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By the time Drago walked into his apartment, nearly half an hour later, he was no closer to understanding this strange pull Holly Craig had on him or why he was taking off in the middle of the day to do something he could have sent any number of assistants to do.
But when he strode into the living room and saw her on the floor with her baby, he got that same strange rush of warmth he’d had the first time. She looked up, her eyes wide and wounded, and his chest felt tight.
“Ciao, Holly,” he said, dropping his briefcase on a nearby table.
She smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “I didn’t expect to see you for hours,” she said.
He shrugged. “I am the boss. I make my own hours.”
She looked at her baby and smiled, only this time it was genuine. He tried not to let that bother him. “It must be nice,” she said, her voice a little higher and singsongy as she directed it at the baby.
“Indeed.”
The baby gurgled in response, his little lips spreading in a grin. Drago watched as he picked up a fuzzy toy cat and put the ear in his mouth. Drago had been around babies before, in the commune his mother had once dragged them to on some tiny island somewhere he’d tried to forget, but he’d never really had anything to do with them. The older children had been expected to take care of the babies while their parents worked in the vegetable gardens—and got high in the evenings—but Drago’s one major act of rebellion, before his mother had left the commune and tried to use him to get money from the Di Navarras again, had been to refuse to help with the babies.
Instead, he’d had to pick vegetables and hoe rows. He suppressed a shudder and folded himself into a nearby chair. Holly’s brows rose. And then she turned toward her baby and started to gather him up.
“Why don’t I take Nicky and get out of your way—”
“No. Stay.” She stiffened, and he sighed. “Please stay. I need to talk to you.”
She let the baby go and he threw the cat. Then he picked up a toy banana and started to chew on that.
“I’m all ears,” she said brightly, though her eyes were wary.
“Do you have a copy of his birth certificate?”
The color drained from her face. “Why?”
Drago felt there was something he was missing here, but he wasn’t quite sure what it could be. “For his passport. We have to take him to the passport office and apply in person, because he is a baby and it’s his first.”
She dropped her gaze. “All right,” she said quietly.
“Is his father named on the certificate?”
Her head snapped up again. There was definitely fear in those pretty blue eyes. A wave of violence washed over him. He wanted, more than anything in that moment, to make her feel safe from the bastard who’d abandoned her and her child.
“If he is, then he must approve of you taking the baby from the country,” he explained. “If not, it does not matter.”
Holly seemed to wilt as she shook her head. “No, he’s not named. He would have had to be there to sign it, and that wasn’t going to happen.”
Drago smiled to reassure her. “Good. Then you are safe. All will be well.”
“Yes, I—I suppose so.”
She turned to look at her baby, and his heart pinched. She loved the child so much. What would it have been like to have a mother who’d loved him that way? A mother who did everything for his benefit instead of for her own?
He would never know.
“There’s nothing to worry about, Holly,” he said. “Everything will be fine.”
“Of course,” she said. But she didn’t sound reassured.
CHAPTER EIGHT (#u7a4c4a26-b33e-537e-bdd9-bc5118cd1434)
EVERYTHING WAS NOT going to be fine. Holly sat in the limo with Drago, Nicky tucked into his carrier, as they whisked their way through the streets of New York City on the way to the passport office. In her bag, she had Nicky’s birth certificate and the forms she’d filled out for their passports.
She could still see the box that had made her heart drop to her toes: parents’ names. She’d filled in only her side, because in Louisiana a father had to sign the birth certificate in order to be named. Drago wasn’t on Nicky’s birth certificate. No one was.
Still, it made her nervous. What if the passport office wanted more information? What if Drago were sitting beside her when they demanded it? How would she answer? How could she?
Holly pressed a hand to her stomach and concentrated on breathing in and out. There was still no sign of a contract, and they were on their way to get passports. It could all fall apart here. She could find herself on a plane home in just a few hours.
She would never see Drago again. That thought twisted her belly tighter than before. The scent of her fear was sharp, like cold steel against her tongue. She tried to ignore it, tried to focus on the other scents in the car. Warm leather, soft powdery baby, sensuous man. She closed her eyes and savored that last one as if it would soon be gone.
“What’s the matter, Holly?”
She whipped around to look at Drago. His sharp gaze raked her. Belatedly, she smiled, trying to cover her distress. “Nothing at all.”
