Mountain Man's Baby Surprise (A Mountain Man's Baby Romance)

by Lia Lee

  “Is the head office holding up without you?” Derric asks as he lifts the handle of the baby carrier holding our little bundle of joy inside it with one muscled arm.

  “Better than holding; it’s flourishing thanks to you and ROO-TV.”

  “Uh-huh. And what about the home office?”

  He means my new studio here in Sydney, of course. It’s home for us now.

  “Growing like a weed,” I answer, “just like this little man.” I lean over to place a fingertip on our beautiful baby boy’s tiny nose. I still can’t believe he’s really here, really ours. But his brown eyes that are just like mine, and his flaxen blond hair like Derric’s, tell me it’s no illusion.

  “Both thanks to a nurturing mother, I reckon,” Derric quips, gathering all the things we’ll need for a visit to the beach. It’s a lovely summer afternoon, and we’re going out to enjoy it, just the three of us. No phones, no clients or deadlines. Just us.

  “Yeah, well, I can’t take all the credit. Being the girlfriend and baby mama of Sydney’s most eligible billionaire hasn’t exactly been bad for business,” I say, throwing him an appreciative smile, but I notice him wince at my choice of words.

  “I don’t like that term, ‘baby mama’. It’s so Maury Povich,” he grouses.

  I laugh at his ability to turn almost every phrase into a TV reference as I stuff a couple of beach towels into the bag. I opened the ‘down under’ branch of Church & Strait shortly after Elijah was born. True to his word, Derric stayed behind in New York well after ROO-TV launched so that I could continue to see my regular gynecologist and give birth in my chosen hospital. It also meant that Elijah was born a U.S. citizen so travel between NYC and Sydney on a regular basis won’t be a problem going forward. He’ll grow up a man of two hemispheres.

  But I could tell my gorgeous billionaire boyfriend was homesick. He never asked me to, but I made the decision to return to Australia with a baby on board. To be honest, I was growing a bit sick of the noise, the pollution, and endless gray skies myself. It’s not a good environment for an infant.

  I breathe in the warm salt air as we exit our beachfront high-rise, the same one where he and I conceived Elijah, on our way down to the endless golden sand that is Bondi Beach. Greeted by blue skies and swaying palms every day, I know I’ve made a good choice; for us, and for our new little family.

  With Derric’s connections and encouragement, I had no trouble setting up shop in Sydney; clients had practically lined up outside my door from day one. Life in Oz is good. And every bit as magical as L. Frank Baum’s fictional land. I feel blessed with good fortune. My mom and dad would have been so proud and happy for me.

  Sadly, Derric’s father Steve suffered a stroke shortly after we arrived in Sydney. Though he and Derric never got along, I was still a little sad that I didn’t get a chance to meet the man as the venerable, successful entrepreneur he once was. But Derric felt that the incident had mellowed him and forced him to take a hard look at life—see what he’d been missing. And allowed him the chance to embrace the joy of being a grandfather. It also meant that Derric had to take over the reins of Faris Media; not only because he’s Steve’s son, but because of his stellar launch of ROO-TV in America. He finally earned the praise and respect of his father he’d so badly craved but would never admit.

  “How’s this spot?” Derric stakes claim on a dune of sand right about where Claire and I had parked our white butts on holiday just over one short year ago. A lifetime seems to have passed since then and, in a way, I suppose it has. Elijah’s lifetime.

  I take our son from Derric who had dutifully carted him in his carrier all the way from the penthouse without complaint, like the devoted dad he always promised he’d be. Honestly. He fusses over him like he’s the Little Prince, and I suppose he is—being next in line to the Faris Media throne after his proud papa.

  I cuddle Elijah and listen to his soft babble as Derric sets up our giant beach umbrella, folding chairs, and Elijah’s pop-up shade tent. I lay the baby down on his blanket beneath the arch of the tent, and Derric and I stretch out in our beach chairs with our feet up. I’m happy to just relax and enjoy the sun, the sand, the breeze and the quiet joy of simply being a family together. Elijah kicks his feet in the warm air and proceeds to chew on a special teething rattle that came as part of Derric’s juggernaut of baby gifts back in New York.

  “What a perfect day,” I say, leaning back in my chair with a sigh of contentment. “I could get used to this.”

  “It is a perfect day,” Derric agrees, pouring us each a cold drink. Our fingers touch as he hands me a tall glass of sparkling water. “Thank you for agreeing to come live here in Oz. I don’t think I’m cut out for life in the Big Apple. I’d have a serious vitamin D deficiency.”

  “So you’re happy here, then?” I ask.

  “Delirious,” he confirms.

  “Then that is thanks enough.”

  He smiles and winks, his tanned, dimpled face and deliciously fit shirtless bod almost making me wish we’d stayed indoors where we could screw each other’s asses off—but we have the rest of our lives to do that. I plan to make love to this man well into our 90s.

  I sip on my drink and gaze out over the rolling blue waves that had first brought Derric and me together. I think perhaps we rescued each other that day.

  “A perfect day in a perfect life,” I declare, taking in the wondrous sights of Bondi Beach, my drop-dead gorgeous man, and our beautiful baby all in the same frame.

