The Pregnant Colton Bride

by Marie Ferrarella

  Mirabella shifted uncomfortably. It felt decidedly strange to her to be thinking about Kyle in the present tense now that he was dead. But the fact that he was dead really didn’t change anything. She didn’t want to admit to having slept with him, which, in turn, was to admit to being used by him.

  In her eyes it made her seem like a little fool—and worse. But since Zane was obviously not letting go of this, she made the nebulous admission and hoped that would be enough for him.

  “Yes, I told him. Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to drop the subject.” She began to get up. “I’d—”

  She stopped abruptly as another wave of nausea, this one far more intense than its immediate predecessor, suddenly caught her up in its grip. She dug the fingernails of her left hand into the arm of the sofa as if that could somehow channel the sensation she was feeling out of her body and into the inanimate object.

  It couldn’t.

  Caught up in all this, Zane saw that horrid color—pea green—reemerge and all but paint her complexion from the throat up.

  He could see by the sudden panicked look in her eyes that she felt she wasn’t going to be able to make it down the hall in time.

  He wasn’t about to allow her to embarrass herself in front of the other people on the floor. They were, in general, good people. But a lot of good people still loved to gossip. Some actually thrived on it, he recalled.

  With that in mind, Zane quickly got to his feet and out of her way.

  “Use my bathroom,” he volunteered. He saw she was about to demur and he quickly cut her off. “You’re not going to make it down the hall. Now stop being so damn stubborn about everything and use the blasted bathroom,” he ordered, pushing open the door to the pristine restroom.

  She wanted to protest and tell him that she was going to use the ladies’ room since it was available to everyone. But she never got the chance.

  Her words were blocked by the sensation of something ominous about to reappear at any second and it was going to be right here, on his rug, if she didn’t hustle and take advantage of the generous offer he’d just made to her.

  She felt there was a time for pride and a time for practicality and this definitely fell into the latter category.

  Wanting to murmur “thank you” but afraid if she so much as opened her mouth, they would both deeply regret it, she could only nod at him as she dashed past Zane and straight into the bathroom.

  Knowing she would welcome privacy as much as he would welcome not having to hear anything he’d prefer not to, Zane pulled the door closed behind her.

  Just in time.

  The next moment, he heard a knock on his outer door.

  Chapter 6

  Zane’s first thought was he needed to get rid of whoever was on the other side of his office door before Mirabella emerged from his bathroom. That seemingly innocent event could very easily start rumors and rumors of any sort were the last thing he needed to deal with right now. He’d learned from personal experience that people were capable of taking a tidbit of what they perceived to be information and somehow wound up spinning the complete works of William Shakespeare out of it.

  Crossing quickly toward the door, Zane pulled it open.

  Any thought of sending the person off instantly vanished when he saw who it was.

  In his midthirties and balding, Meyer Stanley had a slight build. He obsessively maintained ramrod straight posture in an effort to appear at least a little taller than his five-foot-five-inch stature. He succeeded only in making himself look like a determined swizzle stick when he walked.

  His most outstanding feature, despite the black framed glasses he wore—or perhaps because of them—was his eyes. As he walked into Zane’s office, Meyer’s eyes appeared so huge, they were almost startling.

  To say Zane was surprised to see the IT expert was putting it mildly.

  “I just talked to you a few minutes ago,” Zane said. Had Meyer forgotten to add something?

  Meyer bobbed his head up and down. His glasses slid down his nose, and he pushed them back up with a jerky motion of his index finger.

  “Yes, I know.” The three words came out sounding almost breathless.

  Zane took a guess as to why the man had felt compelled to suddenly rush over. “Did you find out where my father’s money was being wired?”

  Again Meyer nodded vigorously in response. When he spoke, his voice had dropped several octaves from its usual high-pitched tone. But before he spoke, he looked furtively around, as if he wanted to make sure there was no one else in the room who would overhear what he was about to say.

  “I thought it was best if I came to tell you this in person.”

  Zane had worked with Meyer for a couple of years now, albeit in a different division, and knew the man had a flair for the dramatic. But this was a level he’d never witnessed before. Zane had absolutely no idea what to expect.

  An uneasiness began to work its way through his system, although he continued to maintain a perfect poker face.

  “Go ahead.”

  “The regular transfers from one of your father’s bank accounts—when they were being made,” Meyer qualified, trying to be painstakingly accurate, “were going into an encrypted bank account belonging to—”

  Meyer paused, not for any sort of dramatic effect, but because he was obviously nervous about the disclosure he was about to make.

  Zane couldn’t remember ever seeing the IT expert behave this way. Just how damning was this discovery Meyer had made?

  “Go ahead, out with it, Meyer,” Zane ordered. “Who did the account belong to?”

  Meyer swallowed. “It belonged to—”

  A noise from the side of the office caught his attention. Meyer looked around Zane’s arm and he saw the bathroom door being opened. Someone was coming out.

  When Meyer saw who it was, he appeared stunned as his mouth dropped open and he seemed to actually shake a little, as well.

  “Damn it, Meyer, who?” Zane demanded, calling the man’s attention back to him. “C’mon, man. Spit it out. Give me a name. Who did the encrypted account turn out to belong to?”

