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“Don’t I have enough problems?” Julia countered. “What am I supposed to do?”
Setting her ice cream down on the table in front of her, Amanda looked at her friend and said, “You’re the only one who can decide that, Jules. It’s your baby. Your life. What do you want to do?”
The answer to that question was easy and complicated in turns. She wanted her baby. But she was terrified of what would happen in the coming months.
Sighing, she said, “You know I always wanted kids.”
“True.”
“But I’d expected to be married first.”
“Naturally, but things don’t always go in order, either.”
“I want the baby,” Julia said. “But what happens when people find out about it?”
“Honey, this isn’t the fifties. Times have changed.”
“Times maybe,” Julia acknowledged. “But my family hasn’t. You know my parents.”
Amanda shuddered. “Good point. They wouldn’t exactly throw a party, would they.”
“To say the least.” She stopped for a moment and imagined having this little chat with her parents. She could almost feel their disapproval. Their shame. Their complete distaste for what she’d done and who she was.
The elder Prentices’ only concern was how things looked. If they found out their only child was pregnant and unmarried, they’d do everything they could to make her life a living hell. True, they couldn’t force her to get an abortion, but they’d surgically slice her out of their lives—and as bad as they were, they were her only family. Could she really stand being tossed aside?
Julia shivered and pushed those thoughts aside. “It’s not just my parents to consider, either. What about all the old-line charities I raise funds for? You think they’re going to appreciate the ‘unwed mother’ thing?”
“Your family will get over it,” Amanda said with more certainty than Julia felt. “As for the rest, you’ll deal with it as it comes.”
“Easier said than done.”
“If you want this baby,” Amanda said reasonably, “what choice do you have?”
By morning, Julia was still thinking about her friend’s question. All night long, she’d been plagued by nightmares. She could still feel the panic she’d experienced in her sleep as she’d run down long, dark streets, empty of people, but filled with shadows. She’d held her baby in her arms, and the infant’s wails had echoed off the buildings on either side of her. Rain stained the streets, and her frantic gaze couldn’t find a single person to help her.
To befriend her.
She shivered a little, shoved aside the remnants of the dream and cupped both hands around her mug of hot tea, hoping the heat would seep into her bones. She squinted into the bright spear of sunlight slanting in through the windows and told herself that dreams were not reality.
Besides, this was ridiculous, and she knew it. Here she was, twenty-eight years old, a college graduate, with a steady income, her own home and a select group of good friends. So she was pregnant and not married? What was the big deal? Other women faced this problem all the time. Why was she making such a mountain out of her own personal molehill?
“Are you that big a coward?” she asked herself and was half-afraid of the answer.
“Mail’s here.” Amanda strode into the breakfast room, dropped a stack of envelopes onto the table and headed for her bedroom. “I’ve got an appointment with a nervous bride in about an hour. Her prospective mother-in-law is trying to arrange the wedding her way. Hello, red flag, blushing bride! Run for the hills!” She shrugged, grinned and said, “Should be interesting.”
As an event planner, Amanda was always rushing to and from meetings with clients, suppliers and site committees. She was wearing a dark red business suit that looked amazing on her. As she walked away, she smiled over her shoulder and said, “Let me know if there’s anything in that stack for me.”
Julia dutifully flipped through the envelopes. Bills, circulars, party invitations…She stopped when she came to one without a stamp or postmark. It was addressed to Julia Prentice, but there was no street address on the envelope, only her name. Frowning, she broke the seal, took out the single sheet of paper and read the all-too-brief message.
Ms. Prentice—I know about your baby. If you don’t want the world to know, wire one million dollars to this Grand Cayman account. You have one week to comply.
There was an account number listed below the message, but obviously, no signature. A blackmail letter? Julia’s hands shook, then fisted on the single page of paper. Who was behind this? Someone in the building? Someone she thought of as a friend? Apart from herself, no one but Amanda and Max knew about the baby. Max didn’t believe her about it, and Amanda would never betray her.
So how had this…person found out? Had someone been listening at the Park Café? Had she been overheard despite her attempts to keep her conversation quiet? Concentrating, despite the rush of adrenaline inside her, she racked her brain, trying to remember the faces of the other patrons at the café the night before. But she couldn’t. She’d been too engrossed in her own thoughts. Too wrapped up in her own world and situation to take note of anyone else around her. And truth to tell, once Max had shown up, the building could have been on fire and she’d only have seen Max’s eyes.
“Oh, God.”
She dropped the letter to the table, slapped one hand to her mouth and fought for air as she suddenly found it hard to breathe. What was she going to do? She didn’t have the kind of disposable income that would allow her to pay out a million dollars in cash. And she couldn’t stand the thought of her private business being the subject of titillating gossip or speculation.
