Her Pregnancy Secret Page 13

  “I’m the father of your baby.”

  “If you insist, I’ll inform you about anything that has to do with your child.”

  “I insist.”

  “Okay. I’ll keep you informed. Other than that, we’re through.” She picked up her purse and slung it over her shoulder. “I can’t even pack up Will’s apartment with you. I thought I could, but I can’t. You’ll have to finish on your own. Or use your precious North money to hire movers. Frankly, I don’t care how you handle it.”

  She turned on her heel and walked past him, out of the apartment, leaving him for good.

  Feeling hollow at the core, he stared after her, the tomblike silence of Will’s apartment closing in around him.

  He needed a drink, so he began to ransack the shelves and open the closets.

  Where the hell was Tony and Will’s liquor cabinet?

  Ten

  It was amazing what money could buy. And what it couldn’t.

  Not personal happiness. Not love.

  Not the one woman he wanted in his life.

  For two months, she’d avoided him.

  Michael, who had jet lag from hell, was staying in one of the world’s most opulent hotels while on business in Abu Dhabi. Gold glittered from the walls. The drapes and upholstery were decorated in an Arabian theme without restraint. Many floors beneath him, waves lapped gently at the building’s foundation and caused a faint and constant hum no matter where one stood in the hotel.

  And still he couldn’t stop thinking about Bree.

  “May I run your bath, sir?” The butler appointed to Michael’s lavish hotel suite spoke politely in an upper-class British accent.

  Rubbing his temple, Michael switched off the giant plasma-screen TV and went to the floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked the sparkling blue waters of the Persian Gulf. “No. You can go. I’m expecting an important business call.”

  The hotel was otherworldly, over-the-top. Michael had a meeting with the sheikh who owned it. He aspired to build another that would be even more ostentatious, more luxurious and more expensive than this one. It was the deal of the decade.

  Normally Michael would have been excited to be here, excited to be asked to be part of such an ambitious project.

  But he missed Bree.

  She’d sounded so cool over the phone when she’d told him they were having a little boy.

  A little boy they’d agreed to name Will.

  She’d refused to talk about anything other than her doctor’s visit. When she’d finished, she’d hung up.

  “I’ll call you when I have something else to tell you about our child,” she’d said right before she’d ended the call.

  Michael missed her so much. More than anything. She didn’t answer when he phoned her. She didn’t reply when he texted. He sent her roses every day, and every day she sent them back to the florist.

  Before he’d left for Abu Dhabi, he’d gone to Chez Z to check on her, but she’d made it plain she didn’t like seeing him in person. She’d answered his questions in unenthusiastic, monosyllabic tones before she’d asked him to leave.

  When he’d told her his agent had found her a two-bedroom, second-floor apartment in her neighborhood in a building that had an elevator, she’d shaken her head. “Leave me alone, Michael. I don’t want to discuss anything other than our child.”

  “But this is about our child. It’s about you avoiding stairs until he’s safely born. I’ll pay for it.”

  “This is about your money.”

  “No. It’s about the baby. After he’s born, I don’t want you carrying him down five flights of stairs. What if you fell?”

  “I’ll figure something out on my own.”

  “You’re carrying my son. Why won’t you let me do this for you?”

  “I know what apartments cost in this city,” she’d whispered in a shattered tone that had cut him. “A favor like that would give you financial power over me. I don’t want to be dependent on you for anything.”

  “No way will I let you stay in that apartment and risk our baby on those stairs,” he’d said. “Why won’t you let me help?”

  “You know why. Because you use your money to get what you want. Because you think I’m out for anything I can get from you.”

  “I don’t think that anymore!”

  “This isn’t a deal. I’m not for sale. Neither is our baby. You’ve used your money to control people for so long, you don’t know any other way. Remember how you used to treat Will? Well, I’m determined never to take anything from you again.”

  “This isn’t about money!”

  “With you, everything’s about money. I can’t live that way, or think that way. It’s too cold.”

  He’d once believed that if he became rich enough, he’d have everything he wanted. But he’d been wrong.

  Too often his money had put him on the defensive. All he’d been able to see was who wanted what from him. Waiters wanted big tips. Women wanted jewels. Socialites wanted him to give to their causes. He’d been catered to by everybody because they’d all wanted his money. And on some level he’d loved it, because he’d felt strong and powerful and in control.

  Michael didn’t know what to do to win Bree back. She’d been a virgin and grieving for her brother. Since Michael was her best friend’s brother, she’d trusted him and had shyly opened herself to him body and soul. Then he’d deliberately crushed her.

  To win her back, he had to become the kind of man she admired. But how?

  What if she was right? What if he couldn’t change?

  * * *

  Michael, who sat near Chez Z’s cash register, looked up from smearing marmalade on a slice of warm, crusty bread and grinned. Bree was storming out of the kitchen toward him. Her cheeks brightened with indignation and that only made her look lovelier in her tight yellow dress and starched white apron that molded to her lush curves.

  When he raked his eyes down her shapely body she reddened even more.

  “You have to stop this,” she said.

