The Boss's Baby Bargain

by Karen Sandler

  Giving the menu a cursory glance, he set it aside. His gaze kept straying to Inez as if he couldn’t quite help himself. Even as his obvious infatuation cheered Allie, her heart ached over the mess that was her relationship with Lucas.

  “Do you and Inez know each other well?” Allie asked.

  “What?” He snapped his head back toward Allie as Inez disappeared into the kitchen. “No. Just through Lucas. Actually, I hadn’t seen her for years until the rehearsal dinner.”

  Allie reached for her water glass, took a sip, then set it down, the condensation chilling her hand. “I hope you don’t mind talking to me a bit about Lucas.”

  John fixed his dark-brown gaze on her. “If sharing my insights about him can help things between you two, I’m sure Lucas wouldn’t mind.”

  Allie suspected Lucas would mind very much, but she was desperate to get some insight into the moody, tortured man she’d married. “First tell me about the Calderas. How does he know them?”

  John’s eyes widened in surprise. “He hasn’t even told you that much?” Shaking his head, he picked up his knife and tapped it against his other hand. “Lucas spent a large part of his childhood in foster care. He lived with the Calderas for several years until he turned eighteen.”

  The revelation didn’t shock Allie, but the fact that Lucas had kept it from her did. “Why wouldn’t he tell me? It was obvious Mrs. Caldera meant a great deal to him. Why wouldn’t he introduce her as his foster mother?”

  John sighed, setting aside the knife and locking his fingers together. “I’m not sure. He’s only told me bits and pieces about that part of his life.”

  “What has he told you?”

  John shrugged. “He never knew his father. His mother drank so he went to foster homes when she couldn’t take care of him. His mother died when he was young—nine or ten.”

  Each detail John added knotted Allie’s stomach tighter. “How did she die?”

  “I’ve never asked.”

  Allie doubted Lucas would answer. “And what about the scar?”

  John looked uncomfortable for a moment. “An accident. That’s all he would tell me.”

  Wrapping both hands around her water glass, Allie gripped it like a lifeline. “Why hasn’t he told me any of this, John?”

  John’s gaze dropped to his linked hands. “What I know about Lucas I’ve drawn out of him over a period of years. Anytime I’ve probed too deep, he’s told me the past has nothing to do with who he is now, so he sees no point in discussing it.”

  “But it has everything to do with who he is now,” Allie protested. Frustration boiled inside her. “Why does he lock himself away from his friends, the people who care about him?”

  “Honestly?” John took a long drink of water. “Control. As a child, he could control nothing. Everything in his life was decided by others. Now, as an adult he controls everything, from TaylorMade on down to his own emotions. If he loses control…”

  Whatever else John might have said faded away as Inez approached with her order pad in hand. Diminutive but voluptuous, Inez managed to give Allie a warm welcoming smile and John a haughty scowl in nearly the same breath.

  She pointedly focused her attention on Allie. “Can I bring you the special today? We served it to your guapo husband week before last when he came in for lunch.”

  Allie felt as if she’d had the breath knocked out of her. Lucas had been in town? He’d come and gone without seeing her? She looked up at John, saw the sympathy in his dark-brown eyes. “Did you know…” she asked him.

  He studied his well-manicured hands. “He called me.”

  Swallowing past the hurt, Allie forced a smile for Inez. “The special sounds good to me.”

  Inez turned to John, cocking her hip. “What about you, guero? La especialidad de la casa?”

  The heat steaming between the two could have started the water simmering in their glasses. When the silence stretched out, Allie cleared her throat loudly to capture their attention.

  “The special’s fine,” John said, nearly toppling the water glasses when he slid the menus across the table. “Not too hot, please.”

  Her equanimity recovered, Inez smirked at John. “Wouldn’t want to burn that guero tongue.”

  As Inez walked away, John ran his hand over his neat blond hair, clearly agitated. Allie smiled, grateful for the chance to focus on something other than her own problems.

