Storyline of I Had A Baby Without You: Five years ago, curvy waitress Scarlett saved Brandon’s life and spent one unforgettable night of passion with him before vanishing. Now she’s back, slimmed down and unrecognizable.
Chapter One: The Contract
The penthouse suite was suffocating in its silence. Outside, Chicago’s skyline glittered with false promises, each light a star that had fallen too far from heaven to remember warmth. Scarlett pressed her palm against the floor-to-ceiling window, watching her reflection overlay the city like a ghost—thin now, angular where she’d once been soft, a stranger wearing her own bones.
Five years. Five years since that night at the charity gala when she’d been invisible in her size-eighteen dress, just another forgotten heiress drowning in her family’s contempt. Five years since she’d found Brandon Cross drugged and burning with fever by the pool, his enemies’ cocktail of aphrodisiacs turning his blood to liquid fire. Five years since she’d given him the only antidote that worked—herself.
He didn’t remember her face. How could he? The drugs had blurred everything, and she’d been just another fat girl in the shadows, someone whose name he’d never bothered to learn before that night. But she remembered everything—the way his hands had shaken as they mapped her body, the broken pleas against her neck, the way he’d held her afterward like she was something precious even as consciousness fled him.
Now she stood in his apartment, wearing designer clothes that hung perfectly on her transformed frame, playing the role of his contract wife. The irony wasn’t lost on her—he’d spent years searching for the “mysterious woman” who’d saved him, while she’d spent those same years raising their daughter in secret, carving away at herself until she became someone new. Someone unrecognizable. Someone named Scarlett instead of Sarah.
“Mommy?”
Lily’s voice from the guest bedroom made her heart clench. Four years old with Brandon’s dark eyes and stubborn chin, their daughter was the only truth in this elaborate lie.
“Coming, baby,” she called softly, but the penthouse door opened before she could move.
Brandon entered like a storm barely contained in an Armani suit. Even from across the room, she could smell the bourbon on him, could see the tension in his shoulders that meant another failed lead in his search. He looked through her at first—she was just the convenient wife he’d married to secure a merger, after all—but then his gaze sharpened, focusing on her silhouette against the windows.
“You’re still up,” he said, his voice rough with exhaustion and something else. Something that had been growing between them in the two months since their paper marriage, an inexplicable pull that made him find excuses to touch her—a hand at her back, fingers brushing as he passed her coffee, the way he inhaled just a little too deeply when she walked past.
“Lily had a nightmare,” she lied. Their daughter had been sleeping peacefully, but Scarlett couldn’t—not when every night in this apartment was a practice in torture, being so close to him and yet worlds apart.
He moved closer, loosening his tie with one hand. “About what?”
“She dreams about her father sometimes,” Scarlett said carefully, watching his reflection in the window. “The father she’s never met.”
Brandon’s jaw tightened. He had no idea how literally true her words were. “Poor kid,” he muttered, pouring himself another drink at the bar. “Though maybe she’s better off. Fathers tend to disappoint.”
“Not all of them,” she said quietly. “Some just don’t get the chance.”
Chapter Two: Recognition Without Recognition
He was drunk. Not stumbling drunk, but loose enough that his usual iron control had cracks. Brandon moved behind her, close enough that she could feel his body heat but not quite touching—a dance they’d been doing for weeks now.
“You know what’s fucked up?” he said, his breath stirring her hair. “Sometimes when I look at you, I feel like I’m drowning. Like my body knows something my mind doesn’t.”
Scarlett’s pulse hammered. “Brandon—”
“That night,” he continued, setting his glass down with a sharp click. “Five years ago. Someone saved me from those bastards who drugged me. A woman. I don’t remember her face, but Christ, I remember—” He cut himself off, his hand coming up to hover near her shoulder, not quite touching. “I remember how she felt. How she smelled. How she—”
“You’re drunk,” Scarlett interrupted, her voice sharper than intended. “You should go to bed.”
