Read Daddy by December (The BAD BOY BILLIONAIRES Series) for Free Online Page B

me?”
    Drake frowned.  Was the
child in some kind of trouble?  He reached out and pulled up a chair then sat
down beside her.  “Is something the matter?” he asked gently.  “I’ll do my best
to help.”
    “Can you help me find a
daddy by December twenty-four?”
    Drake shook his head
but, not wanting to scare the child, he tempered it with a smile.  “What do you
mean, Jessie?  Why do you need a daddy by that date?”
    “It’s for my mommy,”
she said, her little face earnest as she stared up at him.  “She never gets
flowers for her birthday or for Christmas like my best friend’s mom does and
she never, ever, gets roses for Valentine's Day.  Sometimes she looks so sad…”
Her voice trailed off and her face grew pensive.  “I think if we had a daddy at
our house like my friends do then she’d be happy.”  She turned her eyes back to
him.  “Can you help me find one?”
    “Well, I’m…” He clamped
his mouth shut. What the hell could he say to the kid?  I’d love to apply for
the position but your mom would never have me?  He cleared his throat as he
tried to buy himself some time.  “What’s so special about December
twenty-four?”
    Jessie gave a tinkling
laugh.  “It’s Christmas Eve, silly.  That’s the last day to tell Santa what
presents you want.”  She leaned toward Drake then whispered, “I made Mommy
think I want a daddy for me but it’s really for her.  I want it to be a
surprise.”
    Drake sat back in his
chair and stared at the five year old matchmaker  in admiration.  Who would
have known that such a tiny child would have the gray matter to plan to trick
her mother into a relationship?
    He shook his head as he
contemplated Jessie.  She was an observant little tyke, too, to notice her
mother's lack of presents on those special days.  Poor kid.  It must have been
hard for her, losing her daddy.
    “You miss your dad a
lot, I guess,” he said softly, not wanting to upset her with sad memories.
    “Unh-unh.”  She shook
her head vigorously.
    Drake cocked his head
to one side.  “You don’t?”
    “I don’t know my daddy,”
she said.  “I mean, not anymore.  I was too little when he died.  Mommy said he
was hit by a drunk driver.”
    Oh, shit . 
He didn’t say it out loud.  What a crappy way to die.  The poor guy had
probably been on his way home to his family when some idiot put out his lights
forever.  “I’m sorry to hear-”
    “I’m back.”  Meg burst
into the room, an overly bright smile on her face.  “I got your juice.”  She
walked over and laid a bottle of strawberry kiwi juice blend on the table. 
“And I got you a big, chewy chocolate chip cookie.”  She produced her prize
with a flourish and laid it on the table beside the juice.
    Jessie seemed
unimpressed.
    Meg looked at her then
at Drake.  A frown crinkled her brow.  “Is everything okay?  She hasn’t been
bothering you, has she?”
    “Not at all," he
said and got up to walk over to the wide windows looking over the city.  “We
were just getting to know each other, that’s all.” 
    That brought an even
more worried look to Meg’s face.  “Know each other?”  She looked back at Jessie. 
“What exactly did she say?”  Her face had taken on a pink hue, a definite sign
of her uneasiness.
    On an impulse Drake
decided to seize on an once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.  He and Meg would be
seeing each other on a professional basis but this might just be his chance to
abandon professionalism for a while.  He wanted the opportunity to be with her,
speak to her, understand what he’d done that made her resent him so much.
    “I can tell you all
about it,” he said, “if you’ll agree to have dinner with me.”
    “Have din…” She stared
at him, wide-eyed, then turned her suspicious gaze on her daughter.  “Did you
have something to do with this?”
    Jessie turned her baby
blues up to her mother and shook her head.  “Unh-unh.”
    “She didn’t,”