Married Right Away

Glad to have a reprieve to think this through, Savannah tried to smile, but failed miserably. “Okay.”

“Just remember that the longer you take to decide the less possible this scheme becomes,” he said quietly. He studied her, then rubbed his thumb across her knuckles. “Today, the clinic and a handful of police know. By tomorrow night, you can add a hundred people to that list. This time next week, you can add millions. But with the right word from me, I can have that police report filed away or destroyed as if it never existed.”

“What about the people at the sperm bank?”

Ethan smiled. “Since I could sue the clinic into bankruptcy for this, once I tell the owner I’m not pressing charges, a smart man would shove the paperwork so far back in the corner of his filing cabinet that it would never again see the light of day. Even if one of the employees sold the story to a tabloid, with that paperwork ‘lost’ there would be nothing to back it up and we could easily deny it.

“But if we let another twenty-four hours go by,” Ethan continued, “then this window of opportunity is gone because too many people will know the truth. You need to agree before seven tomorrow morning or all bets are off.”

Savannah nodded.

“Okay. I’m going to let you alone now to think about this because I can tell by looking at you that you’ve had enough excitement for one day.”

His voice softened marginally and Savannah recognized that though he was pushing her into making a huge decision, he was doing it gently, like a man taking care of her. Only then did it fully register that he was still sitting beside her, holding her hand. And only then did the knowledge that she was pregnant with his child completely sink in. Her body flushed as the heat of embarrassment spiraled through her. Though they hadn’t been physically “intimate” with each other, they were none the less sharing the most intimate experience any two people could share. Together they had created a child, a child who was growing inside her.

Savannah felt strange and awkward and suddenly faint.

Grateful that he was leaving, she cautiously slid her hand from his and took a slow breath before she said, “You’re right. I’ve had so much news in the past twelve hours that I need time to digest at least some of it before I can make this decision.”

“You rest then,” he said, rising. “And I’ll be back early tomorrow morning.”

Savannah nodded and rose from the sofa, too. As she did she noticed the way the lamplight glistened off Ethan’s shiny black hair. Though she didn’t want to be making these kinds of observations, she realized that her child could look exactly like him. He or she might have Ethan’s eyes and Ethan’s hair. Their baby could have his brains and his talent, or, better yet, their baby could really be somebody important like Ethan’s father….

Reminded of the prominence of Ethan’s family, the queasy feeling in her stomach turned into full-fledged nausea. She had just been asked to marry the son of a man who might become the next vice president of the United States. Worse, he was one of the most eligible bachelors in the world because he wasn’t merely rich, he was gorgeous. Absolutely gorgeous. She’d noticed before, of course. She would have been blind not to, but working with him and being married to him were two different things.

“We will be getting divorced, right?”

“As soon as reasonably possible after the baby’s born,” Ethan agreed, walking to the door. “But that gives us time to talk about visitation.”

Ethan smiled at her and Savannah returned his smile, but Ethan didn’t for one second believe she was okay with all this. Which suited him just fine because he wasn’t a hundred percent sure he was okay with it, either. In fact, having her wary rather than excited at the prospect of becoming his wife was actually a point in her favor. He meant it when he said he didn’t think she had any knowledge of this scheme to use his sperm, but now that the baby had been created, he had to take steps to ensure she didn’t get any crazy ideas. Like blackmail. The shy, sweet paralegal he worked with two years ago would never think to use his child as a ploy to get money but he wasn’t so sure about the new Savannah he had found here this evening.

She didn’t even look like the woman he remembered. Instead of having short unruly red hair, she now had long tresses that cascaded all around her so that the riot of curls was flattering, not disheveled. Though her pregnancy concealed it, she must have lost some weight because her face was thinner…prettier. She wasn’t wearing an ounce of makeup, yet she looked beautiful in a way she never had when she worked at Hilton-Cooper-Martin Foods. The past two years had matured her into an absolutely stunning woman.

A stunning woman swollen with his child, Ethan thought, then swallowed hard. She wasn’t merely a beautiful woman to whom he would be attracted if circumstances were different, she was somebody he had worked with, a wonderfully innocent woman he had liked and respected, and the baby she carried was his. He wanted to hug her. He wanted to take care of her. He wanted to forget that this situation had repercussions and allow himself to tumble headfirst into the magic of becoming a parent. He wanted to bask in the knowledge that finally—after thirty-five years—he was about to become a father!

But he couldn’t. He knew he couldn’t. He wasn’t entirely sure how this situation was going to play out. So he had to be ready for whenever Savannah decided to make her move….

Still he allowed himself one tiny father-to-be indulgence and asked, “Are you okay to be alone tonight?”

