The Billionaire and His PA novel Chapter 94

Felix said nothing and went back to going through the restaurant’s menu. He had gone through it so many times already that he could recite everything on the first two pages effortlessly if he was asked to. Eliza suddenly looked up from her phone and stared past Felix who turned around to see what she was looking at.

Isabel had stepped out of the elevator and was making her way to them. She wore a pink lacy sundress and suede ankle boots. Her brown hair was shorter and fell down to her shoulders in wispy layers. When she took her seat opposite them, Felix found himself noticing all the ways she was similar to him and his father – their father. For one, the three of them had the same eyes, just like Eliza had pointed out all those months ago; dark brown ones that appeared black in every other lightning apart from sunlight. Looking closely, he could see that the three of them had the same button nose, broad shoulders and angular face structure. But that was about where the similarities ended.

She looked between Felix and Eliza, trying to figure out whether she had kept to the dress code. She had been told to dress in something casual so seeing Eliza in an old band t-shirt and cargo pants and Felix in what was essentially a business suit but without the tie made her wonder if she had overdressed or underdressed. In the end, she decided that the three of them each had their own varied definition of casual.

“Hi.” She greeted timidly. Then she stared at one of the photos in an open book before her. A woman who bore a striking resemblance to her stood in the photo with her back against the ocean background in a breezy dress. “Is that my mother? Can I see?”

Felix nodded and slid the picture over to her. “I went by the old family house a couple of months ago. It’s collecting dust at the moment but I was able to find this in a shoebox behind the bookshelf in the study just like Eliza said I would. I had my private investigator look into her and while there’s a lot of things I have to tell you, but I think you should know that she’s no longer alive. I’m so sorry.”

Isabel paused from flipping through the scrapbook. She had known that there was a possibility that they wouldn’t have been able to find her birth mother or that she would be dead but she had still held out hope that she would be able to meet at least one of her biological parents.

“How did they meet?” Isabel asked, staring down at a row of pictures of her mother and father – apparently – that had been taken at a photo booth.

“After my dad…” Felix paused and backtracked. He needed to start getting used to the fact that Derek Callahan was not just his dad. He was their dad. “After our dad, Derek, had a heart attack a long time ago, your mother became his nurse. I was too young to remember her but obviously, the two of them took a liking to each other. Records show that she left the country for Mexico the week after dad was declared fit by the hospital. By my calculations, they spent about a year together. It is very likely that your mum didn’t know that she was pregnant with you when she left for Mexico because you would have just been a two week fetus. You were born Mexico but on your second birthday, the two of you took a flight to Atlanta where your mom continued work as a nurse.”

“Slow down.” Eliza said elbowing Felix. “Give her some time to absorb all the information.” She knew that if she hadn’t interfered, Felix would have gone on to talk about how the state, not knowing any of her close relatives, had bounced her from foster home to foster home for a year until a couple had adopted her and then died before she had turned eighteen.

“No, no. Keep going.” Isabel said. She looked up from the scrapbook. “I want to know. I need to know. What was he like? Our dad?”

Felix sighed wistfully. “He was nice, really nice. He was a musician, you know? I think he liked the piano best. I still remember the way his hands used to dance over the keys in the evenings. It was magical.” He paused. “I have no idea how he and my mum ended up together. They’re complete opposites. He was so full of life and joy and she’s like this ball of darkness that sucked out the happiness out of everything.”

“I can testify to that.” Eliza inspected a breadstick. “I wonder if Bethany knew about the affair.”

Isabel sighed. “I’ve thought about it and I think she did. We’ve only been in the same room twice and each time, she was so eager to get me out of the room. And the first time that she saw me, you should have seen the way she looked at me. I’d always thought that she was eager to get me out of the room because she was racist or something.”

Eliza snorted. “Trust me, she is.”

“Looking back now, I realize that she must have seen me and remembered my mum.” She paused in front of a Polaroid that had two sets of hands – one large and pale and the other small and tanned – over the keys of a piano.

“Did your guy find out anything about her other than the fact that she’s dead?”

Felix nodded and flipped open his briefcase. He started to thumb through the leaves of papers in it. “She was a nurse. And a good one too judging from what’s in here. And you have lots of family in Mexico too; it’s a very extensive family tree so it took some time to compile.” He passed some of the papers to her. “Their contact information is in there so you can reach out to them if you want to.”

Isabel stared at it. The paper had a list of her relatives stretching from cousins and to grandparents. For someone who had once thought that she was all alone in the world, that was more than a nice development. “Thank you.” She looked up from the list and smiled up at him with tears of happiness brimming in her eyes. “Thank you so much for this.”