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Much as Aidan wanted to remember the place as it had seemed to him in his childhood—warm, inviting, almost magical—he couldn’t help recalling that this was where Simone DeRosier had been murdered.
And now he was supposed to vacation here. To relax. Just because his office staff thought he was overstressed from too much work.
He jumped out of the convertible without opening the door, then went round to the back and removed his luggage from the trunk. He paused and glanced farther down the road to Pebble Beach. Wooden stairs led from a modest parking lot to a naturally protected cove. He remembered summer nights sitting by a bonfire on the beach, then later strolling along the boardwalk that led all the way back to town. He, Harrison, Emerson, Gabe and Jennifer had had a lot of fun in those pre-Simone days.
Aidan hefted an expansive duffel bag over his shoulder, then had another cursory glance at the rental car parked next to the driveway. Must be someone visiting the yoga studio across the road. He dug Harrison’s key out of his jeans pocket and headed for the front door.
Last time he’d been on the island—about a year ago— Harrison had been in residence. He’d been investigating the circumstances of Simone’s death, and then, along the way, he’d fallen in love with his real estate agent, Justine Melbourne. No one had been more surprised than Aidan when Harrison and Justine succeeded in proving Simone’s death had not been suicide, but murder.
Harrison could be fiercely tenacious when he wanted something. Like this stupid holiday idea. Harrison had all but packed Aidan’s bags and filled his car with gas, he’d been that anxious to get his friend out of the office in Seattle. Just because Aidan had called Harrison while he was sleeping with a great idea for a merger target.
“It’s three o’clock in the morning, Aidan. You need to get a life.”
But it had been a great idea….
Never mind, maybe he had been guilty of overworking this last little while. But he had to, didn’t he? Otherwise, if he weren’t careful, he’d be thinking about things that were better forgotten.
Aidan dropped his bag to the porch floor. The wooden boards looked freshly stained. The entire property was well-maintained. He glanced back at his car, wondering if he should put up the roof. But the clear sky held no hint of a summer storm.
What had brought him back to this place for his holiday? Sure Harrison had offered the use of his house, but money wasn’t an object—Aidan could have traveled anywhere in the world. It was almost as if he couldn’t stay away, as if the island had laid a claim on him, a claim that had to be settled.
Gloomy thoughts, man. You’re supposed to be on holiday, remember?
He inserted his key into the lock, then pushed the door open. Immediately, he was accosted by an acrid smell. A second later, a loud crash sounded from the back of the house where the kitchen was.
What the hell? Harrison had told him a cleaning crew would have the place stocked and ready for his arrival, but this couldn’t be them, could it?
And then it hit him. The driver of that rental car wasn’t at the yoga studio, after all.
RAE CORDELL HAD READ the instructions on the plastic wrapper that was now lying on the counter. It wasn’t that complicated. “Remove from packaging and place loaf on a cookie sheet in a prewarmed 325 degree oven. Bake for thirty to thirty-five minutes, until the bread is golden brown and sounds hollow when tapped.”
Yes, it had all sounded very simple. But Rae knew that if anyone could screw up baking a loaf of oven-ready bread, it would be her.
She peeked in the oven, and the yeasty aroma that greeted her made her gag. Oh, God. She had to get to a washroom. Quick.
Just hours ago, she’d been craving a slice of thick bread, slathered in butter. Now, the scent of the baking dough made her ill.
Rae kneeled over the toilet, and when she was done, mopped off her face and then checked her reflection in the mirror above the sink.
What was wrong with her? Why couldn’t she do the things that seemed to come to other women so easily? Like cooking. And being pregnant.
Everyone knew morning sickness ended after the first trimester. Yet here she was, well into her eighth month. And the nausea still struck without warning and often at the most inopportune times. Like during Thursday afternoon staff meetings. And business dinners with important financiers. No wonder she’d been invited to take an expenses-paid vacation until the baby was born.
Oh, Harrison’s wife had been very sweet on the phone. Justine had said that since she and her husband were planning to spend August in Seattle, their summer home would be vacant. Why didn’t Rae take the opportunity and allow herself a well-deserved vacation?
Justine’s suggestion had been echoed by the executive assistant who worked under Rae at the Pittsburgh office of Kincaid Communications. The human relations director in Seattle had called for a “personal chat” and so had the VPs for Finance and Marketing. In fact, Rae had heard from almost everyone at the corporation except for the one person who really counted: her direct boss, acting CEO Aidan Wythe.
Rae placed her hands awkwardly over the huge mound of her abdomen. The man who got me in this predicament in the first place.
Her pregnancy had been common knowledge for at least the past three months—it wasn’t the sort of news one could hide forever—and she’d spent weeks dreading the prospect of hearing from him. But he hadn’t come to the Pittsburgh office in all that time. He hadn’t even called. Finally, it dawned on her that he didn’t intend to face up to the situation. Knowing men, Rae figured that he’d probably convinced himself someone else was the father.
Well, Rae had no interest in dissuading him of that notion. In fact, the more she reflected on her situation, the more she came to think that Aidan’s disinterest worked perfectly with her own plans.
