Reunited...with Child / One Month with the Magnate: Reunited...with Child

He kept his arms around her, and she told herself she was Cinderella and this was for only one night. Even Cindy had gotten one night with her Prince. She knew that Cam wasn’t some white knight who could rescue her. She’d seen the chinks in his armor. But when he held her close like this, it was easy to forget about that all that. It was so easy for her to just pretend that for once she was going to have her cake and eat it, too.

“What are you thinking?” she asked, as she glanced up and found him staring at her.

“That you are the most beautiful woman in the room,” he said.

She flushed and shook her head. “I’m not.”

“In my eyes you are,” he said. He leaned down, and the warmth of his breath brushed her cheek as he spoke directly into her ear. “You are the most exquisite woman I’ve ever seen. You have haunted my dreams.”

“Then why did you wait so long to get back in touch with me?” she asked.

“I didn’t think you’d be able to forgive me. And I wasn’t sure if I had fantasized about you so much that I made you into someone you weren’t. But none of that matters now.”

But it did. He was talking to her as if nothing had happened except a bad breakup. But she knew there was so much more between them, and she had no idea how to tell him.

He wasn’t the evil ogre she’d made him out to be. She’d known that even back then, but she had pride. Some said too much pride was a bad thing, but Becca didn’t really know how to define “too much.” She had only understood that Cam wasn’t the kind of man who’d take the news of her pregnancy well.

She twisted and started to walk away from him.

He caught up with her and grabbed her arm as she reached the edge of the dance floor. “Where are you going?”

“I can’t do this, Cam. I am trying to pretend this is all just a nice night out, but every time I look in your face I see the past. And I’m just not ready to deal with that tonight.”

“I’m not asking you to,” he said. “I think we should forget about what happened between us—”

“I can’t. It’s way too complicated to go into now, but trust me when I say I could never pretend we didn’t meet.”

“That’s a good thing,” he said.

She shook her head and pulled away from him. “No, it’s not. There are things about me that you don’t know.”

“Tell me about them,” he said.

“Not here. Come to my house tomorrow morning.”

“I can’t wait until tomorrow,” he said.

She smiled up at him as he leaned in close. The hardness of his body was a remembered thrill. “We already did lust. Remember?”

“Yes,” he said. “I know you remember, too. It’s there in your eyes when I hold you. You still want me.”

She did still want him, but she liked to think she was older and wiser. Please, God, let her be wiser. She couldn’t fall for him again. Wouldn’t let herself be that weak where he was concerned. Cam Stern wasn’t the kind of guy she could have a one-night stand with and walk away from.

But that was what she wanted. She wanted to pretend they were strangers with no baggage or no commitments. That they could have one night of passion with no consequences. But it was too late for that. She was emotionally entangled with him, even though he wasn’t with her.

She went up on her tiptoes and rubbed her lips over his and then slowly opened her mouth and kissed him.

She held on to his shoulders and felt his mouth move against hers. He parted her lips with his own, and his tongue snaked over her teeth into her mouth.

His thrusts were light and teasing, making her crave so much more of him. She opened her mouth wider, held on to his shoulders and let everything drop away. She didn’t think about the past or her secrets. She didn’t think about the glittering people at this charity ball. She didn’t think of anything except Cam Stern and his mouth.

That oh-so-talented mouth that was moving over hers and making her forget everything except the way he tasted and the way he felt.

His lips were firm but also tender against hers. His hands smoothed their way down her spine. One sprawled in the middle of her back and the other dipped lower to her hips, drawing her closer to him.

“Let’s get out of here,” Cam said. “We need to go someplace private.”

Confused for the first time in a very long time, Becca really didn’t know what to do. So she followed Cam out of the ballroom and onto the street as he hailed a cab.

Cam wasn’t ready to let the night end. Seeing Becca again wasn’t at all what he had thought it would be.

The April sky was clear, the night air a little cool but not cold when they left the club. Cam had said his goodbyes to Russell earlier and Russell had offered the car, but Cam had turned him down. He liked to do things his own way. He wanted to be in control.

