A Pregnancy Scandal (3 page)

His own smile widened. “I hope so.”

A great, no-strings evening together. In whatever form that took.

“It won't be weird? Tomorrow? We are still working together,” she reminded him. “Some people find it difficult to face each other over a boardroom table after getting naked together.”

Okay, then. Now there was no question about whether they were on the same page. The burn in his loins flared hotter as he slid his hand to the back of her neck, drawing her close so he could feel for the pins.

He extracted one and let it fall. He'd been thinking about doing that since their first moment on the dance floor. Now he could.

“Not weird,” he murmured. “What happens at Phillip's house stays at Phillip's house.”

With a shiver, she shook her head, loosening the pins under his questing fingers. He found them one by one, flicking them free. She tipped up her chin to pierce him with her gaze, and he fell into it as her hair rained down around her shoulders.

“Can I tell you a secret?” Her voice had gone husky.

He loved that he could affect her. “Anything.”

“I sometimes lose track of the discussion in those meetings because I'm thinking about kicking everyone out and letting you kiss me. Maybe up against the table.”

He groaned as that image slammed into his mind unencumbered because there was no blood left in his head to stop it. He understood her problem perfectly. “I generally lose my place because I'm thinking about what you taste like. Here.”

Tracing the line of her throat starting from her ear, he slid a finger to her collarbone and replaced his finger with his mouth. Her flavor filled his senses as he fulfilled the fantasy of savoring it. Straining closer, she moaned and it was better than music.

He needed more. More contact. More music. More Alex. He drew her closer, nearly into his lap, and her dress came up over her hip as his palm gathered it. She pressed into his touch, arching into him.

And then somehow, she rolled and landed
in
his lap, straddling him. Wordlessly—because he couldn't have spoken if his life had depended on it—he cupped her rear, nestling her so their bodies aligned, and then her mouth crashed into his. The kiss ignited inside him, pounding adrenaline through his body, pumping euphoria along all his nerve endings.

More.
Somehow she heard him or he communicated it telepathically because her mouth opened over his as she rolled her hips in a sensuous rhythm against the fiercest erection he'd experienced in recent memory. Maybe ever.

Heat broke over him like a blast from a detonated bomb, coalescing at the point of contact between their bodies, nearly finishing him off before they'd scarcely started. He tore his mouth from hers, panting.

“Wait,” he murmured and stood with her in his arms. She clamped her legs around his waist and he stumbled to his bedroom blindly as she fastened her lips on his throat, sucking with erotic pulls that drove him insane.

“That's not the definition of
waiting
,” he told her hoarsely and let her slide to the ground as he slammed the door shut with one foot.

“I'm not very patient.” To prove it, she half turned and presented the zipper to her dress.

He reached out and pulled it. That glittery fabric snaked from her body and landed in a heap around her ankles as she spun back to face him. She was naked, and her high, peaked breasts called to him.

A curse worked itself loose from his mouth. “Are you trying to kill me?”

“No, I'm trying to get you into bed. Apparently I'm doing it wrong since you're still dressed.”

Laughing around the raging desire clogging his throat, he stripped and scooped her up, then complied with her directive, depositing her gently on the bed. He rolled into her, and that fragrant, fruity scent encompassed him just as completely as the woman did.

“I've been fantasizing about this moment for a long time,” she confessed. Her honesty tripped something inside him.

Honeyed warmth spread through his chest as they stared at each other. This wasn't supposed to be anything other than two people connecting with no expectations. Guess that wasn't even possible with someone as unique as Alexandra Meer. She pulled things from deep inside that he'd have sworn were frozen. Things he didn't want to feel for another woman. But it was hard to shut down.

He liked her. She was smart and successful with a touch of vulnerability that set her apart from other women in his path. That had been true from the first moment he'd met her.

He might as well admit the same. “Me too.”

Phillip kissed her and she slid a long, smooth leg between his, teasing, tempting and torturing all at once, and that was it. This wasn't going to happen slowly. He wanted her as badly as she seemed to want him.

He fumbled in the nightstand for some condoms he was pretty sure were still in there from the last time he'd brought a woman home maybe eight months ago. A year? He had a bad moment when he couldn't find them and then his fingers closed around one.

He tore it open and somehow got it on in one shot and then she was back in place against him, her gorgeous, sweet body aligned with his. After an eternity, he pushed inside and they joined in a clash of bodies that felt so right, Phillip could hardly stand it. She was unbelievably lush and sensuous.

They moved in a timeless rhythm that somehow became new and electrifying. She gave as much as she took and his mind drained of everything except returning the pleasure. Higher and higher they spiraled as her moans spurred him on. Their simultaneous climax was like icing on an already lip-smacking cake.

