A Touch of Temptation

by Tara Pammi

  His words rumbled around her, and images and sensations tumbled toward her along with them. But she refused to back down. “You take risks. Your business tactics are barely on this side of the law. The last thing you need in your life is a baby. If I had hidden this from you you would have only found more reason to hate me.”

  “To think for a moment I assumed that you weren’t doing this for purely selfish reasons but for the actual wellbeing of the child you’re carrying...”

  She flinched, the worst of her own fears crystallized by his cutting words. Her earlier dread intensified. That was what she should have immediately thought of. The child’s welfare. “I want nothing but a divorce and an exit from you.”

  His laughter faded and shadowed intent filled his face. He grabbed the papers she had signed not five minutes ago and shredded them with his hands.

  His calm movements twisted her gut. “Then what do you have in mind? We’ll kiss each other and make up? Play happy family—”

  He came closer—until she could see the gold specks in his eyes, smell the dark scent of him that scrambled her wits.

  “I’m not turning my back on my child.”

  Panic unfurling in her stomach, she shot up from her seat. “You’re out of your mind. This is not what I planned for my life—”

  “I’m sure you had a list of requirements that needed to be met in order to produce the perfect offspring,” he said, his words ringing with bitter satisfaction, “but it’s out of your hands now.”

  “It is. But what I can control is what I do about it now. Being a mother is going to be hard enough. Dealing with you on a regular basis will just tip me over into...”

  Perverse anger rose within her—perverse, irrational and completely useless. He could walk away from this. She needed him to walk away from this. But she...she had no such choice. She had a lifelong commitment. She was supposed to love this baby. She was supposed to...

  “You don’t want this baby?”

  “Of course I don’t. I’ll even go so far as to say it’s the worst thing that has ever happened to me!” she shouted, the words falling off her trembling lips.

  Shock flickered in his gaze, but she didn’t have the energy to wish them unsaid.

  “This baby is going to be a walking, talking reminder of the biggest mistake of my life. You’ve achieved what you wanted, Diego. You’ve done your worst. You have changed my life in a way I can’t control. Now, please, leave me to get on with it.”

  * * *

  Diego breathed out through his teeth and hit the punching bag again with renewed force. His right hook was beginning to fall short again. The injury to the muscle in his bicep was making itself known. The same injury that had forced him to withdraw from financially lucrative street-fights. The injury that had forced him to reach out to his father for help when he had been sixteen and unable to pay for his mother’s treatment.

  But he wouldn’t stop now. He breathed through the vicious pain, hating himself for even remembering.

  The clock on the wall behind him chimed, reminding him he’d been at it for more than two hours now.

  Sweat poured down from his forehead and he shook his head to clear it off. His T-shirt was drenched through and the muscles in his arms felt like stones. Adrenaline rushed through him in waves and he was beginning to hear a faint thundering in his ears. Probably his blood whooshing. But he didn’t stop.

  Because even trying to drown himself in physical agony he couldn’t block out Kim’s words.

  Stimulus and response!

  Meu Deus, the woman reduced him to the lowest denominator with her infuriating logic. No one had ever got under his skin like she did. And she was carrying his baby. The resentment that had glittered in her brown eyes pierced even the haze of his pain.

  Punch.

  Of course it’s yours.

  Thump.

  It’s the worst thing that has ever happened to me.

  Punch.

  This baby is going to be a walking, talking reminder of the biggest mistake of my life.

  Thump.

  Nausea whirled at the base of his throat, threatening to choke him with its intensity. He’d had enough rejection from his father to last him several lifetimes. He would be dead before he did the same to his child or became a stranger.

  He took one last punch and pulled his gloves off. He picked up a bottle of water, guzzled half of it down and dumped the rest over his head. The water trickled over his face into his eyes. The biting cold did nothing to pacify the crazy roar in his head.

  Because Kim had been right. He didn’t want to be a father.... He wasn’t fit to be a father...

  He let a curse fly and went at the punching bag again, shame and disgust boiling over in his blood. Pain waves rippled up his knuckles. His skin started peeling at his continued assault.

  He had no good in him. All he had was hatred, jealousy. He didn’t possess a single redeeming quality that said he should even be a part of a child’s life. He had chosen to walk the path he had with full clarity of thought—to take everything from his father that he deserved. He had known exactly what he was doing when he’d reached for that goal.

  And that was what he wanted to do now, too. He wanted to take his child from Kim and walk away. Every nerve in him wanted to ensure he had full custody.

  But he could not sink so low again.

  He had let his hatred for his father lead him to destroy his half brother’s life in the process. If not for Diego’s blind obsession Eduardo would have been...

  He shivered, a chill swamping him.

  He couldn’t risk that happening with his child. If, because of his obsession with Kim, he hurt his child in any way he wouldn’t be able to live with himself. He couldn’t let his anger at her drive him into making a mistake again—not anymore. Not when it could hurt his own child.

