The Millionaire's Pregnant Bride

As much as he hated the scandal for Sebastian’s sake, Will couldn’t blame the guy. If Dorian resented Jack’s shabby treatment of him and his mother, he hid it well. Sebastian had accepted him to the extent of taking his half brother into his home and giving him a job in the computer division of Wescott Oil. Now Seb was pushing for Dorian’s membership in the Texas Cattlemen’s Club.

Will decided to reserve judgment.

Jack’s secretary was another matter. The first time he’d seen her, she’d been backing out of the Royal Diner, talking to someone still inside. He’d held the door and waited patiently—tired, but not too tired to appreciate the view.

Not that she’d been advertising the view. Just the opposite, in fact. There’d been nothing at all outstanding in the tan-gray gabardine dress she’d been wearing. The color had a name: one of those colors with “au” in the middle. Mauve, taupe. He could never remember what it was. With her glossy, brown hair and delicate build, it had looked coolly elegant on a day when the temperature could frazzle the calmest nerves.

Two shapely young women passed by the diner licking ice cream cones. They were wearing tight jeans and skimpy, skin-tight tops. He’d barely spared them a glance.

“It’s over next to the library, I think,” the lady standing in the doorway was saying. “I’ve got several boxes to go, once I sort through them.”

Nice hips. Slender build, rounded in just the right places. Gabardine was a surprisingly sexy fabric when it hung—as this did—over a shapely pair of hips, merely hinting at the surface beneath.

He must have sighed. Will knew he hadn’t said anything, because what could he have said other than, “Would you please either come in or go out, lady? It’s nearly three in the afternoon and I haven’t had lunch.”

She turned—gasped—and wiped a three-scoop ice cream cone across his chest. “Oh, my— Oh, dear— I’m so sorry!”

Will backed up, staring blankly down at the mess she’d made of one of his favorite ties. “It’s all right,” he assured her. Then, when she began mopping the mess up with a handkerchief in one hand, the rapidly melting cone in the other, he said, “Look, it’s really all right, okay? No harm done.”

No harm a dry cleaner couldn’t take care of. Trouble was, he had that three-thirty meeting. He could either go home and change clothes or go inside and have a quick lunch.

“Oh, Lord, I can’t believe—and I think I know you, too. That’s even worse.”

He was edging away, wanting to escape before his shoes caught the rest of her melting chocolate ice cream. “No problem. It’s all right.” She looked as if she might burst into tears, which would be the last straw. He didn’t know her. Might have seen her around town somewhere—she was the kind of woman a man wouldn’t notice right off, but when he did, she’d be worth a second look.

Only not today. Not under these circumstances.

“Excuse me, I think I’ll go drown myself.”

Sticky, hot, irritated, he managed a smile. “Swimming pools frown on that sort of thing.”

“Is there still a French Foreign Legion? Do they take women? Look, I’m really, really—”

“Don’t say it. Better go back inside and wash your hands before you get into more trouble.”

She opened her mouth, closed it again and sighed. Looking disgustedly at the melting mess in her left hand, she tossed it in the trash receptacle, sighed again and walked away.

For several minutes Will stared after her. She was worth watching. Again, nothing particularly outstanding—no twitchy little behind, no slinky movements, she simply walked. Where the devil, he wondered, had he seen her before? There was something about her…

The second time he saw her was several days after the ice-cream episode. She was just coming out of the secretarial pool. On his way to meet someone in the lobby, he’d stopped and stared, tempted to go and ask her name and if she worked there and whether or not she’d be interested in exploring a brief, nonbinding relationship with him. Fortunately, she hadn’t noticed. Fortunately, no one else had, either.

Equally fortunately, common sense had kicked in before he could be accused of workplace harassment. The trouble was, his social life had been moderated along with just about everything else as he’d neared the four-oh mark. He was out of practice.

He had seen her several times after that, and the less she did to call attention to her sexuality, the more intrigued he became. There was something challenging about a woman who went out of her way to downplay her feminine attractions. Made a man wonder what was under all the muted colors and understated styles. The lady was a challenge, and if there was one thing Will thrived on, it was challenge.

But not this kind of challenge.

He told himself it was probably something simple—maybe a minor midlife crisis. He’d made a policy of never mixing business with pleasure. In today’s litigious society, it simply wasn’t worth the risk of future embarrassment, awkwardness or worse. Even so, he’d been almost at the point of breaking his own rule and asking her out when Jack had moved in and staked a claim by whisking her up to the executive floor as his personal secretary.

Jack’s tastes had invariably run to leggy blondes in thigh-high skirts, with big boobs and big blond hair. The Foster woman was a marked improvement. Quelling his own disappointment, Will had gone out three nights in a row with three different women and—always the gentleman—had managed to conceal his boredom.

As for what Diana Foster had seen in Jack Wescott, that was easy. At fifty-eight, the wealthy oilman had been in peak physical condition until he’d dropped dead of a massive heart attack. It was widely known that wealth was among the world’s greatest aphrodisiacs, and Jack had been a practiced philanderer who enjoyed bragging about the notches on his bedpost.

