A Billionaire and a Baby

“Can’t wait for this little darling to be born so I can move it around in a stroller instead of feeling as if I’m lifting weights every time I get up.”

Because pregnancy, children and loved ones existed on an unknown plane, Sin-Jin could only vaguely nod at her words. A rejoining comment failed to materialize. The only thing he noted was, pregnant or not, the woman was extremely attractive.

His father had said there was no such thing as an attractive pregnant woman, but then, his father had demanded perfection in everything around him, if not in himself. The man was interested in ornamental women, not pregnant ones. Like a spoiled child in a toy store, his father had gone from one woman to another, marrying some along the way. He was vaguely aware that the man’s tally stood at something like seven.

Or was it six? He’d lost count. The slight smile widened on Sin-Jin’s lips, curving somewhat ironically.

Not bad, Sherry thought. The man was almost human looking when he smiled. She already knew that he was handsome. That much she’d gleaned while surfing the Internet for more than two hours, trying to piece together anything she could find on the man. She’d discovered that Owen was right. There wasn’t anything on St. John Adair that didn’t have to do with business. It was as if he disappeared into a black hole every night when he left the impressive edifice that bore his name.

It made her feel like Vicki Vale, on the trail of Batman.

Well, Batman was smiling, she thought. Perhaps not directly at her, but close enough.

Maybe Adair had a weak spot for pregnant women. It would be nice to be given an ace in the hole because of her condition for a change.

She took a deep breath, bracing herself. No time like the present.

Leaning around Adair, Sherry pressed the emergency stop on the elevator. The elevator hiccuped and came to an abrupt, jarring halt between the eighteenth and seventeenth floors.

The smile on his lips vanished instantly as a score of different scenarios crowded into his mind. Was he being threatened, kidnapped? There’d been two botched attempts at that in the past four years. He began to doubt the woman was pregnant. It made for a good disguise, put a man off his guard.

He was on his guard now. “What the hell are you doing?”

Sherry’s smile was sweetness personified as she looked up at him. “I was wondering if you could give me a moment of your time, Mr. Adair.”

Chapter Two

For one heartbeat, there was nothing but silence within the elevator. Sin-Jin stared at the only other occupant in the car as if she had lost her mind. He wondered if she was dangerous in any sense of the word.

“Who are you?”

Sherry was ready for him. Opening her purse, she took out the press card that she’d carefully laid on top just before entering the multiwinged building that bore Adair’s name. This was not the time to fumble through the various paraphernalia that she deemed indispensable and always dragged along with her.

She held her identification card aloft for Adair’s perusal. And watched a transformation.

The unfriendly look on his face turned to something that, in a different era and country, would have reduced pagan worshipers to quivering masses of fear had Adair been their emperor, or, more probably regarded as their god. She felt a little unnerved herself.

Sherry shook herself loose from the hypnotic effect and squared her shoulders. Fierce expression or not, he wasn’t about to make her back down.

Adair’s glare was hot enough to melt the plastic on her ID. “You’re a reporter?” It sounded like an offense second only to being a serial killer.

Damn, but she could see how he could strike fear into the hearts of those around him. She reminded herself that she wasn’t afraid of anything except a magnitude-seven earthquake.

“Investigative,” she informed him crisply, as if that fact took her out of the general pool that merited his disdain and elevated her to a higher plateau.

It didn’t. Electric-blue eyes nearly disappeared into small, darkly lashed slits. “All right, then go investigate something.”

The growled order only had her stiffening her backbone. She met him on his own battlefield, smiling sweetly. “I am. You.”

“The hell you are.” He reached past her to press the elevator release button only to have her hit the red stop button again. Stunned, he glared at her. “You will stop doing that.” It was a command, brooking no disobedience, no dissent.

Her smile never faltered as she met his words with a condition. “I will if you promise to answer a few questions for me.”

