And the Winner Gets...Married!

by Metsy Hingle

  “What about tomorrow?”

  “I’m going to be busy.”

  “Sunday?” he countered, his mouth going flat.

  “Tied up. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’d better get these changes done or I’ll be late.”

  “All right,” he conceded. “But sooner or later you and I are going to talk. You can’t go on avoiding me forever.”

  Kim did manage to avoid him—or at least avoid talking to him—for most of the next week, thanks in large measure to an unexpected emergency that had taken Justin back to New York. When he returned on Friday, he’d been in a bear of a mood and so busy she’d had little trouble avoiding any personal conversation. She watched the clock on her desk, noted the hands edging just past five o’clock. This had nothing to do with being a coward, Kim assured herself as she gathered up the mail and notes and headed for Justin’s office. She would dump his messages and correspondence on his desk while he was still on the phone and get out the door before he even knew she was gone. Bracing herself, she tapped lightly on his door and prayed her luck would hold out a little longer.

  She stepped inside his office, and Justin hung up the phone. Kim knew at once that her luck had run out. “I have a few messages for you, the letters you dictated and the financial reports you wanted.” Quickly dispensing with the items, she said, “If there’s nothing else, I’m going to call it a day.”

  “Actually, I’d like you to bring me up to speed on several projects. Would you mind staying a few minutes longer?”

  Kim hesitated but saw no way around it. “No problem,” she said, and took a seat across from him. For the next fifteen minutes Justin went over routine business matters and projects, and Kim began to relax.

  “What about that problem we had a while ago with the computer system? That technician Charlotte Masters hired seems to have done a good job. Everything running okay?”

  “Yes. Everything seems to be running smoothly now,” Kim assured him.

  Justin nodded. “Is there anything else we need to cover?”

  Kim glanced at her notes, then back up at him. “No. You should be up to speed on everything in the department now.”

  “Good.” He put down his pen, sat back in his chair and stared at her. “Now we can talk about us.”

  Kim’s stomach fluttered. “Us?”

  “Yes, Kim. Us,” he said, an edge in his voice. He sat forward. “As in you and me. Or maybe you’ve done such a good job of pretending nothing happened between us that night in the cottage that you’ve forgotten we were lovers.”

  “Hardly,” Kim shot back, not bothering to hide the irony of his claim. Since she was now nearly four weeks late, she might have an even more tangible reminder of that night.

  Evidently reading something in her expression, Justin’s eyes widened. “Kim, What are you saying? Are you…?” His gaze dropped to her belly, then shot back to her face. He stood, started around the desk. “No wonder you haven’t been yourself. Sweetheart, you should have told me. I promised you that if you became pregnant, I’d take responsibility. And I will. All you had—”

  His words swiped at Kim’s heart. She rushed to her feet. “First off, there’s no reason for you to panic, because I don’t know whether I’m pregnant or not,” Kim told him, reasoning it was true since she’d yet to take a pregnancy test. “And second, if I am pregnant, I have a generous employer who provides an excellent salary and benefits, so I’m quite capable of taking care of myself and a baby if it comes to it. And third,” she ticked off her finger as temper took hold. “I’m not out to trap you into a relationship you don’t want. So there’s no need for you to worry on that score.”

  “Are you finished?” Justin asked her, his voice deadly soft, his expression inscrutable.

  Refusing to be intimidated, she jutted out her chin and met his hazel eyes. “Yes.”

  “Then let me set you straight on a few things. First off, I never panic. Second, I know Connelly’s salaries and benefits are generous, since I had a hand in drawing them up. And third,” he said menacingly as he caught her by the shoulders and pulled her to within a breath of him, “I’m not the one who needs to be worried about getting trapped into a relationship I don’t want. You are.”

  And before she could even think of a response, Justin kissed her. His mouth was hard, angry, demanding. When his tongue demanded entry, she didn’t even try to resist. She opened to him. Someone moaned. Kim didn’t know if it was her or Justin. All she knew was that she was drowning in sensation, in the need for more. No longer innocent, her body knew the joys of making love with this man and responded accordingly. She roped her arms around him, took and demanded, even as she gave. When she felt the weight of his arousal pressed against her belly, an answering need throbbed inside her.