  “Well, it’s pretty close to perfect,” Derric says.

  “What do you mean ‘close’?” I ask, feigning indignance.

  “I’m a pretty demanding bloke, and I demand perfection. There’s one thing missing.”

  I can’t imagine what that could be. “Oh, really? Like what?”

  Derric rolls out of his chair and reaches over to dig into Elijah’s massive diaper bag. He pulls something out and hides it in his palm as he turns and drops to one knee in the sand before me. A nervous tingle rises up my spine.

  “A perfect family,” he says, opening his hand to reveal a small velvet box, “needs a proper husband and wife, to have and to hold, forsaking all others and all that jazz.” The box splits open to reveal a stunning gold ring, set with a breathtaking, perfectly cut yellow diamond that beams like a thousand suns even in broad daylight. My breath catches. “Mila Churchwood, will you marry me?”

  My heart swells in my chest, cutting off my airways so that I can barely utter a squeak. I’m happy just being with him, and being a mother to Elijah, but what he’s offering me now is truly what I’ve dreamed of and hoped for.

  I find my voice. “Yes. Absolutely yes!”

  He slides the exquisite ring onto my finger and leans forward to seal our agreement with a kiss. This is one contract I can never let myself out of, nor would I ever want to. We claim each other’s lips while the sounds of the sea and our baby’s happy gurgles fill our ears.

  Now it’s perfect.

  I wrap my arms around Derric’s beefy neck, holding tight to the man who has brought me so much joy and opportunity. I look over his shoulder and see Elijah lazing happily under the shade of his tent, and the breaking waves beyond. The lifeguard tower stands in the distance, occupied by a new, younger, sun-bronzed sentinel atop its lofty heights; a new prince to hold dominion over the kingdom of Bondi Beach.

  It’s fitting because the last sovereign to sit in that chair now has a much more important empire to reign over. A wife, a son, and Network 10. In that order.

  No more apologies necessary.

  THE END

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  Chapter One

  Dr. Ian Cartwright towered over his students as they looked up at him in rapt fascination. His words shouldn’t have come as a surprise; every student in the room was a senior. Every one of them had enough experience in business classes to give a lecture. But for some reason, every word Dr. Cartwright spoke seemed to draw them all in further.

  Hazel Greenwood felt her chest tightening as he walked past her. The gentle wisp of his cologne caused a shudder to run up her back. It always did. As much as she had initially been resistant to take this extra business course, she had to admit that she looked forward to coming twice a week. Even if she wasn’t a business major. Even if she disagreed, in principle, with much of what Dr. Cartwright said.

  She had gotten into a verbal altercation with her professor at least once a week since the semester had started, sometimes twice. Once she had gone to his office to discuss his comments on her audience analysis essay, totaling out their fights that week to four. At least he didn’t seem to hold ill-will toward her for their altercations. He smirked when he felt he was “correcting” her naïve assumptions about how businesses should work. It must’ve been entertaining to him.

  On Hazel’s end, these fights were much less enjoyable. She’d never had so much trouble getting along with a teacher before. It wasn’t that he disliked her—Hazel wished that she could have that kind of excuse. Over the summer, Dr. Cartwright had hand-selected his class from proposals that the students had given to the program director in the business school. So even if Dr. Cartwright mocked her degree plan and thought that majoring in Nonprofit Management (in addition to Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies) was a waste of time, Cartwright had chosen for her to be there. He should’ve guessed from her application that Hazel would have a fundamentally different understanding of how businesses should conduct themselves.

  Leaning on her hand, Hazel looked over the complex maze of information on the board. This class was more of a practicum than a lecture since she and the others already had business plans set out for their ventures, but Dr. Cartwright liked to hear himself talk. Usually, on Tuesdays, there was no stopping him from giving a long, meandering rendition of one of his business experiences.

  “You must never confuse language with communication. You can definitely have one without the other, but if you’re looking to make your business as efficient and well-functioning as possible—” Dr. Cartwright pointed his finger around the room at them as the two other female students swooned at his British accent. “—You mustn’t forget to engage in both.”

  Hazel closed her eyes for a moment, trying to imagine what it would be like to watch Cartwright speaking without saying anything. Sometimes it seemed as though he did already, but Hazel felt like she must just be unable to parse his communication. Likewise, he didn’t always seem to pick up the meaning when she spoke.

  It was easier to imagine Dr. Cartwright shucking off that stiff suit jacket, unbuttoning his shirt with one hand as he continued to talk and talk and talk. Button by button, he’d reveal a broad set of pecs that didn’t belong to a professor…

  He wasn’t really a professor though. Dr. Cartwright came by his Ph.D. as an honorary award from the university. His qualifications lay instead in being a multinational corporate billionaire. His suits were filled in such a way that Hazel could tell he had plenty of time to work on his muscle tone outside of his business meetings and classrooms. There wasn’t a girl in the department who hadn’t gone out of her way to check out the ring situation on his left hand.

  No ring. Definitely not married. Hazel could’ve confirmed as much before she’d even found out about Topics in Entrepreneurship 5436. Cartwright’s most recent divorce had been well-covered by the checkout magazines at every store. Since Hazel spent most of her nights swinging the night shift at the local discount grocery, Hazel had plenty of reasons to check in on the lives of the rich and the feckless.