Cam hailed a cab for them and asked to be taken to his hotel, the Affinia Manhattan, which was a suite-only hotel. Though he’d only been in town for a few days, Cam liked to have room to be comfortable. At six-five, he was a big man, and he didn’t like to be in a room crammed with a bed and a dresser.

“I thought you said you only wanted someplace private,” Becca said, arching one eyebrow. “Why do we need to go to your hotel? “

“I don’t know any other quiet place we can talk.” He wanted her to himself. That was one thing he’d done right during their affair. They had spent all of their time together in her hotel room. Having sex and lying in each other’s arms. Despite the fact that they were both working hard during the day, the nights had been filled with only each other.

She tipped her head to the side. She studied him, and he wondered what she was searching for. When he looked at her, he saw the same beautiful, sexy woman he’d known two years ago. But she had changed. There was something mysterious about the woman sitting next to him now.

“Okay, we can go to your hotel, but we are getting a drink in the lobby bar.”

“Fair enough. I want to take my time and really apologize for the way things ended.”

“Apology accepted,” she said.

She was a graceful and charming woman, and as she sat next to him during the cab ride, he surreptitiously studied her. Her heart-shaped face was framed by her hair, and her eyes were dark and mysterious in this light.

He wouldn’t have thought to look into his romantic past to find a woman to move forward with, but it made sense to him now that Becca was here.

He stretched his arm out behind her and toyed with the soft tendrils of hair at the base of her neck. “Thank you. But I know you like me so I have that in my favor.”

“How do you know this?” she asked.

“The way you smile at me,” he admitted. “And the way you kissed me.”

“That wasn’t about you,” she said.

“It wasn’t?”

“No. It was a gift to myself. A chance for me to taste the forbidden fruit of the past and then move on.”

“Why are you in this car with me now?”

“I wanted to hear what you had to say,” she said. “I really don’t know much about you.”

“Or I about you,” he said.

“I think men like it that way,” she said.

“Men? I hope I’m a little different than every other man out there,” he said. “I think I want to know everything about you.”

She shook her head. “I doubt that. As long as I have secrets then I will be mysterious and just a little more attractive to you.”

“You couldn’t be anything less than you are right now, Becca. I want you.”

She shook her head again. “I know you do, but we aren’t going down that path.”

“I can’t think of anything except you in my arms,” he said, watching her blush.

“Why are you here? You said Justin is helping his fiancée move.”

He laughed. “Fine. I will stop talking about your sexy little body for a few a minutes, but I can’t stop thinking about you naked in my arms.”

“Cam.”

“Okay.” He knew he was pushing her, but he only had this night before he had to return to Miami. And apologizing for the way things had ended between them wasn’t enough to repair the damage he’d done. He wanted her back. He hadn’t realized how much until he’d danced with her. Kissed her.

“I’m here visiting Justin and to attend this charity ball tonight. The African Children’s Fund was one of my mother’s pet charities,” Cam said as the car started moving.

“Well, that’s nice.” She would have liked to think that she’d made a clean break with everything Cam Stern, but she still read about him in magazines, and late at night when she was feeling very alone, she sometimes went on the internet and read about him. She should have realized he’d be here tonight, but honestly, she’d been busy with work, and having an eighteen-month-old kept her on her toes.

“What have you been up to?” she asked.

“I think I mentioned we are celebrating Luna Azul’s tenth anniversary. Even if you can’t take me on as a client, I would like you to come to Miami. My invitation earlier was genuine.”

“Um …”

“Think about it, Becca.”

“I’ll do that,” she said, but she knew the answer had to be no.

“Ten years is a long time,” she said.

“Yes, it is. Are you interested in redesigning the new marketplace?”

“Sounds like that will be a fun project. You can email me the details on that.”

“Are you really going to make small talk and pretend that a casual business acquaintance is all that we have between us? “

“Yup,” she said. “That’s all we have.”

