She started to pull away. “Right.”
“Not with you.” He hugged her even tighter. Pressed his lips against her eyebrow in a kiss that was meant mostly to soothe her but ended up calming him. When he pulled back, some of the wariness had left her eyes. “See, every other time, I walked away and the feelings, the churning, the reason I fled in the first place, disappeared. With you, the need only got stronger.”
Her fingers clenched against his forearms. “You didn’t come back to me. I waited for some sign. Any sign.”
“I felt broken, Abby. I knew I had already fallen for you and then my dad...” Mentioning him could ruin everything. He wasn’t the problem between them now. Not really. “Forget that. This was my fault. I left and I missed you every single day. I couldn’t visit my brother because I worried I would see you.”
She nibbled on her bottom lip. For a few seconds, she didn’t say anything and he held his breath...waiting.
When nothing happened, he tried again. “It was a crappy thing to leave and then to make you wait. You suffered. I suffered. I don’t want to do it anymore.”
She brushed her fingertip over his bottom lip. “Can you break the cycle?”
She’d asked the question but he sensed she was starting to believe. To hope.
“Before you told me about the possible pregnancy, I wanted to tell you how I felt.” He nodded toward the living room. “Sitting right there on that couch, I was going to tell you I loved you. That I’d figured out I would always love you. That you were worth sticking around and fighting through the mess.”
Tears gathered in her eyes. “Spence.”
He rushed to get the rest out. “I didn’t tell you then because I didn’t want you to think I did it because I had to, but I’ll tell you now.” He rested his forehead against hers and inhaled. “Baby or not, I want to build a life with you. That gnawing sense of wanting to bolt will likely always be with me, but I don’t want to leave you. Ever.”
She wrapped her arms around his neck. “Sounds like I’d have to go with you then.”
The words were muffled in his neck, but he heard them. Also picked up on the happiness in her tone. How much lighter she sounded.
“That also works.” He lifted her head and stared down into her eyes. “But really, I love my brothers. I’ve even gotten used to the office, which is nothing short of a miracle.”
She smiled. “What are you saying?”
He recognized hope when he saw it. It soared through him, too. “Take a chance on me. I know I’m a risk, but—”
“Stop.” She shrugged as she hugged him close. “It’s too late. My life is already bound up with yours. I’m afraid you’re stuck with me.”
“I love the sound of that.” He kissed her. Let his lips linger over hers, loving the feel of her body pressed against his.
“Good, because I plan on making it a requirement for the next fifty years or so.”
He didn’t try to fight the smile. “Then we should start now.”
“I like your style.”
* * *
It was well past two in the morning. They were in bed, lying side by side, recovering from what she might call the greatest make-up sex of all time. She’d mentioned that to him and he hadn’t stopped smiling. Until right now.
She looked at his hands, those long fingers. Saw the white stick he held in a death grip. “You keep staring at it.”
“It’s so little and has the power to change everything with a plus sign.”
He’d insisted on the pregnancy test after their last round. She’d wanted cake, but he won the argument. Now, if only the panic screaming through her would stop.
“I could make a joke about how babies disrupt lives, but I’m not sure you’re ready for that.” She also wanted to point out that the Jameson men were pretty fertile and warn Carter, but the timing seemed wrong for that, too.
Spence shook the stick. “It should do something.”
“Like?”
He shrugged. “Balloons should pop out of it. Maybe play music.”
“It’s not a magic stick.”
He snorted as his head turned and he faced her. “It kind of is. We wave it and it changes everything about our lives together.”
Skipping the cake might have been smart. Her stomach wouldn’t stop dancing. “Well, that’s true.”
His eyes narrowed just a fraction. “You okay?”
“Scared.” It would take her a while to figure out how to deal with this news. They’d have to make plans, but she knew they would do it together. He’d made that clear. “Not about us. Not about how much I love you.”
He turned over and faced her. Wrapped an arm around her waist as he watched her. “But?”
“This is going to be hard. We’re still trying to sort ourselves out as a couple and now we’ll have this.” A few hours ago, that would have terrified her, but not as much now. She just needed to make sure he agreed with her. “Spence, this is—”
“I’m going to get angry if you offer me an out.”
“Six weeks ago, when you stepped back into my life, I knew you as the guy who bolted when everything got to be too much.” She winced as she pointed that out. She didn’t want to start another fight.
“Didn’t we settle this?” But he didn’t sound angry. Instead, he rolled her onto her back and balanced his body over hers.