  Playing happy family with Kim, seeing her every day, when she was the one weakness he had never conquered—every inch of him revolted at the very thought.

  And yet he couldn’t escape his responsibility. He couldn’t just walk away and become a stranger to his own child.

  He had a chance to change the vicious cycle of neglect and abuse he and Eduardo had gone through.

  He would move mountains to make sure his child had everything he’d never had—two loving parents and a stable upbringing. Even if that meant tying himself to the woman who brought his bitterest fears to the surface.

  CHAPTER THREE

  KIM PULLED THE satin pillow over her head and groaned as her cell phone chirped. She hadn’t gotten into bed until three in the morning, after going over the new feature on The Daily Help with the design architect and writing her own feature for the career advice section she did every Tuesday.

  Pushing her hair out of her eyes, she looked at the digital clock on the nightstand. It was only seven. She felt a distinct lack of energy to attack the day. When her phone rang for the third time in a row she switched the Bluetooth on.

  “Kim, are you okay?”

  Liv.

  Tension tightened in the pit of her stomach at the concern in her twin’s voice. She had been putting Liv off for two weeks now.

  She pushed herself up on the bed and leaned against the metallic headboard. “I’m fine. Is everything okay with you and Alex?”

  “We’re fine. I’m just...” Liv’s uncharacteristic hesitation hung heavily between them. “God, Kim—is it true? Why the hell didn’t you tell me?”

  Kim swallowed, fear fisting her chest. “What are you talking about?”

  “You’ve made front page headlines. Not just the scandal rags, like I did, but even the business channels on television.”

  “What?”

  “It says you’re pregnant. Are you?”

  Diego.

  Kim closed her eyes and breathed huge gulps of air. Obviously her refusal to have anything to do with him, her refusal even to answer his calls, meant Diego had begun playing dirty.

  “Yes.”

  �
��When were you going to tell me? Are you...? I mean, are you okay with this? Does Diego know? What are you planning to do?”

  They were all perfectly valid questions. Kim had just shoved them down forcefully.

  “I’m perfectly fine, Liv. I don’t have the time right now to process what it means. Once this upcoming milestone for my company has passed I’ll make a list of the things I need to do.” She closed her eyes, fighting for composure. “I’ll even have a few sessions with Mommy Mary.”

  “Who is Mommy Mary?”

  “The expert on all things maternal on my team.”

  “On what?”

  “On what I need to learn to be the perfect mother. It’s not like we had a good example, is it?”

  “And until then you’re just going to put it on the back burner?”

  What else was she supposed to do? Focus on the relentlessly clammy feeling in her stomach every time her thoughts turned to the baby growing in her womb?

  The stark contrast between the terrifying emptiness she felt and her newly pregnant CFO’s glorious joy was already a constant distressing reminder that something vital was missing in her own genetic make-up.

  “I can’t botch this opportunity for my company by losing my focus.”

  “I don’t know what to...” Olivia’s tone rang with the same growing exasperation Kim had sensed in their recent conversations. “Let me know if you need anything, okay?”

  Kim tucked her knees close as Liv hung up. She wanted to reach out to Liv. Liv’s love came with no conditions, no judgment.

  But Kim—she had always been the strong one. She had had to be in order to protect first her mother and then Liv from their father’s wrath.

  She couldn’t confide her fears in anyone. Least of all to her twin, to whom loving and caring and nurturing came so easily.

  Whereas Kim had trained herself so hard to not care, not to let herself be touched by emotions. She’d had to after she had learned what her mother had planned...

  Only had she accomplished it so well—just as she had everything else in life—that she felt nothing even for the child growing in her womb?

  Because even after a week all she felt was utter panic at the thought of the baby. She had spent a fortune buying almost a dozen more pregnancy test kits, hoping that it had been a false positive. And every time the word “pregnant” had appeared her stomach had sunk a little lower.

  Or was it because of the man who had fathered her baby? Could her anger for Diego be clouding everything else? Was this how their mother had felt? Beneath her fear of their father, had she felt nothing for her children?

  Without crawling out of bed, she pulled her reading glasses on and powered up her iPad. Her heart thumped loudly. She clicked on to one of her favorite websites—one she could count on to provide news objectively.

  It was the first time she wasn’t in the news being lauded for one of her accomplishments.

  The article, for all its flaming header, didn’t spend time speculating on the answer to either of the questions it posed. But suddenly she wished it did. Because the speculation it did enter into was much more harmful than if they had spawned stuff about her personal life.

  The article highlighted the way any woman—especially one who was pregnant and with her personal life in shambles—could expect to expand her company and do it successfully.

  Should investors be worried about pouring their money into a company whose CEO’s first priority might not be the company itself? One who has been involved in not one but two major scandals? Could this pregnancy herald the death of the innovative startup The Daily Help and its brilliant CEO Kimberly Stanton’s illustrious career?

  She shoved the tablet away and got out of bed, her mind whirling with panic. She ran a hand over her nape, too restless to stay still. It might have been written by Kim herself, for it highlighted every little one of her insecurities— everything she had made a list of herself.

