One-Night Heirs

CHAPTER FIVE

SAINTHADBEEN in London three times since the gala more than three months ago. Each time, he had thought about reaching out to Fliss.

He’d fought the compulsion with difficulty, especially once paparazzi had located her living in Nottingham. She was working in an assisted living facility and picked up casual shifts at a local pub.

Interest in her was finally dying down, though, largely due to the fact that she only ever said “No comment” and shoved her way past anyone trying to pry more out of her.

Saint was grateful for her silence. A strongly worded letter had quieted Julie, and Saint was doing his best to live up to his name for the sake of his project. He arrived early for meetings, bought his mother a filly she wanted and was enjoying celibacy. Not.

The fact was going without sex wasn’t that difficult. He’d gone long stretches in his life without anyone warming his sheets. When he was focused on work, as he’d been through much of last year, he became as single-minded and neglectful of others as his father had always been. It was another reason he’d never pursued relationships that lasted longer than a few weeks. He wasn’t built for them.

What did make it hard, pun intended, was his memories of Fliss. He regularly woke in the middle of the night, aching and covered in the sweat of arousal, traces of her touch evaporating from his skin.

He’d made great strides in rehabilitating his reputation, though. Xanthe’s constructed gossip about his “eye on the future” and readiness “to find his life partner” had gone a long way with the board. He’d been fielding requests for more information from them for weeks. A few had even confided that his success with this project would give them a reason to pressure his father into retirement.

Yesterday, Saint had been invited to attend their regular quarterly meeting in two days. He was certain that meant they were pivoting toward approval.

His father was still holding his cards close to his chest, and Saint had an idea why. This “life partner” narrative had opened a new field of war between his parents. They had begun advancing their preferred candidates for daughter-in-law.

Saint had played this game before. He knew that siding with one would make his life a living hell with the other. It was freaking exhausting.

From the outside, most would assume that aligning with his father was the strategic move. Not only did they share the common interest of the business, but Saint should know which side his bread was buttered on.

Saint refused to be a hostage to his legacy, though. Many, many times he’d stood on the precipice of walking away from his father’s dictates and heavy-handed attempts to control him, aware that he would be walking away from his inheritance.

That didn’t bother him. He knew his own worth. Yes, his father had paid for his education, but Saint had done the work to achieve top grades and the two degrees he held. He had put in the hours at the office, too, learning the ins and outs of every department and contributing to the company’s success from the time he’d begun sweeping floors at eleven.

No matter where he landed, he would never have to start from the bottom.

He hated to draw his mother into his power struggle with his father, though. Unlike Ted, Norma Montgomery had once possessed a heart. It had since been shattered so often by Saint’s father that it was a distorted reflection of the woman Saint remembered from childhood, but he felt obliged to protect her from further damage.

Leaving Grayscale would force her to decide whether she wanted to divorce her husband in what would be a very public, destructive battle or lose her son. Ted would have no compunction about demanding she cut ties with Saint if she wanted to maintain the life to which she had grown accustomed—and the horses she loved as much as, probably more than, her son.

Any decision Saint made around walking away from Grayscale would affect Grayscale, too. He didn’t want to destroy something that he’d had a hand in building. He didn’t want to take his work to a competitor that would attempt to eat what should have been his. He didn’t want to see someone else take over his legacy when his father was finally gone, not when it could be his.

No, the most sensible plan was to continue his restraint, earn the trust of his father and the board, and focus on the product he believed in. With recent scrutiny by the government around privacy, his father couldn’t deny the value in his new approach. If his father wanted to tie his agreement to an arranged marriage, they would work that out away from the office.

All of which caused the text Saint received to fill him with conflict.

I have to be in London tomorrow. Is there any chance you’re here? I need to speak to you, but I don’t want anyone to see us together.

She didn’t identify herself, but he gave very few people this number.

Seeing Fliss could reignite the publicity and wouldn’t be fair to her if she was looking for something longer term. It could undo the progress he’d made where the board was concerned. The smart thing to do was to leave the text on Read. Or simply say no.

But the temptation to see her was mouth-wateringly strong. All he could think about was the feel of her hand tucked into his arm as they had walked into the hotel. Of her secretive smile, as though she knew things he didn’t. Of the way she felt when she shuddered with orgasm, triggering his own.

He deserved answers around why she’d misrepresented herself, didn’t he?