One eyebrow rose in that superior manner of his. “I don’t believe you.”
She clasped her hands together in her lap. “Believe what you like, but I’m fine.”
His frown didn’t go away. “Would it help you to know that my lawyers have finished drafting your contract?”
Her heart did a slow thump against her chest. The contract. If only she had that already signed, she wouldn’t worry as much. Wrong. Of course she would. Because she’d been lying to Drago from the moment he’d walked back into her life.
And, as she knew from bitter experience, he didn’t handle deception very well.
“Oh? That’s good.”
His brows drew down. “You don’t sound very enthused. Considering how insistent you’ve been, I find this rather odd.”
Holly swallowed. “I’m very enthused,” she said with false brightness. “What do you want from me? A happy dance right here in my seat?”
“Not precisely.”
She rolled her eyes, tried to play it off. “I’m happy, Drago. Ecstatic.”
He watched her a moment more. “Fine,” he said, before dropping his gaze to his tablet once more.
Holly turned to look out the window at the traffic, her heart thrumming. She had to tell him the truth. Not right now, certainly, but soon. It was the right thing to do, no matter how much it terrified her. Once she had the contract, once it made sense to do so, she would have to find a way.
Provided it didn’t all fall apart before she got that far.
The car pulled to a stop in front of a building on Hudson Street, and Drago opened the door. When they were standing on the sidewalk, Holly holding Nicky’s carrier, she looked over at Drago, who was getting the diaper bag from the limo.
“You can come back and get us,” she said. “I’ll call when I’m done.”
He looked imposing as he straightened to his full height and gazed down at her. He was dressed in a custom suit, navy blue, with a crisp white shirt and no tie. The pale blue diaper bag with the smiling monkey on it looked completely out of place against that elegant backdrop.
And yet he held it as though he could care less that the rich and entitled CEO of one of the most important cosmetics companies in the world might look just a little ridiculous. Or a little too appealing for a tabloid photo.
Holly cast her gaze up and down the street, but nobody with a camera emerged to snap a shot. Thank goodness.
“I’m going with you,” Drago said.
“I don’t see why,” she returned. “I can handle it alone. Or you could send a lackey. Surely you have work to do.”
“I have a cell phone and a tablet, Holly. I can work, I assure you.”
She tried to swallow down her fear. It tasted like bitter acid. “I won’t run away, Drago, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
A preposterous suggestion that he’d be worried about her leaving, but it was the only thing she could think of.
“Holly, for goodness’ sake, just turn around and walk into the building. We have an appointment and you’re going to make us late.”
She glared at him a moment more, her stomach dancing with butterflies—and then she heaved a sigh. “Fine, but don’t blame me if it takes six hours and you’re bored silly. I told you not to come.”
Thankfully, it did not take six hours. But Holly’s fear refused to abate while they waited. When they were finally shown into an office and it was time to hand over the paperwork, Holly snatched the diaper bag from Drago and fished out the papers with trembling hands. Then she handed them directly to the clerk.
The clerk was a typical bureaucrat, going over everything in triplicate. At one point, the woman looked up at Drago. He was flipping through files on his tablet and didn’t seem to notice, but Holly’s heart climbed into her throat as she waited for the woman to say something.
Then the clerk met Holly’s gaze for a long moment. Finally, she seemed to give a mental shrug, and the moment was over. A short while later, they were on their way back to Drago’s apartment, the passports safely tucked away in Holly’s purse.
Holly felt a little shell-shocked over the whole thing. When they arrived at Drago’s, she took Nicky and put him down for his nap. Then she climbed into bed and lay there, staring at the ceiling, her stomach still churning with guilt and fear. It wound its way through her belly, her bones, her heart, curling and squeezing until she thought she would choke on it.
She’d overcome another obstacle, gotten one step closer to the goal. Her luck was holding, but for how much longer?
She needed to tell Drago the truth before her luck ran out, but she was caught in an infinite loop of her own making. There was no scenario in which she could envision telling him and it not exploding in her face.
Once she signed the contract, she would tell him. Once she had the guarantee that she’d have money to take care of her baby, she could admit the truth. And then, even if he threw her out again when it was over, it would be fine. Everything would be fine.
But she couldn’t quite make herself believe it.
