by Lia Lee
“Have someone tell her that I’ll meet her down in the hotel lounge when I have a moment,” Alex finally said with an exaggerated air of casualness. “I believe I remember her.”
“A delightful piece of ass then?” Yuri actually rubbed his hands together. “The bellboy said she’s quite a looker.”
“If I remember her, then yes. I suppose she was rather nice looking.” Alex ground his teeth together and tried to remember that throttling Yuri would serve no purpose.
Maddie had the body of a goddess and the personality of an imp. She was strong, confident, and had a terrific sense of humor. They had laughed and joked just as much as they’d enjoyed their time in bed together. The woman was a wildcat between the sheets. Alex had had scratch marks on his chest and shoulders afterwards, and he’d loved every second of it.
Yuri disappeared, and Alex forced himself to wait five minutes. Ten minutes. Finally, after fifteen minutes he gathered up his papers and neatly packed away his business materials into his briefcase. He took his time even though he wanted to bolt through the door. He pulled on his suit jacket and painfully straightened the lapels. He turned his cufflinks in the right direction and then ran his fingers through his hair. Not that any of this mattered. He shouldn’t be worrying about how he looked. A night with Maddie had been fun, but there was no future in it. No matter how much he might want that sort of future for himself.
Alex exited the suite and sauntered to the elevator. He took his time, an endeavor aided by the fact that it took what felt like a million years to get from his suite to the ground floor where the hotel lounge was located. Finally, the elevator dinged and Alex exited.
A short walk and he was inside the lounge. He nodded to the hostess and headed for the bar. He spotted Maddie almost immediately. He half suspected that every man in the room had noticed her already. She was dressed in a form fitting, slinky black dress and heels. Her legs were long and shapely, and her athletic body was round in all the right places. The woman was gorgeous. Perhaps not in a voluptuous way, but there was strength and confidence in the way she carried herself that went a long way toward making her a bombshell. Of course, there was also her dark red hair. The waves falling over her shoulders reminded him immediately of what it looked like to see all that hair spread across a pillow or to feel it tickling his belly as she sucked his cock.
Alex took a breath and shuddered. This was not the time to lose control. Maddie was sitting tensely on a barstool drinking something he could not decipher. When Alex had known her six weeks ago, she had been a wine drinker. Now the nearly clear liquid in her glass bubbled and frothed as she stirred it vigorously with a straw.
“Hello, Maddie.”
“Alex.” She turned to face him and took a deep breath. “I came to see you because I’m pregnant.”
Alex fell back a step. It felt as though he’d been gut punched. Of all the things she could have said to him, this one wasn’t just shocking. It was life altering.
Chapter Two
Alex struggled to find words. He settled himself on the empty barstool beside Maddie and ignored the bartender. He didn’t want a drink, although he probably needed one. None of his training or the protocol that ruled his life had prepared him for this moment. No, that wasn’t entirely true. There had been several liaisons in his past that had resulted in accusations of pregnancy from the very few women he ever took to his bed. Alex was exceedingly careful. He had no bastard children. His mother would have never allowed that sort of threat to the succession to exist. She took care of potential pretenders with the precision of a military general.
But none of that mattered right here and now. He needed some kind of intelligent response to Maddie’s words. “Are you sure?”
Her expression suggested that those had not been the words to say. Not that Alex really needed the negative reinforcement. He heaved a mental sigh and retreated further into himself to avoid Maddie’s obvious irritation.
“Am I sure?” she squeaked. She glanced around as though she were afraid they were going to be overheard. “Of course I’m sure. I could have brought the little pee stick with me, you know? I could have tossed that little sucker onto the table and let you see for yourself. Except that would have been disgusting, and I have manners.”
“Thank you.” Why had he said that? The woman had the most disconcerting ability to discompose him. It made him quite uncomfortable. He cleared his throat. “So what is it you want from me?”
“I don’t know.” She fiddled with her drink a little more. “I’ve been asking myself that since I got the news.”
“Are you—” For some reason he struggled with the question. “—going to get rid of it?”
She raised her gaze and pegged him with a glare that could have set him on fire. “No!”
“Well, I wasn’t certain what you considered your choices to be.” He tried to be reasonable even though the idea of Maddie getting an abortion was abhorrent to him for some reason. He should have been championing the idea, as it would make his life considerably easier. Yet the idea of raising a child with Maddie was not wholly distasteful.
She exhaled raggedly, refusing to look at him. “I don’t know if you have any desire to be a parent. I don’t know if I’m ready for that. I have my career to think of. My family…” She trailed off, and he wondered what her family was like and whether or not they would accept a child born out of wedlock.
Wedlock. Was he actually considering such a notion? For some reason it was tempting, which proved only that he had lost his ever-loving mind.
***
MADDIE WAS HAVING difficulty keeping it together. Sitting so close to Alex was making it impossible to think straight. From the first moment she’d met him, the chemistry had been intense. The man himself was intense. After a few hours together, he had started to relax before, but right now the man was ensconced behind several layers of armor.
