“Ms. Michaels?” someone said hesitantly from the doorway.
Caitríona didn’t bother to look up. If her co-workers had thought she had one hell of a temper before, now they positively lived in fear of crossing her. Even Ciara had had to remark that while most people went on vacations and came back in a better mood, Caitríona was a baffling exception; she had returned with the disposition of a bear with a sore paw. These days, it was common to see executives slinking out of her office with their tails between their legs after a severe tongue-lashing; people dashed about in unusual frenzy anxious to avoid her saber tongue and mistakes popped up everywhere she looked as a result. The more she snapped, the more harried her staff became and the more they scrambled to avoid mistakes, the more they made mistakes; and then she snapped some more. It was a vicious circle.
“Ms. Michaels?” the voice said more insistently as its owner came into the office more fully.
“Yes?” she snapped, finally looking up. It was Gareth Davies.
“The Waller group will see us tomorrow at twelve noon,” he said quietly.
Caitríona nodded and turned back to her laptop, dismissing him. She didn’t have to look at him to feel his surprise. Given her raging fury when they had mucked up the last meeting just before her vacation and her intense pursuit of the Waller group since her return, her co-workers could be forgiven for expecting a little more enthusiasm from her. But these days, she couldn’t dredge up much enthusiasm for anything besides a crying jag and sleep.
It had been eight weeks since Hawaii and her temper had been steadily getting worse and worse. It didn’t help that she seemed to have picked up some sort of bug too because she had been unable to keep anything down lately. And worse, every time she shut her eyes, Alec’s face floated before them. Had it really been just one night she had spent in his arms? He had branded her so completely with his essence that she thought of him every time.
Then when she remembered that for all his charm he was nothing but a cheating cad, she wanted to hit him.
Another wave of nausea surged through her and with a sigh, Caitríona rose to her feet. She really did need to go see her doctor, she thought. She hadn’t made an appointment but seeing as Harvey was also her childhood friend, she knew she didn’t need an appointment to see him.
Twenty minutes later, she was seated across from him telling about all her symptoms from the weakness to the dizziness to the nausea.
As she tried to tell him about the tenderness in her breasts, Harvey’s lips twitched and Caitríona glared balefully at him. This was what came from having a best friend as one’s personal doctor. Good thing she hadn’t gone to Sam; but then, why would she? Sam was a heart surgeon.
“What is it?” she asked angrily.
He laughed openly, “What can I say, Caitríona? Maybe you missed school that day, but you’ve just described the classic signs of pregnancy. Who’s the lucky bastard?”
The words slammed into Caitríona with all the subtlety of s sledge hammer and she froze, her face a ravaged mask of shock.
Harvey’s teasing grin vanished when he saw how white her face was and he sat up straighter in his chair, “Um, there’s no proof yet. We need to do some tests and even if you are pregnant, you don’t need to look so ashen. There are options,” he continued.
Caitríona wasn’t listening anymore. Her thoughts whirled with dizzying intensity; a baby! Alec’s baby! True, he was a cheating cad but she had stupidly gone and fallen for him, she finally admitted to herself. She wanted to loathe him till the day she died, but some traitorous part of her kept thinking wistfully of him. She kept remembering his grin, his smile, his teasing, the way his hands held her, his impeccable manners; it was all enough to make a body weep.
How would she run CaiCia as a single mother? What would her employees say if they learned she was pregnant? What about her old-fashioned staunchly Catholic mother and relatives?
Resolutely, she sat up in her chair; if she was pregnant, she would have this child, she decided and the Devil fly with public opinion! This was the twentieth century. Besides, the pregnancy was a reminder as though one were needed that at least for one night, someone had thought she was so incredibly attractive that he had lost all control and made love to her without any thought for protection. She could never regret having this baby; she already wanted it with every fiber of her being, she thought, her hand going protectively to her still-flat stomach.
