“I care about you, Savvy. I care about you more than I thought it was possible to care about another person,” he said when she didn’t speak after several tense moments.#p#分页标题#e#
“That’s … that’s impossible,” she said, and she looked as if she were ready to tuck tail and run.
He wasn’t allowing that. He strode forward and grabbed her arm, pulling her into the office. Once the two of them were at his desk, he leaned against it and slung his arms around her, trapping her against him.
“Yes, it’s not only possible, but true. I care about you enough, my sweet Savannah, to change my own goals in life.”
She was breathing heavily as she looked up at him. He could see she was trying to determine whether she could believe him or not.
“Ashton, this is insane. We barely know each other. It’s just a fling. Or it was.”
“Are you trying to convince me of that, Savvy, or convince yourself?”
She stood stiffly against him, but he rubbed his hands along her back and felt immense pride when she began to relax.
“I don’t care if you want to admit it or not, Savvy. Okay, I do care. And you have to admit that you care about me, too. What we have is special, and I’m not willing or able to give you up. And I don’t think you can walk away from me.” He leaned closer, his lips only a breath away from hers.
“But … the problems,” she said.
He noticed she didn’t actually use the word children in her stilted sentence.
“We can just be together right now, and the rest we’ll figure out,” he told her.
Tears sprang to her eyes and they filled with hope. It was all he needed to see. He barely had to move to connect their lips, and instant fire and comfort filled him when she reached up for him. She’d missed him as much as he’d missed her.
They truly were meant to be together.
“Would you mind taking your sleazy little hands off my future husband?”
The room went deathly silent as Ashton looked up to find Kalli in his doorway, and she was holding something between two of her well-manicured fingers. He was too stunned and then too pissed to be able to utter a single word.
“Haven’t we been here before, darling?” Kalli said. “You with your hands on the cleaning staff while I’m standing like a fool in the doorway? Have you grown addicted to the smell of bleach?”
Ashton found his voice at last. “What are you doing here, Kallista? I’m not in the mood to deal with you right now.”
“Of course you aren’t, darling. Not when you have your tongue halfway down this slut’s throat,” the woman said. “Haven’t you learned by now not to fraternize with the hired help? They have no manners and they don’t know how to behave in society. It’s a recipe for embarrassment. I guess we all have to dabble in lukewarm water once in a while, though, just to get it out of our system.” She moved a short way toward the two of them.
“Get the hell out of my office,” Ashton growled. Savvy, who wasn’t saying a word, pulled away from his arms, making him even angrier. How had he ever thought to marry the “high-class” bitch who was now invading their privacy? He took a determined step toward his ex-fiancée.
“Be careful, darling,” Kalli said. “You wouldn’t want to upset me too terribly. It might harm our child.”
He stopped moving; she took what she was holding and waved it high in the air. Savvy gasped from behind him, and he realized that what Kalli was brandishing must have some sort of significance. He took a good long look.
“Is that an ultrasound?” he asked, and he suddenly grew weak at the knees.
“It certainly is, my love. I knew you’d want proof I was carrying.”#p#分页标题#e#
And then Kalli was placing that photograph into his hands. But he couldn’t focus on the image in front of him, not for the life of him. Or for the life of …
“Here, let me point out the little head,” Kalli told him a little too smugly. Then he heard words but not full sentences from this woman, the blue-blood hussy who had managed to get his ring on her finger before he’d wised up.
“… healthy pregnancy … low blood pressure … ten weeks along …”
There was so much buzzing in his ears that he could barely process what she was saying to him.
“How?” He hadn’t slept with her in … crap! In about ten weeks.
“If I need to explain the birds and the bees to you, Ashton, you couldn’t have been very active with your little low-class floozy for the past couple of months.”