Prince Charming's Child

“Don’t be silly. You tell me a confidence, I’d take it to the grave.” He wanted to say something more, but there seemed to be a lump in his throat about the size of Alaska. Not to mention that his heart was pounding so loud in his ears that he could barely think.

She pushed out of her chair again. Up down, up down, like a yo-yo. But he understood. When anxiety was chasing your tail, the inclination was to try and outrun it by staying in motion. She paced over to the window and stared down at the pounding surf below, then yanked the shades to block the view. “I’m afraid there’s a little more to this. In this day and age, there’s nothing that odd about a thirty-two-year-old woman choosing to have a baby without a husband in sight. I mean, a woman can choose the best time for her in terms of biology and health. There’s no stigma about being a single parent anymore. And If I could just sell that story to the staff, I don’t think anyone would blink twice. Unfortunately, there’s no possibility of my selling that fib. Because of the circumstances, the real truth is going to come out whether I want it to or not.”

“You’re saying there’s some complication...like you don’t want the baby?”

“Oh, I want the baby.” Instinctively she pressed a hand on her heart. “I didn’t plan for this right now, and for sure I haven’t had two seconds to make plans about how I’m going to cope. But the baby...I’ll find a way. Whatever I have to do. It wasn’t really finding out I was pregnant that threw me into shock. It was the shame.”

“Shame?”

Again she sighed. Again she raked a hand through her hair, paced away from the window, and leaned back against her tall pecan credenza. “Mitch, I shouldn’t be telling you any of this.”

He knew. She never admitted any private problem to the staff. She had an unbending code about what bosses should and shouldn’t do around employees—and that had always applied doublefold to him. The lump in his throat seemed to be growing to the size of the Northwest Territories. She wasn’t talking by choice, but because she was too shook up to hold it in. “Just spill the rest of it. You’ve gone this far. Get the rest off your chest.”

She whispered, “I don’t know who the father is. How could there be a worse shame than that? And that isn’t even the worst of it.”

Through a mouth dryer than an abandoned well, Mitch said, “So, okay. Let’s hear the worst.”

She gestured wildly with her hands. “I don’t remember. Sleeping with anyone. It’s been years since I was involved—the business took so much time to build up. I just didn’t go out. And there were other reasons that I never...” She clipped off that thought, and zoomed in another direction. “The thing is, it had to have happened the night of the Christmas party. There was no other possible time.”

“The Christmas party,” he echoed.

She seemed to assume something from his change in expression, because she swiftly nodded. “Yes. I know. That means it was someone here. One of the team. That’s what I meant about not being able to lie—someone here unquestionably knows the truth. And on top of everything else, that it could be one of our team makes me guilty of sexual harassment—”

“What?” Hell, the woman kept lobbing grenades at him. He couldn’t keep track what direction she was going to come from next.

“Come on, Mitch. I’m the employer. That puts me in a power position in terms of the law—and that really kills me, because I thought I was always so careful about that. But what it means is that I put one of the guys in a terrible position. Everything’s my fault. I had no right...”

“Wait a minute, wait a minute—” The lump in his throat had grown to the size of a couple of continents now, but he had to get past it. She was beating herself up right and left.

But he couldn’t get a word in. She was way too wound up to even acknowledge the interruption. “...and not being able to remember makes it so unforgivable. The problem was the champagne—and I don’t mean that like an excuse. There is no excuse for drinking when I know it goes straight to my head. But the champagne apparently fogged my memory. And that’s one of the critical things I just don’t know how to deal with—coming to work, facing you all, what I should say about the pregnancy when someone here obviously knows what happened. You’re going to laugh, but I thought it might be you. For two seconds.”

“Me?”

“I know. Really impossible.” She rolled her eyes to the ceiling, at least for that second showing an honest spark of humor. “You and I rub against each other like a snake and a mongoose. Maybe that’s why I suddenly spilled all this—not that I meant to vent on you, Mitch—but because I was so sure you have no interest in me that way. And that’s one of the things that’s confused me. Why the man never said anything. And no one has. All I can think is that he must really have felt put on the spot and regret that night really badly—”

“Hey, I don’t think you should just assume that. There could be all kinds of reasons why he kept quiet.”

“Well, whatever the reasons, I have to figure out who it is.” She was back to pacing again, hips swinging, hands in constant motion. “First I thought...John. Like out of kindness, because he’s still having a rough time getting on his feet after that divorce. Maybe he turned to me and I just couldn’t see a way to say no? Because of not wanting to be another woman who crushed his ego? But I’ve thought and thought about that, and the truth is, I keep trying, but I just can’t imagine kissing him, much less—”

The lump dissolved. He found his voice. “Hey, you don’t need to be thinking about John that way. In fact, forget John. Nicole—”

“Well, I could forget John, but that leaves Rafe. Only Mitch, he’s made such a point of never talking about his personal life. You know how Wilma flirts. He never bites. He’s just violent on not combining business with his private life, so if something happened with him, it’s really the worse kind of harassment. He could have been put in a position where he didn’t feel he could say no because of his job. But he is an attractive man. It’s not like I can’t imagine any circumstance where—”

“Forget Rafe. Forget imagining him that way, too. Nicole—”

“There’s no point in my considering Wilma, because she couldn’t have gotten me pregnant,” she said with another dry attempt at humor. “I have to know who it is. And it’s so frustrating that I can’t remember. Somehow I have to make this right for the man involved, but I don’t even know how to start. I’m just so ashamed and disgusted with myself that I could have put someone in this position. I care about all of you. This is just so wrong. Wrong of me—”

“Nicole,” Mitch said for the third time—this time loud enough to wake the dead, which was what it seemed to take to catch her attention.