  “So what’s going on between you two?”

  John’s eyes went wide. “Nothing. Me and Inez?” He barked a laugh. “Nothing.”

  “But you’d like there to be,” Allie guessed.

  John shook his head. “We’re about as ill-suited as two people could be. I’m a lawyer, she hates lawyers. She likes Latino men, I’m not Latino. Even worse, I’m rubio—blond.” Even as he spoke, John’s eyes strayed to Inez as she delivered an order to a table across the room.

  “Have you asked her out?”

  “What?” John turned back to Allie, registered her question. “Hell, no. She spent the entire night of the rehearsal dinner telling me every lawyer joke she knows. I wouldn’t be so much of a masochist as to ask her out.”

  Allie dropped the subject, returning her thoughts to her husband. During their brief engagement, in the short time they’d been married, she’d always felt one step behind Lucas, with her heart always on the defensive.

  She considered what John had said—how crucial it was for Lucas to maintain control. Her own father had been much the same, although French Dickenson saw the iron fist as a man’s birthright. Raised by a tyrannical father himself, French felt a man’s place in society required he control the women in his family—his wife, his daughters. Thank God he hadn’t passed that arrogance on to Stephen, or Anne might never have married him.

  Without even meaning to, she’d fallen into the same pattern with Lucas she’d always followed with her father. Out of a desire to keep everything on an even keel, to avoid the outbursts she dreaded, she’d accepted Lucas’s actions without questioning them.

  She’d let him close himself off to her after they made love. She’d let him abandon her these three weeks, let him escape the pain that closeness with her seemed to expose. She’d allowed him to run her life, run her emotions just as her father had all those years.

  Her father had done it by being a tyrant. Lucas accomplished the same thing by cutting himself off from her. Damned if she would let him continue. Theirs might not be a true marriage, but she at least deserved a husband that stayed home with her, spent time with her, paid her a little attention. That certainly wasn’t too much to ask.

  So what now? Call him? Not this afternoon at the factory; she’d have to wait until this evening when he returned to his hotel. Could she demand he come home? Cut his trip short? What reason could she give him?

  I need you, Lucas.

  Because she did. She needed the time spent with him, needed those hours at night talking about their day, or just sharing the companionable silence. Until now, she hadn’t realized just how much she’d enjoyed those two short weeks of their marriage before they’d made love. She wanted that easy camaraderie back.

  She only needed the courage to pick up the phone. As she tried to frame in her mind what she would say to Lucas, anxiety set her stomach churning. The faint nausea persisted when her food arrived. Staring down at the plate heaped with carne asada, rice and beans, Allie wondered how she would ever take a bite.

  John was observant enough to recognize her distress. “Feeling okay?”

  “I’m fine.” Her hand trembling a bit, she took a sip of water, then picked up her fork. Her stomach gave another little lurch as she breathed in the aroma of carne asada. But with the first bite, her queasiness vanished. “Just hungry, I guess.”

  John caught her smile, grinned in return. “You seem in better spirits.”

  Reaching across the table, she touched John’s hand lightly. “Thank you for everything. You’ve been a big help.”

  Suddenly raven
ous, she cut another mouthful of carne asada, savored the deliciously seasoned beef. She pondered the coming confrontation with Lucas. At worst, her demands could drive him further away. But the man couldn’t travel forever. He’d have to face her sooner or later.

  She intended to make sure it was sooner. If twenty-six years as French Dickenson’s daughter had taught her anything, it was grit and determination. She’d learned how to handle her father. It was time she did the same with Lucas.

  Chapter Nine

  Dead tired, Lucas swung the hotel door shut behind him and dropped his briefcase on the desk. His overcoat he dropped on the desk chair, not caring that it dragged on the floor. Slipping off his shoes and kicking them into the closet, he waffled over whether to shower now or wait until morning.

  Morning would be soon enough. Shedding his jacket, he hung it up in the closet, then stuffed his shirt into the hotel laundry bag. Stripping down to his shorts, he staggered to the bed.

