by Heidi Betts
“Yes,” she gasped when he began to pound into her. Long, sure strokes, as deep as he could go to bring them both to the keenest, highest peak of satisfaction.
He moved faster, thrusting in time with her rapid-fire murmurs of yesyesyesyesyes until the world tilted, an invisible surf crashed in his ears and everything washed away to nothing except the woman beneath him and the startling, intense, overwhelming pleasure rocketing through him like a meteor crashing to earth.
When he came down, Jessica was breathing rapidly against him, her body splayed on the mattress in proverbial rag-doll fashion.
Well, wasn’t he a heel. He’d enjoyed himself to the nth degree, but hadn’t bothered to make sure she’d reached her completion first. So much for being a gentleman.
Then she lifted her gaze to his, arms going around his neck while her fingers combed through his hair near the nape. And she smiled.
“Better than dessert,” she said just above a whisper.
Blowing out a relieved breath, he returned her grin before leaning in for a soft, lingering kiss. “Who says we can’t have both?”
Six
Jessica had been right about the resort’s desserts—they were delicious.
So how scary was it that she hadn’t enjoyed that indulgence nearly as much as getting naked and rolling around with Alex?
Three times.
After that first amazing encounter, they’d only made it to the bathroom for a quick potty break before somehow ending up back in bed, getting sweaty all over again.
An hour after that, Alex had regained enough strength to reach for the phone and call for room service. She’d told him it wasn’t necessary, that she wasn’t even particularly hungry anymore. At least not for food.
But he’d insisted. The dishes had been preordered, so the kitchen was simply waiting for his call to send them up. Besides, he’d said, no dinner date was complete without dessert.
She thought heart-stopping, pulse-pounding, coma-inducing sex probably qualified as a decent substitute.
The fruits and pastries, crèmes and sauces that he’d spooned and then hand-fed her had been pretty yummy, too, though. She’d especially enjoyed the bits he’d eaten off her bare skin, and then let her lick off his.
Which had led to that third and final incredible experience that had started on the sitting room sofa…and somehow ended on the very desk she’d snooped through earlier.
Afterward he’d picked her up and carried her back to bed. Good thing, since she’d been doing her best impression of a jellyfish by that point.
She’d drifted off, tucked snuggly against Alex’s solid warmth, his strong arm holding her close. And for a while she’d let herself pretend.
That it meant something.
That what they’d shared had a longer shelf life than expired milk.
That she wasn’t deceiving him and he hadn’t ruined her family.
But all too soon she came awake, reality slapping her hard across the face. Careful not to disturb him, she’d slipped from the bed, from his arms, and gathered her clothes, dressing as quickly and quietly as possible.
Tiptoeing from the bedroom, she moved through the sitting room, praying she could find her purse and get out before Alex noticed she was missing. Then she saw his briefcase, lying open on the coffee table. Frozen midstride, she stood staring at it, battling with herself over what to do next.
Should she turn around and leave, as she’d planned, ignoring the blatant invitation to snoop just a little more? Or should she peek, check to see if there was anything even remotely incriminating inside?
She felt like a dieter standing over a plate of fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies. Tempted. So very tempted.
With a quick glance toward the open bedroom door, she decided to risk it. Rushing forward, she put her clutch down beside the case and started riffling through the papers and manila folders.
It was too dark to see much, her eyes adjusting as best they could to the bit of moonlight shining through the French doors leading to the balcony.
As far as she could tell, it was more of what she’d found in the nightstand. Interoffice memos, contract notations, design sketches. Nothing worthy of fueling Erin’s proposed plan of corporate espionage.
Then, at the very bottom of the case, she spotted one final packet. Not a plain manila folder, but a darker manila envelope stamped with giant red block letters she couldn’t have missed, even if the room had been pitch-black: CONFIDENTIAL
Jessica’s heart stopped. It was sealed. Well, tied closed with a thin red string, at least. But it was obviously private, not meant to be viewed by anyone but Alex and other authorized Bajoran Designs personnel.
Sparing another glimpse toward the bedroom, she took a deep breath and hurried to untie the stringed closure.
She didn’t know what she’d been expecting…a treasure map or stack of secret security codes, maybe. Or maybe that was just her vivid imagination, replaying various scenes from her favorite action-adventure movies in her head while she pretended to be a poor man’s Indiana Jones.
But what she found was no more surprising than anything else she’d stumbled upon so far. A stack of papers labeled Proposed Princess Line, with sketches of a dozen or so fresh designs included. They were for earrings, necklaces and rings, all in matching sets with similar design elements.
Obviously these were suggested pieces for a new line Bajoran Designs intended to launch in the near future. Likely a multimillion-dollar business venture.
Jessica couldn’t have said what possessed her, but before she even realized what she was doing, she set the envelope under her clutch and replaced the other papers and folders inside the briefcase, making sure to leave it open exactly as she’d found it.
