WATCHING HIM GO, Eleanora stood in the lobby, smiling her most professional smile, then she walked into her office and flopped down into her desk chair. He hadn’t been happy, but his reaction hadn’t been god-awful either. She’d needed the day to sort her thoughts after she’d seen the positive pregnancy test. She’d give him the same consideration.
What she hadn’t expected was her reaction to being with him in the lobby of the Grand York Rome. The second they’d stepped inside, it was as if her body became hyperaware of his. Desire had flooded her. Memories of their night together filled her brain with pictures of touching him and being touched by him, falling asleep tucked into his side—
And waking to find him gone. She couldn’t forget that.
She’d thought his decisive proclamation that he wanted nothing to do with her would have splashed a bucket of cold water on her attraction, but obviously her hormones had a mind of their own. She either had to figure out a way to shut them down or drown them out when she and Marco met the next morning to talk about the hotel.
Wednesday, she dressed in a sedate black dress that hugged her curves. She frowned when she looked at herself in the mirror. The tiny waist she loved so much, the curvy but toned body she worked so hard to maintain, was about to explode as their baby grew inside her.
She told herself not to panic. She was a little over eight weeks pregnant. Her tummy was still flat. So far, she hadn’t had any morning sickness. No one would be able to tell she was pregnant.
But when they did, there would be whispers.
She shook her head. Once again, that was a problem for another day. Unless she or Marco said or did something foolish, there would be no whispers today. And she fully intended to keep control of herself, her emotions and especially those damned hormones that kept reminding her of kissing him and—other things.
After a few breaths to compose herself, she slid into her snakeskin high-heel sandals and headed out of her apartment to her small car and to the Grand York Hotel.
Wearing her sunglasses, she walked into the lobby. Her pride in what she and Marco had accomplished showed in her wide smile and confident stride. She had months before she lost her waist and even more months until she had to take time off, have the baby, find childcare. She should enjoy these months—
Except, the planner in her wouldn’t let her ignore the fact that she was pregnant. It kicked into high gear, filling her head with a to-do list. To keep the job she loved, she’d need a nanny. Eventually, she’d need a bigger apartment. She’d have to decide if she’d breastfeed. And if she did, she’d have to learn how to use a breast pump. Then there were bottles and diapers, nanny cams and baby monitors—
Telling her parents.
The urge to hyperventilate raced through her and she stopped.
Stopped walking.
Stopped the long list of things mounting in her brain.
Because no matter how much her inner planner wanted to be let loose on some of these items, today was not the day to start any of them. Today she had to meet with Marco, see how he was handling this and answer his questions. Or maybe hope he would want to talk about the hotel, the reasons for his visit, and let the other stuff settle for another few days.
Standing by the registration area, reading something on his phone, Marco didn’t see her, but she saw him. Gorgeous, talented, smart, fun-loving Marco. Looking at him always made her heart skip a beat, but now the feelings were different, stronger. All because her fantasy had come to life, and she knew he really was as sensational in bed as she’d always dreamed he’d be.
Her heart thrummed, but she reminded herself that she’d decided to get control of herself and keep control.
She headed toward the registration area, her head high, her breathing steady. Marco didn’t even look up until she was right beside him.
He started. “Oh! Eleanora!”
She pulled down her sunglasses. “What’s on the agenda for today?”
“Lots. But first... Have you eaten?”
She frowned. “What?”
“Eaten? Breakfast?”
His comment confused her. But so did his calm. Here she was struggling with the longing to slide her arms around him and kiss him and he was worried about food? “No. I don’t usually eat breakfast, but if you want to go to the restaurant and begin our discussions there, I’m fine with that.”
“You need breakfast.”
“I’m not hungry.”
He lowered his voice. “What if the baby is?”
Her breathing stopped. The last thing they needed was one of the employees overhearing this discussion. She directed him away from the reception desk. “What’s going on here?”
“I’m just...you know...looking out for you.”
The thought was sweet, vintage Marco, but having him hover over her was the last thing she needed. If he was too nice, too kind, she’d fall hopelessly in love.
“Okay. First, I don’t need any help taking care of myself. Second, the lobby is the wrong place to talk about any of this. Let’s get some coffee.”
She turned him to the left and walked him to the restaurant. Dark wood chairs surrounded round tables covered in white linen tablecloths. Gino, the maître d’, snapped to attention.
“Good morning!”
