From Heiress To Mum

Finding a family...

...with her ex?

In this Billionaires for Heiresses story, Autumn is stunned when Hunter Lee, her billionaire ex turned best friend, appears on her doorstep—with a son! Their relationship changed because she wanted a family and he didn’t believe he’d make a good father, but they never stopped loving each other. Now he needs her help. Will caring for baby Eli together make them realize how much they both want this little family...forever?

Being an author has always been THERESE BEHARRIE’s dream. But it was only when the corporate world loomed during her final year at university that she realised how soon she wanted that dream to become a reality. So she got serious about her writing, and now she writes the kind of books she wants to see in the world, featuring people who look like her, for a living. When she’s not writing she’s spending time with her husband and dogs in Cape Town, South Africa. She admits that this is a perfect life, and is grateful for it.

Also by Therese Beharrie

Tempted by the Billionaire Next Door

Surprise Baby, Second Chance

Her Festive Flirtation

Conveniently Wed, Royally Bound miniseries

United by Their Royal Baby

Falling for His Convenient Queen

Billionaires for Heiresses miniseries

Second Chance with Her Billionaire

From Heiress to Mum

Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk.

From Heiress to Mum

Therese Beharrie

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-1-474-09105-3

FROM HEIRESS TO MUM

© 2019 Therese Beharrie

Published in Great Britain 2019

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.

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www.millsandboon.co.uk

Version: 2020-03-02

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For Grant, who sees me when I can’t see myself.

I love you.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

About the Author

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

EPILOGUE

Extract

About the Publisher

CHAPTER ONE

A POUNDING WOKE her up.

At first Autumn Bishop thought it was a dream. She’d gone to bed with one hell of a headache. Unsurprisingly: she’d spent a weekend away with her parents and sister, dealing with family drama, and had then driven six hours back to Cape Town.

The familiar throbbing had come shortly after she’d arrived at home. Right on time. Her head always ached when she was far enough away from her family to brood about how different she was from her sister. And how those differences made her feel like a failure.

When she heard the pounding, she thought it was that. Perhaps the pounding headache had manifested into a drumming. But then she heard a shrill ringing, and she woke up fully. Throwing the covers off, she ran to the front door, her stomach dropping when she opened it to Hunter Lee.

Her stomach kept free-falling as her eyes swept over him. His brown hair was wild, a sign that he’d let the wind style it. The strong features of his face were tight, as if someone had attached them to a string at his nose and pulled, forcing everything to be drawn to the centre of his face. Even the muscles of his shoulders—his chest, his entire body—were tense.

Something about it sent a wave of emotion, of awareness through her. When that wave collapsed, a second one of nausea replaced it.

‘What is it?’ she asked. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘Everything.’

His voice, usually steady and strong, was hoarse, the word cracking. A part of her wanted to turn on her heel and climb back into bed; another, more forceful part spurred her forward. Before she knew it, her arms were circling around his significantly larger body.

She wasn’t sure why she was hugging him. They’d avoided this kind of contact since they’d made the transition from lovers to friends a year before. Besides, he wasn’t the kind for contact, unless in affection, and in private. But her instinct had been to comfort him. And, though she would never admit it aloud, to comfort herself at seeing him this way.

She drew back and took a deliberate step away from him.

‘What happened?’

He stuffed his hands into his jeans pockets. Her eyes automatically followed the movement, and she shoved away a kick of appreciation. It didn’t matter that his legs—those powerful, strong legs—deserved appreciation. Now was not the time.

‘Can I come inside?’

His voice was steadier.

‘Of course,’ she said, opening the door wider.

Two things happened then. One, she held her breath, not wanting to get a whiff of his cologne. The smell never failed to twist her insides, even after their break-up, and she’d become accustomed to not breathing it in when she was around him. Two was that a light breeze followed Hunter through the front door. It wasn’t particularly cool—cool and summer in the Western Cape of South Africa rarely went together—but Autumn shuddered, her skin shooting out in gooseflesh. And suddenly she realised how she looked.

She was wearing a silk nightdress, a gift from her mother, since it was the first thing she’d found in her cupboard before falling into bed. She groaned softly. It wasn’t demure, though she might have been able to ignore that if her breasts had played along. They currently were not, having reacted to the breeze, and, along with the silk material, she knew she’d give Hunter an eyeful if she turned around like that.

