The Paternity Proposition

by Merline Lovelace

  “Alex!”

  A petite bundle of sparkle and energy, she rattled off what Julie guessed was an effusive greeting in French. Laughing, Alex dropped a kiss on both cheeks and replied in kind before switching to English for the introductions.

  “Cecile, this is Julie Bartlett. Julie, meet Cecile Duchamp. The lightest hand at crepes ever to come out of Maubec.”

  “Pah!” their hostess puffed. “As though she would know Maubec. It has not even a highway, only a two-lane farm road. But it is in Provence, yes, and all Provençal cooks prepare the crepes like you have never tasted before.”

  The smile she turned in Julie’s direction didn’t dim. If anything, it ratcheted up another notch. Yet the look that accompanied it was swift, assessing and distinctly female.

  Uh-oh. Was Cecile one of the also-ran in the mother-of-my-child contest? Julie couldn’t help wondering as the vivacious brunette escorted them to a circular booth tucked into a corner.

  “I bring a bottle of red from your reserve, yes? And the crudités.”

  Alex looked to Julie. “Is red okay or would you prefer white? Or something other than wine?”

  Like the Dos Equis they’d downed that night in Nuevo Laredo? Another memory shot to the surface, this one of Alex laughing at her grimace when she sucked on the lime wedge—right before he leaned across the table and kissed the pucker off her lips.

  “Red’s fine,” she said hastily.

  It was more than fine, she discovered when Cecile had decanted the wine. One sip evoked smooth velvet and giant sunflowers—fields and fields of them, bobbing on tall stalks with their faces turned up to the sun…probably because those particular flowers dominated almost every poster Julie had ever seen of the south of France.

  “It’s good,” she told Alex. “Tastes a little like a Chilean syrah.”

  “You’ve got a discriminating palette. They come from the same grape variety.”

  His shoulders rested against the back of the booth but she wasn’t fooled into thinking he was relaxed. Especially when he issued a seemingly casual request.

  “Tell me about your time in Chile.”

  “This is what you meant by getting to know each other?” she said, bristling. “An immediate demand to know what I was up to last year?”

  “Sorry. That came out wrong. Let me rephrase. What type of jobs did you fly down in Chile?”

  “Mostly contact airlift for Caterpillar.”

  “One of our major competitors,” he commented.

  “I also flew for Komatsu, hauling equipment parts to Minera Escondida’s gold and copper mines. As I’m sure your private investigator has informed you,” she couldn’t help tacking on.

  Annoyance flickered across his tanned face. “I’m just making conversation here.”

  “Fine. Then why don’t you tell me about yourself?”

  “What do you want to know?”

  She’d gleaned the basics from her Google searches. Age, education, professional associations. She’d catalogued far more intimate physical details during their night together. And she’d certainly had a taste of the ruthless determination that had taken Alex Dalton and his family to the top. Yet the man himself was pretty much an unknown quantity.

  “What’s it like to be a twin?”

  He eased into a rueful grin. “All the cliches apply. Blake and I fought like hell from day one to maintain our individual identities. Fought each other, too. Sibling rivalry takes on a whole new dimension when you’re half of a pair. We also rarely passed up a chance to pretend to be each other to confuse babysitters and teachers.”

  He took another taste of his wine. Julie watched his throat work and vaguely recalled burying her face in the hot crease between it and his shoulder.

  “The bond is always there,” he continued. “It’s undefinable, intangible. Even when we’re in different parts of the world. If Blake hurts, I feel it. If I get angry, his blood pressure spikes.”

  She traced a pattern on the table with her nail, trying to imagine that kind of closeness.

  “How about you?” Alex asked, as if reading her mind. “What was it like to be an only child?”

  “I loved it,” she replied, with a familiar pang at the thought of the parents she’d lost more than a decade ago. “My folks spoiled me rotten.”

  “That must be how you talked them into letting you apply for a pilot’s license at, what? Fourteen? Fifteen?”