She was tired and maybe not thinking straight. But she would take the proposed designs with her to study more carefully in the safety of her apartment, and decide then whether or not to show them to her cousin.
With luck she could sneak them back into Alex’s briefcase in the morning when she cleaned his room, long before he even noticed they were gone.
Pushing to her feet, she grabbed her purse and the envelope and rushed to the door, careful not to make a sound as she slipped out of Alex’s suite, leaving him sleeping peacefully and hopefully none the wiser.
Seven
One Year Later
Alexander made his way down the hall toward his office with his nose buried in the company’s latest financials. Not bad for a year when the country’s economy was pretty much in the toilet, but he suspected they would have done better if someone else hadn’t gotten the scoop on their Princess Line.
A deep scowl marred his brow. It had taken him a while to figure out, but now he knew exactly who was responsible for that little betrayal, too.
He was digging into his anger, mentally working up a good head of steam, when a peculiar sound caught his attention. Pausing midstride, he tilted his head to listen. Heard it again.
The unfamiliar noise seemed to be coming from the conference room he’d just passed. Backing up a few steps, he glanced through the open doorway.
His arms, along with the papers he was holding, fell to his sides. He blinked. Shook his head and blinked again.
He knew what he was seeing, and yet there was a part of his brain that refused to function, that told him it couldn’t be what he thought it was. Obviously he was imagining things…but did illusions usually come with full surround sound?
The noise he’d heard earlier came again. This time he identified it easily, mainly because the source of that sound was sitting right in front of him.
In the center of the long conference table that was normally filled with high-ranking Bajoran Designs’ employees sat a white plastic crescent-shaped carrier. And in the carrier, lined with bright material covered in Noah’s ark cartoon animals, sat a baby.
A baby.
In his boardroom.
While the child continued to kick his legs and coo, Alex double-checked to b
e sure the room was empty. It was. No mother or father or grandparent or nanny in sight.
Stepping out of the room, he looked in both directions up and down the hall. It was completely deserted.
Since this was the floor where his office was located, it tended to be quiet and not heavily trafficked. Just the way he liked it. The majority of Bajoran Designs’ employees were stationed on other floors of the building.
But that didn’t mean someone wasn’t visiting, child in tow. He couldn’t say he thought much of their parenting skills, considering they’d left what looked to be their months-old infant completely unattended on a tabletop.
“Rose!” he shouted down the hall toward his personal assistant’s workstation. He couldn’t see her from where he was standing, but knew she would be there. She always was. “Rose!”
“Where’s the fire?” she asked in an exasperated voice, coming into sight as she headed his way.
He ignored her tone. Having worked together for years, they knew each other better than some husbands and wives. He might be demanding and short-tempered at times, but Rose was twenty years his senior and only let him get away with so much before putting her foot down.
Rather than responding to her question, he pointed a finger and asked one of his own. “What is that?”
Rose paused beside him in the doorway, blinked once and said, “It’s a baby.”
“I know it’s a baby,” he snapped. “What is it doing here?”
“Well, how should I know?” Rose replied, equally short. “I didn’t put it there.”
A beat passed while Alex ground his teeth and struggled to get his growing outrage under control.
This was getting him nowhere. His secretary might be a woman, but she apparently wasn’t teeming with maternal instincts.
Fine. He would handle the situation himself.
Stalking forward, he turned the baby carrier slightly to face the child head-on. Cute kid. Alex couldn’t say he—or she—was any more or less cute than any other baby he’d ever seen, but then, he didn’t pay much attention to children one way or another. They were—in his opinion—smelly, drippy, noisy things, and he didn’t know why anybody would want or purposely set out to have one of their own.
Which still didn’t explain why somebody had left this one in his conference room.
The baby smiled and blew a tiny spit bubble as it kicked its feet, sending the carrier rocking slightly. That’s when Alex noticed the piece of paper tucked beneath the safety strap holding the infant in place.
Careful not to touch the baby any more than necessary, he removed the paper, unfolded it and read.
Alex—
I know this will come as a shock, but Henry is your son. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about him before now, but please don’t hold that against him.
As much as I love him, I can’t keep him with me any longer. He deserves so much more than I can offer right now.
Please take care of him. And no matter how you feel about me, please tell him that I love him very much and never would have left him if I’d had a choice.
It was signed simply “Jessica.”
Jessica. Madison? Mountain View Jessica Madison?
The timing was right, he would admit that much. And he hadn’t forgotten a single thing about their encounter, despite the year that had passed since she’d sneaked out of his hotel room—his bed—in the middle of the night.
A muscle ticked in his jaw as he clamped his teeth together more tightly than nine out of ten dentists would probably recommend.
She’d left without a word, which was bad enough. But it wasn’t until later, much later, that he’d discovered the proposed designs for his company’s Princess Line were also missing.
It hadn’t taken more than three seconds for him to realize she’d taken them. That she’d apparently been some kind of spy, either sent by a competing corporation or come on her own to ferret out Bajoran Designs secrets.
