Inheriting His Secret Christmas Baby Read Free Page B

she’d brought along with Heather’s picture. “She was killed in a car accident two months ago.”
    Her chest tightened even more when a look of genuine sympathy passed over his features. He might not remember Heather, and he might suspect Haylie was up to no good with her it’s a boy! announcement, but he didn’t appear to be completely cold and heartless.
    “I know you probably think I’m trying to work some elaborate scam on you. Or that I’m hoping to snag a bit of the Jarrod fortune for myself. But I assure you, that isn’t the case.”
    Bradley started to fuss, and she jiggled him slightly, transferring him to her other hip. “I’m only here because Heather told me you’re Bradley’s father, and since she never got around to contacting you herself, I felt it was my place to let you know she’d passed away, and that you have a child. More importantly, I think he—” she lifted Bradley, making it clear to whom she was referring “—deserves to know his father and where he comes from on his father’s side.”
    When Trevor didn’t respond, she slipped the photograph and obituary out of his loose grasp. “So check me out if you need to. Draw up whatever legal documents you feel are fair and will protect your assets. But don’t punish your son for his mother’s mistakes.”
    Trevor’s grip tightened on the door handle while he studied the woman standing before him. He’d met his fair share of young ladies with dollar signs in their eyes and their sights set on the Jarrod millions, and had become adept at brushing them off.
    But none of his usual gold digger alarm bells were going off with Haylie Smith. Something about her told him she was sincere. Even if she was wrong about the baby’s paternity, it was clear she believed what she was saying—or at least what her sister had apparently told her before her death.
    Glancing down at the photograph clutched in Haylie’s white-knuckled fingers, he once again racked his brain for any memory of the woman he’d supposedly spent a less-than-memorable night with. He remembered the trip to Denver, and even stopping in at one of the city’s more popular nightclubs for a drink after a day filled with disappointing meetings and a potentially lucrative business venture that had fallen through. He’d been frustrated and annoyed, and had needed to blow off some steam.
    The earsplitting techno music had rattled his brain, but he’d stuck around long enough to down a few drinks. And he remembered women…lots of women in short skirts and ice-pick stilettos, both out on the dance floor and crowded into booths the color of Hpnotiq vodka. Several had hit on him, but he hadn’t been in the mood.
    Or maybe, after a few more drinks, he had.
    There was no recollection there, though. The only thing he found familiar about the woman in the picture came from her resemblance to the woman standing in front of him now. They had the same blue eyes and honey-blond hair, the same bow-tie mouth and long, thick lashes. But that’s where the similarities ended.
    Where Heather’s hair was styled in a bold, spikey do, with a streak of magenta running down one side, Haylie’s fell soft and naturally around her face and looked infinitely touchable.
    Where Heather’s lips were painted a bright, shocking shade of pink, Haylie wore nothing but a layer of clear gloss.
    And where Heather’s eyes appeared hard and jaded, Haylie’s were deep pools of warmth and earnestness.
    How could two women—sisters—with so many of the same features look so very different? he wondered.
    He also wondered how one sister could go nine-plus months without making a single effort to inform a man he was allegedly going to be a father, while the other had spent two months trying to track him down by phone and felt so strongly about her duty to inform him of his parenthood—again, alleged parenthood—that she’d driven nearly four hours from Denver to Aspen with a baby in tow and wheedled her way into