Her Pregnancy Surprise

“Every once in a while I get lucky. But when it comes to pure skill the woman is evilly blessed.”

Danny laughed. “My mother likes cards, too.”

Grace’s eyes lit. “Really? How good is she?”

“Exceptional.”

“We should get them together.”

Danny took a long breath, then said, “We should.”

And Grace suddenly saw it. The thing that had tickled her brain all weekend but had never really surfaced. In spite of her impoverished roots and his obviously privileged upbringing, she and Danny had a lot in common. Not childhood memories, but adult things like goals and commitments. He ran his family’s business. She was determined to help her parents out of poverty because she loved them. Even the way they viewed Orlando proved they had approximately the same beliefs about life and people.

If Danny hadn’t asked for her help this weekend, eventually they would have been alone together long enough to see that they clicked. They matched. She knew he realized it, too, if only because he’d nearly slipped into personal conversation with her four times at dinner, but he had stopped himself. Probably because she was an employee.

It was both of their loss if they weren’t mature enough to handle an office relationship. But she thought they were. Her difficult childhood and his difficult divorce had strengthened each of them. They weren’t flip. They were cautious. Smart. If any two people could have an office relationship without it affecting their work, she and Danny were the two. And she wasn’t going to miss out on something good because, as her boss, Danny wouldn’t be the first to make a move.

She raised her eyes until she caught his gaze. “You know what? Though you’re trying to fight it, I think you like me. Would it help if I told you I really like you, too?”

For several seconds, Danny didn’t answer. He couldn’t. He’d never met a woman so honest, so he wasn’t surprised that she spoke her mind. Even better, she hadn’t played coy and tried to pretend she didn’t see what was going on. She saw it, and she wanted to like him as much as he wanted to like her.

And that was the key. The final answer. She wanted to like him as much as he wanted to like her and he suddenly couldn’t understand why he was fighting it.

“It helps enormously.” He bent across the bar and kissed her, partly to make sure they were on the same page with their intentions, and partly to see if their chemistry was as strong as the emotions that seemed to ricochet between them.

It was. Just the slight brush of their lips knocked him for a loop. He felt the explosion the whole way to his toes.

She didn’t protest the kiss, so he took the few steps that brought him from behind the bar and in front of the stool on which she sat. He put his hands on her shoulders and kissed her deeply this time, his mouth opening over hers.

White-hot desire slammed through him and his control began slipping. He wanted to touch her, to taste her, to feel all the things he’d denied himself for the past two years.

But it was one thing to kiss her. It was quite another to make love. But when he shifted away, Grace slid her hand around his neck and brought his lips back to hers.

Relief swamped him. He’d never had this kind of an all-consuming desire to make love. Yet, the yearning he felt wasn’t for sexual gratification. It was to be with Grace herself. She was sweet and fun and wonderful…and beautiful. Having her slide her arms around him and return his kisses with a passion equal to his own filled him with an emotion so strong and complete he dared not even try to name it.

Instead he broke the kiss, lifted her into his arms and took her to his bed.

The next morning when Grace awoke, she inhaled a long breath as she stretched. When her hand connected with warm, naked skin, her eyes popped open and she remembered she’d spent the night making love with her boss.

Reliving every detail, she blinked twice, waiting for a sense of embarrassment or maybe guilt. When none came she smiled. She couldn’t believe it, but it was true. She’d fallen in love with Danny Carson in about forty-eight hours.

She should feel foolish for tumbling in over her head so fast. She could even worry that he’d seen her feelings for him and taken advantage of her purely for sexual gratification. But she wasn’t anything but happy. Nobody had ever made love to her the way he had. And she was sure their feelings were equal.

She yawned and stretched, then went downstairs to the room she’d used on Friday and Saturday nights. After brushing her teeth and combing her hair, she ran back to Danny’s room and found he was still sleeping, so she slid into bed again.

Her movements caused Danny to stir. As Grace thanked her lucky stars that she had a chance to fix up a bit before he awoke, he turned on his pillow. Ready, she smiled and caught his gaze but the eyes that met hers were not the warm brown eyes of the man who had made love to her the night before. They were the dark, almost black eyes of her boss.

She remembered again the way he’d made love to her and told herself to stop being a worrying loser. Yes, the guy who ran Carson Services could sometimes be a real grouch, but the guy who lived in this beach house was much nicer. And she was absolutely positive that was the real Danny.

Holding his gaze, she whispered, “Good morning.”

He stared at her. After a few seconds, he closed his eyes. “Tell me we didn’t make a mistake.”

“We did not make a mistake.”

