Beauty and Her Boss

by Jennifer Faye

  “I NEED TO talk to you.” Gabrielle smiled at her new husband in the back of a black limo.

  “Really?” The smile he’d been wearing all day slipped from his face. “I wanted to talk to you, too.”

  “You did?” Gaby sat up straighter. She couldn’t imagine what Deacon had on his mind. “Maybe you should go first.”

  “Wipe that worried look from your beautiful face. Or else I’ll have to put up that privacy divider and give you something to smile about.” His eyes twinkled with mischief.

  She knew exactly what direction her husband’s mind had taken and she shook her head as a smile returned to her face. “That will have to wait.” When Deacon made a point of pouting, she added, “There’s no time. We’re almost to the airport.”

  He nodded in understanding. “As usual, my wife is right.”

  “Make sure you remember those words the next time we have a disagreement.” The lights of the Los Angeles skyline rushed past the window in a blur as their limo headed for LAX. They were hopping a private plane to Fiji. Their honeymoon was going to be a new adventure for the both of them.

  “But if we disagree, we get to have make-up sex.”

  She couldn’t help but laugh at her husband’s unabashed eagerness. “Do you ever think of anything besides sex?”

  “Not when you’re around. You’ve ruined me.” He pulled her closer until she was sitting on his lap. Then he closed the divider. “We should probably save Charles from all of this naughty talk. And this way, I can show you what I was thinking about.”

  He drew her head down to him and claimed her lips with his own. It didn’t matter how many times he kissed her, he still made her heart race. His lips moved hungrily over hers, making her insides pool with desire.

  She knew where this kiss was headed and it wouldn’t leave time for them to talk before the flight. And there were some things they’d put off discussing for too long. It was best to clear the air now before the honeymoon began.

  It took every bit of willpower to place her hands on her husband’s muscular chest and push back, ending the kiss. “Deacon, wait.”

  His eyes blinked open and she could read the confusion in his expression. “What’s the matter?”

  She moved back to the seat beside him. “You’re distracting me.”

  “But in a good way, right?”

  “Of course. But we still need to talk.”

  The color drained from his face. “What’s wrong?”

  She couldn’t help but laugh at the utter look of panic on his face. “Relax. Nothing is wrong.”

  “You’re sure?”

  Gaby nodded. “I know we should have talked about this before now, but I was wondering how you felt about children.”

  “Children?” His gaze narrowed as he eyed her. “I must say I like them. I happened to be one not so long ago.”

  “Hah! I’ve seen your six-bay garage with all those sports cars. You’re still a kid at heart.”

  “Busted. But I do make time for business. Speaking of which, remember how I sued QTR for that pack of lies they printed about the car accident?”

  She nodded. “How’s the lawsuit going?”

  “It’s over. I got the news yesterday, but with the wedding festivities, I didn’t want to ruin anything.”

  Gaby braced herself for bad news. “Did they get it thrown out of court?”

  “It never went to court. QTR’s board stepped in and between our combined legal teams we hammered out a reasonable deal. The gist of it is they will be revising their editorial guidelines.”

  Gaby’s mouth gaped as she digested the ramifications of the deal. “You mean no more hatchet jobs?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Deacon, that’s wonderful.” She rewarded him with a kiss, but before it got too heated, she pulled back.

  “Why did you stop again? I have a piece of paper that says we must kiss multiple times a day.”

  She laughed. “I didn’t see that on our marriage certificate.”

  “It’s in the fine print.”

  “Oh. Okay. I’ll have to look closer.” She smiled. “And did it say anything about how many kids we’re supposed to have?”

  “No. How many were you thinking?”

  “At least one... Since it’s already on the way.”

  For a moment, her husband didn’t speak. He didn’t move. She wasn’t even sure that he was still breathing.

  “Deacon, did you hear me?”

  “Say it again.” His voice lacked emotion and she was beginning to wonder if he was having second thoughts about having children.

  “We’re having a baby.”

  “That’s what I thought you said.” He lifted her back onto his lap. Then he placed his large hand over her abdomen. “You’re going to be a mom.”

  “And you’re going to be a dad.”

  A big smile lit up his eyes. “I love you.”

  “I love you, too.”

  She reached out, placing her hand behind her husband’s head, and drew him toward her. She claimed his lips with her own. No matter how old she got to be, she would never tire of his kisses. And she planned to grow very old with this wonderful man by her side.

  * * * * *

  Look out for the next romance story in the

  ONCE UPON A FAIRYTALE duet

  Coming soon!

  And if you enjoyed this story check out these

  other great reads from Jennifer Faye

  SNOWBOUND WITH AN HEIRESS

  MARRIED FOR HIS SECRET HEIR

  THE MILLIONAIRE’S ROYAL RESCUE

  HER FESTIVE BABY BOMBSHELL

  All available now!

  Keep reading for an excerpt from A BABY IN HIS IN-TRAY by Michelle Douglas.

