Dating A British Billionaire (BWWM Romance) by Tasha Jones, BWWM Crew Page B

and the family I had never even told my new fiancé about. My headache got that much worse. It felt like my own brain was banging against the inside of my head. “Oh fuck,” I whispered, my eyes prickling with the promise of tears as I struggled to figure out what the hell I was thinking, getting engaged to someone without telling them about my daughter; without meeting my daughter. I already felt like shit and my mother hadn’t even had a chance to discover what I had been lying to her about.
     
    There it was again: the knocking.
     
    I made a sad attempt to swallow the lump in my throat before I travelled the remaining steps to my door and pulled it open.
     
    There she was, my mother in her morning dress and my daughter in the same clothes I had put on her the day before. My heart dropped, like a useless rock into the pit of my stomach as I stared into her dejected eyes with my doubtlessly bloodshot ones. I was suddenly hyperaware of my scent, no doubt a cross between something like bourbon, red wine and sex, my dry, stained lips, my smudged makeup and the oversized t-shirt I had thrown on in the middle of the night when I got up to use the bathroom. I was supposed to come by and pick her up. I always came back for her at the end of my nights.
     
    But I had gotten drunk and forgotten. “Oh, Valerie,” I whispered.
     
    I had hardly gotten those words out of my mouth when I heard footsteps from behind me.
     
     
    “What on earth…” my mother started to ask as she eyed me up and down. Then, her eyes went wide as she gazed past me.
     
    I turned to find Edward, my fiancé, my prince, standing right in front of all of us, wearing nothing but his Calvin Klein boxers. His well-maintained body glowed warm in the morning light, but his muscles were tense, from head to toe as he stared right into my mother’s eyes.
     
    “I want to die,” I mumbled.
     
    Mother shifted her gaze back to me, her eyes cutting holes right through me. I turned to meet her stare, the force of it cutting right through to my insides. “I’ll take Valerie out for brunch, while you sort out your…” she eyes Edward up and down one more time before adding, “Issues…” With that, she shifted her gaze to Valerie who was staring distrustfully at Edward. I frowned at this. Already, Edward had been painted as the strange man who had invaded her home to her and this was the worst way I could have imagined them crossing paths.
     
    “Come on, Valerie.” My mother took her hand, walked her right back out into the hall then shut the door behind the both of them.
     
    It wasn’t until the sound of the slamming wood resonating had faded away that I realized I hadn’t actually wanted them to leave. Now that I was alone with Edward, there were no more buffers to his anger. I turned to face him. His jaw was set, lips were pursed and he looked as if he had not moved an inch since he first laid eyes on my mother and daughter. In all the time I had spent with him, I had never seen him this angry. I shuddered to think that I was the cause of it. “I’ll uhm…make us some coffee.” I stepped into my small kitchen and started the process of brewing coffee.
     
    “No. Don’t.”
     
    I froze with my hands on the coffee grounds. My heart pounded so hard, I could hear it in my ears. “Ed...” I started, turning around to face him.
     
    He had taken a couple of steps towards the kitchen, but other than that, he was still in the same defensive position he had been in for the last five minutes. He raised a hand up at me. “Don’t say anything. I ask the questions and you tell me the answers.”
     
    I winced at this. His cutting voice caught me off guard. A piercing pain shot through my torso, landing in the very pit of my gut. “Okay, well just… If you could let me explain…”
     
    He slammed his fist against my counter.
     
    I jumped at the sound.
     
    “You had months to explain on your own accord and you neglected to.”
     
    “I’m