The Boss's Baby Surprise. Lilian Darcy

her step stool two hours ago while trying to change a lightbulb in the kitchen. She’d broken her leg, and she hadn’t been able to get to the phone.

      “I’ve already called 911,” Mrs. Pascoe told her. “The ambulance is on its way.”

      Celie hung on the line, shaky and hardly able to breathe, and it seemed like an hour before the other woman came back to the phone again to report, “She’s going to be okay, although the paramedics say it looks like a bad break. They’ve just left, and they’re taking her to Riverside. You can probably hear the sirens in the background. She’s in shock, after lying on that cold floor for so long.”

      Mrs. Pascoe hung up, but Celie’s fingers were curled tightly around the phone and she couldn’t seem to let it go. Nick appeared in the doorway while the receiver still hung in her hand.

      “Kyla said—” Nick stopped, midsentence. “Heck, what’s wrong, Celie? You’ve gone white.”

      “My mother’s broken her leg. She had to lie in pain on the kitchen floor for two hours, with no help on its way. I dreamed about it. Which is just so weird.”

      “You dreamed your mother broke her leg?”

      “Yes. I saw a figure lying on a floor, only I didn’t know who it was. Someone in the dream told me, ‘Call her in the morning.’ I remembered the dream just now, so I did call her, and when I did…” She took a shuddery breath. “Thank heaven I called!”

      “Celie, it’s all right. Keep remembering to breathe, okay? Are you going to faint?”

      “No.” She’d never fainted in her life, and didn’t intend to start now.

      “Help is with her now, right?”

      “She’s in the ambulance.”

      “So it’s okay. And for heaven’s sake, don’t worry about a little thing like a dream!”

      “No. Of course. You’re right.”

      Celie felt herself sway. She didn’t think she would have fainted, since she never had before and was so determined not to, but when Nick’s arms came around her for support, strong and warm, she clung on to her boss for dear life and whispered hoarsely, “Don’t let go.”

      Chapter Two

      “We should get back to work,” Nick muttered, after a couple of minutes—or maybe a couple of lifetimes.

      Celie felt a little firmer in his arms, now, thank heaven, and a little firmer on her feet. He was no longer afraid she might just crumple into a heap on the floor, as he’d been a minute ago. She’d seemed completely boneless, as if she wasn’t quite real, as if a formless wraith had invaded her body. He loosened his arms cautiously, and was relieved when she didn’t crumple against him.

      Still, he was reluctant to let her go.

      She felt amazingly good.

      Too good.

      And different.

      Surprising.

      He didn’t want an executive assistant who surprised him, and yet every sense told him that this was good. She felt far softer than she looked in her crisp suits. Warmer, too. As warm as if he’d just climbed into bed with her on a winter morning, or as if she’d been toasting herself in front of an open fire moments earlier.

      As for the way she smelled…Faintly rose-scented, like soap and shampoo lingering on clean skin and hair. There were some other scents in there, too, but he couldn’t pick them. Good scents. Spring scents. Classic. Not astringent and artificial, but soft.

      His face had never lingered this close to her neck before. Who knew that his efficient, unsurprising and utterly reliable executive assistant would feel and smell so warm and soft and sweet in his arms?

      Nick let her go at last, stepped back and looked at her, still standing close. She had a fuzzy look around her gray-blue eyes and a new fullness to her mouth, which changed her whole face.

      He’d never considered that there might be this side to Celie. Somehow, if he ever broke his own rules and thought about her private life or the deepest emotions of her heart, he always assumed a level of…safety, or something. Secretarial efficiency, even in her heart. Neatly packaged emotions. Cautious affections. Suitable, unthreatening relationships.

      After her first month in the job, he’d congratulated himself on getting such a great assistant, and he’d been determined to do everything he could to keep her. She’d probably marry eventually, he’d calculated. Some local man, with a local career. He wanted her still here at Delaney’s when she had pictures of her grandchildren on her desk, her hair still pulled back in its efficient knot, but gray.

      He’d always thought her intelligent, capable and practical, but he’d never considered that she might be a deeply passionate person as well. He wondered if she knew this about herself. It seemed possible that she didn’t. So new to him, the hint of this unsuspected passion around her eyes and mouth stirred him to an extent that shocked him, and tilted his balance. He didn’t like it, and he definitely didn’t want it to upset the status quo.

      She smiled at him carefully. “Getting there,” she said.

      He could almost sense the way her blood beat in her veins. Her hands were clenched into fists at her sides, and her breathing went in and out steady and strong, as if she had to work hard to get it to happen at all.

      I’m watching her body, he realized.

      He was watching the way her lower lip had dropped open, and the way her breasts moved when she breathed. In eight months he’d never thought about her breasts. Her suits tended to tailor them out of visible existence, but the softer top she wore today above her straight navy skirt hugged her shape much more closely. He couldn’t tear his eyes away, even though he knew it wasn’t right.

      In another second she would notice, and of course she wasn’t thinking about anything like that. She was thinking about her mother, and her disturbing, clairvoyant dream.

      Nick didn’t believe in psychic dreams, himself. He’d learned early on to believe only in the things he could see and touch and feel for himself. His adoptive parents were practical, rational people who’d worked very hard to rescue him and Sam from the darkness of their early years, and he had enormous respect for their attitude.

      His dad had retired a few years ago, and they wintered in Florida, now, so he saw less of them. He still felt they were close, however, and still shared many of their beliefs. Even those he didn’t share, he respected.

      From the beginning, his mom and dad had encouraged their boys to respond to the tangible proof of their care—things like home-cooked meals and bedtime stories—and not to go stirring up the murky memories that lay beneath, by reading anything into the bad dreams they’d sometimes had.

      No, like Mom and Dad, he definitely didn’t believe in the significance of dreams.

      But he could see how upset Celie was, both by what had happened and by the fact that she thought her dream had warned her of it in advance. Of course she was upset!

      “Sit,” he urged her, emotional himself, worried about her, thrown off balance. “I’m going to ask Kyla to get you some hot tea and something from the cafeteria. Then we’ll talk about how much time you’ll need. Your mother’s here in Columbus, right?”

      “Yes. In Clintonville. They’re taking her to Riverside.” She didn’t sit, she just stood there, leaning her left hand heavily on her desk. Her fingers splayed out fine and neat and long.

      “What would you like to eat?”

      “Oh, I…I’m not really hungry.” She waved away the idea of food with a graceful right hand that looked limp with shock.

      “No, you should,” he urged again. “Even just a muffin.”

      “Okay,