Not the Boss's Baby

She wanted to touch him, find out if the rest of him was as strong as his arms were—but before she could do anything of the sort, he broke the kiss and pulled her into an even tighter hug.

His lips moved against her neck, as if he were smiling against her. She liked how it felt. “You’ve always been special, Serena,” he whispered against her skin. “So let me show you how special you are. I want to buy you all three dresses. That way you can surprise me on Saturday. Are you going to refuse me that chance?”

The heat ebbed between them. She’d forgotten about the dresses—and how much they probably cost. For an insane moment, she’d forgotten everything—who she was. Who he was.

She absolutely should refuse the dress, the dinner, the way he had looked at her all afternoon like he couldn’t wait to strip each and every dress right off her, and the way he was holding her to his broad chest right now. She had no business being here, doing this—no business letting her attraction to Chadwick Beaumont cloud her thinking. She was pregnant and her job was on the line, and at no point in the past, present or future did she require three gowns that probably cost more than her annual salary.

But then that man leaned backward and cupped her cheek in his palm and said, “I haven’t had this much fun in...well, I can’t remember when. It was good to get out of the office.” His smile took a decade of worry off his face.

She was about to tell him that the champagne had gone to his head—although she was painfully aware that she had no such excuse as to why she’d kissed him back—when he added, “I’m glad I got to spend it with you. Thank you, Serena.”

And she had nothing. No refusal, no telling him off, no power to insist that Mario only wrap up one dress and none of the jewelry, no defense that she did not need him to buy her anything because she was perfectly able to buy her own dresses.

He’d had fun. With her.

“The dresses are lovely, Chadwick. Thank you.”

He leaned down, his five-o’clock shadow and his lips lightly brushing her cheek. “You’re welcome.” He pulled back and stuck out his arm just like Mario had done to escort her to the dais. “Let me take you to dinner.”

“I...” She looked down at the droopy green dress, which was now creased in a few key areas. “I have to get back to work. I have to go back to being an executive assistant now.” Funny how that sounded off all of a sudden. She’d been nothing but an executive assistant for over seven years. Why shouldn’t putting the outfit back on feel more...natural?

A day of playing dress-up had gone right to her head. She must have forgotten who she was. She was really Serena Chase, frugal employee. She wasn’t the kind of woman who had rich men lavish her with exorbitant gifts. She wasn’t Chadwick’s lover.

Oh God, she’d let him kiss her. She’d kissed him back.

What had she done?

Chadwick’s face grew more distant. He, too, seemed to be realizing that they’d crossed a line they couldn’t uncross. It made her feel even more miserable. “Ah, yes. I probably have work to do as well.”

“Probably.” They might have been playing hooky for a few hours that afternoon, but the world had kept on turning. The fallout from the board meeting no doubt had investors, analysts and journalists burning up the bandwidth, all clamoring for a statement from Chadwick Beaumont.

But more than that, she needed to be away from him. This proximity wasn’t helping her cause. She needed to clear her head and stop having fantasies about her boss. Fantasies that now had a very real feel to them—the feeling of his lips against hers, his body pressed to hers. Fantasies that would probably play out in her dreams that night.

She couldn’t accept dinner on top of the dresses. She had to draw the line somewhere.

But she’d already crossed that line.

How much farther would she go?





Six


Chadwick did not sleep well.

He told himself that it had everything to do with the disastrous board meeting and nothing to do with Serena Chase, but what the hell was the point in lying? It had everything to do with Serena.

He shouldn’t have kissed her. Rationally, he knew that. He’d fired other executives for crossing that very same line—one strike and they were out. For way too long, Beaumont Brewery had been a business where men took all kinds of advantage of the women who worked for them. That was one of the first things he’d changed after his father died. He’d had Serena write a strict sexual harassment policy to prevent exactly this situation.

He’d always taken the higher road. Fairness, loyalty, equality.

He was not Hardwick Beaumont. He would not seduce his secretary. Or his executive assistant, for that matter.

Except that he’d already started. He’d told her he was taking her to the gala. He’d taken her shopping and bought tens of thousands of dollars worth of gowns, jewels and handbags for her.

He’d kissed her. He’d wanted to do so much more than just kiss her, too. He’d wanted to leave that gown in a puddle on the floor and sit back on the loveseat, Serena’s body riding his. He wanted to feel the full weight of her breasts in his hands, her body taking his in.

He’d wanted to do something as base and crass as take her in a dressing room, for God’s sake. And that was exactly what Hardwick would have done.

So he’d stopped. Thankfully, she’d stopped, too.

She hadn’t wanted the dresses. She’d fought him tooth and nail about that.

But the kiss?

She’d kissed him back. Tracing his mouth with her tongue, pressing those amazing breasts against him—holding him just as tightly as he had been holding her.

He found himself in his office by five-thirty the next morning, running a seven-minute mile on his treadmill. He had the international market report up on the screen in front of him, but he wasn’t paying a damn bit of attention to it.

Instead, he was wondering what the hell he was going to do about Serena.

She was pregnant. And when she’d come out in those gowns, she’d glowed. She’d always been beautiful—a bright, positive smile for any occasion with nary a manipulating demand in sight—but yesterday she’d taken his breath away over and over again.

He was totally, completely, one hundred percent confounded by Serena Chase. The women in Chadwick’s world did not refuse expensive clothing and jewelry. They spent their days planning how to get more clothes, better jewels and a skinnier body. They whimpered and pleaded and seduced until they got what they wanted.

That’s what his mother had always done. Chadwick doubted whether Eliza and Hardwick had ever really loved each other. She’d wanted his money, and he’d wanted her family prestige. Whenever Eliza had caught Hardwick in flagrante delicto—which was often—she’d threaten and cry until Hardwick plunked down a chunk of change on a new diamond. Then, when one diamond wasn’t enough, he started buying them in bulk.

Helen had been like that, too. Oh, she didn’t threaten, but she did pout until she got what she wanted—cars, clothes, plastic surgery. It had been so much easier to just give in to her demands than deal with the manipulation. In the last year before she filed for divorce, she’d only slept with him when he’d bought her something. Not that he’d enjoyed it much, even then.

Somehow, he’d convinced himself he was fine with that. He didn’t need to feel passion because passion left a man wide open for the pain of betrayal. Because there was always another betrayal around the next corner.