  Behaving like a man who had suddenly lost the ability to form words, Meyer was temporarily reduced to having to point. Which he did.

  Straight at Mirabella.

  “Her,” he finally croaked out nervously. “The account belongs to your administrative assistant. Mirabella Freeman.” The damning words came out in breathless gulps. The next moment, Meyer was thrusting a folded up sheet of paper at him.

  Taking it, Zane opened the paper and quickly scanned it. His expression hardened. Everything was right there, condemning her as the one on the receiving end of Eldridge Colton’s regular bank withdrawals.

  Hearing her name, Mirabella stopped dead in her tracks. She looked from Zane to the funny little man he liked to use whenever he was confronted with cyber puzzles or things of a similar, challenging nature.

  Something was going on and from the way the two men had looked at her, Mirabella had a feeling it wasn’t good.

  “Did I miss something?” she asked, deciding it best to meet whatever this was head-on. How bad could it be? She hadn’t been in the bathroom that long, Mirabella reasoned, although when she was throwing up, every second felt like an eternity to her—an awful eternity.

  Zane didn’t answer her.

  The silence grew more ominous.

  He didn’t say anything about what was going on or why Meyer was in his office. In the flash of an instant, given one piece of information he’d gotten from Meyer, everything had changed.

  He focused his attention entirely on Meyer, trying to keep the information the man had just given him at bay for as long as he could.

  His eyes narrowed as he looked at Meyer. “You’re sure about that?”

  The man’s face was the epitome of solemnity. “That’s where the trail ended, sir,” Meyer replied.

  Ordinarily, Mirabella knew when to refrain from saying anything. She might be Zane’s
administrative assistant, but it wasn’t her place to interfere in his conversations. If he wanted to bring her into it, he would have indicated as much.

  But she had this uneasy feeling whatever was going on was somehow about her and she couldn’t very well defend herself if she didn’t know what she was defending herself against or from.

  She needed answers.

  “What is this all about?” Mirabella asked.

  The question was directed to Zane, but when he didn’t answer her, her eyes shifted to Meyer. She thought she detected a glimpse of pity in the IT’s brown eyes before he lowered them, appearing as if he was trying to find a lost penny in the rug’s thick beige pile.

  “That’ll be all, Meyer,” Zane said, dismissing the tech. “Let me know if those transfers happen to start up again.”

  “Absolutely,” Meyer promised, apparently relieved to be leaving the office. He slipped out the door as unobtrusively as a business envelope slipped through a mail slot.

  “When what transfers start up again?” Mirabella asked.

  Zane was deliberately keeping her in the dark and the longer that went on, the more uneasy she became. Did he think she was involved in Eldridge’s kidnapping? Had he asked his trusty information ferret to uncover the identity of her baby’s father because he believed that was somehow tied to the kidnapping?

  You’re overthinking this and giving yourself too much credit. Zane doesn’t care who you slept with, as long as it doesn’t wind up reflecting badly on, or embarrassing, the company. Grow up! she ordered herself.

  There was no actual reason for her to believe Zane was taking an interest in her—certainly not a personal one.

  But when he turned around to face her, his expression frozen in a dark look she couldn’t begin to fathom, Mirabella wasn’t sure what to think—only that whatever information Zane had just gotten from Meyer had apparently made him very angry.

  The next moment, the need to guess was terminated.

  “Why was my father depositing almost ten thousand dollars every month into your encrypted bank account?” he wanted to know, his voice harsh and unyielding.

  She stared at Zane, the man she regarded as her boss and so much more. The words he had just uttered bounced off her head as if they’d been voiced in some language that was completely foreign to her.

  “Into my what?” she cried, unable to process what he was asking.

  His face darkened. He was in no mood to play games with someone he felt had betrayed him in too many ways to count.

  “You heard me,” he retorted. Then, because she continued looking at him uncomprehendingly, he repeated the last part of his question. “Into your encrypted bank account.”

  The room had begun to spin around her again and her knees had gone completely weak. Her hand out, searching for something to brace herself against, Mirabella stumbled back to the sofa.

  The next second, she collapsed into it.

  Zane almost reached out to steady her, but then he pulled back his hand. She was playing him again, he thought angrily.

  Well, not this time, honey.

  “Please, spare me the act,” Zane told her coldly. “That worked once, but I’m not being taken in a second time.”

  She made no effort to protest it was an act. She was barely holding on to consciousness by the edge of her fingertips. She could feel perspiration forming a damp ring just beneath her hairline.

  Mirabella dragged in a ragged breath, desperately trying to make sense out of what her boss was telling her.

  “What are you talking about?” she demanded with as much angry indignation as she could summon. She still failed to sound forceful, only extremely shaken. “I don’t have an encrypted bank account and the only account I do have certainly doesn’t have nearly twenty thousand dollars in it—”

  “Almost thirty thousand,” Zane corrected, his eyes never leaving her face.

  He was going to get the truth out of her if it killed him, Zane silently vowed.

  Her eyes appeared to be both stunned and blazing as she raised them to his.

