The Boss's Baby Affair (13 page)

“This time it will be different.”

Her heart leaped. Was it possible that he was starting to feel the same way about her as she felt about him?

Candace was almost afraid to ask. Her heart was beating so hard she was sure he must hear it, sitting so close to her. “How will it be different?”

She tensed, wired, every nerve ending expectant as she waited for his answer.

One finger trailed down her cheek, leaving a trail of fire in its wake. “This time I will have a lover.”

So he hadn't said he loved her. But
lover
was good, wasn't it? Candace wavered. No, she decided, she wanted more; she needed him to tell her he loved her. Choosing her words
carefully, she asked, “But how will this be different? Jilly was your lover, too.”

The teasing finger stilled. “I never made love to Jilly.”

Was he saying that he'd only had sex with his dead wife, that he'd never loved her? Did that mean he loved her, Candace?

“I know you didn't love her.”

“I didn't love her, nor did I
make
love to her.”

“What do you mean…?” Voice trailing away, she waited. Was Nick saying something else altogether…something she could hardly believe was true?

“You've seen my bedroom. It was mine alone. Jilly had her own suite, her own bed. I never shared it. We never slept together.” His mouth compressed at her incredulous look. “There was no sex. Not for seven long years.”

“You once told me there were no other women—” Candace broke off unable to finish.

“That's right.”

My God.

No wonder he'd been so…
desperate.
Now he was telling her that he expected their marriage to have sex. Yet he'd never said he loved her.

Stupid! He wasn't marrying her because he loved her. He was marrying her to gain Jennie a set of biological parents—a set of parents who loved their daughter and would make it clear to any court.

Nick was making the same mistake of going into a loveless marriage with the best intentions for the wrong reasons all over again. Except this time, instead of saving Bertha and Henry, he was trying to save Jennie. And this time sex would be part of the deal.

The pain below her heart grew more intense.

Nick Valentine deserved to find a woman he could really love. For all his life. Candace wished that woman were her. But it wouldn't be her. Even though he was the father of her baby…and the man she loved.

Nick would never be hers.

Shaking her head, she said slowly, “I'm sorry Nick, I can't marry you.”

Not even for Jennie.

 

Nick had retreated to the sanctuary of his study, where he'd poured himself one measure of single-malt Scotch, then collapsed onto the burgundy love seat.

He'd been so certain she would say yes.

If Candace married him, it would've been a tidy solution, and Jennie would've been safe. He couldn't fathom why she'd refused the most sensible course of action under the circumstances.

There'd been flashes of time over the past few days when he could've sworn she desired him almost as much as he craved her. It had been there in the way her gaze flicked to him, then quickly away, in the soft flush of color that followed, in the slight stutter she developed when he stood too close.

But she'd turned him down flat.

Well, he supposed it served him right for being so sure of her.

He raised the heavy crystal glass to his lips and took a sip, savoring the smoky flavor.

It wasn't over yet. Nick was determined to escalate that reciprocal passion he'd sensed in her. He was convinced he could change her
no
to a
yes.

He knew he didn't have a lot of time. He'd have to move fast if he wanted a marriage to thwart the thorn in his side that Desmond had become. He had to move now.

If he wanted to keep Candace.

N
ick had rarely entered Jilly's suite of rooms during their marriage.

Now as he crossed the threshold he noticed that it smelled…empty…like a hotel room long deserted. The curtains were drawn, dimming the room. He flicked the light switch, picked up a remote and activated it. The curtains opened and sunlight filtered in through the lacy blinds beneath.

The bedcover in Jilly's signature gray and white and lime lay smooth and uncreased. Two crystal perfume bottles stood on the dresser, and a Lalique vase stuffed with silk tulips occupied a writing desk beside the windows.

Feeling like an intruder, Nick crossed to where a dressing room opened off Jilly's en suite. Her clothes had already been packed up and given to charity. The wall safe was empty. Nick had placed Jilly's jewels in a bank deposit box in trust for Jennie, the day after the funeral.

Any hope that he might discover secrets that had not died with Jilly was fading rapidly. The bathroom cupboards
held only unopened toiletries, clean towels and a hairdryer. Impersonal items waiting for the next occupant. The personal items Jilly had used were long gone.

Back in her bedroom he checked the dresser drawers, her bedside table…all empty…as he'd expected. He'd gone through them himself. Nick moved on to her writing desk, already knowing what he'd find.

The first drawer revealed her wallet, a checkbook, an expired passport and a folder of canceled credit cards. The next drawer down contained Jilly's lime-green laptop and an iPhone. The final drawer held a box of Jilly's gold embossed stationery, envelopes, her address book…exactly as she'd left them. He lifted the stationery box out and opened it. Letterheads with
Jilly Valentine
surrounded by tiny pink hearts. He smiled. How Jilly. There were thank-you notes, too. He put the box back and started to close the drawer, then paused.

Taking out the stationery box again, he lifted the large black address book, and pulled out a second black volume. Jilly's appointment book. Next he opened the drawer above and extracted her laptop with its power cable.