She ran a hand up and down his bare arm, loving the feel of his sleek muscles under her fingertips. “I trust you to stay. The point is I want you to.”
“Leaving you, losing you, ripped me apart.” He pressed a quick kiss on the tip of her nose. “It was a wake-up call for me to get my act together.”
She let the words settle in her head. Yeah, she liked the sound of that. A lot. “And I’m part of that act?”
He snorted. “You have the main role in it.”
The last of her defenses crumbled. The walls came roaring down and took her doubts with them. In a few short hours, with a couple of words, he brought her peace. It would not be easy. Knowing the two of them, life would not be quiet or simple. It would be loud and loving and perfectly imperfect, and that sounded pretty great to her.
“I love you. You and your big messy family.” Because when she claimed him, she decided she’d claim them, too. “Okay, not your dad.”
“Remind me to show you something later.” His smile was downright mysterious. “A letter.”
She didn’t want to know, yet part of her did. She guessed he did that on purpose. Reeled her in and made her care about Eldrick, which should have been an impossible feat.
“I hate letters right now.” They reminded her of Jeff and no matter how tonight turned out, she still despised that guy.
Spence’s smile only grew wider. “This one may surprise you.”
“I’m intrigued.” She was about to pepper him with questions, but his hand slipped under the covers. Right down to her thigh. “Oh, yeah. There.” Then those expert fingers traveled a big higher. “The letter can wait.”
“Yes, it can.”
“I’m going to let you show me how much you love me.”
He rolled over her then. “Again?”
“I’m sure you can handle it.”
He lowered his mouth until it hovered right above hers. “I can handle you.”
“Show me.”
* * * * *
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PREGNANT BY THE CEO
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Tangled Vows
by Yvonne Lindsay
One
“There’s been a terrible mistake.”
Yasmin Carter froze—poised in her wedding finery at the end of the royal blue carpet leading to the altar. She stared at the man who had just turned to face her. Ilya Horvath, heir apparent to the Horvath empire, CEO of her biggest business rival.
Her groom. The one she was meeting for the first time today.
Her eyes skimmed the small gathering of guests flanking the aisle. Their expressions registered varying degrees of dismay and shock at her words. She forced her gaze back toward Ilya. He did not look surprised...or amused. In fact, he looked annoyed.
Well, that was fine with her. She was pretty annoyed, too, right now, and she’d tell the Match Made in Marriage people at the first opportunity. When her office manager, Riya, had brought the matchmaking business to her attention, it had appeared to be a solution to her current business woes. Cost aside, she had stood to gain more if she went through the type of arranged marriage at first sight offered by Match Made in Marriage than if she remained single. She’d endured the psychometric testing and the interviews with the end goal in mind—securing an exclusive deal to handle Hardacre Incorporated’s corporate and family travel for the next five years. The company was a well-known motivational and business coaching enterprise that worked all over the country. That agreement was the golden treasure that would pull her small charter airline out of the red and back into the black—so she’d signed the detailed contract that stipulated she must stay married to her stranger-husband for at least three months without a second thought. But contract or no contract, this wedding simply could not happen.
She should never have entered into this ridiculous scheme to save her business, but her inside source had warned her that the owner’s wife would never allow her husband to do business on a regular basis with a beautiful, young, unmarried woman. Wallace Hardacre had a wandering eye but was known to leave married women alone.
It had seemed so simple. To seal the deal, she needed to be married. She knew she had everyone else’s quotes beaten on price. And it wasn’t as if she didn’t want to marry Mr. Right someday. She absolutely did. It was just that with running the company and all the hours that took, she didn’t have time to form quality relationships with men.
Her gaze caught and meshed with Ilya’s for just a moment and a shiver ran through her. Not of apprehension, exactly—something more primitive than that. But it was enough for her to be certain that this whole thing had been a mistake from the start.
Ilya Horvath might look as though he’d stepped from the pages of GQ but there was no way she could consider marrying him.
Physically, of course, he was perfect. Tall, with broad shoulders filling out his suit to perfection and a light beard wreathing his jaw, he was—in a word—gorgeous. Attraction rippled through Yasmin’s body, making the corset beneath her strapless bodice suddenly feel a hundred times tighter than when Riya had hooked her into it this morning. Yasmin clamped down on the sensation and forced herself to take a breath, reminding herself that mentally, emotionally, socially and fiscally he was all wrong for her. No, she couldn’t do this to her late granddad’s memory—not to the man who’d taken her in and raised her when her parents had dumped her on him so they could continue to pursue their adventures rather than face up to adulthood and responsibility. She couldn’t marry the man whose own grandfather, her granddad’s best friend, had stolen and married the woman her grandfather loved. Attraction was all very well and good, but not when two families had been feuding for as long as theirs had.
