Falling for the Pregnant Heiress

by Susan Meier

  “Okay.” He clicked the button.

  Jake said, “What’s going on?”

  “Exactly what Sabrina said. She needed help getting to Paris. I helped her. We’d be home right now except my assistant got the arrangements for a rental car wrong, then we drove right into this hurricane.”

  “Where are you?”

  “We found an old castle. It looks like it was remodeled to be somebody’s country house. I turned on the breaker, so we have electricity. But it almost doesn’t matter now because I think we can leave for the airstrip this morning.”

  “Did you hear any of what happened with Pierre?”

  Trent looked over at Sabrina and winked. “You should have heard her. She laid down the law.”

  Jake laughed. “That’s my sister.”

  “Yep. You can be proud of her.”

  “And you’re okay with all this?”

  Okay with all this? He might have found the love of his life...

  But now was neither the time nor the place to tell Jake that, especially since he didn’t really know if Sabrina agreed with him.

  She’d wanted one night. He’d given it to her. Now he greedily wanted more. He wanted everything.

  “It was my pleasure to help her. You know I owe you and Seth more favors than I can repay.”

  “You don’t owe us any favors—”

  “Of course I do. But I would have helped Sabrina anyway.”

  “Okay.”

  “Want to talk to Sabrina again?”

  “No. You two just be safe.”

  “We will.”

  Trent hung up the phone, a strange feeling tapping on his brain. Jake never questioned that he and Sabrina had been alone in a house overnight. He never warned Trent away from her. He’d bet his last dollar that Sabrina’s brother hadn’t pictured them naked in bed as they spoke with him.

  “Your brother really trusts you.”

  Apparently following Trent’s line of thinking, Sabrina said, “Or he trusts you.”

  He caught her gaze, weird feeling after weird feeling rippling through him. He couldn’t forget what it felt like to hold her, to kiss her, to be kissed by her. Everything with her was different, more intense, more meaningful. He’d already decided he’d give his entire fortune for a chance to explore it.

  And he had no idea what Sabrina was thinking.

  There was only one way to find out.

  Staring into her pretty blue eyes, he said, “Or he thinks we’d make a good match.”

  He waited. Their gazes locked. The longing he’d erased from her eyes had been replaced by caution.

  Still, her voice was soft and breathy when she said, “Maybe.”

  His heart slammed into his ribs. If they pursued this, they’d be taking a hell of a chance. She was the baby sister of his friend. He had no idea how to be a good father...and she was pregnant.

  Yet, it felt right.

  Sabrina’s phone burst out with a song Trent didn’t recognize. His face must have registered his confusion because she said, “‘Sunshine on My Shoulders.’ My mom’s a big John Denver fan.”

  He didn’t know who John Denver was, so he only smiled, his thoughts going in and out and back and forth, his heart filled with something that felt a lot like hope...hope that wanted to spill over into joy.

  “Hey, Mom.”

  As she listened to her mom talking, he almost stretched across the bed to nibble her shoulder, but he suddenly realized that she’d only been gone a few days, yet her mom had called twice. Her older brother had called once. If Seth hadn’t been on his honeymoon, Trent was sure he would have called, too.

  She took a deep breath, made the shhh sound with a finger to her lips, then hit the speaker button on her phone, giving him the chance to hear her mom’s call the way he had Jake’s.

  His hope rose again. Was her including him in the calls a sign that she saw this relationship as more than one night?

  “Then Jake calls me and says you’re fine but you’re in Dublin. Dublin! What are you doing in Dublin?”

  “I went to see Pierre.”

  Trent’s gaze leaped to Sabrina’s.

  She closed her eyes, took a deep breath and said, “I’m going to have a baby, Mom.”

  “What!”

  “It’s okay. I told Pierre that he could have as much or as little contact with our child as he wants but we both were very clear about the fact that we don’t want to get married.”

  Her mom said nothing.

  “I’ve always planned to be a mom.”

  “Yes, you have.”

  Though Sabrina’s mom answered, her tone was stiff, formal.

  “Don’t be upset because my baby isn’t coming after a big church wedding. We know Avery’s having another girl. Maybe I’ll have a boy.”

  Silence.

  “Remember how you fawned over Seth and Jake? Imagine another little boy to spoil.”

  A laugh drifted from the phone. “Little boys can be such fun.”

  “And I’ll need help. Maybe you should come over when I’m home and we can look at my spare room and see what we’d have to do to turn it into a nursery.”

  “We should hire a decorator.”

  Sabrina gave Trent a “watch this” expression. “I think you have good enough taste that you can do it without help.”

  Her mom laughed. “Are you buttering me up?”

  “Maybe a little.”

  Maureen laughed again. “A baby.”

  “Another baby. You have Abby and Crystal, Avery’s new little girl and now potentially a boy.”

  Maureen sighed. “We’re blessed.”

  “Yes, we are.”

  Sabrina said, “Okay. I’ve got to go. You mull all that over and we’ll talk when I get home. That should be tomorrow.”

  “How about if we have brunch together the day after?”