Seating himself on the padded desk chair, Nick flipped open the cover of the five-year appointment book. Finally he booted the laptop up. In less time than expected he'd found a file labeled
Journal.
Opening it, Nick started to read.

 

The following morning, Nick strode past an unsuspecting receptionist and, at the end of the corridor, entered the corner office unannounced.

Desmond Perry sat behind his desk, puffed up as an angry toad. Red-faced, he demanded, “What's the meaning of bursting into my office like this?”

Nick took a seat in one of the two chairs in front of the desk, and leaned back. “If you prefer, I can arrange to see you
another time with my lawyer in attendance. Or you can listen to what I have to say now.”

Desmond stopped blustering. “What do you want?”

“I want you to stop harassing my sister and brother-in-law and tell your crony at NorthPark to withdraw his eviction notice.” Nick paused, while Desmond stared at him. “I want you to forget about trying to acquire enough of a stake in Valentine's to force a takeover—yes, I know about your plan to develop the land, not for high-density apartments, but for a shopping mall in partnership with NorthPark.”

“How did—”

Nick held up a hand. “And you're going to halt all legal action to get custody of Jennie.”

“Why should I do anything you want?”

Nick started with what was most important to him first.
Jennie.
“Jennie isn't Jilly's daughter.”

“I know that.”

It appeared that Candace was right; Desmond was only trying to hurt him though his daughter, enough to make him pursue a frivolous legal suit purely to frustrate Nick. But did he know who her real mother was?

“Then you know you have no right to her.”

The older man picked up a pen and tapped it against the wooden edge of the desk. “My daughter adopted her—she's my grandchild.”

Nick's first reaction was to lean over the desk and punch Desmond, as he'd been dying to do for weeks. Instead, he said, “I intend to challenge that adoption. I don't want my daughter growing up like Jilly did, with a guardian whose only way of showing his love is to buy her whatever she wants.”

Desmond blinked, and Nick regretted his hotheaded reply. The man had lost a daughter. Then he remembered the pain that had poured out in Jilly's diary. It was no wonder that the only way she knew to respond to being in love was to try to buy the loved one.

It had been a disastrous course of action; but spoiled, emotionally starved Jilly had been too insecure to know any other way.

Nick held his father-in-law's gaze, until Desmond looked away first.

“I found the journal Jilly kept. It made for very interesting reading.” That jerked Desmond's attention back to him, Nick noticed with satisfaction. “She poured everything into it—even the reason why the IVF was done offshore—she knew she would never get her harebrained scheme past the ethics committee that approves surrogate arrangements in New Zealand. When I gave the necessary signature for my sperm to be transferred offshore, I had no knowledge that it wouldn't be used to impregnate my wife, but rather the surrogate she had chosen.”

Jilly had written of her overriding need for a baby to fill the emptiness of her life. That had caused Nick a pang of guilt. He'd been so busy resenting Jilly for forcing him into an untenable situation that he'd never tried to figure out what had been behind her desire for a child. Jilly had also written about her craving to experience pregnancy firsthand. Nick could only assume that longing had triggered the fake pregnancy she'd enacted—together with the desperation for Jennie to be seen as
her
child.

Watching Desmond carefully, Nick added, “New Zealand law requires the baby's real mother to be listed on the birth certificate. Jilly bribed the midwife who tended to the baby's birth to state that Jilly was the baby's mother.” When Candace had first claimed to be Jennie's mother, Nick had known it was impossible. According to the birth certificate, Jilly was Jennie's mother. Jilly's journal had solved another piece of the puzzle.

Heaven knew what else Jilly had done.

It was time to play his hand. “The baby's birth certificate will be corrected.” He hoped to attend to the change quietly.
Jennie's status as Candace's daughter was something he intended to handle as tactfully as he could. “Do you want your daughter's fraud to be made public? The fact that she lied to me, her husband, about being pregnant while forging my consent to a surrogacy arrangement? About bribing medical practitioners to go along with fertilizing another woman's egg and implanting it offshore into that woman without my knowledge and consent? About paying off a midwife to falsify a birth certificate? Do you want people to know how mentally frail she was? How your years of emotional neglect affected her?”

Desmond started to object, then he stopped.

“You've worked to build a media image as a philanthropist, a devoted father to Jilly. Desmond, do you want that tainted?” Nick pressed on. “Do you want the real story of your troubled relationship with your daughter made public? The facts of how she manipulated the surrogate system exposed, along with how she bribed medical officials?”

Holding his breath, Nick waited. Would it be enough to persuade Desmond to back down?

“No,” Desmond conceded at last. He tossed aside the pen he'd been fiddling with, and spat out, “I'd rather she was remembered as the beautiful, happy woman she was before she married you.”

Nick nodded. “I was not the right man for her—there can be no doubt about that.” He regretted the years he and Jilly had both wasted. From Jilly's journal he'd learned that in her way she did love him, and she'd come to realize her mistake in forcing him into a union he didn't want. That had been one of the motivations for a baby. To bring them closer together. She'd thought that Nick needed a child—she'd viewed him as a great prospective father. That had deeply touched Nick, giving him a way forward to remember Jilly in a kinder way.