“Sweetie?” Amanda’s voice cut through the clamoring noise in her mind and Julia looked up through tear-glazed eyes at her friend. “What is it, Jules? What happened?”
Julia glanced at the letter and Amanda snatched it up and read it.
“Damn! Who would do something like—” She broke off and said, “Never mind. What are you going to do about this?”
“I don’t know.”
“You should go to the police, Jules.”
“What good would that do?” She shook her head and fought to think clearly, to fight down the panic already clawing through her. Her stomach was churning, her heart was pounding and her mouth was dry.
“Blackmail’s a crime.”
“I know that,” Julia said softly. “But what can the police do about it? Find the blackmailer? Would that stop whoever it is? They’d still leak my secret.”
“It won’t be a secret forever, sweetie,” Amanda reminded her gently. “People are going to find out you’re pregnant. It’s not really something you can hide.”
“Yes, but they’ll find out when I’m ready. Not when some malicious bastard decides to throw me to the gossip wolves. I can’t let my parents find out about this from reading it in the papers. And I can’t tell them myself yet, either.”
“So what are you going to do?”
Julia pushed up out of her chair, walked a few steps, then turned around to look at the other woman. “I can’t go to my parents with this. And I can’t pay the blackmail myself. There’s really only one thing I can do,” she said. “I have to go to Max.”
Max sat at his desk, trying to focus on the day’s activities. Keeping his finger on Wall Street’s pulse was the secret of his success. He had an innate ability to see which way the market would roll. To make his move before others had even considered the situation in front of them.
His reputation was such that his advice was taken as golden, and his rivals kept a close watch on him in hopes of getting the jump on him. Which hadn’t happened. Max enjoyed his work. Enjoyed being the best. He relished the swings, the ups and downs, of the market and delighted at defeating it, bending it to his own whims.
But today, he couldn’t focus. Couldn’t make himself care about oil prices or hog futures or any other damn thing on the screens. Today, all he could think of was Julia.
He hadn’t slept because his bed smelled of her. He closed his eyes and he could feel her body on his. His mind continued to dredge up image after image of her. Her blond hair mussed, tangled, her eyes soft and wide, or glittering with passion. Her mouth, full and delectable as she rose over him, took him inside.
The damn woman was haunting him.
He sat back in his office chair, swiveled it around to turn his back on the view of Manhattan and, instead, swept his gaze around his office. The room was big, the furniture was black, chrome and glass, and the atmosphere quietly successful. When he held meetings in here, this room was enough to put his adversaries on the defensive. This room said plainly that Max Rolland was a man to be taken seriously. With a lot of caution.
His world was exactly the way he’d always dreamed it would be. He had money. He had prestige. He had the whole city by the damn tail. What he didn’t have was a family. A son. An heir.
Jumping out of the black leather chair, he stalked across the room, poured himself a cup of coffee from the silver urn atop the wet bar and took a long sip while his thoughts raced. He’d married Camille, fully expecting to build the family dynasty he’d always planned on.
She’d had good bloodlines. She would have given his children the pedigree they deserved and he would have given them what they needed to excel in the world he’d wanted to hand down to them.
“Best-laid plans,” he muttered darkly, letting himself remember, however briefly, the look on Camille’s face the last time he’d seen her.
She’d looked at him with pity. With disgust. And her last words to him still echoed in his mind.
You can’t give me what I want, Max. A child. So I’m leaving you for someone who can.
He set his coffee cup down, shoved both hands into his pockets and rocked back on his heels. That was why he was so certain that Julia was lying to him about her pregnancy. He already knew he couldn’t have children. He was infertile. He’d let go of his dreams of building a family empire.
There was a brief knock at his office door, then it opened, and his assistant, Tom Doheny, poked his head around the edge of it. “Mr. Rolland? There’s a woman here to see you. A Ms. Prentice. She says it’s urgent.”
Max smiled and it couldn’t have been a pleasant one since Tom’s features tightened in response.
“Send her in.”
Four
Once she’d explained everything, Julia stopped talking, turned around and faced Max. She hadn’t been able to look at him while she told him about the blackmail letter. She couldn’t force herself to face him and admit that she didn’t have enough ready cash to pay the blackmailer what he/she wanted. And she really couldn’t bring herself to do exactly what she’d gone to him to do in the first place.
Ask for help.
Now, as she stared across the massive office to where he sat perched on the edge of his desk, long legs stretched out in front of him, feet crossed at the ankles, she took a breath and waited. Seconds ticked past, measured by the hard thump of her heartbeat. Her mouth was dry, her stomach was in knots, and looking into Max’s cool green eyes didn’t make her feel any better.
When the silence stretched on, Julia broke first. “Well? Aren’t you going to say anything?”
