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

ourselves.”
    She felt his arms tighten around her.
    “Do you miss being with Grandma and Grandpa?” Maybe he was lonely for family?
    “Sometimes. But I wish I had a Mommy and a Daddy. A nice Daddy. Everyone else does.” She didn’t know what to say to this; she’d known that one day he would have questions but she hadn’t thought he’d have them so soon. “Is that what’s bothering you, Honey?”
    “I don’t want a Daddy who makes you and me cry. I want someone kind like Mr. Stone.”
    “Honey,” she slipped her arms tightly around his small frame but he soon wriggled out of her hold. “Why can’t Mr. Stone be my Daddy?”
    Ok, enough madness. “Because he can’t, Jacob.” She lamented the lack of positive male models in her life. Apart from her father there were none. She had no brothers, and neither did Kay. They didn’t keep in contact much with her father’s side of the family and she had no male friends she could occasionally ‘borrow’ who would take Jacob to a game, or to watch a movie. And now to make matters worse, to remind him even more of what he didn’t have, Tobias Stone had stolen into her life, and into her son’s heart and had shown him, in vivid technicolor glory, the very thing that was missing from his life.
    “Why not?” Jacob persisted. “He was all by himself that day at the park, and we were all by ourselves and we had a good time together, didn’t we?”
    Damn Tobias Stone. She nodded, because she knew Jacob had had a good time, but she had to knock this nonsense out of his head. “It’s not as simple as that.” That meeting last week at the park had been freakily weird. “Jacob, I know he seems like a kind man.” At this Jacob’s face clouded over, “I mean, he is a nice man and he’s wonderful—“
    “You do like him, Mommy?”
    “What? No, that’s not what I mean.” She shook her head, worried that her son might get the wrong idea. “I’m saying he’s wonderful to work with,” she struggled to keep her chain of thought, “but our work life means he’s very important and everyone listens to him and I’m just one of the little minions. He’s in charge of hundreds of people.” She wasn’t sure where she was going with this, in her quest to put Jacob off.
    “He’s in charge of that many people?” Jacob asked, full of admiration. Tobias Stone just went up another notch in Jacob’s book. “I want to be just like him when I grow up.”
    Eager to change the subject, she told him, “People like Henry Carson don’t know that your Mommy loves you two hundred million times as much. I’m sorry you feel alone, Honey. But you’re not alone and it’s wrong of other kids to say things like that, but people sometimes say nasty things to other people because it makes them feel better about themselves.”
    “That’s what I thought.”
    “You did?” She replied, proudly, knowing that some of what she tried to pass onto her son had helped.
    “I told him he was being unkind because he had a big nose.”
    “Jacob!”
    “He has! It’s a real hooter.”
    “Jacob Samuel Page. That is being unkind, picking on someone because of the way they look. You don’t say things like that to other children.”
    “Why is that unfair? He was nasty to me because I don’t have a dad.”
    “You do have a dad.”
    “Not one who cares about me.”
    “He does…” She bit back on her tongue as Jacob buried his head in her shoulder. “Henry said my daddy didn’t love me, and that’s why it was just you and me.” His muffled words stabbed her heart.
    “Your daddy loves you but it was better for him to be alone, and for us to be alone. Don’t you agree?”
    He nodded and she ran her fingers through his floppy brown hair. It was darker than hers, more like Colt’s, but unlike his father’s, Jacob’s was fine and soft. “I like it here.”
    “I like it too,” she said, gently stroking the back of his head. It killed her, his worries and his sadness, especially