The Boss's Baby Affair (3 page)

Kissed her.

Double damn.

Bracing his weight on his arms, Nick raised his head and confronted himself in the wall of mirror above the vanity. He looked different from his usual tightly controlled, immaculately groomed self. Not outwardly—the swelling where the edge of the tin had connected didn't show. It was in his eyes where the change lay. Instead of the customary cool calculation, they were filled with turmoil.

What had unnerved him? The sudden bond he found himself forging with Jennie? Or the angelic-looking nanny who'd woken the devil in him?

Nick wasn't sure he wanted to know.

 

A sharp cry woke Candace.

After silencing the baby monitor, Candace sprang out of bed and ran along the carpeted landing lit by night-lights until
she reached the nursery. Lifting Jennie out of the crib, she rocked the baby in her arms.

“Hush,” she murmured as Jennie's head swung up and butted her chin.

The red numbers of the counter clock on the dresser glowed in the night. Two o'clock. Not yet time for a feeding. Jennie fussed in Candace's arms. Walking silenced her momentarily, then the whimpers restarted. Candace laid Jennie down on the changing surface above the dresser, and reached for the thermometer in the first-aid kit on the shelf above. Talking a stream of softly whispered nonsense to Jennie, she deftly removed the diaper and inserted the thermometer.

“Sorry, sweetheart. I know you would've preferred a tympanic thermometer, but those ears might still be tender.”

A few seconds later the thermometer beeped. The reading was above normal, but far from dangerous. Quickly, Candace put on a clean diaper, then picked Jennie up and started to walk, Jennie grumbling incessantly.

Candace suppressed a sigh. “So much for not losing any sleep tonight, huh, Jennie?”

A flash of memory hit her of the wild pleasure that had pierced her when Nick Valentine had kissed her…and the flare of absolute panic that had followed.

She must've communicated her unease to the baby because Jennie let out a volley of wails.

Seconds later, the door to the nursery burst open.

Nick stood there, a dark silhouette against the shaft of light that spilled in from the landing. A rustle of movement, then a switch clicked and bright light flooded the room.

Candace blinked against the glare. Nick wore only a pair of hastily donned pants, the top button still undone. His chest was bare, his hair mussed.

He'd told her he had no intention of losing any sleep over the kiss they'd shared…and had expected her to do the same.

Yet the sight of him caused her pulse to thud.

She was a fool.

Candace looked away as Jennie wailed more loudly.

Nick advanced. “Let me see if I can settle her.”

Gut instinct caused her arms to tighten.

“Give her to me,” he ordered, his face closed, exhibiting no sign of the passionate man who'd kissed her with such ravenous hunger.

Candace took herself in hand.
Forget about that kiss.
This hard-eyed man was her employer. Jennie's father. Soundlessly she surrendered the baby.

Nick took Jennie with more ease than he'd shown earlier. Instantly, Jennie's cries stilled. Her eyes widened as she stared up at the man who held her. The sight of the baby bundled up against the muscled torso caused pain to splinter deep inside Candace.

When Jennie looked down from her father's face and stared at the wall of chest in front of her with a puzzled expression, Candace's throat closed. The baby reached out and touched a ridge of muscle, her puny fingers closed around a sprinkle of hair. She tugged.

Nick didn't flinch.

Jennie gave a gurgle.

And Candace wanted to cry.

It was clear that the baby hardly knew her father.

So what am I going to do about that?
Candace asked herself.
Can I leave Jennie with a man who doesn't have time for his own child? A man who didn't even care enough to call home from overseas when she was sick?

Nick Valentine needed to take responsibility for Jennie. He was her father.

“I'm going to make an appointment to take her back to the doctor tomorrow,” Candace told him.

“She doesn't appear that ill.” Nick was studying the baby.

He'd seen Jennie for maybe an hour after a month away and now he was an expert on her health? As much as she itched
to, Candace couldn't voice that reaction—Nick Valentine was her boss. The last thing she wanted was to annoy him enough for him to dismiss her.

Besides, if she was honest, he had a point. Right now Jennie didn't look that ill. But Nick hadn't seen her flushed with fever, her body limp after being contorted with convulsions. He hadn't experienced the fear—the helplessness—that had caused his sister to sob at the hospital. When Candace had taken the baby from Alison that day, she'd been terrified by the baby's burning temperature, the spasms that had shaken her little body. Nick couldn't possibly understand.

