One Night, Two Consequences

‘When I need to I find work.’ There were always IT consulting projects popping into her inbox—some of which she took on, if they were interesting enough.

‘Doing …?’

‘This and that … I’m a hell of a cook—and, for the record, a really bad waitress.’

He laughed again and she felt her womb contract. Why was getting this hard-eyed, hard-bodied man to laugh such a kick? Such an incredible turn-on?

‘Good to know.’

‘So … what do you do?’

Bo lifted his eyebrows. ‘What do you think I do?’

The corners of his mouth lifted in a sexy little smile. Was he flirting? He was so contained that she couldn’t be sure, but she’d give him the benefit of the doubt.

‘I’ll play that game. Well, you look marginally intelligent,’ she teased. ‘Accountant?’

Bo pulled a face. ‘Ugh!’

She pulled a face too. ‘Lawyer?’

‘Double ugh!’

She tapped her finger against her lip. ‘So, not an accountant or a lawyer? I’d still say that you’re in management.’

‘Yeah.’

And she just knew that he was the top branch of a very tall tree. She couldn’t imagine him taking orders from anyone. He was too controlled, too alpha … not her type at all. As a long-term prospect, she clarified. Along with her career she’d also given up on love and her dreams of happy-ever-after with a nice man followed by a couple of kids. She’d finally—finally!—learnt that, despite what people said, love, trust and approval were conditional—very much dependent on what she delivered.

So three years and two months ago she’d stopped playing that game, and she now kept any new relationships simple. Most of them were transient and fleeting anyway, due to the fact that she was constantly on the move.

And this was pure sexual heat shimmering between her and Bo: passion, lust and incredible chemistry.

Remy lifted her head from watching his thumb on her wrist—so fascinating, so thrilling!—and her eyes slammed into his. She swallowed at the heat and passion rolling through them and sighed when Bo lifted his hand and that magical thumb brushed her full bottom lip.

‘So sexy,’ he muttered as his other hand gripped her thigh.

Remy looked down at his hand and could easily imagine those tanned fingers on her breast, that wide hand sliding over her hip, under her bottom, lifting her to him …

Then he leaned forward and his mouth touched hers … warm, wonderful. Remy, shocked and surprised and utterly turned on, had to grab at his biceps to keep from falling off her stool. Bo steadied her by holding her waist, and she could feel the ridges of his fingers through her thin cotton dress.

Remy held on to his wrists and, wanting more of his deliciousness, pressed her mouth back onto his. He tasted like whiskey and breath mints and his lips were a surprise. Warm, firm, dry … Confident. That word again. What he was to his core and what she only had a glossy, thin layer of…

His hand moved to her spine, kneading as he worked his way up to her bare shoulders, moved around to touch her face. His thumb skated over her cheekbone as he deepened the kiss, his tongue sliding into her mouth.

Remy’s eyes flew open at the bolt of lust that spiked through her. Where had that come from? She couldn’t remember when last she’d been kissed with such mastery, such complete and utter self-assurance.

She wanted more of this—more of him. Now. Tonight. One night of passion with a man she knew would rock her world.

Grabbing every last bit of courage she had, she made herself pull back from him, determined to be sensible just for a minute.

‘This sounds like an extraordinarily personal question, and I know you can lie when you answer but I hope you don’t. Are you married? Involved?’

Apart from those hot, tumultuous eyes, he looked as calm and collected as before. Keeping his eyes locked on hers, he drained his drink. ‘No.’

‘Good.’ Remy nodded. ‘It’s one of my little rules.’ She shrugged a slim shoulder and forced herself to say the words. ‘Been tested lately?’

Bo remained unruffled. ‘Yep. I’m good.’

‘Me too, but I’d still expect you to use a condom.’

‘Noted.’

‘Okay, then.’

Remy, hoping, praying, that she wasn’t making the biggest mistake of her life, stood up and draped her black leather bag over her slim shoulder. She was as nervous as hell—couldn’t believe that she’d had the … well, the courage to do this. Knowing that laughter would loosen the tension between them, she deliberately looked down at his feet before flashing him a naughty grin.