  “Stop what?” Michael ignored the desperation he heard in her husky voice.

  “Coming to Chez Z every single morning you’re in town. Constantly embarrassing me like this. Looking at me like that.”

  His smile broadened. As always, he was so dazzled by her beauty and the immensity of his attraction to her, he felt momentary hope that she might feel a spark of warmth for him if he kept pushing her.

  “Embarrassing you? How?” he asked with seeming innocence.

  She yanked out a chair and sat down. Leaning across the table so that her staff couldn’t hear her, she said, “You know perfectly well how. You send flowers every day.”

  “I’m the money guy, remember. They look good on the tables. I’m just protecting my investment.”

  “You drop by every morning on your way to work. You eat breakfast here. You devour me with those black eyes of yours.”

  “Devour...” He let the word linger as his gaze traveled to her mouth. “Can I help it if you’re the most talented cook in Manhattan as well as the most beautiful?”

  “Don’t you dare compliment me!”

  “Sorry.” He bit into his crispy hash browns.

  “You call so frequently you’ve got Bijou feeling sorry for you. Everybody who works here is talking about us and taking sides.”

  “Who’s winning?” he asked flirtatiously.

  “Since my vote is the only one that counts—me! So stop! You’re supposed to be a powerful CEO. Why can’t you fly off to Abu Dhabi or Shanghai or at least hole up in your office and run your empire like a good boy?”

  “A man has to eat breakfast.”

  When his gaze touched her as intimately as a caress, her hand darted to her throat. “We have a rule—I cal
l you when I have something to tell you about the baby, otherwise we stay away from each other. Please, just go.”

  “That’s your rule. I’m playing by my own.”

  “Which is still another reason we can’t be together. Look, I need to get back to the kitchen and supervise the prep work.”

  “I thought maybe you’d like to see the papers for the foundation I’m setting up in Will’s name.”

  Despite her obvious intention to dismiss him, her annoyance gave way to curiosity. “What foundation?”

  “It will provide educational opportunities for disadvantaged boys in this city.”

  “What’s in it for you?”

  “Would you believe the pleasure of giving back?”

  Her eyebrows lifted. “Your PR guy must have told you that a charitable foundation would improve your image. Am I right?”

  Teeth gritted, he swore softly. “That’s your unwavering opinion of me? You can’t imagine that I might empathize with kids who have it as tough or tougher than I did and want to help them? Or that I might want to honor Will?”

  “No. This is probably just camouflage. You’re hoping to make yourself look less like the shark you are to your gullible prey.”

  “I want to take care of you and our baby. You probably don’t believe that either.”

  “Michael, we’re having a kid because we both made a huge mistake in judgment. Huge! We have no reason to be together other than the baby.”

  “That’s reason enough for me.”

  “But not for me! Why can’t you just go away and let me run my bistro?”

  “Okay, I get it. You think I’m always motivated by greed—even when I try to do good things. We’re going to have a baby. I want to take care of you. Why is that bad?”

  She just looked at him. “I’ve told you.”

  “What if you’re wrong?” he demanded. “What if I can change?”

  “What if cows could fly over the moon?”

  “What if we could get past our mistakes, huge as they are, and become...er...friends?”

  “Friends? You and me?” She lifted her chin and stared at him. “Not possible.”

  “I’ll bet our baby would disagree if he had a vote.”

  “Even for you, that’s low.”

  “There’s one more thing.” He hesitated. “I found a building in your neighborhood that just happens to have a vacant first-floor apartment that I thought would be perfect for you.”

  “Please, please don’t tell me you’ve bought it.”

  “No, but I want you to take a look at it and see what you think. I’m willing to buy the lease on your present apartment and make the owner a very good deal on the one in this building.”

  “How many times do I have to tell you that you can’t buy me?” She pushed her chair back from his table. “You’ve finished your breakfast, and I’ve got a full day ahead of me.”

  “Right,” he murmured. “But just so you know, I’m leaving the keys to the apartment with your mother—on the slim chance that she can talk you into looking at it.”

  “Leave my mother out of this.” She whirled and left him.

  He watched her until she disappeared. Then he arose and pulled out the envelope containing the photos and information about the building and the necessary keys. Documents in hand, he paid the bill and tracked down Bijou.

  “The apartment is perfect! I love the garden. I’ll try to talk some sense into her,” she said after looking at the pictures. She tucked the keys into her purse. “But she’s stubborn...especially when it comes to you. This may take a while...and a miracle. I think I’d better go to church tonight and pray. Yes. I think so, yes.”

  * * *

  Bree raced ahead of Marcie on the cracked concrete sidewalk that edged the riverbank. She almost passed two joggers, so determined was she to get far enough ahead of Marcie that her friend would be forced to stop nagging Bree about Michael.

  The afternoon was cold and sunny, perfect for a walk in the park if only Marcie would change the subject. The humid breeze that gusted off the silvery Hudson River smelled of the sea while gulls laughed and wheeled above them.