  He held up his palms before she could get all huffy about him prying into her past again. “I was curious about you after Nuevo Laredo. Did some checking.”

  “Which you didn’t bother to follow up on until someone deposited a baby on your mother’s doorstep.”

  Where did that come from? Julie sincerely hoped it didn’t sound as snarky to him as it did to her. Evidently not, since he lifted his shoulders in a self-deprecating shrug.

  “Actually, I did try to follow up. By the time I got around to it, though, you were already down in South America.”

  “Oh.”

  That put a different spin on things. So different she found herself relaxing for the first time since Alex Dalton had walked out of her past and turned her life upside down.

  They stuck to non-controversial subjects through an appetizer platter of crisp vegetables with a creamy Dijon mustard dipping sauce and a dinner of herb-crusted Dover sole that flaked off the fork. Cecile herself flambeed dessert at their table in a long-handled copper pan. Julie had to admit the woman hadn’t boasted. The crepes Suzette were the lightest, most succulent she’d ever put in her mouth.

  Not that she’d downed all that many. Having spent most of her cockpit time flying in and out of the Americas, she was a fervent and self-avowed connoisseur of tamales and empanadas. The spicier the better. She could get hooked on these paper-thin pancakes swimming in caramelized Grand Marnier sauce, though. Especially when Alex offered her the last of his after she’d finished her own with a near moan of ecstasy. His eyes dancing, he nudged his plate across the table.

  “I warned you.”

  “Yes, you did.” She stabbed the morsel and used it to sop up the remaining sauce. “Wonder if she does carry-out? I’d love to take some of these back to Dusty and Chuck. On second thought,” she said after letting the heavenly morsel slide her throat. “I’d better not. Dusty would feed half of his to Belinda, and she certainly doesn’t need the calories.”

  “Belinda being the mottled fur rug?”

  “That’s her.”

  “Unusual name for a cat.”

  He stretched a casual arm along the back of the circular booth. It didn’t come within six inches of Julie but she could swear she felt a slow flush crawling up the back of her neck.

  “Belinda’s an unusual cat. Dusty swears she can sniff out stinkbugs or wireworms a half mile away. I didn’t believe him until I saw her in action. She made a believer out of me. A good number of our clients, too.”

  “Maybe I should make sure he includes Belinda in the inventory of Agro-Air’s physical assets when we close our deal.”

  The reminder of their deal should have put a damper on Julie’s after-dessert glow—and it probably would have if she wasn’t so darned conscious of the tanned forearm stretched across the back of the booth. She could make out the hard muscles, the sprinkling of sun-bleached hair, the glint of his mucho expensivo platinum chronometer.

  “Maybe you should,” she said, deliberately angling away.

  “Would you like coffee? Or cappuccino? Cecile makes it with honest-to-goodness whipped cream.”

  “I’ll pass, but you go ahead if you want one.”

  “I’m good.”

  He eased out of the booth with a casual grace and came around to Julie’s side to offer his hand. She hesitated for the barest instant as the glow faded and sudden, insidious doubts raced through her mind. Alex and Cecile were so friendly. Had he arranged for the chef to save the glass Julie had drunk from? One of the forks? Slip it into a plastic bag for shipment to a lab?

  He’
d promised he wouldn’t take anything she wasn’t ready to give. Could she trust him to keep his word? Instinct said yes. Logic argued no, that he had too much at stake.

  Well, hell! This absurd situation was making her crazy!

  Then she looked up into his eyes and went with her gut. Her hand slid into his. The strong, tactile fingers that had made her body sing closed around hers. All too aware of the sensations they once again generated, she eased out of the booth and withdrew her hand to reach for her purse. She led the way to the front of the restaurant and was mentally computing her half of the check when he waved to the owner.

  “Au revoir, Cecile.”

  She saluted with a spatula from the open kitchen. “Au revoir.”

  “We didn’t get a check,” Julie protested as Alex shouldered open the door to the street.

  “Cecile keeps my credit card on file.”