Not that it was something he hadn’t seen before. It was just... Autumn liked boundaries. Preferred them, where he was concerned. Where they were concerned. So she closed the door and crossed an arm over her chest. She wondered how terrible it was that she was thinking about her breasts when he was clearly upset.

‘This is an emergency, I’m assuming,’ she said when she turned around, crossing her free arm over her chest as well.

‘Yes.’ It was all he said for what felt like for ever. Then his eyes sparked. ‘Not so much that you can’t put on something that makes you feel more comfortable.’

Her cheeks heated. Instead of giving him the sarcastic reply she truly wanted to, she nodded, and went to her room. She grabbed the first thing she found to cover up—ironically, the silk kimono that, for reasons only her mother and heaven knew, matched the nightdress—and slipped her feet into a pair of sandals.

When she returned, she found him on the patio.

‘Still can’t get used to this view,’ Hunter said quietly as she stopped next to him.

She followed his gaze onto the city of Cape Town. When she’d moved out of her family home—the Bishop mansion, as some people liked to call it—she hadn’t tried to find somewhere outside the city she’d grown up in to live. She’d merely been drawn to the Bouw Estate.

It had green fields that exploded with wildflowers; rolling hills beyond the fields; a river that surrounded the estate. The old manor and barn on the property had been renovated into what were now her home and her bakery, respectively. Every time she stood outside on the patio, at the top of the mountain that led out of Cape Town, staring down onto the city, Autumn thought that the Bouw Estate might not have been intentional, but it had been necessary.

‘You didn’t come here at...’ She paused, frowning when she realised she hadn’t seen the time. ‘What time is it?’

‘A little after eleven.’

So she’d had all of an hour’s worth of sleep.

‘You didn’t come here at eleven at night to talk about this view.’

His eyes slid over to her, the brown of them a well of emotion, before his head dipped in a curt nod. ‘You’re right.’

‘When am I not?’ she muttered. She gestured to the outdoor table she’d lovingly selected when she’d furnished her house. ‘Shall we?’

He nodded, pulled a chair out and stepped back. With a sigh, she sat down, thanking him when he pushed it back in. She waited as he sat down opposite her. A long silence followed. She used it to study him. To watch the emotions play over his face.

When his eyes met hers, she caught her breath, and wished she had something to drink to distract herself from how vulnerable all of this made her feel.

‘I don’t know how to say this,’ he admitted eventually.

She let air into her lungs slowly. ‘Just...get it out.’

He angled his head, as if accepting her suggestion, but didn’t speak.

‘Hunter.’ She paused. ‘Are you in trouble?’

He opened his mouth, and Autumn could almost see his lips forming no, but then he closed it again. Rubbed a hand over his face; took a deep breath.

‘I am.’

She straightened. ‘Yeah? You’re in trouble?’

His eyes shone with an emotion she couldn’t quite define. It disturbed her. She’d dated him for two years; they’d been friends for one more. She should be able to tell what he was feeling.

‘Yes.’

After a brief moment of hesitation, she laid a hand on the one he’d rested on the table. ‘What’s going on?’

He took a breath, then exhaled sharply, his gaze lowering.

‘I’m a father.’

‘What?’

‘I’m a father.’

She tilted her head, tried to process. But she couldn’t. Her headache had dulled to something bearable, but it felt as if her mind had fallen out of her ear with that head tilt.

‘I’m sorry, I thought you said—’ She moved her head again. ‘Did you say—?’

She broke off, told herself the question was ridiculous. He didn’t say he was a father. He didn’t say it twice. No. No. This was Hunter she was talking to. The man who’d gone quieter and quieter whenever she’d talked about their future together. The man who’d started pulling away from her long before they’d ended things because he’d realised he didn’t want children.

There was no way that man, this man, was a father.

She let out a small laugh. ‘You know...’ she lifted her hand, though she didn’t have any reason for doing it ‘... I thought I heard you say you’re a father. Which is ludicrous, right?’

‘It is,’ he agreed quietly.

Relief burst in her chest as if it were a diva arriving at a party.

‘Oh. Well, then, what is it? Because—’

‘But it’s true, Autumn.’

The diva was assassinated. The party turned into a funeral.

