Expecting the Boss’s Baby

by Leanne Banks

  “Your mother already suspects something,” Michael said. “She said you looked pale.”

  Kate squeezed her forehead. “Oh, no. I knew this would happen,” she wailed, then lowered her voice. “I can’t hide anything from her. I always suspected she had X-ray vision when it came to me. I can’t tell them. It will hurt them terribly.”

  “You’ll have to tell them sometime,” he said with a shrug that indicated he truly didn’t comprehend her situation.

  “Sometime doesn’t have to be now.”

  “What if you were married?” he asked in a tone entirely too intuitive.

  “Oh, don’t even go there.” Kate knew her mother had been planning her wedding since before she was born. If Betty Adams could have done things her way, she would have arranged a marriage between Kate and the boy down the street who’d become a dentist, had them move next door and start a family right away. Kate shook her head and stood. “I refuse to compound my bad judgment by making another decision with long-term consequences.”

  “Bad judgment?” he said, slowly rising to tower over her.

  “By falling for—” She broke off. “By falling into bed with you. You need to leave.”

  “Kate,” Michael said, taking her arm.

  Her heart tripped, unsettling her, confusing her. She pulled her arm away. “You’ve barely looked me in the eye for two months. Why are you touching me now?”

  He paused a half beat, his gaze trapping hers with a power that rocked her. “Circumstances are different now.”

  Not different enough, she thought, remembering how he had shattered her hopes to smithereens just weeks ago.

  “Kate, you know me better than just about anyone.”

  She licked her dry lips and feigned a careless shrug. “So?”

  “So you know I get what I want,” he told her, and his eyes might as well have nailed her to the bathroom wall.

  Her stomach sank. Kate had seen that look of determination on Michael’s face before, but it had always been about business. Now it was about her, yet not about her. It was about the baby. Hearing footsteps, she felt another sliver of panic and it gave her an urge to argue a rain check. She flung open the door and raced out to greet her mother in the hallway. “Mom, Michael was just leaving and wanted to say good-bye,” she continued without breathing. Maybe if she talked fast, no one would ask questions. “Do you think Dad would mind moving the motor home?”

  Kate tossed a quick glance at Michael and saw him watching her the same way a very clever tiger watches his prey. Her pulse picked up.

  “It was nice meeting you, Mrs. Adams. I look forward to seeing you again,” he continued, letting Kate know her reprieve was temporary. “We’ll talk soon, Kate.”

  “Bye,” she said, biting her lip as she watched him leave.

  “I think he might like you, Katie,” her mother said, ever hopeful.

  Kate shook her head.

  “He couldn’t take his eyes off you,” her mother said. “A man like that, he might make a good husband.”

  Kate bit back a dozen corrections and squeezed her mother instead. “Mother, you say every man can’t take his eyes off me. You just want me married,” she teased lightly, but her heart felt heavy.

  Michael allowed the evening spring breeze to wash over him as he sat parked in his Lexus down the street from Kate’s duplex. Her parents’ RV had just pulled out of the driveway. Glancing at his watch, he decided to give Kate a five-minute respite before he rang her doorbell.

  Despite his reputation as Tin Man, Michael had been unable to dismiss Kate’s pregnancy. The whole situation made him nuts, and he couldn’t recall being more driven about anything than he was now to protect his child from every bad thing that had happened to him during his childhood. Long-buried bitterness roiled in his gut at the thought of his child being deprived or feeling abandoned and trapped.

  If that weren’t enough, his protective urge extended to Kate. The idea of her being alone and pregnant with his child was untenable to him. His blood pressure rose just thinking about it and he was determined to convince her to agree to his plan. Checking his watch again, he pulled into her driveway.

  Grabbing a sheet of paper from the passenger seat, Michael got out of the car and climbed the steps to Kate’s porch. He rang the doorbell and a calico cat mewed up at him. The outside of her cozy home echoed the warmth of her personality.

