The Gift, Book 3 (The Billionaire's Love Story) by Lily Zante Read Free Book Online Page A

asking?” She placed the folded up gloves neatly on the side of the sink.
    “I wanted to know when he can come skating with us next.”
    “ That’s why you’ve been asking me?” She coiled her hair around her fingers and placed it over her shoulder.
    Jacob shrugged silently.
    “He’s a busy man, Honey. I don’t expect he’ll have much time to come skating with us.”
    “But he said he would!”
    “I know, but sometimes grown-ups say things they don’t mean.” She couldn’t read his expression behind the Iron Man mask.
    “That’s not being honest.”
    “I’m sure he would love to come, one day,” she added, eager not to crush his hopes. “But when grown-ups say ‘one day’, they’re trying to be nice so that they don’t hurt your feelings.”
    “I wish he wouldn’t lie.” Jacob’s voice was flat and monotone as he removed his mask. She bent over so that her face was barely inches from his. “He wasn’t lying, Honey. I don’t think he said anything he didn’t mean. I think he likes you.”
    “I like him too. He’s nothing like Daddy and I wish we could have more days in the park with him.” There was a touch of anger in his voice and a temper she had never seen on him before colored his childish-features.
    “What is it, Jacob? Why are you upset?” Clearly something was going on and she needed to get to the bottom of it. He’d been quiet lately and she put it down to him getting tired after being back a full week at school but looking at him now, her son looked anxious. “Jacob?”
    He coughed a few times then told her. “Both of Henry Carson’s parents came to see him at the Christmas concert. Henry said my dad didn’t ‘cos he hates me.” She thought back to that night, to the Nativity play in which Jacob had been a sheep. A cute and delightful sheep who said nothing but smiled like an angel the whole time. She didn’t remember Jacob being upset that evening and he had said anything. In fact this was the first she’d heard of it. He seemed to be settling in fine at this new school and she’d been hoping things had gotten off to a good start.
    “Your daddy doesn’t hate you,” she replied quickly. She liked to think that Colt cared for his son, at some level buried way down deep. Just not enough, but her son didn’t need to know that.
    “Then why isn’t he here?”
    “Do you want him to be here?” Her heart tripped a beat and anxiety flowed through her knowing that his father wasn’t in the slightest bit concerned about him. She was always mindful that the boy had a father but Colt had never expressed much interest in his son. He hadn’t even called on Jacob’s birthday a few months ago. It was all so different from how things had been when they had first met. He’d always been arrogant and cocksure of himself, but in the early days there had been a gentleness about him which had disappeared when the factory he’d been a foreman at had closed down. It had affected him badly, and she had never realized that his self-esteem had been wrapped up in his position. He’d refused to take on other jobs as a forklift operator or a handyman, even to get by. His pride getting in the way.
    “Do you, Jacob?” she asked again. “Do you want your Daddy to be here?”
    Jacob shook his head. “He scares me, Mommy. But I don’t understand, if he doesn’t hate me, why does he hate you ?” She clenched her teeth together, thinking about her response. “He doesn’t hate me, Jacob. Daddy wasn’t very well back then.” She ran her hands through her hair, causing her neatly coiled up hair to come undone again and then she scooped Jacob up in her arms. In a couple of years or so he would be too big for her to carry, and another part of his childhood would fall to the wayside. She buried her face in his hair and carried him to the sofa. Sitting down with him on her lap, she held his warm, chubby hands. “I think Daddy likes being by himself. Just like you and me like being by