And Jilly had done more…

“Inside Jilly's journal, I also discovered a codicil Jilly
added to her will, leaving her stock in Valentine's to me.” The codicil was dated shortly before Jennie was born. Nick was grateful she'd taken time to create it.

Desmond picked up the pen again. “My lawyer told me Jilly had instructed him to draw up a codicil, but he didn't have the signed document. We decided she'd had second thoughts.”

“She signed it. And it's witnessed. It's valid. I've sent it to my lawyer,” Nick said. “He'll communicate with the lawyer handling Jilly's estate.”

After a long moment, Desmond gave a sigh. He looked less arrogant—and much older—than when Nick had first entered the large corner office. “It looks like there's not much for me to say.”

“You'll drop the suit for custody?”

Desmond gave a terse nod.

“You will agree to speak to NorthPark about having Alison and Richard's eviction notice revoked?” Again a nod. “And you will stop pursuing Valentine stock?”

“I'll do what you want.” There was still anger on the older man's face.

Nick reminded himself that Desmond had lost his daughter tragically, unexpectedly, and whatever their convoluted father-daughter relationship, he'd loved Jilly in his own way.

Although Nick wanted as little as possible to do with Desmond in the future, he didn't want the man to be an enemy, forever scheming how to hurt him. There'd been a moment earlier when he'd itched to hit Desmond; he was relieved that he hadn't.

It would've made him less of a man in his own eyes—and he knew that Candace would've hated to hear that he'd used violence against a father who must still be grieving.

Bottom line: he wanted the feud with Jilly's father to be over. To that end he said, “I plan to build a children's playground at the flagship Valentine's in Jilly's memory.”
Desmond studied him warily. “I'd like you to open it—I'll make sure the event has plenty of publicity.”

“Jilly would've appreciated that. Thank you.” The anger started to fade from Desmond's face. “Perhaps you could build a bench somewhere with a plaque dedicating it to her. She loved flowers.”

“I could do that. There's a rose garden where Jilly often took photographs, with a sundial in the center. A bench would fit in perfectly. Many people could sit and enjoy the surroundings.”

Desmond nodded slowly. “I might come and sit there myself.”

“Good.” He could tolerate that, Nick decided, rising to his feet. He held out his hand. “I'm glad we've resolved our differences.” He only hoped the coming confrontation with Candace was going to proceed as smoothly.

Nick knew Desmond Perry would no longer present a threat to his family.

 

Candace was reclining on a lounger in the shade under the poolside umbrella, rubbing the fluff that was Jennie's hair dry after a lunchtime swim in the pool, when she heard the scrape of the sliding doors and looked up.

Her pulse picked up as Nick emerged from the house. He'd left early for work this morning, and Candace discovered that she'd missed him. She'd gotten used to the three of them— Nick, Jennie and her—sharing breakfast on the deck on the sunny early mornings but he'd kept himself away since she'd turned down his proposal.

It had left her feeling restless.

Sitting up, she set down the towel and pulled the T-shirt Jennie wore straight, then checked to see that the sarong she'd donned over her own damp swimsuit hadn't parted to reveal her tummy or legs. Since she'd made love with Nick, she'd
taken great care not to allow any opportunity for those burning moments of awareness to arise.

“She's a real water baby,” she remarked, stroking Jennie's head before glancing back up to Nick.

“The signs were always there,” said Nick. He barely glanced at Candace's scantily clad body as he pulled up a chair from the table arrangement where they ate in the morning. “I need to talk to you.”

His face was stern.

“Yes?”

“Desmond has agreed to withdraw the application for custody of Jennie.”

She couldn't stop the huge grin that lit up her face. “That's fabulous news. Nick, I'm so relieved. When?”

“As we speak. My lawyers are talking to his.”

“Oh, I could hug you.” Then she wished she hadn't added they last bit as his face remained set. Nick didn't even joke in response. Something was wrong. “There's more isn't there?”

“I found Jilly's journal and I've been reading her appointment book.”

He paused.

Candace waited, feeling puzzled at the withdrawal she sensed in him. On her lap, Jennie grew restless.

“Do you know that you're not named as Jennie's mother on the birth certificate?”

She frowned at the switch in subject. “You said that when I first told you I was Jennie's mother. I thought you'd simply never seen it.” It had seemed typical of the remote, uninvolved father she'd pegged him to be. “That can't be right.”

She didn't like the way he was watching her, like a dark panther waiting to pounce on the first slip she made. She swung her legs to the ground so that she was perched on the edge of the lounger. Spreading the biggest towel on the deck
in front of the lounger, she placed Jennie on it and handed her a teething ring. Immediately, Jennie started to chew.

“You had a midwife at the birth.”

“Yes—Jilly wanted the home experience, she thought it would give you and her a better chance to bond with the baby than a hospital birth, where your involvement would be minimal.” Candace paused. “She even said you'd decided not to be present because you would be overseas. Thinking about it now, you wouldn't even have known about the birth, right?”