Baby for the Tycoon

Forget twenty-two years of friendship. He was going to kill Ford.

The baby squirmed. Wendy jostled her knee to calm the little girl, all the while still digging in the drawer. “I swear I had another tube of lip gloss in here.”

“Lip gloss?” She’d just pulled the rug out from under him.

If he’d had two weeks, maybe he could talk some sense into her. But no. His idiot of a partner had ripped that away too. And she was worried about lip gloss?

She must have heard the outrage in his voice, because her head snapped up. “It was my favorite color and they don’t even make it anymore. And—” She slammed the drawer shut and yanked open another. “Oh, forget it.”

“You can’t quit.”

She stood up, abandoning her task. “You think I want this? You think I want to move? Back to Texas? You think I want to leave a job I love? So that I can move home? I don’t! But it’s my only option.”

“How will being unemployed in Texas solve anything?” he demanded.

“I…” Peyton squirmed again in her arms and let out a howl of protest. Wendy sighed, sank back into the chair and set it rocking with a pump of her leg. “I may not have mentioned it before, but my family has money.”

She hadn’t mentioned it. She’d never needed to.

People who grew up with money had an air about them. It wasn’t snobbery. Not precisely. It was more a sense of confidence that came from always having the best of everything. It was the kind of thing you only noticed if you’d never had money and had spent your life trying to replicate that air of entitlement.

Besides, there was an innate elegance to Wendy that was in direct contrast to her elfin appearance and plucky verve. Yet somehow she pulled it off.

“From money?” he said dryly. “I never would have guessed.”

Wendy seemed too distracted to notice his sarcasm. “My grandfather set up a trust for me. For all the grandkids, actually. I never claimed mine. The requirements seemed too ridiculous.”

“And the requirements are?”

“I have to work for the family company and live within fifteen miles of my parents.” She narrowed her eyes as if glaring at some unseen relative. Peyton let out another shriek of frustration and Wendy snapped back to the present. “So if I move home now—”

“You can claim the trust,” he summed up. “You’d have enough money to hire a lawyer if it does come down to a custody battle.”

“I’m hoping it won’t come to that. My grandmother still controls the purse strings. The rest of the family will follow her wishes. Once she sees what a great mother I’m going to be, she’ll back off and just let me raise Peyton.” Wendy’s jaw jutted forward in determination. “But if it does come to a custody battle, I want to be sure I have enough money to put up a good fight.”

“I don’t get it. You’re doing all this for a cousin you barely knew? Someone you hadn’t seen in years?”

Wendy’s eyes misted over and for a second he thought that—dear God—she might actually start crying. She squeezed the baby close to her chest and planted a kiss on top of her head. Then she pinned him with a steady gaze brimming with resolution. “If something happened to Ford and Kitty, and they wanted you to take Ilsa, wouldn’t you do whatever it took to honor their wishes?”

All he could do in response was shove his hands deep into his pockets and swallow a curse. Damn it, she was right.

He stared at the adorable tot on Wendy’s lap, summing up his competition. He wasn’t about to lose the best assistant he’d ever had. He didn’t care how cute and helpless that baby was.

Peyton undoubtedly needed Wendy. But he needed her too.

Fighting the feeling of complete and utter doom—which, frankly, was a fight she’d been losing ever since the nanny had first handed her Peyton—Wendy glanced from the baby, to the open desk drawer and then to Jonathon.

She had so much to do, her mind couldn’t focus on a single task. Or maybe it was lack of sleep. Or maybe just an attack of nerves brought on by the way Jonathon kept pacing from one side of the room to the other, pausing occasionally to glower in her direction.

When she’d first started work at FMJ, Jonathon had made her distinctly nervous. There was something about his combination of magnetic good looks, keen intelligence and ruthless ambition that made her overly aware of every molecule of her body. And every molecule of his body for that matter. She’d spent the first six months on edge, jumping every time he came in the room, nearly trembling under his gaze. It wasn’t nerves precisely. More a kind of tingling anticipation. As if she were a gazelle who wanted to be eaten by the lion.

She’d forced herself to get over it.

