Page 19 of The Billionaire's One-Night Baby

Jago stood up and walked along the wooden deck, noticing but not paying any attention to the two kudu bulls approaching the waterhole for an evening drink.

He had not seen this coming. At all.

Anticipating trouble—change—was what he did, who he was. He planned his life, every detail, and he didn’t allow life to throw him curveballs. Fathering a child wasn’t a curveball, it was a goddamn asteroid strike.

A baby had never been part of the plan. With his wife or anyone else.

His marriage to Anju had been a head decision—he’d liked her mind, they’d both had fun in bed, they’d both agreed love was a myth—and her wish to remain childless and pursue her career had been a stance he fully supported. She’d understood the Le Roux empire required an enormous amount of his time, and neither of them had envisaged his changing nappies while negotiating multi-billion-dollar deals.

But his reluctance to be a dad went deeper than that. He knew himself well, and he was too controlling and analytical to be a father. Because of his need to anticipate trouble, change and potential emotional comet strikes, he constantly scanned his environment, overanalysing and overthinking. He put up barriers, rearranged situations, and either ignored or manoeuvred people to make life easier.

For him.

Children deserved, demanded, and required a father who could engage with, relate to and talk to them, not someone who was rigid and dogmatic, someone who’d stifle their creativity and enthusiasm. He was skilled in many facets of business but being a dad, raising a child, wasn’t something he knew how to do. He wouldn’t even know where to start and he could see himself screwing up. Badly. To Jago, failure, of any type, was unacceptable.

And frightening.

Children also required emotional availability and he wasn’t that type of guy. Smothering his feelings, pushing down his expectations of people, keeping a solid emotional distance between himself and the world had been his coping strategy since he was a child, a way to deal with the vagaries, temper and instability of a volatile father. Hardening his heart was also the only way he could cope with his father’s quick remarriage, and the way he’d erased his first wife from his heart, his memories and his life.

Being emotionally distant was a habit now, something he was familiar, and comfortable, with. Something he had no intention of changing...

Except that he had a baby on the way.Madness.

But also, weirdly, a little exciting, in an ‘I’m about to bungee jump and I don’t know if the rope will hold me’ type of way. There was a little person on the way who would, at some point, call him Dad. Did he, would he, deserve that title?

And while he was on the subject of questions he couldn’t answer, how the hell had Dodi fallen pregnant? As she said, they’d used condoms, every time they made love that night. Hadn’t they? Yes, he was pretty sure...

Jago stopped pacing and frowned. He recalled their passion, her frantic demands for him to come into her, and he’d done as she asked, sliding inside her, just once, without being covered because he’d needed to know how she felt without the barrier of latex between them. But he’d pulled out before he’d come, of that he was sure. Had that tiny contact resulted in a child? Could something so life-changing be the result of his need for there to be no barriers between them, just for a minute or two?

Could life be so capricious?

And wasn’t that a stupid question? He knew, from experience, exactly how unpredictable life, and people, could be.

And talking about unpredictable, he needed to get back to the city and face the woman who’d turned his world inside out. They had plans and decisions to make.

Lives to reorganise.

CHAPTER SIX

DODIPULLEDHERT-shirt off, pushed down the band of her leggings and stood in front of her free-standing mirror to stare at her still flat stomach. She turned sideways but, as far as she could tell, her breasts weren’t any bigger or her stomach any rounder.

She laughed at herself, remembering she was only a few weeks pregnant. Her baby couldn’t be bigger than a full stop, less than one millimetre in length, and weighing less than a gram. She’d only start picking up weight in a couple of months and it would be a long time before she felt her baby move.

Her baby.

Emotions, dark and light, battered her from all sides, a constantly changing flow of happy and sad, fear and excitement. Anxiety and anticipation. She was going to be a mum. She was growing a little human she could love. Was she good enough to be a mum? Could she do this on her own?

As a child she’d imagined having a family, being someone’s mother, but she’d pushed aside those dreams to focus her attention on how to navigate life with uninterested parents. She’d thought she might, some time in the future, have kids with Dan. But Lily’s death, Dan’s infidelity, her single status, and the responsibility of running a business had pushed any thoughts of motherhood away. Over the past few years, becoming a parent wasn’t something she’d considered. Now it was all she could think about...

Dodi looked at her fingers resting lightly on her stomach, knowing that she was looking for a physical connection to the tiny, tiny human developing inside her. The one she and Jago had made. How she still wasn’t sure, but if this kid could fight his or her way past condoms, punch through their protection, she thought the little speck had earned its right to be here, to make its way onto this crazy planet.

And yeah, its father was an unemotional jerk, easily able to brush her and The Speck away, but she couldn’t do the same. Wouldn’t.

She was keeping this baby...

Excitement and terror gave way to red-hot anger. And all of it was directed at her baby’s DNA donor. How dared Jago blow her off, give her life-changing announcement no more attention than he would a memo that crossed his desk? His priority had been his imminent meeting. Hers hadonlybeen the rest of her life.

She wanted to strangle him...

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