“I dream about her,” he said, and now his hand did touch her shoulder, burning through the thin silk of her robe. “Every fucking night, I dream about a woman I can’t see, and then I wake up next to you—my contract wife who’s supposed to mean nothing—and I can’t breathe because you smell like—”
He spun her around suddenly, his hands gripping her shoulders, eyes wild as they searched her face. For a moment, Scarlett thought he knew, thought he’d finally seen through the weight loss and the subtle cosmetic changes, the careful construction of a new identity. But his gaze was unfocused, desperate, looking for someone who was right in front of him but hidden in plain sight.
“You smell like rain,” he finished lamely, his hands dropping. “She smelled like rain and jasmine and something else… something warm and sweet and—”
“Vanilla,” Scarlett whispered without thinking. “I used to wear vanilla perfume.”
His eyes sharpened. “Used to?”
She forced herself to shrug, stepping back. “Before. When I was… different.”
“Different how?”
The question hung between them, loaded with possibility. She could tell him. Right now, she could end this charade, could show him the single photograph she’d kept from before—Sarah at the charity gala, two hundred pounds and invisible, standing in the background of a shot where Brandon held court in the foreground, oblivious to the woman who would save him three hours later.
But then she thought of how he’d spent five years looking for a woman he’d built into a fantasy, a mysterious savior who probably looked nothing like the fat, desperate girl who’d actually been there. She thought of how he touched her now, with genuine desire instead of drugged necessity. She thought of Lily, asleep down the hall, who deserved a father who wanted her, not one who felt obligated.
“Just different,” she said. “We all have befores we don’t talk about.”
Chapter Three: The Unraveling
Brandon moved closer again, and this time there was something predatory in it. “What if I want to talk about it? What if I want to know every before, every secret, every inch of you that you’re hiding?”
“That’s not what this is,” she reminded him, even as her body betrayed her, leaning into his proximity. “We have a contract. Six months of marriage for your merger, and then—”
“Fuck the contract,” he growled, and suddenly she was pressed against the window, his body caging hers. “Tell me why I can’t stop thinking about you. Tell me why every time you walk into a room, my body reacts like it recognizes you. Tell me why when you laugh—really laugh, not that polite society bullshit—it feels like I’m remembering something I’ve forgotten.”
His hand came up to cup her face, thumb tracing her cheekbone with devastating gentleness. “Tell me why kissing you feels like coming home and going to war at the same time.”
“We haven’t kissed,” she breathed.
“No,” he agreed, his lips so close to hers she could taste the bourbon and something darker, more intoxicating. “But I know how it would feel. I know you’d taste like—”
A small voice cut through the moment like a knife: “Mommy? Mr. Brandon?”
They jerked apart to find Lily standing in the hallway, rubbing her eyes, her favorite stuffed rabbit dragging behind her. But what made both adults freeze was what she said next, looking directly at Brandon with those eyes that were carbon copies of his own:
“I dreamed about you again, Daddy.”
The silence that followed was deafening. Brandon’s face went through a series of expressions—confusion, shock, something that might have been recognition if it hadn’t been so impossible. He looked from Lily to Scarlett, and for a moment, she saw him doing the math, saw the wheels turning behind those sharp eyes.
“She calls every man that,” Scarlett said quickly, scooping Lily up. “It’s a phase. The child psychologist said—”
“No, I don’t,” Lily protested sleepily, reaching for Brandon with the confidence of a child who knew she belonged in those arms. “Just him. He’s my daddy. I know ’cause we have the same eyes and the same thinking face and—” she yawned hugely, “—and ’cause my heart knows.”
Brandon stood frozen as the four-year-old reached for him again, and this time, moving as if in a dream, he took her. The moment Lily settled against his chest, something shifted in his expression—a recognition that went deeper than thought, deeper than memory. His body knew this weight, this trust, this perfect fit of a child who belonged to him.
“Jesus,” he breathed, looking at Scarlett over Lily’s head. “How old is she?”
“Four,” Scarlett whispered.
