CALLIE gasped. Marry Eduardo? The father of her baby? Her ex-boss? The man she despised more than anyone on earth?
Shocked, she stared at him as she waited for the punch line. Licking her lips nervously, she finally said, “I don’t get the joke.”
Eduardo’s lips curved humorlessly. “It’s not a joke.”
She spread her arms wide in the backseat of the car. “Of course it is!”
Eduardo grabbed her left hand, looking down at her cheap engagement ring with its microscopic diamond. “No, Callie, that is a joke.”
Trying to rip her hand from his grasp, she glared at him. “A ring is a symbol of fidelity, no wonder you hate it!”
“You’ll have a real one.”
“I’m not going to marry you!”
“Oh, right. I forgot you’re a romantic. I should ask you properly,” he said sardonically. His dark eyes gleamed as he wrapped her hand in his own and pressed it against his chest. Before her horrified eyes, he went down on one knee in the back of the car. “Querida, my darling, my dear, will you do me the deep, deep honor of becoming my wife?”
She felt the heat of his hard chest through his suit, and her heart fluttered—even as her cheeks burned at the mockery in his voice. Anger gave her strength, and she jerked her hand from his grasp. “Go to hell!”
He moved back to his seat. “I’ll take that as a yes.”
Rain pattered against the roof of the car, horns honking around them as the car moved through traffic. The rain-splattered streets passed in a gray blur.
Callie realized Eduardo meant it.
He actually wanted her to be his wife.
“But you—you don’t want to get married!” she stammered. “You’ve said as much to every woman you’ve dated. You practically had it tattooed on your chest!”
“I always planned to marry the mother of my children.”
“Yes—but you wanted to marry some ritzy Spanish duchess!”
The edges of his lips lifted. “The best laid plans,” he said. “You are having my child. We must wed.”
He made it sound like a punishment—for him. She lifted her chin. “Gee, thanks,” she said sarcastically. “I’m touched. Five minutes ago, you didn’t even believe you were the father. You said you wouldn’t believe a word I said. Now you want to marry me?”
“I’ve decided that not even you, Callie, would lie to me about our baby’s paternity. Not when the truth is so clearly unpleasant to you.”
She folded her arms, glaring at him. “I’m having your baby, all right, but nothing on earth could make me be your wife.”
“Strange. You were keen to get married a few minutes ago.”
“To Brandon!” she cried. “I adore him. I’d trust him with my life!”
“Spare me his list of virtues,” Eduardo said, sounding bored. “Your love makes you blind.”
“He might not be rich and heartless like you, but that’s exactly why he’ll make a wonderful father. Far better than—”
She cut herself off as a painful contraction arced through her body.
“Far better than me?” Eduardo said with dangerous softness. “Because I am not good enough to be her father. And that was your excuse for lying to me and marrying your lover.”
“He’s not my lover—”
“Perhaps not physically. But you love him. So you were going to steal my child. And you accuse me of being heartless,” he said contemptuously. “You are breathtaking.”
The words were not a compliment.
Callie held her breath as new pain assailed her. Her baby wasn’t due for two and a half weeks, but this was starting to feel very different from the Braxton-Hicks contractions she’d had last week. Very different.
Was it possible...?
Could it be...?
No! She forced herself to take a deep, calming breath. It couldn’t be real labor. It was sixteen days too soon. Stress was causing her body to react, that was all. She had to calm down, for the baby’s sake!
She shifted in the backseat of the car, trying to alleviate the stabbing pain in her lower back. “You don’t want to raise a baby and you certainly don’t want me as your wife. It’s only your masculine pride that makes you—”
“My masculine pride.” Eduardo bared his teeth into a smile. “Is that what you call it?”
“You don’t want to marry me, I know you don’t. You’re just in shock. You haven’t had time to think what it would mean for you to raise a child. To have a family.”
“You think I’ve had no time to consider what it means for a child to feel abandoned by his parents? To feel alone? To have no real home?”
Callie closed her mouth with a snap. Of course he knew. Licking her lips, she tried helplessly. “I could give our baby a wonderful home—”
“I know you will.” His eyes were fathomless and stark. “Because I will provide that home. As her father.”
