Baby for Sugar Daddy: A Secret Baby Romance (Heartstring Dating Agency Book 6)

by Lauren Wood

  “No, in theory…not impossible,” I nodded, thinking it over. “But we would be on our own. Your father wouldn’t have much to offer beyond a little advice here and there. And of course his name on the whole thing paves the way for us.”

  “I don’t know what my father has told you about me, but I’m a shark.” She leaned back in her chair, crossing her arms, a maiden of steel. “There’s no doubt in anyone’s mind about what I can accomplish once I have my first corporation under my belt. I just need it all to play out as proof. And from what I’ve grown up hearing about you…You’re no different. We’re kindred spirits. You know, most companies are lucky to get one big tycoon like us. Heartstring is getting two—three if you count my father.”

  “Jack and Lucas hold their own,” I noted.

  “Which is what got them to where they are…along with the other Meadows siblings. I have no doubt we’d assemble a forceful team of our own to back us up.”

  God, there was something so sexy about talking business with her. In my sex life, I never shit where I eat. I didn’t touch women I worked with, and I prefered to keep the two separate. I had no idea that batting ideas and aspirations back and forth with a woman over dinner could give me such a rush. My cock was already twitching in my suit pants—struggling not to react to the sexual thrill I was getting from the combination of sex appeal and ambitious work drive all wrapped up in one delicious little package…which was so very much off-limits.

  The time slipped away as we got lost in our talk about the big new deal—which we were both completely sold on. At some point, the conversation drifted from business to more casual things.

  “You were there the year my father dressed as Santa and nearly caught his beard on fire on a cinnamon candle because he had too much scotch, right?” She laughed, sipping her third cocktail and swirling her fork through her half-eaten creme brulee.

  “He was still crying out ‘ho ho ho!’ even as he was rushing to put it out,” I laughed at the memory of one of the infamous annual Whitaker family Christmas parties.

  “And Mom!” she squealed, dabbing tears away from her eyes with her napkin. “Swatting his ass with a blanket to try and help!”

  I blew out a big breath to try and regain myself from laughing so hard. “It’s easy to forget sometimes…that you were there for all of that.”

  “I was invisible to you,” she smirked.

  “You were fifteen,” I grumbled, tilting my glass in the air. I was almost bitterly resentful over just how not fifteen she was now.

  She smiled back and swirled her own glass in the air before finishing off the last of it. The diamond ring on her hand sparkled in the light—hypnotizing me right along with her entrancing glare.

  I knew that look in her eye, and it was trouble. If I were with any other woman over dinner and drinks, it would be game on. But with her I had to resist…no matter how hard it was.

  The waiter came by with the check, which I was quick to grab up and pay.

  “I can pay,” she offered, reaching to dig her wallet out of her purse.

  “You’re a recent college grad,” I argued. “It’s my job to pay. And anyway—I’m making it a work expense. Our first official company dinner meeting.”

  “I’m going to want to see our records of those expense charges,” she said coyly. “I don’t abide cocky male executives using the company’s bank account to woo women and buy them expensive dates all over town.”

  “What makes you think I’d do something like that?”

  She leaned back again with that graceful, yet aggressive air to her—like she was so certain about everything. Especially her hunches about me.

  “I know men like you,” she replied. “I’ve been around you my whole life, remember? Not just you specifically…but all of my father’s arrogant business associates.”

  “So, you think I’m cocky and arrogant? And a womanizer?” I huffed, acting flirtatiously wounded.

  “Am I wrong?” she arched her brow.

  I tilted my head and smirked. Thankfully, the waiter returned with the check for me to sign just in time. Anymore witty banter and I’d lose all resolve. It was like another round of foreplay to me, and I could see it obviously was for her too. Maybe she was good at playing those sorts of games and knowing when to quit before she was in too deep—but I couldn’t say the same for myself. Not with the way she had me feeling.

