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“None taken.” His grin seemed heartfelt. “It doesn’t mesh with my image, does it?”
“Not really.”
“Promise me you won’t tell my brothers, okay? They don’t place a lot of value on cooking.”
Ah, yes. The brothers. His show, The Bolton Biker Boys, was about the whole family. The press release she’d found said so. She didn’t watch telly much and hadn’t looked him up on YouTube—couldn’t bear to watch her father’s shows and know that he’d spent more time on them than he had with her. “Then how did you pick it up?”
“I spent more time with Mom,” he replied, checking on a pan. He flipped something—peppers?—before continuing. “Billy’s eight years older than me, Ben’s five. They were always off doing their own thing while I was still in grade school. Mom would pick me up from school, then we’d head home and get dinner ready together.”
Part of her chest started to hurt. The whole thing—a sweet mum to cook and talk with, to spend time with—that’s what she didn’t have. What she’d always wanted. “Do you still cook with her?”
His back still to her, he froze. “She died. When I was eighteen.”
“I was eight. When my mum passed.”
The words escaped her lips before she quite knew she was saying them. She didn’t tell people about Claire. She’d long ago learned that talking about her mother was something not to be tolerated, as if speaking of her would sully her. Her father claimed it hurt too much. Maybe seeing Stella had made him hurt too much, too. Maybe that was why she rarely saw him at all. That had hurt almost as much as her mum’s death—being ignored by her father, foisted off to boarding schools and Mickey.
She’d already pushed aside the hurt again—it was easy when one had as much practice as she had—but the next thing she knew, Bobby had set his bowl down, come around the island and wrapped her in a strong hug. The contact was so unexpected—so much—that Stella felt rooted to the spot. People didn’t usually touch her. Even Mickey just offered her his arm. Her father hadn’t touched her in years. Decades. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been touched like this.
No, she took that back. She could remember. Bobby was the last person who’d put his arms around her. The last person to hold her. As if she meant something to him.
“I’m sorry,” he murmured into her hair, his hands pressed firmly against her back. “That must have been really hard on you.”
Her throat closed up, pushing Stella toward tears. Where the bloody hell was all this emotion coming from?
Ah, yes. Hormones. She was pregnant, after all.
“Thank you,” she managed to say without bawling.
After a small squeeze, Bobby leaned back. “You okay?”
“Fine, yes.”
She managed to push the sorrow back down. What she needed to do here was focus not on the unchangeable past, but the very changeable future. She was pregnant. She’d do anything to make sure her child didn’t suffer the same joyless fate she had.
Bobby let go of her and turned back to the stove. Heavens, the food smelled delicious. Part of her wanted to just enjoy this moment. He was making her dinner. He’d comforted her when she’d gotten upset. Wouldn’t it be lovely if this were something she could look forward to on a regular basis? Wouldn’t having someone to rely on—someone besides Mickey, that was—be just...wonderful?
It was a shame it wasn’t going to happen, Stella thought as Bobby flipped slices of bacon. He was being delightful now because it was a wise business maneuver. In no way, shape or form was this an indicator of things to come, no matter how nice it was. She hadn’t come for a husband. She’d come because it was the proper thing to do, to warn him. To give him a chance.
That’s all she wanted for their baby. A chance.
Quickly, Bobby had plated up slices of omelet and bacon and added buttery toast browned in the oven. “I don’t have any tea,” he said apologetically as the coffeepot brewed.
“No worries. This smells amazing.”
He carried the plates over to the table, setting them down next to each other. The table was empty, save for the picture frame she’d noticed when she’d first entered the flat, but he’d set the plates right next to each other, anyway. Close enough to touch, really. The proximity felt cozy.
Then she saw the picture in the frame.
Three
As Bobby set down the plates, the coffeemaker beeped. He hoped the coffee would be okay. His sister-in-law, Josey, hadn’t been able to touch the stuff when she’d been pregnant. The smell had bothered her.
It wasn’t until he was carrying the cups to the table that he realized what Stella was doing.
Holding the photo. Studying the photo.
“This is...us,” she said in a voice so soft it was almost a whisper.
Immediately, Bobby knew why Stella was here. It wasn’t just that she was pregnant, although that was a huge part of it. That one word was why she was here. To see if there were an us.
Damn.
If this were a normal negotiation, Bobby would do whatever it took to give Stella what she wanted. But...us?
She hadn’t wanted an us. She’d made that blisteringly clear with her “don’t call me, I won’t call you” attitude. And once he knew who she was, he couldn’t really blame her. If David Caine were his father, he’d do everything in his power to avoid irritating the man. Bobby had abided by her wishes. He’d not taken her out to lunch the next day, not tracked her down in the past two months.