There was no winning this war. Now that Eduardo knew about her pregnancy, he would never give up his rights as a father.
“So what do we do?” Callie said miserably.
“I told you. Marry.”
“But I can’t be your wife.”
“Why?”
“I—I don’t love you.”
“Good,” he bit out. “Your sainted McLinn can keep your love. Just your body and your vow of fidelity are enough.”
Her heart was pounding in her throat. “You really want to marry me?” she whispered. The thought made her tremble. In spite of everything, she couldn’t forget the romantic dreams she’d once had of Eduardo taking her in his arms and saying, I made the worst mistake of my life when I let you go, Callie. I love you. Come back to me. Be mine—forever. “As in forever?”
Eduardo gave an ugly laugh. “Be married to you forever? No. I have no desire to live the rest of my life in hell, chained to a woman I’ll never be able to trust. Our marriage will last just long enough to give our child a name.”
“Oh.” She shifted in her seat then frowned. That changed things a bit. “Like—like a marriage of convenience?”
“Call it what you like.”
“For a week or two?”
“Let us say three months. Long enough for it to actually look like a real marriage. And for our baby’s first months to be the best possible, with us both in the same home.”
“But—where would we live? My lease is gone. You sold your brownstone in the Village.”
“I just bought a place on the Upper West Side.”
She blinked. “You were moving back to New York, because you thought I’d be gone.”
His lips twisted. “I bought it as an investment. But you are correct.”
Callie stared up at him, her heart pounding. “This is never going to work.”
“It will.”
She took a deep breath. Marriage. Would it be good for their baby, as Eduardo believed? Or would it only make their frayed relationship even worse, creating yet more accusations and distrust between them?
“But how would our marriage end?” she said. “With an ugly divorce—throwing plates and screaming at each other? That wouldn’t help anyone, least of all my baby.”
“Our baby,” he corrected, then bared his teeth in a smile. “Our prenuptial agreement will outline our divorce. We will agree from the beginning how it will end.”
“Plan our divorce before we’re even wed? That seems so sad....”
“Not sad. Civilized.” He lifted a dark eyebrow, rubbing the rough, dark edge of his jawline. He gave her a tight smile. “Since we are not in love, there will be no hard feelings when we part.”
Three months. Callie swallowed. She tried to imagine what it would be like to live in Eduardo’s house. Even as his secretary, she’d never lived with him on such intimate terms. And though she was no longer the naive, trusting girl who’d fallen in love with him so stupidly, he still had such frightening power over her. Callie’s foolish, traitorous body yearned for him like a sugary, buttery cake that was impossibly bad for her but she couldn’t stop craving just the same.
“And if I refuse?” she whispered. “If I get out of this car and flag a taxi back to Brandon?”
His expression cooled.
“If you are truly so selfish that you’d put your desire for love ahead of the best interests of our child, I will have no choice but to question your fitness as a mother, and challenge you for full custody.” She started to protest, but he cut her off calmly. “I have limitless funds and the best law firm in the city at my disposal. You will lose.”
She felt another contraction and this time, the pain was so deep and sustained that she closed her eyes, bracing her body against it as she panted, “You’re threatening me?”
“I’m telling you how it will be.”
“We’re here, sir,” Sanchez, the driver, said from the front seat, as he pulled the sedan to the curb.
Looking out her window, Callie saw the same courthouse where she’d gotten a marriage license yesterday with Brandon. The thought of deserting her best friend to marry Eduardo was insane. But she could either become Mrs. Eduardo Cruz for three months, living in the same household and sharing custody of their newborn, or she could possibly lose her child forever.
“And...afterward...” she said haltingly, “how would we arrange custody?”
Eduardo gave her a smile that didn’t meet his eyes. “Once you show that our child means more to you than some lover, and that you are a reasonable and concerned parent, I am sure we can work something out.” As Sanchez got out of the front seat and walked around to open the door, Eduardo’s voice turned hard. “You have thirty seconds to decide.”
Shivering, she stared at him with her hands wrapped over her belly. She felt her baby moving inside her, and she was desperate to protect her. She glared at him, feeling trapped and frightened and furious all at once. “You’ve left me no choice.”
The door opened behind Eduardo.