And she’d thought she’d been successful. Only now that feeling was back. Either she could chalk it up to exhaustion and emotional vulnerability. Or she could be completely honest with herself. It wasn’t nerves. It was sexual awareness. And now that she was about to walk out of his life forever, she wished she’d acted on it when she’d had the chance.

Forcing her mind away from that thought, she stared at the open desk drawer. The lip gloss was gone forever, just like any opportunity she might have had to explore a different kind of relationship with Jonathon. The best she could hope for now was to gather her few remaining possessions and make a run for it.

She had a Voldemort for President coffee mug in the bottom drawer, her Bose iPod dock, a tub of Just Fruit strawberries and in the very back, a bag of Ghirardelli chocolate caramels. Precious few possessions to be walking away with after five years, and the cardboard box dwarfed them. On the bright side, at least she’d only have to make one trip out to the car.

Balancing Peyton on her hip, she wedged the box under her arm only to find Jonathon blocking her route to the door.

“You can’t go.”

“Right. The car seat. I can’t believe I forgot that.” She turned back around, only to notice the diaper bag as well.

She blew out a breath. Okay. More than one trip after all.

“No,” Jonathon said. “I’m not letting you quit.”

Turning back around, she stared at him. “Not letting me? How can you not let me? If I quit, I quit.”

“You’re the best assistant I’ve ever had. I’m not going to lose you over something this…” He seemed to be searching for the least offensive word. “Frivolous.”

She raised an eyebrow. “She’s a child, not a frivolity. It’s not like I’m running off to join the circus.”

There was something unsettling about the quiet, assessing way he studied her. Then he said, “If keeping this baby is really so important to you, we’ll hire a lawyer. We’ll find the best lawyer in the country. We’ll take care of it.”

She felt her throat tighten, but refused to let the tears out of the floodgate. Oh, how tempting it was to accept his help. But the poor man had no idea what he was getting into.

“You should know, my family is extremely wealthy. If they fight this, they’ll put considerable financial and political weight behind it.”

“So?”

She blew out a long breath. The moment of reckoning. She always dreaded this. “Leland is my mother’s maiden name. I legally took her name when I left college.”

Jonathon didn’t look impatient, the way some people did when she explained. That was one of the things she liked best about Jonathon. He reached conclusions quickly, but never judgments.

“My father’s name—” Then she corrected herself. “My real last name is Morgan.”

Most people, it took a couple of minutes for them to put together the name Morgan with wealth and political connections. She figured as smart as he was, it would take Jonathon about twenty seconds. It took him three.

“As far as I know, none of the banking Morgans live in Texas. That means you must be one of the Texas oil Morgans.”

He didn’t phrase it as a question. His tone had gone flat, his gaze distant.

“I am.” She bit her lip, not bothering to hide her cringe. “I should have told you.”

“No. Why would you have?” His expression was so blank, so unsurprised, so completely disinterested, that it was obvious, at least to her, that he cared deeply that she’d kept her true identity to herself. His calm, direct gaze met hers. “Then Senator Henry Morgan is…”

“My uncle.” In the interest of full disclosure, she nodded to the baby gurgling happily on her hip. “Peyton’s grandfather.”

“Okay then.” He stood with his hands propped on his hips, the jacket of his suit pushed back behind his hands. He often stood in that way and it always made her heart kick up a beat. The posture somehow emphasized the breadth of his shoulders and the narrowness of his waist all at the same time.

Despite his obvious disappointment, he immediately went into problem-solving mode. He stared at her blankly, then left the room abruptly. A moment later he returned with a copy of the Wall Street Journal. He flipped the paper open, folded it in half and held it out to her. “So, Elizabeth Morgan is your cousin. The baby’s mother.”

It was an article about her death. The first Wendy had seen. She didn’t need to read it to know what it would say. It would be carefully crafted. Devoid of scandal. Bitsy may have been an embarrassment but Uncle Hank would have called in favors to make sure the article met with his approval. That was the way her uncle did business, whether he was running the country or running his family.

Jonathon frowned as he scanned the article. His eyes crinkled at the edges as his face settled into what she thought of as his problem-solving expression. But if he could figure a way out of this one, then he was smarter than even she thought he was.