***
Caitríona’s lips trembled with a secret smile as she led four members of her staff into the conference room at Waller’s Group Inc. She was pregnant! Harvey had almost keeled over from shock when she had said she wanted to keep the baby, but she hadn’t been able to stop smiling since.
She threw Andrea a grateful smile as she was seated and whispered to the girl, “Has Mr. Waller indicated his possible stance at all?”
The girl bit her lip, her face distressed as she whispered, “I’m afraid Mr. Waller won’t be attending this meeting.”
“What do you mean?” Caitríona asked with a frown.
The door opened just then, and three men and two women filed in for the negotiations to begin. Caitríona hid her worried frown and turned to face them with a bright smile even as her mind frantically grappled with what Tyson Waller’s absence meant from a meeting where his company stood to make, at least, thirty million dollars in profit.
Why would he slough them off to his juniors? Had his mind already been made up?
She aimed the smile at the head of the table and then felt her world tilt as she stared into a pair of very familiar and hostile bright green eyes. Alec!
No hint of recognition flickered on his bland features as he stared steadily at her with an insolently bored expression on his handsome face. Instead, he nodded politely at her and then at the rest of the group before saying in a weary voice, “Ladies and gentlemen. You’re all welcome to Waller Group Inc. I am Alec Durante the new CEO of Waller Group Inc., and I would love to hear your proposal. I should warn you, though, that I’m jet-lagged and I have several meetings backed up, so please, a hasty presentation is just the ticket.”
He scrubbed a hand down his face and hid a yawn, his green eyes clashing with hers across the large expanse of the conference table and setting every pulse in her body skittering.
Caitríona swallowed. Was this some sort of trick her mind was playing on her, she wondered, gaping at him across the space that separated them. But no, this didn’t seem to be a trick; he was as real and solid as a brick wall. He was also about as friendly as a briar bush.
Hesitantly, she launched into her presentation, deftly putting up their power-points when needed and handing data around the table. Her eyes bounced restlessly around the table, frequently coming inevitably to rest on Alec Durante; funny, she had never even known his last name or she would have recognized it as belonging to one of the wealthiest and youngest billionaires in the history of the States. Alec’s gaze was remarkably unimpressed and even insultingly bored as he listened to her presentation with the rest of the team.
Questions and comments bounced around the table, but the blond-haired Greek god at the head of the table remained stonily silent, his very silence finally casting a pall around the table until one by one, everyone else fell silent, except Caitríona.
Her eyes flew defiantly to his face as she wrapped up her presentation. He was acting like an impossible jerk, which confused her because given what she had learned about him, in her book, she was the injured party.
Alec finally straightened in his chair when she fell silent and then he tossed out, “Are you the CEO of CiaCai?”
“Yes, Sir. But it’s actually CaiCia for Caitríona and Ciara.”
“Splendid. Could you tell us, just how CiaCai plans to fund this project without a clearly outlined and objective examination of its impact on the high-end market?” he asked, still mispronouncing the name. “I mean we’re in business to make profit and I’m not sure why your targeted clientele seem to be … masons and carpenters with dirt under their fingernails.”
Everyone else around the table was understandably confused, but not Caitríona. Her cheeks burned with the famous Irish temper as she sternly fought the urge to throw a stapler at his head. She had haltingly confided in him that she hated poverty because her only memory of her dad had been of a drunken mason with dirt always under his fingernails until a falling crane killed him at a construction site.
Unshed tears burned in her eyes as she glared at him. “If you have something to say, Alec, then do us all a favor, stop being a coward and just spit it out!”
Everyone gasped. Silence rigid with tension reigned as Caitríona’s eyes clashed and held with Alec’s. How one man could cast a pall over a crowd of people was beyond her.
He regarded her silently for a minute and then he said slowly in a voice that brooked no argument, “Let’s have the room, please.”
Everyone filed out silently, Caitríona’s workers shooting disbelieving glances at her as they left. She could almost hear their thoughts: why would she jeopardize a relationship they had worked so hard to cultivate for months by calling the Alec Durante a coward to his face? If he could take over a giant like Tyson Waller, what would happen to the CaiCia Corporations Inc. which was relatively small fry?
