by Dani Collins
When his mouth settled on hers, lips firm and smooth and hot, her whole body grew charged with electricity.
This was her chance to take another step toward moving on, she realized with a flash of possibility. Indulging herself with Jun Li was liable to wipe her memory clean all the way back to her first kiss in grade school, but that was exactly what she needed.
The conscientious woman inside her, the one still longing for love, marriage and a baby carriage, warned that a man like him could set a bar that no other man could reach. He could destroy her without even meaning to.
She told that fearmongering voice to pipe down and kissed him back.
They kissed until they were both breathless. When he lifted his head, she discovered they were pressed together, arms wrapped tight around each other.
He licked his lips.
“How do you feel about being used in a rebound situation?” she asked before she could think twice.
“I feel great about it.” His expression relaxed into one of sensual anticipation. “I leave tomorrow morning.” His eyes narrowed as he gauged her reaction to that.
“So do I.”
“Let’s enjoy this day, then.”
CHAPTER ONE
Four months later, Singapore
EXACTLY AS SHE had back in April, Ivy accepted a flute of champagne with no intention of drinking it, even though her mouth was a desert. She held the glass to blend in while she got her bearings at a party where she only knew one person.
Actually, zero. Her quarry wasn’t here yet. She gave the dimly lit piano bar another nervous skim of her gaze—as if Jun Li was a man anyone could miss.
She belonged even less at this five-star Singapore hotel than she had at Kevin’s party. Jun Li’s guests were VPs and CEOs whose net incomes made Kevin’s circle look like burger flippers at a fast food joint.
Instead of her prim pink dress, she wore a cheongsam-inspired sheath with cap sleeves, its red shoulders fading to indigo at the knee-length hem. Was it noticeably tight around her middle? Yes, but it had always served her well at the banking functions she was forced to attend, so she’d worn it as a security blanket.
She had hoped it would work for what was essentially a corporate event, but it was too demure for a trophy wife and not chic enough for a female executive with stock options. Any minute she expected a caterer to hand her a tray of canapés and ask her to serve them to table five.
Everything about this was awful. She was bordering on stalking, coming all this way to ambush a man in front of his employees, but in the three weeks since she’d discovered her pregnancy, she’d had little luck reaching out through normal channels. Jun Li hadn’t given her his number, and his privacy settings on social media were locked down tight. A gauntlet of personal assistants and low-level managers had fobbed her off and shut her down, clearly judging her a schemer of some kind. She’d even asked a headhunter to nose around for jobs that might grant her an interview with him, but that process took forever, and this felt urgent. For both of them.
Truth was, she was still in shock and denial, somehow convinced it wouldn’t be real until she told Jun Li. She had to tell him before she revealed it to anyone else, but getting to him was nearly impossible.
She had resorted to calling Kevin. Aside from sending a wedding gift and regrets, she’d been avoiding him, not wanting to know whether Jun Li had told him they’d spent a night together. She wasn’t ashamed of their brief affair, but it was private. She’d done it for herself and wanted it to be a special memory that was between the two of them. She wasn’t up for any teasing over it. She wasn’t running around bragging that she’d bagged a billionaire. She’d be devastated if Jun Li was boasting about conquering her.
With all other avenues exhausted, however, she had screwed up her courage and invited Kevin for coffee, supposedly to discuss her career.
“You haven’t found the right fit yet?” he asked with surprise.
“I’ve been offered a position, but I’d like your take. I don’t know if it will be flexible enough in the long run.” That was true enough. Her entire life was changing, and she needed a position that would adapt to the needs of a single mother.
They sat down a few days later and warmed up with small talk about his upcoming wedding. It provided the perfect opening to bring up her real reason for seeing him.
“Who’s your best man? Jun Li?” She already knew he wasn’t.
“My brother. Jun Li can’t make it. Annual strategy meeting in Singapore.” Kevin had set down his coffee to side-eye her. “Why? Were you hoping to see him again? Carla thinks you two hooked up because you both left our party early.”
Ivy suffered an appalled moment of realizing she was being gossiped about, but it was obviously a joke. He didn’t really believe they had connected.
“Oh yeah, right,” Ivy scoffed after the longest, most agonizingly culpable silence. She hoped he read her nervous, blushing laughter as unrequited attraction, not guilt. “Every woman was throwing herself at him, but Tsai Jun Li, the Chinese billionaire, went home with me. Five minutes after we met.” She added an eye roll to really sell how outrageous the suggestion was.
Whether Kevin believed her or not, she didn’t know. She didn’t have the nerve to look him in the eye after that.
She should have confessed all and admitted, I really need help, but it felt like a gross breach of ethics to air one man’s private business to another.
After a moment, he had said, “You could do worse. You have done worse.” His voice was a lot more compassionate than his words. He knew all about her woes with Bryant.
Kevin had segued into asking about the job she’d been offered, and Ivy lost her chance to ask how Jun Li might react to her news.
She knew how he was going to react—with complete and utter disbelief. That’s why this felt like such a personal, delicate matter that needed to be discussed in person. A text or voice mail wouldn’t convince him and ran the risk of an assistant getting the news first.