He folded his arms over his chest, cocked his head to one side and asked, “Why come to me with this?”
“Because it’s your baby I’m carrying,” she argued, and knew the moment she’d said the words it had been the wrong tack to take.
“Don’t start that again,” he said, lips so grimly compressed it was a wonder any words at all had escaped his mouth. “Let’s stick with the facts, shall we?” He pushed away from the desk and started to prowl the room.
Julia’s gaze fixed on him as he moved, his long legs making great strides, his footsteps soundless on the thick carpet. Diffused sunlight speared through the tinted windows, and the sounds of the city were so muted as to be nonexistent. It was as if she and Max were the only two people in the world.
How unfortunate that they weren’t friends.
“The way I see it,” he said, stalking the perimeter of the room, making her turn to keep him in sight, “you’re pregnant and you don’t want the world to know it just yet.”
“True.” Julia took a breath, held it for a second, then blew it out. “If this person makes good on his threat—” She broke off, unwilling to put into words the fears that had chased her since opening that damned envelope.
“You’ll be fodder for the gossips for months.”
“Years,” she corrected darkly. “My child would hear the whispers and I can’t let that happen.”
“Eventually, you’ll be faced with this problem, anyway,” he pointed out.
“I’ll think of something,” she said, hoping to convince herself, as well as Max. “But I can’t let this get out now. Not yet.”
“And the reason you’re not going to the father of this child?”
She glared at him. Did he honestly believe she was the kind of woman who would be pregnant with one man’s child while telling another that he was the father? His features were twisted into a sardonic smile that let her know it was exactly what he thought. “He won’t believe me,” she said.
“Ahh. So I’m not the only man in your life with a low tolerance for lies.”
She jerked as if he’d slapped her. What had she been thinking, coming to him? She’d deliberately walked into the lion’s den, asked him to open his mouth, then set her head inside it so she could allow him to bite it off!
“You know what?” Julia muttered, turning for the door. “This was a mistake. I see that now. Just…never mind. Forget I was here.”
He caught her before she could reach out and grab the doorknob. His grip on her upper arm was firm, unshakable. Still, she tried. When she failed, though, she lifted her gaze to his, gave him a glare that should have frozen him solid on the spot and said, “Let me go, Max.”
“I don’t think so.” Instead, he turned her around, steered her to his desk and gave her a gentle shove into one of the leather chairs. “We’re not through talking.”
She tilted her head back to give him another dirty look. “Oh, I think we’ve said everything there is to say.”
“Well, you’re wrong,” he told her, and sat down in the chair beside hers. Bracing both elbows on his knees, he locked his gaze with hers and said, “Bottom line it for me, Julia. Why’d you come to me?”
Her posture got even straighter, if possible. Her chin lifted and she gathered up what little dignity she had left and wrapped it around her as if it were an ermine cloak. “I don’t have enough readily available cash to pay this person. I thought maybe you could loan it to me.” When he didn’t say anything to that, she hurriedly added, “I’ll pay you whatever interest you think is fair and—”
“No.”
She blinked at him. “That’s it? Just ‘no’?”
“Paying a blackmailer’s never a good idea.” He sat back in his chair, propped his right foot on his left knee and idly tapped his fingertips against the arm of the chair. “You think a million will satisfy this person? No. Once you pay, you’ll be forced to keep paying.”
“Oh, God.” Perfect posture forgotten, Julia slumped into her own chair. How had this happened? Who was behind this and why? What had she ever done to make someone act so viciously? And what was she going to do?
“The way I see it,” Max said softly, as if plotting out a response even as he spoke, “your only choice here is to make your secret not worth telling.”
“Excuse me?” Julia looked at him. His green eyes were narrowed, his strong, hard jaw tight and his mouth hardly more than a grim line. This was not a man to take lightly. This was the face of the man who’d taken Wall Street by storm. A modern-day warrior who’d slain his would-be competitors by leaving their financial bodies littered in his wake.
This was Max Rolland.
The unstoppable force behind Rolland Enterprises.
And Julia had the distinct feeling she was about to find out firsthand what it was like to have Max the Marauder going into battle on her behalf.
“All you have to do is marry me.”
Did he actually say those words?
She couldn’t be sure. It was as if the whole world had suddenly stopped and tilted weirdly on its axis. If there was one thing she hadn’t expected, it was a proposal.
“Are you—Did you—Why would you—” Not a good sign. She couldn’t even string a complete sentence together.
He smiled at her and the smile was cold and calculating and didn’t even approach his eyes. “Surprised?”
“Uh…yes,” she admitted. “That would be a good way to put it.”
“You shouldn’t be.” Standing up again, Max moved to the wet bar across the room, poured himself a cup of coffee and then asked, “You?”