  Cat didn’t stop shooting me those tempting glances the rest of the way out. She kept her seductive eyes trained to me as I pulled out her chair and led her out of the restaurant. I called my car around, but stopped just before getting in.

  “The car can take you home to your fiance,” I announced regretfully.

  “You’re not leaving the strip?” she hesitated.

  “No, I’m going to hit the gym on the way home.”

  “Get in. I don’t mind dropping you off first,” she commanded.

  I let out a sigh. “No, really. It’s okay. It’s a nice night. I think I’m going to walk. It’s not far and it’ll be a good warm-up.”

  She wrinkled her face and stared me up and down. “You’re in a suit,” she scoffed before turning to look off at the clouds in the distance. “And it looks like it’s going to rain.”

  I shook my head and flashed a smile. “Goodnight, Cat.”

  “Suit yourself,” she answered before climbing into the back of the car.

  I stood on the sidewalk as she drove off, and clicked my tongue—thinking to myself what a shame it all was. I couldn’t remember the last time a woman had me so riled up, so of course it just had to come from a woman I could never possibly have. Not because she was out of my league. That’s what made it sting so bad. The two of us were rare birds and in a league of our own.

  No, I couldn’t have Cat for much worse reasons than that. I let out another sigh and started off down the sidewalk. I didn’t mind the walk—even in my leather shoes. But of course it had to start pouring rain when I was two blocks from the gym. I ran inside and immediately went to my locker where I kept an extra bag and changes of clothes for random, unfortunate circumstances such as these.

  After drying off and getting changed, I went to the bench press and started trying to blow off all the steam and pent up tension. With every lift of the weights, I puffed out a gush of air and reminded myself why I had to get my urges under control.

  It wasn’t just her fiance or her father that were big red flashing lights telling me to pump the breaks. I needed this deal to go through. I wasn’t in financial distress by any means, but I also hadn’t accomplished everything I had hoped to by this point in my career. If I was going to live up to Mark Whitaker’s standards and teachings—I needed us to purchase Heartstring without anything putting the deal in jeopardy.

  4

  Cat

  I was reeling the whole way back to my apartment, laid out in the backseat of the car. My skin was on fire from all those touches and glances from Jordan Ashford. My teenage lust for him was still just as capable of consuming me as it had been all those years before. I had thought I’d be more immune to it now—but apparently not.

  It was more than just how good he looked. There was a chemistry that sparked between us that made my stomach flutter with butterflies like I was fifteen all over again. Only this time around, my Dad hadn’t been watching us, stifling all of my true thoughts and desires.

  The closer we got back to my place, the harder I worked to get myself under control. I couldn’t go back to Drew while my mind was still being ruled by Jordan…my mind and my libido, at that.

  I sucked in deep breaths…inhale, exhale. Pulled out my mirror and put on some lip gloss, fanning myself to try and get rid of the obvious blush that had spread across my cheeks and chest. Even after trying to fix myself up and lingering in the door of the car to calm down, I struggled to force myself out onto the sidewalk and into the lobby.

  Thankfully, the elevator provided one final buffer to push all of those wicked, dirty thoughts down. But tha
t did nothing to erase the awkward smile on my face when I walked in.

  “Hey, babe,” Drew called out casually from the kitchen as he ate takeout and read stock updates on his phone, leaning against the kitchen counter.

  “Heeeeyyyy!” I called right back, sounding way too eager.

  I winced, knowing I had blown it.

  His face wrinkled as he shot me a strange grin. “What’s gotten into you?”

  “It’s raining outside,” I blurted. Maybe my flustered state could pass as me just being cold. Even though I really had the opposite problem. I was blazing with heat from my core out to every limb, right down to the tips of my fingers.

  “You poor thing,” he offered. He went into the hallway closet and pulled out a towel to wrap me in. “You must be freezing.”

  “I just…I need a hot bath, I think.” That’s it. That was the solution. Another quick escape. One where I could be naked and alone with my thoughts.

  “I ordered your favorite,” he pointed towards the extra boxes on the table.