  “I really think you should reconsider about Michael,” Marcie was saying as she caught up to Bree after stooping to hand a dollar to a street musician playing a trumpet.

  Bree, who had finally had enough, stopped abruptly, and a guy on Rollerblades nearly slammed into her.

  “Hey!” he cried. “Watch where you’re going!”

  “I mean, if someone rich like Michael was interested in me and wanted to ‘buy me’ as you put it,” Marcie continued, undeterred, “I’d let him.”

  “Look, Marcie, I love Riverside Park. I come here to exercise and relax and get away from my problems. Right now Michael is a big problem. So please stop talking about him or go home.”

  Marcie’s brows knitted as she watched an immense white yacht pull up to the 79th Street Boat Basin. “But a foundation? How cool is that? How bad can he be if he gives a fortune away for a cause like that?”

  “He told you about that to manipulate you. He’s using his money to buy your good opinion. It’s a trick.”

  “Well, if he created that foundation to win you over, I think it’s sort of romantic...and sweet.”

  “Believe me, he is not sweet. He’s a cunning manipulator who uses his money for insidious, calculating reasons that profit him.”

  “He thought badly about you not so long ago. And he was wrong about you, wasn’t he? He sees that now.”

  “Do not compare me to him.”

  “I’m just saying he was wrong about you, so maybe you could be wrong about him.”

  Two bikers whizzed past them.

  “Marcie, he seduced me just to make Will dislike me. That’s bad. He’s not to be trusted. Not ever.”

  “But he’s so-o-o cute...and rich. And...and even if he did seduce you for the reasons you say he seems genuinely interested in you now. You should see the way he looks at you. He’s got the major hots for you.”

  Bree’s heart constricted. She knew he wanted the baby, and he wanted her in his bed, but she knew as well that he didn’t love her. Her mother had married her father because he’d gotten her pregnant, then she’d complained about it so often, Bree had felt guilty for being the baby in question.

  “And, God, all those flowers! I wish somebody half as handsome and half as rich would try to seduce me.”

  “Did he put you on his payroll or something?”

  “Hey, I’m not the only one. Everybody else at the bistro thinks you should forgive and forget.”

  The only reason Michael wanted her was because she was pregnant with his child, and he wanted control over his heir. His attitude hadn’t changed until he’d realized Will was gay and had proof that she’d been telling the truth about only being Will’s friend.

  “You want to know something—sometimes it’s very hard to forgive.”

  * * *

  A light must have gone out somewhere in the stairwell because the second-floor landing of Bree’s steep Victorian staircase was as dark as a cave.

  Bree, who was tired and weighted down by two bulging grocery sacks and her purse, grumbled as she readjusted her load before tackling the final, shadowy flight to her apartment. It was only four in the afternoon, but she’d left Chez Z earlier than usual because she’d been too tired to stay. She was looking forward to a cup of tea and a long, hot bath and maybe a nap when her cell phone buzzed inside her purse.

  Don’t answer it. Not now.

  But after it stopped for a short interval it began ringing again. She set her bags on the dark stair above her and began to dig in her purse.

  When she saw Michael’s name, her heart beat a little faster. He’d been in Asia for the past five days, and so hadn’t been
by Chez Z to pester her while he ate his breakfast. Was he back? Was he okay?

  Even though she knew she shouldn’t take his call since she had no news about the baby, she couldn’t resist picking up to find out where he was and to make sure he was okay. But just as she touched the phone and his husky voice wrapped around her, something in the bags on the stair shifted. The sack ripped open and shot a barrage of cascading apples and oranges straight at her.

  “No!” she cried as she jumped to catch them before they rolled down the stairs.

  “What is it?” Michael demanded. “What’s wrong?”

  Caught off-balance as she stupidly grabbed for an apple, she lurched to one side. Frantically, she reached for the balustrade and missed, falling backward, tumbling along with her fruit back down to the second-floor landing. At least, she had the presence of mind to throw out her hands defensively. Even so, she rammed the wall so hard a white-hot burning sensation shot through her abdomen.

  “The baby,” she whispered. “Please let him be okay.”

  For a long time she lay in a crumpled heap, too dazed and winded to move. As the unpleasant burning in her belly subsided, she thought she heard Michael shouting.

  “Where are you? Tell me what happened? What’s wrong? Bree? Bree! Are you there?”

  The phone, she thought. Her phone had to be somewhere nearby. Michael had been talking to her before she’d fallen? Was he back? Oh, how she hoped he was in the city!

  Where was her phone?

  With a supreme effort, she sat up and discovered her phone blinking madly in a dark corner.

  “I’m...on my staircase,” she said shakily after she’d managed to inch her way to the phone. “I fell.”

  “Damn it, Bree. I told you those stairs were dangerous.”

  “I think I’m okay. I have to be okay.”

  “Stay where you are,” he ordered. “I’m not far. I’m coming over. I’ll be there in five minutes—max.”

  Good. He was nearby. She’d never felt more thankful about anything in her life.

  “No hurry.... I’m fine,” she whispered. But he couldn’t have heard her feeble protests because her phone had dropped his call.