This way, she didn’t need to consider anyone’s needs but hers and the baby’s.
The timer on the oven sounded again, and Rae was forced to head back to the kitchen. As soon as she stepped out of the bathroom, she knew something was wrong.
The bread was burning. She ran to the oven, slipped on oven mitts and opened the door. The top of the loaf was scorched black. As she pulled it out, her thumb pressed through a worn spot on the oven mitt.
Yikes! She dropped the pan and it clattered loudly against the granite-topped counter. It was in the ensuing silence that she heard the footsteps. Someone was in the house and heading her way.
Rae knew she’d locked the door after her morning walk. Was she about to be robbed? Raped? She reached for the hot pan, ready to hurl it if she had to. As she closed her gloved hands over her improvised weapon, a man stepped into the kitchen.
“Oh!” She stifled her scream at the moment of recognition. Damn it, this wasn’t possible, was it? Separated from her by a ten-foot, granite-topped island, Aidan Wythe looked almost as startled as Rae felt.
“Aidan?” She spoke the name as if his identity might be in doubt, but of course it wasn’t. Damn him, he looked good—even with windblown hair, and dressed in a casual T-shirt and jeans rather than his usual Armani suit and tie.
Oh, my Lord.
She dropped the pan to the countertop for the second time. Fighting an urge to run from the room, she gripped the counter for balance.
Why wasn’t he saying anything? What was he doing here? Rae swallowed, and drew in a long breath. The staccato pounding of her heart made her feel as if she’d just run up a long flight of stairs.
“This can’t be happening.” She closed her eyes, then opened them, hoping this apparition would disappear. Big surprise—it didn’t.
Aidan crossed his arms. Frowned. “What are you doing here?”
“Shouldn’t that be my line?” Must be the baby she was carrying, but she was having a hard time catching her breath. She leaned a little harder against the counter, trying not to wish that she looked slightly more presentable.
She was still flushed from her morning walk, and she hadn’t changed from the baggy T-shirt and shorts that she wore for exercise. Surely no one expected an extremely pregnant woman to look that good, anyway.
Not that it mattered. This was Aidan Wythe. The man she’d thought was so different…so sensitive, so deep. And he’d turned out to be the biggest jerk of all.
“Harrison told me his house was vacant for the month of August.” As Aidan spoke, his gaze raked over Rae, and she could almost hear him listing all the flaws he must be seeing. Messy hair that hadn’t been washed in days, no makeup, terrible clothes.
Whereas Aidan looked…absolutely delicious. More handsome than ever, not to mention calm and collected, even though—as Rae now understood—he hadn’t expected to see her here, either.
Well, that explained one mystery. She should have known he wouldn’t have been looking for her.
“Funny,” she said. “That’s exactly what Justine told me.”
Aidan blinked, surprise registering in his enigmatic, dark eyes. Finally, he broke the visual connection and crossed the room to the windows. The Pacific Ocean, deceptively calm on this late-summer day, dominated the view through all three picture windows that ran the length of the combined kitchen and dining area.
Rae stayed where she was, watching him push his hands into the pockets of his jeans, and trying not to admire the way the dark denim outlined slim hips, long legs, tight ass.
Ah, hell, it wasn’t fair. Aidan had never looked better. Shouldn’t men like him come marked in some way to warn innocent women of the potential danger? He hadn’t asked her how she was feeling, hadn’t even acknowledged the fact that she was pregnant. He really was a cad.
Now she glanced at the spot where he’d been standing earlier and saw a very large duffel bag. And suddenly the ramifications of the problem before them increased significantly.
“You came here for a vacation?”
“Yes.” He swung round to face her again. “How long are you planning to stay?”
Rae looked at him, incredulous. He had to be the most self-centered man on the planet. “Why, until the baby’s born, of course.”
Aidan’s hands dropped to his side. His face went blank. “Baby?”
Stepping out from behind the island, Rae rounded her hands over her large belly. Good grief, his face. It was almost as if…
“Oh, my God. Rae, why didn’t you tell me?”
CHAPTER TWO
“YOU DIDN’T KNOW?” Rae’s voice, usually so strong and confident, gave out in a squeak at the end of her question.
Aidan couldn’t find the words to answer her. He was in shock. Her belly was huge. Enormous. She looked as though she was ready to pop at any second. He tore his gaze from her middle and gave the rest of her a closer look. In contrast with her belly, her arms and legs seemed abnormally skinny. Once, she’d had curves in all the right places. Now, her curves were definitely in all the wrong places.
“Rae, when did this happen?”
She placed her hands, covered in quilted oven mitts, on her hips. “You know damn well when it happened. Eight months ago, in that stupid hotel room in Philadelphia where we were supposed to be preparing our presentation for the Triumph merger.”
He covered his face with one hand. Groaned. Eight months… Yes, that took them right back to the night he’d spent with her. He’d known then that he was making a mistake. But he’d had no idea just what a whopper it would turn out to be.
“Why haven’t I heard about this? You never called.”
