She's Having the Boss's Baby - By Kate Carlisle Page 0,10

until Logan got back to the island. They’d never brought in another partner before, but they both agreed that there was nobody better for their organization than Ellie. And if they wanted the company to grow even larger, they needed someone else in the top ranks who had her intelligence, business insight and unwavering principles.

And all that had nothing to do with the fact that she was downright sexy and beautiful. He thought again of those amazing legs of hers, pictured them wrapped around his waist with him buried so far inside her, he could feel it.

The carnal image was so vivid, he almost lost his footing. Damn, his mind was wandering down a perilous path and if he wasn’t careful, he’d find himself facedown in the sand.

He recovered quickly and drank down a good slug of scotch. The smooth, liquid heat soothed his throat and snapped him out of his wayward thoughts. His wildly active imagination meant nothing in reality. He liked Ellie, would love to take her to bed, but it wouldn’t happen. It couldn’t.

How the hell could he risk losing Ellie as a business partner if a romantic thing between them didn’t work out? Or worse yet, what if he initiated something and she was so offended she quit?

“She wouldn’t just quit,” he muttered darkly. “She’d punch you in the nose first and then quit. Yeah, that’s not gonna happen.”

Still, he wanted her to be happy.

But apparently, it was going to take having a baby to accomplish that.

“Hell.” He rubbed his face, annoyed with himself. If he was being honest, he would have to admit that if Ellie had approached him and asked him to be the father of her child, he would have had a hard time pushing her away. But he absolutely would’ve turned her down in the end. Wouldn’t he? Of course he would’ve. There was no way he would say yes to something like that. Even if it was Ellie doing the asking.

“Not that she asked you,” he groused, then scowled at his own idiotic statement. It was official: he had lost his mind. Exasperated, he swallowed the rest of the scotch and headed back to his suite before he found himself howling at the moon like the rest of the lunatics in the world.

*

Ellie yawned, then finished the last of her tea and shut down her computer. She should’ve gone to bed an hour ago, but since she knew she wouldn’t sleep anyway, she had spent more time sifting through the family photos her sister, Brenna, had sent from Atlanta. A picture of Brenna with her darling husband, Brian. One of Brenna and Brian with their two adorable children. Various shots of the kids on their new backyard jungle gym. And the latest one, a blurry ultrasound photo of Brenna’s unborn baby.

Doctor’s pretty sure it’s going to be a boy, Brenna had written in the email. Lilah’s so excited to have another brother. No annoying little sister to deal with.

Ellie smiled. She could hear Brenna laughing as she wrote those words, since it was Ellie who’d been the annoying little sister Brenna had dealt with all her life. And thank goodness for that, Ellie thought.

Now Brenna had her own wonderful family and Ellie couldn’t wait to see them all again. That was another reason she had chosen the Atlanta clinic. She would get to visit with her sister’s happy, loving family again.

Ellie and Brenna hadn’t always been this happy. Growing up, their mother had been absent most of the time, even when she was sitting in the same room with them. That was what happened when a woman became so obsessed with a man who wanted nothing to do with her. Rather than give any love or attention to her own children, their mother had kept it all inside, saving it up, just in case their father ever returned. Except he never did. He didn’t want anything to do with them. He had moved on, found another woman to marry, a woman who gave birth to children he cared for much more than he had ever cared about his first two daughters.

But Ellie’s mother never gave up on him, never stopped loving him or chasing him, never stopped pretending that he would come back one day. She was always ready, always perfectly dressed and coifed in case he showed up at the door. She insisted that the girls be ready, too. And in her own subtle way, their mother never stopped blaming