by Leanne Banks
The sound of her footsteps echoed on the tile office floor of the executive suite as Michael stared after her. What in hell had just happened? He had been so careful to put their professional relationship back in place after that night he’d given in to the dark hunger and need he’d so often denied, and they’d made rock-your-world love.
He’d always been physically attracted to Kate, but what man wouldn’t be? Her silky dark hair swung in a sexy curtain to her shoulders, her blue eyes glinted with intelligence and humor, her full mouth often formed a secret smile that made him curious, and she moved her lithe feminine body in a way that reminded him of a sensual feline.
She brought out the urge for conquest in a man, but he’d denied himself food and sleep while he’d been building his company. He told himself sex was just one more need denied. Michael had valued Kate for other, more important reasons. She had been the most solid, dependable person in his life during his last three roller-coaster years. She’d treated him the same way when he’d been in debt for the company up to his eyeballs as she did when he became a multi-millionaire. He trusted her. He could count on her, and for a man who’d spent his life not counting on anyone, that was something.
Her scent lingered in the air—a scent that smelled like cookies and sex. That alone could have driven him crazy. She probably had no idea of her importance. But now she was gone. The wild, yet sad look in her eyes haunted him. She was neither impulsive, nor given to irrational displays of emotion. Michael had the uneasy sense that she had meant every word she’d said, and he had not only lost the best assistant he’d ever had, he’d lost his best friend.
The ringing of the phone on Kate’s desk jolted him. He picked up the receiver. “Hawkins,” he muttered in a rough tone.
“Michael? What are you doing answering the phone?”
Michael instantly recognized the voice of his personnel specialist, Jay Payne. “Good timing, Jay. I need a new assistant.”
A long silence followed. “Pardon? Did you say a new assistant? What about Kate?”
“She’s gone.”
“On vacation?”
“No.”
“Temporary leave?”
“No,” Michael said, feeling his impatience grow.
“Is she sick?”
“No,” Michael answered shortly, then remembered she had in fact appeared sick just before she’d left. “She quit.”
Another long silence followed. “Just like that?”
“Just like that.”
“But she’s required to give two weeks’ notice,” Jay sputtered. “Did she give a reason? Did one of our rivals steal her? I know she’s received offers,” he added.
Michael frowned. Something about this didn’t add up. “Put her on sick leave and I’ll see if she changes her mind. Give me the names of the companies who have been after her. In the meantime, get me an interim assistant.”
“Any special requirements?”
“Someone like Kate,” Michael said and knew he had just delivered mission impossible.
Two weeks later, when he joined Dylan and Justin at O’Malley’s, Kate’s departure still bothered Michael.
“Hey, Michael, you’re falling down on the job,” Dylan said. “You’re in charge of the home for unwed teenage mothers, Justin’s looking into the after-school program for underprivileged kids and I’m checking into a medical research program.”
“Medical research,” Justin echoed with an uneasy expression on his face. “Sounds expensive.”
“If you don’t watch out, we’re gonna start calling you the tightwad millionaire,” Dylan threatened with wry humor.
“Call me anything. Just don’t call me broke.” Justin popped an antacid and glanced at Michael. “You don’t look too good. What’s up?”
Michael paused, then reluctantly said, “I lost a key employee a couple of weeks ago.”
Dylan grimaced. “A death? I’m sorry—”
Michael shook his head. “Not a death,” he said, wondering why it felt like one. “My assistant quit. No notice. Just walked out. I’d just given her the assignment to check out the home for unwed teenage mothers.”
Dylan raised his eyebrows. “Flighty?”
Michael shook his head again. “Not at all.”
“Maybe she got a better offer,” Justin said.
“Nah, I checked.”
Dylan signaled for the bartender. “Well, I haven’t yet met a woman who doesn’t act on her emotions every once in a while. PMS, pregnancy…they all get a little crazy every now and then. Maybe she’ll come to her senses and come back soon.”
Michael’s mind locked onto Dylan’s words. PMS, pregnancy. He shook his head. Not pregnancy, he told himself. Maybe PMS, maybe anything, but not pregnancy. It had been just one night. One night full of making love. Hell, they’d made love at least four times, each time more uninhibited than the previous. Contraception had been the last thing on his mind. Losing himself and his hunger in Kate had been his driving focus.
Michael began to sweat. He’d just figured she wouldn’t get pregnant. After all, he’d never intended to be a father or a husband. It wasn’t part of his plan. He was cut out for neither role. It wasn’t part of his destiny. In fact, he’d nearly convinced himself he was genetically designed never to be a father.
“Earth to Michael, come in,” Dylan said, knocking on the wooden bar top. He laughed, but his eyes held a trace of concern. “Something you want to tell us?”
Michael thought of Kate and shook his head slowly. “No. Don’t mind me. I’ll do the research on the unwed teenage mothers’ home myself. I’ll see you guys later,” he said and rose.
“But your beer,” Justin said, clearly uncomfortable with the waste. “Dylan just ordered you another beer.”
“Thanks, but I’ll take a rain check. You can have it.”
“I don’t want it,” Justin said.
Dylan shrugged. “We’ll give it away.”
