The Boss's Baby Affair(23)
“Don’t get impatient with me.” She picked her bag up and stalked toward the archway leading to the lobby. “I’m off. If you want my opinion—which you clearly don’t—I think you should have that DNA test done. It’s the only way you’re going to know whether Candace is telling the truth or not.”
Nick spared a glare for the woman who’d caused all the trouble. To his great annoyance, Jennie had snuggled up against Candace and was resting her cheek against the black T-shirt she wore. The pair looked like a modern take on Madonna and Child. Nick gnashed his teeth. “Of course Candace isn’t telling the truth—and I’ve got Jennie’s birth certificate listing me and Jilly as her parents to prove it.” But Alison had already left.
“DNA doesn’t lie.” Candace spoke into the silence that simmered after his sister’s departure. “A birth certificate can be tampered with.”
Annoyance rose within Nick. “Are you accusing me of tampering with the system?”
Candace muttered something about money talking, and Nick could feel his anger growing. She was boxing him into a corner, forcing him into a place where he was going to have to agree to the test to expose her as a fraud.
Yet watching her, her head bent over the baby’s, caused his anger to dissipate. Only the raw throb of betrayal remained. He wanted her…hell, he’d been growing to like her. The combination had been so seductively powerful, so consuming, he’d been ready to open himself to her…more than he ever had to any other woman.
A sense of emptiness filled him. Why had she done it? Candace didn’t appear unstable. In fact, she seemed heart-wrenchingly attached to Jennie. Nick abandoned his musing. What did it matter what her motivation was?
The test would prove her a liar. Conclusively. And then he would sever all ties with no looking back.
The house was still when the darkness of midnight was broken by the silver streak of light pouring through the crack of the opening door.
Nick moved restlessly.
She came to him, floating soundlessly across the carpet like a wraith in the night. He shifted, and miraculously she was beside him, naked, eager. Her mouth covered his. Hunger rose swift and sharp. He needed this. And she understood.
He took her mouth, plundered it. His fingers sank into her shoulders, holding her captive. She shifted against him with one of those little catlike moves he’d seen her do, and his body went crazy.
He forgot how long it had been…
He forgot that she was a fraud he was determined to expose. He forgot everything except that he had a woman in his bed, a woman he wanted with an unfamiliar desperation.
She twisted beneath him. A silent lover, no sighs or moans split the night. Her legs tangled with his. He grasped her thighs, pushed them apart and sank between them into the moist, waiting heat of her.
His spine arched, his body driving.
Gasping, Nick opened his eyes, blind to everything except the excruciating need that pumped through him as his seed spilled.
A band of bright light fell across the bed from the open door of the en suite. Nick tensed. He reached out a hand. The bed was empty. He groped further, his fingers encountering cool, smooth sheets. Not fabric rumpled by passion.
Where the hell had she gone?
He rolled over onto his stomach, burying his face in the silk fabric, his sleep-numbed brain trying to make sense of what the hell had happened. The sheet smelled of soap and lavender; no hint of her spicy, slightly exotic fragrance lingered. The only softness a plump abandoned feather pillow, damp and crumpled.
He swore viciously.
More asleep than awake, he swung his legs out and stumbled from the bed to the bathroom. In the shower cubicle, he turned the faucets on and let the force of the cold water crash over his overheated body.
He refused to yield to the desire that still raged through him. He told himself it had all been an illusion, nothing but a cruel trick played on him by his starved libido. No woman could ever be as good as a man’s desperate fantasy.
Not even Candace…
Six
His arms folded behind his head, Nick leaned back in the leather chair behind the walnut desk in the study that was his only retreat in a house Jilly had created and furnished with help from an expensive design team. It was Tuesday evening, and Candace was still living in his home.
He hadn’t figured out what her motivation was for lying about being Jennie’s mother—nor had she given up on her insistence that she was.
The other thing that hadn’t changed was that he still craved her with a hunger that made absolutely no sense. Nick couldn’t believe he was fantasizing about a woman whom he should be kicking out.
The past few days had been hell.