“I remember,” he said. “But I never meant for those weeks to be the only ones we spent together.”

“I know you wanted me to be your mistress … I’m sorry I asked for more.”

He said nothing and the silence grew between them.

“You travelled a lot for business back then and I expected you to be back in Miami frequently.”

“I stopped working for Russell so I wasn’t making as many trips to Miami as I used to.”

She bit back a sad smile. To Cam she was just someone to have sex with. She’d seen that pretty early on, and while she enjoyed the white-hot passion that flowed so strongly between them, once she’d discovered she was pregnant, she knew she couldn’t be with him.

She had someone else to think of … Ty. Her little gift from Cam.

But talking to him made her realize why she’d liked him so much. The truth was, from the first moment they’d met she’d liked him. He was honest and fair and so damned handsome that she couldn’t stop staring at him.

Blue was such a nondescript word for the color of his eyes. They were deep blue, the kind of color that she’d seen in only one other place—the azure waters of Fiji. His jaw was strong and well-defined, but it was his mouth that captured her. Those strong lips that felt so soft and so right against her own.

“You’re staring at me,” he said wryly.

“I forgot how good-looking you are.”

That startled a laugh out of him. “Why did you start your own business? Do you like it?”

“I do,” she admitted. “More than I expected to. And being my own boss means I can control my workload. You know Russell is a complete workaholic, so if I’d continued at Kiwi I would probably be in the office tonight.”

“Very true,” Cam said, stretching his arm along the back of the seat. His fingers brushed her shoulder and she glanced up at him to see if he was trying to distract her. But he didn’t seem to notice the accidental touch.

Cam watched her carefully, and she hoped that he took her story at face value and let the topic drop. She knew that right now she had the opportunity to tell him about Ty, but she couldn’t find the words.

He tipped his head to the side, and she realized that this evening wasn’t going the way she wanted it to. She should be home with Ty.

She thought about how scared she’d been the first night she’d brought him home from the hospital. She had always been focused on her career, so she hadn’t had any girlfriends to come and stay with her. And every time little Ty had cried, she’d cried with him.

It had been the longest night of her life, and she’d missed her own mom so keenly it had hurt. But then morning had come, and she and Ty had found their own way.

“What are you thinking about?” he asked.

“Nothing,” she said. Seeing Cam again gave her a chance to let him know that he had a son. But she had no idea how he felt about family. She knew he didn’t believe in love and had two years ago wanted nothing more from a woman than sex.

“Have you ever thought about having a family? Not just your brothers. I mean a family of your own.”

This was it. If he said, Yes, I’d love to have kids, then she would say, Oh, that’s funny, you have a son.

“No.”

“Why not?” she asked. Already she had an inkling she wasn’t going to like the answer. Cam was too much of a workaholic businessman to want a family. He had only had time for the affair with her because it hadn’t interfered with his job. And she knew that.

“I had a paternity suit brought against me right as Luna Azul started taking off. The suit was false but we had to go to court and I think that made me realize that having a child was something I wanted to take very seriously. I didn’t want to have a child with just any woman.”

Becca’s stomach dropped, and she felt like she was going to be sick. She wrapped an arm around her own waist and knew there was no way she could just tell Cam that Ty was his son. In fact, she just wanted to get out of this car and return to her safe little home as quickly as possible.

Three

Cam had a hard time looking at Becca and not touching her. There was something about her that called to him, and he knew part of it at least was the false feeling that they were still intimates. It didn’t matter that it had been over two years since he’d last seen her. He wanted her, and it felt to him that no time had passed.

“I’m glad we met again tonight,” he said. He rubbed his finger over her cheek. Her skin was so soft that he could touch it for hours.

The cab pulled to a stop in front of his hotel, and he paid the driver before following Becca out of the cab. The doorman held the door open as they approached.

“I have to call for a car now or I’ll never get one later,” she said. “I’ll meet you in the bar. Go ahead and order me a Baileys.”