  “Oh, thanks, but I already ate.”

  “I thought you had lunch after your meeting today,” he questioned. “Did you have a dinner meeting I didn’t know about?”

  “Uh…it turned into a dinner meeting,” I stammered. “You know how my dad gets when he starts rambling on about an exciting new deal.”

  His face melted in understanding, because he really did know how my dad was. Which only made me feel more guilty.

  All the more reason to quickly slink off into the bathroom, shutting and locking the door behind me. Drew was all too happy to be free to go back to his stocks and financial news updates.

  I was feeling somewhat better a couple of hours later—once I was freshly bathed, relaxed, cuddled up in bed in my sweats. I flipped through a book that had been on my nightstand for weeks, even though I could barely take my mind off work long enough to focus on actually reading. Of course that night it was somewhat of a relief to have something else fighting for my mental energy.

  Drew was flipping through a book of his own, but with a pen in hand. In the evenings, he scribbled down all the notes he could from that evening’s latest financial news—anything that would be relevant to his clients that he wanted to remember the next morning.

  My own phone was resting in between us in the sheets—an ordinary occurrence that I didn’t give much thought to until it dinged with a message from him.

  The moment Jordan Ashford’s name flashed across the screen, my hand lurched for the phone, and it was hardly subtle.

  “Who’s that?” Drew smirked with the same curious baffled expression he shot me when I first came in and fumbled through explaining my lunch-turned-dinner.

  “My dad’s partner,” I blurted, shielding the screen from his view as I read the text.

  Jordan: Tomorrow at noon. My office. Lawyers and paperwork. Should be exciting.

  I felt a warm, gooey feeling rise up in my chest and spread across my lips in a smile. The sensation was brought on for a number of reasons. One—Jordan now had a reason to message me regularly, and would be doing so for the foreseeable future. Two—the idea that I couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic or not melted me inside. No one appreciated a good dose of sarcasm more than me. But if he really did get a thrill from drawing up the initial paperwork for our deal, no matter how dull and tedious it was sure to be, then we had far more in common than I realized.

  “Jordan Ashford,” Drew groaned, practically rolling his eyes.

  I snapped my eyes over to him with daggers. “What? Why do you say it like that?”

  “You forget what you drunkenly confessed to at my friend Jordy’s dinner party,” he replied dryly. “We played that stupid game of truth or dare after we ate, and you admitted to having a huge crush on him when you were a teenager.”

  “So what?” I scoffed. “Truth or dare isn’t dumb. I think it’s fine, which is why I actually participated…unlike somebody,” my eyes burned into him. “I remember perfectly well what I said, and I don’t see a reason to be ashamed over hormones I felt in highschool. He’s an old man, my dad’s partner, and obviously I have no interest in him now.”

  I swallowed hard, amazed by how easy it was for me to tell one lie right after another. I knew I had to cut things off quick before Drew had a chance to poke holes in anything I said.

  But first, my fingers quickly fired off a reply.

  Cat: Can’t wait.

  I tossed my phone to the nightstand and quickly turned off my lamp before turning to give Drew a quick peck on the cheek.

  “Goodnight,” I sighed as I rolled over to my own side of the bed, pulling the covers over me tight.

  I wondered if this was a good time to consider how infrequently we had been having sex lately, which seemed like a bad sign for two people set to get married next June. Wasn’t it too early for our honeymoon phase to be over? We hadn’t even had a honeymoon yet, or the wedding for that matter. Was the lull in our sex life to blame for my renewed, uncontrollable sexual attraction to Jordan? Or was I only thinking about it now to excuse said attraction?

  The questions overwhelmed me enough to make me eager for sleep. I dozed off quickly, and woke up to the relief of having the apartment all to myself. Drew always left early for the gym before going into the office. I often woke up just as early to join him or go for a run. But on that morning, I only seemed to have enough energy to devote to the thought of seeing Jordan again.