  Kate answered the door, rubbing her eyes as if she’d been crying. “I didn’t expect you.”

  He would be back every day until they got this settled, he thought grimly, wishing she would smile again. “I drove by and noticed your parents had left.” She didn’t invite him in, but that didn’t stop him from entering. “Why are you crying?”

  Kate picked up the cat and cradled it in her arms. She shrugged. “I feel very stupid for getting myself in this situation.”

  “It took two,” he pointed out, thinking that her home might have had a calming effect on him if he hadn’t felt like climbing the walls. He remembered when Kate used to have a calming effect on him. That time was long gone, he thought with irritation. “We didn’t finish our conversation this morning.”

  She shot him a wary glance. “Yes we did.”

  “No we didn’t,” he said, fighting a tightening cord of impatience. “There’s only one thing for us to do. We need to get married. There’s no other choice.”

  Kate blinked. “That’s not true. We’re not living in the dark ages. Many single women give birth to children.”

  “Is that what you want for our child?”

  “No, but—”

  “Exactly. Kate, I won’t take no for an answer.”

  “You seem to forget that marriage takes two. You also seem to forget that you told me in no uncertain terms that you are neither husband nor father material.”

  Michael narrowed his eyes, knowing the essence of what she’d said hadn’t changed. “I didn’t have all the facts during that conversation. You hid a very important fact from me. Why?”

  “I didn’t want you to marry me because I was pregnant,” she returned heatedly. “Which is exactly what you’re trying to do.”

  He ground his teeth. Reasoning with her had been so much easier when she’d been his employee. “People marry for lesser reasons. For the well-being of this child, you and I must marry. Dammit, I won’t have a child of mine born illegitimate and without the financial security I can easily afford. I knew too many kids who suffered under those circumstances and this will not happen to my child.”

  She stared at him for a long moment. “You never talk about your family,” she finally said.

  He hated like hell to discuss his childhood, but he was determined to make her see the only right course. “I don’t have a family. My father left my mother soon after she became pregnant with me, and my mother died when I was six. I spent time in foster care and at the Granger Home for Boys. I can give you a first-hand account of what it’s like to grow up without a father and it’s not pretty. But you wouldn’t know about that, would you?”

  Kate put the cat down and turned away from Michael. She’d always wondered about his family, but had never asked. Michael had seemed to be a man with no personal attachments. Now she understood why. With a sinking feeling she also understood why he would be adamantly opposed to putting his child through an illegitimate upbringing. His disclosure took the wind out of her sails. “So what kind of arrangement are you proposing?” she asked in a low voice.

  She felt him step closer to her. He gave her a sheet of paper. She scanned it, but the numbers were a blur. “What is this?”

  “My financial statement. I’ve had my accountant put aside—”

  Kate’s stomach roiled. “Oh my God,” she said, tossing the offending paper to the floor and walking to the other side of the room.

  Michael stepped in front of her, his hands on her arms, male frustration emanating from every pore. “I want you to know that I can and will take care of you and the baby. I want you to see i
t in black and white. I don’t want you to ever worry about it.”

  In some corner of her mind, she suspected his intentions were good. She could see it was vital to him to protect her and the baby, but the timing couldn’t be worse. This was a far cry from the sweet, sentimental tale her mother had often repeated to her about her father’s proposal on bended knee in an ice-cream parlor. “So this is a business arrangement. You sign over part of your money to me and the baby, you and I get married, we live separately, and I raise our child.”

  “No,” he said firmly, immediately. “You and the baby will live with me.”

  “Why?” she demanded. “You don’t want me.”

  His gaze traveled over her, and Kate felt a surprising flicker of the forbidden but mutual attraction she’d thought he’d killed. “I never said I didn’t want you. I may not have much of a heart, but I am a man. I wanted to take you to bed from the beginning. Every day I saw you, I thought how it would be to touch you and feel you hot and wet. But you were too valuable to me as an assistant to muddy the waters with sex.”

  “And now?”