  When his bleary gaze snagged on the blinking red message light, he considered leaving whatever crisis it represented until morning. But on the slim chance it might be Allie, he picked up the receiver and punched out the numbers for the message service.

  When he first heard her recorded words on the voice mail, his heart slammed into overdrive. She’d called him. After days when her only contact with him had been regarding work issues, she’d actually initiated a call to him.

  A beep sounded at the end of the message and Lucas realized he hadn’t registered a word she’d said. For all he knew, she’d only called to inform him of some last-minute detail related to the information he’d last requested of her. His hands shook as he pressed the buttons to replay the message. Even if there was nothing personal in her call, he wanted to hear it again.

  “Lucas,” she said, then hesitated. “Lucas, please call me at home. No matter how late. We need to talk.”

  As he let the receiver slip back into its cradle, conflicting emotions battled within him—joy that she wanted to talk to him, trepidation over why. What if she’d tired of their sham of a marriage? What if she wanted her freedom?

  And could he blame her? He’d treated her so shoddily the morning they’d made love, so cruelly. He’d thought only of himself, taking his pleasure in her body and then abandoning her because she’d gotten too close. The sweetness of her touch had nearly exploded the barriers between them and it had terrified him.

  But that fear was nothing compared to the terror of losing Allie. He tried to shake loose the sense of dread, to tell himself Allie wouldn’t leave him. He had only to dial his home number and speak to her to allay his fears. But his hands seemed reluctant to move. Even as he assured himself Allie wasn’t calling it quits, he couldn’t shake the sense of impending doom. But what could be worse than Allie leaving?

  Something deep inside him knew the answer. A little voice he’d struggled for years to keep walled in. A part of him that had grown stronger during this brief time with Allie.

  Too much pain lay in that direction if he gave that voice credence. Much easier to keep it buried.

  Cursing his own cowardice, Lucas lifted the receiver again and punched out his phone number. It rang only once before Allie answered with a breathless, “Hello?”

  “It’s me,” he said, keeping his tone brusque. “What did you need?”

  She dragged in a deep breath. “You, Lucas. I need you.”

  He had to squeeze his eyes shut against the thrill of joy that burst within him. It took a moment to find the words, to keep them even and neutral. “What do you mean?”

  If his intentionally obtuse question irritated her, she didn’t let it show. “I need you here. I need you home.”

  A sudden irrational terror shot up his spine. “Are you sick? Are you hurt?”

  She laughed, a soft sound. “No, Lucas. I just…” The silence stretched. “I miss you.”

  His defenses seemed to crumble in that moment, like a wall with its keystone removed. He gathered his control more tightly around him. “I still have business here.”

  He didn’t; it was ridiculous of him to say so. In fact, the New Jersey VPs had grown increasingly testy at his micro-managing. Accustomed to much more latitude from him, having their every move evaluated had frayed tempers today.

  “Please,” she said, a wealth of sweet entreaty in her voice. “Please come home.”

  Home. Come home. He felt his walls quake again as that comforting word echoed inside him. Until that moment, he’d never quite thought of the palatial estate he occupied as a home. It had always simply been a symbol of his wealth, his power in the world.

  But now it was a home. Because of her. Because of Allie.

  With the blossoming emotions inside him, his foundation seemed to shift, to grow unstable even as a stronger base revealed itself. Not wanting to consider the implications, he tamped those unwelcome feelings back down.

  “I can probably wrap things up here tomorrow, take the red-eye back.”

  She released a pent-up breath, the sound teasing his ear. “Shall I make the reservations for you?”

  “I’ll have someone here take care of it. I won’t know for certain the time until tomorrow. I might even have to delay another day.”

  “Oh.” Her disappointment bit into him. “I’ll see you when you get home, then.”

  “Yes. See you then.”

  The silent moments ticked by and he wondered if she’d hung up. Then she said, “Lucas?”