‘Huh?’ she said, inelegantly. ‘What? No. You’re not a father. You’re... You’re you.’

He inclined his head in both acknowledgement and acceptance, then folded his arms. ‘I know. I responded in the same way,’ he told her after a moment. ‘I didn’t believe it when she told me at first either.’

‘She?’ Autumn repeated through numb lips.

She tried to swallow, but the simple task seemed awfully hard. It was as if her throat had forgotten its entire purpose was to swallow. As if it, too, were stunned by what Hunter was telling her.

‘She,’ he confirmed with a tight nod. Though he had every right to be amused by the stupid question, Hunter spoke seriously. ‘A woman I met a...a year ago.’

‘A year ago.’

She was still so numb.

‘After our... After.’

The words sounded distant, as if she were listening to him through a wall or through glass or perhaps under water. She blinked, trying to figure a way out, then lifted her hand to her hair, tucking it behind her ears in case it was obscuring the sound. But when he started speaking again, it was the same.

‘I...was trying to deal with our break-up,’ he said deliberately. ‘It was hard, for both of us.’

But I didn’t sleep with anyone else.

Her mouth almost said the words. Somehow, by nothing short of a miracle, it didn’t.

‘I wasn’t dealing with it very well.’

Was she dreaming? Maybe she was having a nightmare.

‘I went to the bar close to my house.’

She brought her hand to her legs under the table. Discreetly, she pinched her thigh, hard, but Hunter kept talking. She was awake.

‘It was the night after we decided to end things. I started drinking. I didn’t stop.’ He paused. ‘It was a drunken mistake. I... I made a mistake.’

Autumn sat back, her eyes sweeping over the frame of her house. She’d rebuilt it by herself, this house. It had been stately, impressive when she’d bought the estate. It had been falling apart, too, and she’d rebuilt it. The red brick outside, the balcony above them, all of that had been her.

When she’d struggled with her life, with trying so hard for people to see her, to love her, she came out here and looked at it. At what she’d built. It never failed to make her feel proud. Steadier.

Tonight, it couldn’t anchor her.

She felt as if she were floating away. She wasn’t quite sure where to, until she saw herself as a child, following her father around the Bishop Enterprises building. The home of their family empire. She watched as the child asked questions, was answered, but curtly, as if to brush her off. Summer, Autumn’s twin sister’s questions were answered patiently, though.

Then she was at home, at the Bishop mansion, listening to her mother talk about Summer. Autumn said the right things in response to her mother’s concern. Waited patiently for her mother to ask about her. About Autumn. It never came.

Finally she saw her gangly frame at fifteen. She was standing outside her parents’ house, waiting for her date to the school dance. When he arrived, he asked her where her sister was. Looked behind her—no, through her—to check for Summer...

The hurt that had informed her every action since those days flared again now. It asked why she wasn’t enough. Why, even when she tried, people still didn’t want her.

Even Hunter didn’t want her. Of course, she’d known it when he’d agreed to break up. But they’d stayed friends. And she didn’t have to try as hard with him. She felt the most like herself when she was with him. She almost felt like...like she was enough. As if she were the first choice.

Except she wasn’t. She very clearly wasn’t.

CHAPTER TWO

IT WAS AS if Hunter had been given X-ray vision and could suddenly see through flesh and bone. As Autumn sat staring at him, Hunter saw her hurt, the desire she had to scream at him. He saw how badly she wanted to run. From his news, from him. He wouldn’t have blamed her.

He probably looked like a nightmare. He’d pitched up at her house at eleven at night, having got into his car almost as soon as Grace had left his place. He should have tried to get some sleep first, after he’d heard the news. He shouldn’t have arrived at Autumn’s house in a panic. But he doubted his ability to sleep. He probably wouldn’t be able to for the foreseeable future, considering what it might hold.

What it would hold, he thought, Grace’s words echoing in his ears.

He’d felt better when Autumn had opened the door, concern in her eyes. Something had clicked back in place when she’d put her arms around him. Now, that seemed like an appropriate punishment for coming to her with this.

Seeing how hurt she was, seeing her wanting to run, sent an unbearable ache through his body. Another appropriate punishment.