  “Now you’re no longer my assistant,” he said. “You’re fair game.”

  Confused, rattled and, embarrassingly, a little turned on, Kate backed away. She took a careful breath and shook her head. “This is just a little too primitive for me. Your protectiveness, the money, the—” she groped for a benign description and came up empty “—the sex.” She shook her head again. “I don’t know what to say. I don’t feel like I know you at all, yet you’re insisting we marry.”

  “Do you remember what it was like between us before that night we spent together?”

  She nodded, remembering that underneath the forbidden wanting, there’d always been an ease, occasional laughter, and respect. Everything had felt so dreadfully tense between them, however, ever since that night. “We laughed a lot more.”

  “You were a friend.”

  Kate felt the push and pull of loss and confusion. He called her friend, and she felt elated, yet she knew he wasn’t offering her a lifetime of love and devotion. She crossed her arms over her chest, then lifted a hand to rub her forehead. “I don’t—” She bit her lip. “I don’t know. I need time to think.”

  “You said you cared for me as more than a boss,” he reminded her.

  She felt the sting of humiliation at how she’d laid her emotions bare for him to see. “That was before you told me you didn’t believe in love.”

  “So you prove my point. You can’t count on emotions. Yours have changed.”

  “I think it would be more fair to say I didn’t have all the facts. I didn’t know everything about you.”

  “When do you ever know everything about someone else?” he asked. “You don’t.” He took her left hand in his and rubbed her ring finger, then met her gaze. “It’s right for us to be married.” He closed his hand around hers and drew her to him. “Right in a lot of ways.”

  He lowered his head and took her mouth in a gentle, but firm caress, and she felt the coil of sensual tension inside her tighten. She felt his fingers splay through her hair, tilting her head for better access. He was a heady combination of masculine control and passion, and Kate struggled with overwhelming seductive and forbidden wishes.

  He slid his leg between hers and she felt the evidence of his hard arousal against her. Kate remembered how easy it had been to fall into his arms before. Was she ready for that again? The thought cut through the haze of passion, and she pulled back and ducked her head. Her lips and mind were buzzing.

  “I need to think,” she said, staring at the open collar of his shirt. She knew his chest was strong. She knew how his bare chest felt against her hands and cheek. Kate closed her eyes. “This isn’t helping.”

  She heard him exhale deeply; his impatience shimmered between them. She knew that sound. She’d seen it and heard it a hundred times, but it had always been business-related.

  “I don’t remember you being this stubborn,” he said in a wry voice.

  Kate glanced up at him. “Different circumstances,” she said.

  He tilted his head to one side. “How’s that?”

  “You used to be my boss,” she said. “Now, you’re not.”

  He nodded, taking her measure. “Works both ways.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Like I said before, now that you’re not my assistant, you’re fair game.” He lifted her hand to his mouth and brushed his lips over her fingers. “We’ll talk soon.”

  Her fingers burned as she watched him walk out the door. She felt as if she’d walked into a cyclone, or perhaps one had walked into her. She rubbed her hand over her face and sagged against the wall. She hadn’t counted on Michael’s insistence. She hadn’t counted on him pursuing her with the same fervor and intensity with which she’d watched him pursue his business interests.

  Her chest tightened when she remembered the you-can-fight-but-you-won’t-win look in his eyes. Her emotions were all over the place. She felt exhilarated, seduced…. She spied his financial statement on the floor and scowled in disgust. She scooped it up and crumpled it into a tight little ball.

  The man was a mass of contradictions. He wanted to protect her, seduce her and marry her.

  But not love her.

  Kate didn’t know what to do. This was definitely not a sentimental story of a proposal on bended knee in the ice cream parlor. She tried to imagine repeating this story to her child. “Yes, a lot of men propose with words of love and devotion and diamond rings, but your Daddy brought me his financial statement instead.”

  Kate groaned and tossed the paper across the room.