Her gaze focused in on him like a laser beam. “You made it perfectly clear my calls weren’t welcome when you banished me to Pittsburgh.”
“Banished? That was a promotion, Rae.” Holding out his hand, he ticked off the reasons on his fingers. “You got more money, more responsibility, a step up the corporate ladder.”
Rae shook her head, releasing more strands of wild, dark hair from her loose ponytail. “Sure, Aidan. And you didn’t have to go to work every day and face the woman you’d made the mistake of sleeping with. Be honest and admit the truth. You sent me to Pittsburgh to get rid of me.”
Her words infuriated him and he had to struggle to reply calmly. “Not true.”
“If you weren’t trying to avoid me, then why did you stop making monthly visits to Pittsburgh once I was made divisional VP?”
“I trusted you to handle the job.”
“Oh, really? And the switch from the conference phone calls you used to make to divisional VPs to group e-mails—that must have been another example of your great trust? It wasn’t because you didn’t want to hear the sound of my voice?”
“You’re reading too much into all that. And forgetting how busy I’ve been, with Harrison out of the office so much….”
Since he’d married Justine, Harrison had started working eleven months of the year from here on Summer Island. It had fallen on Aidan, who’d been promoted and given a huge raise, to fill in the gaps.
“Right.” She looked at him scornfully. “You’ve been busy. You haven’t been avoiding face time with the employee you screwed. And when I say ‘screwed,’ of course I’m speaking literally and figuratively.”
Aidan paced to the far corner of the room. He needed space to think. He needed to be calm and rational. But every time he looked at Rae’s enormous belly he felt as if he was about to have a panic attack.
Focus on something else for a minute. In front of him, the Kincaid china cabinet was filled with French Provincial serving dishes, teapots, ornaments. He felt like smashing the lot of them.
So much for calm and rational.
He turned to face Rae again. “What were you expecting me to do? We shouldn’t have slept together. It was a mistake and we both should have known better.” He let out a huge sigh of exasperation. “Because of my position of authority, I recognize that I shoulder the majority of the blame.”
She blinked and her head jerked back a little, as if he’d slapped her.
What had he said wrong this time? Surely she couldn’t deny that what they’d done had been ill-advised, to say the very least.
“Look, we’re two ambitious people, who in a moment of weakness…” He paused, remembering that moment of weakness, and how truly incredible it had seemed at the time. That night he’d wanted her so badly that he hadn’t cared about consequences. About any consequences. For the first time in his life he’d been so carried away that he hadn’t used a condom.
He hadn’t even asked if she was protected. Which, clearly, she hadn’t been.
“Rae, even if you think I’m the biggest jerk in the world…”
“Sounds about right.”
He decided to ignore that. “I still deserved to be told you were pregnant.”
“Really? Why?”
Her answer stunned him. “Because I’m the father.”
“So what? You contributed the sperm. Big deal.” With her hands still covered in protective mitts, she picked up the pan and tipped the loaf of bread on it into the trash. “This smell is making me sick. Or maybe it’s you. I’m not sure.”
Fighting words, again. But throwing insults back and forth wasn’t accomplishing anything. Aidan tried to see her side of the situation. “You’ve been through a lot. Maybe you’ve got reason to be upset with me. But at least you could have told me. Given me a chance.”
“A chance to do what, Aidan? Marry me?” She took off the oven mitts. Tossed them to the counter, as if she were issuing some kind of challenge.
“Is that what you want?” he asked quietly.
“Jesus, Aidan!” she exploded again. “I don’t even like you anymore. Why would I want to marry you?”
Okay, that hurt. But why? Wasn’t this exactly the real reason he’d sent her away? So that their feelings for each other might cool to a point where they’d be able to continue their professional relationship without the risk of messy emotional entanglement?
“As the father, I have responsibilities. At the very minimum, there will be support payments.” He pictured years and years of tidy monthly bills, and the thought of this obligation—which he was certainly capable of following through on—calmed him somewhat.
Rae crossed to the closest of the windows and opened it, allowing a fresh breeze into the room. Leaning her forehead against the frame, she fixed her attention on the ocean.
For a moment, Aidan admired the beauty of the woman. Rae had strong, compelling features, with thick, dark hair, rosy cheeks and a lush, wide mouth. Since the day he’d met her, he’d been attracted to Rae. Then, she’d been lean and fit, with small, high breasts and a curvy bottom he couldn’t tear his gaze from. Now, he was surprised to find that her new shape held a certain fascination for him, too.
He was so focused on the picture she made, outlined against the bright sunlight outside, that he almost missed her next words.
“This baby won’t need your support payments, Aidan.”
He took a moment to process that. “I know you earn a good living and you’re capable of handling everything on your own. But I can’t let you. It isn’t right. I’ll pay my share. And I want to be involved in other ways, too.”
That last bit startled him, as much as it obviously surprised Rae. She turned to him, her dark eyes narrowing skeptically.
When had he decided he wanted to be a father in a real sense? Aidan didn’t know. But it was true. He wasn’t going to walk away from this responsibility, no matter how much he didn’t want it.