He should have. If he’d had any idea she was pregnant, he would have. He fought the urge to drop everything and pull her into his arms. Again. The pull to protect her was overwhelming. But then, the pull to track her down had been, too.
This—the pregnancy, his need for her—was a problem.
He did not have time to drop everything and start playing house with anyone, let alone Stella Caine. Maybe in a few years, sure. The resort would be turning a profit, he’d have his penthouse apartment...then he might like to have someone in his bed who set his blood racing and made him laugh. But now?
So he did the next best thing. He told her only part of the truth.
“I get snapshots of all the celebrities I meet. I have a whole wall of them at the shop.” All true. Nothing wrong with anything he’d just said. “It’s good for our brand image—creates desirability.” When she didn’t say anything, he felt compelled to keep talking. “It’s a good shot.”
It was. Bobby had his arm around Stella’s waist, but she had her back turned to the camera, revealing that swath of creamy skin left bare by the backless dress. She looked at the camera over her shoulder, a wicked pixie grin on her face. Her eyes bright, her hands rested on Bobby’s chest.
What the camera didn’t show was that, seconds before the paparazzi had snapped the photo, Bobby had been kissing her in that delicate spot right beneath her ear. The photo also didn’t show them bailing on the club entirely about twenty minutes later. But he remembered those things every time he looked at the photo.
Stella touched the glass with the tip of her finger. “Why is it here, then?”
“Excuse me?”
Stella leveled those beautiful eyes at him. “It’s been eight weeks. You haven’t hung it yet.”
“I really haven’t gotten into the shop much.”
It wasn’t a lie, but it wasn’t the truth, either. Because the truth was, every time he looked at Stella’s bright eyes, he remembered the feeling of her lithe body in his arms, the way she’d lowered herself onto him with a ferocity that had blown his mind, the way she’d curled into his chest after the first time, her wicked grin all the more wicked with sated knowledge.
It should have been just sex. Great sex, but just sex. However, in the course of one evening, he’d found himself matching wits with a cultured, refined woman who subtly pushed his boundaries while she made him laugh. He’d been with a lot of women, but none had made him feel like Stella had. It was something he couldn’t quite explain, not even to himself. When he was with another woman—any other woman, now that he thought about it—they were there to have a good time, but also...because he could offer them something—a little PR, another good tweet. But Stella hadn’t been interested in mutual promotion and satisfaction. She’d been interested in him.
If he’d hung the photo on the wall in the shop, mixed in with all the other photos of famous people—some of whom he’d also slept with—then that would have meant that she was just like all the rest of them.
And she wasn’t.
“Dinner’s getting cold,” was all he could say.
He held her chair for her. By the time he’d settled into his own chair, close enough to touch her, she was half done with the omelet. “This is excellent,” she told him after she washed down another bite with coffee.
“Glad you liked it. Have you had a lot of morning sickness?”
Still chewing, she shrugged. “Some. The flight out...” She grimaced, her hand fluttering over her waist.
He nodded in sympathy. “Have you seen a doctor?”
She paused, as if she wanted to retreat behind that icy silence she’d first confronted him with. Then her shoulders relaxed. The bacon seemed to help. “Yes, two weeks ago. I’m eight weeks along, due on June 24.”
A date—even one in the middle of next year—was something concrete and real. All he could do was stare at his coffee as he repeated the date in his head. June 24. The date he’d be a father.
This was really happening.
“What do you want?”
It wasn’t until the words were out that he realized he’d said them.
They were the wrong words—too much of an ultimatum—but he couldn’t take them back. He’d spent approximately seven total hours in the company of Stella Caine. Seven hours wasn’t long enough to base the rest of his life on.
Plus, she was David Caine’s daughter. All of Bobby’s plans—the television show, the destination resort, the chance to finally prove himself to his family? David Caine could change all of that, if he saw fit. This wasn’t just about Bobby and Stella. This was something that affected the entire Bolton family.
He felt the icy wall Stella put up between them even before she set down her fork. She stood and walked across the room, the distance between them growing.
“It’s not about what I want, not anymore.” She looked out the patio door that led to a small balcony. “I won’t complain about the lot I’ve drawn, but if I have this child, I need certain assurances about her future.”
If.
So maybe Bobby wasn’t ready to be a father. He might never actually be ready.