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  A Baby in His In-Tray

  by Michelle Douglas

  CHAPTER ONE

  ‘WHAT I’M SAYING, Liz, is that someone has left a baby on your—my—’ she amended, aware that Liz had already corrected her twice so far this phone call ‘—desk!’

  ‘A baby?’ Liz parroted for the third time, and Olivia Grace Gilmour closed her eyes and dragged in a breath—a long, deep, calming breath. In through her nose and out through her mouth. No matter how much she might want to, she couldn’t take her twin to task for her incredulity. She could hardly believe it herself.

  Except seeing was believing.

  She peered once more into the baby car
rier at the sleeping infant.

  ‘Livvy, I...’

  Liv waited but nothing else was forthcoming, and her heart rate kicked up another notch.

  ‘Where’s Judith?’

  Judith was Liz’s assistant. ‘She called in sick.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Good?’ She tried to keep the shrill note out of her voice. A partner in confusion and concern would be welcome at the moment. But Liz was right. It was just as well Judith wasn’t here to witness her panic. Liv didn’t want to give the game away. She swallowed and tried to modulate her voice. ‘There was a letter addressed to your boss tucked into the side of the baby carrier.’

  ‘Your boss,’ Liz corrected. If a voice could sound green, hers sounded green.

  ‘My boss,’ Liv managed through gritted teeth.

  Never had agreeing to stand in for her twin at her day job seemed a crazier move than it did right at this very moment. But it was only for a week and Sebastian Tyrell—Liz’s boss—was away. Not that he sallied forth all that often from his estate in Lincolnshire, from where he apparently oversaw operations. But with him being away it meant she shouldn’t even need to speak to him on the phone. This week should’ve been non-eventful, mission possible, a walk in the park. Liz had promised her it’d be a piece of cake.

  Except now there was a baby.

  Somewhere in the back of her mind maniacal laughter sounded.

  She stared into the carrier at the cherubically sleeping baby—the teensy-tiny baby. ‘Heavens, Liz, it’s little. She can’t be more than four or five months old.’

  ‘Oh, God.’ If possible, Liz’s voice turned greener. Liv grimaced. Her twin had never been good with babies. And now—

  ‘Have you read the letter?’

  Liv swung away from the baby, seized the letter and paced to the window overlooking a busy inner-London street, a sliver of the Thames in the distance, glinting silver in the afternoon light.

  ‘Of course I’ve read the letter!’ It was why she’d rung. It gave no clue whatsoever to the baby’s identity. And she had no idea what to do. ‘It says “Sebastian”—not Dear, not Seb, but “Sebastian—I can’t do this any more. It’s not fair. You owe me. Do not let baby Jemima down!”’ She glared at the inoffensive-looking piece of paper. ‘“Not” is underlined three times. It ends in an exclamation mark.’ She pulled in another long breath. ‘It’s not signed.’

  ‘Not signed?’ Liz’s voice rose. ‘Dear God, Livvy, I’m stuck in Turkey in the middle of a plane strike. It’ll take me days to get home and—’

  ‘Relax, Liz!’ The words shot out of her with more confidence than she’d dreamed possible, but she recognised the panic in her twin’s voice and needed to allay it. Liz was pregnant and she needed to stay calm. ‘I’m not asking you to come home. You need to stick to your plan.’

  What Liz didn’t need was additional stress. Dear God, her sister had enough on her plate at the moment. Liv mentally kicked herself for troubling Liz with this except...except she’d panicked herself. ‘Look, seriously, I can take care of everything at this end. I was just keeping you apprised of developments like I promised I would.’ She dragged a hand back through her hair. ‘And I thought you might have some idea where this baby had come from.’

  ‘I haven’t the foggiest. I can’t think of a single baby he has in his life.’

  ‘Well...obviously somewhere along the line he became a father.’

  A strangled noise on the other end of the phone was Liz’s only reply.

  She swallowed. Did Liz’s boss even know he had a child?

  ‘Oh, what a mess! But Livvy, I can’t shed any light on this at all. I wasn’t joking when I said the most personal thing Mr Tyrell and I have ever shared was our mutual concern over an accountant I’d hired. I mean, I hardly ever see him, the only thing we ever discuss is work...and that as briefly as possible as a rule. He’s not a chatty man.’

  ‘Seriously? Nothing personal? Ever?’ She still couldn’t get her head around that.

  Liz was silent for a moment. ‘When I returned from my holiday he asked me if I had a nice time. I said yes. That was the extent of the discussion.’

  The holiday where Liz had become pregnant to her hot mystery man?

  ‘No passing comments about politics and the state of the nation, or a book you’ve been reading, or a movie you’ve seen?’ she persisted.

  ‘No! We have a weekly phone call—the Tyrell Foundation is his baby and it’s obviously close to his heart—but that’s it. He’s busy doing whatever it is lords running their estates are busy doing. It’s the reason I was so convinced we could pull this switch off.’