And she’d found herself a doozy, hadn’t she? He might be CEO of the family business, but it had been none too comfortable standing in front of the Board of Directors and explaining that he’d lost the Princess Line prospectus. Not just lost them, but had them stolen out from under him by what he could only assume was the competition.
Not that he’d told them the whole truth. He hadn’t wanted to admit that he’d let himself be seduced and then robbed. He’d also hoped to get to the bottom of the theft on his own before coming totally clean. Which is why he’d talked them out of taking legal action or filing an insurance claim.
But he’d seethed for months. And though no one had said anything to his face—no one would dare, unless they had a death wish as well as a desire to be on the unemployment line—he knew he’d lost a certain amount of respect from his colleagues.
He wasn’t sure which bothered him more—that, the loss of revenue for the company or his apparent gullibility at the hands of a beautiful woman.
Now, just when he’d finally begun to get his impromptu affair with Jessica the Chambermaid-slash-Evil Seductress out of his system and memory banks enough to focus more fully on the theft itself, here she was again. Popping into his life and claiming he’d fathered her child.
Not a single fiber of his being told him he could believe the note in his hand. If it was even from Jessica…or the woman he’d known as Jessica. After all, he had no proof that was her real name. Or that she’d actually written this letter…or that this was really her child…or that this was really his child.
Even so, he found himself studying the infant’s features. Was there any hint of himself there? Any hint of Jessica?
“Call security,” he told Rose without bothering to look in her direction. “Tell them to search the building for anyone who doesn’t belong—especially a lone woman.”
A lone woman with a streak of wild blue in her blond hair and eyes the color of smoky quartz. He thought the words, but didn’t speak them.
“I also want to see the video footage from this floor.”
Wrapping his fingers firmly around the handle of the carrier, he lifted the child off the table and marched away, certain his orders would be followed to the letter.
“I’ll be in my office.”
* * *
What the hell was he supposed to do with a baby?
At the moment, he was pacing a hole in the carpet of his home office, bouncing the squealing, squalling infant against his chest and shoulder. He still wasn’t convinced this was his son, but the evidence certainly did point in that direction.
Security had searched Bajoran Designs’ entire building—including the floors and offices that had no affiliation with the company. Nothing.
Then they’d reviewed the security tapes from Alex’s floor, as well as the building’s main entrance. Sure enough, there had been a woman who rang all kinds of bells and whistles for him.
She’d been wearing sunglasses and a knit cap pulled down over her ears, the collar of her denim jacket flipped up to cover as much of her features as possible. But her attempts at anonymity couldn’t conceal the blond curls peeking out from beneath the cap, the high cheekbones holding up the shades or those lips that reminded him of sinful, delightful things better shared in the dark of night.
So while he couldn’t say with one hundred percent certainty that the woman on the security tapes—toting a baby carrier on the way in but not on the way out—was the Jessica he knew from Mountain View Lodge, it was sure as hell looking that way. Which meant this could be his child.
According to Rose’s best nonmaternal guess, she pegged the infant to be three or four months old. And given that he’d spent the night with the child’s alleged mother a year ago… Yeah, the timing was more right than he cared to contemplate.
The question was: What did he do now?
Rose had been no help whatsoever. She’d told him to get himself some diapers and formula, and then take the baby out of the office because his coos—which were headed much more toward fussing by that poi
nt—were getting on her nerves.
Not having a better game plan, he’d done just that. Called his driver and ordered him to stop at the nearest grocery store on the way home.
Normally, he’d have sent his housekeeper out for baby supplies—and he probably still would. But at that very moment, he’d somehow known that he shouldn’t wait much longer to have food for this kid’s belly and clean Pampers on his bottom. Babies, he was quickly learning, were both demanding and smelled none too fresh after a while.
Thank God a clerk had come to his aid and pointed out a dozen items she insisted he couldn’t do without. He’d been in no position to argue, so he’d bought them all.
No matter how rich he was, however, he learned the hard way that he couldn’t snap his fingers and get a nanny to appear on his doorstep within the hour. He’d tried—asked Mrs. Sheppard to call every nanny placement agency in the city and offer whatever it took to have someone at his estate that night. She’d run into nothing but one stone wall after another.
No one was available on such short notice, and even if they had been, the agencies insisted he had to go through the official hiring process, which included filling out applications and running credit and background checks. He’d gotten on the phone himself and tried to throw his weight around in a way he rarely did, but suspected that had simply bumped him to the bottom of their waiting lists.
In a growing series of things that were just not going in his favor today, it turned out Mrs. Sheppard was no more maternal than Rose. The minute she’d spotted him walking through the door carrying a whimpering child, she’d scowled like a storm cloud and firmly informed him with more than a hint of her usual Irish lilt that she “didna do babies,” hadn’t signed on to care for children and wasn’t paid well enough to start now.