“Four,” he repeated. “So five years ago…”
Chapter Four: The Truth in Touch
“We should put her back to bed,” Scarlett said desperately, reaching for Lily, but Brandon stepped back, his arm tightening around the child who’d already fallen back asleep against his shoulder.
“Five years ago,” he said slowly, “I went to the Worthington charity gala. Someone drugged me—a business rival who thought it would be amusing to watch me lose control publicly. But someone helped me. A woman. I woke up alone the next morning with nothing but—”
He stopped, his free hand going to his pocket where Scarlett knew he still carried it—half of her mother’s earring, the one that had broken during their desperate encounter. She’d kept the other half, had it made into a pendant that hung between her breasts even now.
“Nothing but what?” she asked, though her voice was barely a whisper.
“Evidence that I hadn’t imagined it,” he said. “That she was real. That what happened between us was real.” His eyes bored into hers. “I’ve been looking for her ever since. Hired private investigators, checked every guest list, every security tape. But it’s like she vanished.”
“Maybe she had reasons to disappear,” Scarlett said carefully. “Maybe she knew you’d feel obligated. Maybe she didn’t want to trap you with consequences from a night when you weren’t yourself.”
“I was myself,” he said fiercely. “More myself than I’d ever been. The drugs lowered my inhibitions, yes, but they didn’t change what I wanted. WHO I wanted.” He shifted Lily gently, his hand coming up to trace the child’s features with wonder. “She has my mother’s nose.”
“Coincidence,” Scarlett tried, but her voice broke.
“And your mouth,” he continued. “Your stubborn chin. Your way of frowning when you’re thinking hard.” He looked up at her, and his eyes were wild. “How long were you going to lie to me?”
“I’m not—”
“You are,” he said, moving closer, Lily still cradled between them. “You’re Sarah Mitchell. The Mitchell family’s discarded daughter. The one they said was an embarrassment, too fat to marry off, too smart to be controlled. The one who disappeared the same night I lost my mystery woman.”
Scarlett’s legs gave out. She sank onto the couch, her carefully constructed walls crumbling. “You didn’t know me. You’d never even looked at me before that night.”
“But I looked at you after,” he said, sitting beside her, close enough that their thighs touched. “I looked for you everywhere. Do you know what it’s like to be haunted by someone you can’t quite remember? To have your body yearn for someone your mind can’t fully picture?”
Chapter Five: The Weight Falls Away
“You were looking for someone who doesn’t exist,” she said bitterly. “Some beautiful mystery woman who saved you. Not the fat girl who could barely breathe when you touched her. Not Sarah Mitchell who’d loved you from afar for two years, who saw you drugged and vulnerable and took advantage—”
“Stop,” he commanded, his voice sharp. “Just stop.”
With infinite care, he stood and carried Lily back to her room, laying her in the small bed they’d set up just two months ago when this arrangement began. Scarlett followed, watching as he tucked the blankets around their daughter with practiced ease, as if he’d been doing it all her life.
When he turned back to her, his expression was unreadable. He walked past her, back to the living room, and she followed because there was nowhere else to go. The storm that had been building between them for two months was about to break, and she wasn’t sure either of them would survive it.
“Show me,” he said quietly.
“What?”
“Show me who you were. Show me Sarah.”
With shaking fingers, she pulled out her phone, scrolling to the hidden folder she’d never been able to delete. There she was—Sarah Mitchell five years ago, standing at the edge of that charity gala photo, her dress straining across her body, her face rounder, softer, infinitely more vulnerable than the sharp-edged woman she’d become.
Brandon took the phone, staring at the image for so long she thought he’d frozen. Then, without warning, he pulled her against him, his arms wrapping around her with desperate strength.
“It was you,” he breathed against her hair. “Christ, it was always you. My body knew. Every time you walked into a room, every time you smiled at Lily, every time you touched me, my body knew.”
