Taste of Love - By Stephanie Nicole Page 0,16

got closer to the table. She leaned down and kissed the older woman's cheeks.

"I'm great. Having a wonderful dinner with my son." Bunny pointed to the man sitting at the table with her, shielding his face with his hand. "Madison, this is my currently rude son, Cameron. Cameron, this is Madison."

She smacked his hand away from his face, eliciting a gasp from Madison.

"We've met, Mother." Cameron spoke softly, while Madison just stood there with her mouth open.

"Oh wonderful! I think the two of you will get along famously," Bunny said, clasping her hands in front of her in excitement. Then she looked at the young woman standing beside the table and frowned.

"Are you alright dear?" she asked Madison, seeing her pale face.

Madison nodded after a long moment. "Um, Cameron, can I talk to you in my office for a minute?" she asked. She wasn't sure what she was going to say, but fate had obviously brought him to her restaurant for a reason.

He nodded, and threw his napkin on the table as he stood and followed behind her. Bunny was left at the table to create a hundred different scenarios as to what was going on between the two of them. All of them ended up with Madison as her daughter-in-law and the mother of her grandchildren.

She was quite pleased with herself as she dug into the last of her dessert.

Once the door closed behind them, Cameron was quick to jump to the matter at hand. "What is it that you wanted? I don't have all night."

"You might want to sit down for this." She motioned to a chair.

"I think I'll stand," he told her defiantly.

"Fine, don't say I didn't warn you." She took a deep breath. "Cameron, I'm pregnant, and it's your child."

Cameron looked at her with a raised eyebrow. He didn't miss a beat. "Oh, really? You expect me to believe that?"

"What?" Madison stared at him with wide eyes.

"I should have known you would do something to try to ruin me. How much do you want?"

"Excuse me?" she asked, still not understanding what he was talking about.

"How much do you want to keep from going public with 'my child'? Do you know how many times women have come to me and said that I fathered their children? Do you know how many of them were actually mine? None of them were mine, that's how many. It's all a ploy to get money from me," he spat, his anger rising.

Madison's anger was rising, too. She took a deep breath to keep it in check.

"Well, you're the only one I've been with in a really long time, and I'm sure this was no 'Immaculate Conception', so that leaves just one conclusion," she argued.

"Yeah, right. We had a one night stand, and you expect me to believe that I'm the only one you've been with in a while? Come on, tell the truth. I bet you do it all the time; go out to bars, pick up a guy, go home and screw his brains out? You're a little slut, aren't you?" Cameron taunted.

Staying calm was getting much harder to do. "Screw you," she said, her voice almost a whisper. "I told you that was the first time I'd ever had a one night stand." She could feel the tears prickling her eyes.

"Yeah, and I've never heard that one before either. Get real. It's the same old story I hear time after time. If you're even pregnant, it's not mine, so forget the whole extortion thing," he told her as he walked out of her office, slamming the door.

Only when he was gone did Madison let the tears fall.

Cameron walked back to the table where his mother was sitting, trying to dampen his temper with every step he took. That woman sure had nerve to accuse him of something so transparent! Did she think she was the only one who had ever tried that game? The moment he got even the slightest bit famous, it began to happen with disappointing regularity. Now he was accustomed to dealing with women who thought they had found their paycheck in his pants.

"Let's go, Mother," he said, harsher than he intended, once he got back to their table. He reached for her arm, making it clear that he was serious about getting out of there.

"What happened?" Bunny asked, confused as to why her son was in such a sour mood.

"Some people just aren't who they pretend to be," he told her cryptically, as he dropped