Bought by a Millionaire

“Are you serious?” She lifted the lid of the pizza on her lap and inhaled deeply. Her stomach growled in appreciation as she stared, awestruck, at the evidence of his generosity.

“Oh, Lord,” she breathed, “this looks so good.”

“Then why aren’t you eating?”

She turned her head and noticed the glint of humor in his eyes to match the teasing note in his voice. With a grin, she separated a single piece from the jam-packed pie and dug in.

Three slices later, she was still moaning in near ecstasy. She wiped her mouth with one of the napkins that had come with the pizzas and patted her overstuffed belly.

“That was so thoughtful of you, thank you very much.”

She settled a hand on Burke’s knee. She did it without conscious thought, without considering the consequences…and without worrying about what he might read into the gesture. And when his hand moved to cover her own, she didn’t pull away, regardless of the impact the action had on her growing attraction to him.

“I was glad to do it. Are you sure you don’t want more?”

Groaning, she shook her head. “Heavens, no. I couldn’t eat another bite. But it was delicious, and just what I was craving. Thank you,” she said again. She slipped her hand out from under his then, afraid to let the contact go on much longer.

“Have you gotten many cravings already?” he wanted to know as he moved the pizza boxes a few at a time to the otherwise empty seat across from them.

Shannon swallowed, trying not to read too much into his behavior. She’d touched his leg. He’d covered her hand with his own. And now he was clearing the space between them. It all made her very nervous, and she found herself holding her breath, waiting to see if he would slide closer.

When he merely leaned back to focus his gaze on her face once again, she began to relax and consider the best answer to his question.

If she told him she’d devoured an entire bag—family size, not single serving—of corn chips on the way to the doctor’s office, he’d think she was a glutton. Then again, she had been experiencing odd hunger pangs which she attributed to the early stages of her pregnancy. And being the baby’s father—as well as her employer—she supposed he had a right to know the God’s honest truth.

“Only a few,” she told him, taking a sip of the bottled water he’d bought for her, along with the pizzas.

“Like what?”

As much as it embarrassed her, she admitted the earlier corn chip incident and was surprised by his deep, amused chuckle.

“I also stocked up on six different flavors of ice cream, when I don’t usually keep much around. And gummi bears,” she admitted, digging into her purse to retrieve the plastic baggie filled with rainbow-colored candies. “Do you know anyone over the age of six who actually eats these things?”

One corner of his mouth still lifted in a half grin, he said, “Pregnant women, apparently.”

He reached over, untwisted the tie on the baggie, and plucked out a single, bright-yellow gummi bear. “And expectant fathers.”

Shannon watched as he chewed, wondering how much The National Inquisitor would pay for a story about Chicago’s most eligible bachelor eating gummi bears in the back of his limousine. With the surrogate mother of his unborn child, she added, and laughed silently.

“Not bad,” Burke murmured. “Not quite as wonderful as I remember, but I can understand why you’re craving them.”

He finished prying the sticking concoction away from his molars and turned to her, more serious now. “I hope you’ll let me know if there’s anything you need. Anything at all, including corn chips or ice cream at three in the morning.”

She smiled, touched by his concern and obvious excitement about becoming a father. “Thank you, but I’m hoping it won’t come to that. Not for several more months, at least.”

She saw him swallow and his jaw tighten. His fingers clenched and then released where his arms rested atop his legs.

“Right. We’ve got a ways to go, I guess.”

“Seven more months, to be exact,” she said as the limo pulled to a stop outside her apartment building.

It was hard to believe she was pregnant at all. But here she was, two months along, carrying a child for a man she hardly knew.

Her mother would die if she knew, even though Shannon was doing this for all the right reasons. And though she had no intention of not visiting her mother at Meadow Lark for the duration of her pregnancy, she had decided not to tell her mom what she was doing until she absolutely had to. Shannon figured that would be about the time she began to show and her mother started to guess.