“You don’t have to pretend,” she said against his chest. “I know I’m not what you were looking for. I know the woman I am now isn’t real, and the woman I was then isn’t what you wanted—”
He pulled back, gripping her face between his hands. “I searched for five years. Five fucking years. Not for a body or a face, but for the woman who held me when I was breaking apart. Who whispered my name like a prayer. Who cried when I touched her because no one ever had before. Who gave me everything and asked for nothing, not even my memory of her.”
“Brandon—”
“I searched for you,” he continued ruthlessly. “For the woman whose heart beat in time with mine. Whose body welcomed mine like coming home. Who smelled like rain and vanilla and something essentially, entirely her.” His thumb traced her lips. “You think I don’t remember? I remember everything. How you trembled. How you tasted. How you felt around me, under me, the way you said my name when you—”
She kissed him to stop the words, but also because she couldn’t not kiss him anymore. And he was right—it felt like coming home and going to war at once. His mouth on hers was familiar and foreign, gentle and demanding, five years of searching condensed into a single point of contact.
Chapter Six: The New Beginning
When they broke apart, both breathing hard, Brandon rested his forehead against hers. “Why?” he asked. “Why disappear? Why change everything? Why keep Lily from me?”
“Because I loved you,” she said simply. “And love means not trapping someone with obligation. You were drugged, Brandon. You weren’t capable of consent. And afterward… I was nobody. Worse than nobody—I was the Mitchell embarrassment. You would have married me out of duty, and I would have spent my whole life knowing you were only there because you had to be.”
“So you changed yourself.”
“I changed everything. Lost the weight, moved across the country, built a new identity. And then your company needed a merger, and my family’s company was perfect for it, and suddenly you needed a wife who wouldn’t complicate things with feelings.”
“Except I complicated everything with feelings anyway,” he said wryly. “Do you know what these two months have been like? Being married to you, wanting you so badly I could barely breathe, but thinking I was betraying the memory of my mystery woman? Thinking I was a bastard for wanting my contract wife when I should be faithful to a ghost?”
“And now?”
“Now I know the ghost and the wife are the same woman. The mother of my child. The woman I’ve been looking for.” His hands slid down to her waist, pulling her closer. “The woman I’m keeping.”
“The contract—”
“Fuck the contract. We’re staying married. Real married. Forever married. You, me, and Lily, and maybe more kids if you want them. The board can have their merger, but they don’t get to dictate terms anymore.”
“Brandon, you don’t have to—”
“I want to,” he interrupted. “I want you. Not the woman you were or the woman you became, but you. All of you. Every pound you lost and every secret you kept and every night you raised our daughter alone. I want your stubbornness and your sacrifice and the way you look at me when you think I’m not watching, like you’re still that girl at the gala who loved me from across the room.”
“That’s not fair,” she whispered, but she was crying now, five years of armor cracking apart. “You can’t just decide—”
“Watch me,” he said, and kissed her again, deeper this time, with intent. His hands relearned her new shape while remembering the old one, tracing paths that were different but somehow essentially the same. “Do you know what gave you away?” he murmured against her throat.
“What?”
“This,” he said, pressing his lips to the spot where her neck met her shoulder, a place that made her gasp and arch against him. “Your body remembers me, Scarlett. Sarah. Whoever you are. Your body remembers exactly how I touched you that night, and it responds the same way.”
His hands slid under her robe, finding skin that was different but familiar, mapping the new landscape of her while honoring the memory of the old. “You’re still you,” he said wonderingly. “Under everything, you’re still exactly you.”
Chapter Seven: Coming Home
They made love on the couch like teenagers, too desperate to make it to the bedroom, five years of separation making them clumsy and urgent. But their bodies remembered the rhythm, remembered the fit, remembered the way they’d always been meant to connect.
Afterward, lying tangled together in the ruins of their clothing, Brandon traced lazy patterns on her bare shoulder. “Tell me about Lily,” he said. “Tell me everything I missed.”
