What was it she’d said, exactly? That she couldn’t believe he’d think that of her. Somewhere along the line he’d earned her confidence, which was a far cry from where they’d been that day he’d swanned into Connell’s Floral Design and back into her life. And, with a single comment, he’d destroyed it. But trust was a two way street. If she couldn’t be 100 percent honest with him, too, then they didn’t stand a chance.
He had his work cut out for him if he wanted to get her to open up to him fully, that was for sure. But he was driven to succeed in this, to surpass his success in everything else he’d wanted in his life to date. She’d said she wouldn’t stand in his way with the baby, but he wasn’t satisfied with that. He wanted them both.
What Chance had said resonated with Dylan. Whatever she’d done or been involved with in the past wasn’t who she was now. Why should it matter? She was the mother of his baby. She was the woman who held his heart. That was all that counted. The rest, well, he’d deal with it one way or another, provided she’d let him. The morning couldn’t come soon enough.
* * *
It was only ten o’clock and already Jenna was exhausted. Millie hadn’t shown this morning, too hungover, if the garbled text message she’d sent had been anything to go by. Had Jenna ever been like that? she wondered. No, of course not. She’d been too busy trying to be invisible, yet invaluable at the same time.
A call to Valerie, to see if she could come in, even if only for a couple of hours, had revealed that during the night she’d fallen victim to an apparently short-lived, but virulent, stomach virus that was ripping through their household. There was no way she’d come in and risk infecting Jenna, even if she could tear herself away from the bathroom right now.
Jenna had assured her tearful friend that she’d cope—after all, they’d completed most of the work for today’s wedding client yesterday and by working back about three hours last night—but her head swam a little and she leaned against the counter, taking a swig of her water bottle and reaching for the salty snack the doctor had told her to introduce into her diet. She certainly didn’t want a repeat of what had happened the day before last, and especially not at a time when she was on her own at the store. She’d had three bouquets to finish for the wedding today—now thankfully completed. With no Millie and with Valerie laid low with that stomach virus, it was all up to Jenna to handle those last-minute things, the things she’d counted on Millie helping her with so she wouldn’t overdo it, she thought with a grimace. Not to mention walk-ins.
She heard the buzzer out front in the store. Ah, good, hopefully that’d be her wedding people in to pick up their table arrangements and the bouquets and boutonnieres. She forced a smile onto her face as she left the workroom.
Her smile faded the instant she saw who’d arrived.
“What are you doing here?” Dylan demanded. His face was a taut mask of control but she could see fire glinting in his eyes.
Jenna took a step back. “Where did you expect me to be? And what business is it of yours, anyway?”
“It’s my business because that’s my baby you’re carrying. I went around to your place this morning, expecting to find you there, but you weren’t.”
“Well, obviously,” she said drily, even as her heart rate picked up several beats at seeing him again.
“Why aren’t you at home, resting?”
Oh, so he’d heard. She sighed.
“I just fainted, that’s all.” Jenna reached toward some roses she had on special in a tubular vase next to the cash register, and tore away a few damaged petals.
“Why? Have you been looking after yourself?”
“You’re not my mother,” she snapped. “I’m perfectly capable—”
“Don’t give me that, Jenna,” he growled. “I’ve seen inside your refrigerator. I know you don’t cook for squat. Why were you hospitalized?”
“My blood pressure’s a little low, that’s all. I have to be careful not to let myself get dehydrated, and they recommended I up my salt intake. So you see, there’s nothing to worry about.”
“And the fall? You didn’t hurt yourself?”
“No, and the baby’s fine, too. Seriously, Dylan. I’m okay.” Someone else came in through the front door. Ah, the father of the bride to pick up the flowers. “I’m also very busy, so if you’ll excuse me?”
He didn’t leave. Not through her discussion with her customer, nor when it came to helping the guy load the flowers into his van. Dylan even had the temerity to insist she stay in the store and sit down while he helped instead. She was seething by the time he came back inside.
“I don’t need babying and I don’t appreciate you coming in here telling me how to do my job.”
“You’re working far too hard. Aren’t you supposed to have help here today? Where’s Millie?”
“She couldn’t make it, and...oh, there’s a customer.”
He waited while Jenna dealt with the woman. Then helped the client out to her car with the flowers she’d ordered.
“What do you mean, Millie couldn’t make it?” he asked the second he and Jenna were alone again. “Don’t you have backup?”
“Well, yes, sometimes Valerie will come for an extra day, but she’s sick and she’s already been doing most of the heavy stuff for me since my little incident.”
“Little incident?”
Jenna could see he wasn’t impressed by the terminology.
“Look, I fainted at the bank. The staff called an ambulance because that’s their procedure. I was checked into the emergency department, and kept overnight for observation. I was rehydrated and then released in the morning with a set of instructions that I promise I’ve been following.” Mostly.