He'd been thousands of miles away, choosing furniture and carvings for upmarket gardens, focusing on making his next million.

But blaming him, working herself up, wasn't going to help the situation. Candace pulled herself together and said with forced calm, “I don't like the way she's fretting.”

“Then make a doctor's appointment in the morning.” He jiggled the baby in his arms.

“What time will suit you best?”

His head jerked up. “What?”

“When will you be free?” Did he imagine she'd make an appointment without consulting him? Even she knew he was a hotshot tycoon with endless demands on his time. “Or should I ask your assistant when you're available tomorrow?”

“I can't come—I've got too much to do tomorrow.”

Of course he did. Poor Jennie. “You have to come. You're her father and she's been ill.”

“What exactly was the matter?”

“Chronic ear infection. Her temperature rocketed until she had convulsions. She had to be hospitalized.”

And that was how she'd come into Jennie's life. Candace hadn't stopped thanking her stars for whatever twist of fate had put her on duty for the shift when Jennie arrived.

“I'd have come if—”

If it had been important enough…

Candace cut him off with a wave of her hand—she wasn't interested in his excuses. Nick had no idea what havoc she was capable of unleashing—especially driven by her own guilt, her own very personal demons. “Jennie needs you with her. And I want to make sure there's been no resurgence of the infection, that her eardrums are clear. I'd hate for Jennie to lose her hearing for life.”

He gave her an unreadable look. “Arrange the appointment, and get Mr. Busby to take you. Let me know the time and I'll meet you there.”

“Good—Jennie will appreciate it.”

The baby might be blissfully unaware of the importance of the moment. But in the years to come, at least Candace would have the comfort of knowing she'd gotten Nick involved in taking care of his daughter.

 

Something about the expression on the nanny's face bothered Nick.

Nurse, he amended silently. His sister had told him Candace was a nurse…not a nanny. Frankly, Nick didn't care what Candace called herself as long as she quit having this unsettling effect on him.

He was doing everything he could to pretend her proximity was leaving him unfazed. He'd forced himself to be cool and distant, but it wasn't working. He only had to catch a whiff of her sweet, spicy perfume to want to pull her close and bury his mouth against her scented skin.

It wouldn't do.

If only he could make himself think of her as the nanny—or the nurse—rather than Candace, the woman with tousled hair and translucent silver-gray eyes who was standing a short distance away from him wearing nothing but a pair of pink-and-white candy-striped cotton pajamas. Nick's gaze fell on the monitor that poked out the breast pocket of her pajama
top, and he said with more than a little desperation, “I'm glad the system works—you must've sprinted up the stairs to have got here quicker than I did.”

She gave him a peculiar look. “What do you mean? I'm in the room next door.”

Next door?
“You're not in the nanny's quarters in the basement?”

She shook her head. “The doctor and I agreed it made sense for me to be close at hand when Jennie was ill.” Her gaze was very level. “Your sister agreed. The house has so many bedrooms—all of them empty. It seemed silly for me to stay two floors away from Jennie.”

“Of course.”

His lukewarm response caused her to say quickly, “I'm here to look after your daughter. As long as she's happy and healthy, does it matter where I sleep?”

Nick could hardly confess that the thought of her living here—on the same floor as him, a short distance from the master suite—was going to drive him crazy.

At least, he supposed, his mind would be at peace knowing Jennie was well looked after. Even if his body was on red alert.

He suppressed a groan.

So much for getting any sleep…

T
he next day Candace glanced at her watch for the hundredth time in the past five minutes. The minute hand had crawled to twenty minutes past noon.

Where was Nick?

On her lap, Jennie gurgled and gazed avidly at the two identically dressed boys on the opposite side of the doctor's reception room, who appeared hell-bent on stripping the florist ribbon out of a flower arrangement. Their harried-looking father kept telling them to stop, to no avail. The twins had arrived half an hour after Candace, right on the heels of a little girl with a rash on her face.

That patient had already been sent in ahead, Candace having elected to miss Jennie's scheduled appointment time and wait for Nick to arrive. Who was now forty minutes late. With every passing moment, it was becoming clearer that Nick had no intention of keeping the promise he'd made.