  For so long she had poured everything she had into first starting her company and then into making it a financial success. She had never stopped to wonder—never had a moment of doubt when it came to her career.

  She opened the calendar on her phone. Her day was full of follow-up meetings with five different investors. By the end of the day she intended to start working on putting the plans she had outlined about the expansion of her company into full gear.

  She couldn’t focus on any other outcome—couldn’t waste her mental energies speculating and in turn proving the contentious article right.

  Only then would she deal with Diego. There was no way anyone else would have known or leaked the news to the media. She had confided in only one person.

  Wasn’t this what Diego had intended all along? She was a fool if she’d thought even for a moment that he wanted anything but her ruin.

  * * *

  Kim clicked End on her Skype call and leaned back in her chair. Her day had only gotten worse since Liv’s phone call. That had been her fifth and last unsuccessful investor meeting. Not one investor was ready to wire in funds.

  Whereas the invoices for the new office space she had leased, for the three new state-of-the-art servers she had ordered, for the premium health insurance she had promised her staff this year mocked her and the vast sum of numbers on the papers in front of her was giving her a headache.

  She leaned her head back and rubbed the muscles knotting her neck. Her vision for her company, her team’s livelihood, both were at stake because she had weakened.

  Hadn’t she learned more than once how much she could lose if she let herself feel?

  The number of things she needed to deal with was piling up. Panic breathed through her, crushing her lungs and making a mockery of the focus that she was so much lauded for. She forced large gulps of air into her lungs.

  Breathe in...out...in...out... She repeated it for a few minutes, running her fingers over the award plaques she kept next to her table, searching for something to tune out the panic.

  Pull yourself together, Kim. There are people counting on you.

  It was the same stern speech she had given herself at thirteen, when she had discovered her mother’s packed bag one night. And the note to her father that had knocked the breath from her.

  She had survived that night. She could survive anything.

  She had to go on as before—for her company’s sake and for her own sake. If she lost her company she had nothing. She was nothing.

  She picked up her cell phone and dialed Alex’s number. He was someone with whom she had always tossed around ideas for her business, someone she absolutely trusted. And someone she had been avoiding for the past month...

  But she needed objective, unbiased advice, and Alex was the only one who would give it to her. She would exhaust every possibility if it meant she could go on with the plan for expanding her company.

  * * *

  Diego cursed, cold fury singing through his blood as he stared at the live webcast on his tablet. Reporters were camped with cameras and news crews in front of Kim’s apartment complex in Manhattan.

  He rapped on the partitioning glass and barked her address at his chauffeur.

  His gaze turning back to the screen again, he frowned at a sudden roar in the ruckus. And cursed again with no satisfaction as he recognized the tall figure. Her ex had arrived. Diego could almost peek into how the press’s mind would work.

  The news about her pregnancy on top of the scandal last month, when her twin had been found with Kim’s ex—the press would come to only one conclusion.

  That the unborn child—his child—was Alexander King’s.

  This was not what he had intended when he’d had his head of security leak the news of her pregnancy to the media.

  He stared at the tall figure of Alexander King as he walked into the complex without faltering, despite the reporters swarming around him. Acrid jealousy burned through him. He slammed his laptop shut, closed his eyes and sought the image of Eduardo’s frail body.

 
; Which was enough to soak up the dark thoughts and send some much-needed reason into his head.

  He had done this before—let his obsession consume his sense of right or wrong. He had let it blind him to the fact that Eduardo had needed his help, and instead he’d turned on him.

  He couldn’t do that again. This was not about what Kim could drive him to. It was about what was right for their child.

  * * *

  Kim took a sip of her water as Alex finished a call. She had emailed him her proposal and set up the appointment. Now she wished she had waited for the weekend. Stupid of her not to expect how much the media would make of Alex visiting her alone on a Friday evening at her apartment.

  She had never been more ashamed of herself. It had taken everything in her to ask Alex for his help but she had no other options. A flush overtaking her, she plucked up the daily statistics report her website manager had sent her.

  Based on the turnover of her company in the last quarter, and on her expansion proposal, investing in her company was a sound opportunity for any shrewd businessman. Except for the scandal she had brought on herself.

  Their daily numbers, the number of questions that came into their portal and the website hits, had spiked well above average today.

  But she knew, as was pointed out by the breakdown in front of her, that this was because twenty percent of the questions had been about her pregnancy, whether she was married and—worst of them all—whether she was married to the father of her baby.

  She needed to make a statement soon.

  Tucking his phone into his pocket, Alex turned toward her. “I’m sorry, Kim. You know how much I trust your business savvy. But, as brilliant as your plan and forecast is, I can’t invest in it right now.”

  Her stomach turning, Kim nodded. It was exactly as she had expected: the worst.

  She blinked back tears as he wrapped an arm around her. “With everything going on out there right now I just... As much as I hate to admit it, my association with your company in the current climate would only damage your credibility.”