  The tones of his name spoken by her curled around him like a caress. He shut his eyes to savor the sound. “Yes?”

  “Thank you. Thank you for coming home.”

  She said goodbye then and he waited until he heard the phone disconnect. Then he lowered the receiver, letting it slip from his hand. Images of Allie crowded in, soft and warm in bed, the melody of her voice trembling on the phone line.

  God, he wanted her. He ached for her, physically, mentally, emotionally. Everything about that need for her screamed danger, yet he couldn’t turn back the desire that ripped through him.

  Hope had long ago died, had decayed and gone to dust. But somehow Allie urged it to life, bucking the impossibility of renewal. Each stone he set back into place in that wall around the most tender part of his soul she took away with nothing more than a sigh, a smile.

  Without thought, Lucas reached for the phone again. Digging in the nightstand for the directory, he flipped to the Yellow Pages for the airline listings. In five more minutes, he’d scheduled himself on the first morning flight home.

  Home. He was going home. To Allie.

  Sinking onto the bed, he knew he wouldn’t sleep. Instead he lay there, impatient and content all at once as he let his thoughts drift, again and again, to his wife.

  The next two weeks passed in a haze of giddy excitement for Allie. As if to make up for his time away, Lucas made every effort to be with her as much as possible. He had her block out the lunch hour, asking her to keep her schedule clear for both of them during that time. They would spend that hour uninterrupted at a local restaurant, or they’d brown-bag it and eat outside at the picnic tables set up for TaylorMade employees. The unusually warm early-November weather only added to the pleasure of time spent with him.

  He touched her often, a hand at the small of her back as he escorted her through a door, his fingers wrapped around hers when they walked side by side after lunch. The sensual tension still persisted between them, burned continually inside Allie. She could see it in his eyes, feel it in the way his hand would linger on her arm as he helped her into the car. There were moments she thought his passion would leap out of control, thought the tempest in him would explode. She ached for the explosion, but the tight leash he kept on his desires never loosened.

  Even without intimacy, the marriage finally seemed real to Allie. Much as her body wanted otherwise, she could live without the physical aspect to their union as long as she had Lucas at her side.

  Now, sitting at her desk, counting down the minutes until
lunchtime, she couldn’t keep a smile from curving her lips. Lucas was spending the morning in Modesto again, but they’d arranged to meet at Cocina Caldera in another hour. He’d e-mailed her twice to confirm, and now she couldn’t seem to think of anything else.

  When the elevator door opened, Allie’s heart leapt with hope that Lucas had returned unexpectedly early. But it was only Randy Sato, one of the engineers from Research and Development.

  “Allie,” he called out as he approached her desk, “can you look up the date of the SoftDunk planning meeting last month? I misplaced my notes.”

  She brought up the calendar on her laptop, flipped back through the weeks searching for the meeting date. “Looks like October nineteenth,” she told Randy.

  He flashed her a grin of thanks, then headed for the coffee room. Allie glanced at the time on her laptop display, sighing over the endless minutes that still stretched until she could leave for lunch. About to close the calendar, her gaze strayed to earlier in the week in mid-October.

  She registered two things in quick succession—the mid-October date she and Lucas had made love and the asterisk entered on the calendar six days prior. As she stared at it, the asterisk seemed to glow and brighten on the screen.

  A habit from her midteens when her cycles were terribly irregular, ranging from nearly nonexistent to embarrassingly long and heavy, she still used an asterisk to mark the start of her period. With so many visits to the gynecologist back then, she’d needed a reliable way to recall the date.

  Once she’d entered her twenties, her cycles had inexplicably kicked into unswerving regularity. She started on nearly the same date each month.

  Except this month. Full of trepidation, Allie checked today’s date, did a quick calculation. Her stomach, never very dependable these days, did a queasy flip-flop. Good God, she was over a week late.

  It couldn’t be. She and Lucas had made love immediately after she’d finished her period. She couldn’t have been fertile then.

  She couldn’t possibly be pregnant.