The CEO's Baby Surprise. Helen Lacey
Daniel struggled with the unease clawing up his spine. “You cannot expect me to simply accept this news at face value.”
She shrugged, as if she couldn’t care either way. “Do, or don’t. If you want a paternity test to confirm it, then fine, that’s what we’ll do.”
He relaxed a little. Finally, some good sense. “Thank you.”
“But it won’t be done until the baby is born,” she said evenly and took a long breath. “There are risks associated with tests after the fifteen-week mark, and I won’t put my baby in jeopardy. Not for you. Not for anyone.”
There was such unequivocal resolve in her voice, and it surprised him. She was a flake. Unreliable. Unpredictable. Nothing like Simone. “Of course,” he said, and did his best to ignore the stabbing pain in his temple. His shoulders ached, and he could feel the effects of no sleep and hours flying across the globe begin to creep into his limbs. “I wouldn’t expect you to put your child at risk.”
Her child.
Her baby.
This wasn’t what he’d expected to face when he’d decided to come home. But if she was telling the truth? What then? To share a child with a woman he barely knew. It was a train wreck waiting to happen.
And he hated waiting. In business. In his personal life.
He’d waited at the hospital when Simone was brought in with critical injuries. He waited while the doctors had tried to save her and their unborn daughter. He’d waited, and then received the worst possible news. And afterward he’d experienced a heartbreaking despair. After that night he became hollow inside. He’d loved his wife and daughter. Losing them had been unbearable. And he’d never wanted to feel that kind of soul-destroying anguish again.
But if Mary-Jayne was carrying his child, how could he turn his back?
He couldn’t. He’d be trapped.
Held ransom by the very feelings he’d sworn he never wanted to feel again.
“So what do you want from me until then?”
“Want? Nothing,” she replied quietly. “I’ll call you when the baby is born and the paternity test is done. Goodbye.”
He sighed. “Is this how you usually handle problems? By ignoring them?”
Her cheeks quickly heated. “I don’t consider this baby a problem,” she shot back. “And the only thing I plan to ignore is you.”
* * *
He stared at her for a moment, and then when he laughed Mary-Jayne realized she liked the sound way too much. She didn’t want to like anything about him. Not ever. He had become enemy number one. For the next five months all she wanted to do was concentrate on growing a healthy baby. Wasting time thinking about Daniel and his sexy laugh and gray eyes was off her agenda.
“You don’t really think that’s going to happen, do you?” he asked, watching her with such hot intensity she couldn’t look away. “You’ve dropped this bombshell, and you know enough about me to realize I won’t simply fade away for the next five months.”
“I can live in hope.”
“I think you live in a fantasyland, Mary-Jayne.”
The way he said her name caused her skin to prickle. No one called her that except her parents and her older brother, Noah. Even her sisters and closest friends mostly called her M.J. To the rest of the world she was M. J. Preston—the youngest and much loved sibling in a close-knit middle-class family. But Daniel had always used her full name.
Mary-Jayne took a deep breath. “A fantasyland?” She repeated his words as a question.
“What else would you call it?” he shot back as he looked her over. “You’re what, twenty-seven? Never married or engaged. No real career to speak of. And a barely solvent online business. You’ve rented the same house for nearly ten years. You drive a car that’s good for little else but scrap metal. You have less than a thousand dollars in the bank at any given time and a not-so-stellar credit rating thanks to a certain dubious ex-boyfriend who ran up a debt on your behalf over five years ago. It looks very much like you do—”
“How do you know that?” she demanded hotly, hands on hips. “How do you know all that about me? I’ve not told Solana any of...” She trailed off as realization hit. And then she seethed. “You had me investigated?”
“Of course,” he replied, unmoving and clearly unapologetic.
“You had no right to do that,” she spat. “No right at all. You invaded my privacy.”
He shrugged his magnificent shoulders. “You are working at this resort and have befriended my grandmother—it was prudent to make sure you weren’t a fortune hunter.”
“Fortune hunter?” Mary-Jayne’s eyes bulged wide and she said a rude word.
He tilted his head a fraction. “Well, the jury’s still out on that one.”
“Jury?” She echoed the word in disbelief. “And what does that make you? The judge? Can you actually hear yourself? Of all the pompous, arrogant and self-important things I’ve ever heard in my life, you take the cake. And you really do take yourself and the significance of your opinions way too seriously.”
He didn’t like that. Not one bit. She watched, fascinated as his eyes darkened and a tiny pulse in his cheek beat rapidly. His hands were clenched and suddenly his body looked as if it had been carved from granite. And as much as she tried to fight it, attraction reared up, and heat swirled around the small room as their gazes clashed.
Memories of that night four months ago banged around in her head. Kissing, touching, stroking. Possession and desire unlike any she had known before. There had been a quiet intensity in him that night, and she’d been swept away into another world, another universe where only pleasure and a deeply intimate connection existed. That night, he hadn’t been the rigid, unyielding and disagreeable man who was now in her living room. He’d been tender and passionate. He’d whispered her name against her skin. He’d kissed her and made love to her with such profound eagerness Mary-Jayne’s entire mind and body had awakened and responded in kind. She’d never been driven to please and be pleasured like that before.
But right now she had to get back to hating him. “I’m going to get changed and go for a walk to clear my head. You know the way out.”
He didn’t move. And he looked a little pale, she thought. Perhaps the shock that he was going to be a father was finally hitting home. But then she remembered that he didn’t believe he actually was her baby’s father, so that probably wasn’t it.
“We still have things to discuss.”
“Not for another...” Her words trailed off and she tapped off five of her fingers in her palm. “Five months. Until then, how about you treat me with the disdain that you’ve clearly mastered, and I’ll simply pretend that you don’t exist. That will work out nicely for us both, don’t you think?”
Of course, she knew saying something so provocative was like waving a red cape at a bull. But she couldn’t help herself. He deserved it in spades. And it was only the truth. She didn’t want to see him or spend any more time in his company.
“I don’t treat you with disdain.”
And there it was again—his resolute belief in the sound of his own voice.
“No?” She bit down on her lip for a moment. “You’ve admitted you had me investigated and just accused me of being a fortune hunter. Oh, and what about what you said to me on the phone when I was in South Dakota?” She took a strengthening breath. “That I was a flake who dressed like a hippie.”
His eyes flashed. “And before you told me to go to hell you called me an uptight, overachieving, supercilious snob, if I remember