That was a rationalization. We all trick ourselves, she’d said, and he’d come to realize how very insightful she was.

He looked to the calendar. He was due down the hall here at the New York office less than forty-eight hours from now, but he had turned around a flight to London in less before.

He had Willow rearrange his lesser appointments and file a flight plan, then texted her.

A card will be waiting under the name Norma at the concierge. Come to my hotel room at four p.m.

Time crawled, but after a heavy morning of dull meetings, he was in his hotel room, nursing a scotch while he waited. He was half expecting some enterprising reporter would turn up, but when the knock sounded and the mechanism released, Fliss entered.

He wasn’t sure what he had expected, but it wasn’t her in a pink plaid skirt suit, black knee-high boots and a beret. It was cute as hell and had his gaze dragging itself from the glimpse of her thighs below the fall of pleats to the way her short jacket emphasized the nip of her waist and the generous swells of her breasts.

His inner Neanderthal instantly awoke. Mine.

Her features were mostly hidden by oversize sunglasses and a lipstick that had been applied to change the shape of her mouth. She pressed the door firmly closed behind her and stayed against it, hand on the latch.

“Hello.” She leaned to set his room card on the nearby table. “Thank you for seeing me. I won’t stay long.”

She looked and sounded nervous, but he would swear her gaze was traveling all over him. He felt it as viscerally as the way her hands had skimmed across his skin when they’d last been in this room together.

Don’t.

“Are you into role-play?” he drawled. “Is that why you’re dressed like a hired assassin from a time-travel movie?”

“That’s exactly what I am,” she said without missing a beat. “I thought it would take more to convince you.”

Damn. He didn’t want to find her amusing. There was too much at stake.

“Take off your sunglasses. I want to see your face.”

She complied, fumbling them slightly as she slipped them into a pocketbook hanging from a long strap over her shoulder. She lifted a frown of consternation to him.

“I actually made this for my interviews at—” She brushed the side of her skirt, making the pleats flutter. “Doesn’t matter. I came to London to sell all the clothes I made, but I needed something to wear into this hotel that would blend in. I am a designer. I’m just not paid professionally for it.”

“You’re also a maid. Or you were, until they realized you have sticky fingers.”

“It was in the bin,” she said as though she was tired of repeating that. “Delia Chevron threw twenty-five thousand pounds into the bin. I thought it was a ticket for dinner and hoped to network or get some publicity for my work. Do you think at any point through all of this nightmare that one single pap has asked me who made my gown? Believe me, I’ve come to regret the whole escapade.” She waved an arm in a wide circle.

“Me, too,” he said, stung more deeply than he’d expected by that word regret.

She dropped her arm and her mouth pouted with injury, as though that particular word had landed just as hard for her.

Then she set her jaw and lifted her chin.

“Don’t pin what happened onto me. I changed my mind about that gala before you’d even spoken to me. You dragged me there, throwing me to them as ‘fresh meat to chew on.’ Do you know that I thought I was on a date?” She tapped where the pretty yellow lace of her camisole peeked between her lapels. “You might have explained that I was your paid escort. Who the hell sends a woman earrings worth a hundred and fifty thousand pounds for one night together? I wasn’t that good, Saint.”

He would beg to differ but only ran his tongue across his teeth.

“Why didn’t you text me sooner?” he asked.

“Because you cost me my job and set the hounds of hell upon me. Thanks. Sign me up for more of that. I can’t wait.”

This was going well. He ran his hand down his face, trying to reset.

“I should have dealt with Julie sooner, instead of giving her an opportunity to feed off your story. That wasn’t fair to you.”

“You think?”

“Is that why you’re here? To tell me you’re angry at how this played out?” He would only grovel so far, and she’d just witnessed the extent of it. “Or have you decided you want compensation for your trouble after all?” He moved to the ice bucket. It held a bottle of Prieur Montrachet that he’d had room service deliver. “Have a seat. Do you want something to drink while we discuss terms?”

She didn’t move.

He pulled the bottle from the ice and glanced over, catching a look of wounded shock on her face.

“That’s really mean,” she said.

“What is?”

Saint knew. He was uncomfortable with his guilt and how strongly he was reacting to her. He was doing what he’d learned to do when intense emotions took hold in him—he set them aside and used cold logic while he did whatever was necessary to make the issue go away.

