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And she wouldn’t get any answers standing in his third floor office when he was downstairs!
She ran down the steps and found him in the great room, behind the bar, pouring Scotch into a glass.
He glanced up when she walked over. Though he seemed surprised she hadn’t gone to her room as he’d more or less ordered her to, he said, “Drink?”
Wanting to be sharp and alert so she didn’t misinterpret anything he said or did, Grace smiled and said, “No. Thanks.”
She slid onto one of the three red leather bar stools that matched the red leather sofas that sat parallel to each other in front of the wall of windows that provided a magnificent view of the Atlantic Ocean. A black, red and tan Oriental rug between the sofas protected the sand-colored hardwood floors. White-bowled lights connected to thin chrome poles suspended from the vaulted ceiling, illuminating the huge room.
Danny took a swallow of his Scotch, then set the glass on the bar. “Can’t sleep?”
She shrugged. “Still too keyed up from the weekend I guess.”
“What would you normally do on a Sunday night?”
She thought for a second, then laughed. “Probably play rummy with my mother. She’s a cardaholic. Loves any game. But she’s especially wicked with rummy.”
“Can’t beat her?”
“Every once in a while I get lucky. But when it comes to pure skill the woman is evilly blessed.”
Danny laughed. “My mother likes cards, too.”
Grace’s eyes lit. “Really? How good is she?”
“Exceptional.”
“We should get them together.”
Danny took a long breath, then said, “We should.”
And Grace suddenly saw it. The thing that had tickled her brain all weekend but had never really surfaced. In spite of her impoverished roots and his obviously privileged upbringing, she and Danny had a lot in common. Not childhood memories, but adult things like goals and commitments. He ran his family’s business. She was determined to help her parents out of poverty because she loved them. Even the way they viewed Orlando proved they had approximately the same beliefs about life and people.
If Danny hadn’t asked for her help this weekend, eventually they would have been alone together long enough to see that they clicked. They matched. She knew he realized it, too, if only because he’d nearly slipped into personal conversation with her four times at dinner, but he had stopped himself. Probably because she was an employee.
It was both of their loss if they weren’t mature enough to handle an office relationship. But she thought they were. Her difficult childhood and his difficult divorce had strengthened each of them. They weren’t flip. They were cautious. Smart. If any two people could have an office relationship without it affecting their work, she and Danny were the two. And she wasn’t going to miss out on something good because, as her boss, Danny wouldn’t be the first to make a move.
She raised her eyes until she caught his gaze. “You know what? Though you’re trying to fight it, I think you like me. Would it help if I told you I really like you, too?”
For several seconds, Danny didn’t answer. He couldn’t. He’d never met a woman so honest, so he wasn’t surprised that she spoke her mind. Even better, she hadn’t played coy and tried to pretend she didn’t see what was going on. She saw it, and she wanted to like him as much as he wanted to like her.
And that was the key. The final answer. She wanted to like him as much as he wanted to like her and he suddenly couldn’t understand why he was fighting it.
“It helps enormously.” He bent across the bar and kissed her, partly to make sure they were on the same page with their intentions, and partly to see if their chemistry was as strong as the emotions that seemed to ricochet between them.
It was. Just the slight brush of their lips knocked him for a loop. He felt the explosion the whole way to his toes.
She didn’t protest the kiss, so he took the few steps that brought him from behind the bar and in front of the stool on which she sat. He put his hands on her shoulders and kissed her deeply this time, his mouth opening over hers.
White-hot desire slammed through him and his control began slipping. He wanted to touch her, to taste her, to feel all the things he’d denied himself for the past two years.
But it was one thing to kiss her. It was quite another to make love. But when he shifted away, Grace slid her hand around his neck and brought his lips back to hers.
Relief swamped him. He’d never had this kind of an all-consuming desire to make love. Yet, the yearning he felt wasn’t for sexual gratification. It was to be with Grace herself. She was sweet and fun and wonderful…and beautiful. Having her slide her arms around him and return his kisses with a passion equal to his own filled him with an emotion so strong and complete he dared not even try to name it.
