by Kat Cantrell
“All right.” He stepped back and let her through the door instead of sweeping her into his arms for yet another delirious and amazing session of being the sole center of Val’s attention. “That sounds ominous.”
But before she could unstick her tongue from the roof of her mouth to explain that she needed some time to get her feet under her, to figure out what she was doing with her coaching, her stomach rebelled.
Dashing past him, she barely made it to the bathroom before expelling the contents of her stomach. And then some. Ugh. She flushed the toilet and lay her burning cheek on the counter, heaving in great big gulps of air.
Stomach flu. Where had she got that? Or was it something she’d eaten?
Val’s face reflected his concern when she emerged, but he didn’t bat an eye, just hustled her into bed and made her chicken noodle soup from scratch with little corkscrew noodles that melted in her mouth. It tasted like something more than soup, but she was afraid to ask if he’d made it with love because what if the answer was no?
He settled onto the coverlet next to her in bed, but made no moves other than to stroke her hair as she finished the soup. “So the talking we have to do. Does it involve the reason you’re sick?”
With a short laugh, she lifted a hand in a half shrug. “I don’t know. Maybe. I’ve been tired a lot lately, so probably that’s why I caught this whatever-it-is. My defenses are down. But yeah. I was going to mention that we’ve been a whole lot crazy lately, and maybe we can slow down. Take stock.”
Val grew quiet for a long beat and then cleared his throat. “I thought you were going to tell me you were pregnant.”
Heat then cold bloomed in her chest at the same time, and she shuddered with the dual sensations that shouldn’t exist together. Oh, dear God. She couldn’t even think that word, let alone say it out loud. How he had she’d never know. “What? No. We haven’t even been sleeping together that long. Plus, we’ve used protection.”
Except for that one time the condom had broken that first weekend. They’d immediately ripped open another one and they’d been careful since then. She hadn’t even thought about it since.
He flashed a brief, not very amused, smile. “Hence the talking. I was bracing to hear it wasn’t mine.”
Wow. Were both of them on the lookout for secrets the other had been keeping? It was a bit of a revelation that he’d think of that. And care, apparently. “That would be so horrible, I don’t even know how to respond.”
A thousand emotions warred through his expression. “Does that mean you’d be okay with it if it was mine?”
“Geez, Val.” Her head started spinning and there was a real possibility that she might lose the chicken noodle soup if this conversation kept up. Mostly because the answer was a resounding yes. She could picture that baby perfectly, with his father’s dark hair and gorgeous smile. But they weren’t that serious. Were they? “Can we pick this up in the morning, maybe? I want to talk, I really do. But I’m not feeling so hot. I just want to sleep for a million years.”
“Sure.”
Val took her bowl and set it aside, then stroked her head until she fell asleep. Or so she assumed since, when she woke, it was dark and he lay next to her, snoozing, with his hand still tangled in her hair. She extracted herself carefully so she didn’t disturb him and wandered to the bathroom, happy at least that she didn’t feel like death warmed over so much at the moment.
Probably, she shouldn’t have taken a three-hour nap because now she was wide awake. Taking her phone in hand, she checked her email, while fetching a glass of orange juice from Val’s fridge. Fresh squeezed, it tasted divine on her parched throat, and she drank every drop as she scrolled through the emails. Most of them could be instantly deleted, but she filed the notification from her bank that LeBlanc had paid her monthly invoice. That was one of the benefits of sleeping with the boss: she always got paid on time.
That’s when her analytical brain kicked in and started doing the math. Dual hot–cold sensations exploded in her chest as she instantly recalled the date of the last time she’d been paid, which, naturally, was a month ago. And the same day as that Friday night Tina had canceled on her, allowing her to say yes to Val, spaghetti and the start of an affair that had led to this moment.
A month ago. Plenty of time for her to have gotten pregnant. There was no way. No way.
And yet...there was a way. Funny how she’d never have thought of pregnancy in a million years if Val hadn’t suggested it first.
She snagged her keys and let herself out of the house, then drove to the store wearing leggings and an old T-shirt that she’d dug out of one of the bags she’d left at Val’s house.
The whole process took less than fifteen minutes and, suddenly numb, she slid to the floor of his bathroom to await the results, slim white stick in hand. That’s where Val found her some indeterminate period of time later, long after the two pink lines had appeared.
As he crouched next to her, his expression grave, she waved the stick. “Guess we’re going to have that conversation after all.”
Thirteen
Sabrina held a positive pregnancy test in her hand. A positive pregnancy test. Sabrina was pregnant.
The swamp of emotions blasting through Val’s gut could not be quantified. Hope, panic, joy, uncertainty. No one thing jumped to the forefront as he sank to the floor to sit next to her.
“I’d dismissed the possibility of pregnancy from my mind after...” He swallowed as he recalled the exact point at which they’d cut off the conversation, once he’d stuck his foot in his mouth by bringing up the point that he might not be the one celebrating this news with her.
And now he had to wedge his foot firmly into his mouth.
“Sabrina.” He blew out a breath and forged ahead. “We can’t skip that part this time. Is there the remotest possibility that the baby is Xavier’s?”