  “She doesn’t have mine.” Julie halted just outside the door. The still muggy summer night flowed around them as she tackled the issue head on. “I thought I made myself clear. I want to pay my own way this week.”

  “It was just dinner, Julie.”

  “Funny, it feels more like a bribe to me. Some folks might even say this whole week smacks of blackmail.”

  He shrugged, completely indifferent to the accusation. “I consider it a precondition to a legitimate business proposition.”

  “So you’re going to charge all my expenses to the company’s ledger?”

  “No, of course not. But…”

  “No buts, Dalton. I’ve been pretty much on my own since I was seventeen. I pay, or I don’t play.”

  Alex started to object when he remembered that the copper-haired pilot he’d hooked up with had roused before dawn and dropped a kiss on her half-asleep bed partner, murmuring that she had an early take-off. When he’d rolled out of bed and departed several hours later, the motel bill was already taken care of.

  “Okay,” he conceded. “I’ll keep a record of all expenses incurred. We can settle up at the end of your stay.”

  Or not. He had no intention of presenting her with a bill. He’d dug through Agro-Air’s balance sheets. He doubted she or either of her partners could handle a solid week of special reserve reds or dinners at places like Cecile’s. Besides, by the end of her stay he would know for certain whether Julie was Molly’s birth mother. If so, the expenses she racked up this week would drop below the noise level amid the much heavier negotiations to follow.

  The idea that Julie Barlett would give up her child was looking less likely by the moment, however. The woman was fiercely independent. When you factor stubborn as hell into the equation, Alex couldn’t see her walking away from anything, much less her own baby.

  If not for those as-yet-unexplained gaps during her months in South America and her flat-out refusal to provide a DNA sample, he might have called a halt to this enforced visitation right then and there. Then he caught the sway of her hips as she pushed through the entrance to the Dalton building.

  He’d give it another day or two, Alex decided, his eyes on her trim rear and slender hips. See if his PI could fill in the gaps. Peel another layer or two off Julie’s prickly exterior.

  When the elevator glided to a stop, that’s all he intended to do. Just dig a little deeper. Get to know the woman inside the nicely packaged female. Was it his fault her use of the phrase “when I play” kept looping though his mind, repeating over and over like a damaged CD?

  “Play” didn’t begin to describe their interaction a year ago. There’d been some giggles on her part. He remembered that. Some laughter on his. Then everything had heated up. Time and the press of business had diluted the X-rated edges, but enough remained for Alex to use the pretext of outlining tomorrow’s schedule to invite himself in for a nightcap.

  “We’ve got a schedule?” Julie echoed, tossing her purse and key card on the glass-topped coffee table that ate up most of the sitting room.

  “My mother quit the business five years ago but she has a hard time letting go of the reins.” He felt the usual rush of affection too often strained to the limit. “She’s got us down for brunch, ten o’clock. After that, I thought I would give you a tour of our local operations.”

  While Julie mulled that over, he crossed to the mahogany wall unit containing an entertainment center on one side and a fully stocked wet bar on the other.

  “What’s your pleasure?” Doors opened to display shelves lined with expensive brands. “We have all the regular labels, liqueurs, wine. Oh, and the speciality of the house.”

  “Which is?”

  “A blend my father had bottled for him in Scotland. He named it Jake’s Folly.”

  “Okay, I’ll bite. Why folly?”

  “He would never tell us. Neither will our mother, but she refuses to touch the stuff.”

  When Julie moved in for a closer look at the black label with a gold-embossed oil rig gushing crude, Alex breathed in her scent. Soap and shampoo and brandy from the crepes Suzette. Did she have any idea of how seductive it was? Or how the shimmering beads decorating the neckline of her blouse enhanced the color of her unusual eyes? One was the deep, dark green of a forest glen just before dusk. The other was that same glen, but with a touch of autumn in its gold and brown flecks. With their fringe of thick black lashes, they drew Alex in—and raised a new round of questions in his mind.