Justin shook his head. “You two take this charity thing too far.”
“It’s just a beer,” Dylan said with a smile tinged with glee. “You’ll be writing a much bigger check when the Millionaires’ Club makes its first donation.”
Justin’s queasy expression amused Michael despite his preoccupation with Kate. “You’re looking a little green around the gills, bud. You must be so full of money you need to get rid of some. Don’t worry, Justin. No cans of Beanee Weenees in your future. Later, guys,” he said, and as he left the bar his mind immediately turned to Kate. Was she pregnant?
He drove to his apartment, brooding all the way. He examined the possibility of her pregnancy, turning it around in his head first this way, then that. Walking into the apartment that was more a place to sleep than a home, he didn’t bother turning on a light. The dark suited his mood. Although pregnancy was a physical possibility, every time Michael seriously considered it, he felt a dull thud in his stomach.
Tugging the buttons on his shirt loose, he stood in the quiet dark and swore at himself in disgust. How could he have been so careless? So stupid? Potentially to bring a baby into the same single-parent situation that he’d faced as a child. Granted, Kate was neither ill nor uneducated, as his mother had been, but she was young and alone. A smoky visual of his mother just before she died slithered through his mind.
The memories were poison, he knew, and he deliberately closed his mind to them. Sleep, he told himself. Eight hours would clear his head, and if ever he needed a clear head, it was now.
Sleep, however, eluded him. He paced and turned the TV on. In no mood for late-night infomercials, he turned it off and tossed and turned. Finally, he drifted off. The gray images he’d successfully deflected during the day invaded his dreams.
Short flashes of turning points in his past, all seen through a child’s eyes, kicked him back in time. He might as well have been a six-year-old again.
“Your mother is dead,” the social worker said, patting his small, cold hand.
He tasted the metallic f
lavor of fear and terror and felt his thin body begin to shake.
“Do you have any other family?” she’d asked.
Unable to speak, he shook his head.
“Don’t worry, Michael. We’ll find someone to take care of you.”
The suffocating aloneness and loss of control wrapped around his throat like a vise. He couldn’t breathe. His mother couldn’t be dead. She was all he had. He ran from the social worker.
“Michael!”
He heard her voice calling after him, but he kept running. His hand connected with something hard. Glass shattered. Pain shot through him and he bolted upright in bed, his chest heaving for breath.
Disoriented by the darkness, he reached for the bedside lamp, but it wasn’t there. He groped for a flashlight in the drawer. The lamp lay on the floor in pieces. Perspiration dampened his skin and his heart pounded as if he had indeed been running.
The images of his childhood continued while he was awake. He’d always felt like an unnecessary visitor. For various reasons, three foster families had been unable to keep him longer than a year or so at a time. Too old for adoption, he’d made a home of sorts at the Granger Home for Boys. There was little possibility for forming any emotional connections. That suited Michael fine. But it was a place that fostered dreams. At night in a room with three sets of bunk beds, a boy could sleep. A boy could dream.
He’d dreamed of being a man in control of his life and destiny, a man of wealth and power. But he’d never dreamed of being a father.
Kate’s alarm rang at the regular time, waking her just before 6:00 a.m. She slapped the snooze button to quiet the morning deejay who sounded as if he mainlined coffee. She gently eased herself toward the edge of the bed for a shower to clear her head for work when it occurred to her that she no longer worked at CG Enterprises. She still wasn’t accustomed to the change in routine. At the thought of being unemployed, her heart raced. Then she remembered her stock options and breathed normally.
Her brain began to whirl like a scratched CD. Thoughts of Michael slid into her mind with the insidious ease of smoke, and the pain of her last encounter with him returned full force. Every time she thought of him, she felt like a fool. Although she’d had strong feelings for him, it hadn’t been love on either end. Thinking of him reminded her how much she’d fooled herself. She squeezed her eyes tight and told herself she had more important considerations now. Like the baby.
For the hundredth time Kate wondered how she would tell her parents. Kate had been what her mother called a change-of-life baby. As the long-awaited only child of a woman over forty, she knew she embodied all her parents’ hopes and dreams. She winced, picturing her mother fainting and her father’s face full of disappointment. Stall, she thought and wondered how she might stall for a year. She had a temporary respite since her parents had taken an extended RV trip to Branson, but that wouldn’t last forever.
Pushing back her worries, she rose from bed determined to forge ahead. After a shower and a breakfast of tea and toast, she heard a knock at her door. Neighbor, she thought, and opened it to Michael.
Her heart jolted at the sight of him. His grim expression etched a sharp contrast from the morning sunshine and spring flowers on the porch of her duplex townhouse. Kate read a lack of sleep on his face, but he still managed to emanate rock-hard strength. It was part of the reason she’d fallen for him. Something about him said he might fall, but he wouldn’t break and he would always get back up. He studied her for a long, uncomfortable moment before meeting her gaze head-on, and Kate felt the full power of Michael Hawkins’s undivided attention.
“Are you pregnant?”
Kate’s breath stalled. She felt as if she’d been hit by a train. His gravelly voiced question scraped over raw nerve endings. Off-guard, unprepared and rattled, she worked her mouth, but nothing came out. She eyed the door and thought about shutting it against him.