She shook her head. “We never slept together.”
Then everything else was manageable. Hope and joy won out, flooding his heart with so much raw emotion that it pushed upward, leaking out through his eyes. “That’s...great.”
His voice stopped working, and he swallowed a few more times to no avail. Looked like he had no choice but to greet the news that he was going to be a father with happy tears.
“Is it?” She didn’t so much as glance at him in favor of staring at the white plastic stick clutched in her fingers. “I would have thought you’d be the last in line for a complication like this. I hate to force it, but this is the part where you have to tell me where our relationship stands.”
Last in line? Wait, she thought he was unhappy about this?
“Sabrina, look at me.” To help that along since she didn’t seem inclined to move, he cupped her jaw and brought her chin up, unable to keep a tender smile from curving his mouth upward. “We’re building a family. That’s what we’re doing. Unexpectedly, sure. But that doesn’t dilute the fact that we’re having a baby. Together. We’re a team. Nothing has changed.”
The rightness of it inundated him and, suddenly, it all clicked into place. The terms of the will had been difficult, challenging, archaic and unfair—but his father had unwittingly introduced the first step in the rest of Val’s life. This was hands down the best thing that had ever happened to him.
“Everything has changed,” she countered, her eyes huge and troubled as she nestled her cheek against one of his palms without even seeming to realize that she’d sought the comfort of his touch. “We don’t even live in the same house.”
He snorted. That was her concern? “Please. You sleep here ninety percent of the time. The address on your driver’s license is simply a formality. Change it. Today.”
“Are you asking me to move in with you?” A line appeared between her eyebrows as she processed that. “Because I was expecting something a little more...more to accompany that question.”
>
“Hell, no, I’m not asking you to move in.” He was botching this, likely because he’d never done anything remotely like this before, and of course Sabrina wasn’t going to hesitate to call him on it. That was one of her best qualities. “I’m asking you to marry me.”
Shock made her mouth drop open, and that’s when she pulled away from his hands. “Marry you? Val, that’s insane. No one gets married after dating for a month.”
His hands fell into his lap, and he let her go because what was he supposed to do, force her to let him touch her? Force her to feel the same way about him that he felt about her? “Yet we’re having a baby after dating for a month. Facts are facts. I don’t want my child raised anywhere but in my ancestral home. Call me old-fashioned, but I’d also like to be married to my kid’s mother.”
Sabrina slumped against the bathroom wall. Yeah, not the most ideal place for life-changing decisions, but he had to work with what he had. He’d like to tell her how much she meant to him, but she wasn’t giving him a whole lot of encouragement to continue spilling his heart all over her.
“Think about it,” he encouraged her. “We have eight months to get this worked out.”
She nodded, and the tight bands that had been squeezing his chest loosened somewhat. As long as Sabrina wasn’t going to run screaming into the night with his baby along for the ride, he could handle anything else she threw at him.
“I’m having a hard time imagining you in a long-term relationship,” she said.
Except that. Uncomfortable all at once, he shifted, and his own back hit the wall. Yeah, okay, so he’d never been in a long-term relationship. He’d never been the CEO of LeBlanc either, but he hadn’t burned the place down yet.
Somehow he didn’t think mentioning that was going to wipe away her very real concerns about an untried concept like Val being tied to one woman for the whole of his life. The fact that the concept filled him with a warm glow instead of panic was proof enough for him. He just had to figure out how to convince her of that.
“We have time to work through that too. Just don’t give up on the idea before then, okay?” She nodded again, and he pulled her into a long hug, burying his lips in her hair. “It’s going to be great, you’ll see.”
His mind spun as he contemplated all the ducks he had to line up in a row come sunrise. Engagement ring, first and foremost. Would it be out of line to combine that with a trip to Botswana? He’d love to present Sabrina with a diamond he’d pulled from the earth himself. Or was he overdoing it again?
Before he could even think about proposing to Sabrina for real, he had a very important meeting with Jada Ness to initiate. He owed it to his future wife and the mother of his child to draw a very firm line in the sand where other women were concerned. The handsy designer was the number-one place to start.
* * *
Getting Jada to agree to an appointment ended up being harder than Val had anticipated. He contemplated leaving her a voice mail, but he did have a thin thread of hope that he could firmly convince the woman to sign with LeBlanc regardless of whether she got side benefits or not.
The deal he’d worked up with Legal had pizzazz, and she’d get the winning hand out of the agreement. Val had made sure of that.
But she made him cool his heels for two days before she finally strolled through the door of his office, coolness cloaking her from the moment she appeared. No problem. He had lots of practice melting Sabrina’s ice. Jada wouldn’t be too tough a nut to crack.
“I’ve decided to forgive you,” she announced with fanfare, flinging a long vintage ermine scarf around her neck as she waltzed toward his desk. “For standing me up. But just this once.”
And the Oscar goes to... Val bit that back. But come on. Drama queen much? To be fair, he had been the one to cancel drinks with almost no notice and then busied them both with emails and options rather than using the personal touch she responded to. He should be thanking her for gracing him with her presence at all. “You’re too kind, Ms. Ness.”
