The Rich Man's Baby

by Leah Vale

  Now he loves to stack them all over the place while he tries to count them."

  A strange feeling filled Harrison's chest. "You're a good mother."

  She gave a ghost of a shrug, but he noticed her gaze darted quickly over his face to gauge his sincerity. "I try."

  "But what about your life...before?" He didn't know how else to ask the question without putting into words the guilt he could taste along with the moist air. When she glanced at him, he didn't look away.

  "I was going to go to college. Eventually." Her eyes clouded over and she looked away. "Probably only community college, but still college."

  "Really? Which one?" he asked, excited to learn she'd aspired to a higher education. That alone provided a partial explanation of why she seemed so different from her family. Ambition, other than the sort that came in the form of a paternity settlement, seemed to be in short supply in her mother and brother.

  "Yes, really," she snapped. "Which one doesn't matter anymore, now does it?"

  He pulled in his chin, a little surprised by her anger over the simple

  question. It seemed a strong reaction. "Why not?"

  "Because," she answered sharply, and started to slide off the rock.

  Harrison reached out and placed a stilling hand on her arm. "Juliet,please. Just talk to me."

  "What good will it do?"

  He released her arm. "It would let me get to know the mother of my child, the woman I...the woman who..." He floundered, afraid of saying too much. How could he explain how she affected him in a way he didn't understand? How he wanted her more than any woman he had ever known? He settled for something less intimate and revealing. "The woman who'll be raising him."

  "Are you sure?" she challenged despite his earlier praise. "Are you sure it'll be me?"

  "Not when you're belligerent like this I'm not," he shot back, then instantly regretted it.

  She narrowed her eyes and thinned her lips. He slid his gaze to the swirling current of the river. It had a lot in common with his gut.

  Harrison could feel her looking at him, but she didn't speak for several moments. Finally she said, "What, exactly, did you want to know about me?" She sounded as though she was agreeing to something distasteful but necessary.

  Sighing, he set his hands on his hips. "I would like to know you, what you want out of life, what you dream about." He shrugged, feeling a little self-conscious. "What a person aspires to tells a lot about them."

  She pulled in a noisy breath. "I'd always wanted to go away to school and study something that would pay enough money so I'd never have to come back here."

  He looked at her, but she was staring at the river. "Money doesn't solve problems, Juliet. It only makes them different."

  She scoffed. "Spoken like a true millionaire."

  "Okay, if you want to go that way, let's say you were the millionaire.

  What would you be doing?"

  "Certainly not standing here..."

  He stared hard at her.

  "I'd be on a tropical island somewhere. Just me and Nat."

  "Really?" He found it telling that she included Nathan in her fantasy.

  She shrugged.

  Harrison sighed again. "What would you have studied in school?"

  She glanced up at him. "If I didn't have to worry about money?"

  "Yes. If you didn't have a care in the world."

  She crossed her arms and leaned back against the rock, her expression wistful and heartbreakingly beautiful as she considered the river again. "I would have studied literature."

  He kept the surprise out of his voice. "Literature?"

  "Yeah."

  "American or English?"

  "Shakespeare."

  "English." He smiled and studied her lovely face. What next?

  She shrugged again. "Because of Grandpa. He loved Shakespeare. He had this old book with all of Shakespeare's works in it. He called it Bill's book." She laughed softly, sadly. "He used to recite poems and stuff up to me while I sat on the balcony and he pumped gas. That's why that stupid balcony is so special to me."

  A kindred sadness bloomed in Harrison's chest. "You cared about your grandfather a lot, didn't you?"

  She nodded. "He's the one who named me Juliet."

  Harrison chuckled. "And Willie...?"

  "William," they both said together, meeting each other's smiling eyes.

  Her transformation took his breath away. The haunted distrust was gone from her beautiful, gold-flecked brown eyes, and her smile made her face glow. The need to make this expression permanent was like a gauntlet he mentally lunged to pick up.

  "My mom, she told you her name was Phyllis, right?"

