Jonah nodded, acknowledging her struggle. “You mean about the baby.”
* * *
Emma’s green eyes widened in panic and Jonah felt his own pulse speed up in his throat. She wasn’t expecting him to say that at all. He’d uncovered all her secrets, it seemed.
“How did you...?” She shook her head in denial.
“I saw you in the gym the other night after work.”
She continued to shake her head, letting her gaze drop to her lap. “I knew I heard someone as I was leaving. It was stupid of me to wear that outfit, but I didn’t even think about it as I packed it. No one was around and I’ve really just started to show recently, so I didn’t think anyone would notice. Especially you. You were supposed to be out at dinner.” She glanced up with an accusing look in her eye.
Jonah felt his chest tighten more and more the longer she spoke. Not because of her pointed look, but because up until this moment, the baby had been a suspicion, not a fact. Yes, she skipped the wine, but she could just not like it. Yes, she had a little tummy, but she could’ve overindulged. He was no expert where pregnant women were concerned.
Now it was confirmed.
He was going to be a father. A father. He’d taken every precaution, and yet fate had laughed in his face and put him in this position anyway. He reached out to brace his hand on the edge of the table and squeezed his eyes shut. “My dinner meeting got canceled, so I came back to lift some weights. I’m usually alone in there. And yes, I sure as hell noticed. I noticed the tattoo and I noticed the...stomach. I wasn’t sure until now, but I noticed.”
Emma slumped back against her seat and dropped her face into her hand. “This wasn’t how I wanted you to find out, Jonah. I’m sorry. I wasn’t keeping it from you forever. I was going to tell you.”
Jonah’s head snapped up and his gaze pinned hers. “Were you?” He wasn’t so sure. Sometimes she looked at him as though he were something stuck to her shoe, not the father of her child.
“I swear I was. Like I said, I wanted to finish the audit, do my job without any whispers of impropriety, but then yes, I was going to tell you who I am and that I’m pregnant. If I’d known how to contact you two months ago, I would’ve done it then, but by the time I figured it out, I was already involved in the audit. That said, I’ve been scared to death to tell you the truth.”
Jonah swallowed hard and furrowed his brow. He was far from a hulking, intimidating person that people were scared of. He picked up his glass of wine and took a large sip to slow his spinning brain. “Why?”
Emma pulled her gaze from his and crossed her arms protectively over her chest. “It’s like I told you that night—I’m not the woman you think I am. I knew that you wanted her, the wild and passionate anonymous stranger, not me. I couldn’t bear to see the look on your face when you realized that I was that girl and the fantasy was shattered forever. I’m just boring old, stick-in-the-mud Emma. And to make matters worse, then I’d have to tell you that we were stuck together for the sake of our baby.”
“Stuck together?” Jonah flinched at her choice of words. Is that how she saw her situation? She was stuck with him because they screwed up and she got pregnant?
The waiter returned with imperfect timing, placing each of their appetizers in front of them and disappearing silently when he sensed the tension between them.
“You know what I mean!” Emma leaned in and whispered harshly across the table at him. “Even if you were disappointed beyond belief to find out it was me, even if you never wanted to lay another hand on me again, I’m having your child, Jonah. I would hope that you would want to be a part of his or her life, even if I’m just on the periphery.”
Jonah didn’t know what to say. He honestly didn’t know how he wanted to move forward where Emma and the baby were concerned. His thoughts were spinning too quickly to light on one in particular. His strict upbringing nagged at him to marry her on the spot. Mother would insist when she found out. Noah could embezzle three million dollars, but it would be Jonah’s scandal of an out-of-wedlock child that would be the biggest family disgrace in her eyes. Emma wasn’t the only one constantly worried about gossip.
At the same time, his rebellious nature insisted that people didn’t get married in this day and age just because they were having a baby. He and Emma hardly knew each other, much less loved each other. Coparenting was a more popular thing for people who didn’t want to make the previous generations’ mistakes and stick out a miserable marriage for the sake of the children.
What did he want? Jonah had no idea. He’d barely become accustomed to the concept of fatherhood, but he certainly never imagined that Emma would just be on the periphery, no matter the scenario.
“Emma...to start off, you’re not a disappointment. Look at me,” he demanded, and then reached across the table and took her hand, gripping tightly so she couldn’t pull away from him again. Once she reluctantly met his gaze with her own, he continued. “I mean it. While this is all a surprise, I can assure you that disappointment has never crossed my mind.”
She studied his face with disbelief lining her weary eyes. How had he not noticed how tired she looked? He’d been blinded tonight by flawless makeup and the silky jumpsuit he wanted to run his hands over. Now that he was really looking, he could see the sense of overwhelming stress and exhaustion in her eyes. She was working too much, and too hard, in her condition. They’d discuss that before long.
“But I’m not the woman you wanted, Jonah. I’m not wild and sexually adventurous. I’d never done body shots or had a one-night stand before. I’d certainly never have a tattoo if it weren’t for that night. Everything you saw and liked about me was out of character. I mean, I... I don’t even know what I’m doing here. Coming with you tonight was a mistake.”