  Molly’s eyes were a grayish blue, but that could change. Most babies’ eye color wasn’t set until they were nine or ten months old, or so Delilah had informed her sons. Would Molly’s eyes deepen to dark cobalt like his? Or shade toward green like Julie’s?

  For a moment Alex regretted his promise not to take a DNA sample without her permission. The sample may not hold up in court if it came to a custody suit but at least he would know.

  He killed the thought almost as soon as it surfaced. He’d given his word. He’d stand by it. But he hadn’t promised to back away completely.

  “Your hair’s longer than I remembered from Nuevo Laredo,” he commented, letting his gaze roam the shining cap.

  She looked a little wary at the mention of their night together but shrugged. “I didn’t have much time to fuss with it during the past year, so I let it grow long enough to pull back out of the way.”

  Casually, he curled a coppery strand around his finger and feathered the ends with his thumb. “I like it.”

  That wasn’t all he liked. Using the dark red strand as a tether, Alex moved closer. “I remember a few other details from that night.”

  “So do I.” Warning signs went up in her face. “Enough to let you know right up front there isn’t going to be a repeat performance.”

  She didn’t pull back, however, or tug her hair free. Alex noted both with a quick leap of satisfaction.

  “No repeat performance, huh?” He pretended to ponder that. “I’m pretty sure I used most of my good moves that night. Given enough time and the proper incentive, though, I might be able to come up with something original.”

  Julie couldn’t help herself. He looked so solemn, as though he was giving the matter some really heavy consideration. She let a grin slip past her common sense.

  “Speaking from personal experience, I can verify that your moves were very good. And I suspect you wouldn’t need much in the way of incentive to come up with some new ones.”

  “You’re right. In fact, all it might take is this.”

  He tugged gently on her hair, urging her closer while giving her plenty of advance notice of his intentions.

  Julie had more than enough time to deliver a swift kick to her conscience. She could put up a front with Dalton, but she couldn’t lie to herself. She’d driven into the city with a very mixed bag of motives. It wasn’t just about the business deal this man had offered. Or Dusty’s sworn promise to refrain from feeding the slots if she complied with Dalton’s outrageous precondition. Or even the innate sense of fairness that acknowledged this man had a legitimate need to know his child’s heritage. The sad tr
uth was that Alex Dalton irritated and aroused her in equal measures.

  All right, all right! If she added up the minutes they’d spent in each other’s company, honesty would force her to admit he aroused her a whole bunch more than he’d irritated her. That still didn’t excuse her idiocy in tipping her head back for his kiss.

  And idiocy it was. The shock that jolted through her gave ample proof of that. Not to mention the shiver that raced down her spine when he curved his free arm around her waist.

  “The hair’s different,” he murmured, drawing her against him, “but you taste every bit as good as I remember.”

  His mouth brushed hers again. Lightly. Deliberately.

  “Forget good,” he said a moment later, his voice husky. “You taste great.”

  He punctuated that with another kiss.

  He held her splayed against his long, hard frame. Every pressure point in her body was alive and kicking. Her breasts. Her hips. Her belly, where it pressed against the stiffening bulge just below his belt buckle.

  Oh, God! It was just like last time. They’d barely slammed the door of that sleazy motel room before they started ripping at each other’s clothes. She had the same urge now, could barely keep her hands from sliding up his ribs and down his muscled flanks.

  And look what that raw hunger had produced, the last sane corner of her mind shouted. Two people caught up in a tangle of if’s and maybe’s. The thought acted like a fire hose on her raging hormones. It was time to end this charade, she decided grimly. Past time. Not even the shimmering vision of a brand spanking new Lane 602 could make her continue it.

  “Alex, listen to me. I wasn’t pregnant when I left for South America. I didn’t give birth in a Chilean hospital or some remote mountaintop clinic. I’m not the mother of your child.”

  She pushed away and put some breathing room between them while her fingers fumbled in her hair. She found a random couple of strands, yanked. Her breath still ragged, she looped them around the top button of his shirt.