“I’ll take care of the car. You go get a seat and I’ll be right there.”

“I’d rather—”

He put his finger over her lips. They were full, and he was dying to kiss her again. Touching her mouth, he found it soft and even more tempting than he’d expected.

“I said I’ll take care of it.”

She playfully nipped at his fingertip and then turned and walked away.

He watched her. She’d surprised him, and he reminded himself that a lot had changed with Becca in the last two years.

And he was dying to know more.

But if he was going to build trust with Becca, he needed to respect the fact that she didn’t want to be rushed into his bed. So he called for a car, asking for it to arrive in an hour.

He joined her in a quiet area of the bar where she’d found two large armchairs and a small table.

“I ordered you a Baileys, too.”

“Thanks. Your car will be here in an hour,” he said.

“Great. So what did you want to talk to me about?” she asked.

“Us. Are you going to give us another chance to get to know one another?” he asked.

As she nibbled on her lower lip, he wanted to groan out loud but didn’t. He wanted her mouth, and promised himself that before he put her in a car back to Long

Island, he was going to taste her and prove to himself that she couldn’t taste as good as he remembered.

“I’m thinking about it,” she said at last. Their drinks arrived, and she held hers with both hands. “It’s hard for me to just rush into anything with you.”

“If we are going to get to know each other, we should talk,” he said. “Tell me something about you that I don’t already know.”

She paused, her eyes darkening.

“I don’t like surprises,” she said.

“What kind?” he asked.

“Any of them. I like my life to go according to plan. I can adjust and change my plan but I don’t want to have to do it too often.”

“Me, too,” he said. “Though to be honest, usually I just bully my way through a situation until I get the results I want.”

“Hence me having a drink with you tonight,” she said.

He just smiled and lifted his glass toward her. He took a sip and sat back in his chair.

“Tell me more about why you are in Manhattan,” she said.

“Justin and I are exploring the idea of expanding Luna Azul someday. We are discussing eventually opening clubs in other parts of the country. Manhattan is the first location we are contemplating.”

“That’s a big step,” she said.

“It is. And to be honest, I love our Miami locals. But we are ready for it. And now that you and I have reconnected I will have another reason to come up here.”

“Cam—”

He shook his head when she tried to speak. “I want to get to know you better, Becca.”

“I don’t know if that is a good idea. I’m more complicated than you probably have time for,” she said. Her eyes had narrowed, and she tipped her head to the side, studying him.

“I know that. That’s why … Am I wrong here to think that there is something between us?”

“No. We’ve always had that attraction that is impossible to resist, but I want more than that. And you don’t.”

“I’m willing to try it.”

“Try what? I had a hard time getting over you, Cam. I don’t think I want to take a chance on letting you break my heart again.”

“I can’t make promises,” he said. “But I do know that I want more than a secret affair. Will you at least agree to come to Miami for the Tenth Anniversary party and spend the weekend with me? “

“As your lover?” she asked.

“I hope so. Definitely as my friend. I want to get to know you better. I feel like we have something unfinished between us.”

Becca didn’t panic. But she wanted to. Cam had no real idea of what was unfinished between them. She knew that he was talking about sexual attraction or maybe the kind of thing that made her tick. And she knew she wasn’t going to share too much with Cam until she could trust him.

“I think that isn’t going to be as easy as you might think,” she said.

“I know it’s not. But anything and anyone worth having is worth working to get to know.”

She wasn’t sure if he’d mellowed or if it was simply that he was keeping the passion that had flared between them the first time under wraps. But talking was making her realize that Cam was a decent man. A man she wanted to know better and maybe a man that she wanted her son to know.

“I agree.” She had to find out more about his past. Had to understand the best way to tell him they had a son. “So tell me what kind of woman you would choose to have a child with,” she said.

It was the one thing she wanted to know. Telling him about Ty was only the first step—making sure that he treated her son well once he knew that Ty was his was the important part.

“That’s a big jump in conversation.”