If this wrap-up party had been more difficult to sleuth out, Ivy might have gone back to Kevin, but things had fallen into place very easily. The itinerary for the entire week had been on the corporate website, including the fact Jun Li was scheduled to present some awards tonight, recognizing the most innovative suggestions from the week’s meetings.
Ivy had extended the start date for her new job in Vancouver, finished moving and used points to book a package, arriving in Singapore yesterday.
At least she was getting a final vacation before settling into single motherhood, she thought dourly as she glared into her flattening champagne. Because it was looking as though Jun Li wouldn’t even show up—
A stir in the crowd brought her head up. She glimpsed him through the throng, and her heart stalled. Her knees went soft. She shifted so she had a better view of him, and her shoulders tensed so hard with nerves and jubilation, she could hardly breathe.
He seemed to stop time, pausing to survey the milling guests. He was still the most beautiful man Ivy had ever seen, and it was his superpower to seem completely unaware of his impact. In this faux candlelight, his complexion held a godlike bronze sheen. He wore a striped shirt, open at the collar, and a pair of tailored pants with a cuff, casually elegant and completely untouchable. Beyond her.
How had this pregnancy even happened? That’s what she was thinking as her shoes from the outlet mall pinched her feet and a woman approached him, curvaceous and stunning in a peacock-blue cocktail dress and an abundance of jewelry that Ivy instinctively knew was real.
Ivy couldn’t compete with that. Her gaze glued itself to him as she waited for him to notice her, half terrified, half thrilled to merely be in his orbit again while her heart tripped over itself with jealousy and loss. Her instinct was to crawl away. The last thing she wanted was a humiliating rejection in front of all these people.
If only she could take
heart from the fact Jun Li’s aloof expression didn’t change as he spoke to that other woman, but she’d found him very hard to read when she’d spent an afternoon and evening with him. As it turned out, he’d been seducing her the whole time, so he might be doing the same to that woman right now for all she knew. Perhaps he already had.
A small choke of agony left her at the thought. She felt tangled in barbed wire as she stood there. She wanted to rush away and hide, but if he was romantically involved with anyone, he ought to know what she knew.
There would be no convenient time to approach him. No easy way to say what had to be said. She had come all this way, and it was time to wade in before he was completely surrounded or disappeared.
As she started forward, her situation hit her as very tawdry. Not the one-night stand part. She had agreed to that and, even though it had stung that he hadn’t made any effort to reach out to her afterward, she accepted their time together as merely a fling.
No, the fact they’d been intimate but she was forced to go to these lengths so he could disbelieve and disregard her was eating her alive.
She was so focused on Jun Li, a touch on her arm made her jolt in surprise. A young man gave her a pained smile. “You’re not on the list.”
She could only stare blankly. He repeated it in Mandarin.
“You don’t know who I am,” she said, using her own flawless Mandarin.
“Exactly. I know every face except yours. Can you come with me, please?”
“No, I—” She glanced at Jun Li, digging in her heels. His attention was turned on that other woman, and he wasn’t even looking this way.
“Please don’t make a scene,” the young man said. His hand on her arm firmed.
Ivy had the panicked feeling of someone being pulled beneath the surface of a lake, certain she was about to drown.
She yanked her arm free and hissed, “Go tell him Kevin Chow’s friend Ivy needs five minutes.”
Dropping Kevin’s name gave the young man pause. After a wavering second, he said, “Wait by the elevator.”
She did, begrudgingly, and watched as he went to Jun Li to speak in his ear.
Jun Li’s head came up. His gaze seemed to hit her like a spear from across the room, deafening her to the din of conversation and the patter of piano keys. She couldn’t read anything in his body language. Was he pleased? Appalled? She didn’t know, but a hot sting of adrenaline shot to the ends of her fingers and toes, urging her to run while another part of her melted under his gaze.
She didn’t understand why she reacted to him this way, and it was ten times stronger now they had shared a night of passion. More.
Her hand twitched, wanting to protectively cover her middle, but that would be far too telling when people were turning their heads, picking up on where his attention had gone.
Jun Li flicked his hand in an unspoken, I’ll handle it. He left his group and wove unerringly toward her, expression inscrutable.
As he closed in, her lungs compressed and her insides began to tremble. His profound effect on her was not the thrill of catching a handsome, powerful man’s attention. It was a painful sting of raw fear because she sensed his irritation at her turning up this way.
This was a far more daunting man than the one she’d met in Vancouver—which she hadn’t realized was possible—but he still made her blood move like lava under her skin. Instead of basking in the glow of his attention, however, she felt spotted by an eagle. Picked apart. Naked.
It struck her that she’d gone to these ridiculous lengths so she could experience the soaring feeling of being in his presence again, but that had been a mistake. He was about to shoot her down, and the fall would be crippling.
“Ivy.” There was no warmth in his voice. There was no hostility, either, which made it worse. He conveyed annoyance that she was bothering him at work, but otherwise he was indifferent to her being here.
She had the sudden, horrifying sense that he wouldn’t have remembered her at all if she hadn’t just given her name to his PA.