  He lifted his head and speared his fingers through her hair, loosening the pins. “Kim, I—” Suddenly, Justin stilled. He dropped his hands to her shoulders.

  “Justin, what is it?”

  “Shh.” He pressed his fingers to her lips and looked past her toward the door.

  Kim turned slightly, stared in the direction that had caught his attention, and she noted that the door had been left ajar. But as far as she could tell, they were alone. She shifted her gaze to him and waited for him to explain.

  “I thought I saw someone at the door,” he said as he released her and walked over to the door to investigate.

  Kim thought of the kiss they had just shared, and instinctively, she reached up and smoothed a hand over her hair. She nearly groaned as she imagined Dina Dietrich or one of her cohorts getting an eyeful of her kissing Justin. Considering her conversation with the other woman just a short time ago, she knew the office rumor mill would have a field day.

  “I don’t see anyone,” Justin told her when he returned to her side. “We need to talk, Kim. But I’m supposed to be meeting Marsh in a few minutes.”

  The mention of Robert Marsh sobered Kim. He was the last person she wanted to have find her alone with Justin, her hair mussed and her lipstick ruined. “I’ll get out of your way.”

  “You’re not in my way, and you and I have some unfinished business to discuss,” he told her, and gave her a quick, hard kiss. “Personal business,” he clarified. “But I could be a while with Marsh. I’ll call you later.”

  He didn’t ask if he could call her, simply told her he intended to do so, Kim noted. But before she could call him on it, there was a tap at his door and Robert Marsh was sticking his head inside.

  “Am I interrupting?” he asked, flashing them a smile that Kim thought was as slick and phony as the man himself.

  “I was just leaving,” Kim replied coolly and started past Marsh toward the door. “Good night, Justin.”

  “Here, let me get that for you,” Marsh said politely, and opened the door for her.

  “Thank you,” she murmured.

  “My pleasure,” he told her.

  One look at the gleam in his eyes and Kim’s stomach knotted like a fist. Marsh had seen her kissing Justin. She knew it in her heart. She could only hope that he hadn’t also heard their conversation.

  “Hi, this is Kim. I’m not able to come to the phone right now. Leave a message and I’ll get back to you.”

  Justin slammed down the telephone. Shoving his hands through his hair, he paced the length of his apartment. Where in the devil could she be? he asked himself as he stared out the window and watched the sun begin its descent in the sky. He considered driving by her apartment again, but nixed the idea. He’d driven by twice yesterday and once today already. And it was the memory of his last attempt to see her that ate at him now.

  He scrubbed a hand down his face as he recalled the scene a few hours ago.

  He’d hit the buzzer on the door repeatedly, and when she hadn’t answered, he’d rapped on the door. “Come on, Kim. Open the door.” Frustrated by the game she was playing, he’d knocked again and told her, “Sweetheart, I saw your car parked outside, so I know you’re in there.”

>   “No, she’s not.”

  Justin had spun around to see a pair of faded brown eyes in a weathered face watching him through the crack between the door and the safety chain. Despite the woman’s orange-colored hair and rouged cheeks, Justin made her to be seventy if she was a day. Realizing that he was staring, he cleared his throat and said, “I was trying to reach Kim. I’m sorry if I disturbed you.”

  “You didn’t disturb me,” she said matter-of-factly. “But, like I told you, Kim’s not home. She left early yesterday morning.”

  Uneasiness coiled in his gut at that news. Since he knew Kim had no family, he couldn’t help wondering where Kim had gone that she would have left her car. And why had she gone when she’d known he’d wanted to see her? Because she wanted to get away—from him. Deciding his best hope of finding her was the little old lady sizing him up, he tried turning on the charm. “I’m Justin Connelly,” he said. “Kim’s my assistant.”

