“Give me a minute,” Ray said, and he stepped out and reached back, shutting the door behind him.
“I’m sorry,” Danielle said. “I didn’t want to get pregnant; I didn’t trick you. I don’t want your money.”
“The pill doesn’t mess up. You can’t get pregnant on it.”
“You can, it’s just rare,” Danielle said. “Trust me, you can.”
She felt tears in her eyes once more, and she felt like an idiot. One slipped over her bottom eyelid and slipped down her mocha cheek, but Ray reached out and wiped it away.
“I bought you this,” Danielle said, holding the gift out to him. He opened it and smiled when he looked to her his own eyes were misty. “You can’t give up on your dream,” she said. “You have to write that novel.”
Ray nodded. He couldn’t speak.
“I want to tell you about my father,” Danielle said. Ray looked to her. She had never opened up about her dad. She went on. “He died before I was born. That’s why I don’t talk about him. I don’t know him. He was with the wrong people. He was killed, shot by a guy he had some sort of beef with. It sounds dumb. Exactly what your father must think about black people, but that’s who my dad was. A thug who was killed. That’s all I know him as. I didn’t get to learn about the man my mother fell in love with. I don’t want my own child to do that. You aren’t dead, but I don’t want this baby to grow up without knowing their father. It has nothing to do with money; I want him or her to know you. You. An amazing man, with love, and passion, and a writer. I want this baby to know you. A writer. A father. Someone who does amazing things with his life. That’s what I want for the baby, and for you. It has nothing to do with me or the money. We could live in a one-bedroom apartment.”
Ray laughed. “We might have to. My dad is going to have a fit when I tell him.”
“When you tell him what?”
“That I’m going to be a dad. That I’m going to be with you. Telling me about your father… I know that this was just…. an accident, but you know, thinking about it, maybe it’s exactly what we need. I love you, Danielle. I do. And if I weren't already married to you, I would want to marry you.”
Danielle grinned and threw her arms around her husband. They kissed, and she knew they would be together forever.
THE END
The Billionaire’s Secret Love Child – Rae’s Story
1
Rae Coleman couldn’t believe her luck as she walked onto the movie set. She had been waiting years for this, ever since her mother had agreed to move to Los Angeles when Rae was sixteen so she could try to get into commercials. She was a pretty girl, then at sixteen, and now at twenty-four, and she had gotten the commercials. Her skin was the dark brown color of mocha, her hair brown and kept short. Her legs stretched on for miles, and her hips were pronounced and feminine, without being large. She was pretty, beautiful even. But that’s not all you needed to make it in Hollywood.
For one thing, she was black, and there just never seemed to be as many roles for her as there were for her white peers. Rae had lost count how many times she had lost out on a role for being “too urban.” She had never been urban, having been born and raised in an affluent Cincinnati suburb. Often at her schools, she was one of only a few black kids.
But she kept landing commercials, and at age eighteen managed to get in a pilot, which tested poorly and never got picked up. Back to commercials she went. Her mother had gone back to Cincinnati when Rae turned nineteen, but the young girl wouldn’t give up. She couldn’t. She got a little apartment with another struggling actress, an Australian girl named Gillian, and she kept grinding, filling in the time between commercials with waitressing jobs.
And then last year she landed the role of a lifetime. A movie. A true blue, play across the world movie.
And not only was Casey Denning producing it, but he was also going to star in it.
Casey was one of the most popular actors in the world. He had gotten his start as a young man in a couple of horror films, but he quickly transcended them and got the roles his talent deserved. He was forty-two now, and he was on the cover of magazines more than he was on the silver screen. Every stay at home mom loved to read about him, and needed to know who he was sleeping with, and what car he was driving, and where he ate.
Casey was Caucasian and had salt and pepper hair, and a dimple in his broad chin. His eyes were cold and gray but expressive, and his smile could light up a room. He had been in the room when Rae had auditioned for the movie, and it made her nerves even worse than they had already been.