He held her quaking body tight against his as the release blasted through him. And then he couldn't let go. She smelled like pears and well-loved woman, and he craved her heat, even in the aftermath. Usually he preferred to recover on his own, but he still couldn't get enough of this amazing woman.

Sure, he'd wanted her, but sex wasn't the be-all, end-all. He'd wanted to explore the connection they'd both felt from the very first. It had been just as amazing as he'd hoped. But he'd anticipated burning off that attraction and moving on. Epic fail in that regard. He wasn't close to done and that felt like a problem.

He had to get her out of his bed before he started rehearsing a pretty speech designed to convince her to spend the night. Which was enough of a warning to scramble from the sheets. He had never
slept
with a woman other than Gina. Tonight was not the night to start.

Later, he drove Alex home in his Tesla instead of sending her with his driver, Randy, like he'd planned. He couldn't seem to let her go. The night had ended far too soon.

And though he couldn't give her everything she deserved, he didn't want to let Alex walk out of his life.

Just because they'd said no expectations didn't mean he couldn't ask to see her again. After all, he didn't really
know
what she was looking for in a relationship. How could he say what he had to offer wasn't enough if they didn't talk about it?

At the door of Alex's house just north of Dallas in University Park, he kissed her good-night and then pulled back to gorge himself on the sight of her beautiful face. Tomorrow, she'd go back to T-shirt-and-jeans Alex.

He wanted to see her again, no matter what she was wearing.

“Can I call you?” he asked hoarsely and cleared his throat. “Let me take you to dinner.”

She smiled. “I'd like that.”

Phillip mentally flipped through his calendar and then cursed. He'd fly to Washington tomorrow and hadn't planned to be back in Dallas for the foreseeable future. “I can't set a firm date. But please know it's not because I don't want to. I have to be in Washington. Duty calls.”

“Phillip, no expectations.” She cupped his face with both palms and held it. “I like spending time with you. But I'm not going to wait by the phone for you to call. I have a company to run. I'm busy, too. Call me when you're free.”

A bit blindsided, he stared at her. Most women—
all
women he'd ever met—wouldn't have considered giving him a pass like that. Alex was something else. “That's very gracious.”

She shrugged. “You're worth waiting for.”

Something turned over in his heart. This was crazy. Instead of exploring their attraction and getting it out of their systems, he was trying to figure out how to juggle his schedule so he could see her again. He should be running back to his car and driving away very fast in pursuit of someone who was much better suited to being the wife he needed.

The wife he needed would understand he couldn't be disloyal to Gina. The wife he needed would stand by his side as he navigated the Washington social scene, wearing couture and cosmetics with ease. The wife he needed would understand that his career might require sacrifices to her own career.

Above all, the wife he needed would not generate all of these unexpected, confusing emotions. Alex was not what he needed.

His career was everything to him. It had saved him from drowning in grief two years ago, and with his eye on the White House, Alex would only complicate his life. No, she wasn't what he needed—but she was everything he wanted. And that made her very dangerous indeed.

Three

Four weeks later...

T
he packaging on the pregnancy test was too slick for Alex's shaking fingers to grip. Gracelessly, she stuck the end in her mouth and tore it open. The slim stick fell out and tumbled end over end into the toilet bowl with a splash. Of course.

This was surreal. The walls of the company she'd cofounded surrounded her. Fyra was a multimillion-dollar cosmetics powerhouse that she'd worked tirelessly to manage alongside her friends and partners. Every single dollar of revenue and every dime of expense had passed through her fingers from day one. She was responsible for hundreds of employees' paychecks.

And she couldn't do a simple thing like open plastic packaging.

“What happened?” Cass's voice rang out from the other side of the bathroom stall.

“I'm nauseous and clumsy,” Alex shot back. “The stupid test made a break for it and landed in the water.”

This was not the way Alex wanted to spend her lunch break.

She was pretty sure the test would only confirm what she already knew in her heart to be the truth. The upset stomach she'd been battling for over a week had nothing to do with the seafood she'd eaten last Friday and everything to do with the night she'd spent with Phillip.

“Can you get it out?”

“I'm working on it.”

Liar.
Staring at the little white stick down in the water wasn't solving the problem. Alex thought about just flushing the thing and avoiding the whole question of why no amount of prayer had started her skipped period. She and Phillip had used protection. This wasn't supposed to be happening.

“Just pee in the toilet,” Cass suggested. “You don't have to be holding the stick for it to work.”

Alex sighed and gave in to the inevitable. “Fine. It's done. Now, how long do I have to wait?”

“I don't know.” Cass rustled the paper instructions she'd been holding when Alex had locked herself in the bathroom stall. “Three minutes.”

Might as well be three hours. Alex shredded her nails in under a minute and a half, not that it mattered. No one was looking at her nails. Phillip had gone back to Washington the day after his party, as promised, and they'd conversed a few times via email. He'd called twice to say hi, but so far, they hadn't connected for dinner. She wasn't upset. He'd let her know when he was free and that obviously hadn't happened yet.