  They’d thought it so unlikely that Liv would even need to speak to him that they’d practically considered it a fait accompli. But now... She swallowed and nodded. She could do it. She could pull it off. After all, she’d had no trouble convincing Judith that she was Liz.

  Still...deceiving the sixty-two-year-old Judith who did a solid job at maintaining the foundation’s database but who was more interested in sneaking in a surreptitious game of Solitaire than gossiping with Liv was one thing. Deceiving a businessman in his prime was a different matter altogether.

  ‘Livvy?’

  ‘This new development might mean me and your Mr Tyrell have to come face to face.’

  ‘Will you be OK with that?’

  She could practically see the grimace on her twin’s face. ‘Yes.’ She gave a silent scream and then stuck out her chin. ‘But I’m not changing my hair.’

  Finally Liz laughed. ‘We already agreed I’d have to lop a few inches off mine before I came home. And in the unlikely event he even sees it, let alone mentions it, I’ll tell him I’ve gone back to being blonde.’

  For a moment she could almost picture her twin waving an unconcerned hand through the air, treating the issue of hair as a matter of little importance. Liv couldn’t help smiling. She loved her hair. ‘Right. We’ll call that Plan A, then.’

  ‘What are you going to do now, though? About the baby?’

  She suspected what she should do was call the police, but...

  ‘Please don’t lose me my job, Livvy.’

  But there was that—it was what she was here for. Everything else in Liz’s life was up in the air and she was clinging to the security of her job like a lifeline. Liv couldn’t jeopardise that.

  And if Mr Tyrell did happen to be the father of this baby...well, it wouldn’t be fair to call the authorities until after she’d spoken with him.

  ‘I’m going to ring your—my—boss and ask him what he wants to do about the situation. I’ll do my best to sound cool and efficient—’ like her twin ‘—but if I sound a tiny bit flustered I think, given the circumstances, that’ll be understandable.’

  ‘Oh, Liv, are you sure you don’t want me to come home? I can do my best to get back asap. Given this rotten plane strike, if Mr Tyrell is out of the country it could take him days to get home too. And in the meantime you could be literally left holding the baby on your own.’

  ‘Which sounds like more fun than doing government grant acquittals. There’s not been a peep from the little tyke. And before you ask—yes, she’s breathing. I checked. Besides, I love babies—you know that. And thankfully they’re not actually all that much trouble at this age.

  ‘Except for the four-hourly feeds and the sleep deprivation.’ Liv glanced down at the baby and grinned. ‘Not much sleep deprivation happening here. Besides, Mr Tyrell is bound to know who Baby Jemima is and what I should do with her. We’ll sort it out.’

  ‘I’m so, so sorry, Liv. If I’d thought for a moment that anything like this would happen, I’d have never asked you to fill in for me.’

  ‘I know. But don’t fear—I’ll muddle on through. You just focus on sorting things out at your end. Don’t worry about me, I’ll be fine.’

  Liv hung up fr
om her twin and tucked her phone back into her handbag. She stared again at the sleeping baby and bit her lip. It was usual for babies to sleep a lot, right? She touched her fingers to the baby’s forehead, but the baby didn’t feel hot or feverish.

  What on earth was the poor little mite going to think when she woke up and found her mother gone? ‘Poor little chick.’

  Right.

  She planted herself in her office chair and pulled the phone towards her, punching in the contact number that Sebastian Tyrell had left...along with the instruction Only to be used in the direst of emergencies.

  The phone rang three times before it was answered. ‘Ms Gilmour.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I trust this is an emergency?’

  The cold, clipped tones told her it had better be or there’d be hell to pay. She took an immediate dislike to the man. ‘Yes, I’m afraid it is.’

  ‘My parents...?’

  His tone didn’t change and she disliked him even more. ‘To the best of my knowledge they’re in excellent health. This has nothing to do with your parents. It’s to do with—’

  Baby Jemima chose that moment to let loose with a loud wail.

  Heavens! Who knew something so small could produce a sound so fierce? She stood up to peer into the carrier—still perched on her desk where it’d been left—but the sight of Liv seemed to startle the baby further. Baby Jemima’s face turned red as she started crying in earnest.

  Oh, heck!

  Sebastian Tyrell’s voice boomed down the line at her. ‘Is there a baby in my office?’

  Technically, it was her office.

  Actually, it was Liz’s office.

  ‘Hey, there, little one, hush.’ She ran her hand across the baby blanket—over the baby’s tummy—in an effort to impart some comfort. ‘Shh, it’s OK.’ She spied the dummy pinned to the blanket and popped it into the baby’s mouth. Baby Jemima immediately stopped crying and sucked on it greedily. Oh! She must be hungry.

  ‘What is a baby doing in my office?’

  She hated that voice—the cutting ice of it. ‘That, Se—sir...’ She quickly caught herself. Liz had told her that first names weren’t used in the office. Ever.