  Harrison scratched his head. "You know, I'm not even sure I was formally introduced to her. Your brother just said she was your mother."

  "Yeah. Just my mom." She shook her head. "Well, anyway. Do you want to know what her real name is?"

  He raised his brows. "Not Phyllis?"

  She giggled. "Ophelia."

  "Hamlet's crazy girlfriend."

  She laughed outright. "Yeah. Does she have the 'do for it, or what?"

  Harrison shook his head, wondering at it all. There was so much more to Juliet than the earthy sensuality he was having a hell of a time ignoring. "So you'd study Shakespeare."

  "Yeah. I'd study Shakespeare." She shrugged again. "Go figure."

  "Yeah," Harrison echoed her favorite word, his gaze glued to a lock of her silky hair drifting across her lush lips. "Go figure."

  He reached to brush the hair away, but found himself tracing the fullness of her lower lip with the pad of his thumb instead. God, she did things to him, made him feel things and want things he'd only felt and wanted with her.

  He was somehow connected to Juliet. And despite knowing he shouldn't, he wanted Juliet the way he'd wanted the peace he'd found along this river that June day he and Juliet had discovered each other. Knowing it was the second stupidest thing he'd ever done in his life but not caring any more than he had two years ago, Harrison met Juliet's warm brown gaze and asked, "Can I kiss you?"

  Juliet stared into Harrison's smoldering eyes, certain her twisted, lonely heart was making her hear things. The last time he had asked her if he could kiss her they were in the shed laughing themselves to tears over Willie's attempt at a racing motorcycle, complete with fake flames made of tinfoil erupting from the back.

  He had looked into her eyes and stepped into the emptiness of her heart. With nothing more than his yearning gaze he had filled her, completed her, made nothing else in the world matter but the intangible connection they shared.

  She had been so surprised by a man asking and not just trying to take that she'd blurted, "You're asking?"

  He'd blinked. "Is that so strange?"

  She hadn't bothered with an explanation then but had kissed him instead.

  And it was happening again.

  She wasn't sure whether she leaned toward him or gave him some other sign, but the next thing she knew he'd captured her lips in a soul-shattering kiss. Once again he instantly melted the ice she'd encased herself in out of self-preservation. She was far from the ice princess with him. But could she ever be his princess?

  Burrowing her fingers into his thick hair and tilting her head to allow him better access, she welcomed his hot, stroking tongue into her mouth and felt the fire clear to the soles of her bare feet. The boundaries between them, both physical and emotional, faded as he wrapped his strong, sheltering arms around her and pressed her against the large rock until she no longer knew or cared where she ended and he began.

  He angled his mouth and deepened the kiss until she thought she'd die if he didn't devour her completely. But he was the one who moaned deep in his throat. Juliet soared with the same sense of power and purpose she had felt the first time she'd lit his fire. He slid one hand up her back and into her hair to cup her head, then brought the other over her ribs and up between them to cover her breast.

  The heat of his h
and seared her through the thin cotton of her shirt and his kneading and teasing of her peaked nipple made it her turn to moan. Juliet arched into him, wanting more, needing to match herself with him one more time. She kissed him with all the longing and passion trapped inside that she had thought would never get out.

  As if he understood her need, without releasing her mouth from his tender onslaught, Harrison leaned his weight forward until she was bent back over the rock. He pulled his big hand from her breast and she whimpered her disappointment, but he trailed his hand down to the back of her thigh and raised her leg to his waist. He fit his body to hers through their clothes.

  Light exploded behind her closed eyelids and she nearly came undone.

  After hitching her knee at his waist, he released her leg and reached for her shirt, pulling it from her jeans and pushing it up above her breasts. He skimmed her belly with his palm before pushing his blunt fingers under her bra and finding the sensitive tip of one hard nipple.

  Pulling his mouth from hers, he rasped, "God, Juliet, what you do to me."