‘You know what they say about men with big feet. Want to prove that to me?’

His shout of laughter had more than a few customers looking their way.

Yeah, laugh, cutie, Remy thought as they left the bar. You sound amazing.

‘You okay?’

Bo’s voice rumbled across her skin and Remy nodded, rubbing her head against his shoulder.

‘Wonderful, thanks.’

And she genuinely was. Sleeping with Bo was nothing like the last one-night stand she’d had, and she was thrilled that it was so much more. There were no regrets this time—no feelings of guilt, no resentment at not being satisfied.

She felt relaxed and calm and, weirdly, safe.

She’d hit the one-night stand jackpot, Remy thought on an internal smile. Very good-looking, and his body, under those sharp threads, was droolworthy. Long, lean muscles, ripped abs, broad shoulders … And he smelled divine.

He was the best lover she’d ever had by a million miles. Sex with Bo had been fun and, strangely for an ONS, a little romantic. That had never happened to her before. With all her previous lovers her mind, ever analytical, had always ruled and she’d never allowed herself to fall into that space where she stopped thinking and just enjoyed. But instead of the fast and furious she’d expected, Bo had spent long, luscious minutes worshipping her body, allowing her to do the same to him. It had made what should have been a quick encounter deeper, more personal … softer.

Why was it that the one man who’d managed to show her how sex should be, who had been able to satisfy her beyond anything she’d believed possible, was the man she’d never see again?

Remy watched as Bo raised his wrist and looked at the bright dial of his watch, the roman numerals visible in the nearly dark room. This was it. In fifteen minutes—maybe twenty—he would slip out of her bed and then out of her life. She shouldn’t want a little more time with him but she did: just an hour, or a day or two, here in this magical town.

Remy brushed her hand through the light, crisp layer of hair on Bo’s chest. She rubbed her cheek against his shoulder before succumbing to the urge to bury her face in his strong neck, silently asking him to stay exactly where he was. She’d barely finished the thought when she felt the tap of his fingers against her hip, and she pulled her head back to look at him.

‘I must go. I have to be up in a couple of hours.’

Remy sat up and managed a small smile as he swung his legs around to sit on the edge of the bed. ‘I’m leaving early too.’

He reached behind him and squeezed her calf. ‘I’m not going to ask you where you’re going because I might be tempted to follow. I had a great time.’

Remy, holding the sheet up above her breasts, risked placing her hand on his shoulder and turned her intended caress into a quick pat. ‘Me too. I thought we’d spontaneously combust that first time.’

His deep, sexy chuckle danced across her bare skin. ‘We shouldn’t have started kissing in the lift. We gave that other couple quite an eyeful.’

Remy frowned, confused. ‘There was another couple in the lift?’

Bo stood up and pulled his boxers on. Placing his hands on his hips, he looked down at her, his mouth twisted into a wry smile. ‘Yeah, there was.’

Remy tossed her head and didn’t break contact with his mesmerising eyes. They were the most amazing shade of grey, edged with a ring of black. ‘Well, sorry … I was kind of distracted.’

His eyes deepened and looked smoky again. ‘I like the fact that I can make you lose track of your surroundings.’

Remy had to smile at the very self-satisfied smirk on his face.

When he’d headed to the bathroom Remy scuttled out of bed, rummaged in her suitcase and eventually found a pair of sleeping shorts and a roomy T-shirt. In the mirror on the opposite wall she saw her reflection and pulled a face at her very messy hair and make-up-free face. She wasn’t looking her best, but what was the point of fussing over what she looked like when he was heading out through the door?

Out of her life.

One night. His staying any longer was not an option.

She shouldn’t want him to stay at all.

Bo stood in the generic hotel bathroom and stared at his reflection in the large mirror above the basin. This is a one-night stand, he told himself, a one-time deal.

So what if it had been some of the best sex of his life? He’d spent two hours with her and they had done it … he could hardly believe it … three times. He wasn’t in his dotage, but that was excessive even for him. He hadn’t been able to stop touching her, seemingly desperate to make every second count.

