A Clandestine Corporate Affair - By Michelle Celmer Page 0,4

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After he ended their affair, he must have picked up the phone a dozen times that first week, ready to tell her that he’d made a mistake, that he wanted her back, even though it would have been the end of his career at Western Oil. But he had worked too damned hard to get where he was to throw it all away for a relationship that was doomed from the start to fail. So he had done the only thing he could. He’d gotten over her…or so he thought. Now he wasn’t so sure.

She tried to jerk her arm from his grasp and her grimace said he was hurting her. Damn it. He released his grip and clamped a vice down on his temper. He worked damned hard to maintain control at all times. What was it about her that made him abandon all good sense?

“We need to talk,” he said in a harsh whisper. “Now.”

“This is hardly the place,” she said.

She was right. If they disappeared together people were bound to notice. And talk.

“Okay, this is what we’re going to do,” he said. “You’re going to say goodbye to Beth, get in your car and drive home. A few minutes after that I’m going to slip out. I’ll meet you at your condo.”

Her chin rose a notch. “And if I say no?”

She was trying to be tough, trying to play the spoiled heiress card, but he knew better. He knew that deep down the defiant confidence she flaunted like some badge of honor was nothing more than a smokescreen to hide the fact that she was as vulnerable and insecure as the next woman.

“Not advisable,” he said. “Besides, you owe me the courtesy of an explanation.”

Even she couldn’t deny that, and after a brief pause she said, “Fine.”

What else could she say? She may have been stubborn and, yes, a little spoiled, but she was an intelligent woman. She walked away, clutching her son—their son—unsteady on the grass in her ridiculously high-heeled boots. Hooker boots, his brother Jordan would have called them. Not the typical attire for an heiress, and even less appropriate for a mother, but she never had been one to play by the rules, which was what had drawn Nathan to her in the first place. Her confidence and her spunk had been an incredible turn-on, especially when he was used to dating “proper” women. The kind who would keep him grounded, who wouldn’t tempt him from within the safe place he’d carved out for himself and back into the dark side. But she hadn’t been nearly as wicked as she wanted people to believe. In fact, she’d coaxed him farther out into the light than any other woman had managed.

Nathan spotted Beth and headed in her direction. He didn’t doubt for a second that she knew the baby was his. And the look on her face as he approached said she knew that he knew. “She swore us to secrecy,” Beth said before he could get a word out.

“You should have told me.”

She snorted. “Like you didn’t already know.”

“How could I have?”

“Come on, Nathan. You break up with a woman and a month later she turns up pregnant, and you’re telling me you didn’t even suspect it was yours?”

Of course he had. He kept waiting for a call from Ana. He trusted that if the child was his she would have the decency to tell him. When he didn’t hear from her he just assumed the baby was another man’s, which he’d taken to mean that she’d wasted no time moving on. Which he couldn’t deny stung like hell.

Turned out there really hadn’t been anyone else—at least, not that he knew of. That wasn’t much of a consolation at this point.

“It was wrong of her to keep it from me,” he told Beth.

“Yes, it was. But—and she would kill me if she knew I was telling you this—you broke her heart, Nathan. She was devastated when you ended the relationship. So, please, cut her a little slack.”

That was no excuse to keep his child from him. “I have to go. Give the birthday girl a kiss for me.”

Beth’s brow cinched with worry. “Go easy on her, Nathan. You have no idea what she’s been through the past year and a half. The pregnancy, the birth…she did everything on her own.”

“That was her choice. At least she had one.” Feeling angry and betrayed by people he trusted, Nathan turned and headed toward the parking lot.