When Holly finally emerged from her room a couple of hours later, it was because she was hungry and couldn’t stay hidden any longer. She hoped that Drago would have gone out for the evening, so she didn’t have to face him right now, but of course nothing ever went the way she hoped.
He looked up as she tiptoed into the kitchen. Her stomach slid down to the marble floor and stayed there.
“I was just looking for something to eat,” she said casually.
“There’s Chinese takeout,” he said. “It’s in the warming drawer.”
She couldn’t help but look at him in surprise. “You eat Chinese takeout?”
He shrugged. “Doesn’t everyone?”
Not billionaires, she thought. She expected they ate lofty meals in the kinds of restaurants he’d taken her to the last time she was in New York. Or meals prepared at home by their personal chefs. Which he did happen to have.
“I figured that would be too, um, basic for you.”
He laughed and a trickle of warmth stirred inside her. She loved that laugh more than she should. He was sitting at the expansive kitchen island with papers arrayed around him and an open laptop off to one side. Just a tycoon and his paperwork. Quite a different picture from the one she usually made at her worn Formica table every month, trying to make too little money stretch too far.
Chinese takeout had been a luxury. And Gabi was usually the one who’d bought it, against Holly’s protests.
Save your money, Gabi. Don’t waste it on me.
It’s not a waste. Eat.
The memory of her and Gabi perched on the sofa in front of the television, eating from containers, made her feel wistful. And lonely.
“Holly, I’m a man like any other,” Drago said. “I like lobster and champagne, I like Kobe beef, I like truffles—but I also like Chinese takeout, hotdogs from a cart and gyros sliced fresh at a street fair.”
She very much doubted he was like other men. But the idea of him eating a hot dog he’d bought from one of the carts lining the city streets fanned the warmth inside her into a glow.
“Next you’ll be telling me you like funnel cakes and deep-fried candy bars.”
“Funnel cakes, yes. Candy bars, no.”
She pictured him tearing off bites of funnel cake, powdered sugar dusting his lips, and fresh butterflies swirled low in her belly. “Will wonders never cease?”
He grinned and then stood and walked over to the warming drawer. He wore faded jeans and a dark T-shirt, and his feet were bare. It was entirely too intimate and sexy, especially since the sky was dark and the city lights sparkled like diamonds tossed across the horizon.
She didn’t know why that made it more intimate, but it did.
Drago pulled open the drawer and took out several containers of food. “There’s a variety here. Mu shu pork, sweet-and-sour chicken, Mongolian beef, kung pao shrimp, black-pepper fish, lo mein, fried rice...”
Holly could only gape at him. “Gracious, was there a party tonight and I missed it?”
He shrugged, completely unselfconscious. “I didn’t know what you liked, so I ordered several different things.”
He set the containers on the counter, and Holly walked over to peer at the contents. Her stomach rumbled. It all looked—and smelled—wonderful. Drago set a plate and some wooden chopsticks on the counter.
“Thank you,” she said softly. And then, though it embarrassed her, “But I’ll need a fork.”
He pulled open a drawer and took out a variety of silverware—forks and spoons so she could dip out the food—and set them down without a word about her inability to use chopsticks. It was a silly thing, but she was ridiculously grateful that he didn’t tease her about it.
He walked back to his seat at the island, and Holly started to fill her plate. She thought about retreating to her room with the food, but he’d been so nice to order it all and she didn’t want to be rude.
Holly turned and set the plate on the island. But instead of sitting, she stood and dug her fork into the kung pao shrimp. The flavors exploded on her tongue—spice and tang and freshness. Far better than anything she’d ever had from the lone Chinese restaurant in New Hope, where everything was either hidden under too much breading or soaked in sauce.
“I have your contract here,” Drago said softly, and her belly clenched. “When you’re done, we’ll go over it.”
She wanted to shove the food away and see it now, but she forced herself to keep chewing. She’d been unable to eat breakfast or lunch and now she was starving. If she didn’t eat now, she didn’t know if she would be able to. Her nerves swirled and popped like ice dropped on a hot grill. She was so close to having security for her baby. So close.
She put the fork down. “I have to see it now,” she said. “I’ll never be able to wait.”
Drago frowned. “Only if you promise to keep eating,” he said, picking up a sheaf of papers from the pile next to him.