Candace had tried to call him several times. Only to get his voice mail. She should've expected this. He'd told her he
was busy. But she'd blissfully thought this time he would put Jennie first…before work.

Had he ever intended to come? Or had he sent her on ahead with the chauffeur simply to get her out of his hair?

It didn't matter what excuse he'd make later, it wouldn't take away the ache of…of…disappointment…in Candace's heart.

She told herself the emotion she was feeling had nothing to with her ambivalent relationship with Nick…or with the desire he'd awakened within her last night. She told herself it was all about Jennie.

By not arriving for the appointment, by not even bothering to let Candace know he'd bailed, he'd irrevocably let Jennie down.

 

With his round face and ruddy complexion, the snowy-bearded man seated behind the heavy antique desk twiddling a pen between his fingers looked like every child's vision of Santa Claus.

Nick had been taken in by the air of jolly bonhomie when he'd first met Desmond Perry—until he'd discovered that the devil himself lurked behind that merry mask. Now he couldn't figure out how he'd failed to notice the splinters of ice in the startling blue eyes.

“The final payment is done.” It had given Nick enormous satisfaction to come here, into Desmond Perry's lair, to tell him that. He glanced at his watch and pushed back the chair he'd taken because Desmond had clearly expected him to stand. He rose now to his full intimidating height. “I won't have a cup of coffee—” the older man hadn't offered “—because I have an appointment.”

Desmond carefully set the pen he'd been twirling between his blunt fingers down on the leather inset of the desk. “You should know I plan to sell my stock in Valentine's,” he said.

Nick said very softly, “You what?”

“I will be selling my share of your business as soon as Jilly's estate has been settled.”

His
share? For a moment Nick could only stare at his father-in-law in disbelief. Then reality sank in. Desmond was talking about Jilly's stocks. The stock that in terms of their prenuptial agreement Nick had given to his wife. Stock that Jilly had then bequeathed to her father in her will.

With Jilly's sudden death brought on by a virus, Desmond no longer needed to pretend any loyalty toward the son-in-law he'd bought for his daughter—but never liked. Mostly his own fault, Nick knew; he'd been unable to kowtow to the man, be the obsequious puppet Desmond had expected. For seven years he'd worked night and day to maintain the astronomical payments to repurchase the garden center Desmond had tricked Nick's mentors, Bertha and Henry Williams, into selling.

By giving Nick a job, Bertha and Henry had saved Nick from sure trouble when he'd been a teen. And though he'd gone on to establish his own business, he couldn't stand by and watch them lose the garden center they'd loved…and the home they occupied on the premises. And wily Desmond had known that.

Desmond had set him up. The price for the center had not only been an unrealistic, extortionist amount, but also marriage to Jilly. Nick had considered refusing, but Henry's heart attack and Bertha's terror had caused Nick to grit his teeth and accept the terrible terms.

But once he'd signed the contract, and taken occupation of the garden center that had once belonged to his mentors, he'd given Bertha and Henry back their home. It hadn't been the end of it.

His new father-in-law had sat back, expecting Nick to fail to meet the punishing payment schedule, which would've put the property back under his control—and allowed him to triumph over the son-in-law he detested.

But Nick had done it.

The final repayment had been made. And he'd done it without jeopardizing the financial well-being of his own company. Sure it had slowed his expansion plans down, tightened his finances, but he was still a wealthy man.

But now, as the first glimpse of freedom appeared like a fragment of sky between dark city high-rises, Desmond had dropped his next bombshell.

Nick wasn't going to roll over. “The prenup stipulated that once the full amount of the sale price was repaid to you—” and Nick had worked himself almost to death to make sure of that “—then I would have right of first refusal on the shares if Jilly ever wanted to sell them.”

He'd paid dearly for Bertha and Henry's retirement dream…

“My daughter is dead. You failed to pay the price before she died—the right of first refusal died with her. In terms of her will, the stock is now mine. And I have no intention of waiting until you can raise sufficient funds for the stock,” Desmond sneered. “The growth of Valentine's garden centers has not been at all what I expected. I'm selling.”

Nick forced himself to keep still. Not to defend the performance of the stock. Not to reveal his shock at Desmond's revelation. Instead, raising an eyebrow, he asked, “You already have a buyer for the stock?”