Instead he broke the kiss, lifted her into his arms and took her to his bed.
The next morning when Grace awoke, she inhaled a long breath as she stretched. When her hand connected with warm, naked skin, her eyes popped open and she remembered she’d spent the night making love with her boss.
Reliving every detail, she blinked twice, waiting for a sense of embarrassment or maybe guilt. When none came she smiled. She couldn’t believe it, but it was true. She’d fallen in love with Danny Carson in about forty-eight hours.
She should feel foolish for tumbling in over her head so fast. She could even worry that he’d seen her feelings for him and taken advantage of her purely for sexual gratification. But she wasn’t anything but happy. Nobody had ever made love to her the way he had. And she was sure their feelings were equal.
She yawned and stretched, then went downstairs to the room she’d used on Friday and Saturday nights. After brushing her teeth and combing her hair, she ran back to Danny’s room and found he was still sleeping, so she slid into bed again.
Her movements caused Danny to stir. As Grace thanked her lucky stars that she had a chance to fix up a bit before he awoke, he turned on his pillow. Ready, she smiled and caught his gaze but the eyes that met hers were not the warm brown eyes of the man who had made love to her the night before. They were the dark, almost black eyes of her boss.
She remembered again the way he’d made love to her and told herself to stop being a worrying loser. Yes, the guy who ran Carson Services could sometimes be a real grouch, but the guy who lived in this beach house was much nicer. And she was absolutely positive that was the real Danny.
Holding his gaze, she whispered, “Good morning.”
He stared at her. After a few seconds, he closed his eyes. “Tell me we didn’t make a mistake.”
“We did not make a mistake.”
He opened his eyes. “Always an optimist.”
She scooted closer so she could rest her head on his outstretched arm. “We like each other. A lot. Something pretty special happened between us.”
He was silent for a few seconds then he said, “Okay.”
She twisted so she could look at him. “Okay? I thought we were fantastic!”
His face transformed. The caution slipped from his dark eyes and was replaced by amusement. “You make me laugh.”
“It’s a dirty job but somebody’s got to do it.”
Chuckling, he caught her around the waist and reversed their positions. But gazing into her eyes, he softened his expression again and said, “Thanks,” before he lowered his head and kissed her.
They made love and then Danny rolled out of bed, suggesting they take a shower. Gloriously naked, he walked to the adjoining bathroom and began to run the water. Not quite as comfortable as he, Grace needed a minute to skew her courage to join him, and in the end wrapped a bedsheet around herself to walk to the bathroom.
But though she faltered before dropping the sheet, when she stepped into the shower, she suddenly felt bold. Knowing his trust was shaky because of his awful divorce, she stretched to her tiptoes and kissed him. He let her take the lead and she began a slow exploration of his body until he seemed unable to handle her simple ministrations anymore and he turned the tables.
They made love quickly, covered with soap and sometimes even pausing to laugh, and Grace knew from that moment on, she was his. She would never feel about any man the way she felt about Danny.
CHAPTER THREE
WHEN Grace and Danny stood in the circular driveway of his beach house, both about to get into their cars to drive back to Pittsburgh, she could read the displeasure in his face as he told her about the “client hopping” he had scheduled for the next week. He wanted to be with her but these meetings had been on the books for months and he couldn’t get out of them. So she kissed him and told him she would be waiting when he returned.
They got into their vehicles and headed home. He was a faster driver, so she lost him on I-64, but she didn’t care. Her heart was light and she had the kind of butterflies in her tummy that made a woman want to sing for joy. Though time would tell, she genuinely believed she’d found Mr. Right. She’d only known Danny for two weeks, and hadn’t actually spent a lot of that time with him since he was so far above her on the company organizational chart. But the weekend had told her everything she needed to know about the real Danny Carson.
To the world, he was an ambitious, demanding, highly successful man. In private, he was a loving, caring, normal man, who liked her. A lot.