“I knew you’d see reason,” he said sardonically. Climbing out, he turned back, holding out his hand. “Come, my bride.”
For an instant, Callie was afraid to touch him—afraid of what it did to her. But as he waited, she reluctantly put her hand in his own. His hard, hot palm pressed against her skin, his larger fingers intertwined around hers. As he pulled her from the car to the sidewalk, she looked up at his face, remembering the first time she’d touched his hand.
Callie Woodville? The powerful CEO of Cruz Oil had been visiting his outpost in the Bakken fields of North Dakota. Callie was the local office liaison, sent from the nearby town of Fern. He’d held out his hand, looking sleek and urbane in a black suit, with his helicopter still noisily winding down behind him. I’ve heard you run the entire office here, and do the work of four people. His sudden, gorgeous smile lit up his darkly handsome face. I could use an assistant like you in New York.
She’d looked into the warmth of his dark eyes. Dazzled, she’d taken his outstretched hand. And that had been it. The thunderbolt she’d always prayed for. She’d loved him from that first moment. How she’d loved him...
Now, with Eduardo’s hand still wrapped around hers, Callie was barely aware of people rushing by them on the busy New York sidewalk. The two of them were connected like the moon and the sun, as stars and comets streaked around them in the vastness of space. The two of them. Just like always.
But his handsome face had changed over the last year. It was subtle. Perhaps no one else would have even noticed. But she saw the tighter set of his jaw. The deeper crinkle around his hard eyes. His high, angled cheekbones seemed chiseled out of stone, and so did his jawline, already dark with five o’clock shadow. At thirty-six, he was even more ruthless and powerful than she remembered. His masculine beauty was breathtaking. Looking up into his deep black eyes, Callie trembled. It would be too easy to fall under his spell again, and forget the way he demanded total devotion from others, while offering none in return.
Eduardo’s expression darkened. Reaching down, he tucked a tendril of her wavy brown hair behind her ear. “You will be mine, Callie. Only mine.”
A shudder went through her. She was helpless, lost in his gaze. Lost in his touch. Lost in her traitorous heart’s memory of how, for years, she’d lived for him, only for him.
A cough behind her broke the spell, causing her to jump away. An unsmiling bald man in a plain blue suit stood behind her. She recognized John Bleekman, Eduardo’s chief attorney.
“Hello, Miss Woodville,” he said expressionlessly.
“Um. Hello,” she said, wondering why he was there.
He turned to Eduardo, holding out a file. “I have it, sir.”
Taking the file, Eduardo opened it and glanced over the papers for several minutes. “Good.” He handed it to Callie. “Sign.”
“What is it?”
“Our prenuptial agreement.”
“What? So fast?”
“I had Bleekman start drawing up the draft after I spoke with your sister this morning.”
“But you didn’t even know if it was true about the baby–much less that you wanted to marry me!”
“I always like to be prepared for every possibility.”
“Yes.” She scowled. “To make sure you get your way.”
“To mitigate risk.” He pushed a fountain pen into her hand. “Sign it. And we’ll go get our marriage license.”
Callie looked through the thick stack of papers of the prenuptial agreement. She started to read the first paragraph. It would probably take an hour to read it all. Frowning, she thumbed through the pages uncertainly. She saw the amount of money he intended to give her as alimony and child support and looked up with a gasp. “Are you crazy? I don’t want your money!”
“My child will grow up in a safe, secure, comfortable home. That means she must never worry about money. And neither can you.” He set his jaw, watching her with visible annoyance as she turned back to page two and continued reading through the document. “Do you intend to read every single word?”
“Of course I do.” Lifting her head, she glared at him, even as pedestrians jostled them on the sidewalk. “I know you, Eduardo. I know how you operate—”
Her voice choked off as another sharp pain hit her body, so intense her spine straightened as she nearly gasped aloud. The contractions were getting worse. Surely this wasn’t Braxton-Hicks. She was in labor. Real labor. The baby was on her way. Callie put one hand over her belly and exhaled through her teeth.
“What’s wrong?”
Eduardo’s voice had changed. Trying to hide the pain rolling through her in waves, she looked up.