“I know, but I want to know the kind of man you are.”

He leaned back in his chair and took another sip of his drink. “I’ve never really thought about it. My dad was everything to me when I was growing up, and my mother was more concerned with her social position than her children.”

“I’m sorry.”

He shrugged. “It is what it is. No changing the type of woman she was. But I want to make a better choice than my dad did. I want a woman who will want to be a mother to our children. Who will make them a priority,” he said.

His words made her feel better that he was Ty’s father. But she still didn’t know if he was just paying lip service to the type of man he thought he should be. And to be fair, he probably didn’t know either. She’d had similar uncertainty about becoming a parent. She’d never expected to be a mom and had thought she’d have a nanny who took care of the kid all the time. But once Ty was in her arms, she’d realized she didn’t want to miss a moment of his life.

She nodded. “I want that, too. I mean in a dad. I don’t want a man who is on his BlackBerry with the office while he is at home and supposed to be spending time with the family.”

“Good. Something we have in common,” he said. “We both think family should come first. That is partly why I wasn’t ready to settle down with you two years ago, Becca.”

“Life is complicated sometimes,” she said.

“Very.”

He leaned forward and took her hand in his. “I really do want this to be a fresh start for us.”

She was afraid to believe him. She knew that they’d never be able to make a fresh start unless she came clean first about Ty. But tonight she didn’t want to ruin the feeling between them. That excitement and hope that came from getting to know someone the first time—for her it was building on the fantasies she’d spun around Cam since she’d had Ty.

She wasn’t going to lie; she’d wanted him to come back into her life. She just never thought that he would. And now here he was.

“Why are you staring at me?” he asked.

“I just realized that I like you.”

That made him chuckle. “What’s not to like?”

“You are autocratic and bossy,” she said.

“I think you like that, too. You need a man who doesn’t let you ride roughshod all over him.”

“Did I do that before?”

“No, but I think I was the exception. You are very used to getting your way,” he said.

“I am. I have had to be. Since I was twenty I’ve been on my own and that means I have to make good choices.”

“Have you always made them?” he asked.

She shook her head. “No, but I try not to have regrets. I mean I can’t change any decision I made to get where I am today.”

That was one thing she’d learned growing up. Her mother had said that everyone makes mistakes. A wise person learns from them and moves on. A fool lingers over them and spends all their time wishing they’d done something else.

He lifted his glass. “A toast to knowing what you want, and getting it.”

“A toast,” she said.

He looked at her as if she was the very thing he wanted. That made her feel warm all over, and she knew no matter how hard she tried to keep this tame, it wasn’t going to work. She wanted Cam. He was everything she liked in a man. She loved his height; he was taller than she was, with big shoulders and firm muscles. She remembered the way they’d fit together when they’d made love, so perfectly, and she wanted him again.

It had been a long time since she’d slept with a man—since Cam to be exact—and she felt overdue. But a one-night stand wasn’t the answer.

“I have a confession to make,” Cam said.

She didn’t want him to tell her anything else. She just wanted this hour to pass and for her to get into the car and drive away. And this time she hoped that they’d stay apart because the more time she spent with Cam, the more she realized that she missed having a man in her life. Missed having this man in her life.

“And that is?” she asked.

“I’m going to kiss you before you get in the car tonight,” he said.

She shivered, and everything feminine in her came to attention. She wanted to feel his big strong arms around her again. Wanted him to hold her and make her feel like she wasn’t alone in the world.

“I was planning to let you,” she said because she didn’t want him to get the upper hand. And because it was the truth—other than the one big lie, she was going to be honest with Cam.

“I thought you wanted to start slow,” he said.

“I do, but denying there is lust between us is silly. I want you and I suspect you are very aware of it.”

“I am. But I don’t want you to feel pressured,” he said.

And that made her heart melt. That one comment made her realize that Cam was a man that she wanted not only in her bed but also in her life.

The driver of Becca’s car sent Cam a text when he was outside the hotel.