“I’m fine,” Savannah said. “I just need to get accustomed to all this.”

“Yeah, me, too,” Ethan agreed, because he was sure that once his own astonishment and excitement abated, he wouldn’t have to worry about being attracted to her or overwhelmed with the joy of becoming a father. His common sense and logic would return and he would be just fine.

But when he again caught her gaze, he saw sadness in her eyes and suddenly recognized that while he was fighting the desire to rejoice over getting a child she was being forced to adjust to having to share her child. From the pain in her eyes it was a devastating blow.

Again he remembered her as she was when she worked with him. Shy. Sweet. Vulnerable. Guilt tightened his chest and made him draw a deep breath.

“I know this has been an awful day for you. I don’t feel right leaving you by yourself.”

“I’m not going to be by myself. I have friends coming over in a few minutes,” she said, backing away from him. “Since I got pregnant, we’ve made Friday night our poker night.”

“Poker?”

The question in his voice must have amused her, because she smiled. “What? You think women don’t like to gamble a little or get together for a weekly gossip session?”

He wished she hadn’t told him she liked to gamble, but in some ways he was glad she had because it brought him back to earth with a hard thump. He didn’t know how much she had changed in the past two years. She might not have had any part in stealing his property, but now that she knew he was the father of her baby it wasn’t a stretch to realize she would soon see she could make this work in her favor.

Before Ethan had a chance to say anything, there was a quick knock at the door. Her guests didn’t wait for an invitation to enter, and Ethan had to jump out of the way as the women he assumed were her poker pals entered around him. Redheaded twins, a blonde and a brunette made up the quartet. Each of the women was in her early twenties. All wore simple jeans and colorful T-shirts.

“Hi, Savannah!”

“Hi.” She paused, glanced at Ethan and drew a quick breath. “This is Ethan McKenzie. Ethan, these are my friends, Andi, Mandi, Becki and Lindsay.”

Ethan said, “How do you do?”

“How do you do…?”

Four pair of eyes eagerly assessing him might have cowed another man, but Ethan held their gazes steadily, making his own quick assessment of things. Just from the cornered expression on the face of the brunette, Ethan knew her poker buddies weren’t simply here for a night of playing cards. He would bet his last dime they came here every Friday night more to check up on Savannah than to gamble and they would take care of her. The smartest thing for him to do would be to get the hell out of here and regroup before he said or did something that he regretted, if only out of compassion for the woman carrying his child.

His child.

He almost couldn’t believe he was about to have a baby. The knowledge overwhelmed him. Took his breath. Which was exactly why he had to be careful. The last time he let an emotion control him, it cost him much more than he could afford to risk.

He looked at Savannah and forced himself to see her objectively, honestly and through the filter of unhappy possibilities. “We’ll talk tomorrow.”

She nodded. “Okay.”

The second he was out the door, Savannah turned to her four friends. Protectively placing her palm on her stomach, she said, “I’m in big trouble.”

“What?” Becki, one of the twins, groaned. “Please don’t tell me that good-looking guy is suing you or something.”

“Or something,” Savannah said, leading her friends into the living room, where they sat on the sofa and round-backed chairs, tucking their feet beneath them and getting comfortable, though they continued to stare at Savannah with rapt attention.

“He’s the father of this baby,” Savannah said, then looked from blond-haired, blue-eyed Lindsay, to the red-haired twins Mandi and Becki, to dark-haired, dark-eyed Andi. “I didn’t know it. He didn’t know it. But Barry did. Ethan had sperm cryogenically frozen for some reason when he was married. Apparently, my fear about getting a good father for the baby led Barry to search the banks of people who had sperm stored but weren’t donors. When he found Ethan’s name he knew we had our father because we knew Ethan to be a good man since I had worked with him. So Barry forged Ethan’s signature to get his sample mainstreamed into the donor banks to be used for my pregnancy.”

“Oh, boy,” Mandi said slowly, her blue eyes widening with each word.

“Yeah, oh, boy.”

“So, is this guy pressing charges?” Lindsay demanded.

Savannah licked her lips. “Not if I marry him.”

“You’re kidding!” Becki gasped, flopping back on her chair as if flabbergasted.

“It gets worse. His father is…”

“Parker McKenzie,” Andi said. A reporter who was part of a team that covered the Washington beat for several newspapers, Andi knew everybody on Capitol Hill. She had facts at her disposal that the general public wouldn’t have. She also knew backgrounds that frequently got forgotten. “He’s a senator who had to live down the pasts of a starlet mother and drug-using pro-football player father. His son’s sperm theft would be the final embarrassment of his career. But his son’s marriage, even a hasty marriage, would go virtually unnoticed.”