  She opened her eyes and met his hot, intense gaze, and inside her head the tiny voice she'd done a poor job of banishing whispered, There is such a thing as soul mates. And she wanted to answer the need blazing in his eyes more than she wanted to breathe.

  She arched up again and recaptured his mouth, telling him with her kiss and her body what she could never tell him with words. You're the only man I've ever wanted, Harrison Rivers.

  He answered her passion in kind, but she didn't dare consider what message he meant to send her. The hardness of his body said enough. He rocked against her and Juliet had to pull her mouth from his and gasp a lungful of cool air to keep from shattering right then and there. He used the opportunity to pull away enough to push her bra aside.

  His breath was hot against her skin when he murmured, "You are so damn sexy," then captured between his lips the nipple he'd been teasing with his fingers.

  No amount of cool air could keep Juliet from spiraling upward from the sensation of his warm, wet mouth on the peak of her breast. Only the weight of his body kept her down. Their bodies felt so perfectly matched, so perfectly meant for each other. There had to be such a thing as soul mates.

  But then the other, nastier voice that had taken up permanent residence in her brain answered, There is also such a thing as a guy who can't pass up a sure thing.

  The thought was like a bucket of cold river water being dumped on her. Untangling her fingers from his thick golden hair, Juliet slid her hands to his broad shoulders. It wasn't fair, this wanting. And giving herself to him again, especially like this, would not improve whatever opinion he might have of her. There was too much at stake here-her baby and her heart.

  Ashamed of her weakness for him, she gently pushed at his shoulders. "Harrison, please. We have to stop."

  He didn't resist or protest in any way. Juliet had never felt so respected in her entire life. Funny how she hated it.

  Unwilling to discover what other emotions his eyes might hold, she kept her gaze on the river as she righted her clothes then separated from him by hoisting herself up on the rock and drawing her knees to her chest again.

  He still didn't say a word.

  Juliet sat in awkward silence for a long time as the enormity of what she'd done sank in. She hugged her arms around her tighter and closed her eyes to the river.

  She needed to know if he realized it, too, though, so she dared a glance in his direction. The river's breeze ruffled his thick blond hair the same way his fingers did when he ran them through it in frustration.

  His expression now was anything but frustrated. He looked blank. Utterly, completely blank.

  Juliet filled her lungs with cool air and pulled her gaze from his handsome profile. Controlling his expressions must be some trick he used in the boardroom to mask his feelings and motivations. And heaven only knew what had motivated him to kiss her again. Other than the fact you were so willing, of course, the nasty voice interjected.

  She'd kissed him again. Heck, she'd nearly made love to him on a rock. Her rock.

  Telling him her secrets was bad enough. First she'd admitted Nathan was his child-something she'd sworn she wouldn't do-and then she told him the truth when he insisted on playing "What do you want to be when you grow up?"

  She'd always kept her aspirations to herself out of self-defense. After all, Willie would bust a gut if he learned she dreamed of studying literature. But Harrison hadn't laughed. He'd even acted as if he thought it a reasonable dream for her to have had, that it was something she could have achieved if she'd had the chance. For some odd reason he seemed to believe in her when no one else ever did. Man, if that wasn't enough to make her fall for the guy...

  She turned back to consider his profile again. Of course, studying Shakespeare was probably a common pursuit in Harrison's world, A world where no one worried about money.

  A world she would never fit into.

  Juliet ground her teeth at her own idiocy. What good was there in wanting something she could never have?

  But Harrison got to her. He looked in her eyes like a man writing songs. He drew her out no matter how deep she tried to bury her true self. She found herself letting him into the place she kept her deepest secrets. Heaven help her if it really was her soul. She should be keeping her soul safe from Harrison, because her heart was already his.

  "We need to get back," she said, stepping from the river's edge without sparing him a glance, still afraid of what he might see in her eyes.

  "There's something we need to talk about first," he insisted.

  Her gaze on the river, Juliet stopped even though her mind screamed for her to run.

  "Juliet, I..."