He must have read her mind because he planted his foot in the doorway. “Are you pregnant?”
Unaccustomed to having his undiluted intensity solely focused on her, Kate continued to struggle for balance. He stood too close to her. When she forced herself to take a breath, she inhaled his scent and her body softened in the same way it had the night they’d shared together. “Yes,” she said, more whisper than voice.
“We need to talk,” he said and entered her house.
Struggling to clear her head, she crossed her arms over her chest, hugging herself, and left the door open. Heaven help her, she wished she was better prepared. “I’m not sure I agree.”
He lifted a dark eyebrow of inquiry.
“You pretty much covered everything during our last discussion. You said you would be a rotten father and I shouldn’t count on you.”
He rested his hands on his hips. “That was before I had all the facts.”
“And how does having the facts change things?” she asked, refusing to give into her weakness for him. Her weakness for him had gotten her into enough trouble already. “Do you suddenly have the ability to be a good father now?”
He narrowed his eyes. “No. I may not be able to do much for this baby, but I can be financially responsible.” He paused a half-beat. “I can give this baby a name.”
“How?”
“We can get married,” he said with the same emotion with which he could have proposed buying a car.
Kate forced her brain to work. “Let me get this straight. You don’t love me, you don’t want to be a husband or a father, but you think it’s a good idea for us to get married so the baby will have a name and financial security?”
“I can provide well for this child,” he said with a steely resolve that surprised and unnerved her.
“Financially,” Kate said, holding fast to her resolve. “But children need more than money from moms and dads. A child needs security, attention, love, affection, instruction, laughter. A child needs to see that love is possible, and you don’t believe in love. Why should I marry you, Michael? You don’t—” Out of the corner of her eye a familiar vehicle caught her attention. “Oh no!” Kate watched in horror as her parents’ RV pulled into her driveway.
She glanced back at Michael. “You have to leave,” she told him. “We’ll talk later. Go away.”
He looked at her as if she’d sprouted another head. “Why?”
“It’s my parents. You have to leave,” she said, fighting panic and a return of nausea.
“You haven’t told them,” he concluded.
“I haven’t told anyone.”
“When were you planning to tell them?”
Kate watched her father climb out of the vehicle and wave. “Oh, four years sounded good,” she said in a voice that sounded thin to her own ears. She pasted a smile on her face for her dad. “My mother has this minor heart condition. It’s not really dangerous, but I don’t want to tempt it. You need to leave,” she whispered emphatically.
“I can’t. They’ve blocked me in,” he said, and his logical statement made her want to cry.
“Katie,” her mother called with a smile as she climbed the steps to Kate’s porch. “Surprise! I hope you don’t mind. I promise we won’t stay long. Just the day. I needed to see you to make sure you’re okay.” She studied Kate with a mother’s knowing eye. “You look a little pale, sweetheart.”
Kate felt her stomach twist and turn with the familiar nausea, but continued to smile as she embraced her mother. “I’m fine. It’s good to see you too. I thought you two were in Branson.”
Her father gave her a quick squeeze and chuckled. “You know your mother. She’s not happy if she hasn’t seen her little chick in a while. Who’s this?” he asked, looking at Michael.
More than anything Kate wished for a magic wand. She would make both Michael Hawkins and her nausea disappear.
Two
“This is my boss,” Kate said. “I’m taking some time off and he wanted to go over a few minor details on a special project. Michael Hawkins, Tom and Betty Adams,” she said,
making speedy introductions. “We’re done,” she added cheerfully. “You can leave now.”
“Oh, there’s no need to rush on our account,” Kate’s mother said. “Katie sent us a newspaper article about your company. Very impressive. She’s always had high praise for you.”
“Thank you,” Michael said, giving Kate a speculative glance. “Kate’s been invaluable. Irreplaceable.”
Irreplaceable as his secretary, Kate firmly reminded herself.
“That’s our Katie,” her father said beaming with pride. “She’s always been special to us.”
Kate’s stomach twisted viciously at how quickly her father’s pride and joy would disintegrate if he knew the truth. She might be a grown woman, but the thought of hurting her parents made her ill. She felt herself go light-headed and blinked. “Come in and make yourselves at home. I’ll be right back,” she said, and dashed for the bathroom.
She sat down on the brass stool beside the pedestal sink for a moment to regain her equilibrium, then splashed her face and took several deep breaths. She wasn’t given to anxiety attacks, but Kate couldn’t imagine a more nerve-wracking situation. Michael Hawkins pressing marriage when he didn’t love her and sitting in her living room with her parents. Biting back a moan, she sank back down on the stool.
The door opened, and Michael appeared.
“What are you doing here?” she whispered. “You’re supposed to be gone.”
He stepped in front of her, crowding her with his body and unhinging her with his intense stare. “Do you do this often?” he asked, crouching in front of her.
“Do what?”
“Pass out.”
“I’m not passing out,” she retorted, irritated with his proximity and her continuing lightheadedness. “I was making sure I didn’t pass out by coming in here. I’m sure I’ll feel much better when you leave. We need to get back out there or my parents—”
