Page 1 of Oops Baby for the Billionaire
Chapter 1
Willa
My phone buzzes again,making me jump.
The tray of wine flutes I’m carrying doesn’t rattle, but my heart sure does.Not now, Dad.
“Willa, the shrimp tray is empty,” the catering manager says as she speeds past me. “Fill it, or make it disappear!”
“Got it. I’ll just—” My phone vibrates again.
She stops abruptly and spins around. “Do you have your phone on you?”
“I won’t answer it.”
One of the tech industry bigwigs at this party bumps into me, making the flutes wobble.
“Sorry,” I say by default, even though they bumped into me.
“What?” They spin around, their hand slamming into the tray—and suddenly the contents of eight champagne flutes are dripping down the front of my catering uniform.
“Oh! Watch it, sweetheart.”
I stare at them. I have an armful of precarious glass, and they thinkI?—
My manager steps in, turning me around. Deftly picking the flutes from my clutched embrace and setting them on a side table with alarming speed.
“It’s fine,” she says so fast I can’t even begin to protest. “Let it go. There are spare shirts in a garment bag in the kitchen.”
My phone goes off again, a low buzzing that nobody else can hear but I know she can.
“Go change. You’re soaked. And for the love of God, turn off your damn phone. The host of this party is going to arrive any minute and everything has to be perfect, or his assistant is going to murder me.”
I findthe clean shirts no problem, hanging in a garment bag not far from the tempting tray of strawberries. I steal one, savoring the sweet, tart bite of the fruit, and then grab a shirt and duck into the staff washroom to change.
But there’s no hand dryer, only paper towels. The wine soaked right through to my bra, and the replacement shirt is too thin to be worn without anything underneath.
Wincing at the visible way my nipples jut against the white cotton, I try to think of another option. Where else could I dry my bra off?
We’re in a corporate penthouse apartment on the top of a skyscraper. The party is at one end of the apartment, and I don’t think anyone is in the other end, where there are sleeping quarters.
Surely, where there are beds, there will be bathrooms and hair dryers, right?
I crack open the door. Nobody’s in the kitchen, so I dash across it and down the quiet hallway.
Sure enough, I find an empty bedroom. It’s lushly carpeted, so I toe off my shoes and pad across it, looking for a bathroom. I find one through a massive—and empty—walk-in closet.
And bingo, there’s a high tech hair dryer.
I rinse out my bra in the sink with one hand while skimming through the text messages from my father with the other.
Dad:I swear I paid the rent, I don’t know why this is happening.
I do,I want to yell back at him.You gambled or drank away that money. Maybe both. And then you lied to yourselfandme, and now we’re homeless.
But yelling doesn’t help. I’m so glad I saw this eviction coming and moved everything precious to my studio at the art college I attend. I have a couch to sleep on tonight, and for a few weeks at least, until someone notices that I’m not crashing there because I’m working on a project, but because I have nowhere else to go.
I’m not sure what I’ll do after that, because I can’t afford an apartment on my own in the city.
