The Bachelor's Bride. Audra Adams
think it. I won’t take money from him. Not now, anyway. Maybe later. When the baby’s older. For college.”
“Why? For heaven’s sake, tell me, why?”
Rachel gave up on eating. She stood and scraped the remainder of the food off her plate into the trash. “Because I’d be putting myself—the baby—up for sale. I’d feel obligated to him. Not to mention the publicity. Can you imagine what the newspapers would do if they found out about this? New York’s most eligible bachelor and moi. I could see the headlines now.”
“You’d live through it.”
“But I don’t want to live through it! I want to have my baby in peace and quiet. I don’t want to become part of any Reid James media circus. I couldn’t do it, Trudy, even if he offered.” She paused. “He hasn’t, has he?” she asked.
Trudy shook her head slowly. “No, but I know he would if—”
“If I asked him? Oh, Trudy, can’t you see how that would make me feel?”
Trudy got up from the table and came over to Rachel. She put her arm around her. “Why are you being so stubborn? He can do things for you.”
“I think he’s done enough for me already, don’t you?”
“That’s not fair,” Trudy said. “He’s really a great guy. A little rough around the edges, but that’s to be expected based on his background.”
“What about his background?”
The phone rang. Rachel drew a deep breath and let it out slowly as she walked over to answer it by the bed. She lifted the receiver.
“Hello?”
“Rachel? How are you?”
It was Reid. Rachel sank onto the edge of the bed and mouthed his name to Trudy. “Fine. I’m fine.”
“I hope you don’t mind my calling. Trudy gave me the number.”
“No. No, I don’t mind your calling.”
“Hell, no,” Trudy said out loud. “We were just talking about you.
Rachel shushed Trudy with a wave of her hand. “What can I do for you?”
“I’d like to meet with you...talk to you.”
Rachel shut her eyes and pressed her lips together for a moment. “I’ve already made my decision, Reid.”
He hesitated. “And...”
“And I’m going to keep the baby.”
If she thought it really mattered to him, Rachel could have interpreted a note of relief in his intake of breath.
“I’m glad.”
“Are you?” she asked.
“Yes. Very. Will you meet with me?”
“I don’t know for what, Reid.”
“To discuss how we’re going to handle this.”
“We aren’t handling anything. I’ve decided to go back home.”
“Home?”
“To Ohio.”
“Oh. Is that definite?”
“Yes. All the arrangements are made,” she lied.
Reid was silent for a long time. Rachel could almost feel the steam from his temper seeping through the phone. Her heart began to pound.
Finally he said, “I see. Well, then, I guess this is—”
“Goodbye.” Rachel finished his sentence for him.
She hadn’t thought this would be so hard. She didn’t really know him at all. For all intents and purposes he was a stranger. Except for the outcome of their night together, they would probably have never met again. He’d only been a face in a dream to her, but meeting him again, seeing the dream come to life, walk, talk, touch her, was unbalancing to say the least.
He was real, and they had shared something special. She felt something for him she couldn’t even put a name to.
The lump in her throat was growing larger and more prohibitive by the second. She wasn’t sure how much longer she could continue to speak, so she thought it best to end this conversation as soon as possible.
“I have to go.”
“Okay...” he said softly. But when she didn’t hang up, he added, “Rachel? Are you still there?”
“Yes...” she squeaked.
“Will you let me know...when, and all...”
“Yes. Of course. Goodbye, Reid.”
And this time she did hang up, cradling the phone and gripping the receiver long after the connection was broken.
“Well, that’s that,” Trudy said with a faint tinge of disapproving resignation.
“Yes,” Rachel said. “It’s over.”
Three
It wasn’t over. Not as far as Reid was concerned. Not by a long shot.
Rachel Morgan couldn’t possibly believe that she could enter his life, drop this kind of bombshell in his lap, and then shoo him away like an annoying fly on a hot summer day.
He stared at the phone on his desk for the longest time after cradling the receiver. He’d stayed late at the office with no desire to go home and return to the scene of the crime, so to speak. He wanted to wallow for a while, a bit of self-indulgence he’d made it a point never to give in to anymore, but for some reason needed to sink down into right now.
So she was going home, she said. To Ohio, no less. Not that he had anything against Ohio. He had a very nice, profitable business there. He even visited now and then. But Ohio was not where he lived. He was here. In New York. And this is where he wanted her to be.
Especially now. Especially since she’d decided to keep the baby.
He couldn’t believe how pleased—no, overjoyed—he was by her decision. Or how apprehensive he had been about what that decision might be. He didn’t really know what he would have done if she had chosen otherwise, but he would have done something.
He wanted her in his life. In whatever capacity she’d accept, and that was the bottom line. He needed to come up with a strategy to accomplish that, and that would take some planning. But he was good at planning. He’d lived his whole life setting and reaching goals, most of them deemed by others to be impossible. This would be no different.
He would set her up. An apartment on the Upper West Side maybe. Something near the park so that they could take the baby there on nice days. He’d get her a nanny, or better yet, a nurse, too. The best of care for his son...or daughter. Whatever. It didn’t matter. The child was his. No report from Mazelli was going to refute what he knew in his heart to be so.
Right or wrong, good or bad, Rachel Morgan and Reid James had made a baby that night.
He wasn’t a religious man, and he didn’t believe in fate. You made your own luck. But too much had happened, too many things had had to fall into place for this to be dismissed as coincidence.
So something had brought them together that night. Be it God, or the fates, or the stars in the universe, something beyond and more powerful than them had decreed that this should be, and his gut instinct told him that there had to be a reason for it.
He’d always trusted his gut instinct, even when logic had said no, even when people had thought him crazy, and never, ever, had he been wrong. He wasn’t wrong now, either. Rachel and he had made a baby and, ego aside, he was meant to be part of the child’s life.
So