It was a plunge into reality from a fantasy she hadn’t acknowledged. Deep down, she had imagined he might want to see her again. How incredibly foolish of her. He was supposed to have cured her of yearning for a man to bolster her sense of self-worth.
She cut off her anguished thoughts. The backs of her eyes were hot, and her throat wanted to close, but she forced herself to adopt her boardroom demeanor, the one she used when she had to deliver bad news. She was the person on staff everyone loved to resent. She had learned to wear a dispassionate veil to protect herself.
“I’m sorry to bother you,” she said in a level voice. “It was difficult to reach you without revealing why I need to speak with you. It’s a personal matter.”
His brows came together with genuine concern. “Kevin?”
“No.”
Just as quickly, comprehension washed over his expression along with weary cynicism. “If I gave you a wrong impression when we—”
“You didn’t.” She’d done that to herself and would scream her mortification into a pillow later. “I only need five minutes, but I have information you should have. It’s private,” she added as his assistant hovered behind him.
Jun Li drew a skeptical breath, looking like he wanted to rebuff her, but his gaze flickered over her. She was watching him so closely, trying so hard to read him, she caught the flash of something—memory? Hunger?
Whatever it was disappeared so quickly, it left a void inside her the way a detonation left a scorched crater in the earth.
He withdrew a card from his pocket and loomed close to her.
She was so disconcerted, so buffeted by his dynamic energy, she took a step back, not realizing he was only touching the call button near her hip. She practically fell through the doors when they opened behind her.
He caught her arm to steady her. “I’ll escort you down.” He guided her into the empty elevator and shook his head when the young man would have joined them. “How did you get up here?” he asked her as the doors closed.
By riding the elevator until she was motion sick and slipping into the ladies’ room ages before the greeters with their tablets and their gift bags had arrived. “Does it matter?”
“It’s my hotel. I’d like to know how my security was bypassed, yes.” He touched his card to the panel.
His hotel. Right. He wasn’t just some guy she’d slept with. He was the head of a Chinese infrastructure conglomerate with projects and investments worldwide. He didn’t have time for a lowly one-night stand to bend his ear. She ignored his question to blurt what she had come to say.
“Look, I know my coming here seems extreme, but—”
The floor didn’t drop. It went up, causing her to stagger again.
“Are you all right?” He frowned, and his hand returned to her elbow.
“I thought you were taking me downstairs.”
“I will. You said this was a private matter.” The doors opened almost immediately. He escorted her across a small foyer into a two-story mansion of a penthouse.
It was the kind of over-the-top luxury she’d only seen in reality shows about the rich and famous. He walked her down a spiral staircase made of glass into a living area where the wall of windows looked onto the colorful lights of Singapore against the night sky.
She was completely taken aback by the astonishing view and understated opulence of white leather sofas arranged to enjoy a fireplace that peeked through to an elegant dining room. There were modern art sculptures and abstracts on the walls, an area rug that had to be silk and chandeliers that had to be crystal.
“Drink?” he invited.
“I can’t, thank you.” She cleared her throat and dug deep in search of the woman she’d pretended to be that day with him. Experienced. Detached. This was a compliance error, she reminded herself. That’s all. “I’m n
ot here to attempt an extension of our...” Relationship? “Association,” she decided in a strained voice. “I only thought you should know that I’m pregnant.”
Her heart pounded so hard, she thought the whole building must be pulsating with the sound. Her skin felt hot, but clammy with sweat.
His expression didn’t change. “Congratulations?”
“It’s yours.”
His breath hissed out in a humorless snort while his shoulders slanted with fatalism. He gave a small shake of his head that asked Why are you wasting my time?
“Hear me out.” She held up a hand, noticed it was trembling and tucked it under her elbow, folding her arms defensively. “I broke up with my boyfriend last Christmas. You’re the only man I’ve been with since. Does this look like a full-term pregnancy to you?” She opened her arms to indicate the subtle curve in her middle.
It was nearing the end of July. She was seventeen weeks along, looking more like she’d been indulging at an all-inclusive buffet than pregnant.
“Whether you’re pregnant or not I couldn’t say...” His attention traversed all over her, like a paintbrush making several long, thorough strokes to leave a thick coat. When he dragged his gaze back to hers, his was sparking with heat that was smothered with cynicism. “You’re not the first woman to make a claim like this, you know. They don’t usually have the information I confided to you—”
“Don’t,” she warned, heart wrenched by the contempt she could hear in his tone. The one that censured her against being desperate and foolish. The one that said she had grossly overstepped by coming here.
She was used to powerful men dismissing her. The truth was often inconvenient, but this wasn’t a gray area in a policy or regulation that she was suggesting he abide by. It was way more personal than that. And even though she’d known he would react this way, it hurt to be accused of dishonesty. She might tell white lies, but she was dead honest when it came to life, death and tax implications.
She swallowed and hugged herself again.
“I’m not here to ask for money or a ring. I’m telling you because it’s information you deserve to have. I’m perfectly capable of raising this baby on my own and plan to.”