Expecting A Bolton Baby. Sarah M. Anderson
should have. If he’d had any idea she was pregnant, he would have. He fought the urge to drop everything and pull her into his arms. Again. The pull to protect her was overwhelming. But then, the pull to track her down had been, too.
This—the pregnancy, his need for her—was a problem.
He did not have time to drop everything and start playing house with anyone, let alone Stella Caine. Maybe in a few years, sure. The resort would be turning a profit, he’d have his penthouse apartment...then he might like to have someone in his bed who set his blood racing and made him laugh. But now?
So he did the next best thing. He told her only part of the truth.
“I get snapshots of all the celebrities I meet. I have a whole wall of them at the shop.” All true. Nothing wrong with anything he’d just said. “It’s good for our brand image—creates desirability.” When she didn’t say anything, he felt compelled to keep talking. “It’s a good shot.”
It was. Bobby had his arm around Stella’s waist, but she had her back turned to the camera, revealing that swath of creamy skin left bare by the backless dress. She looked at the camera over her shoulder, a wicked pixie grin on her face. Her eyes bright, her hands rested on Bobby’s chest.
What the camera didn’t show was that, seconds before the paparazzi had snapped the photo, Bobby had been kissing her in that delicate spot right beneath her ear. The photo also didn’t show them bailing on the club entirely about twenty minutes later. But he remembered those things every time he looked at the photo.
Stella touched the glass with the tip of her finger. “Why is it here, then?”
“Excuse me?”
Stella leveled those beautiful eyes at him. “It’s been eight weeks. You haven’t hung it yet.”
“I really haven’t gotten into the shop much.”
It wasn’t a lie, but it wasn’t the truth, either. Because the truth was, every time he looked at Stella’s bright eyes, he remembered the feeling of her lithe body in his arms, the way she’d lowered herself onto him with a ferocity that had blown his mind, the way she’d curled into his chest after the first time, her wicked grin all the more wicked with sated knowledge.
It should have been just sex. Great sex, but just sex. However, in the course of one evening, he’d found himself matching wits with a cultured, refined woman who subtly pushed his boundaries while she made him laugh. He’d been with a lot of women, but none had made him feel like Stella had. It was something he couldn’t quite explain, not even to himself. When he was with another woman—any other woman, now that he thought about it—they were there to have a good time, but also...because he could offer them something—a little PR, another good tweet. But Stella hadn’t been interested in mutual promotion and satisfaction. She’d been interested in him.
If he’d hung the photo on the wall in the shop, mixed in with all the other photos of famous people—some of whom he’d also slept with—then that would have meant that she was just like all the rest of them.
And she wasn’t.
“Dinner’s getting cold,” was all he could say.
He held her chair for her. By the time he’d settled into his own chair, close enough to touch her, she was half done with the omelet. “This is excellent,” she told him after she washed down another bite with coffee.
“Glad you liked it. Have you had a lot of morning sickness?”
Still chewing, she shrugged. “Some. The flight out...” She grimaced, her hand fluttering over her waist.
He nodded in sympathy. “Have you seen a doctor?”
She paused, as if she wanted to retreat behind that icy silence she’d first confronted him with. Then her shoulders relaxed. The bacon seemed to help. “Yes, two weeks ago. I’m eight weeks along, due on June 24.”
A date—even one in the middle of next year—was something concrete and real. All he could do was stare at his coffee as he repeated the date in his head. June 24. The date he’d be a father.
This was really happening.
“What do you want?”
It wasn’t until the words were out that he realized he’d said them.
They were the wrong words—too much of an ultimatum—but he couldn’t take them back. He’d spent approximately seven total hours in the company of Stella Caine. Seven hours wasn’t long enough to base the rest of his life on.
Plus, she was David Caine’s daughter. All of Bobby’s plans—the television show, the destination resort, the chance to finally prove himself to his family? David Caine could change all of that, if he saw fit. This wasn’t just about Bobby and Stella. This was something that affected the entire Bolton family.
He felt the icy wall Stella put up between them even before she set down her fork. She stood and walked across the room, the distance between them growing.
“It’s not about what I want, not anymore.” She looked out the patio door that led to a small balcony. “I won’t complain about the lot I’ve drawn, but if I have this child, I need certain assurances about her future.”
If.
So maybe Bobby wasn’t ready to be a father. He might never actually be ready.
But he was a Bolton, by God, and there was one thing the Bolton men valued above all else—family. His father had married his mother when they were both seventeen, after Mom had gotten pregnant with Billy. Through the ups and downs of twenty-five years of marriage and motorcycles, the family had always come first.
If Bobby was going to be a father to Stella’s child, then she was already family. For it to be any other way was unthinkable. Stella was giving him a chance to do the right thing here. He just had to man up and...
Marry her.
Make sure the baby was a Bolton, through and through.
This realization hit him harder than any punch ever had. Honest to God, his knees went weak and his vision blurred. Married. Oh, hell.
Stella was still staring out the window, thankfully. She hadn’t seen his reaction. But she was probably expecting a reasonable response.
“What kind of assurances?”
He saw her reflection in the glass take a deep breath, but that was the only outward sign of her mental state. Otherwise, she was an unreadable wall.
“I will not have a child who is used as a pawn or a child who is not loved by her father. I’d rather she never know you exist than that she live life knowing she wasn’t wanted.”
That statement hung out there, practically icing over the glass with its frostiness. Something in the way she said it hit Bobby in a different way.
David Caine was world famous for being conservative—a staunch proponent of abstinence-only education, marriage between one man and one woman and no abortions—not even in cases of rape or incest. He believed in these rules and others so that when Bobby had signed on the dotted line for The Bolton Biker Boys, he’d also agreed to an extensive morals clause. David Caine believed there was such a thing as bad publicity, apparently, and he enforced a strict rule of law on what constituted “bad publicity.” Which included almost everything that would land a man on TMZ or any other gossip site.
Which included getting his daughter pregnant out of wedlock.
Not that this particular situation was outlined in the contract, but Bobby had a feeling David Caine would do a whole lot more than just terminate Bobby’s contract with FreeFall TV. He thought of Mickey, who still had Bobby’s Glock. Hell, he’d be lucky if David Caine didn’t terminate him, period.
He didn’t like the distance she’d put between them, the cold words she’d just said. It wasn’t as if he wanted her sobbing and hysterical,