So she did. She told him about the pregnancy she’d hidden from her family, about giving birth alone in a hospital three states away. About first steps and first words and first days of preschool. About how Lily had his stubborn streak and his brilliant mind and his way of tilting his head when he was thinking hard.
“She knows about me?” he asked.
“I told her stories about her daddy. How brave he was, how smart. How he had important work to do but loved her very much. I showed her pictures from news articles. She’s been a little obsessed with you since she could talk.”
“That’s why she recognized me.”
“That, and because you’re basically a male version of her. The genetics are undeniable.”
He laughed, pulling her closer. “We’re going to have to tell people. My mother is going to kill me for missing four years of her only grandchild’s life.”
“My family is going to have a collective aneurysm.”
“Good,” he said vindictively. “They deserve worse for how they treated you.”
“They’ll know I lied about Lily’s father being dead.”
“Also good. Let them choke on it.” He kissed her temple. “We’ll face them together. All of them. Every judgment, every gossip column, every board member who has opinions about our unconventional story.”
“Brandon—”
“I’m serious,” he said, turning her to face him. “I lost you once because we weren’t brave enough to face the truth in daylight. I’m not losing you again. Tomorrow, we go public. The real story, or at least enough of it. The business rivals who drugged me are still out there—I want them to know I remember, and I’m coming for them. Your family needs to know that you’re under my protection now. And the world needs to know that Lily is mine, has always been mine, will always be mine.”
“Ours,” Scarlett corrected.
“Ours,” he agreed, then grinned. “Think we should wake her up and tell her? She’s going to be insufferable when she finds out she was right about me being her daddy.”
“Let her sleep,” Scarlett said, curling into his warmth. “We have time now. All the time in the world.”
Epilogue: Five Years Later
The charity gala was at the same hotel, in the same ballroom, but everything else had changed.
Brandon stood at the bar, watching his wife work the room with their daughter on her hip—Lily at nine was even more obviously his child, down to the way she charmed every adult in her path. Their son, three-year-old Michael, was attempting to escape his grandmother’s hold to join his sister, while baby Emma slept in her father’s arms.
“Five years,” Scarlett said, appearing beside him in a dress that would have scandalized the old Sarah Mitchell but looked perfect on Mrs. Brandon Cross.
“Ten years since the first time,” he corrected, his free hand finding hers. “Best worst night of my life.”
She laughed. “Being drugged and taken advantage of by a desperate fat girl was the best worst night?”
“Finding you was the best part. Losing you was the worst. Everything since has been just right.”
“Even the part where Lily announced to her entire preschool that you were her daddy before we’d told anyone?”
“Especially that part.” He kissed her temple. “She inherited your inability to keep quiet about important things.”
“And your tendency to make dramatic declarations.”
“A winning combination.”
They stood together, watching their family, their empire, their life that had been built on a foundation of secrets and lies but had somehow become the strongest truth either of them knew.
“Do you ever wonder what would have happened if I’d just told you the truth from the beginning?” Scarlett asked.
“No,” Brandon said firmly. “We needed those five years. You needed to become who you are, not who you thought I wanted. I needed to learn the difference between wanting someone and needing them. Lily needed to exist exactly as she is—fierce and independent and sure of her place in the world.”
“When did you become so wise?”
“When I realized that the weight of memory isn’t about pounds or pretense. It’s about the gravity of love—how it pulls you back to where you belong, no matter how far you try to run.”
She turned in his arms, careful not to wake the baby. “I love you. Sarah loved you. Scarlett loves you. Whoever I become next will love you too.”
“Good,” he said, sealing the promise with a kiss. “Because I plan to love every version of you for the rest of our lives.”
Across the room, Lily had commandeered the microphone and was regaling the crowd with a story about how her parents met—a highly edited version involving mistaken identities and true love conquering all. It was fiction, mostly, but like all the best stories, it held the kernel of truth at its heart:
Sometimes love finds you when you’re at your most vulnerable. Sometimes it takes years to recognize what your body knew all along. And sometimes, just sometimes, the weight of the past is exactly what you need to anchor your future.
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