He didn’t want to walk back out there, pick his clothes up off the floor and walk out of her life. For the first time in far too many years he wasn’t racing to leave, wasn’t feeling the noose around his neck, the let-down after good sex with no emotional connection. All he wanted to do was to climb back into her bed and slide on home.

But that would not be sensible or practical and definitely not wise. Apart from the fact that she intrigued him—which he didn’t like—they were out of condoms. Although if he didn’t leave—now!—then he wasn’t sure he’d be able to control himself.

Bo flipped on the cold tap and ducked his head under the spout, hoping the cold water would shock some sense into him. Why was he thinking about her like this? She was sex, pure and simple—a good time, and that was it!

She’d offered, he’d accepted, they’d both had fun—the end. He should be walking out through the door with a fat smile on his face.

She’d been a superb lay—the best two hours of his life … so why wasn’t he feeling any better? Bo rubbed a towel over his hair and his hand over his jaw, now covered with dark stubble.

Since Ana he’d consciously, deliberately, kept all his sexual encounters casual and this had been supposed to be the most casual of all. A pretty girl—a tourist—someone he wouldn’t see again. How much more casual could he get? He didn’t know her surname, where she was from, what her cell number was, but she was the first woman in five years who’d managed to reach inside his gut and twist it into a knot.

And that was why he purposely, deliberately, strode back into the room and quickly yanked on his clothes. The quicker he left, the quicker he could go back to thinking straight …

Remy had left the bed and got dressed and Bo was thankful for the small mercy that she wasn’t still naked; that would have made leaving a lot harder than it already was. Than he already was …

He sent her a quick look. She sat on the corner of the bed, her long legs crossed at the knees. She looked cool and composed, so he walked over to her and dropped his head to kiss her high on her cheekbone, knowing that if he didn’t keep it light he wouldn’t be able to resist temptation … again.

‘Thanks, Remy. Have a good life.’

‘Yeah, you too.’

Bo yanked open the door, closed it behind him and shook his head. If someone had told him earlier that walking away from her would be difficult he would have told them that they had rocks in their head. Walking away was never difficult.

Except that this time it really was.

CHAPTER TWO

Six weeks later

IN PORTLAND, REMY stood in the smallest bedroom, which her mum had turned into a nursery for Callum, and kept her eyes firmly fixed on her baby half-brother’s face. Only the fact that her mother would kill her if she woke Callum kept her from running into the dark Portland night, screaming like a psychotic banshee.

She was on the edge of sanity and there were more than a few contributing factors …

Six weeks in her mother’s orbit was about five weeks and five days too long. As it turned out Callum slept a lot, and Jan had had plenty of time to nag her adult child.

‘When are you going to pick up your career? You have an obligation to use the brains God gave you for something more worthwhile than catching flights, learning another way to cook fish and then blogging about it. All that education wasted. You are not fulfilling your potential.’

Below those comments were the unsaid implications … You disappoint me. I expected more. What you do is important—not who you are.

But she now had a bigger problem than her mother’s nagging her about her life …

Remy looked down at the plastic wand in her hand and pulled another two out of her back pocket. One displayed a plus sign, one showed two lines and, just to make sure she got the message, the third had the word ‘pregnant’ in the display window.

She was going to have a baby.

This couldn’t be happening …

She was going to have Bo’s baby. The stranger from Bellevue. Her one-night, blow-her-head-off stand.

Remy slid down the wall and rested her head just below the butt of the happy giraffe painted on the wall. God! Why, oh, why was this happening to her? She couldn’t be pregnant—she didn’t want to be pregnant—but she held the irrefutable proof in her hands. And how? Bo had entered her only once, maybe twice, without a condom. On neither occasion had he been close to his happy ending … The man had had incredible self-control and he’d used that control to bring her to orgasm after orgasm during the night.

But apparently one of his super-sperm had sneaked out and had been hell-bent on finding its own happy ending. With her egg.

Remy muttered a series of silent curse words as tears pooled in her eyes.