He’d thought he’d grown accustomed to her disappointment. Every day towards the end of their romantic relationship had been stained with its stickiness. She had never said it in so many words, but he’d sensed it. Every time he hadn’t responded to her gentle probes about their future. Or when he hadn’t added anything when she’d spoken about her dreams about having a family.

In truth, he’d been figuring out his answers. First for himself; then what he would give her. She wouldn’t like them, despite the different ways he’d tried to phrase them in his mind. He’d spent too long trying to figure out what to tell her in the end, desperate for her not to have a low opinion of him.

But it had happened anyway, rightfully so. Just as it was happening now.

He could see it. In the tightness around her eyes. In the crease between her brows. More than that, he felt her disappointment, sharp and acute. Felt sharp and acute pangs in his chest as well. So he supposed he hadn’t got used to it after all.

But no matter how much he wanted to, he couldn’t say what she needed to hear: that he wanted to have a family with her. He couldn’t. The desires she’d expressed when they’d been together had reminded him of how families broke. How siblings got sick. How losing them felt like losing everything in the world.

Each person involved in a family would get hurt. Would be irrevocably changed—or worse. He’d seen it with his own parents. With his own sister. He had no desire to put himself in a situation to feel that way again. Let alone with a woman he genuinely cared for.

And yet the first thing he’d done after their break-up was forget his responsible nature and get a woman pregnant. Then he’d come to her, to the woman he cared about, to tell her that their break-up had resulted in the very thing she’d wanted and he hadn’t: a child.

The thing he now had and she didn’t. What painful irony.

‘Autumn,’ he said when the silence extended long enough that even he, who was at home in silence, felt uncomfortable. ‘Say something.’

Her lips parted, and for a split second Hunter remembered that they did that just before he would kiss her. But that memory was unwelcome, untimely. How could he think about kissing her when he’d just told her he was a father? When he’d just discovered he was a father?

He was a father.

Bile rose in his stomach. It was the same thing that happened whenever he thought about his own father. The man who’d put his feelings above his dying daughter’s.

‘Autumn,’ Hunter said again, more insistently.

Autumn’s eyes met his, and his breath did something strange at the gold that flickered in their brown depths.

‘Are you okay?’

Her eyelashes fluttered. ‘I—Yes.’ She straightened. ‘I’m okay.’

Her voice sounded strange too, as if someone had taken a hold of her voice box and were squeezing tightly.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, because he needed to.

She closed her eyes, and he wanted to reach out. To brush a finger over the line where her dark lashes lay against the brown of her skin. To smooth the lines at her forehead.

Her eyes opened right then and before he could avert his own, their gazes locked. His heart stumbled in his chest, resulting in an uncomfortable beat against his chest bone. The thump-thump of his heart sounded in his ears, except he heard it as laughter, a mocking ha-ha at what he’d given up to ensure that what he’d told her tonight would never happen.

He forced his eyes away, onto the night lights of Cape Town. It used to comfort him once upon a time. Now it mocked him.

‘You found out tonight?’ she asked after some time had passed.

He nodded. Still, he couldn’t look at her.

A voice in his head called him a coward.

‘Grace, the woman I—’ He stopped before he said something stupid. ‘The mother of the child. She showed up at my place.’

‘You didn’t know before that?’

He shook his head.

‘How old is the... How old?’

‘Three months.’

She pursed her lips, though he’d caught the trembling long before she’d done it.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said again, eyes resting on her face now. She nodded.

‘You’re here because you’re surprised.’

It wasn’t a question.

‘I’m here because—’ he hesitated ‘—it’s the first place I wanted to go. I needed to see you.’

Her tongue darted out, wet her lips.

‘Why?’

He took a breath. ‘You’re my friend.’

‘Not your only one.’ She pushed back at some of the curls exploding over the silk band she wore. ‘Certainly not the best one to deal with this.’

‘No,’ he agreed, but didn’t say anything else. Couldn’t. Because she was right.

She wasn’t his only friend; not that he had many more. In fact, he had one more: his second-in-command, Ted. Most of his peak making-friends time—school, university—had been focused on other things.

Most of his school life he’d spent helping his parents take care of Janie, his baby sister, who’d had cystic fibrosis. Ha! a voice in his brain immediately said. He hadn’t helped his parents take care of Janie; he’d helped his mother take care of Janie. His father had tapped out of her care early on, pronouncing himself too clumsy to help.