Chapter Two
Alex struggled to find words. He settled himself on the empty barstool beside Maddie and ignored the bartender. He didn’t want a drink, although he probably needed one. None of his training or the protocol that ruled his life had prepared him for this moment. No, that wasn’t entirely true. There had been several liaisons in his past that had resulted in accusations of pregnancy from the very few women he ever took to his bed. Alex was exceedingly careful. He had no bastard children. His mother would have never allowed that sort of threat to the succession to exist. She took care of potential pretenders with the precision of a military general.
But none of that mattered right here and now. He needed some kind of intelligent response to Maddie’s words. “Are you sure?”
Her expression suggested that those had not been the words to say. Not that Alex really needed the negative reinforcement. He heaved a mental sigh and retreated further into himself to avoid Maddie’s obvious irritation.
“Am I sure?” she squeaked. She glanced around as though she were afraid they were going to be overheard. “Of course I’m sure. I could have brought the little pee stick with me, you know? I could have tossed that little sucker onto the table and let you see for yourself. Except that would have been disgusting, and I have manners.”
“Thank you.” Why had he said that? The woman had the most disconcerting ability to discompose him. It made him quite uncomfortable. He cleared his throat. “So what is it you want from me?”
“I don’t know.” She fiddled with her drink a little more. “I’ve been asking myself that since I got the news.”
“Are you—” For some reason he struggled with the question. “—going to get rid of it?”
She raised her gaze and pegged him with a glare that could have set him on fire. “No!”
“Well, I wasn’t certain what you considered your choices to be.” He tried to be reasonable even though the idea of Maddie getting an abortion was abhorrent to him for some reason. He should have been championing the idea, as it would make his life considerably easier. Yet the idea of raising a child with Maddie was not wholly distasteful.
She exhaled raggedly, refusing to look at him. “I don’t know if you have any desire to be a parent. I don’t know if I’m ready for that. I have my career to think of. My family…” She trailed off, and he wondered what her family was like and whether or not they would accept a child born out of wedlock.
Wedlock. Was he actually considering such a notion? For some reason it was tempting, which proved only that he had lost his ever-loving mind.
***
MADDIE WAS HAVING difficulty keeping it together. Sitting so close to Alex was making it impossible to think straight. From the first moment she’d met him, the chemistry had been intense. The man himself was intense. After a few hours together, he had started to relax before, but right now the man was ensconced behind several layers of armor.
He was good looking. There was absolutely no doubt about that. His body looked as if it had been carved from a block of granite. The tailored suit was incredibly flattering. It showed off the breadth of his shoulders and the lean power of his legs. He was tall, imposing, and dripped masculine power.
Those very things had been the traits that had drawn her to him at the club in the first place. Even now she got all tingly inside remembering what it was like to be held in those arms while they danced. Alex had been in utter control every single moment. The way he’d touched her told her in no uncertain terms that she was cherished, but that he was absolutely in charge. It was a turn-on to be taken in hand like that. So many guys these days were wimps who were so afraid of offending her feminine sensibilities that they were terrified to make a decision on their own. Alex was the opposite.
Maddie forced herself back to the moment at hand. What would it be like to parent with a man like Alex? Was that even a possibility? She barely knew the guy. Sure, they’d had a casual liaison after dancing half the night away at a club. She did that two or three times a year without ever thinking about playing house. What made Alex so different?
“I’m not sure if I want to keep the baby or put it up for adoption, but I know that abortion isn’t an option for me,” Maddie told him quietly.
He gave her a deferential nod. “I can respect that. I’ll pay for the expense of having the child, of course.”
“I don’t need your money,” Maddie bristled.
He raised an eyebrow. “Then why bother telling me?”
“Honestly?” Maddie tugged at her earring. “I don’t know. I guess I just thought you should know. There are a dozen women that wouldn’t have told you at all, and twice as many who would have demanded some kind of monetary compensation. I don’t want either of those options. I just want to respect your rights as the father.”
***
FOR SOME REASON it was not difficult to believe her. If that made him a fool, then so be it. Alex trusted his gut in business, and he trusted it in his personal life. Considering the plethora of family drama that happened on a regular basis in his life, his instincts were a valuable commodity that he never underestimated. Right now his gut was telling him that he could trust Maddie at her word.
“I appreciate your consideration.” He tapped his fingers idly on the bar top. “I’m in New York for a week.”