“There’s definitely been a mistake,” she repeated, more firmly this time.
She bent and gathered the fullness of her layered organza gown, completed a swift one-eighty and exited the ballroom as fast as her feet, clad in intricately beaded slippers, would carry her. There was total silence for a few seconds, then the room broke out in a clatter of noise that followed her down the wide corridor.
Yasmin didn’t know which way to go as she headed into the resort’s foyer. To the elevators and back to the luxurious honeymoon suite where she’d gotten ready this morning or straight out the front door and hope there was a cab waiting there? It was a long way from here in Port Ludlow, Washington, to her home in California. The fare would be—
“Yasmin!” a woman called from behind her. “Please, wait. We need to talk.”
Yasmin turned to face the petite, elegant older woman now approaching her. Alice Horvath—the woman responsible for the bitter rivalry between the Carters and the Horvaths these past sixty-plus years.
“There’s nothing you can say that will make me change my mind,” Yasmin said firmly.
“Just give me a moment of your time.” Alice put a gentle hand on Yasmin’s arm. “Please? It’s important.”
“Look, I—”
“Perhaps up in your suite would be best, more private.” Alice began to steer Yasmin toward the elevators.
The adrenaline that had surged through Yasmin’s body at the sight of her intended groom began to abate, leaving a dragging lethargy in its wake.
“Fine, but you, of all people, should know you’re wasting your time if you’re going to try and persuade me to marry your grandson.”
The older woman gave her a sweet smile in response but said nothing as they rode the elevator up to the honeymoon suite. Yasmin was surprised when Alice produced a key card that opened the door.
“Forgive me the intrusion,” Alice said, closing the door behind them. “I was merely holding the key for Ilya until after the ceremony.”
Yasmin didn’t know what to say or where to look, so she opted to plunk herself down on one of the sofas in the sitting room. Alice gracefully seated herself opposite.
“You have a right to know what’s going on.”
Damn right she did. Yasmin tightly squeezed the bound stems of her bouquet of pale pink roses and gypsophila to stop the trembling that had begun in her fingers and now threatened to travel up her arms and take over her entire body.
“Let me be frank with you, my dear. When you applied to Match Made in Marriage I immediately knew you and my grandson were compatible. I didn’t need the specialist tests to assure me that you and Ilya would very much be a perfect match.”
“I beg your pardon? You work with Match Made in Marriage? Are you telling me that you make the matches?” Yasmin replied in stunned surprise.
“It’s not widely known, of course, and we do take the tests and interviews into consi
deration, but more as a confirmation that I’m on the right track with my couples. Trust me when I say I’ve always had a knack for these things. Once I retired from the family firm it was purely common sense to turn my little talent into a business. When my grandson told me he was ready to marry and settle down, it was only natural he would turn to me, but I didn’t expect to find the perfect match for him so promptly. I have to say, getting your application was quite the surprise.”
* * *
Alice Horvath looked at the beautiful but clearly confused and angry young woman sitting opposite her and wished things could have been different between their families. That the painful rift between best friends hadn’t formed when Jim Carter and Eduard Horvath both fell in love with her and, eventually, fallen out forever when she chose Eduard for her husband. But this was her chance to make things right—to heal the wounds of so long ago and to put this stupid feud to bed once and for all.
If only she could persuade Yasmin to go ahead with the wedding.
She drew in a breath and chose her words carefully. If there was anything this young woman seemed to have a grasp of, it was business. Oh, yes, Alice knew that Carter Air was struggling. She also knew that Yasmin, despite having come up with the hefty commitment fee, could not afford to break the terms of the marriage contract she’d signed or attempt to sue Match Made in Marriage to get out of it.
Alice sighed softly and composed herself.
“I repeat, matching you and Ilya is no mistake. The two of you are perfectly suited to each other and are fully compatible when it comes to your values and your hopes and dreams for the future. I have every faith that you belong together and that you could make a long and very satisfying marriage.”
“But—”
Alice raised a hand. “Please, allow me to finish. There comes a time when the past has to be put behind us so we can look to the future. This is your time. I know that there’s been a great deal of bitterness between our families, that your grandfather and my Eduard ceased to have a civil word to say to each other after...” Alice blinked away the emotion, the weakness she couldn’t afford to show. “Suffice it to say that bitterness has tainted too many lives for far too long.”
Reunion With Benefits Page 16