At least he hadn’t bragged about his latest conquest. If he had, Will might have decked the man. After which, Will would have been forced to sell his stock, turn in his resignation and move out to his ranch a few years earlier than he’d planned to retire.

What he couldn’t understand now, after Jack’s death, was what the quietly elegant Ms. Foster had gained from the affair. She still drove the same elderly sedan, still wore the same inexpensive classic styles and—so far as he could tell—owned no jewelry other than pearl studs and the type of wristwatch that could be purchased at most drugstores.

Not that he’d paid any particular attention to her, once he’d realized she was having an affair with his business partner. For all he knew, Jack might’ve been planning to marry the woman, even though Jack had sworn he would never let himself be trapped into marriage again.

But, if that had been the case, surely he’d have had his lawyers drawing up a prenuptial agreement, and there’d been nothing like that in the works when he’d died. As a rule, Jack had even his mistresses sign a settlement agreement so that they couldn’t come back to haunt him. Dorian’s mother had signed one, but obviously Dorian didn’t consider the terms of the agreement to apply to him.

Waiting for the elevator, Will stroked the back of his neck, massaging away the tension that always seemed to settle there. Jack’s will, which had been read four days ago, had been simple and direct. Other than a few token gifts to his household staff, Sebastian had inherited everything the IRS didn’t claim.

As executor of Jack’s estate, Will was still trying to reconcile a few discrepancies in his personal accounts. Jack had been notoriously delinquent when it came to balancing his own checkbooks.

Nodding to the night security guard who let him out of the building, Will set off to walk the eleven blocks to his own apartment. Maybe fresh air would work a miracle. Maybe his headache would ease and the incomprehensible entries on Jack’s personal check stubs would miraculously begin to make sense.

And maybe he would quit obsessing on the quiet, elegant beauty who had begun to crop up in more than a few of his dreams.

On the long walk home, Will mulled over a few minor discrepancies he’d come across just today. While the business’s financial records were in excellent condition, thanks largely to his own hand on the controls, Jack’s personal affairs weren’t quite so tidy. In building the empire that bore his name, he had stepped on more than a few toes, cut more than a few corners and no doubt had paid off his share of politicians and predatory women. Which might account for the unexplained drafts for tens of thousands of dollars in the past few months.

Poor guy. He’d been warned more than once to tone down his lifestyle. Will had often heard him joke about having a few wild chickens come home to roost. One of them, Dorian Brady, already had.

How many more would there be?

Urged by the board to take over as president, Will had declined the honor. With Jack gone, he was now the senior partner, but getting himself mired any deeper in corporate crap wasn’t among his long-term plans for the future. Once he turned over his tenth-floor offices to the mandatory outside auditors, he would have to clear out Jack’s tower office to prepare for the new regime. Which meant he was probably going to need the help of Jack’s secretary. He didn’t know whether to dread it or look forward to it. All he knew was that the woman affected him in a way no woman had in nearly twenty years.

Midlife crisis?

Yeah…probably. And dammit, he didn’t have time for it now.

Shoulders hunched, the tall, lean Texan strode along the empty sidewalk. This time of night, traffic was light. The weather was unusually mild for February despite the wind and the threat of rain. If he finished up by Friday, maybe he could spend a couple of days out at the ranch.

Or maybe not. There was still a lot of sludge to wade through before the company could move ahead at full speed. For a business the size of Wescott Oil to be run like a mom and pop market was not only criminal, it was damn near impossible in this age of government regulations and demanding stockholders. But by bribing and threatening the right people, Jack had managed to do things his way right up to the end.

The end…

God, what a waste. At fifty-eight, he’d looked no older than Will himself did at forty-one, thanks to great tailor, a good barber, a personal trainer and a top-notch plastic surgeon. For a man who routinely managed to tick off half of the Texas legislature and buy off the rest, he’d been one hell of a guy. He was going to be missed.

While a scratchy recording of Fleetwood Mac flowed from a battered portable phonograph, Diana propped a bare foot up on her lap and carefully painted her big toenail a deep shade of coral. Tears ran a crooked trail down her face, not because she missed Jack, exactly, but because…

Well, because it was such a waste. Underneath his crazy suspicions and his domineering ways, he’d been a good man. In some ways. At least he’d been good to her when it mattered most. Her mother had had the very best care right up to the end, and if it meant giving herself—Diana refused to call it selling herself—to a man like Jack Wescott, then it was well worth the shame.

Or the guilt. Whatever she was feeling, it probably wasn’t grief, which was even more of a reason to feel guilty.

She screwed the cap on the bottle of nail polish, which she used only on her toes where it wouldn’t show, and grabbed a tissue to blow her nose. “Get over it, Foster,” she muttered. People said that all the time. Get over it. Deal with it.

And she would, she really would. She was nothing if not a realist. The thing was, she had never really wanted to be anyone’s lover, especially having grown up in a household where love was never a factor.