Yes, they would probably experience some problems because he owned the company she worked for. He’d hesitated at the bar before kissing her. He’d asked her that morning if they’d made a mistake. But she forced herself not to worry about it. She had no doubt that once they spent enough time together, and he saw the way she lived her beliefs, his worries about dating an employee would vanish.
What they had was worth a few months of getting to know each other. Or maybe the answer would be to quit her job?
The first two days of his trip sped by. He called Wednesday morning, and the mere sound of his voice made her breathless. Though he talked about clients, meetings, business dinners and never-ending handshaking, his deep voice reminded her of his whispered endearments during their night together and that conjured the memory of how he tasted, the firmness of his skin, the pleasure of being held in his arms. Before he disconnected the call, he whispered that he missed her and couldn’t wait to see her and she’d all but fainted with happiness.
The next day he didn’t call, but Grace knew he was busy. He also didn’t call on Friday or Saturday.
Flying back to Pittsburgh Sunday, Danny nervously paced his Gulfstream, fighting a case of doubt and second thoughts about what had happened between him and Grace. In the week that had passed, he hadn’t had a spare minute to think about her, and hadn’t spoken with her except for one quick phone call a few days into the trip. The call had ended too soon and left him longing to see her, but after three days of having no contact, the negatives of the situation came crowding in on him, and there were plenty of them.
First, he didn’t really know her. Second, even if she were the perfect woman, they’d gone too far too fast. Third, they worked together. If they dated it would be all over the office. When they broke up, he would be the object of the same gossip that had nearly ruined his reputation when his marriage ended.
He took a breath and blew it out on a puff. He couldn’t tell if distance was giving him perspective or calling up all his demons. But he did know that he should have thought this through before making love to her.
Worse, he couldn’t properly analyze their situation because he couldn’t recall specifics. All he remembered from their Sunday night and Monday morning together were emotions so intense that he’d found the courage to simply be himself. But with the emotions gone, he couldn’t summon a solid memory of the substance of what had happened between them. He couldn’t remember anything specific she’d said to make him like her—like? Did he say like? He didn’t just like Grace. That Sunday night his feelings had run more along the lines of a breathless longing, uncontrollable desire, and total bewitching. A man in that condition could easily be seduced into seeing traits in a woman that weren’t there and that meant he had made a horrible mistake.
He told himself not to think that way. But the logical side of his brain called him a sap. He’d met Grace two weeks before when she’d come to work for his company, but he didn’t really know her because he didn’t work with new employees. He worked with their bosses. He said hello to new employees in the hall. But otherwise, he ignored them. So he hadn’t “known” her for two weeks. He’d glimpsed her.
Plus, she’d been on her best behavior for Orlando. She had been at the beach house to demonstrate to Orlando that Carson Services employed people in the know. Yes, she’d gone above and beyond the call of duty in her time with Orlando, making him feel comfortable, sharing personal insights—but, really, wasn’t that her job?
Danny took a long breath. Had he fallen in love with a well polished persona she’d pulled out to impress Orlando and simply never disengaged when the basketball star left?
Oh Lord!
He sat, rubbed his hands down his face and held back a groan. Bits and pieces of their Sunday night dinner conversation flitted through his brain. She’d grown up poor. Could only afford a house that needed remodeling. She wanted to be rich. She’d gone into investing to understand money.
He had money.
Technically he was a shortcut to all her goals.
He swallowed hard. It wasn’t fair to judge her when she wasn’t there to defend herself.
He had to see her. Then he would know. After five minutes of conversation she would either relieve all his fears or prove that he’d gone too fast, told her too much and set himself up for a huge disappointment.
The second his plane taxied to a stop, he pulled out his cell phone and called her, but she didn’t answer. He left a message but she didn’t return his call and Danny’s apprehensions hitched a notch. Not that he thought she should be home, waiting for him, but she knew when he got in. He’d told her he would call. He’d said it at the end of a very emotional phone conversation in which he’d told her that crazy as it sounded, he missed her. She’d breathlessly told him she missed him, too.
Now she wasn’t home?