He was good looking. There was absolutely no doubt about that. His body looked as if it had been carved from a block of granite. The tailored suit was incredibly flattering. It showed off the breadth of his shoulders and the lean power of his legs. He was tall, imposing, and dripped masculine power.
Those very things had been the traits that had drawn her to him at the club in the first place. Even now she got all tingly inside remembering what it was like to be held in those arms while they danced. Alex had been in utter control every single moment. The way he’d touched her told her in no uncertain terms that she was cherished, but that he was absolutely in charge. It was a turn-on to be taken in hand like that. So many guys these days were wimps who were so afraid of offending her feminine sensibilities that they were terrified to make a decision on their own. Alex was the opposite.
Maddie forced herself back to the moment at hand. What would it be like to parent with a man like Alex? Was that even a possibility? She barely knew the guy. Sure, they’d had a casual liaison after dancing half the night away at a club. She did that two or three times a year without ever thinking about playing house. What made Alex so different?
“I’m not sure if I want to keep the baby or put it up for adoption, but I know that abortion isn’t an option for me,” Maddie told him quietly.
He gave her a deferential nod. “I can respect that. I’ll pay for the expense of having the child, of course.”
“I don’t need your money,” Maddie bristled.
He raised an eyebrow. “Then why bother telling me?”
“Honestly?” Maddie tugged at her earring. “I don’t know. I guess I just thought you should know. There are a dozen women that wouldn’t have told you at all, and twice as many who would have demanded some kind of monetary compensation. I don’t want either of those options. I just want to respect your rights as the father.”
***
FOR SOME REASON it was not difficult to believe her. If that made him a fool, then so be it. Alex trusted his gut in business, and he trusted it in his personal life. Considering the plethora of family drama tha
t happened on a regular basis in his life, his instincts were a valuable commodity that he never underestimated. Right now his gut was telling him that he could trust Maddie at her word.
“I appreciate your consideration.” He tapped his fingers idly on the bar top. “I’m in New York for a week.”
“On business I assume.” She took a sip of her drink, and he realized that it was ginger ale. She was pregnant. That was the reason she had foregone the wine. Her decision to abstain from alcohol lent credence to her claim to want to have the baby.
He turned his attention back to the conversation. “Yes. I have a week’s worth of meetings and business dinners.” An idea occurred to him. “Perhaps we could spend some time together this week. Just to get to know each other. I feel bad asking you to attend business dinners that will likely bore you to tears, but it would be an opportunity for us to—” How could he put this? “—interact in a general fashion.”
“Interact in a general fashion?” A smile played at the corners of her mouth. “Really? Sorry, sweetie, but who talks like that?”
When she spoke, there was a hint of an accent to her voice. It didn’t happen often, but Alex would have classified it as a drawl. He had spoken with many native New Englanders over the years. They didn’t sound like that, which made him wonder where she was from.
“What?” She drew her eyebrows together in a frown. “You’re staring at me as though I’ve suddenly grown a second head.”
“It occurs to me that I have no idea of your history.”
“Pedigree?” She snorted. “Really? What am I? A prize heifer? I’m from Dallas, Texas. And down in Texas the only pedigrees that matter belong to cows and horses.”
“Is that right?” He could not stop the smile that wanted to jump across his face.
Alex knew that Mother would hate this woman, but for some reason that made Maddie just that much more enticing. She was everything he should have been avoiding. Maddie was nothing like the women he had been groomed to mix with. She was real.
He gazed at the demure way she kept her eyes downcast. It didn’t seem as though she really wanted to talk about this, which only made him more curious. “And what did you do in Dallas?”
“Me?” She shrugged. “I was barely out of college when I left to come here to New York. My family owns a very large land and cattle company. My parents live in Dallas, and my aunt runs the main bulk of the operation out in West Texas.”
“The real Wild West then, hmm?” he teased.
She rolled her eyes. “Please. Don’t be ridiculous.”
***
MADDIE DID NOT want to talk about Dallas. She had left that mess to come to New York to make her way in the world without all of the family baggage, accusations, and problems that had plagued her life back home. She had no interest in talking about a place where she wasn’t welcomed anyway. It had been better on the ranch with her aunt. Maddie and her middle sister had spent summers there. But the Texan city was her older sister’s personal stomping grounds, and Maddie knew she could never survive in Jacey’s world.
“What brought you to New York?”
Maddie cocked her head, gazing at him and trying desperately not to be so distracted by the chemistry sizzling between them. “Why are you grilling me about my past? Trying to see if I’m an appropriate broodmare to bear your offspring?”
His snort said it all.
“So basically you’re informing me that I’m not good enough to bear your offspring,” she guessed. Well, that hurt, but she refused to be put off by his snobbery.
“Let’s just say that if it were up to me, you are the perfect woman and nobody else could ever measure up.” The warm timbre of his voice made her belly quiver with nervous excitement. “Unfortunately, my family is rather stuck back in the tsarist era of Russian history.”
“Excuse me?” Now Maddie was confused. “Oh, I get it. You’re some kind of Russian royalty or something.”
“Or something,” he agreed drily.
He wasn’t drinking anything. In fact, he looked rather stiff sitting there in his suit. What was going on?