“I can’t undo what happened, Fliss. I did cost you your job and threw unwanted attention onto you. People seem to think I don’t take responsibility for my actions, but I do.” Money might not fix everything, but it bought some very effective bandages. “Tell me what will make you feel better, and I’ll see what I can do. A storefront for a boutique perhaps?”

Still she didn’t move or speak.

He opened the bottle and poured two glasses, then carried them to the coffee table.

“Come,” he invited as he seated himself and leaned back.

After a moment, she came toward him. She seemed very pale as she sat on the sofa across from him, only lowering to perch on the edge of the cushion. She stared at the glass of wine but only clasped her hands in her lap, back very straight. She lifted her gaze to his.

“I didn’t come here to ask anything of you,” she said with quiet dignity. “Nothing. I mean that. Nothing.”

“Except my time,” he noted drily.

“Not even much of that,” she assured him with a proud lift of her chin. “I’m catching the train back to Nottingham once I’ve finished the rest of my errands. You’ll never hear from me again. But I had to tell you something that didn’t feel right to send as a text.”

“What’s that?” He did his best to sound detached, but his ears were ringing with that word. Never. He held his breath, straining to hear over that jarring sound of a train disappearing down a tunnel. His muscles felt both paralyzed and tense with readiness to leap and catch.

“I’m pregnant.”

Saint didn’t move. She wasn’t sure he was breathing.

Then there was a faint, fractured clink before he gave his wine a startled look and swore.

He’d snapped the stem on his glass. He cupped one hand under the other and rose to head to the bar.

“Are you bleeding?” Fliss hurried after him to see him rinse the welling blood from his fingers into the sink. “I’ll call the desk.” She looked for the hotel phone.

“I can deal with it.” He wrapped a clean bar towel around his fingers as he strode into the bedroom.

Fliss covered where her heart had been pounding with anxiety from the time she’d worked up the courage to hit Send on her text. It had increased to alarming levels when she had entered this hotel, picked up the card from a bored-looking bellman, then stepped off the elevator and made her way to this door. Now it was racing so fast she felt dizzy. Her nerve endings were sizzling and her mouth had gone dry.

Entering this suite was like stepping into a dream, but one of those weird ones that repeated every time you closed your eyes, the kind that made you feel stuck and fighting to wake up.

Everywhere she looked, sensual memories accosted her. She’d pressed her hands to that glass door and felt him inside her. He’d carried her through that doorway and stripped her naked, and they’d showered together before taking to the bed where they had touched and kissed each other everywhere. He had spoken wicked commands and reverent compliments in a sexy rasp.

Tell me if it’s too much. I can’t get enough of you.

As she had dressed to come here, she had braced for the impact of that potent sexuality of his. She had known she would react to his rangy, athletic body in his tailored trousers and crisp shirt. She had known she would want to push her fingers into his hair again, to press her mouth to his stern lips and nuzzle the scent in his throat.

She had not been prepared for his aloof, businesslike wall of commerce.

You want compensation after all?

She had suspected he would think that, but she hadn’t expected it to stab so deeply to hear it.

“Are you sure it’s mine? I used condoms.”

She nearly leapt out of her skin, not realizing he’d come back. She grappled at the edge of the bar to steady herself, feeling spun around one too many times by all of this.

“Are you okay?” She looked to his hand. Two fingers wore beige-colored bandages.

“Fine.” He folded his arms, feet braced. He’d withdrawn even further, presenting her with a wall of frost that chilled her to the bone. “This is why you’re here, then? You think you’ve pulled the golden ticket?”

She opened her mouth, but her voice stalled in her throat. In her head, all her words had been carefully planned out, but none of this was going the way she’d expected. Her thoughts were scattered on the wind.

“This is not my first stroll around this particular block, Fliss.” Saint’s tone grew even more deep and lethal.

“Wh-what...?” She had to press her wobbling lips together to make them work. “What do you do?”

“What do you mean?”

“When it’s yours. What do you do?” She dropped her gaze to the elegant buckles on his shoes and the fine detail work across the toes, trying to tell herself that his skepticism worked in her favor. “You don’t have any children that you acknowledge, so what do you do when it’s yours? Pay for termination or—”

“They’ve never been mine.” He spoke through his teeth. “If I had children, I’d acknowledge them, but I don’t. That’s why I wear condoms, so claims like this don’t even arise. And I say this without judgment, Fliss...”