“Where do you get off trying to embarrass me like that?” she spat the moment the door shut behind the last person.
“I don’t know, you tell me. You embarrassed yourself. I didn’t hold a gun to your head and force you to lose your cool just now,” he told her evenly.
“You have some nerve!” she spat.
“No, Caitríona, actually that’s you,” he countered, finally rising to his feet from his seated position to tower over her. “You couldn’t wait for my back to be turned before you sped off and you didn’t just go home; you ran clear across to the States just to get away from me. Now you traipse in here with all the arrogance of a regular drama queen expecting what? That I would fall at your feet and declare my undying love?”
“Hardly. I expected that you would fall on your knees and beg my forgiveness for using me to cheat on your wife,” she raged at him.
In the silence that ensued, an ant’s sneeze could have been heard clearly.
Finally, after what seemed like endless minutes, Alec said slowly, “What do you mean?”
She glared wordlessly at him.
“I know you have a wife, okay? You should have told me that before taking me to bed and making me an adulteress.”
His eyes widened with surprise, their green depths impossibly brilliant as he stared at her in surprise. “I don’t know where you’ve been getting your information, but if you had bothered to consult Google, you would have known what the rest of the world knows: that Sophie Durante died five years ago.”
Her breath whooshed out of her in a rush as her eyes frantically searched his. The truth was written nakedly in his eyes.
“I don’t understand,” she began. “Olivia said”
“Olivia is responsible?” he interjected, his eyes hooded as he stepped closer to her, his long legs bringing her within a hair’s breadth of him. He was standing so close that his shirt grazed her blouse.
The very air crackled with electricity and tension. He hadn’t changed so much as his facial expression, but suddenly, there was this intensified, underlying aura of danger around him.
Caitríona swallowed nervously but stood her ground as she looked up into his eyes. “Olivia showed me your wedding pictures. She never mentioned that um, Sophie had died.”
“Look at me, Caitríona,” he said firmly, grabbing hold of her shoulders. “Sophie is dead; it’s been over five years now.”
She stared up into his eyes with the bone-deep certainty that he was saying the truth sweeping through her as she looked at him. Why had Olivia lied to her? What did she stand to gain? More importantly, where had he been that ugly day?
“Why did you leave me alone?” she asked now.
“I went to get breakfast. You were sleeping so soundly I didn’t want to wake you. Besides, I wasn’t gone long. In less than thirty minutes, I was back to see your note,” he said quietly. He didn’t say anything else, but she could see the question in his eyes. He wanted to know why she had left him that note.
Regretfully, Caitríona shook her head. “I felt used after she told me about your marriage. I was angry and hurt, and I guess I just wanted to save face.”
It was his turn to scan her eyes for truth, and apparently satisfied with what he saw in her gaze, he nodded.
“I must apologize for Olivia. She always has been rather possessive of me, I’m not sure why. Um, would you like to have dinner with me tonight?” he asked.
Caitríona stared up into his familiar green eyes and hid a grin. He’d always had a talent for saying one thing with his mouth and another with his lips. Even now, he was undressing her with nothing more than his eyes; he had that skill down to a science. She didn’t need a soothsayer to know that that was exactly what he was doing as he grinned lazily at her.
She knew now why it had hurt so much when she thought he’d betrayed her. She had fallen for him. He made her feel things no one else made her feel; he thought she was sexy and hot, even though she was worried about her weight. Lately, she had started to see herself through a fresh pair of eyes, thanks to him. When was the last time she worried about her thighs or her arms? She was perfect the way she was and she had only come to believe that because of this man.
Biting her lip, she looked down at her hands, wondering whether to tell him about the baby or not. She didn’t want to trap him in something he didn’t want any part of. Tremulously, she looked up at him and said quietly, “Yes Alec, I would like to have dinner with you.”
“Your place or mine?” he asked.