“What?”

“You can quit thinking about the other guys in that context. It wasn’t any of them. It was me. I’m the father of your baby.”

Two

“Oh, no! You couldn’t be the father, Mitch! You just couldn’t be!”

Mitch didn’t wince, but he wanted to. Although Nik might not appreciate it, his mind was racing from shock, no different than hers. Obviously he was aware they’d taken a risk the night they made love, but there’d been no tip that night had repercussions until this instant. That she seemed stunned at his admitting paternity was bad enough, but she also threw herself in her office chair as if she lacked the strength to face such appalling news.

At thirty-two, naturally Mitch had taken a few slices in his masculine ego—but nothing that knifed his male esteem quite so fast or lethally.

Way, way back—in the era before Nicole had upended his entire life—he vaguely remembered a pleasant historical time when women actually liked him. One even told him he was a creatively inspired lover. Several had chased him downright ruthlessly. Amazing as it seemed now, he’d never had a complaint about his prowess or talent between the sheets. Until Nik, no woman had ever felt obligated to completely block all memory of sleeping with him. And until now, he’d never taken up with a woman who looked aghast at the idea of him in her bed.

Any second now, Mitch figured the letter of resignation burning a hole in his pocket would strike his sense of irony. Quitting was obviously out of the question now. A baby in the picture changed everything.

Only it was hard to imagine how an impossible situation could possibly have become even more disastrous. Mitch had learned the hard, bloody way that he had a problem with tenacity. Sensible people turned off when they saw a dead-end road sign. Not him. If there was something he wanted or valued, he stubbornly persisted in charging forward long past the hopeless point. He hated giving up on anything. But this afternoon, he thought he’d finally gotten smarter and was doing the rational, practical thing by resigning. Getting out of her life. Removing himself from the hopeless temptation of Nicole altogether.

Only this afternoon wasn’t going precisely like he planned. Under any other circumstances, that would have been great news. He never wanted to get out of her life. He never wanted to quit a job he loved. Hell, as soon as he recovered from the life-threatening shock that he’d fathered a child, he was likely gonna spin high on the baby news, too. Unfortunately, one teensy small detail hadn’t changed from the original core problem.

Nicole still couldn’t see him for dust.

And she was still facing him with that aghast expression.

“Mitch...it just couldn’t have been you. The two of us just couldn’t have slept together. I mean, for one thing, I know there’s already a woman in your life, a Suzanne or Susan or something—”

Bewilderment furrowed his brow. For a moment he was completely confounded how Suz could have possibly entered this conversation—but that didn’t stop him from immediately correcting her misconception. “Whoa—there’s no one in my life. Nor would anything have happened between us if someone else had been in the wings. If I’m involved, I believe in doing the loyal-as-a-hound routine. No exceptions. I can’t imagine how you even heard Suz’s name?”

“From Wilma. I’m positive she said—”

Aw, hell. Finally it clicked how she’d made the association. “Yeah, well...before I moved and took the job here, there was a Suz. And when I was first hired on, Wilma came on pretty strong. I didn’t know then that flirting was a life-style with her. I didn’t want to hurt her feelings, and didn’t want to start a new job with an awkward situation, so I made some comment about there being a Suz in my life. Good grief, I never even thought about it again. It was just a chance comment at the time. It never occurred to me that she’d spread the word or that anyone else had made anything of it.”

That didn’t stop her from sputtering. “But Mitch, it still couldn’t have been you.”

A billion women on the planet, and he had to fall for the one who used his masculine ego for machete practice? “Trust me. It was.”

“But I always thought you didn’t even like me—”

“Um, Nik, that’s not remotely true.”

Instead of that comment reassuring her, it seemed to cause more mental wheels to spin in her mind. She seemed to sink even deeper in that office chair. A flush of guilt splashed her cheeks with color. “Oh, God. Look, I have to face this, so I just you want you to be honest with me. What did I do? Throw myself at you at that party? Put you in a position where you couldn’t say no because I was the boss?”

“Nicole, that’s not at all how it happened.”

“Then how did it happen? And why didn’t you ever say anything to me long before this?”

Mitch rubbed an exasperated hand at the back of his neck. For almost three months, he’d have given gold for those questions to come up. He’d had to battle every grain in his character to shut up, when his nature was to charge into a problem and confront it head-on. It was only for her sake—ever—that he’d been silent.

Now, though, blurting out the plain truth wasn’t that simple. He was painfully conscious that how he handled the situation could either open doors—for her, for him, for the two of them—or permanently close them. Somehow, he had to buy himself some thinking time.