Oh, he was definitely judging her. She flashed a rancorous look up at him.

“I’ve seen what people have said about you online.” His voice and expression were cool and remote. “I can’t take your word for it that it’s mine.”

“Wow.” She couldn’t hide the slap of that. She looked away, unable to keep from revealing her torment. It wasn’t just the memory of those old, cruel rumors. It was demeaning enough that he knew about that time of her life. She couldn’t believe he had thrown it in her face like that, though.

“I don’t care how many lovers you’ve had,” he said grimly. “I’m not that much of a hypocrite. I’m only saying I can’t take it on faith that your baby is mine.”

“You’re—” She had to clear the thickness of humiliation from her throat. It came from realizing that she’d nurtured a barely acknowledged hope that this would go differently. Deep in her subconscious, she’d thought he might welcome her back into his life and greet this news with the joy that imbued her.

Fool. Struck by lightning. A new day. A naked child on a horse, proceeding into the future alone.

“You’re making assumptions,” she said, fighting to inject some semblance of dignity into her voice as she scraped for the words she’d come to say. “I only came to ask you to make a statement that it’s not yours, so the paparazzi will leave me alone.” She fumbled her sunglasses from her pocketbook and put them on before she looked at him again.

He was standing like a pillar, lips parted as though he’d been about to say something. His brows were a thick, foreboding line.

She wished these cheap lenses didn’t afford him such a golden glow. He looked like a bronzed statue. A gleaming study in wrath.

“Will you?” she prompted, arteries stinging from the adrenaline running through them.

“It’s not mine.” Why did he sound so angered? Shouldn’t he have been relieved? “That’s why you came here today? To tell me it’s not mine?”

“It seemed fair to warn you.” Now the words she’d rehearsed were coming more easily. “It’s all over the entertainment sites that you’re looking for a wife. It would be awkward if rumors about me started while you were engaged to someone else, wouldn’t it? Your intended would be dragged into something she didn’t sign up for. I’d rather skip that myself, if you don’t mind. So will you? Make a statement?”

“Take off those glasses.” He was trying to pierce through their mirrored lenses with the strength of his glower.

“No.” She stood straighter, chin up, but she was quivering like jelly inside.

“Is the baby mine or not, Fliss?”

“You wore condoms,” she reminded him, refusing to outright lie. “None broke, did they?”

“No, but we had sex. There’s a chance it’s mine, isn’t there? That’s why you’re here.”

“With the legions of men I’ve entertained? Who’s to say?” she said scathingly.

“Don’t play games, Fliss.”

“This isn’t a game,” she snapped. “I’m pregnant. The baby is mine. Your only obligation is to tell people to leave me alone. That’s what I came to tell you today.”

She headed for the door, but when she got there, he was there, too, covering the seam to keep it shut. He loomed so close around her she spun to face him, more angry than alarmed.

“Don’t make this ugly,” she said shakily.

He fell back a step and let his hand fall, but his jaw was clenched, his mouth tight.

“I want a paternity test.”

“Why? You want this problem to go away. Let me go away.” Fliss reached for the latch.

“So you can, what? Raise my child in some squalid flat on government handouts?”

“I would sell my diamond earrings, but I never received them, did I?” she shot back.

“You’re still playing out of your league, Fliss.” His hand came up to the door again, leaning on it. “I won’t let you use my child against me.”

Her heart had become a shriveled thing inside her, leaving a cavern for her voice to reverberate with emotion.

“Don’t judge me by your standards, Saint. That’s not something I would even think to do. I’m naive that way—which I’m pretty sure you know because I didn’t feel played until I heard about those earrings. I thought you were charming and interesting and a generous lover. I thought we were two people who had a really nice time together, but you know which one of us was full of BS that night? You. It was all an act to get me into bed, wasn’t it? And you think I’m into role-play?” She pointed between her breasts. “You’re superficial and callous and kind of a bully. There’s no way on earth I would raise a baby with you. Now, let me go before I scream the place down.”

Fliss made to elbow him in the stomach, forcing him to step back to avoid it. She opened the door and left.

Saint had taken a kick from one of his mother’s horses once. This was a similar sensation. He felt knocked clean across a stall.