  Seeing him had done more than just sent longings of a horny teenage girl intensity surging through me. It had also rolled back my age in a number of other ways, like my sudden need to obsess over what I wore and how I looked…for him. Had I slipped into some kind of time machine? Not even the hottest boys at my highschool had inspired this kind of silliness in me.

  But like some kind of slave to the urge, I primped and preened in front of my bedroom mirror—smoothing down every last wrinkle and crease in my pencil skirt, pasting down every flyaway frizzy hair, and readjusting my push-up bra around my boobs to show the most possible amount of office-appropriate cleavage.

  Finally, I was looking good and set off to Jordan’s office. My heart pounded as I walked in—particularly because I wasn’t sure if my father would be joining us that day.

  “Here she is,” Jordan smiled as I walked in. He jumped straight into introducing me to his team of lawyers around the table, and from there we went straight into analyzing every last word and figure in the mountains of paperwork of legal drafts spread out on the table before us.

  The quick start to the work, and the never ending piles of it that consumed the rest of the day, actually made it easier to forget that Jordan was in the room. I wasn’t some sex-crazed bimbo who only cared about men—even if we were talking about him. I had a brain and a career path I loved—which was about to take a huge turn if everything went according to plan. With a job to do, I was focused and happy. Ashford, smashford…I mocked in my head. If only I could figure out how to master that kind of thinking in the rest of my life.

  But the hours waned on until there was nothing left for the lawyers to do until we had thoroughly reviewed everything along with their changes and suggestions. Given our tight proposed timeline and the need for perfection, Jordan and I didn’t even pause to question whether or not we’d be staying late to get it done. It was obvious and didn’t even need to be said out loud. We settled in for the night.

  At one point, as the sexual tension was slowly, silently building in the room between us again now that we were alone, he tossed a menu into the middle of the table.

  “That’s the menu from my favorite Chinese place around the corner. Look it over and tell me what you want. I’ll put in an order.”

  “I don’t need to look over a menu for Chinese takeout,” I smirked. “I’m used to all nighters and I know my takeout all too well.”

  His eyes met mine with a smile that slayed me inside. It was absurd how easily he could unravel me. I realized all at once that we’d b
e working alone together late into the night. No one else was around, including my father and my fiance…or anyone else we worked with. Working late nights always made me a little squirrely as it was, with any good looking guy. I quickly realized extra provisions would be needed to ensure I behaved.

  “How about Indian?” I chirped suddenly. Indian food on a stomach full of coffee would guarantee that absolutely nothing sexual would be happening that night…no matter how bad either of us wanted it to as the hours went on. Insurance, I thought.

  Two hours later, my eyes were starting to burn, and the sustenance from our Indian takeout was wearing off.

  In fact, it almost instantly seemed to vanish as he circled around from behind and pointed over my shoulder, leaning in far too close and caging me in with his hot, muscular body.

  “That figure is far too low,” he said with certainty.

  I smiled wide, realizing he was right. “I’m never going to argue with more money.”

  “Unless we’re the ones paying it out,” he countered.

  God, he was smart and good at what he did. It only made him more irresistible, as if that was even possible.

  “Shit, it’s almost midnight,” he hissed, glancing at the clock on the wall. “Don’t you need to call your fiance and let him know you’ll be late? You don’t want him to worry.”

  “He’s not going to worry,” I snipped. “What about you? You don’t have some hot date waiting up for you?”

  “No, which is how I like it,” he smirked. “I’ve seen too many men over the years get caught in that old conundrum of knowing they need and want to work later, but realize their wives will be pissed if they do. Those poor guys can’t win. They’re always letting someone down…if not their families, then their co-workers. And in both cases…they let down themselves.”

  I crossed my arms and narrowed my eyes. “Guys like my dad, you mean?”

  He shook his head. “Mark was never like that. Hell, your mom dropped you off at the office when he was working late plenty of times. You liked hanging out with him while he worked. That’s why you are the way you are,” he teased.