Page 21 of A Baby for the Billionaire

And even though Hamish and Tia’s marriage was far from a love match, the room was full of love regardless. Love from Roman and Kate to Tia, and from Tia to them, and for baby Grace, and for the very idea of the baby she and Hamish would be creating. Perhaps already had?

As with the entire week, the ceremony seemed to be over in a blur. Without long, emotional vows and paring things right back to the essentials, it was really only a question of the legally required components.

“Congratulations,” the officiant said. “You may kiss your bride, Lord Ashcombe.”

Tia’s eyes widened. They hadn’t anticipated that. Hamish’s smirk showed amusement though, and he dipped his head, brushing a chaste kiss against her cheek. It might have been awkward, if their expectations had been for anything different, but by now, Tia had explained the situation to Roman and Kate. Initially, they’d expressed some doubts. I’d hate you not to have what we have, Kate had said, holding Roman’s hand and squeezing it. Tia had responded, I’m happy for you guys, you know that. But I don’t want this. She’d drawn an invisible circle around them. What Hamish and I have agreed to works, for me. For us.

It felt weird to refer to them that way. ‘Us’. It implied an intimacy that really wasn’t there. But at the same time, they’d be having a baby together—that wasn’t exactly purely business.

“Congratulations.” Kate lurched forward and pulled Tia into a huge hug, and despite the pragmatic nature of their arrangement, tears filmed her eyes, so Tia laughed quietly.

“You big softie,” she teased, wiping away one of Kate’s tears.

“I just love weddings,” she responded, answering Tia’s laugh with one of her own.

“This isn’t exactly a wedding,” Tia responded. “So much as a merger.”

Kate rolled her eyes. “Do you have to ruin it for me?”

Roman was there a moment later, putting an arm around Tia and dropping a kiss to the top of her forehead. “Lunch?”

Despite the fact their wedding was more of a business arrangement, for the sake of privacy, Hamish had booked out the entire restaurant—which couldn’t have been easy, or cheap. It was, after all, one of the hardest to get into in the city, so God knew how he’d gone about it. But on that day, Tia didn’t care. She felt happy. Happy in a way that didn’t make a heap of sense, given the make-believe nature of all this. Maybe that was the hormones, too?

“Your parents weren’t sad to miss the ceremony?” Kate asked Hamish. All three of them pinned him with curious stares. Though Kate had only become a fixture in the last couple of years, she had lived a similar life to Roman and Tia—not in trailer parks, but in the foster system, and none of them knew what it would be like to have parents who loved and cared for you. Who actually cared about coming to your wedding.

“They would have been if I’d told them.”

Tia turned to look at him. “I presumed you had.”

“I told them I’d met someone. Better to ease them into it.”

“But surely your mother would have wanted to be there, to see you get married?”

“She’ll get over it, believe me.”

“Hamish,” Tia said, fiddling with her fingers beneath the tablecloth. A waiter appeared brandishing a bottle of vintage French champagne and popped the top, then poured it into four champagne saucers.

When the waiter had left, Tia leaned forward. “I thought you said you were going to tell them.”