If he hadn’t given her the time he would be landing, if he hadn’t told her he would be calling, if he hadn’t been so sappy about saying how much he missed her, it wouldn’t seem so strange that she wasn’t home. But, having told her all those things, he had the uncontrollable suspicion that something was wrong.
Unless she’d come to the same conclusions he had. Starting a relationship had been a mistake.
That had to be it.
Relief swamped him. He didn’t want another relationship. Ever. And Grace was too nice a girl to have the kind of fling that ended when their sexual feelings for each other fizzled and they both eagerly walked away.
It was better for it to end now.
Content that not only had Grace nicely disengaged their relationship, but also that he probably wouldn’t run into her in the halls because their positions in the company and the building were so far apart, he went to work happy. But his secretary buzzed him around ten-thirty, telling him Grace was in the outer office, asking if he had time for her.
Sure. Why not? Now that he’d settled everything in his head, he could handle a debriefing. They’d probably both laugh about the mistake.
He tossed his pencil to the stack of papers in front of him. “Send her in.”
He steeled himself, knowing that even though his brain had easily resolved their situation, his body might not so easily agree. Seeing her would undoubtedly evoke lots of physical response, if only because she was beautiful. He remembered that part very, very well.
His office door opened and she stepped inside. Danny almost groaned at his loss. She was every bit as stunning as he remembered. Her dark hair framed her face and complemented her skin tone. Her little pink suit showed off her great legs. But he wasn’t meant for relationships and she wasn’t meant for affairs. Getting out now while they could get out without too much difficulty was the right thing to do.
“Good morning, Grace.”
She smiled. “Good morning.”
He pointed at the chair in front of his desk, indicating she should sit. “Look, I know what you’re going to say. Being away for a week gave me some perspective, too, and I agree we made a mistake the night we slept together.”
“What?”
Confused, he cocked his head. “I thought you were here to tell me we’d made a mistake.”
Holding the arms of the captain’s chair in front of his desk, she finally sat. “I came in to invite you to dinner.”
He sat back on his chair, knowing this could potentially be one of the worst conversations of his life. “I’m sorry. When you weren’t home last night when I called, I just assumed you’d changed your mind.”
“I was at my mother’s.”
“I called your cell phone.”
She took a breath. “And by the time I realized I’d hadn’t turned it on after I took it off the charger, it was too late for me to call you back.” She took another breath and smiled hopefully. “That’s why I came to your office.”
He picked up his pencil again. Nervously tapped it on the desk. “I’m sorry. Really. But—” This time he took the breath, giving himself a chance to organize his thoughts. “I genuinely believe we shouldn’t have slept together, and I really don’t want to see you anymore. I don’t have relationships with employees.”
He caught her gaze. “I’m sorry.”
That seemed to catch her off guard. She blinked several times, but her face didn’t crumble as he expected it would if she were about to cry. To his great relief, her chin lifted. “That’s fine.”
Pleased that she seemed to be taking this well—probably because his point was a valid one—bosses and employees shouldn’t date—he rose. “Do you want the day off or something?”
She swallowed and wouldn’t meet his gaze. She said, “I’m fine,” then turned and walked out of his office.
Danny fell to his seat, feeling like a class-A heel. He had hurt her and she was going to cry.
Grace managed to get through the day with only one crying spurt in the bathroom right after coming out of Danny’s office. She didn’t see him the next day or the next or at all for the next two weeks. Just when she had accepted that her world hadn’t been destroyed because he didn’t want her or because she’d slept with him, she realized something awful. Her female cycle was as regular as clockwork, so when things didn’t happen on the day they were supposed to happen, she knew something was wrong.
Though she and Danny had used condoms, they weren’t perfect. She bought an early pregnancy test and discovered her intuition had been correct. She had gotten pregnant.
She sat on the bed in the master suite of her little house. The room was awash with warm colors: cognac, paprika, butter-yellow in satin pillows, lush drapes and a smooth silk bedspread. But she didn’t feel any warmth as she stared at the results of the EPT. She had just gotten pregnant by a man who had told her he wanted nothing to do with her.