“It says here she is survived by a brother and sister-in-law. Why don’t they take the baby?”

“Exactly,” she said grimly. “Why not? It’s what every conservative in the country will be thinking. Those conservative voters made up a huge portion of Uncle Hank’s constituents.” And they weren’t the only ones who had that question. It was no secret that their grandmother, Mema, didn’t approve of modern families. In her mind, a family comprised a mother and a father. And possibly a dog. Mema would want Hank Jr. to take Peyton. And what Mema wanted was generally what the family did.

She may have been in her late eighties, but she was a wily old dame. More importantly, she still controlled the money.

“It’s so frustrating,” she admitted. “This wouldn’t even be an issue if I had a husband I could trot out to appease my grandmother and Uncle Hank’s constituents.”

“You really think that’s all you need?”

“For my family to see me as the perfect mother?” She gave a fake, trilling laugh. “Oh, yes, a husband is the must-have accessory of the season. The richer, the better. Optional add-ons are the enormous gas-guzzling SUV, the Junior League membership and the golden Lab.”

“And it’s really that simple?”

“Oh, sure. That simple. I’ll just head over to the laboratory and whip up a successful husband out of spare computer parts. You run out to the morgue and steal a dead body I can reanimate and we’ll be good.”

His lips quirked in a smile, his eyes crinkling at the corners, just a hint of cockiness. The expression gave her pause, because he wasn’t laughing at her joke. No, she knew this look too. It was his I’ve-solved-the-problem look. “I think we can do a little better than that.”

“Excuse me?”

“You said it yourself. All you need is a rich, successful husband.”

For a moment she just stared blankly at him, unable to follow the abrupt twist the conversation had taken. “Right. A rich, successful husband. Which I don’t have.”

“But you could.” He smiled fully now. Full smiles were rare for him. Usually they made her feel a little breathless. This one just made her nervous. “All you have to do is marry me. I’ll even buy you a dog.”

Three

Having never before asked a woman to marry him, Jonathon wasn’t quite sure what reaction he expected, but it wasn’t Wendy’s blank-faced confusion. Or maybe that was a perfectly normal reaction under the circumstances. After all, it wasn’t every day a man proposed to his assistant for such transparently selfish reasons.

For a long moment, she merely stared at him, her blue-violet eyes wide, her perfect bow mouth gaping open in surprise.

She wasn’t just surprised. She was disconcerted. His proposal had shocked her. Maybe even offended her. On some deeply intimate level, the thought of marriage to him horrified her.

Not that he could really blame her. Despite his wealth, he was no prize.

She was going to say no, and he couldn’t let her do it. He needed her. Quite desperately, if the past seven days had been any indication.

“I’m not proposing a romantic relationship,” he reassured her, hoping to make his proposal seem as benign as possible.

“Obviously,” she muttered. Still holding the baby in her arms, she sank to the edge of the desk. She dipped her head, nuzzling the tuft of dark hair on Peyton’s head.

“This would be strictly a business arrangement.” He argued more vehemently as he felt her slipping away. “We’ll stay married as long as it takes to convince your family that we’re suitable parents. We won’t even have to live together. I’ll grant you an annulment as soon as we’ve convinced them.”

“No,” she said softly.

He felt a pang in his chest at her response. Then he saw it. Her letter of resignation. Signed, dated and ready to be handed over. As official as an order for his execution.

This past week had been a premonition of his future without her. He could envision an endless parade of incompetent temps. Countless hours of interviewing assistants, all of whom would fail to live up to the precedent set by Wendy. This government contract would slip through his fingers, just as the Olson deal had. FMJ had lost millions on that one. Which was nothing compared to what they’d miss if they didn’t secure this contract. He could feel the stepping-stone slipping out from under him, the future he’d planned out for the company dissolving before his very eyes.

Panic mounting, he kept talking. “If you’re worried about sex, don’t be. I certainly wouldn’t expect to sleep with you.”

Her gaze darted to his as she bolted to her feet. “No.” Then she squeezed her eyes closed for an instant. “What I meant was…” She drew in a deep breath. “… a fast annulment wouldn’t work.”