It was as if he could hear her thoughts.
“Not completely, if I know you. What are your plans for lunch today?”
“I was just going to grab a sandwich—”
“How, when you can’t leave the store unattended? How are you supposed to have a decent break if you don’t have an assistant?”
“Well, I didn’t know that she wouldn’t be here until I got in this morning, did I?”
“Are you expecting any more customers today?”
“There are always a few walk-ins on a Saturday, but I have no more orders to fill.”
“Good, then you won’t mind me doing this.”
He strode out back and she heard him locking the back door.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Get your bag.”
“I won’t do any such thing!”
“Fine. I’ll do it myself.” He shot through to her office and came out with her handbag slung over his shoulder. She’d have laughed at the sight he presented if she hadn’t seen the look of absolute determination on his face.
“Dylan...” she started, but her words trailed away when he swept her up in his arms and carried her out the front door, hesitating only a second to turn the sign around to Closed. The door banged shut behind them.
“Key,” he demanded, and she reached into her bag for her set, and while he still held her in his arms, turned the lock.
A group of people began to gather on the sidewalk.
“Hey, look at that! Isn’t that Dylan Lassiter?”
“Yeah. Go, Dylan!”
To her chagrin, he flung them a beaming smile and began to walk toward his SUV, parked a few spaces down the street. As he went, the crowd grew larger, and began to applaud and cheer. Someone raced up to open the passenger door for him and another cheer rose into the air as he gently slid Jenna onto the passenger seat, before reaching around her to secure her seat belt.
Jenna was certain her cheeks were flaming. Dylan closed her door and marched resolutely around to the driver’s side.
As he got into the car she flung him a murdero
us glance.
“This is kidnapping, you know.”
“I know,” he responded succinctly, right before he reached out to cup the back of her head and draw her to him.
Sixteen
His lips closed on hers with familiarity and yet with a sense of newness and wonder that tantalized and terrified her in equal proportions. On the sidewalk, the crowd went wild. Dylan broke away and reached for the ignition. For a second Jenna thought to protest once more, but the set of his jaw convinced her any argument would fall on deaf ears. She’d have to wait until he got her to wherever they were going.
It didn’t take long to figure out. She recognized the route out to his home immediately.
“Dylan—” she started.
“Don’t mess with me, Jenna. We’ll talk when we’re home.”
He said it with such strength and distinctness it echoed in her mind. His home was in L.A. now, but from his tone it sounded as though he’d chosen the word quite deliberately. As if he meant to stay here. Her heart leaped in her chest even as her stomach dropped. The prospect of seeing him more often would be both torture and an illicit pleasure at the same time. She’d told him all along that she’d give him free access to their baby, so did this mean he meant to make his visits more frequent? Another more frightening thought occurred to her. Did he mean to get permanent custody? He had the funds at his disposal, and the family support.
She shoved the idea from her mind as quickly as it had bloomed there. He’d never once spoken along those lines. Why would he start now? Her thoughts flew back to last Saturday night at the opening—to the exact moment she’d felt her world come inexorably apart, like a dandelion destroyed in a powerful gust of wind. She simply couldn’t go through all that again.
When they arrived at the house, he surprised her by parking in the garage rather than out front. She was even more surprised to see the red Cadillac gleaming under the overhead lights in the four-bay garage.
“You kept it?”
“I couldn’t let it go,” he answered simply as he lifted her from her seat and into his arms again. “A bit like you, really,” he added cryptically.
He carried her inside to the casual family room off the massive kitchen, and put her down on a long L-shaped couch in the corner.
“Stay,” he commanded, then wheeled around to the kitchen and went straight to the fridge, where he started pulling things out. In no time, he’d made a couple sandwiches on what smelled like freshly baked bread. He came back over to her and put a plate on her lap. “Eat.”
She looked at him in annoyance, tempted to tell him where to stick his sandwich. But her mouth watered at the sight of it and she knew she needed to eat. Heck, she wanted to eat this layered concoction filled with freshness and flavor.
Once she’d finished, he took her plate, poured a glass of mineral water and handed it to her.
“Yeah, yeah, I know. Drink,” she said, her voice dripping with sarcasm. This dictatorial side of Dylan was already starting to get old. “I am capable of taking care of myself, you know.”
He just looked at her, his derision clear in those blue eyes that seemed to be able to stare straight through her. She couldn’t hold his gaze. She might be capable of taking care of herself, but being capable and actually doing it had been two very different things.
“Things are going to change, Jenna,” Dylan said, once she’d drained her glass and he’d taken it from her. “You are too important to me to leave either your health or the baby’s to chance. You could have really hurt yourself in that fall, and what if it happens again?”
“It won’t. I’m more aware of how I’m feeling now, and despite what you might think, I plan to take better care of myself.” It’s just that everything else in the past two days has gotten in the way, she added silently.