  “I’m Lucille Brown.”

  He flashed her a smile. “A pleasure Ms. Brown. I was wondering, do—”

  “It’s Miss,” she informed him. After releasing the safety chain, she opened the door wider to reveal a tiny woman in a bright green running suit. She smiled at him. “I’m still waiting for Mr. Right to come along.”

  Justin cleared his throat. Given her age, he suspected that Mr. Right had come and gone some time ago. “Um, Miss Brown—”

  “You can call me Lucy,” she told him, and batted her eyelashes at him.

  “Um, Lucy, would you happen to know where Kim went?”

  “She said she was going to spend the weekend at the beach with her friend.”

  “Her friend,” Justin repeated, more to himself than to Lucy, as he tried to remember if there was anyone in particular that Kim gravitated to among the office staff. “Did Kim happen to mention the name of this friend?”

  “No, but it was the same young man who came by for her a couple of weeks ago.”

  Justin’s blood iced, then ran hot in his veins.

  “Whoever he is, he’s a good-looking one. Almost as tall as you, with nice, tight buns.”

  Justin nearly choked. “Thanks, Lucy,” he murmured and made his exit.

  Several hours later jealousy was like a beast clawing inside him. The idea of Kim with someone else, with another man kissing her, touching her as he had, put blood in his eye. He needed to beat something or someone, Justin decided. Preferably the man who was with Kim. But since he didn’t know who the guy was yet, he’d settle for picking a fight with one of his brothers. Every one of the Connellys was good with his fists. He’d never known any of them to shy from a fight, particularly if goaded properly. Since he possessed the same quick temper, it shouldn’t be too difficult to get the fists flying, he reasoned. And maybe if he was busy pounding on one of his brothers and being pounded on in return, he wouldn’t have time to think about Kim. And whom she was with, or what she was doing with him.

  Snatching up his car keys, Justin headed for Brett’s house.

  “All that baiting wasted,” Justin complained as a smiling Brett and Elena waved goodbye. For a moment, there, he’d been sure Brett was going to take a swing at him. Then Elena had come in, showing him some things she’d picked up for the baby, and his tough, take-no-prisoners brother had turned into a marshmallow.

  “Disgusting,” Justin muttered as he pointed his Jeep toward Seth’s. Seth was who he should have gone to in the first place, Justin decided. Seth was always up for a fight. Probably because he was sensitive to the fact that his birth had been the result of his mother’s affair with their father. While Justin might understand some of Seth’s feelings of not quite belonging, he couldn’t honestly identify with them. As far as Justin was concerned, Seth was a Connelly. It didn’t matter who had given birth to him, Emma Connelly considered him her son—and that was good enough for Justin.

  Didn’t anyone stay home anymore? Justin wondered as he put the Jeep into reverse and sped away from Seth’s place. He considered going to his brother Rafe’s, then decided against it since he wasn’t sure if Rafe was even in town. Instead he opted for the gym—where he pounded on the bag until his arms ached and fed his blood lust by sparring with an up-and-coming professional boxer.

  By the time he arrived at Connelly Corporation headquarters the next morning, Justin’s mood matched the dark shiner he sported on his left eye courtesy of yesterday’s sparring match. And it was in keeping with his string of bad luck that the first person he saw was Brett.

  Brett whistled. “That’s a real beauty you’ve got there. The shade almost matches your suit.”

  “You’re a real comedian,” Justin told him with a scowl, and continued on to his office. He’d slept little the previous night, imagining Kim with some unknown man. Finally in the early-morning hours he’d chucked the line he’d been feeding himself about feeling responsible for her because he had been the one to awaken her passion. Responsibility had nothing to do with the feelings churning inside him, he admitted. He’d been flat-out jealous because he wanted Kim for himself. A fact he intended to make clear to Kim the first chance he got.

  Only, he never got the chance until late that afternoon—thanks to a bout of flu that had swept through the office and left the clerical staff at half-force. His own pressing workload hadn’t helped. Finally, near the end of the work-day he got his chance, when Kim came in with a folder of documents requiring his signature.