“Good morning, Gino,” she said pleasantly. “Mr. Pearson and I would like a table over there.” She pointed at a space with empty tables. “And keep it private. Don’t seat anyone near us.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Gino said, leading them to the table.
After they settled on their seats, Gino promised to return with a pot of coffee. Eleanora smiled and let him scamper away.
“You can’t have coffee.”
Eleanora sighed, “Did you spend the night Googling pregnancy?”
“I might have looked up a few things.”
Gino returned with the silver tea service, and two delicate cups and saucers. Marco ordered eggs, bacon and toast and Eleanora pointedly told Gino she only wanted a glass of water.
When he was gone, Marco sighed. “You have to eat.”
The guy was the sexiest, most considerate man in the world. Having him care about her, somehow made him sexier. But she saw two waitresses open the door of the kitchen a crack and peek at them. Her gut reaction was to walk over and tell them to stop being nosy and get back to work, then she realized they could be looking at the tables, the customers, or discussing how they’d handle the lunch rush, almost anything.
Telling herself to get her head in the game, she faced Marco again. “According to what I’ve read, I need to keep up my typical eating habits. When the baby needs more sustenance, I will get hungrier.”
He frowned.
“We haven’t even started discussing things like when and how we’ll tell our families, custody, visitation, how involved you want to be. If we get hung up on things like when I eat, we’ll never get to the important decisions.”
“I guess.”
“I know. Plus, I’m an adult, someone you consider smart enough to run your first international hotel. It seems to me that you should be able to trust me to pick my own meals.”
She reached for the coffeepot. “Not only that but I read that I can have one cup of coffee a day.” She poured a cup of coffee but handed it to him. “But I’ve decided to abstain.”
He took a quick breath. “Okay. I’m sorry.”
“Marco, we’ve always been able to separate our friendship from our work. Let’s do that with this too.”
His eggs and bacon arrived. She sipped her water. A bellboy and a registration desk clerk walked by the glass wall in front of the restaurant. Though they tried to be casual, both looked in at the same time. They craned their necks to see beyond the front tables—
Because she and Marco were in the back?
There might not be whispers about her pregnancy but there were definitely whispers about her and Marco. This was the first time they’d been together since the grand opening. She and Marco hadn’t been discreet that night as they’d danced and raced up the grand staircase in the lobby together, and God only knew if anyone had seen him going into her room with her.
Setting his linen napkin on his lap, Marco pulled back his annoyance that she wasn’t eating. She was correct. She was an adult. She was intelligent. She would do the right things.
She set her water on the table in front of her, as she leaned back in her chair, craning her neck to look through the glass into the hall off the lobby. The neat little black dress she wore outlined her curves nicely. The way she was sitting drew his attention to her chest. He remembered touching her, pressing her up against the wall by the door in her room. The flash of memory came with a jolt of attraction that sent shivers along his spine. Making love with her had been—
Breathtakingly sensual.
And perhaps this was not the best time to remember that.
He quickly shifted his attention to his eggs. “So...no morning sickness?”
She turned to look at him. “Not yet.”
“That’s good.”
“It is.”
The conversation died and her scent drifted to him. As friends, he had barely ever noticed it. But the olfactory nerve was the devil. The second her scent touched it, a million sensations fired off. Pleasure. Happiness. Hunger and need.
He didn’t see a picture of that night, the way he had when he looked at the stairway. He didn’t remember anything being said. Just sensations that stole his breath and made him want to—
He choked on his eggs.
What was he doing! Eleanora was his friend. Who was also an employee and a friend of his father’s! They might have had one night of passion—made one mistake—but he wouldn’t compound it by repeating it. Those urges prompted by the sensations he kept feeling...? They were wrong.
He took a long sip of water, then glanced at Eleanora. “I guess the first thing we need to talk about is when we will be telling people.”
“I’ve decided not to tell anyone at the hotel until I have to.” She glanced at the door, then returned her gaze to him. “But I want to tell my parents as soon as possible.”
He peered over at her. “As soon as possible?”
“It’s always best not to keep secrets from your parents.” She looked at the door again, then said, “You should tell your dad soon too.”
The mention of his dad threw his nervous system into overdrive. Not only did he have to get accustomed to the idea of being a father, with a woman who worked for him, and was also his friend, but he’d promised his dad he would spend the holiday with him—beginning on December 23. He didn’t want the holiday celebration—the first time he, his dad and his sister spent Christmas together in three years—to be ruined by the announcement that he’d slept with Eleanora.
