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A Pregnancy Scandal
Kat Cantrell
They married for the sake of the baby. Will they stay together for love?Widowed power player Phillip Edgeworth’s political ambitions demand he have a wife—they don’t demand he love her. It’s a good thing, too, because his heart belongs to the perfect wife he lost. But finding a woman who will say “I do” to his deal proves difficult. Until he meets Alexandra Meer—the sexy CFO he can’t resist. She doesn’t believe in happily-ever-after, even after their amazing night together. And now she’s pregnant with his child! A marriage of convenience should end the scandal and solve all their problems…as long as they don’t fall in love…
What was Alex doing in Washington?
It was almost as if she’d known he couldn’t stop thinking about their night together.
He stood as the door opened and Alex spilled into the room. Her face glowed and something seized his lungs as he stared at her. She’d stolen his ability to think simply by walking into the room. That was not supposed to happen.
Her eyes shone with unexpected moisture and he lost his place again. This wasn’t a social visit, obviously. “Is something wrong?”
“Maybe.” She hesitated, biting her lip in that way that said she didn’t know what to say next.
If only he could take her in his arms and kiss her hello, like he wanted to. He sighed. “I like you a lot, Alex, but I’m not sure we’re meant to continue our affair. It’s complicated. And not your fault. I wish things could be different. And not so complicated.”
She choked out a laugh that sounded a bit like a sob. “Yeah, I wish that, too. Unfortunately, things are far more complicated than you could ever dream.”
“What—”
“I’m pregnant.”
* * *
A Pregnancy Scandal is part of the Love and Lipstick series: For four female executives, mixing business with pleasure leads to love!
A Pregnancy Scandal
Kat Cantrell
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
KAT CANTRELL read her first Mills & Boon novel in primary school and has been scribbling in notebooks since then. She writes smart, sexy books with a side of sass. She’s a former Mills & Boon So You Think You Can Write winner and an RWA Golden Heart® Award finalist. Kat, her husband and their two boys live in north Texas.
To Anne Marsh for about a million reasons but mostly because you’re always there on the other side of my chat window.
Contents
Cover (#u3cb6506e-db11-5542-bd0b-41f90eeea7e8)
Introduction (#u694d9cb4-c050-596a-abe0-db63ae16aed4)
Title Page (#u44000390-84db-5b00-9e81-a6bccca8dfc5)
About the Author (#ubaa1ca28-315e-53b8-867f-5e6d14895793)
Dedication (#u7f3c91de-46f2-5a6c-ae11-489f60da14ec)
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Epilogue
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
One (#u88ba6195-cdac-5779-8e99-fb62f93bea29)
The third time Alex ducked behind the Greek statue, Senator Phillip Edgewood’s curiosity got the best of him. Yeah, he’d been watching her from across the crowded room as she chatted with her friends and coworkers. How could he not?
Alexandra Meer was the most beautiful woman in the room.
Surprisingly so. Phillip had half expected her to show up to his fundraiser-slash-party in jeans, which he would not have minded in the slightest because he liked her no matter what she wore. But this dressed-up, made-up, transformed version of the woman he’d first met a couple of weeks ago at the Fyra Cosmetics corporate office—wow.
Senator Galindo cleared her throat, drawing Phillip’s attention back to their conversation. Ramona Galindo, the other United States senator from Texas, and Phillip had a lot in common and they often socialized when they were both home in Dallas. But it was hard to focus on the senator with Alex’s secretive actions going on. He pretended to listen, because the whole point of this evening was to network with his colleagues outside of Washington, while he also strained to catch a glimpse of Alex.
Was she covertly dumping canapés before anyone figured out she wasn’t eating them? Or was she hoping to meet someone interesting in the shadowy recesses?
If it was the former, Phillip felt it was his civic duty to inform her that, while this was his party, he hated the canapés, too. If it was the latter, well, it might also be his civic duty to grant her wish.
Honestly, Phillip needed the distraction. Today was Gina’s birthday. Or rather, it would have been. If his wife had lived, she would have been thirty-two. You’d think nearly two years of practice being a widower would afford a guy a better handle on the designation. But here he was, still stumbling through it.
And that decided it. He could spend the rest of the evening morose and moody. Or he could fan the sparks that always kicked up whenever he was around Alex. When Phillip had agreed to help Fyra Cosmetics navigate the FDA approval process for a new product, he’d never expected to meet someone so intriguing, especially not when that someone was the company’s chief financial officer.