  “That’d be great.”

  They said their goodbyes as Trent leaned against the headboard again. When she clicked off the call, he said, “Wow.”

  She laughed. “I wanted you to hear her panic because sometimes it’s funny.”

  His heart warmed looking at her, seeing how much she loved her mother, remembering her affectionate conversation with Jake. Things he’d never had with his family. “You like to tease her.”

  “She’s a hoot when she gets on a roll.”

  “I notice you didn’t tell her about the hurricane.”

  “And have her hire mercenaries to try to rescue us?”

  He chuckled. But he also realized she hadn’t told her mom they were together. She’d told Jake, but not her mom.

  “You really don’t want her to worry.”

  “No. Not ever. We’ve had enough worry and pain in our lives.”

  That was when the closeness of the McCallan family came into sharp focus for Trent. Their father had been a tyrant. When he died, Jake found Avery and his life shifted enough that Sabrina, Seth and their mom began to relax. Abby was born. Then Seth found Harper, who brought Crystal into their lives. Seth took the shaky steps to becoming a father and for the first time, the clan McCallan became a normal family.

  Now Sabrina was bringing another child into their happiness. And the family would grow even tighter.

  Unless he somehow botched everything.

  He knew nothing about being a dad. And if he hurt Sabrina, he would hurt Jake and Seth and Maureen. He’d ruin the peace they’d finally found.

  Thinking back to the terrified boy he’d met when Clark brought Seth to live in their apartment all those years ago, Trent stiffened. Living with their dad had been awful. Seth had confided many times. Though the McCallan patriarch had been gone for years, this was the first Trent had realized how much the family had changed. How happy they were...

  And he could ruin th
eir peace.

  If he knew he could fit, if he knew what he felt for Sabrina would be strong enough to endure his mistakes, he wouldn’t hesitate.

  But he was a misfit. He couldn’t guarantee anything. Except maybe failure. For as much as he’d always said that his stepfather had never warmed up to him, there were two people in that equation. What if it hadn’t been his stepfather’s fault? What if it had been his fault? What if he didn’t know how to connect, how to love?

  After all, he’d never had a girlfriend that he’d stayed with longer than a few months.

  And the price for failure here was Sabrina’s happiness. The contentment she’d found in becoming a mom. The peace of her close family.

  Sabrina slid down in the bed and half turned to nestle against him. He shifted away, rolling to get out of bed.

  “Do you hear that?”

  She lifted her head, paid attention. “I don’t hear anything.”

  “That’s just it. There’s no drumming rain, no whipping wind. The rain stopped last night but now the wind is gone, too. I’m going to get dressed, maybe take the SUV up the road a few miles to check out the damage.”

  She shook her head. “We have all day.”

  “Not really.”

  Her face scrunched with confusion. “Trent?”

  “Look, maybe we made a mistake last night.”

  “Two seconds before my brother called, you were on the verge of suggesting a relationship.”

  “Yeah. I was.” Her boldness shamed him, but it was also her happiness—the hard-won happiness of her entire family—that made his decision. He stepped into the black pants from the tux he’d had on the night before, then faced her. “You and I have always been honest.”

  She held his gaze.

  “So I’m going to continue that.”

  She nodded again, but her eyes clouded with confusion that almost did him in. His choice was to hurt her now or devastate her later.

  “In the past forty years, your family hasn’t had a lot of happiness.”

  Her face shifted. Her lips lifted into a warm smile and her eyes lit with joy. “We do now.”

  He sat on the edge of the bed. “Do you understand why?”

  “I think my brothers finding love changed things.”

  “What if they’d picked the wrong mates?”

  “If they hadn’t married Avery and Harper?”

  “If they’d married women who didn’t fit into your family.”

  “They didn’t.”

  “Pretend they did. Pretend they married someone your mom didn’t like...” He stopped, slowly met her gaze. “Someone who wasn’t a good mom to your mother’s precious grandchildren.”

  “They’re both great moms.”

  “But what if they weren’t? What if they hurt your family dynamics?”

  She searched his gaze before she said, “Like your stepdad.”

  “Yeah.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “Your family is finally happy. Finally solid. It never dawned on me until I heard Jake’s voice and your mom’s voice just how fragile all this is for you.”

  “It’s not fragile—”

  “It is. You just don’t see it.”

  She stiffened. “Because I’m not a romantic the way most women are?”

  “No. Because you were right all along. A relationship between us is a bad idea. Not because one of us is bad or good...but because your whole life is going to change and so is your family’s and I’m not the guy to take a chance with at this point.”

  She reached for him. “Trent—”

  He caught her hand, kissed the palm. “This is about securing your family’s happiness but it’s also about me. If we fail, and there’s a good chance we will, your family isn’t the only ones who will get hurt. I will, too.”

  Her eyes softened. “And you’ve already been hurt enough.”

  “Exactly.” He said it softly, quietly, so angry with fate and himself and his upbringing and his shortcomings that he could have punched a wall, but he stayed calm, logical, because reason was the language she understood.