  With her heart hammering in her chest as she stared at the river, she waited for him to finish, to either give her hope or damn her to an existence she already knew. As the seconds ticked by and he didn't finish, her pulse slowed to a dull thud. How could she have forgotten this was the man who believed it was never a good thing to love someone so much he lost control?

  In a flat tone she said it for him. "Let's pretend this," she gestured toward the rock, still not looking at him, "never happened."

  "No, that's not what I was going-"

  "That's the way I want it." She almost laughed. She wanted so many things that could never be. Furious at herself for wanting him, she repeated, "We should get back." She headed for the trail and trudged up it, digging her bare toes into the loose dirt and gravel. She could hear Harrison following in her wake.

  She crested the incline and halted at the edge of the road, but not because of the traffic occasionally speeding by. She was brought up short by the sight of a white van, the words Toys-N-Stuff emblazoned on its side in bright colors, parked behind Harrison's car. Dorothy Rivers flitted about the van's open rear doors.

  Juliet watched, her mouth gaping, as Harrison's grandmother gaily directed the unloading of box after box of toys and child-size furniture. And Willie was right there next to the petite woman, jumping up and down and crowing his approval like an eight-year-old. The takeover had begun. First Harrison stole her heart, now the Riverses were buying Nathan.

  Her vision clouded, and she burst into a run toward the van, mindless of anything save stopping the bribing of her child.

  She was vaguely aware of Harrison's shout of "Wait", of his hand clutching unsuccessfully at the back of her T-shirt, but she didn't break her stride as she darted across the road.

  She heard Willie yell, "Hey, Grandma Rivers," distracting Dorothy from directing the van's driver where to put the toys. "You know, Nat would learn a lot more from Sesame Street

  if he watched it on a big-screen TV." Spotting Juliet charging toward him, Willie hailed her. "Jules! Look!" He pointed at the interior of the delivery van. "Christmas in July!"

  "It's September," Ashley corrected mildly as she watched the unloading of the van.

  "Who gives a rip? This is way cool," Willie said to Jul
iet when she came to a stop at his side, staring at him in horror. Taking a radio-controlled car from one of the deliverymen, he whistled through his teeth. "I've always wanted one of these."

  Harrison's grandmother stepped away and put a hand on Willie's arm. "I'm sure Nathan will gladly share all his new toys with you."

  Juliet panted, "No. No, he won't!" Strangled emotions, not exertion, made talking difficult.

  Dorothy furrowed her delicate brow. "Oh, but he seems to know how to share just fi-"

  Juliet cut her off. "I'm sorry, but they're all going back."

  Dorothy pulled her chin in. "For heaven's sake, why?"

  "Aww, Jules," Willie whined, and turned his face to the sky.

  She heard the crunch of Harrison's footsteps on the gravel as he approached them, but Juliet didn't turn to look at him. She was too mad.

  "Nothing is going back." Harrison said from behind her. "Well, at least not all of it. Good gracious, Grandmother, is there anything left in the store?"

  Dorothy brought her narrow shoulders up and looked as though she was trying to appear contrite, but couldn't quite manage it. "I suppose I did get a tad carried away. But you did say I could buy him a little something."

  "Grandmother, a jam-packed delivery van is not a little something."

  The firmness of Harrison's tone surprised Juliet. She glanced at him.With his fists propped on his lean hips, his expression matched his tone, and only his slightly mussed hair hinted at the passion that had erupted between them. He continued to glare at the small woman until Juliet noticed a sparkle enter his eyes exactly like the one lighting

  his grandmother's gaze.

  How would she ever make them understand if they all thought this a grand joke?

  Harrison looked to her and the glint of amusement faded from his expression. "You have every right to return all but the most appropriate of the gifts."

  "All but-" she scanned what was left in the van and reached for a plump, fuzzy brown bear, since Nat loved bears "-this...is going back. We don't need your charity," she said firmly. If she allowed anything but the smallest of gifts now, it wouldn't be long before Willie got his big-screen TV. Harrison frowned. "Juliet-" "I mean it."