Emma moved fast, slipping out of the booth and taking the nearest door out to the back patio that overlooked the water.
“Emma?” Jonah rushed after her, catching her wrist as she leaned over the railing seemingly looking for an escape. What was she going to do? Swim away from him? All the way back to New York?
“Emma! Would you just stop and listen to me?” he demanded as she tugged at his grip. She finally turned around to face him, leaning her back against the railing. He instinctively wrapped his arms around her waist. He knew immediately that pressing against each other like this wasn’t the best idea to keep his focus, but at the very least, he could convince her that he was attracted to her.
“Jonah, I want to go home.”
“If that’s what you want, I will, but not until you hear me out. I sat there and listened to all your excuses for lying to me. You owe me the opportunity to tell you how I feel, whether you believe me or not.”
Emma finally stilled in his arms, although her gaze was fixed on the buttons of his shirt. He breathed a sigh of relief that he could finally focus his thoughts on telling her how he felt. This was important.
“I want you to know that you’re totally and completely wrong.” Jonah pulled aside the blue silk strap of her jumpsuit to expose her shoulder and upper chest. He placed his hand over the curve of her breast as he’d done that first night. Their tattoos aligned, creating one heart again at last. Emma looked down at the heart with tears shimmering in her eyes, but she didn’t say anything.
“These tattoos weren’t just something I suggested on a whim, Emma. They were supposed to be instruments of fate. This heart becoming whole again would only happen if it was meant to. Yes, we don’t know much about each other, but now is our second chance to make that happen. Not just because of the baby, but because we’ve been brought together again to do just that.”
“Jonah...” she started to argue.
“No,” he silenced her. “From the moment I saw you sitting in my office, I’ve had this pull towards you that I couldn’t explain. It was the same feeling that led me to rescue a pret
ty stranger from a creep at a party. I didn’t know why then and I don’t know why now, but I know I’m not letting this second chance slip between our fingers. I don’t know how it’s going to end. No one ever does. This might not be forever. It might not turn into the love affair of the century. But we owe it to ourselves, and to our child, to at least try and see where it can take us.”
She sighed and relaxed into his touch. “And what if my company finds out? I’ll lose my job. They’ll never believe that I can be impartial. I have a vested interest in the successful business dealings of my baby’s father.”
Her mention of the audit was enough to remind Jonah of why he started romancing his auditor to begin with. Yes, he’d been drawn to her, but he’d stuck it out to cover Noah’s ass and keep from botching the Game Town deal. He hadn’t heard from his accountant in days, and that wasn’t good. Sooner or later, she was going to find the discrepancy. If he couldn’t keep it from her, there was a part of him that hoped maybe she wouldn’t mention it in her report as a favor to him. That he could explain it away somehow.
“Can you be impartial, Emma?” he asked.
Her green eyes met his with a hard glint shining in them. Her spine straightened and her pointed chin thrust forward in the defiant response he seemed to coax out of her so easily. “Yes. Despite what Tim thinks, I’m first and foremost a professional and I will do my job.”
Jonah didn’t doubt that at all. That’s exactly what he was afraid of. But for now, he needed to salvage tonight and worry about Noah’s mess tomorrow. “Then there’s nothing your boss could say or do to prove otherwise. Now come back inside and eat that amazing-looking dinner with me.”
Emma sighed and nodded. She slipped the strap of her jumpsuit back over her shoulder, hiding away the tattoo and removing the temptation of her bare skin.
They went back inside, crisis averted, and yet Jonah couldn’t help but feel a new sense of worry. The audit for Game Town was at risk and it had nothing to do with Emma and everything to do with Jonah.
Eight
Thankfully, the rest of the dinner went well. Jonah had been worried that the whole evening would be ruined, but the opposite turned out to be true. Uptight Emma seemed to finally, truly relax. All her secrets were out in the open and lifting that burden had an almost-physical impact on her. She smiled more, flirted happily through dinner by sharing bites of her food and making eyes at him, and didn’t once refer to him as Mr. Flynn.
All their issues weren’t behind them, but they were able to at least focus on enjoying each other’s company tonight and worrying about the rest tomorrow. With that thought in mind, Jonah directed the pilot to land on his building’s rooftop instead of returning them to the heliport.
When they touched down, Emma frowned out the window. “Where are we?”
“My place.” He opened the helicopter door and offered his hand to help her.
Suspicion wrinkled her nose, but she still accepted his hand and stepped out onto his rooftop with him. They hustled away from the helicopter and over to the door. He led her down a set of stairs and out onto the landing where the entrance to his penthouse loft was located.
“Wait a minute,” Emma said as she stared at the door.
“What?”
“This was your place? Where the Mardi Gras party was held?”
“Yes,” he replied as he reached out to unlock the door. Jonah didn’t hold many parties at his loft in Tribeca, but the Mardi Gras shindig had been one of them. “You don’t think I’m tacky enough to seduce a woman in someone else’s laundry room, do you?”