Just as quickly, her eyes shifted away from his. In that moment, a powerful, unspoken message passed between them.

Not once in all the years they’d worked together had they talked about sex. They had shared countless other intimacies. Eaten meals late at night. Sat beside each other on long plane flights. He’d had her fall asleep with her head on his shoulder somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean. They had slept in hotel rooms with walls so thin he’d heard the sound of her rolling over in her bed. And yet despite all that, neither of them had ever broached the subject of sex.

But now that the word had been said aloud, it was there between them. The image of her, sprawled naked on a bed before him, was permanently lodged in his brain.

He found himself oddly pleased by the faint blush that crept into her cheeks as she couldn’t quite meet his gaze.

“If we’re going to do this—” she shot him a look from under her lashes as if she were trying to assess his commitment “—then we have to go all in.”

He raised his eyebrows, speculatively. She wasn’t saying no. She was making a counteroffer. He felt a grin split his face. Just when he thought he knew her, she always managed to surprise him.

“We can’t get an annulment in three or even six months,” she said. “My family will see right through that. In a year, maybe two, we’ll have to get divorced. Simply pretend the marriage didn’t work out.”

“I see.”

She shook her head. “I don’t think you do. I’m committed to fighting for Peyton. I’ll do whatever I have to. But I can’t ask you to do the same.”

“You’re not asking,” he pointed out. “I’m offering. And just so we’re clear, I’m not doing this out of the goodness of my heart.” The last thing he needed right now was her developing some starry-eyed notion about his motives. “I’m doing this to keep you working for FMJ. You’re the best damn assistant I’ve ever had.”

She threw up her hand to interrupt him. “This is ridiculous. Just hire another assistant. I’ll even help you find one. There are plenty of other competent people in the city.”

“But none of them are you. I need you,” he argued. “None of them know the company the way you do. None of them would care about what FMJ does the way you do.”

She seemed to be considering for a moment, then admitted,

“Well, that’s true.”

“Besides. I don’t have the time or energy to train someone new. My motives are very selfish.”

“Trust me, I wasn’t about to swoon from the romanticism of the moment.” Her lips twisted in a wry smile. “I just want to make sure you know what you’re getting into. If my family suspects what we’re up to—”

“Then we’ll convince them that our marriage has nothing to do with Peyton.”

Her eyebrows shot up. “Convince them we’re in love?”

“Exactly.”

Wendy gave a snort of laughter. Baby Peyton squirmed in response. She turned her head and gave Jonathon a look of annoyance. If a baby could be annoyed. Obviously she wasn’t going back to sleep. Pressing her tiny palms to Wendy’s chest, she pushed away as if she wanted to be set free.

Wendy crossed to a diaper bag sitting on her desk. He hadn’t even noticed it before, but when Wendy tried to unzip it with one hand, he moved to help her. He brushed her fingers aside and unzipped the bag. “What do you need?”

“The blanket. That pink one there. Spread it out on the floor.”

Once the blanket was out, she situated the baby on her belly in the center of it.

The sight of a baby in the middle of FMJ’s executive offices was so incongruous he could barely remember what they’d been talking about. Oh, right. She’d been snorting with laughter over the idea of them being in love. Nice to know he’d amused her.

“So you don’t think we can convince your family we’re romantically involved?”

Wendy was back at the diaper bag now, pulling out an array of brightly colored toys. “No offense, Jonathon, but in the five years I’ve been here, I don’t think I’ve ever seen you romantically involved.”

“That’s ridiculous. I—”

She held up her hands to ward off his protests. “With anyone. Oh, I know you’ve dated plenty of women.” She stressed “plenty” as if it was an insult. “But romance is not your strong suit.”

Dropping to her knees, she strategically placed the toys in an arc in front of the baby. By now, Peyton had wedged herself up on her elbows.

“You think I can’t be romantic?” he asked.

“I think you approach your love life with all the warmth and spontaneity of a long-term strategic planning committee.”

“You’re saying… what? That I’m a cold fish?” His voice came out tight and strained.

There was something very matter-of-fact about her tone. As if she were stating the obvious. As if it hadn’t even occurred to her that this might insult him.