It was exactly what she'd signed up for. A night of passion with an amazing man who paid attention to her. She still dreamed about the way his mouth felt on hers and how gorgeous that man's body was. Sure, she'd have liked to see him again, but that might mean having a conversation about what dating meant for them and she didn't want to ruin the magic with real-life fears and hang-ups.

If the test came back positive, they'd be having a hell of a conversation about dates, that was for sure. Due dates, birth dates, playdates. It was mind-boggling.

She peered into the toilet. Nothing. Or maybe something. Did the results window look a little pink? Her stomach flipped over and back again. “What do the instructions say about how to read this test? What does it mean if it's pink?”

She'd read them herself but panic drove the information from her brain.

“One pink line is not pregnant. Two pink lines is pregnant. You've
never
taken a pregnancy test before?” Cass didn't bother to keep the incredulity from her tone. “Not even in college?”

“No,” Alex muttered. “You'd have to have sex to need one.”

She'd been just as awkward and clumsy in college as she was now. Men shied away, for the most part. Phillip was a rare exception.

Please, God, do not let that exception have irreversible consequences.

More pink bled into the window. A distinct line appeared.
One
line. That meant not pregnant. Except the pink was still wicking through the window, spreading its impersonal message about huge, life-alerting events.

“Why are you making me do this?”

“Because you clearly weren't ever going to do it yourself. It's been four weeks since Phillip's party,” Cass reminded her, as if she needed reminding. “If you are pregnant, you're a third of the way through the first trimester. Denial is not a good health-care plan for you or a baby.”

Baby.
Oh, God. Alex had staunchly refused to even think that word. And then...a second line appeared in the window, pink and vivid and final.

“Hand me the second test,” Alex demanded hoarsely. She'd wondered why they'd included two. Obviously so people in her position could make absolutely sure.

Cass did so without comment and they waited in silence for the second confirmation.

“How accurate are these things?” Alex whispered, as again, two pink lines materialized in the window.

“Pretty accurate,” Cass confirmed. “Sometimes it says you're not pregnant when you really are because you've taken the test too early. But if it says you
are
pregnant, that's like 100 percent. I'm guessing it was positive. Both times.”

And now it was a reality, an undeniable, unfixable reality.

Alex was pregnant with Senator Phillip Edgewood's baby.

Flipping the latch to unlock the wide door, she stumbled from the bathroom stall—how, she didn't know, when everything was numb. Except her mind, of course. That was on full speed in a Tilt-a-Whirl of thoughts, none of which were cohesive.

She was going to be a mom. A life was growing inside her through the miracle of procreation. It hardly seemed possible.

Cass took one look at Alex's face and engulfed her in a hug, holding her tight as if the sheer pressure might keep Alex together. “It'll be okay.”

“How?” Alex mumbled into Cass's shoulder. “How will it be okay?”

She was going to be a
mom
. The idea terrified her. Deep inside, she knew she could do it. She had her own mom to fall back on and look to for guidance. Alex was smart—present circumstances excluded. She had her own money and house. Maybe it
would
be okay.

Phillip.
She had to go see him. For one brief, bright second she envisioned him opening the door, seeing her and breaking into a wide smile that she'd feel all the way to her toes. He'd confess he'd missed her, had been thinking about her and was glad she'd come by. She'd smile back and something meaningful would pass between them. She'd admit she'd thought about him, too. That she wished he'd called even though she knew why he hadn't.

And then she'd tell him he was going to be a father. She had no idea how he'd react. Because she didn't really know him at all.

“It's a mess.” Alex pulled from Cass's embrace.

“It's a wonderful, joyous event to be celebrated amongst friends,” Cass corrected brightly. “You're the first of us to get pregnant. Harper and Trinity will be thrilled.”

“About what?” Harper asked as the two women in question joined Alex's nightmare right on cue. Fyra's chief science officer's red hair was down today, framing Harper's lovely face, and she'd got it cut, but Alex was too shell-shocked to comment on it.

Trinity's keen gaze zigzagged between Cass and Alex as she crossed her arms over a chic suit in a vivid shade of blue that matched the stripe coloring the right side of her dark hair. “Something's going on. Did something happen on the FDA approval front? What did Phillip say?”

His name was like a knife through Alex's heart, especially since she hadn't thought about Formula-47's FDA application one time over the past week. That was what she should have been focusing on, not her stupid crush on the man helping Fyra with the approval process.

This was the absolute worst timing. Fyra was poised to hit the billion-dollars-a-year mark in revenue with Harper's revolutionary new skin-care formula, and Alex couldn't do a simple thing like working with the senator on the FDA approval process without messing it all up.