He opened his eyes. “Always an optimist.”

She scooted closer so she could rest her head on his outstretched arm. “We like each other. A lot. Something pretty special happened between us.”

He was silent for a few seconds then he said, “Okay.”

She twisted so she could look at him. “Okay? I thought we were fantastic!”

His face transformed. The caution slipped from his dark eyes and was replaced by amusement. “You make me laugh.”

“It’s a dirty job but somebody’s got to do it.”

Chuckling, he caught her around the waist and reversed their positions. But gazing into her eyes, he softened his expression again and said, “Thanks,” before he lowered his head and kissed her.

They made love and then Danny rolled out of bed, suggesting they take a shower. Gloriously naked, he walked to the adjoining bathroom and began to run the water. Not quite as comfortable as he, Grace needed a minute to skew her courage to join him, and in the end wrapped a bedsheet around herself to walk to the bathroom.

But though she faltered before dropping the sheet, when she stepped into the shower, she suddenly felt bold. Knowing his trust was shaky because of his awful divorce, she stretched to her tiptoes and kissed him. He let her take the lead and she began a slow exploration of his body until he seemed unable to handle her simple ministrations anymore and he turned the tables.

They made love quickly, covered with soap and sometimes even pausing to laugh, and Grace knew from that moment on, she was his. She would never feel about any man the way she felt about Danny.

CHAPTER THREE

WHEN Grace and Danny stood in the circular driveway of his beach house, both about to get into their cars to drive back to Pittsburgh, she could read the displeasure in his face as he told her about the “client hopping” he had scheduled for the next week. He wanted to be with her but these meetings had been on the books for months and he couldn’t get out of them. So she kissed him and told him she would be waiting when he returned.

They got into their vehicles and headed home. He was a faster driver, so she lost him on I-64, but she didn’t care. Her heart was light and she had the kind of butterflies in her tummy that made a woman want to sing for joy. Though time would tell, she genuinely believed she’d found Mr. Right. She’d only known Danny for two weeks, and hadn’t actually spent a lot of that time with him since he was so far above her on the company organizational chart. But the weekend had told her everything she needed to know about the real Danny Carson.

To the world, he was an ambitious, demanding, highly successful man. In private, he was a loving, caring, normal man, who liked her. A lot.

Yes, they would probably experience some problems because he owned the company she worked for. He’d hesitated at the bar before kissing her. He’d asked her that morning if they’d made a mistake. But she forced herself not to worry about it. She had no doubt that once they spent enough time together, and he saw the way she lived her beliefs, his worries about dating an employee would vanish.

What they had was worth a few months of getting to know each other. Or maybe the answer would be to quit her job?

The first two days of his trip sped by. He called Wednesday morning, and the mere sound of his voice made her breathless. Though he talked about clients, meetings, business dinners and never-ending handshaking, his deep voice reminded her of his whispered endearments during their night together and that conjured the memory of how he tasted, the firmness of his skin, the pleasure of being held in his arms. Before he disconnected the call, he whispered that he missed her and couldn’t wait to see her and she’d all but fainted with happiness.

The next day he didn’t call, but Grace knew he was busy. He also didn’t call on Friday or Saturday.

Flying back to Pittsburgh Sunday, Danny nervously paced his Gulfstream, fighting a case of doubt and second thoughts about what had happened between him and Grace. In the week that had passed, he hadn’t had a spare minute to think about her, and hadn’t spoken with her except for one quick phone call a few days into the trip. The call had ended too soon and left him longing to see her, but after three days of having no contact, the negatives of the situation came crowding in on him, and there were plenty of them.

First, he didn’t really know her. Second, even if she were the perfect woman, they’d gone too far too fast. Third, they worked together. If they dated it would be all over the office. When they broke up, he would be the object of the same gossip that had nearly ruined his reputation when his marriage ended.

He took a breath and blew it out on a puff. He couldn’t tell if distance was giving him perspective or calling up all his demons. But he did know that he should have thought this through before making love to her.

Worse, he couldn’t properly analyze their situation because he couldn’t recall specifics. All he remembered from their Sunday night and Monday morning together were emotions so intense that he’d found the courage to simply be himself. But with the emotions gone, he couldn’t summon a solid memory of the substance of what had happened between them. He couldn’t remember anything specific she’d said to make him like her—like? Did he say like? He didn’t just like Grace. That Sunday night his feelings had run more along the lines of a breathless longing, uncontrollable desire, and total bewitching. A man in that condition could easily be seduced into seeing traits in a woman that weren’t there and that meant he had made a horrible mistake.