His handsome face was looking down at her with concern. He was worried about her. His dark eyes were warm, warm as they’d been during the time when she’d been his infallible secretary, when she’d been the one woman he needed, the only woman he trusted. Before they’d slept together in the happiest night of her life, and then she’d lost everything.
The intensity of his gaze caused her heart to twist in her chest. She could cope with his cold anger or cruel words, but not his concern. Not his kindness. A lump rose in her throat, and she suddenly had to fight tears.
“Nothing’s wrong,” she said. “I just want to get this over with.” Gripping the pen, she turned to the pages marked with yellow tags and rapidly scrawled her signature. It was all she could do to keep the pen steady, with her knees shaking. She shoved both the signed prenuptial agreement and pen against Eduardo’s chest, then turned away to focus on her breathing.
Breathe in, breathe out. She tried to let the pain go through her without fighting it or tensing her muscles, but it was impossible. Stupid useless breathing classes!
“You didn’t read it,” Eduardo said behind her, sounding almost bewildered. “That’s not like you.”
A policeman mounted on horseback came clopping in their direction, even as yellow taxis and large buses whizzed down the street, honking noisily. But all the moving colors of the busy world seemed to slide like water around her. She didn’t answer.
Eduardo touched her shoulder, turning her around. “Callie,” he said huskily. “What is it?”
She couldn’t speak over the ache in her throat. She’d loved him, in spite of his faults. She’d thought she was his one indispensible woman. Until he’d discarded her. She couldn’t let herself care for him. And she couldn’t let herself believe, even for an instant, that he cared for her.
“I just hate you, that’s all,” she bit out, pulling away. Pain ebbed from her body, and she exhaled, forcing her shoulders to relax. “Let’s just get this sham of a wedding over with.”
Without waiting for him, she started walking up the steps toward the courthouse.
“Fine.” When he caught up with her, the brief concern in his voice was gone. He strode ahead to open the door, and when she saw his face, it was hard and cold again. She was glad. She couldn’t bear his tenderness, not in his eyes and not in his voice. Even after all this time, it twisted her heart into a million pieces.
Three months, she told herself, her teeth chattering. Then I’ll be free.
She followed him into the courthouse, with his lawyer trailing behind. Twenty-two minutes later, they walked back out with the license. Callie knew it was exactly twenty-two minutes, because she’d started timing her contractions with her watch.
Eduardo didn’t touch her as they walked down the steps. He didn’t smile. He barely looked at her. After bidding the lawyer farewell, he led her toward the black car at the curb. “I have made arrangements for us to be married privately at my home,” he said coolly, as if discussing a business arrangement. Which, Callie reminded herself savagely, was exactly what it was.
She tried to follow, desperate to get their nightmare wedding over and done with, but another contraction hit her. Panting, she grabbed his arm. “I don’t think I can.”
He looked at her, his eyes flinty. “It’s too late for second thoughts.”
Sun burst through the clouds as light rain fell, sprinkling against her hot skin. She felt the contraction build inside her, and she could no longer deny what was happening. She gripped his jacket sleeve tightly. “I think...I think I’m in labor.”
He sucked in his breath, searching her gaze. “Labor?”
Wheezing, she nodded. As the pain built, her knees went weak beneath her and she felt herself start to collapse toward the sidewalk.
Then she felt Eduardo’s strong arms around her as he lifted her against his chest. It felt good, so good, to be cradled in his arms that she nearly wept. He looked down at her, his jaw tight.
“How long?” he demanded.
Her body was starting to shake with the pain and she saw from his expression that he could feel it, too. “All...day...I—I think...”
“Damn you, Callie!” he said hoarsely. “Why do you hide everything?”
She was in too much agony to answer. His jaw clenched and he turned away, racing to the curb. “Sanchez! Door!” he shouted, and his driver sprang into action. Seconds later, she was in the backseat of the black sedan. Eduardo took her hands in his own as he asked urgently, “Which hospital, Callie? The name of your doctor?”
She told him, as Eduardo turned to shout the information at his driver, growling at him to drive faster, faster.
“Just hold on, querida,” Eduardo said softly to her, stroking her hair. “We’re almost there.”
But Callie was lost in pain as the car flew down the streets of New York, taking sharp turns and honking wildly until the car sharply stopped. The car door flung open, and she was dimly aware of Eduardo shouting that his wife needed help, help now dammit!
