Page 4 of The Billionaire's Instant Triplets

Ria herself had dropped out of college after her sophomore year. She’d been studying education and had dreamed of becoming a teacher, but that dream had been put on hold. Her brother, Thomas, had broken his leg playing football, and the medical bills had been too high for their single mother to afford on her own. The family had needed money, fast, so Ria had signed up with a nannying agency and taken her first job.

Ria didn’t have any regrets — or not many, at least. She’d done what was needed to help her family, and she loved all of the kids and families she had worked with. Now and then, there would be an unruly kid or a completely detached parent, but that was just part of the job. She got to work with kids every day, as she’d always dreamed of doing.

Ria had inflated her qualifications to land the job at Oh Pear! for the same reason she’d dropped out of college at nineteen: she had done, and always would do, whatever it took to help her family.

This time, she might have gone too far, though.

Ria strode towards the bus stop, her thoughts already racing ten steps ahead. She barely noticed the colorful row of houses with wide balconies that made up the neighborhood, nor the wide pines and patches of green. San Francisco was a beautiful city, although Ria rented her apartment in a cheaper and less fancy neighborhood. She rarely stayed in her own apartment, as most of her jobs were live-in, so it didn’t matter that she still lived in a walk-up studio on the fifth floor of an old apartment building that had seen better days.

A bus was pulling up just as Ria approached the stop. She broke into a jog and managed to slip through the doors just as they were closing. Luckily, there was an empty seat near the back of the bus beside a window. She sat and leaned against the glass as the bus climbed up and down hills and wove through the bright buildings of downtown towards Ria’s neighborhood on the other side of the city.

As soon as she got home, she would start applying for new jobs. She wasn’t fired — yet — but it seemed like it was only a matter of time before Eloise called her into the office again for more permanent measures. Even if Ria got another chance, her new clients would probably expect her to speak fluent French or professionally arrange flowers — her résumé did say that she could. Ria banged her head lightly against the window. She definitely needed to look for something else, though losing the higher pay would hurt. And she wouldn’t try fudging her qualifications again.

Ria got off at her stop a while later and walked up a hill, then the stairs, to her apartment. The walls were still painted white, as they had been when she’d first rented the apartment five years ago, and the apartment was furnished with cheap, mismatched pieces she’d found at yard sales. Despite the eclectic and slightly un-homey look, the apartment was always spotlessly clean, and the walls were hung with pictures of Ria with her young charges over the years, as well as drawings that they’d done for her and letters that they’d written.

Ria loved the kids she looked after as though they were her own. She wanted kids of her own, too, but without job stability or a partner by her side, the time had never seemed right. She traced her finger over a drawing of an elephant one of the kids had given her, a smile drifting across her lips, before she took out her laptop, sat at the dining-room table, and started going through job postings.

She would figure this out. She always did.

CHAPTER2

TRISTAN

“And I can assure you that—” Tristan was cut off by the sound of a loud wail outside the office. His investor, Aaron Brewer, looked at him across the table with an expression of concern.

“Is everything all right out there?” he asked.

“Yes, yes, all is well. I brought the kids into work with me today — it was a bit of an emergency.”

The emergency was that reliable childcare was hard to find. Over the last three months, Tristan had worked with a few nannies and babysitters and had tried to put the triplets in a nature preschool a few days a week. Yet, every time, things fell apart. The triplets were rambunctious and hard to wrangle, which meant that nannies and babysitters often quit quickly. The nature preschool had been helpful — until Jacob managed to put paint handprints all over the walls, the floor, the other children’s clothes, and his own face. It hadn’t helped that Jasmine often cried or that Jamie had so much energy that he practically bounced off the walls. The preschool had told Tristan last week that they couldn’t take the kids anymore.

Tristan was quickly running out of options, which meant he’d been bringing his kids into work more than he should.

“Certainly. I have a daughter myself.” Aaron Brewer smiled. Another wail cut through the office’s thin walls, and his expression turned to a grimace. “She’s at home with my wife, though. Anyway, I wasn’t aware that you had children.”

“It’s a bit of a long story.” Tristan reached for his cup of matcha. He still struggled to call the triplets “his kids” — it felt like a betrayal to the sister he’d never known. Anyway, it was difficult to explain how the triplets had come to be in his care, and it wasn’t really any of Aaron’s business, anyway. “Shall we return to the matter at hand? We were discussing how much of an investment you’d like to make in the next fiscal year. As I said, a seven percent increase on?—”

Another wail sounded, this one in the form of a word. “Mamaaaaa!”

“Perhaps you’d better go see what the matter is,” Aaron said, grimacing again.

Tristan felt his own polite smile turning into a grimace. He wanted to do right by these kids, but he had no idea how to do that. Everything he tried seemed to turn into a catastrophe, and today was no exception. “You’re right. Please, give me a minute.”

Tristan got to his feet and went to examine the source of the noise. His assistant, Caroline, was holding a screaming Jamie in her arms. His face was scrunched into a red-faced expression of complete displeasure as his small arms flailed wildly. His sister and brother, Jasmine and Jacob, were sitting on the floor, playing with a chunky train set.

“Caroline.” Tristan tried to keep his tone calm. “What is going on out here?”

“What’s going on is that I’m not a babysitter.” Caroline handed the screaming toddler to Tristan. Her usually neat blond curls were frizzy, and there was a stain on her blouse. “He just lost his head all of a sudden.”

“I know you’re not a babysitter, but I only asked you to watch the kids while I had this meeting.”

“Right, maybe today — but yesterday I watched them for three hours while you were in a board meeting. Do you know how many diapers I changed? Seven! In three hours! How is that evenpossible?” Caroline looked on the edge of a breakdown herself, which Tristan could understand.

“I know it isn’t ideal,” he said. “Let’s all take a few deep breaths.” It was hard to be Zen with a child screaming in his arms, but Tristan had to try.

“A few deep breaths.” Caroline scoffed, her blue eyes rolling. “I signed on as your assistant because I admire your company and your work, but I’ve been spending more time trying to get your kids to eat mashed peas than actually working. I quit.”

“Give me until the end of the day,” Tristan said. “I just need to attend to a few things, and then I’ll figure out a permanent solution for the kids.”

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