“Oh, yes.”

Nick allowed himself a slight, disbelieving smile at Desmond while his brain worked frantically. Alison had said she and Richard had had an offer for their shares, too. Was he sensing a conspiracy where none existed?

Nick shrugged. “Well, they'll have to wait for Jilly's estate to be finalized.”

“My buyer is not in a hurry.”

“Who is it? Another chain of garden centers?” Nick tried to think which of his competitors might have the liquidity in the present economic climate to force a takeover.

“Why must the buyer be a garden center? The land owned by the company is worth a fortune.”

That wiped the mocking smile clean off Nick's face. “A developer?” he asked dangerously. “You're planning to sell to someone who will hunt more stock until he has enough to close all the centers and develop the land?”

Triumph glittered in Desmond's pale blue eyes. “The developer I have in mind is prepared to pay a premium rate for the stock.”

The Super Center, Valentine's flagship store, was located close to Auckland city, not far from the waterfront on a sizable tract of prime real estate. It was worth a fortune, and other stores in other cities were equally well situated. A developer would love to get his hands on the company's assets.

In the back of Nick's mind, there had always been the knowledge that he could sell off some of the land to raise funds, but that would be a last resort. It was something he'd never seriously contemplated—no matter how hard Desmond rode him.

Because that would mean closing those centers. Not only would his staff lose jobs, the community where the center was located would lose, too. Each center had landscaped gardens, a café where customers could socialize, well-equipped playgrounds for children and bandstands offering musical events. A Valentine's Garden Center brought pleasure to everyone who stopped by.

To hurt him, Desmond wanted to destroy the culture Nick had built.

Desmond knew him too well…

Narrowing his gaze on his adversary, Nick challenged, “You'd sell your stock, so your crony has a chance to make a fortune out of building high-density developments?”

Desmond placed his hands behind his head and smirked. “Sounds like a good plan.”

Nick rocked on his toes, tempted—not for the first time—to slam a fist in his father-in-law's corpulent stomach.

The open green space with streams and lakes that Henry had painstakingly created and lost to Desmond seven years ago would be the first site to be bulldozed and developed—Nick had no doubt about that. With it would go the craftsmanship that Valentine's stores had brought to the lifestyle market. The handmade pots. The carved garden statues. The water features that were so carefully created. The plants that were so lovingly tended.

And it wouldn't stop there. The network of suppliers would lose contracts…and as for his staff, Nick didn't want to think about the layoffs that would follow.

His anger roared into fury. Nick took a step closer to the devil behind the desk. Then he checked himself, drawing on the control that had always served him well and helped him thwart Desmond in the past.

A glance at his watch caused him to grimace inwardly.
Damn.
He'd lost all track of time. He'd been due to meet Candace at the doctor's room fifteen minutes ago. He was going to miss the chance to talk to the doctor about how well Jennie had recovered. Hurriedly, Nick stuck his hand into his pocket searching for his cell phone.

It wasn't there. Cursing silently, Nick remembered placing it in the holder between the front seats in the Ferrari before he'd left his office.

“We can discuss an alternative plan.”

Distracted by his thoughts, Nick turned his head. The triumph in Desmond's expression glowed even brighter. Whatever the alternative plan was, it boded ill—Nick had no doubt about that. He had no interest in bargaining with the devil.

He wasn't going to stay a minute longer. Already he'd allowed Desmond to consume too much of his time. A twinge
of shame pierced him. He'd told Candace he would be at Jennie's doctor's appointment.

She was going to be furious—and how could he blame her?

If he left now, he'd make the tail end of the appointment and be able to speak to the doctor about Jennie himself. Snatching up his suit jacket from where he'd slung it over the chair back, Nick swiveled on his heel and headed for the door.

“Nick!”

He kept walking as Desmond's voice called out from behind him, “If you don't stop right now, I'll start negotiating the stock sale.”

Nick cast a glance over his shoulder. Desmond had risen to his feet, his face red with frustrated anger. It gave Nick an immense amount of satisfaction to say, “Do what you must, but you'll have to excuse me, I have something more important to deal with right now.”

Nick watched frustration and rage darken Desmond's face to the color of a tomato. Quite suddenly, the other man no longer resembled Santa.