Emma’s cheeks flushed bright red at the mention of their impulsive encounter. “I didn’t really think about it. Although now that you mention it, I think Harper did say that party was at her boss’s place. I assumed she meant the head of finance, not the CEO’s apartment.”
“I was right under your nose the whole time,” Jonah said. He pushed open the door and gestured her in ahead of him. He followed behind, watching her as she studied the open, industrial space he’d fallen in love with the first time he toured it.
“It looks different without a hundred people crammed in here. It’s huge.”
“It takes up the whole top floor,” Jonah explained. “Originally, I think this building was some sort of textile factory. When I bought it ten years ago, part of it had been converted to offices and shops and the top two floors were a storage warehouse. I ended up turning the whole thing into loft apartments with shared common areas on the ground floor.”
Emma stopped and turned to face him. “You own the whole building?”
Jonah nodded and slipped out of the suit coat that had been irritating him all evening. He was hot-blooded and the suit on top of the long-sleeved shirt and glasses of wine had him almost at the point of sweating.
“If I listened to nothing else my mother, the great Angelica Flynn, told me, I did learn to diversify my investments.” He tossed the jacket over the back of a dining room chair and spread his arms out. “This was my foray into the real estate market. She thought I was crazy, of course. She prefers stuffy uptown mansions with marble and gold inlay. I like exposed brick and ductwork. Fortunately, I’m not the only one. The other lofts were rented with an extensive waiting list within weeks of being on the market.”
Emma set her purse on the concrete countertop of his kitchen and ran her fingers across the slightly roughened surface. “It’s definitely a different style. Not my style, but I know plenty of people who would like it.”
He followed behind her as she strolled through the living room and dining area, nearing the door that led into the infamous laundry room. As a true loft, there were only three doors in the whole space. One for the laundry and utility room, and the others for the guest and master bathrooms. Even if he’d wanted to take her to his bed that night, he wouldn’t have been able to. The space was wide-open to the party. It wasn’t ideal but the laundry room had been his only real option.
Emma hesitated for a moment, then reached out and turned the knob of the door. Was she really heading straight for the scene of the crime? He’d brought her back to his place with the intention of tasting every inch of her skin, but he’d anticipated using the bed this time.
She went straight to the washing machine, running her hand over the same top that he’d lifted her onto. Emma turned and pressed her back against the machine, then looked up at him with a sly smile curling her lips. “That night was...”
Mind-blowing? Crazy? Amazing? Passionate? Life changing?
“...unforgettable.”
Jonah took a step closer, narrowing the gap between them. “That it was. Every minute I spent with you was seared into my brain. Every soft moan and cry permanently etched into my memory.”
Emma made a familiar sound, barely louder than an intake of breath. He remembered that gasp. She’d made that same sound of surprise when he pushed up her skirt and pressed his fingertips into the flesh of her upper thighs.
He moved closer with that thought in mind. His every nerve tingled in anticipation as they remembered that moment. His blood rushed through his veins as his heart pounded loudly in his ears. “Over these last few months, I’ve thought of little else but having my butterfly back in my arms again.”
Emma looked up at him as he came near enough to slip his arms around her waist. For once, she didn’t fight or squirm. Instead, she pressed into him and clutched at the fabric of his dress shirt. “I’ve thought about that night a lot, too. I’ve wondered what I would do if I were given a second chance to be with my hero.”
“Any ideas?” Jonah asked with a wicked grin. He leaned into her, pressing her back against the washing machine and imprinting his desire for her against her stomach.
“I have a few.” Emma laced her fingers behind his neck and pulled his mouth down to hers.
As their lips made cont
act, Jonah realized this was the first time that he’d kissed Emma knowing who she really was. The kiss they’d shared before, aside from being slightly antagonistic, was just a kiss from the uptight Game Town auditor. There were no real expectations there, unlike a kiss from his butterfly.
He worried that this moment might be tainted by shaded memories of that night that no mortal woman could ever live up to. The minute they touched, however, it was no longer a concern. Her scent, her taste, the feel of her in his arms—it all combined in a familiar tidal wave that washed over him all at once. Before, there had been things about her that seemed familiar, but it had been like a déjà vu moment with one piece missing, the piece to tie it all together.
Now he had the tattoo to bring it all into focus and suddenly everything was right in the world.
He pulled her tight against him, loving the feel of her silken tongue as it glided along his own. Her touches weren’t as bold as they had been that night, but tequila did that to a person. Yes, it made her wild and uninhibited, but with her in his arms again, he realized that wasn’t the part of her that he craved. Emma was wrong to think that he wouldn’t want her the way she was. Who she was, was the core of what he was after. The inner woman; the one who felt free to be herself for the first time in her life.
Jonah’s hands spanned her hips and he slid one up the soft fabric of her jumpsuit to caress her breast. He took advantage of the low neckline to slip his hand beneath the cups of her strapless bra and happily mold her flesh in his palm until the peaks of her nipples dug into him.
Little Secrets--Secretly Pregnant Page 10