“But I’m not your wife,” Callie breathed as she was wheeled into the hospital. She looked up at him, blinking back tears even as the pain started to recede. “We only have a license. We’re not married.”
Callie heard him gasp before she was whisked away by a nurse to a private examination room. As the contraction eased, she changed into a hospital gown. When the nurse came back through the door, Callie got a single glimpse of Eduardo pacing in the hallway, barking madly into a phone at his ear. Then the door closed, and the round-faced, smiling nurse came to check her. She straightened. “Six centimeters dilated. Oh, my goodness. This baby is on the way. We’ll notify the doctor and get you to your room. I’m afraid it might be too late for anesthesia...”
“Don’t—care—just want my baby to—be all right...” But before Callie had even been wheeled to her private labor and delivery room, the new contraction had already begun. Each one was worse than the last, and this one hit her so badly it made her whole body shake. Rising to her feet, reaching toward her bed, Callie covered her mouth as nausea suddenly roiled through her.
Quickly Eduardo came behind her. He snatched up the trash can and gave it to her just in time for her to be sick in it. Afterward, as the pain receded, Callie sat down on her hospital bed and cried. She cried from pain, from fear, and most of all from knowing that she’d just been vulnerable in front of Eduardo Cruz...and was about to be even more vulnerable.
But there was no way out now.
Only one way through.
“Help her!” Eduardo bit out at the nurse, who gave him an understanding smile.
“I’m sorry. I don’t think there’s time for meds. But don’t worry. The doctor is on his way....”
Eduardo snarled a curse that involved the doctor’s lacking moral qualities, intelligence and bloodline. Growling, he went to the door and peered out into the hallway for the third time before Callie heard him mutter, “Thank God. What took so long?”
“All good things take time.” A smiling, white-haired man in a suit followed him back into the private delivery suite. Eduardo went to Callie, who was stretched out across the hospital bed with her feet in stirrups, taking deep breaths and trying to relax before the next contraction.
“That’s not my doctor!” she cried.
Eduardo knelt beside the bed. “He’s going to marry us, Callie.”
She looked between them in shock. “Right now?”
He gave her a crooked half smile, pushing sweaty tendrils of hair off her face. “Why? Are you busy?”
Callie looked at the trim man with the white beard and bow tie. “Is he authorized to just randomly marry people?”
The corners of his lips quirked. “He’s a justice of the New York Supreme Court. So yes.”
“There’s a twenty-four-hour waiting period after the license—”
“He’s waived it.”
“And my previous license—”
“Handled.”
“Everything always goes your way, doesn’t it?” she grumbled.
Leaning over the hospital bed, he kissed her sweaty forehead. “No,” he said in a low voice. “But this time it will.” He turned back to the judge. “We are ready.”
“The doctor will be here any second,” the nurse warned.
“I’ll do the express version, then.” The judge stood in front of the beeping, flashing displays that monitored both Callie’s heart rate and the baby’s, and gave the plump nurse a wink. “Will you be my witness?”
“All right,” the nurse said with a girlish blush. “But make it quick.”
“Quicker ’n quick. So. We’re gathered here in this hospital room to marry this man and this woman.” The judge peered down at Callie’s huge belly. “And none too soon, I’d say...”
“Just get on with it, Leland,” Eduardo snapped.
“Do you, Eduardo Jorge Cruz, take this woman—what’s your name, my dear?”
“It’s Calliope,” Eduardo answered for her through clenched teeth. “Calliope Marlena Woodville.”
“Is it really?” The judge looked at her sympathetically through wire-rimmed glasses. “How very unfortunate for you.”
“From my mother’s—favorite soap opera,” she panted.
“Right. So do you, Eduardo, take this woman, Calliope Marlena Woodville, to be your lawfully wedded wife?”
“I do.”
Callie felt the pain starting to build again, and grabbed Eduardo’s shirt. Looking at her, he put his hand over hers, then said angrily to the judge, “Hurry, damn you!”
“And do you, Calliope Woodville, promise to love Eduardo Jorge Cruz, forsaking all others, till death do you part?”