“Jada,” she murmured and slid into the closest chair, crossing her legs carefully for maximum exposure. “I do hope we’re still friends.”
“We can do business together,” he told her, his voice steady as he slid the sheaf of papers toward her. “But that’s the extent. This contract is a bit more generous than we discussed, but I think you’re worth it.”
“There you go again, being charming.” She pursed her lips into the practiced pout that she seemed to favor. “It hardly seems fair that you then turn around and soundly dismiss the idea of being more than business associates. I have a fair amount of talent in certain—shall we say—areas. You don’t know what you’re missing.”
“I’m missing your signature on this contract. I’m recently engaged, so there’s no chance of anything more than a mutually beneficial business venture between parties.”
Jada snagged the contract, her sleeves rising to reveal sapphire-encrusted cuff bracelets on both arms, and stuffed it into her giant alligator bag. “You’re the most slippery male I’ve ever come across, Valentino LeBlanc. I’ll read over the contract, but don’t hold your breath. I’m still hoping you’ll honor our original agreement.” She rose and held out her hand, but to her side, forcing Val to skirt the desk in order to shake it.
He could afford to bend in this one instance. But the moment he clasped her hand, she pulled him closer, catching him in her embrace. The quick movement knocked them both off balance, and his arms came up around her automatically. Before he could correct his stance, she lifted her lips to his, almost connecting, but he turned his head at the last microsecond.
That’s when he realized they weren’t alone.
Sabrina was standing at the door of his office, her face devoid of color.
* * *
“Sabrina. Slow down.”
Val had followed her down four flights of stairs, God knew why. Sabrina had told him in no uncertain terms to leave her alone. Had he listened? No. Just like every other time she’d tried to tell him how she felt about something.
Except this time, her heart had cracked in two and fallen out of her chest to land in a heap on the carpet of his office. Every other time, she’d still cared somewhat. Now she didn’t. She’d known this was coming. Known. The fact that it was Val who’d betrayed hurt worse than anything she ever imagined.
Whirling at the base of the next flight of stairs, she confronted him, her index finger flying up to stab him in the chest. “I don’t want to hear what you have to say. Back off!”
“You do want to hear what I have to say,” he countered hotly, their voices echoing in the enclosed concrete stairwell. “Because what you saw is not what it looked like.”
Her laugh sounded hysterical even to her own ears. “Oh, my God. Do men pass around an excuse jar? Next time you need a good one, just pull out a slip of paper and use that?”
“It’s not an excuse—”
“Okay, I’ll bite, only to get you to stop following me. Please, Val. Tell me whatever lies you’d like me to believe about what was going on in your office. You had a beautiful woman in your arms. With the door closed. She was kissing you, and you avoided it by turning your head. Stop me when I get to the part where it wasn’t what it looked like.”
Oh, God. Another woman had put her hands on Val. If she’d had any question about how she felt about him, that scene had answered it. She was in love with him. Otherwise it wouldn’t hurt so much.
He scowled. “That’s exactly what was happening. If you know I wasn’t actively engaged in that kiss, then what is the problem? You’re clearly upset and—”
“You had a beautiful woman in your office with the door closed!” She pinched the bridge of her nose, furious with herself for even bothering to get emotional. “What if I hadn’t walked in? Would you have broken down and eventually kissed her? What about next time?”
“No!” he shot back. “And thanks for the trust, by the way. I specifically met with her to make it clear that I would never be interested in her. I did that for you.”
“Oh, no, don’t push this on me. We’ve been dating for a month. One would hope that you’d already made it clear that you wouldn’t be interested in her.” Some of the unease from earlier conversations about Jada filtered through her beleaguered senses. “But you hadn’t, had you? I overheard her mention an original agreement. I’m not daft, Val. I know what I saw, and she was disappointed that you weren’t coming on to her. What was the original agreement?”
Guilt flickered through his gaze and arrowed right through her heart. Funny, she’d have said there was nothing there to hurt. She’d be wrong.
Why was it always the same? She’d known going in that he wasn’t a one-woman man. But somehow she’d convinced herself that it was okay because they hadn’t made any promises. Until she’d gotten pregnant and he’d spilled all of those pretty words about getting married. That was a hell of a promise.
And she’d fallen for it. Actually believed that he’d done a complete turnaround because something momentous and unprecedented had happened. Was she destined to always fall for the same kind of man? Her stupid hormonal brain had actually convinced itself that marrying Val was a great idea, that it would all work out if she willed it hard enough to be so.
“There was no original agreement,” he snapped, his face like granite with no give. “She thought there was. But I never told her that was happening. I cannot believe that you’re upset I was having a business meeting with someone you’d pushed me to sign an agreement with. You weren’t even supposed to be here right now.”
That tipped her over the edge. Raw, sheer fury coursed through her blood, tightening her hands into fists. If he kept talking, she might drive one into his mouth. “Oh, my mistake. You’re right. This is all my fault. I’m too clingy and expect too much from the man who just proposed to me. Like propriety, even when there’s no chance of being caught. You can’t believe I’m upset? That proves that we’re not meant to be together.”