  “Miss Greenwood?”

  Hazel flushed as her eyes popped open to the rest of the class looking at her. Daydreaming in class. How unprofessional. She was a senior now. She couldn’t be doing that stuff.

  “I’m sorry, Dr. Cartwright. What were you saying?” Hazel said with as much dignity as she could muster.

  His lips curved into a smirk as he crossed his arms and leaned back on his desk. “I was hoping you could elaborate for us how the Nonprofit Sector would handle a miscommunication between partners.”

  Hazel frowned and thought on that. “I don’t know that our communication practices are that much different from in for-profit ventures. Maybe in that we have structures in place to mobilize a base of citizens to action…”

  “No? I would have thought the tone of the workplace would be different—when none of you are getting paid,” Cartwright said, light teasing undergirding his words.

  Why was it that every man over thirty-five thought women thought being undermined was fun?

  Hazel felt like she might sprain something rolling her eyes. “There are positions for volunteers, but people in the nonprofit sector do get paid. Job growth for nonprofits was up 57% last year, compared to 36% in for-profit businesses.” She tapped her pencil impatiently. “Anyway, no one’s paying a soccer mom, but you still have to mediate conflict there.”

  “Every business has to pay competitively, or lose their talent,” Chris, the male student, said. He sprawled back on his desk, taking up as much room as humanly possible. “You can’t kumbaya your way to having a strong workforce. It doesn’t matter how good your communication skills are.”

  “Your goal for a nonprofit is to create a job worth staying for. Job satisfaction is just as important as competitive pay,” Hazel snapped. “There’s a lot of research to prove people don’t only base their job decisions on salary, especially young people entering the workforce right now.”

  “I’d be satisfied with a six-figure salary,” Chris said.

  Gina, another female student, leaned forward at her desk and gave Dr. Cartwright a saccharine smile. “I’d like to hear about how you retain your… talent.”

  Hazel felt her skin burning again and glanced back at Gina, who was grinning completely without shame.

  “Maybe another day,” Cartwright replied, to Hazel’s immense relief. “For now, I want us to start talking about how you will each develop rapport with your employees and how you will deploy your communication structure.”

  Hazel sighed and pulled up the work she’d prepared for the day. Her mind began to drift back to that daydream and, for a few moments, all thoughts of corporate communication were pushed out of her head by the image of her professor’s bare chest and abs. She had to focus. It was important that she learned as much as she could from every class, no matter how difficult it was to get along with the professor.

  ***

  Ian Cartwright scanned over his classroom with a confident smile. While he’d never doubted his own business prowess—that spoke for itself— the concept of teaching had seemed more daunting at first. Now, a few weeks into the semester, and he looked forward to greeting his students at the beginning of class. They all had such vibrant energy and so many ideas. Granted, plenty of those ideas were complete nonstarters, but the important thing was that every student in this class was highly motivated and highly intelligent. They would be able to feel out the market in time, as they gained experience.

  His eyes drifted, as they often did, to Hazel. She didn’t look very impressive at first glance. She had a fair complexion, and almost always wore her ginger hair drawn into pigtails, or one large ponytail nearly on the top of her head. She had a smallish frame and the way she tilted her head back when she was assessing what someone said was a
lmost birdlike. There was something about her, however, that made it hard to keep his eyes off of her.

  She leaned over as she spoke, ever the emphatic budding demagogue, and lectured Chris on appropriate team-building activities for employees. The young man was teasing her, of course, amping up his own feelings of superiority. She was right in principle, as usually was the case. It was just difficult to take her seriously at times. She cared too much. And she dressed like she was on her way to a construction site, or she’d rolled out of bed minutes before class and gotten dressed in the dark. Today was another black tank top (with the words I’ll save myself thanks printed over the image of a crown), layered over a white tank top and an electric blue bra. And of course, her jeans, which looked as if they’d survived a hurricane.

  It was hard to watch such an articulate young woman holding herself back with her youthful ideals. If she’d clean herself up a bit, put on some makeup and maybe a dress, Hazel would find so many more doors opening to her. But she was so stubborn. Ian wasn’t certain whether that trait attracted or repelled him. Either way, Hazel had managed to catch his interest in a way he couldn’t shake.

  “That’s Clarence Thomas levels of wrong, Chris!” Hazel snapped, slamming her palm against the table.

  “Clarence Thomas still has a job,” Chris gloated, shooting finger guns at her.

  Ian rubbed his fingers over his lips, spotting a few eye rolls from other students, as he walked over to break up their spat.

  “If you don’t mind, this is a bit too much drama for the beginning of the week,” he said.

  Hazel’s eyes fixed on him, their slate gray suddenly piercing and vivid. “So you think it’s perfectly fine to require all female employees to wear skirts above the knee and plunging necklines?”

  “We don’t want our clients to be bored!” Chris laughed at his own joke.

  Hazel turned her glare back to Chris. “And require employees to attend biweekly parties hosted at the male executives’ houses? Are you trying to court a lawsuit?”