In his wooden crib Callum snuffled and Remy tensed, thinking that he was about to wake up. She stretched her neck to look at him. Crap! She was going to have one of … of those! They didn’t even look all that interesting to have around; all Callum seemed to do was cry, eat and sleep.

She wanted to send hers back… Why didn’t life come with a remote control? Whoops, didn’t mean to do that—rewind. Don’t like that channel—swap.

Remy banged her head lightly against the wall. Life doesn’t work that way, chicken. She couldn’t duck, ignore or rewrite her life or her past … no matter how much she’d like to.

Remy stared at the carpet between her knees. She was her mother’s daughter in more ways than one: stupid when it came to condom use, apparently, but brilliant academically.

Like her brainy mother—a professor in mechanical engineering—she’d been in an accelerated learning programme most of her life and at sixteen had started at the same Ivy League college Jan was a lecturer at. She’d spent her entire undergraduate degree years feeling that she was an exhibit, her mum’s pet project … paraded around when she was in favour, held at a distance when she wasn’t.

After completing her PhD in computer science she’d been headhunted by Tiscot’s, the biggest media and PR company in the country, to be their Chief Information Officer at a stupidly massive salary. Her desire to please and to achieve had followed her into the workplace, and she’d given the company, and her boss, more than a pound of her flesh—part of her soul as well.

Her life had been consumed by work, and such dedication, obsession, such stupidity, had caused her ulcer to perforate and she’d landed up in hospital—which had given her some much needed time to think.

Lying in that hospital bed, she’d never felt more alone. She’d had no visitors—why would she? She had no friends—and the only flowers she’d received had been from the firm, probably ordered by the junior receptionist. Long, long hours on her own had given her the time to examine her life and she had come to accept that she was twenty-five, lonely—because she never made an effort to make friends—perpetually single—because she never took the time to date—and desperately unhealthy because she never took the time to eat properly.

She was also burnt out and possibly depressed. And every time she thought about returning to Tiscot’s the flames of hell fired up in her stomach.

That had been a freaking big clue that she’d had a choice to make: she had to change her life or allow hell to move permanently into her stomach. She’d chosen to save herself and her sanity and had walked away from her corporate, high-pressure, immensely demanding job.

From New York she’d flown to England, but that hadn’t quite been far enough to silence her mother’s voice in her head constantly reminding her that she was making a huge mistake, that she was being a coward, a cop-out. That she wasn’t good enough, wasn’t working hard enough, wasn’t achieving enough.

The rest of Europe had still been too close, so she’d headed for Asia, and by the time she’d got to Africa Jan’s voice had been quieter. But sadly it still hadn’t disappeared entirely.

Leaving her corporate life had been the right decision, Remy thought. And she’d seen some amazing places, met some extraordinary people. But travelling hadn’t filled all the holes in her soul. She was still looking for …

Remy racked her brain. Why couldn’t she define what she was seeking? Why did she have this belief that she would only know what it was when she found it? It wasn’t love, or a man, or a relationship—love was conditional, an iffy emotion that wasn’t steadfast and true. And, as she’d been shown all her life, it could be used as a weapon or a bribe. She had spent her life chasing it, catching it and then having it ripped from her grasp. She was so over it.

As a result, she didn’t buy in to the premise that love, or a man, would make her happy. So what would? She wished she knew.

Was she looking for a new job? Possibly. A new passion? Definitely.

What she hadn’t been looking for was pregnancy or incipient motherhood. That was taking her whole turn-over-a-new-leaf attitude a forest too far.

But a baby was on its way, she was keeping it, and she had to adjust. She had to make plans—start thinking for two.

But before she could make plans she had to tell Bo—tell him that she was pregnant and expecting his child. Bo deserved to know he’d fathered a child, and her child needed to know who his or her father was. She knew this because nearly thirty years ago, in a rare display of loss of control, her mum had gone to a party, got totally high, and couldn’t remember exactly who she’d slept with that night.

As a result Remy didn’t have a cookin’ clue who her own father was.