Eduardo looked down at her with his dark eyes. Once, this had been all Callie ever wanted, to promise her love and fidelity to him forever. And now it was happening. She was promising to love him forever, though she knew it was a lie.
It was a lie, wasn’t it?
“Callie?” Eduardo said in a low voice.
“I do,” she choked out.
Eduardo exhaled. Had he wondered, for a brief instant, if she might refuse? No, impossible. He was too arrogant, too sure of his control over women, to ever doubt....
“I see you already have the ring,” the judge said, then blinked in surprise at the tiny diamond on Callie’s hand. “I must say, Eduardo,” he murmured, “that’s unusually restrained for you.”
She was still wearing Brandon’s engagement ring! Horrified, Callie tried to pull it off her swollen finger, but it was stuck. “I’m sorry—I...forgot...”
Without a word, Eduardo eased the ring from her finger and tossed it in the trash. “I will buy you a ring,” he said flatly. “One worthy of my wife.”
“Don’t worry.” She gave him a weak smile as she felt the pain start to build again. She panted, “Our marriage will be so short it really doesn’t matter...”
“That’s the spirit,” the judge said jovially. “Ring can come later. Or not. Well, kids, we’ll just skip through and assume the part about forsaking all others and staying together for better or worse. And since with Eduardo I already know it’ll be for richer, not poorer, I reckon that’s about it.”
Callie stared at the judge, then Eduardo. The wedding ceremony had passed by in a flash. Just a few words spoken, and two lives—soon, three—forever changed. How could something so life-changing be so fast?
The judge gave them a big grin. “You may now kiss the bride.”
She nearly gasped. Kiss? She’d forgotten that part! He was going to kiss her?
Eduardo turned to her. Their eyes met. He slowly leaned over the bed, and for an instant, all the pain fled Callie’s body in a breathless flash.
When his mouth was an inch from hers, he hesitated. She could feel the warmth of his breath against her skin, causing prickles up and down the length of her body.
Then he lowered his lips to hers.
Eduardo kissed her, and prickles turned to spiraling electricity, sizzling her nerves like a current sparking up and down her body. His lips were hot and soft, in pledge of their promise, inflaming her senses from within. It lasted only a brief moment, but when he pulled away, Callie’s hands were shaking, and not from pain.
“Congratulations, you crazy kids,” the justice said, beaming at them. “You’re married.”
Married. Callie’s body flashed cold over the magnitude of what she’d just done. She’d married Eduardo. She was his wife.
Just for three months, she reminded herself desperately. The prenuptial agreement had been clear about the timetable. At least in the paragraphs she’d skimmed before the contraction had hit her... She tensed as another contraction hit, burning through her like wildfire. She gasped, biting back a cry as her doctor came in, a brown-haired man in his late fifties. Glancing at the monitors, he checked her. Then he smiled. “Seems you’re good at this, especially for a first-time mother. All right, Callie. Time to push.”
Her eyes went wide as fear ripped through her. Instinctively she reached for Eduardo’s hand, looking up at him with pleading eyes.
Eduardo took both her hands in his. “Callie, I’m here.” His voice was deep and calm as his dark eyes looked straight into hers. “I’m right here.”
Panting, she focused only on his black eyes, letting herself be drawn into them. As she started to push, bringing her baby into the world, she’d never felt any pain so deep. She gripped her new husband’s hands so tightly she thought she’d break his bones, but Eduardo never flinched, not once. He never left her. As she held on to him for dear life, nurses moving around them at lightning speed, monitors beeping, she focused through her tears on his single, blurry image. Eduardo was her one solid, immovable focal point.
He never looked away.
He never backed down.
He never left her.
And in the end, the pain was worth it.
A healthy seven-pound-eight-ounce baby girl was finally placed in Callie’s arms. She looked down at her daughter in amazement, at the sweetest weight she’d ever known. Cuddled against her chest, the baby blinked up at her sleepily.
Leaning over them, Eduardo kissed Callie’s sweaty forehead, then their baby’s. For a long, perfect moment, as medical personnel bustled around them, the newly married couple sat together on the bed with their brand-new baby.
“Thank you, Callie, for the greatest gift of my life,” Eduardo said softly, stroking the baby’s cheek. He looked up, and his dark, luminous eyes pierced her soul. “A family.”