He and Alex had been developing a “thing” over late lunches and one-on-one meetings. She laughed at his jokes and made him feel like a man instead of a politician. And she’d come to this party stag when he’d been almost positive she’d decline. How much more of a hint did he need that their relationship might become more than two people working together?
“Excuse me,” he murmured to Senator Galindo as he skirted her expertly, tugging on the white shirtsleeves under his tuxedo as he beelined across his cavernous living room to catch the most interesting woman at his party in the act of...whatever she was doing.
He crossed his arms and stepped behind the statue, boxing her in. The scent of Alex overwhelmed him first...light, fruity...and then the woman did. He let both wake up his blood. Which didn’t take long.
“Fancy meeting you here,” he said blithely. “I hope I’m not the bore at this party that you’re avoiding.”
Alex’s eyes widened and then warmed dangerously fast. Her eyes were the most fascinating shade of green with a little brown dot in the left iris that he couldn’t help but notice. She was easily the most distinctive woman he’d ever met, and that was saying something when he regularly mixed with the elite of both Dallas and Washington.
“No, of course not. You couldn’t pry that title away from the mayor with a crowbar.” And then she groaned, which made him grin. “I mean, I’m not avoiding the mayor. And he’s not a bore. Neither are you! I’m not avoiding anyone.”
Was it wrong that he enjoyed flustering her so much? It was so easy to do and she always said something outrageous that never failed to make him smile. He needed to smile, especially tonight. And she was the only person in attendance who had managed that feat. The only person he’d met in a long time who seemed unimpressed by his position or wealth. He liked that.
“But if you were hoping to avoid someone, this would be the opportune spot.” He leaned against the wall and crossed one ankle over the other. “No one would know you were back here unless they were already watching you.”
The shadows weren’t deep enough to cover her blush. “You were watching me?”
“Oh, come now.” He tsked. “When a woman wears a dress like that, surely it’s not a shock that a man would spend a great deal of time looking at her.”
She glanced down and scowled.
“It’s just a dress,” she mumbled.
No, it was anything but. The off-white dress had a hint of gold sparkle that caught the light when she moved, and the fabric draped over her curves in a way that announced she had some. That was news to Phillip and he’d call that a front-page story, because she was an amazingly beautiful woman already, even before this evening’s transformation.
But with the transformation...well, she’d captured his interest thoroughly, because he hoped it meant she wasn’t averse to the occasional dress-up event. Politicians attended a lot of those and Phillip had a huge void in the plus-one category.
Maybe he’d found a potential candidate.
“Yet I’ve never seen you in a dress.” He raised one eyebrow in emphasis, which she did not miss. “I’ve come by Fyra for FDA meetings, what, like three or four times? And you, my dear, have reinvented the concept of casual wear. Cass, Trinity and Harper always wear suits, but you’re most often in jeans.”
The other three cofounders of Fyra dressed well and without regard to price tags. Phillip appreciated a woman who knew her way around a stylist, and normally he would have said he preferred a sophisticated woman. Gina had never met a rack at Nordstrom she could leave untouched, and the small handful of women he’d preoccupied himself with after Gina died could only be described as high maintenance. He’d lost interest in them pretty quickly.
But Alex...well, Alex intrigued him. She’d instantly stood out from her three counterparts when his cousin Gage had introduced Phillip to the founders of Fyra Cosmetics.
He couldn’t ignore the demure, brown-haired woman clad in a T-shirt, hair scraped back into a ponytail. It was baffling to walk into a meeting with Fyra’s executives and see the chief financial officer’s face bereft of makeup. It would be like introducing himself to someone as Senator Phillip Edgewood and then claiming he had no interest in the laws of the United States.
He was intrigued. He wanted to know her better. Understand why he couldn’t stop thinking about her. Why she was so different from any woman of his acquaintance. But he had to tread carefully with the opposite sex for so many reasons, not the least of which was his aversion to scandal. And then there was the other thing: he was on the lookout for a permanent plus one. Only the right woman would do for that role and his criteria were stringent.
No point in getting a woman’s hopes up unless she filled them. He didn’t know if Alex fell in that category or not, but he planned to find out.
“Don’t you have guests?” she asked and glanced over his shoulder. “I’m keeping you from them.”
“Seventy-eight, if I recall.” Yes, he should be doing host-type things, definitely. He didn’t move. “And you’re one of my guests, as well. I’d be remiss if I didn’t see to your welfare as you skulk about behind this very large statue.”
“My dress is...uncomfortable.” She waved at her torso. “None of this stays in place like it’s supposed to.”
Naturally, his eye was drawn to the area in question. “Looks like everything is in order to me.”