But he was a Bolton, by God, and there was one thing the Bolton men valued above all else—family. His father had married his mother when they were both seventeen, after Mom had gotten pregnant with Billy. Through the ups and downs of twenty-five years of marriage and motorcycles, the family had always come first.
If Bobby was going to be a father to Stella’s child, then she was already family. For it to be any other way was unthinkable. Stella was giving him a chance to do the right thing here. He just had to man up and...
Marry her.
Make sure the baby was a Bolton, through and through.
This realization hit him harder than any punch ever had. Honest to God, his knees went weak and his vision blurred. Married. Oh, hell.
Stella was still staring out the window, thankfully. She hadn’t seen his reaction. But she was probably expecting a reasonable response.
“What kind of assurances?”
He saw her reflection in the glass take a deep breath, but that was the only outward sign of her mental state. Otherwise, she was an unreadable wall.
“I will not have a child who is used as a pawn or a child who is not loved by her father. I’d rather she never know you exist than that she live life knowing she wasn’t wanted.”
That statement hung out there, practically icing over the glass with its frostiness. Something in the way she said it hit Bobby in a different way.
David Caine was world famous for being conservative—a staunch proponent of abstinence-only education, marriage between one man and one woman and no abortions—not even in cases of rape or incest. He believed in these rules and others so that when Bobby had signed on the dotted line for The Bolton Biker Boys, he’d also agreed to an extensive morals clause. David Caine believed there was such a thing as bad publicity, apparently, and he enforced a strict rule of law on what constituted “bad publicity.” Which included almost everything that would land a man on TMZ or any other gossip site.
Which included getting his daughter pregnant out of wedlock.
Not that this particular situation was outlined in the contract, but Bobby had a feeling David Caine would do a whole lot more than just terminate Bobby’s contract with FreeFall TV. He thought of Mickey, who still had Bobby’s Glock. Hell, he’d be lucky if David Caine didn’t terminate him, period.
He didn’t like the distance she’d put between them, the cold words she’d just said. It wasn’t as if he wanted her sobbing and hysterical, but this detachment? No. He wasn’t having any of it.
So they barely knew each other. So this development could blow all of his carefully laid plans to bits, probably hers, as well. That didn’t change the facts—they’d met, felt an instant chemistry and followed up on it. He hadn’t been able to hang her picture on the wall with all the others.
He hadn’t been able to stop thinking about her.
No, the one thing he knew was that she’d been wrong in the back of her car, when she’d kissed him instead of giving him her number and told him it was better this way.
Her way was not better.
Time to try it his way.
He went to her, folded her into his arms and kissed the spot on the back of her neck.
Her skin was cool against his lips, her body ramrod stiff in his arms. She was going to fight him on this, fight to maintain her icy detachment. I don’t think so, he thought as he kissed his way around her neck until he got to that special spot, the one just below her ear, half hidden by a silver earring. When he traced the area with his tongue, she shuddered.
For a brief moment, her back arched. Her bottom pushed against him. Yes, he thought. Unleash that energy on me.
But then she pulled away from him and said, “Stop.”
Bobby froze. But he didn’t let her go. Instead, he held her even tighter, hoping the steel would leave her body. He let his hands skim over her body until they rested on her stomach. Between the leather bodice of her dress and the fact that she wasn’t very far along, he would never have guessed she was pregnant. But if she’d already seen a doctor, then it was a fact.
He felt the smooth plane of her body—a body that held his child. “Is that what you want? This baby to never know my name? To never know that I loved her?”
She sucked in a hard breath, as if Bobby had slapped her. “This isn’t about what I want,” she said again. But she didn’t sound as if she believed it. “This is about what’s best for everyone involved.”
Damn it, he was done with her forced detachment. They weren’t discussing stock options or a merger or whatever she and her father talked about around the dinner table. This was a life—a baby-to-be—theirs.
Careful not to hurt her, he turned her in his arms as he backed her up against the glass doors. Although she moved, her body was not the soft, welcoming thing he dreamed of at night.
She refused to meet his gaze, though, so once he had her secure, he lifted her chin until she looked him in the eyes. No mistaking it this time—she was terrified of what he might say. “I don’t care what ‘everyone’ thinks is best. I only care about what you want.”
He saw the doubt flash over her eyes right before she shut them. “It’s better this way.”
She sounded as though she was on the verge of tears, but Bobby didn’t care. He wanted to know that she cared—one way or the other.
“Better for who?”
He kissed her, just a touch of two lips.
Just a promise.
Then, in a flash, the cold steel melted from her body. She laced her arms around his neck and pulled him down as her mouth opened, her tongue hesitantly tracing his lips.