  “It doesn’t have that amount in it, either,” she insisted. “What you’re saying is crazy. Why would Mr. Eldridge put that much money into an account with my name on it?” She wanted to know.

  Mr. Eldridge. As if you hadn’t been warming my father’s sheets, preying on his weakening state of health and mind, Zane thought in disgust.

  He’d trusted her. How could she have done that? How could she?

  He said, “That’s what I’m trying to find out.”

  She’d had about enough. And since he’d already condemned her, she really didn’t have anything to lose anymore.

  “Well, let me make it easy for you,” Mirabella retorted. “He wouldn’t. I don’t know where you got this insane idea from, but it’s just not true,” she declared heatedly.

  Meyer, working his wizardry, had uncovered the bank account’s actual number as well as its location and the name of the account owner. The IT had handed that over to him before leaving just now.

  “I got the initial ‘idea’ from the sheriff,” Zane informed her. “He was the one who discovered the regular withdrawals from my father’s account into some untraceable account. I gave that information to Meyer who followed up on it and tracked down the name of the culprit behind the scheme.” His eyes narrowed. “That answer your question for you?”

  His tone was so cold, she felt she needed a winter coat to withstand being in its presence without getting frostbite.

  But rather than cower or just accept his censure, Mirabella stood her ground and said defiantly, “All except for why.”

  Her words didn’t make any sense. “Why what?” Zane bit off angrily.

  She was easygoing up to a point, but that point had just been passed.

  She raised her chin, every inch a fighter who was not about to accept defeat quietly. “Why would someone want to frame me?”

  He stared at Mirabella for a long moment, realizing he would have wanted nothing more than to believe her. But evidence was evidence and he trusted Meyer implicitly. The man didn’t know how to lie.

  “Someone framed you,” Zane echoed with barely harnessed contempt. “Is that the excuse you’re going with?”

  “Yes,” she retorted angrily, afraid that at any second, she was going to burst into tears. “That’s what I’m going with. Because it’s the truth,” she insisted.

  Damn, I wish I could believe you. “Well, here’s the way I see it,” Zane said. “You and my father had an affair. Maybe you even tricked him into it, I don’t know,” he said, speaking fast in order to talk over the protest he saw she was about to voice. “But you did and you deliberately didn’t take any precautions, hoping to get pregnant so you could blackmail my father and get him to pay you any amount of money you asked for in exchange for your silence.”

  He glared at her, blocking feelings of betrayal he had absolutely no idea how to handle. “Am I getting warmer?” Zane asked sarcastically.

  “I don’t know, just how hot is hell?” she retorted furiously. “Because that’s where you’re obviously going to go for even thinking something like that about me or about that sweet old man.” Fully fired up, she told Zane exactly what she was thinking—she saw no reason to hold back any longer. “I respect your father, I like your father—maybe I even love your father—but I love him like a father, not like someone I would ever, ever—”

  Exasperated, Mirabella couldn’t even get herself to finish her sentence. Instead, she made a small, guttural sound reflecting her total frustration about the entire preposterous idea he had just outlined.

  How could he even entertain such an idea about her? Was that how little regard he had for her?

  She blew out a shaky breath and then attempted to draw in a more steadying one in order to continue giving him a piece of her mind.

  But at least for now, her own indignation prevented her from saying anything that sounded even the least bit remotely coherent.

  Mirab
ella took another breath, and then, as calmly as she was able, measuring out each word, she told Zane, “If that’s what you really believe about me, then, regretfully, I have to hand in my resignation. I can’t work for anyone who actually regards me—regards my character—in such awful terms.”

  She rose to her feet too quickly and suffered the consequences.

  The room began to spin again and for one mortifying moment, Mirabella thought she was going to pass out for the second time that day.

  Grabbing hold of the sofa’s arm, she continued holding on to it until the room finally slowed down and ceased moving.

  Zane, on the outside chance she actually was going to faint, quickly moved to her side. He reached for her to take hold of her shoulders.

  Mirabella angrily pushed one of his hands aside with the flat of her own.

  “I can manage,” she informed him through gritted teeth. “You wouldn’t want to be seen grabbing your father’s kept woman,” Mirabella warned in a mocking voice. “Heaven only knows what kind of stories that would give birth to.”

  He supposed maybe this could all be just an elaborate performance. After all, if Mirabella had done what he’d just accused her of, she could very well feign this indignation in order to play the part of a wronged woman in his eyes.

  He just didn’t know anymore.

  So much had happened in this last month that he found himself at a loss as to what to believe and what to hold suspect. Truth had become a very elusive commodity, changing its appearance to the point that he didn’t know if he could actually recognize it anymore. Truth had become a chameleon, assuming odd shapes.

  And then he thought he heard the little voice in his head advise, Trust your gut.

  He hadn’t worked his way up in the company—and in Eldridge’s estimation, by looking to others for guidance, or by relying on reports and other people’s opinions to dictate his actions. He’d done it by following his own instincts.

  In a nutshell, by trusting his gut.

  And his gut told him the woman he had relied on all this time, who had worked tirelessly at his side without expectation of praise or any sort of additional compensation these last few years, was telling him the truth.