Read Online Inheriting His Secret Christmas Baby by Heidi Betts - Free Book Online Page A

the marble island had been covered with fabric totes, a boxed dinner for two from one of the Ridge’s exclusive restaurants waited on the counter near the stove and her car was parked in the drive. Trevor had thanked him with a nod and what looked to be a fifty-dollar tip, something Haylie quickly pretended she hadn’t seen.
    She’d known the Jarrods had money, of course. Which was sort of like saying the Sahara desert had sand. They were, in a word, loaded.
    Yes, she understood that. And if she hadn’t before driving down from Denver, the sight of the Jarrod Ridge Resort certainly would have clued her in. Trevor’s demeanor of entitlement and the lavishness of his own private home were really just icing on the cake.
    And though she considered herself a generous person, always tipping well at restaurants and after hotel stays, she didn’t have a fifty-dollar bill in her wallet for emergencies, let alone floating around as extra change to give to a complete stranger in thanks for doing her a favor.
    He hadn’t been stingy when it came to supplying her with personal and baby items or a fresh outfit for her lunch with his sister, either. The vanity in the guest bathroom and the kitchen countertops all resembled a well-stocked drugstore, and the guest bed looked like the fitting-room floor of a woman trying to find the perfect dress for her high school reunion.
    A new sweater and another pair of slacks would have been fine, but Trevor had apparently requested one of everything in her size from several of the resort boutiques. There were dresses and skirts and pants, blouses and pullovers and casual tops with both short and long sleeves. Even shoes and undergarments.
    She couldn’t decide whether to be impressed in a Pretty Woman sort of way or intimidated by the power Trevor so obviously wielded. He snapped his fingers and people jumped. He said, “Jump,” and people asked, “How high?”
    If the blood tests came back showing Bradley was his son—and she had no doubt they would, unless Heather had lied to her for the last year of her life—and Trevor got it into his head to fight for custody, she wouldn’t stand a chance.
    Haylie’s heart seized in her chest at the thought, and her hands actually shook while she rushed to get dressed. She might not have money or power or even the biological rights that Trevor did, but she would still do whatever she had to in order to keep Bradley in her life.
    She hadn’t given it a lot of thought before making the trek to Aspen—something she was beginning to regret—but she realized now that it wouldn’t be feasible for her to maintain full custody once the DNA results came in. The knowledge did nothing to loosen the low-level panic gripping her chest. But she would do anything and everything she could to make sure she was able to see the baby and spend time with him on a regular basis.
    Surely Trevor would be open to visitation, right? He might be a Jarrod, used to getting his own way and ordering people around like pawns on a chessboard, but he wasn’t cruel, was he? He wouldn’t invoke his parental rights and cut her out of Bradley’s life altogether. Would he?
    Haylie wasn’t sure what the symptoms of a full-blown panic attack felt like, but if her shallow breathing, sweaty palms and the ringing in her ears were any indication, she suspected she might be headed in that direction.
    She needed to calm down. The test results wouldn’t be in for weeks yet, so it wasn’t as though Trevor was going to snatch Bradley out of her arms and run off with him. Considering the fact that he hadn’t even held the baby yet—voluntarily, at any rate—she thought he was probably hoping the tests would come back negative so he could wash his hands of the whole situation and return to his fun-loving, playboy lifestyle with barely a ripple.
    In the meantime, however, she had a business lunch to get ready for. One she was unaccountably nervous about.
    Almost as nervous as she was about