Having the Billionaire's Baby(5)

However, what he did spy on the receptionist's desk was an invitation to   an awards ceremony taking place that evening. He recalled Melody   telling him earlier about the New Zealand PR campaign for their wines   being nominated for an award, and how she wouldn't be able to go,   because she'd only just be back from the honeymoon. He considered his   evening ahead. He could reshuffle a few things.



In the glittering banquet hall, Nick talked easily to acquaintances from   the hotel and wine industry as he scanned the room. Even if, as he   suspected, Melody was overreacting, the evening wouldn't be a total   waste of time. He'd picked up some useful pieces of information and made   contact with several colleagues he hadn't seen in a while. One of them   had pointed out Kelly Jamieson, seated at a table with her back to  him.  Glossy brown hair was pulled into an elegant twist at the back of  her  head. She wore a high-necked, slim-fitting gown of a dazzling  electric  blue. There was something familiar about the tilt of her head,  and the  pale creamy shoulders.

Nick blocked the thoughts and concentrated on the business at hand. All   he needed was to talk to Ms. Jamieson and assess her intentions. As he   started toward her, the woman turned her head and he caught a glance of   her profile, long lashes, high cheekbones and a jaw with a hint of   defiance.

Not Kelly, but Callie, Calypso.

He couldn't name the feeling that slammed into him. In the first unguarded instant it was almost something triumphant.

He'd found her.

But after that brief, shimmering moment, triumph turned to doubt and a   sharp sense of betrayal. He paused. Relegating emotion, he sorted   through the facts. This was the woman Mel suspected of interfering in   her marriage. The same woman who had slept with him at Mel's wedding and   then disappeared. A woman who had given him a name that, if not  exactly  false, didn't seem to be the name she was known by.

What if Mel's concerns weren't unfounded? What if she had slept with him   to get at his sister or Jason? He had to at least consider the   possibility.

Callie sat at the large round table, idly spinning the stem of her empty   wineglass between thumb and forefinger as she listened to Robert from   Harvey PR explain in detail the campaign his company had been nominated   for.

She tried to be attentive, but couldn't help her relief when finally the   MC, a moonlighting television presenter, stood behind the podium and   gradually the conversation died away. The chair on her right was pulled   out and she glanced up at the tall figure beside her. As the MC began   his introduction the breath stalled in her lungs.

"Nick." His name passed her lips on an exhalation that left her feeling winded.

Over the last month she'd constantly tried, and failed, to stop thinking   about him. Seizing the day-or night-had seemed such a good idea at the   time. And a spectacularly bad idea in the dim light of an early Sydney   morning.

"Calypso." He sat easily in the chair next to her, smiled a greeting to   the others at the table before turning back to her. His gaze met hers.   For long seconds she could only stare. Her heart and her head vied for   control of her reaction.

She looked into the green depths of his eyes and saw … nothing, not the   warmth she remembered, no surprise, either. He was studying her, looking   for something, but she couldn't tell what. "You left early the morning   after the wedding."

Early and fast. She'd practically sprinted from the room after seeing   his business card. She lifted her chin, didn't want him to see her   turmoil. "I had a plane to catch."

"Of course." He agreed easily. And yet, despite the outwardly relaxed manner, she had the feeling he was anything but.

She hadn't once seen him in her three years working with the Cypress   Rise account, and she'd fervently hoped that trend would continue. All   she wanted was to be able to put him out of her mind. As she looked at   him now, she was forced to accept that things just weren't going her way   lately.

It also didn't help that for the last couple of weeks she'd been working   on the Jazz and Art festival she was organizing for Cypress Rise. In   fact, with the account so to the fore of her workload, she'd actually   congratulated herself for pausing only occasionally to bang her head on   her desk and mutter, What was I thinking?                       
       
           



       

She took a deep and supposedly calming breath. "I wasn't expecting to see anyone from Cypress Rise here. Melody said-"

"That she couldn't make it. Fortunately, I could."

"Fortunately." She tried and failed to imbue the word with sincerity.

His gaze flicked over her before coming back to her face. "You're   looking very demure tonight." The softly spoken words contrasted   dramatically with the cool gaze. "Though I think I preferred the   siren-red, with the low neck and that delectable thigh-high split in the   side."

This was no wistful recollection. She looked at him, confused by his thinly veiled accusation. Where was he going with this?

"And your hair. I liked it loose against your shoulders." For a moment   the sharp gaze softened. "I liked the way it brushed across-"

"This is a business function." Callie said quickly before he could call to mind images that had no place here.

He straightened. "As opposed to a seduction?"

Her confusion deepened. "Surely, you're not suggesting that-"

"I'm not suggesting anything. Just curious."

"About?"



"Several things. Your name, for instance. Everybody else seems to know you by Callie."

"It's Calypso, but I don't always use the full version." Why was she   feeling that she had to defend herself for using her own name?

"Ahh." The river-green eyes were narrowed. Strange how, at the wedding,   those eyes had seemed full of promise and passion. If there was promise   there now, it was not of good things to come.

"We'd toasted freedom." She gave in to the urge to explain. "Calypso felt right for … then."

His face advertised his disbelief. Was she being accused of both   seducing and deceiving him? Callie's spine stiffened. She lowered her   voice. "Over the last few weeks I've engaged in plenty of   self-recrimination for my lapse in judgment that night. And though I'm   happy to heap blame on myself, I'm not going to let you do it, because   there were two of us in that room-equal partners." The sense of equality   in itself, something she hadn't felt before in the bedroom, had been   liberating. But it wasn't something she wanted to dwell on now.

A waiter came to stand at her shoulder, offering to fill her glass. She   nodded acceptance, though she seldom drank. Jason and Melody's wedding   being a notable exception. Still, the wine was a Cypress Rise vintage,   and she'd scored something of a coup in getting it served tonight.

The MC finished a joke about the PR and advertising business and   good-natured laughter filled the room. Callie hadn't heard a word of it.

Nick leaned in, his face so close she could almost count the dark, spiky   lashes framing his accusing eyes. "It's not equal if one person has  far  more information than the other, and if that person chooses to  withhold  it."

She held that gaze. To think she'd once imagined a connection with this   man. The cold reality was that he was a complete stranger. "I withheld   no more than you did."

"You're saying you didn't know who I was?"

She leaned in, too, matching his stance while she made her point. "Not till the next morning, when I saw your business card."

"Despite the speeches?"

A strange heat built, as neither of them backed away or broke the   contact of their gaze. Callie desperately wanted to attribute the heat   to anger. "Most of which I missed." To avoid Jason's uncle and his   unavuncular patting of her thigh.

"I was in the wedding party."

She fought the distraction of the familiar, masculine scent of his   cologne. "There being so few of you in the wedding party, and the   resemblance between you and your sister being so striking." Nick,   olive-skinned and over six feet tall, looked nothing like petite, blond   Melody. He gave a single, slow nod of his head. He seemed to be   acknowledging, if not exactly buying, her point.

"I can't think why you're so reluctant to believe me. Aside from   anything else I would never have … a relationship-" what else could she   call it "-of that kind with a client."