Telling Bo was the one thing she was sure of. She owed him that. She supposed that she would also have to tell her family … which meant—unfortunately—having a conversation with her mother.

Remy sighed and pushed her hair back off her face as she stood up. That was going to be fun. Jan would respond as if she’d told her that she was intending to juggle with vials of something lethal. It was going to be ten times worse than telling her mother that she had given up her job to go travelling to ‘find’ herself.

Way. Way. Worse.

Unlike travelling, she couldn’t just give up a baby and resume the life Jan had spent so much time planning.

Remy walked over to the crib and stared down at the tiny, tiny little bundle who was her mother’s latest little project. Unfair, Remy thought, biting her lip. Her mum loved Callum and she loved her. Sort of …

‘I’ll try to shield you as much as I can, little brother, but I’m warning you she’s a force of nature. Don’t be too smart, okay?’ she murmured, touching the back of her knuckle to his satin-smooth head. ‘I’m going to leave Portland now—tonight. I’ve got to get out of here. And, no, I’m not quite brave enough to tell her yet.’

‘Tell her what?’ Jan asked from the doorway, her arms folded against her already flat stomach.

Her body wouldn’t dare rebel and hold on to its baby fat a minute longer than it should, Remy thought.

Remy pushed the pregnancy test wands back into her pocket, hiding them, before turning to face her mum. ‘Nothing much,’ she lied. ‘Just that I’m leaving. It’s time.’

Jan nodded briskly. ‘Good. I was about to suggest the same thing. But before you go I want to tell you about a VP position that I hear is vacant at Repcal Tech. It’s a step down from where you were before, but beggars can’t be choosers …’

Back in Bellevue, Remy thought as she pulled into a spare parking space in front of the diner on the corner of Main and First. Looking down, she saw the open notebook next to her on the cracked bench seat of her old Ford 150. There were just two bullet points on the blank page.

Fill up with gas.

Find Bo and tell him you’re pregnant.

Easy-peasy, lemon-squeezy, she assured herself. Once she told Bo that he was going to be a daddy and that she expected absolutely nothing from him she could move on again. He would be upset at the news—and then grateful when he heard that she intended to let him off the hook, happy that she didn’t need or expect anything from him. Then she’d leave.

She had, she reckoned, another three months of travelling before she had to make some hard decisions—like where she wanted to live, what she was going to do for the rest of her life.

That’s what happens when you let yourself play with fire, Draycott. You get burned, dummy.

Or, in her case, pregnant …

Remy grabbed her leather tote bag and left the car, slamming the heavy door shut behind her. She had been travelling for hours and she was hungry and desperate to use the bathroom.

Remy pushed open the door to the diner and sighed when she saw the packed tables and booths. Apparently lunchtime on a Saturday was chaotic. She used the facilities and washed her hands and face, taking some time to run a brush through her hair, to swipe on some lip gloss. This was Bo’s town, after all, and she didn’t want to run into him looking as if she’d been dragged backwards through a bush.

And if she did run into him, how should she tell him?

Hi, remember me? Thought you’d like to know that I’m pregnant.

Funny thing … You know when you slipped inside without a condom? Well, it had a pretty big consequence …

Or her favourite.

I’m pregnant. It’s yours. Bye.

Remy sighed at her pale reflection in the bathroom mirror before whirling away and heading back into the diner. Food always made her feel better. She’d have a bacon and blue cheese burger and then she’d tackle the problem of finding out exactly who Bo actually was and how to get hold of him. Once she did that her duty would be done and she could move on.

There still wasn’t an empty table in the place, so Remy looked over the customers to see who would be most receptive to sharing a table. Years of travelling had robbed her of any lingering shyness and she could talk to anybody, anywhere. There were two good-looking blondes, one male, one female, sitting in a corner booth. They looked enough alike for her to assume that they were siblings. And, since they weren’t lovers, they shouldn’t mind her horning in on their private time.

Her mind made up, Remy walked across the room to the booth and flashed them her biggest smile. Ooh, the blond guy was very fine: muscled and masculine, with a gorgeous pair of deep brown eyes.