He was vaguely aware of other sensations. His fingers were still stinging where he’d cut them with the glass. His blood felt thick and congealed in his veins, as though it was pooling in shock. His guts were pure acid.

It wasn’t true, was it? There’d been a handful of paternity claims in his past. In the first case, he’d been young enough to buy in very quickly and had nearly bought his partner a ring, only to learn she wasn’t even pregnant. Another time, he hadn’t been the father.

Those false alarms had not only made him cynical about such claims but made him all the more diligent about wearing condoms. He bought them himself and regularly checked the dates. As Fliss had noted, none had split, so it seemed highly unlikely they had failed.

A compulsion to double-check the dates had him striding into the bathroom where his shaver was in its case. A half strip of condoms was tucked beside it, exactly the way he usually kept it. They were the brand he liked and part of the same strip he’d used with Fliss. The stamp said they were within their use-by date.

She’d been with him every second that night. There’d been no opportunity for her to poke holes in them—

He swore and crushed the strip in his fist, eyes pressing closed. Fliss hadn’t had an opportunity to sabotage his birth control, but someone else had.

With a grim sense of premonition, he tore one out and sealed its opening to the tap. He filled it with water, then held it at his eye level and watched a droplet of water leak out against the skin. As soon as it fell, another formed. Then another.

With a curse, Saint threw the condom into the shower. It landed with a loud splat. He tried another. Then another. All of them were damaged.

Julie.He couldn’t prove she was the one who had done it, but no one else had traveled with him and spent time in his space, and she’d already shown herself short on scruples.

At least he wasn’t expecting a baby with her.

No. He was expecting one with Fliss.

You’re superficial and callous and kind of a bully.

He drew in a breath that burned, hating himself for going full Ted Montgomery on her.

But this circumstance was exactly what his own father had faced when Saint’s mother had come to him with her unplanned pregnancy. Ted had been on the cusp of what had turned into unprecedented success. Norma had contributed to his ascension in no small way, not that Ted ever gave her that credit. Any warmth or charm that Saint possessed had come from her. She’d compensated for Ted’s utter lack of empathy.

But such a one-sided relationship could only be sustained so long. Eventually, their marriage had become a toxic partnership, one that continued to rain nuclear fallout on Saint to this day.

Thatwas why he wore condoms. He didn’t want kids. He didn’t want to discover thirty years from now that he was as damaging a parent as his own had been.

He was about to become one anyway. He didn’t need a paternity test to prove it. He sent another dour look to the discarded condoms in the shower.

Fliss might have walked a very thin line between implying and outright lying about whether her baby was his, but he had no doubt that she was pregnant and that he had put her in that condition. He had even less doubt that she wished it had been nearly any other man.

This isn’t a game, she’d said. The baby is mine.

Saint found himself thinking, Mine, too.

He braced his hands on either side of the sink, reminding himself to breathe while he took that in. Whether he wanted to be a father or feared he’d make a terrible one didn’t matter. He was about to be put to the test. This was real. And he did take responsibility for his actions—even when his mistake was putting too much trust in the wrong person.

Swearing did nothing to help, but it felt very satisfying to curse out a long, vicious blue streak. Sensation was seeping back into his limbs, and his brain was crawling out of the rubble of emotions that were still piled up around him: shock and fury and guilt. So much guilt toward Fliss. There was something else there, too, deep under the heavy weight of that. Something that was too nascent to excavate. Something almost like relief or... He didn’t know what it was and would rather focus on taking action.

He needed a paternity test for his father’s sake. Ted would turn this into another black mark against Saint, possibly vetoing the board’s approval.

Saint swore again, tiredly this time, and pinched the bridge of his nose.

You want this problem to go away. Let me go away.

As if it were that simple. She was right. As soon as she grew plump enough for people to suspect pregnancy, they would do the math and guess that he was the father. Even if he wanted to take the easy way out that she’d offered and made a statement that the baby wasn’t his, she would still be badgered.

And he couldn’t turn his back on his child. Not in good conscience. Within a year or two, the baby would look just like him anyway, giving how strongly he resembled his own father.

No, if Fliss was having his baby, they were having their baby.

Where had she said she was going? Errands. Hell. That could mean anything. If he wanted to catch her, he’d have to be waiting in Nottingham for her.

He went to look for his phone to order the car, ignoring the way Fliss’s last words resounded in his ears.

There’s no way on earth I would raise a baby with you.