The Billionaire's Baby Chase. Valerie Parv
unless you counted deep unhappiness. But Andrew’s jealous behavior had frozen something deep inside her.
Her life had settled onto a much more even keel since her husband died, although she still shuddered to think of how quickly everything had changed. He simply hadn’t believed she was attending a business seminar with a workmate. Convinced she was on her way to meet a man, Andrew had followed her, slamming his car into a telegraph pole in his unseeing rage. He had died instantly.
Zoe no longer allowed herself to dream of an ideal relationship, although the longing for a child of her own was harder to subdue. That she hadn’t even been close to managing it had become obvious the day she got the chance to foster Genie and love her as her own. No child could have been more cherished.
Zoe set the folder aside and took Genie’s chubby hands in her own. “Don’t I tell you almost every day that you are my little girl in every way that matters and I love you very, very much?” The child nodded solemnly and Zoe pulled in a deep breath. “Do you remember the teddy bear I made for your last birthday?”
Genie nodded again. “Yes.”
“And Big Ted that Santa brought you before that?”
“When I was little,” Genie confirmed so seriously that Zoe had to make an effort not to laugh.
“Do you love Big Ted any less because I didn’t make him for you?”
Genie looked affronted at the very idea. “’Course not. I love both my teddies zackly the same.”
Zoe enveloped the child in a hug, feeling her eyes threatening to brim again. “Now you know how I feel about you. You’re my special little girl and it doesn’t matter one bit that you didn’t grow inside me.”
“Or if Santa brought me.” Genie finished on a triumphant note. Then she added more hopefully, “Maybe if I asked Santa—”
“Santa doesn’t bring children,” Zoe interjected before Genie could embellish the notion. “Any more than he brought you.”
Genie chewed her lower lip. “I know, but it would be fun if he could bring me a baby brother or sister.”
A pang gripped Zoe. She knew just how Genie felt. Maybe she was getting greedy, but sometimes her arms ached to hold a baby and feel its mouth nuzzling against her breast. The desire for another child to grow with Genie, to share her games and discoveries, and the outpouring of maternal love Zoe knew she had to offer was almost more than she could bear. Not for the first time she made herself count her blessings. She had Genie to love and care for, and it was more than she had ever dreamed would be hers. She managed a tremulous smile. “Speaking of fun, isn’t it time you got ready to go to playgroup?”
To Zoe’s intense relief, the distraction worked as it usually did. “Are you coming, too?” Genie demanded, all thoughts of Santa and babies miraculously forgotten.
Zoe wished she could distract herself so easily. She shook her head. “Simon’s mummy is taking you both today.” Simon’s mother, Julie, lived next door and was Zoe’s friend and self-appointed morale officer. “I have to show a house to a nice man who’s coming all the way from the country to see it.”
Genie made a face. “Do you have to? Why can’t he look at a house by his own self?”
Zoe laughed at the child’s persistence. “Because he can’t, that’s why. Now scoot. Auntie Julie will be here any minute.”
The child scampered off down the hall to her bedroom. In minutes she was back, carrying her koala backpack and favorite Barbie doll, just as the doorbell pealed. As soon as Zoe opened it, Genie launched herself at Simon and his mother, who were waiting outside. Amid promises to be good and hugs all around, they left in a flurry of chatter and excitement.
Zoe barely had time to assemble the documents she would need for the house inspection when the doorbell pealed again.
James Langford waited with barely leashed impatience. When he had asked his secretary to arrange the appointment with Zoe Holden, he had not expected to meet her at what was obviously her own home. He had been fully prepared to spin some tale that would end in her inviting him home after they had inspected the Strathfield mansion.
Being invited here was beyond all his expectations and he could barely suppress a shiver of anticipation. He was so close to finding his daughter he could practically taste his success.
The signs of a child in residence made him catch his breath, his chest tightening painfully. A battered tricycle lay on its side on the front lawn while a ball made a splash of scarlet beneath a rosemary bush. In the report which had awaited him on his desk after he returned from the doctor’s office the investigators had noted these signs and more.
A good deal more.
The child living with Zoe Holden was unquestionably Genevieve Langford.
It had taken James half an hour before he recovered sufficiently to read beyond that simple statement to the proof the investigators had amassed, and the background they had supplied on the Holden woman.
It seemed she hadn’t always worked as a property manager. Until she obtained her real estate agent’s license, she’d been a live-in nanny. Her late husband had lived next door to her employer, which was how they’d met. After the husband died, she’d supported herself by looking after other people’s children in her home, while she studied for her present career.
According to the report, Ruth had left their child with Zoe frequently while she made a new life for herself under a false name. Thinking of what sort of life she’d chosen, James felt his features tighten. Freed of the constraints of their marriage, she had thrown herself into all sorts of wild adventures, trying everything from parachuting to whitewater rafting and, finally, to sailing on Sydney Harbor. She hadn’t survived her last escapade.
James’s jaw muscles worked as he considered what could have driven his wife to do such crazy things. Was she trying to prove something to herself? Or was she thumbing her nose at James himself, knowing he would never approve of her life-style?
Damn it, he wasn’t a tyrant, expecting his wife to sit at home and be a meek little wife and mother. But he did believe that parenthood conveyed some responsibilities, not least of which was surviving to see your child grow to adulthood.
He dragged in a strangled breath. Even though it had happened eighteen months before, finding out about Ruth’s death so abruptly had hit him harder than he had expected. Not because he still loved her. He wasn’t that much of a fool. But because her death had been so senseless. Like the proverbial candle in the wind, she had burned herself out long before her time. And because she had never discussed her feelings with him, he had no idea what part he himself might have played in the tragedy.
By hiding herself and Genevieve under a false identity, Ruth had left the authorities no way to trace him after her death. According to the investigator’s report, all avenues of inquiry had been tried, many of them by Zoe Holden herself. When any family had proved impossible to trace, she had finally fostered the little girl.
There was no doubt that his search was almost over, but he couldn’t let himself accept it. Not yet. Until he was reunited with Genevieve, he was reluctant to trust any amount of evidence. But he would trust his instincts. They had urged him to follow just one more hopeless lead and not to give up. Thank providence he hadn’t, or he wouldn’t be standing here now with his throat drying and his palms sweating while his heart raced a mile a minute. Setting up a modern telecommunications network for a volatile Middle Eastern country hadn’t reduced him to this state.
Drawing in a steadying breath, he let his hand edge toward the doorbell again. Before he could press it, the door swung open and he was confronted by the woman whose face he had been studying in photographs all day.
The first thing he realized was that she was more attractive by far than the grainy picture had suggested. She was slighter, too, and as he had suspected, he could have spanned her waist with both hands. What the photo hadn’t revealed was the determined lift to