The Boss's Pregnancy Proposal

Funny. It had been almost two years since Jan had died. There were now times when he could go a few days without the wave of nausea, the sharp pain in his heart and the cramping of his stomach muscles at the thought of her and what he’d lost. And then it would come again, slapping him in the face when he least expected it. Like now.

She was the only woman he’d ever loved or ever could love. And because of that, he almost welcomed the pain. Anything that would bring her closer for a moment. He would never get over it. He didn’t want to get over it. Jan was still his wife, now and forever.

On the other hand, he ached for a child. His little Lisa had been as beloved as a baby could be and he missed her almost as much as he missed Jan. But over the last year or so, the need for another child had been growing in him. He wanted a son. A baby to fill up the hole in his heart. A child to give him a future.

“Are you thinking this way because of Granddad?” his sister, Gena, had asked him just the other day when he’d hinted at his longing. “I know he’s on all the time about wanting you to marry again so you can have a son to carry on the name.”

“‘Grant Carver, the name of Texas heroes’,” he quoted his grandfather in a voice very like his, and they both laughed. “No, this has nothing to do with getting married.”

“Children usually come with mothers attached,” she’d warned him.

She meant a wife, of course. She thought he ought to look for someone to marry.

“I’ll find a way around that,” he’d told his sister artlessly.

“You can’t have a baby without getting married,” she’d insisted.

“Oh, yeah? Watch me.”

But he wasn’t as confident as he pretended. He’d looked into the various options open to him and had found it wasn’t as easy as you might think. You couldn’t just order up a new kid the way he’d bought his new Lamborghini. Not if you wanted the child to actually carry your genes.

And that was what he wanted—deeply, passionately, with all his heart. He just wasn’t sure how he was going to be able to make it happen.

“Do you have any family around you?” he asked Callie curiously. He knew she was a widow, but he didn’t know much else about her circumstances. “Any parents or aunts and uncles?”

She had the look of someone who was thinking of edging toward the door.

“Family?” she repeated. “Uh…no, not really. I’m pretty much alone.”

Leaning against his desk, he dabbed at the blood on his lip again. “Everybody needs some sort of family,” he advised her. “I just spent the last few days at a friend’s family reunion in San Antonio. Watching all those people enjoy each other and care about each other and depend on each other really brought it home to me. We all need other people in our lives.”

And I need a son.

He didn’t say it aloud, but somehow he almost felt she heard his thoughts. Watching her eyes change, he knew she was thinking of the same thing he was—of that rainy fall day about six months before when he’d nipped into his cousin’s medical clinic and found Callie Stevens sitting in the waiting room.

Babies—that was his cousin’s business. Ted ran an infertility clinic that specialized in in vitro fertilization. Tortured by his longing for a child to love, Grant had stopped in to see if he could get some information from his cousin about surrogate mothering—without actually planning to come clean on why he was asking about it.

And there was Callie, flipping nervously through a food magazine. He’d nodded in recognition. She’d turned beet-red and nodded back, then pretended fascination in tofu recipes. And he’d left without the information he’d come for, but with a new curiosity in just what a woman like Callie had been doing in his cousin’s waiting room.

As a widow, could it be that she, like him, longed for a baby but didn’t want the complications of another relationship? The thought was tantalizing and he’d spun a whole scenario around it, getting more and more enthusiastic. His cousin’s office wasn’t the first place he’d gone to find out about surrogates. He’d gone as far as to interview candidates at two other clinics. And he hadn’t been impressed. But if he could interest a woman like Callie Stevens…

He knew instinctively she would never have a baby for mere money. So what could he do to provide an incentive? He’d mulled it over for days and thought he’d come up with a plan that would be mutually advantageous. She obviously wanted a baby. He could provide the support for her if she had a child for him—and then stayed on to basically be the child’s nanny. That way they both could get what they wanted.

It sounded good to him.

The next day he called her into his office and ran it past her. She’d acted like he was setting up a baby smuggling ring and wanted her to provide the baby. She couldn’t get out of his office fast enough. He was actually afraid she might quit her job or file some kind of harassment suit.

She hadn’t done that, but she had acted very wary around him for a while. He hadn’t brought it up again. But the possibilities were provocative, and he’d done his share of wondering—what if?

CHAPTER TWO

“YOU’RE bleeding again,” Callie said, jerking Grant’s attention back to the present situation. “We really need to do something about it. You need a doctor.”

“Oh, no,” he said, dabbing at the wound. “I can do this myself.”

“No, you can’t.” She shook her head in exasperation. “I know you’re a control freak, but you can’t control everything yourself. There’s a time to admit when you need help.”

His blue eyes rose and held her gaze. There was nothing warm there, no teasing, no humor.

“What makes you think you know me, Ms. Callie Stevens?”

“I don’t really know you, Mr. Grant Carver, but I know your type.” She was on a roll. Things seemed to work much better when she took the initiative. He was scary in his way, but he could be tamed. At least, she hoped so.

“My type? Please, enlighten me. What is my type?”

She tried to glare at him but it didn’t come off. He looked strangely vulnerable in the T-shirt with his mouth still bleeding. Like a fighter after a fight. All his hard edges were blurring a bit.

“Go on,” he pressed. “I want to know what you think ‘my type’ is.”

“Okay.” She raised her chin. “Type A for arrogant. Type C for controlling. Type T for tyrant. Should I go on?”

“I get the picture. You don’t like me very much, do you?”

She blinked at him and words stuck in her throat. Like him? What did that have to do with it? She didn’t really know him, just as he’d said. What right did she have to be name-calling? Suddenly she regretted that she’d let herself tumble down this blind alley.

His handkerchief was soaked with blood and he was fishing in his desk for another one. The cut seemed to be getting worse the more he fooled with it.

She frowned. “I think you should sit down while we figure out what to do about your face,” she said.

He looked up at her with a spark of humor in his eyes. “You don’t like my face, either?” he said, managing to make it sound pathetic in a way guaranteed to touch her heartstrings.

She bit her lip to keep from smiling at him.

“Sit down,” she said.

“I don’t need to sit down, I…”

Reaching out, she flattened her hand against his chest and gave him a shove into the large leather desk chair behind him. He let her do it and didn’t resist, sinking down into the leather and watching her curiously, as though he was interested in what she thought she was going to do with him next.

“Now pick up the phone and call a doctor,” she ordered.

He gave her a skeptical look. “Be serious.”

“I’m serious as a heart attack. You need help. I’m not leaving you here to bleed to death in the night. Pick up that phone.”

“At the rate my blood is flowing, it’ll take a week to bleed to death,” he scoffed. But he did glance at the soaked handkerchief. Still, he hesitated. “Listen, my sister’s a general practitioner. She can take care of it—if I decide that’s necessary.”

She motioned toward the telephone. “Call her.”