The Cowboy's Baby(35)

He was a successful billionaire who had been with the perfect woman. And honestly, in Alyssa’s mind, the price of being that woman had been extraordinarily low where he was concerned.

But then, he’d had to ruin everything.

When the man had first started babbling about the damn baby, she’d ignored it. She’d never really wanted any children of her own, though she was willing to be a kept stepmother for the right price. She’d thought it was just a passing fancy, and so she hadn’t paid Daniel’s pleas any mind.

But then he’d become incessant. Bugging her every day, every hour, about wanting a kid – about defiling her body for his own impending sense of doom. Christ, wasn’t it enough that the man wanted to fuck every time she turned around? While it had been thrilling at first, she’d quickly tired of his wanting to have his way with her at his whim. She had a life too, which he had a tendency to forget.

Ultimately, she’d agreed to his request – if for nothing more than to get him to shut up. She supposed that as long as she didn’t have to ruin her body for the sake of the brat, it wouldn’t be a big deal. She’d just hand it over to him the moment it was born anyway – wasn’t that what he wanted?

Maybe if it was a girl, she’d have the opportunity to dress the kid up and show it off to her friends, but that was pretty much the level of involvement she wanted. After all, the child would be Daniel’s, not hers. He was the one who wanted it.

And everything would have been fine if he hadn’t picked the wrong goddam surrogate.

From the moment Alyssa had caught sight of the picture, she’d been suspicious. Daniel attested that he’d chosen her for her impeccable health record, because she was unattached and independent…

She knew why he had chosen the bitch. Because she was a pretty face and supposedly had a relatively high IQ. She didn’t know what he saw in the woman, but the moment they’d met, Alyssa knew he wanted to plant his seed in a more carnal way.

She’d caught him looking before, and thank God she’d always been there to steer him back in the right direction. Now, he thought he could get smart with her. He thought he could be alone with the woman, claiming it was only for the brat’s sake, and let the fucking surrogate supplant her?

Well, Alyssa had sure showed him exactly how she’d felt about that notion.

The problem was, upon walking out, she realized just how much she’d come to depend on the man. Used to a certain standard of living, she’d run out of the money she’d saved in just a few short weeks and now had few places left to turn. She didn’t dare tell her mother that she was broke now – in the elder woman’s mind, Alyssa was the future Mrs. Daniel Hartford – even though Alyssa herself didn’t ever plan on marrying the man.

Just keeping him wrapped around her little finger.

But now, as loathe as she was to admit it, she needed him. It had been a couple of months, and God knew what he’d been up to with the little piece he’d been trying to run off with, but Alyssa wasn’t too worried.

If there was one thing she’d always been good at, it was manipulating the man into anything she wanted him to do.

And now, she wanted him back.

He was hers, after all. What would a man as emotional – as vulnerable – as Daniel do without her?



**



Daniel tried his damndest to suppress a smile as Esme frowned at the printed image in her hands. It was an enlarging of the latest ultrasound image of the child within her – now six months along – and every time she looked at it, she seemed to be trying to find some unknown object.

He himself was humbled every time he looked at the thing.

He and Esme either went to the clinic or had Amos visit the house every two weeks, and frankly, even though he’d known what to expect, he still found himself in awe of the life developing within her. He watched her stomach slowly swell as the weeks went by, growing until it seemed to dwarf her slender frame.

Of course, there were other parts of her that filled out as well. Her breasts had gone from pert handfuls to spilling out of the confines of most of her undergarments – a fact that she despised but he adored. Her hips rounded out ever so slightly, her thighs softening from their lean musculature as her body gained curves that flattered her figure more, even, than he’d ever imagined they might.

And unlike any woman he’d ever come across, Esme had sexual appetite that rivaled even his own. She had mentioned to him upon several occasions that she believed hormones from her pregnancy had put her libido into overdrive, but he certainly wasn’t complaining. One had to wonder what she’d been like before – because now the woman was like a tiger on the prowl.