“Planning isn’t good enough. You need more help if you’re going to look after yourself properly.”
“I know,” she admitted. It was something she’d thought about a great deal this morning. One other person could make all the difference.
“So you’ll hire more staff at the store.”
Jenna’s mind raced over the logistics of employing another full-time staff member—with wages, insurance and paperwork—and how that would upset her careful budget.
“At my expense—I insist on it,” Dylan continued.
“Oh, no,” she resisted firmly. What if he then decided to try to call all the shots when it came to her business? “Besides, it’s not that easy to find a good florist. They don’t just grow on trees, you know.” The ridiculousness of that statement struck her at about the same time it struck him, and they both laughed. The sound lightened the mood, clearing the air as if by magic. Jenna let her barriers down. It would be great to hire another florist, someone who was innovative with design, yet didn’t mind throwing together the traditional bouquets and arrangements that remained the backbone of her business.
“I’ll look into it,” she acceded.
“Thank you. I appreciate that you won’t just get some walk-in off the street, and that in a business the size of yours, finding the right person might take some time. Can you get a temp until you find the right one? Do they even have temps for this kind of work?”
“I’ll find out on Monday.”
“I could do that for you,” he offered.
“I said I’ll do it and I will.” She didn’t want to relinquish an ounce of control to him if she could help it. This was her business and while, yes, he had a very valid point about her needing help, she would be the one looking for that help. Not him. Besides, didn’t he have enough on his plate already? Jenna swung her feet to the floor and started to get up from the chair.
“Right, now that we have that sorted out, perhaps you could take me back to work.”
“No.”
Dylan stared back at her, his feet planted firmly on the floor and his arms crossed in front of him as if he was some kind of human barrier.
“Dylan, please. You’ve fed me, again. I’ve rested. Now I really need to get back.”
“We need to talk.”
“We’ve talked,” she pointed out. “And I’ve agreed to get more help at the store. I thought—hoped—that would settle your concerns.”
“On that score, yes. But there’s a whole lot we didn’t discuss last weekend that needs to come out in the open.”
Jenna felt a fist close around her heart. So, they were back to her father. Would she never be free of his crimes?
Dylan reached out and took her hands in his. “I reacted badly last Saturday. It hurt more than I wanted to admit when I learned you’d withheld stuff from me and in turn I hurt you back. I’m sorry for that. But I need to know everything. If you can be honest with me, Jenna, I believe we can work things out. Don’t you want to at least try?”
She studied his beautiful face for a long time. He looked tired, with lines of strain around his eyes and those parallel creases between his brows that told her he was still worried, deep down. Could she do it? Could she share her shame with him and come out on the other side intact? There was only one way to find out.
“Okay,” she said softly, dipping her head.
He let go of one hand to tip her chin back up again.
“Don’t hide from me, Jenna. Don’t ever hide.”
Tears filled her eyes, but she blinked them back and drew strength instead from the reassurance in his voice.
“At first it was okay when Dad packed us up and brought us here to the States. We settled in Austin, Texas, where he was originally from. He met a lady, fell in love, but when it ended he just packed us up again, and off we went, somewhere else.”
“It must have been hard, shifting around like that,” Dylan sympathized.
“It was. I’d just get settled somewhere and the same thing would happ
en all over again.” Jenna sighed. “I retreated into myself more and more, made friends less and less. His girlfriends started getting older and wealthier, and he started receiving more extravagant and expensive gifts from them. I would, too, because he always introduced them to me—maybe having me there in the background gave him some degree of respectability. They were usually nice to me, some more than others.
“One of them in particular, Lisa Fieldman, was especially lovely and she lasted the longest of all his girlfriends. There was a stage when I began to wonder—to even hope—they’d get married. That I’d have a mom again. She used to say she’d always wished for a daughter and that we’d do together very nicely.
“Lisa always had time for me and showed an interest in whatever I was doing. She even got my dad to come along to a school recital I was in when he’d never been to one before. I can still remember the big wink she gave me when I saw them in the audience. Lisa gave me a stock portfolio for my thirteenth birthday. She told me it would be something to fall back on—my ‘rainy day fund.’ I had no idea what that was and promptly forgot about it. I vaguely remember Dad trying to cajole her for control of it straightaway but she was adamant its management remain in the hands of her investment advisers. That was probably when Dad realized that she could see right through him. Despite that, I’m pretty sure she loved him, faults and all, but she wasn’t a complete fool and kept a pretty tight rein on her finances. Of course, by the time the penny dropped for Dad and he realized he couldn’t get any more out of Lisa, we moved on. It just about broke my heart. I’m pretty sure it broke hers.”
Jenna paused a moment to swipe at her eyes.
“Your dad sounds like a real piece of work.”
EXPECTING THE CEO'S CHILD Page 15