  The next morning Kate left before Michael could call or visit. She invited her close friend, Donna, to meet her at a park in downtown St. Albans for lunch. Kate had known Donna since they’d both entered Virginia Tech’s computer science program as freshmen, and she valued the longevity and comfort of their friendship. Donna’s wide-eyed baby face belied her worldly-wise mind.

  “I’m surprised you were able to get away from work,” Donna said as they shared a small table overlooking the pond. “It seems like your lunch hours are always used for special projects for the mighty Michael.”

  “I’m not working for the mighty Michael anymore,” she said. “I quit.”

  Donna’s brown eyes rounded. “You’re joking!”

  “No. I’m pregnant,” she said, and Kate told her the whole story to the accompaniment of Donna’s repeated gasps.

  “His financial statement,” Donna said and tried unsuccessfully to swallow a chuckle. “I’m curious. What did it say?”

  Kate threw her a sideways glance. “I didn’t look. I already know he’s got a lot in the bank. I just don’t know how terrible it would be to marry him knowing he doesn’t even believe in love.” She tossed some breadcrumbs toward the geese that begged from the luncheon crowd.

  Donna made a face and sighed. “It’s admirable that he wants to take care of you and the baby. I hate to say it, but he may be too damaged from his upbringing to really be able to love someone. This won’t be a marriage like your parents have.”

  Donna was voicing all of Kate’s concerns. “I know,” she said glumly. “It’s not that he’s a bad person, but since he didn’t have an example of how to live in a family, I’m afraid he really won’t know how.”

  “You can’t tell me you didn’t see this coming like a freight train,” Donna said. “You’ve worked with him for three years.”

  Kate felt a rush of embarrassment at her foolishness. “That’s part of the problem. The only way I know him is through work, and even though that might have consumed a lot of hours, there are things Michael never mentioned about himself. I know it sounds silly, but I just thought I had a terrible, terrible crush. Since we spent that night together, I’ve been on an emotional seesaw.”

  Donna groaned. “How hard is he pushing?”

  “Very hard,” Kate said, feeling the beginning of a headache.

&nb
sp; Donna reached over and squeezed her arm. “You could always move to France.”

  Kate gave a half-hearted smile. Throughout their friendship, they’d taken turns offering the fantasy of moving to France as a way to escape the crisis du jour.

  “Whatever you do, don’t fall in love with him until he falls in love with you,” Donna said.

  Kate frowned. “What do you mean don’t fall for him? I thought I already had.”

  “You fell into lust, infatuation. Both of those are temporary. Real love is terminal,” Donna said cheerfully. “My mother always told me never to marry anyone who didn’t love me more than I loved him. So if you decide to marry him, you just need to make him fall in love with you. Or make sure you don’t fall in love with him.”

  “Great,” Kate said wryly. “Do any of these pearls of wisdom come with a magic wand?”

  Three

  “Michael, if you don’t stop talking about the financial arrangements pertaining to this marriage, I’m going to throw up.”

  Michael blinked. “Okay,” he said, setting his papers on the end table beside her sofa.

  His unswerving focus on her never failed to unnerve her. She would have to find a way to get over that if she was actually going to go through with this. She’d been unable to sleep thinking about it. It seemed so terribly wrong not to marry for love, but in the stillness of the middle of the night when it was just her heartbeat and her baby’s, Kate asked herself if she’d be able to live with herself if she didn’t try. Looking at Michael, she prayed she was making the right choice. “I have other concerns.”

  “Such as?”

  “Where we will live, how we will relate to each other, the wedding,” she said, thinking that those barely scratched the surface.

  “That’s easy,” he said, waving his hand. “You can choose a house where you’d like us to live. We’ll relate to each other the way we always have. And we can get blood tests and be married by a justice of the peace within three days.”

  Kate bit back a sigh. She agreed with one out of three. They had nowhere to go but up. “I don’t mind finding a house for us, but I’d like to know some of your likes and dislikes. I don’t think we will be able to relate to each other the way we always have.”