“Not really.” She tilted her head to the side, her attention focused on Peyton. She nudged a stuffed elephant closer to the baby. He didn’t know if the topic made her uncomfortable or if infant toys were really just that fascinating. “More that you keep your emotions tightly under control.” Apparently satisfied with the arrangement of toys, she stood, dusting her hands off. “You’re a dispassionate man. There’s nothing wrong with—”

Okay, he’d had enough. He strode toward her, pulled her into his arms and kissed her.

He didn’t know what pushed him over the edge. Whether it was her unending lecture about how dispassionate he was. Or the fact that ever since he’d said the word “sex” aloud a few minutes ago he hadn’t been able to get it out of his head. Or maybe it was that tempting bit of shoulder her shirt kept exposing. Or hell, maybe it was even the hot-pink strap.

Whatever it was, his restraint snapped and he had to kiss her. And then, he couldn’t stop.

Wendy had not seen it coming. One minute, she was trying to calm Peyton down, keep her distracted enough so she could keep talking to Jonathon. Because frankly, Wendy was having enough trouble concentrating on the logistics of the conversation without Peyton breaking out into all-out fussiness.

And then, a second later, her body was pressed against Jonathon’s and his mouth was moving over hers in a kiss heaven made to knock her socks off.

One hand cradled her jaw, his fingertips rough against the sensitive skin of her cheek. The other was wrapped firmly around her waist, his hand strong against her back, pressing her so close to him she could feel the buttons of his shirt through the thin cotton of her T-shirt.

His kiss was completely unexpected. When he had crossed the room to her, the lines of his face taut, his expression so full of intent, it had never occurred to her that he was going kiss her.

Sure, in the past, she’d imagined what it might be like to kiss him. After all, they’d worked side by side for years. Just because she had a modicum of restraint didn’t mean she was dead. Despite the pure perfection of his exterior, she’d always imagined that in the bedroom Jonathon was very much how he was in the boardroom. Analytical. Logical. In control. Dispassionate.

Holy guacamole, had she been wrong.

His lips didn’t just kiss hers. They devoured her.

She felt his tongue in her mouth, stroking hers, coaxing a response, all but demanding she participate, until she found herself rising up onto her toes and wrapping her arms around his neck, brushing her palm against the bristle of soft hair on the back of his head.

The kiss was hot and endless. He tasted faintly of coffee and fresh minty toothpaste and deeply buried longing. He stirred feelings within her that she’d never even imagined. And she could just not get close enough to him.

He backed her up a step. And then another. She felt the edge of her desk bump against the back of her legs. And still he pressed into her, bending her so her back arched.

An image flashed through her mind of him sweeping the desk clear, pressing her down onto her desk and taking her right there. The idea came to her so completely, it was as though it had been right there in the back of her mind for years. Just waiting for his kiss to pull it out of her.

There was no one else in the building. Why shouldn’t they give in to this thing between them? She couldn’t think of a single reason not to.

She still hadn’t thought of one a moment later when he pulled his mouth from hers and stepped away. He cleared his throat, then tugged down the hem of his jacket to straighten it.

He left her aching for him. Missing the warmth of his body, even though he was only a foot away. Wishing she had some idea of why he’d kissed her. Why he’d stopped…

Peyton.

Oh, crap. Peyton!

Wendy looked past Jonathon to where Peyton still lay on her belly on the floor.

Holy guacamole, indeed! She’d been a mother for less than four days and she’d already abandoned her daughter on the floor to make out with her boss. Maybe her family was right. Maybe she really was unfit to be Peyton’s mother.

Her gaze sought Jonathon. He’d crossed to the other side of the room so that Peyton lay between them like a landmine.

He ran a hand across his jaw, then shoved his hand deep in his pocket. She’d never seen him look quite so disconcerted. Though he still looked less shaken than she felt.

“Well,” he began, then swallowed visibly. “I think we can both agree that if I need to I can convince your family that I am more than your boss.”

“Yeah. I think so.” Then she paused for a beat while his words sank in. “That’s what this was about?” For a second, confusion swirled through her, muddling her thoughts even further. “You kissed me merely to make a point?”