She cleared her throat. “So, you want me to go to a few dinners this week and be your date?”
“Yes. That’s what I’m proposing.”
He sounded like he was making arrangements with a bank to transfer funds or something. Geez. The guy was so obviously uncomfortable that it was making her twitchy.
“Look,” she began. “If you don’t want to spend time with me or you would just like to be kept informed of the, uh, progress of my condition and that sort of thing, I can deal with that. All right? Don’t put yourself out or anything. It’s not that big of a deal.”
He glanced down at his watch. “I have to go. I have a meeting this evening.”
“Okay.” At least it was easy to ignore the fierce chemistry when she felt like gum on his shoe.
“Please meet me here tomorrow night at seven o’clock. I have a dinner I would very much like for you to attend with me.”
“What sort of dinner?”
“Rather informal, but a nice restaurant.” He seemed abruptly done with the conversation, and his gaze kept drifting to the exit as though he were anticipating the moment he could get out of there and stop thinking about this. Too bad she couldn’t do the same.
“Then I’ll meet you tomorrow at seven.” Maddie jumped up and exited the lounge. She wasn’t sure why, but it made her feel better to be the first one leaving.
Chapter Three
Perfect. As if Alex’s evening could become any more awkward, he had spotted Yuri attempting to eavesdrop near the entrance to the hotel lounge. It had suddenly become imperative to end the conversation with Maddie and get her out of the hotel before Yuri could begin to wonder what was going on.
Alex approached his cousin with raised eyebrows. “And you’re here why?”
“Just keeping an eye on you,” Yuri said quickly. He sketched a quick bow. “It’s time to leave for our meeting. I was beginning to wonder if you were going to make it at all.”
“I assure you, I would never send you without me,” Alex told his cousin in all honesty.
Of course, it wasn’t because Alex particularly wanted to spend time with Yuri. Alex couldn’t send Yuri to a meeting by himself because his idiot cousin would make a mess of everything that Alex had carefully spent the last year putting together. Yuri had a huge mouth and an even larger ego. He tended to believe that his way was the best way and never accepted input from others. It made him an annoying addition to any boardroom. Unfortunately, Yuri’s mother was Alex’s mother’s very favorite baby sister. That meant that Yuri was often assigned to Alex as a companion. The man actually drew a salary for the nonsense.
Alex sighed and tried to put his apprehension out of his mind. He could not start borrowing trouble. If Yuri had overheard the conversation with Maddie, he wouldn’t keep it to himself for long. Alex would just have to deal with each challenge as it arose.
“Let’s go,” Alex grunted. “They’re expecting us in the restaurant in less than five minutes.”
“I still don’t know why we had to have dinner here,” Yuri groused. “I would rather go someplace else.”
“This is convenient,” Alex said in a flat tone that discouraged further discussion. He was sick and tired of his cousin’s assertion that it would be far more appropriate to eat in a local topless establishment. Alex preferred class, and Yuri preferred easy.
“I’ll be taking a companion with me to dinner tomorrow night,” Alex informed his cousin as they crossed the hotel foyer and entered the restaurant.
Yuri actually stopped walking. “What?”
“I said, I’ll be taking a companion to dinner tomorrow night,” Alex repeated. The hostess gestured them forward, taking them immediately to one of the best tables in the center of the large dining room. Alex continued his conversation with his cousin. “I would have thought that would be very agreeable to you.”
“Why?”
&nbs
p; “Because it means you can go enjoy the topless club instead of boring yourself for hours at an informal dinner with associates who mean nothing to you.” Alex spotted their dinner companions and gave a polite smile and a nod.
“I don’t like it.” Yuri’s tone was almost pouty. “We’ll see what your mother has to say about all of this.”
Alex groaned beneath his breath. Why did life have to be such a mess? But he had no time to deal with this right now. He had to focus on dinner and business.
Corrigan Peters smiled and shook Alex’s hand. “I trust your flight to New York was pleasant?”
“Quite, thank you.” Alex sat down as Corrigan and his top manager took their seats as well.
“I’m sorry,” Corrigan said hesitantly. “I couldn’t help but notice that you were in the hotel lounge with Madison Castillo. Do you know her very well?”
Well, that was completely unexpected. Alex wondered how to proceed. From the corner of his eye he could see Yuri practically frothing at the mouth with his eagerness to hear this particular explanation.
Alex cleared his throat. “Ms. Castillo—” At least now he was certain of her last name. “—and I met briefly during my last visit to New York. I find her very refreshing and asked her if she wouldn’t mind attending a few social events with me while I am here in town.” There. That sounded innocuous enough.
Corrigan nodded. There was something akin to a smirk on his face. “Yes. She’s quite...refreshing. Madison and my son move in several of the same circles. My son is an aspiring actor, and Madison is a music talent scout for a rather large record label here in New York.”
“She and I rarely discuss business,” Alex said stiffly. “In fact, the two of us tend to speak more about our outside interests...art, movies, and pop culture. That sort of thing.”
“I see.” Corrigan shared a look with his manager. “Well, regardless of your connection, she’s a very resourceful and driven woman.”