Mrs. Farley had pleaded with him to take on a bodyguard. Had even gone so far as to line up several for him to interview, but he’d then refused flatly, thinking it a waste. Now he wasn’t all that sure. At least bodyguards would keep annoying reporters where they belonged. Away.

“I never make promises I have no intention of keeping.” Again he pushed the button to restart the elevator and again she stopped it. “Look, lady—Mrs. Campbell—” he amended, exasperation evaporating the very air in his lungs.

“Right in the first place, wrong in the second,” she informed him cheerfully, then suggested, “Why not just Sherry?”

She didn’t think it possible, but his dark expression darkened even more.

“Because, ‘just Sherry,’ I don’t intend to get that friendly with you.” He hit the release button and the elevator made it to another floor before she abruptly halted it with a counterpunch. “You keep this up and the cable’s liable to break. We’ll wind up free-falling the rest of the way. That might be on your agenda, ‘just Sherry,’ but it’s not on mine.”

The glare he shot her bordered on filleting her nerves. She could see his underlings scattering and running for cover like so many Disney mice before the villainous cat in Cinderella. The thought did a lot to calm her nerves and made it difficult for her not to grin.

Sin-Jin’s eyes slid to her belly. “Are you even pregnant?” It could have been a ruse used to allow her to gain access to his floor. In his experience, reporters were capable of all sorts of devious deceptions.

She surprised him by taking his hand and placing it on her distended abdomen. “Most definitely.”

As if burned, Sin-Jin pulled his hand back. Although not soon enough. He’d felt the stirrings of new life beneath his palm. The child she was carrying had moved—probably on cue, he thought cynically.

What was a pregnant reporter doing here, lying in wait for him? He thought of the meeting he’d just left. “If this is about the Marconi merger—”

Sherry cut him short. “It’s not,” she told him. Raising her eyes to his face, she dug up all the charm she could muster. “It’s about you.”

Suspicion entered his eyes. He’d never had any use for reporters, feeding off the misery of others for their own ends. “What about me?”

“That’s exactly what I want to find out. What about you? Nobody knows anything about Darth Vader, the Corporate Raider.”

He winced inwardly at the label. If it was meant to flatter him, it missed its mark by a country mile. The limelight had never meant anything to him. Sin-Jin didn’t do what he did for any sort of recognition. He did it because he was good at it, good at trimming fat off selected businesses and getting them to run more efficiently. Once he accomplished what he set out to do and the businesses were running at their maximum peak, he grew bored with them, selling them off to other corporations while he turned his attention to something else.

That this sort of thing attracted a great deal of attention and generated an almost obscene amount of money was without question. But it was never about the money. It never had been, perhaps because there’d always been so much of it when he was growing up. Every movement he’d ever made had been cushioned in it, as if somehow money could take the place of everything else that was deemed important in life. Like parental love and warm memories to draw on when things became difficult.

He’d had the best upbringing that money could buy. All needs taken care of, everything done in a utilitarian fashion. It was the kind of upbringing that could have produced an emotional robot, which was what his enemies had accused him of being.

If no one knew anything about him, it was for a reason. Because he wanted it like that. “And it’s going to remain that way,” he informed her.

As he reached to bring the elevator back to life, she moved to block his access. “Why?”

For just the smallest second, he almost forgot that they were stuck, suspended between the eighth and ninth floor like a yo-yo that had gotten tangled in its own string. The annoying woman who kept insisting on getting into his face had eyes that were probably the deepest shade of blue he’d ever seen. Undoubtedly, she used that to her advantage, just as she used her present condition.

“Does the word privacy mean anything to you?” he demanded. “Or is that particular term missing from the lexicon distributed to the ignoble fourth estate?”

“Ouch, they weren’t kidding when they said you could fillet a person at ten paces with just your tongue.”

“No,” he informed her tersely, “they weren’t.”

But rather than take offense at his words, she smiled, her face lighting up as if he’d just given her a ten-carat diamond instead of an insult.