She swallowed hard and began to pace the honey-yellow hardwood floors of the bedroom she’d scrimped, saved and labored to refinish. Technically she had a great job and a good enough income that she could raise a child alone. Money wasn’t her problem. And neither was becoming a mother. She was twenty-four, ready to be a mom. Excited actually.
Except Danny didn’t want her. She might survive telling him, but she still worked for him. Soon everybody at his company would know she was pregnant. Anybody with a memory could do the math and realize when she’d gotten pregnant and speculate the baby might be Danny’s since they’d spent a weekend together.
He couldn’t run away from this and neither could she.
She took a deep breath, then another, and another, to calm herself.
Everything would be fine if she didn’t panic and handled this properly. She didn’t have to tell Danny right away that she was pregnant. She could wait until enough time had passed that he would see she wasn’t trying to force anything from him. Plus, until her pregnancy was showing, she didn’t have to tell anybody but Danny. In six or seven months the people she worked with wouldn’t necessarily connect her pregnancy with the weekend she and Danny together. They could get out of this with a minimum of fuss.
That made so much sense that Grace easily fell asleep that night, but the next morning she woke up dizzy, still exhausted and with an unholy urge to vomit. On Saturday morning, she did vomit. Sunday morning, she couldn’t get out of bed. Tired, nauseated and dizzy beyond belief, she couldn’t hide her symptoms from anybody. Which meant that by Monday afternoon, everybody would guess something was up, and she had no choice but to tell Danny first thing in the morning that she was pregnant. If she didn’t, he would find out by way of a rumor, and she couldn’t let that happen.
Grace arrived at work an hour early on Monday. Danny was already in his office but his secretary had not yet arrived. As soon as he was settled, she knocked on the frame of his open door.
He looked up. “Grace?”
“Do you have a minute?”
“Not really, I have a meeting—”
“This won’t take long.” She drank a huge gulp of air and pushed forward because there was no point in dillydallying. “I’m pregnant.”
For thirty seconds, Danny sat motionless. Grace felt every breath she drew as the tension in the room increased with each second that passed.
Finally he very quietly said, “Get out.”
“We need to talk about this.”
“Talk about this? Oh, no! I won’t give credence to your scheme by even gracing you with ten minutes to try to convince me you’re pregnant!”
“Scheme?”
“Don’t play innocent with me. Telling the man who broke up with you that you’re pregnant is the oldest trick in the book. If you think I’m falling for it, you’re insane.”
Grace hadn’t expected this would be an easy conversation, but for some reason or another she had expected it to be fair. The Danny she remembered from the beach house might have been shocked, but he would have at least given her a chance to talk.
“I’m not insane. I am pregnant.”
“I told you to get out.”
“This isn’t going to go away because you don’t believe me.”
“Grace, I said leave.”
His voice was hard and cold and his office fell deadly silent. Knowing there was no talking to him in that state and hoping that after she gave him a few hours for her announcement to sink in he might be more amenable to discussing it, Grace did as he asked. She left his office with her head high, controlling the tears that welled behind her eyelids.
The insult of his reaction tightened her chest and she marched straight to her desk. She yanked open the side drawer, withdrew her purse and walked out of the building as if it were the most natural thing in the world for her to do. When she got into her car, she dropped her head to her steering wheel and let the tears fall.
Eventually it would be obvious she hadn’t lied. But having Danny call her a schemer was the absolute worst experience she’d ever had.
Partially because he believed it. He believed she would trick him.
Grace’s cheeks heated from a sudden rush of indignation.
It was as if he didn’t know her at all—or she didn’t know him at all.
Or maybe they didn’t know each other.
She started her car and headed home. She needed the day to recover from that scene, but also as sick as she was she couldn’t go back to work until she and Danny had talked this out. Pretty soon everybody would guess what had happened. If nothing else, they had to do damage control. There were lots of decisions that had to be made. So when she got home she would call her supervisor, explain she’d gotten sick and that she might be out a few days. Then she and Danny would resolve this away from the office.