“On business I assume.” She took a sip of her drink, and he realized that it was ginger ale. She was pregnant. That was the reason she had foregone the wine. Her decision to abstain from alcohol lent credence to her claim to want to have the baby.
He turned his attention back to the conversation. “Yes. I have a week’s worth of meetings and business dinners.” An idea occurred to him. “Perhaps we could spend some time together this week. Just to get to know each other. I feel bad asking you to attend business dinners that will likely bore you to tears, but it would be an opportunity for us to—” How could he put this? “—interact in a general fashion.”
“Interact in a general fashion?” A smile played at the corners of her mouth. “Really? Sorry, sweetie, but who talks like that?”
When she spoke, there was a hint of an accent to her voice. It didn’t happen often, but Alex would have classified it as a drawl. He had spoken with many native New Englanders over the years. They didn’t sound like that, which made him wonder where she was from.
“What?” She drew her eyebrows together in a frown. “You’re staring at me as though I’ve suddenly grown a second head.”
“It occurs to me that I have no idea of your history.”
“Pedigree?” She snorted. “Really? What am I? A prize heifer? I’m from Dallas, Texas. And down in Texas the only pedigrees that matter belong to cows and horses.”
“Is that right?” He could not stop the smile that wanted to jump across his face.
Alex knew that Mother would hate this woman, but for some reason that made Maddie just that much more enticing. She was everything he should have been avoiding. Maddie was nothing like the women he had been groomed to mix with. She was real.
He gazed at the demure way she kept her eyes downcast. It didn’t seem as though she really wanted to talk about this, which only made him more curious. “And what did you do in Dallas?”
“Me?” She shrugged. “I was barely out of college when I left to come here to New York. My family owns a very large land and cattle company. My parents live in Dallas, and my aunt runs the main bulk of the operation out in West Texas.”
“The real Wild West then, hmm?” he teased.
She rolled her eyes. “Please. Don’t be ridiculous.”
***
MADDIE DID NOT want to talk about Dallas. She had left that mess to come to New York to make her way in the world without all of the family baggage, accusations, and problems that had plagued her life back home. She had no interest in talking about a place where she wasn’t welcomed anyway. It had been better on the ranch with her aunt. Maddie and her middle sister had spent summers there. But the Texan city was her older sister’s personal stomping grounds, and Maddie knew she could never survive in Jacey’s world.
“What brought you to New York?”
Maddie cocked her head, gazing at him and trying desperately not to be so distracted by the chemistry sizzling between them. “Why are you grilling me about my past? Trying to see if I’m an appropriate broodmare to bear your offspring?”
His snort said it all.
“So basically you’re informing me that I’m not good enough to bear your offspring,” she guessed. Well, that hurt, but she refused to be put off by his snobbery.
“Let’s just say that if it were up to me, you are the perfect woman and nobody else could ever measure up.” The warm timbre of his voice made her belly quiver with nervous excitement. “Unfortunately, my family is rather stuck back in the tsarist era of Russian history.”
“Excuse me?” Now Maddie was confused. “Oh, I get it. You’re some kind of Russian royalty or something.”
“Or something,” he agreed drily.
He wasn’t drinking anything. In fact, he looked rather stiff sitting there in his suit. What was going on?
She cleared her throat. “So, you want me to go to a few dinners this week and be your date?”
“Yes. That’s what I’m proposing.”
He sounded like he was making arrangements with a bank to transfer funds or something. Geez. The guy was so obviously uncomfortable that it was making her twitchy.
“Look,” she began. “If you don’t want to spend time with me or you would just like to be kept informed of the, uh, progress of my condition and that sort of thing, I can deal with that. All right? Don’t put yourself out or anything. It’s not that big of a deal.”
He glanced down at his watch. “I have to go. I have a meeting this evening.”
“Okay.” At least it was easy to ignore the fierce chemistry when she felt like gum on his shoe.
“Please meet me here tomorrow night at seven o’clock. I have a dinner I would very much like for you to attend with me.”
“What sort of dinner?”
“Rather informal, but a nice restaurant.” He seemed abruptly done with the conversation, and his gaze kept drifting to the exit as though he were anticipating the moment he could get out of there and stop thinking about this. Too bad she couldn’t do the same.
“Then I’ll meet you tomorrow at seven.” Maddie jumped up and exited the lounge. She wasn’t sure why, but it made her feel better to be the first one leaving.