  “And we’ve been together four days.” He squeezed the hand he held. “A relationship is a fun thought. A wonderful possibility. But we haven’t gotten in so deep that we know it will work, or that we can’t back out before we make a mistake.”

  * * *

  Sabrina stared at him. He was the most intuitive person she’d ever met yet he hadn’t seen that it was already too late. Making love the night before had gotten her in too deep. She wouldn’t have melted under his touch, given herself to him the way she had, as she never had with any other man, if she hadn’t already fallen in love. She simply hadn’t known it until they’d gone the whole way and her heart had lifted, and her soul had sighed with the relief of finally finding real love.

  She slid away and took the sheet with her as she rose. “I get it.”

  “Do you?”

  She nodded, pasted a smile on her face. “Sure. What we had was a one-night stand and all that. Besides—” she pointed at her belly “—I’m kind of going to be busy for the next nine months and eighteen years.”

  “Yeah.” He returned her smile. “And you’re going to make a great mom.”

  But she wouldn’t make a great wife. She was so damaged that a man with his own problems couldn’t take a chance on her. She wanted to kick herself for being foolish enough to romanticize what was happening between them when really it was nothing.

  Her heart shattered into a million pieces. She knew better.

  She’d always known the idea of real love was untrustworthy.

  But she’d been so sure. Not of herself...of him.

  And he didn’t want her.

  Pain flooded her. Her chest ached. Her limbs felt like they wouldn’t support her. “You know, I think I’ll shower and dress while you check out the roads.”

  He rose from the bed. “Okay. I’ll be back in twenty minutes.”

  She had to work to keep her voice from shivering when she said, “I’ll be ready.”

  In the shower she tried to tell herself that it was better to be dumped after a one-night stand than to be married to someone for years before their true colors emerged. But it didn’t stop the tears.

  She’d trusted him. She’d fallen in love with him.

  And he didn’t want her.

  When she was done dressing, she remembered the mess they’d made in the great room and cleared the table, tossed the burned-down candles, put the empty bottles in the trash.

  She’d tried to do it clinically, tried to do it without remembering what dancing with him felt like, without remembering the slow, delectable kisses that she’d thought were filled with emotion. But everything came back to her...the emotion. The longing. The need. The fulfillment.

  She forced herself to stop seeing herself and Trent and began imagining the Irish couple. She disappeared. Trent disappeared. And the happy Irish man and woman with the kids filling the upstairs beds and the servants tucked away in the quarters were the man and woman who danced.

  By the time Trent returned to tell her the roads were clear, she could pretend she was fine. But on the drive to the airstrip she texted her assistant to arrange to have a car pick her up at the airport in New York. She didn’t talk to Trent on the flight and when the plane landed she walked directly to the McCallan limo that awaited her.

  She didn’t say goodbye.

  She left him with his phone to his ear, back to doing the job that he loved.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  MONDAY MORNING TRENT awoke in his Upper East Side condo. Two stories, it boasted a commercial-grade kitchen, a wine room, a master suite fit for royalty and exclusive access to the roof. He filled a mug with coffee, threw a robe over his sweatpants and baggy T-shirt and climbed the two flights of stairs t
hat took him to his haven.

  Three conversation areas with outdoor sofas and chairs and glass stone fire pits sat on bright aqua area rugs. He walked to the edge, where a five-foot Plexiglas wall served as a barrier, leaned over to watch the sun rise...

  And felt nothing.

  Except anger with himself.

  How could he have been so stupid as to seduce a woman who was off-limits? He had legendary self-control. He could analyze any situation and know—with absolute certainty—if it was good or bad, right or wrong, yet he’d forgotten important parts of the equation when adding his life to Sabrina’s. She had a family, a real family who loved her. Family who would help her with her baby. Family who would give her baby the peace of belonging.

  And he came with nothing. Except money. A little power. A lot of emptiness.

  With a huff of anger, he turned from the spectacle in the sky and went back inside. There was no way he could take all this emotion to one of his lake houses. Being alone with this anger? With his self-recrimination? That wouldn’t work.

  What he needed to do was go into the office.

  Talk to his staff.

  Get back his sense of self.

  And forget about soft blue eyes filled with longing...that he’d satisfied. Almost as if they were supposed to be together.

  Calling himself an idiot, he gulped the coffee in his mug, jogged down the stairs to the master suite, showered, dressed and was in the back of his town car in under an hour. After a brief “Good morning” and an exchange about the beautiful end-of-August day, silence descended in the plush vehicle. He pulled his phone from his breast pocket and started reading newspapers.

  Twenty minutes later he entered the building housing his offices, leaving the noise of Manhattan traffic behind. The ping of his private elevator announced his arrival at his office, so he wasn’t surprised to see Ashley, a pretty twenty-seven-year-old in the process of getting her MBA, and Makenzie standing at attention, ready to work.

  “Ladies,” he greeted as he strode to his desk.

  They scurried to follow him. “Good morning, Trent.”

  “I’ve texted a list of articles I want you to print out for me.”

  Makenzie looked confused. “Print out?”