“Phillip didn't call,” she told Trinity, who she knew was chomping at the bit to get started on a new marketing campaign. “I'm pregnant.”

Harper and Trinity exclaimed happily and took turns hugging her. She had her friends, if nothing else. She breathed easier.

Cass smiled and rubbed her back. “See? We'll hold your hand through it and be your village. Single women raise children all the time.”

Single mom.
Oh, God. She hadn't even got that far in her mind. It wasn't just a pregnancy, but a child who needed nurturing and love.

The complexities nearly knocked her knees out from under her. She'd never intended to have children, never planned to expose a helpless child to pain and suffering at the hands of adults. Her own parents' divorce had changed her, hardened her, driven her into teenage experimentation with drugs and alcohol, then ultimately a brush with the law. And now she'd done the one thing she'd sworn to never do—force a child to live with his or her parents' mistakes.

This was what happened when she threw caution to the wind.

Cass had made a broad, sweeping assumption that Alex would be handling this without Phillip, but nothing could be further from what Alex had envisioned. Babies needed a family. A father. She hadn't had one and knew that pain. Her child would have one come hell or high water.

Did Phillip even want kids? What if he would be happier washing his hands of her and the baby, perfectly fine with never seeing either of them again? How would she convince him otherwise if he hated the idea of being a dad?

And what kind of relationship would she and Phillip have? How could they be parents when they weren't even a couple? Panic sloshed through her already nauseated stomach.

“When did you become an expert on motherhood?” Alex snapped, too freaked to temper her tone.

“Since Gage got full custody of Robbie,” Cass said simply. “Just because I didn't give birth to him doesn't make him any less mine. I wanted to learn.”

Cass had fallen in love with a single father and thus had to become a mother in short order. Looked like Alex would be doing the same.

A horrifying thought occurred to her then.

Maybe Phillip
would
want to raise the baby...without her. Oh, God. What if he tried to use his power and influence to take the baby away for some reason? Instantly, she cradled her still-flat stomach protectively. He wouldn't do that. Would he? She bemoaned the fact that she didn't know him well enough to guess.

It didn't matter. No one was taking this baby from her. The child was equally hers and Phillip's, and they were both going to have a role in its life. Period.

No child of hers was going to grow up without a loving mother
and
father. That started by talking to Phillip about how they would manage the next eighteen-plus years together and ended with honesty. She certainly didn't need his money, but what she did need from him would require courage and fortitude to secure.

“I have to see a doctor. To confirm. And then fly to Washington,” she told Cass woodenly. “I know it's the worst time to be gone, but—”

“Don't be ridiculous. Go. Take the time you need to figure out the next steps. We'll be here.”

Yes. Next steps. If she took this in the logical order everything would be fine.

Trinity and Harper both nodded, throwing in their own versions of support and talking a mile a minute about nursery decor, breast-feeding and maternity fashion.

“Thanks.” Alex's throat closed and she couldn't say anything else. Just as well. She needed to save her voice for the long conversation with Phillip looming in her future.

* * *

Phillip typed his electronic signature and sent the email. One thing off his growing list.

Cherry trees outside his office window had burst into full bloom in the past week. Spring was Phillip's favorite time in Washington, though he enjoyed the snowy winter, too. Winter in Dallas consisted of ice storms followed by seventy-degree days. The ups and downs were maddening.

He wished his grandfather agreed. The man had spent years and years living in DC while he'd held office, but as his health declined, Max Edgewood preferred to stay in Dallas. It was the one reason Phillip commuted back and forth as much as he did; he loved his grandfather and gladly split his time between the two cities. He didn't like to think about how few days Max might have left on this earth.

In fact, they were overdue for a visit. He should go home soon. Except he was avoiding Dallas.

Linda buzzed him through the phone intercom. “Senator, Ms. Meer is here.”

A myriad of emotions flushed through his body at the mention of the woman he'd fled to Washington to forget. He'd failed spectacularly at the forgetting part, but he'd been trying to at least stay away. No matter how much he'd wanted to arrange that dinner they'd discussed, they were all wrong for each other and she'd given him the perfect out by telling him to call when he was free. If he was at the Capitol, he wasn't free.

What was Alex doing in Washington? It was almost as if she'd known he couldn't stop thinking about their night together. Or, more realistically, she was here about the FDA approval process. They
were
still working together.

This wasn't the first time she'd stopped by his office. It was, however, the first time she'd come by without an appointment. It was a testament to his admin's superior mind-reading skills that she hadn't turned Alex away.

“Send her in immediately,” he told Linda.

He stood as the door opened and Alex spilled into the room. Gone were the makeup and fancy clothes, replaced by her typical ponytail and jeans.

Her bare face glowed and something seized his lungs as he stared at her. She was even more beautiful without all the trappings she'd worn to his party. Breathtaking almost, as if something inside her had suddenly become illuminated.