“Because I just adjusted it all,” she hissed fiercely.
The image of Alex ducking behind his statue to dip her hands under her dress to adjust things flooded through his senses, unchecked. He couldn’t unsee it. Couldn’t unexperience it. And now this small space in the corner wasn’t nearly big enough to hold a senator, a CFO and the enormous attraction sizzling between them.
He stopped himself from asking if she needed help adjusting anything else. It was right there on the tip of his tongue. But United States senators didn’t run around saying whatever they felt like, no matter how badly he wanted to flirt with her. Among other things.
Phillip’s life was not his own, never had been, nor would he have it any other way. He was an Edgewood, born into a long line of statesmen, and an even longer line of Texas oilmen, and his family was counting on him to be the first one to make it to the White House.
To accomplish that, he needed a wife, plain and simple. A single president hadn’t been elected in the United States since the eighteen hundreds. The problem was that his heart still belonged to Gina, and he’d met few women willing to play second fiddle to another woman, even one who’d passed away.
The catch-22 was brutal. Either he’d marry someone in name only and make his peace with loneliness for the next fifty years or hope that he magically stumbled over a woman who was okay with his ground rules for marriage—friends and lovers, sure. But love wasn’t on offer. It would feel like a betrayal of the highest order.
It wasn’t fair; he knew that. But Phillip didn’t believe in second chances. No one got lucky enough to find their soul mate twice. But if Alex was the right woman for him, she’d understand.
Instead of the dozens of other offers he’d have rather issued, he asked, “Would you like a glass of champagne?”
“Do I look that much like I need a drink?” she asked wryly. “Or are you a mind reader?”
He grinned. “Neither. I thought it was a shame you were stuck back here in the corner with your dress problems and couldn’t enjoy the party.”
Tucking an errant lock of hair behind her ear, an escapee from her upswept hairdo, she rolled her eyes. “It’ll take a lot more than champagne to get me to enjoy a black-tie party.”
There she went again with her outrageous statements. He smiled. “Should I be insulted that my party isn’t up to par?”
A horrified light dawned in her expression. “No! Your party is perfect because, well...you’re you and your house is amazing and the guests are great. I’m just clumsy with small talk. Obviously.”
She blinked up at him from under her lashes. On any other woman, that look would have been coquettish, designed to convey blatant invitation, and he would have walked away without regret. On her, it was a hint of vulnerability, of uncertainty. And together, they unexpectedly whacked him in the heart.
Hadn’t seen that coming. His attraction had deepened over a simple look.
“Not clumsy,” he corrected smoothly. “Honest. That’s refreshing.”
“I’m glad someone thinks so.” She scowled, but it was cute on her. “Numbers people like me are not usually sought out by party hosts. We tend to skulk about behind statues and embarrass ourselves with wardrobe problems.”
“Why did you come to the party if you don’t like dressing up?”
Obviously she hadn’t morphed into someone who liked black-tie affairs, which was a shame. She was looking less and less like a candidate for his permanent plus one. The problem was, the more he stood here with her, the more he wanted to chuck all his marriage rules.
“You know why.”
The undercurrents between them heated as their gazes locked. He couldn’t have walked away from Alex if his ancestral home caught fire. He was close enough to see the brown fleck in her eye and it was oddly intimate. His attraction to her was ungodly strong and a colossal problem.
“You came for me?” he asked, but it wasn’t really a question. Her smile answered affirmatively anyway. “I’m flattered you’d put on an uncomfortable dress and wear makeup just for me.”
“Call it a rare burst of spontaneity. Totally unlike me. But hopefully worth it in the end.”
He almost groaned. She was killing him. Why couldn’t they be two normal people meeting at a party, with no agenda other than to spend time together? “I’m a fan of spontaneous women.”
Especially since he didn’t have nearly enough opportunity to indulge in spontaneity. It was the enemy of someone eyeing the presidency. His life consisted of carefully worded statements and planned appearances, strenuously vetted acquaintances and photo ops. The chances of, say, happening across an intriguing woman in a shadowy corner were nearly nil.
Yet here he was. They shared an inability to be spontaneous. Just this once, he wanted to indulge in spontaneity alongside her. Maybe they could be two people who met at a party and had fun with no expectations.
His grin widened. This was probably the most he’d smiled without being ordered to in...a long time. “Let’s do something totally impulsive, then. Dance with me.”
As vigorously as she shook her head, it was a wonder it didn’t roll off her neck. Brown, glossy strands floated from her hairdo, drifting down around her face. “I can’t dance with you in front of all these people.”