She was right. The sooner he told his dad the better—
Picturing the scene, with his dad expressing his disappointment in him and wanting him to marry Eleanora, a woman he loved like a daughter, Marco almost closed his eyes in despair. The last thing he wanted to do was explain to his dad that he didn’t want to get married because he didn’t believe in love. After the death of his mom, Marco was certain his dad agreed with him, but he didn’t want to say the words, to talk about the loss that hung over their heads every damned day. His mom had been wonderful, a gift from God, and losing her ten years ago had not been easy.
Still, surely, he could tell his dad in such a way that talk of marriage never came into it? Maybe with time? Maybe it would be better to wait until he was adjusted before he tried to explain to his dad?
“I think I need to get accustomed to the idea before I tell anyone.”
“I understand.”
He shook his head. “And I wish you didn’t.” Except for the way she kept glancing at the door, she was cool, calm, collected. “I wish you’d be nervous or upset or anxious or at least as overwhelmed as I am.”
She smiled at him. “Who says I’m not?”
Her smile threw him for a loop, stalling his breath. She was the consummate professional, but today everything about her was infused with femininity. It was like she was so pretty, so sexy in the slim black dress that she couldn’t hide it.
And noticing that was wrong!
He cleared his throat. “You don’t look anxious or overwhelmed.” She looked like someone a man would crawl across a bed for. And if he remembered correctly, he had.
She laughed. “One of us has to keep their wits.”
Clearly, it wasn’t going to be him. At least not until he got himself acclimated to their predicament. It had to be their night of passion that had his hormones so attuned to her. But the reason didn’t matter. He needed to get a hold of himself.
His appetite suddenly gone, he set his napkin on the table. “All right. I get it. You’re teasing me.”
“You’re not taking this very well.”
“I’m just surprised. There I was expecting you to tell me everything between us changed because we’d slept together, and you tell me that you’re pregnant.”
“Same thing, if you think about it.”
Marco rolled his eyes. “Not really.”
“This isn’t the end of the world, Marco. It’s a shift in our lives.”
She didn’t have any idea how big of a shift this was for him. He didn’t believe in marriage. He’d never even considered being a father. The woman he accidentally impregnated was a woman he admired as an employee and treasured as a friend. His entire life felt like a puzzle that had been taken apart and the pieces strewn across a table with no rhyme or reason and no clue about how to put them back together.
Worse, there was a lot at stake. If he didn’t handle this right, he could lose her as a friend, maybe even an employee. And no matter what he decided, his dad wasn’t going to take this well.
After a quick tour of the conference areas, a few of the guest suites and the kitchen—where the chef almost fainted with happiness over his being there—they walked through the lobby and down the long silent hall to the hotel’s offices.
The second they stepped into the workspace of Eleanora’s assistant, Sheila jumped from her desk chair.
“Good morning, Marco!”
“Good morning, Sheila.” In their one hour of touring the hotel, his voice had lost its nervous edge. He sounded normal again. Meaning, he was adjusting to the news already. Surely, things would continue to get better.
Eleanora said, “Good morning, Sheila,” then led Marco into her office.
As he followed her, his gaze cruised down her back and to her bottom. Just as it had in the restaurant, his entire body sizzled. He almost groaned. He might be adjusting to the news that he was about to become a father, but his hormones refused to behave around Eleanora. He told himself he should have kept his eyes up, but he seemed to have no control around her anymore.
She walked to her desk, grabbed a stack of reports, and ambled to the conference table. A pile of files about the size of what she had in her arms sat in front of the chair at the head of the table. She took the seat on the right. Leaving the seat of command for him.
Desperate to get down to business and forget everything else, he walked over, removed his jacket and sat down. “What have we here?”
“I thought we’d take a look at the expenses for each individual department before we get into big picture numbers.”
“Sounds good.”
He picked up the top report as she opened her top report. Her hands were small, but her fingers were long, the nails painted a soft gray. He stopped his brain before it could form an inappropriate memory about those nails scraping down his back. He managed to get through ten minutes of her listing her expenses, but that was it. The past eight weeks, he’d blocked all thoughts of their night together. But being with her had memories cascading through him uncontrollably. He swore his body had some sort of muscle memories because certain things caused his chest to tighten or his breath to stutter.
After one particularly interesting memory, he jumped from his chair. “You know what? I think that’s enough for this morning.”
She glanced at her watch. “It’s not even eleven.” She frowned. “Do you want lunch?”