  As he began signing the documents, he was sharply aware of her nearness, her scent. “I tried to reach you this weekend,” he told her.

  “I know. I got your messages when I got home last night. By then it was too late to return your call.”

  “Did you and your friend have a nice weekend at the beach?” he asked, not bothering to hide his irritation.

  Kim wrinkled her brow. “How did you know I’d gone to the beach?”

  “Your neighbor Lucy told me.”

  “You spoke to Lucy?” Kim asked, her surprise evident.

  “Yeah. When you didn’t answer the phone, I thought you might be avoiding me. So I went over to your place. Imagine my surprise at learning that you and your boyfriend had gone away to the beach for the weekend.”

  “My boyfriend?”

  “Dammit, Kim. Don’t play innocent. Lucy told me he was the same guy who came by for you a couple of weeks ago. What I don’t understand is if you were already involved with somebody, then why in the hell did you make love with me?”

  Kim opened her mouth, closed it, and Justin watched in fascination as those blue-green eyes of hers turned stormy. She walked away from him, then turned back. “First off, I don’t owe you any explanations, Justin Connelly.”

  “I know that, but—”

  “Secondly, I was not and have not been involved with anyone except you.”

  He narrowed his eyes. “What about the guy with the tight buns?”

  “The tight…Lucy,” she said.

  “That’s right,” Justin told her. “He made quite an impression on Lucy.”

  “Every man makes an impression on Lucy,” Kim countered. “And in this case, the man happened to be the driver for the limo service your sister Tara uses. Evidently she requests a particular driver whenever she engages the service—such as the night of the auction and again this weekend when she invited me to join her at the beach.”

  “You were with my sister?”

  “That’s right. I called Tara to thank her again for inviting me to the fund-raiser. When she mentioned that she had some things she needed to handle for Alexandra’s wedding and was searching for a sitter, I volunteered. So she insisted that I join them at the beach for the weekend. Since I didn’t have any plans, I accepted.”

  Feeling like an idiot, Justin sank down in his chair. “Kim, I’m sorry. I thought—”

  “I know exactly what you thought. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a ton of work to do.”

  Work proved to be a panacea. Because of the bout of flu that had hit the office, Kim staye
d too busy the rest of the week to brood over the mess she’d made of her personal life and her relationship with Justin. She could only be grateful that business had kept Justin away from the office a great deal of the time and she’d managed to avoid any further encounters with him. What she could no longer avoid was the fact that she was seriously late for her menstrual cycle.

  Opening the pregnancy-test kit she’d purchased the previous evening, she followed the directions. A short time later she held her breath as she checked the test strip for the results.

  Pink.

  She was pregnant.

  Kim sank to the chair at her kitchen table as myriad emotions rushed through her. Excitement. Fear. Happiness. She was going to be a mother. She thought of Tara’s little boy, recalled how good it had felt to hold him in her arms. Imagined how it would feel to hold her and Justin’s child.

  Justin.

  She sobered as she thought of him. How was she going to tell him? What would he say? Maybe she didn’t have to tell him. She and the baby could go away, start a new life somewhere else. Just as quickly she dismissed that notion. Justin deserved to know he was going to be a father, and their child deserved to know about him. She’d grown up without a father. No way could she put her own child in that situation.

  Her head spinning, Kim took a deep breath. First things first, she decided. She needed to make an appointment with her gynecologist and have the pregnancy confirmed. Then she would decide how to tell Justin. A quick glance at the clock told her she’d have to hustle to make it to the office on time. She’d call and make an appointment the first chance she got.

  The first chance she got didn’t come until late that afternoon. “Doesn’t Dr. Stevens have anything available tomorrow?”

  “I’m sorry, Miss Lindgren, but Dr. Stevens doesn’t have any openings until next week. If it’s an emergency—”

  “No. No, it’s not an emergency. But would you take my name in case there’s a cancellation? I’d really like to see her as soon as possible.”