He didn’t. He was still full from breakfast. But she hadn’t eaten. “I’m not sure.” Dismayed at his inability to form coherent thought, he sat again. “I mean... Aren’t you hungry?”
She sighed and closed the report she’d been referencing. “Marco, you have to settle down.”
Glad she thought it was the pregnancy and not unexpectedly clear memories of their night together that had him so flummoxed, he said, “I am... I will. I just think it’ll take a few days for the pregnancy to sink in.”
Sheila cleared her throat. Marco’s gaze jumped to the door where she stood, her face red, her expression apologetic.
“I’m sorry, Eleanora. Your parents called on the hotel line. They said they couldn’t get an answer on your cell phone, so they tried this number.”
Marco caught Eleanora’s gaze. He knew what they both were thinking. Sheila had heard his last comment.
She took a breath, then broke their eye contact to address Sheila. “Are they on the line now?”
Sheila nodded.
“Okay. I’ll pick up.”
Looking eternally grateful, Sheila nodded again and raced from the room.
As Eleanora walked to her desk, Marco sighed. “You know that if I close the door now, she’s going to guess we were talking about your—our being pregnant.”
“It doesn’t matter. In an hour, that word pregnancy will have traveled through the entire hotel and speculation will be everything from the guess that we’re pregnant, or you got somebody pregnant, or somebody got me pregnant.” She reached for the phone but didn’t pick it up. “We’re good enough friends that everybody knows I’d tell you if I was pregnant or you’d tell me if you’d gotten somebody pregnant.” Her head tilted. “That would probably be their first guess rather than that we’re pregnant. Actually, I think we’re safe. Because anything they guess will be a guess and everybody will treat it like gossip.”
She lifted the phone’s receiver. “Mom?” Listening as her mom spoke, she laughed and sat on the big chair behind the desk.
Marco looked skyward. Though he wanted to groan, his common sense told him there was no point in hiding the pregnancy or the fact that he was the baby’s father. Everything would come out eventually. Plus, he’d already decided he could handle a little ribbing.
But watching Eleanora talk to her mom, the way she kept hedging, he knew she needed to tell her parents sooner rather than later. And he had to tell his dad before something leaked through the corporate grapevine. Which was probably why Eleanora had told him at breakfast that he should tell his dad soon.
Plus, they had a million things to decide. Custody. Visitation. His involvement. How involved could he be when she lived in Rome, and he lived in New York? There’d be discussions of baby names, schools, holidays, vacations, even what the poor kid would wear.
He suddenly realized that the reason he was so antsy, so jumpy, so befuddled was because he was a person of action. He did not sit on problems. He solved them.
Being here, pretending nothing was wrong, putting something else ahead of the biggest thing to happen in his personal life since the death of his mom? That’s what was making him crazy.
She hung up the phone. “My mother’s nuts. She’s making plans for Christmas because I promised I would be home. It’s only the beginning of November and she’s working on a menu for a holiday that’s weeks away.”
“I think we should leave—go home.”
She frowned. “To my apartment?”
“No. Home. Home. I need—we need—to figure out some things, make plans, make decisions, tell people. I don’t want to waste a week in Rome talking about work, then go back to Manhattan as if nothing’s different.” He caught her gaze. “Everything’s different. And I need to figure some of this out.”
She rose behind the desk. “Okay. Go home.”
“Oh, no. I’m not going alone. You’re coming with me. This is about both of us. We need to make these decisions together. We need to do this right, or it might cost us our friendship.”
She took a breath, thinking through what he’d said. His heart tweaked a bit with worry that she didn’t consider their friendship as important as he did.
But she suddenly shrugged and said, “You know what? You’re right. This might be a make or break for us. If we want to keep our friendship, we need to do this correctly.”
Relief billowed through him.
“Plus, it will be good to tell my parents in person.”
“Yes! That’s it exactly!” The relief that had gone through him turned to happiness. The whole battery of odd thoughts he’d been having around her really had been nothing but his brain rebelling with confusion over letting a problem hang over his head. Now, that they were taking steps to solve it, he could breathe again, think normally again.
Then she stepped out from behind the desk and everything about her from her soft red-brown hair to her sexy high heels hit him like a punch in the gut. Feelings fluttered in his stomach. His muscles tightened.
He wished with all his might that he could forget their night together, then decided that taking her to New York, spending a week or so with her, might be the way to get so accustomed to her that the memories had no power.