The Boss's Baby Surprise. Lilian Darcy

her before she goes into surgery?”

      Her face cleared, leaving her brow wide and smooth, and bracketed softly by the hair she’d left loose this morning. “Yes, of course. Oh, could I? Can you spare me right away? Can Kyla handle the rest of the meeting? I have the files laid out on—”

      “Don’t worry about it, Celie. Between us, we’ll manage. Take as much time as you need. A couple of weeks, if you have to.”

      “Thank you, Mr. Delaney!” She smiled again.

      Celie had a gorgeous smile. He’d noticed it very early on, when she’d just started working for him, and he remembered thinking it was such a huge professional asset it was a shame she couldn’t list it on her resume. Today, the smile was wide and soft and wobbly, far more heartfelt than he’d ever seen it look before. She couldn’t keep it in place, and it faded at once.

      “Please save the Mr. Delaney stuff for executive meetings,” he said. “I’m just Nick. How many times have I told you that?”

      He took her arm, led her to her ergonomic chair and pushed her gently into it, then called Kyla from the phone on Celie’s desk because he didn’t quite trust what his executive assistant would do if he left her alone, even for a moment. If she thought she had to clear her desk, leave memos, check her e-mail before she departed…It would be typical of her to think that.

      “You’re still a lot shakier than you realize,” he told her.

      “No, I’m not,” Celie answered. She added more firmly, in order to clear the ambiguity, “I mean, I do realize. How shaky I am. Now. Thanks. The tea will help.”

      She watched Nick take the tea and a blueberry muffin from Kyla a few minutes later. “Thank you,” he said. He clicked his tongue at Sam’s assistant, curled his fingers around the disposable cup and cradled the paper muffin plate in the opposite palm.

      Something had happened just now. She and Nick hadn’t kissed, hadn’t come close to that, but it was the most potent hug that Celie had ever experienced. She could still feel Nick’s body against hers, and smell his scent—clean male, mixed with professional laundry—on her skin. She could feel the throb of secret places inside her.

      He’d felt so solid and strong and steady, and she’d needed that, after the shock of the prescient dream and her mother’s pain. She’d made no attempt to let him go, even when her dizzying weakness began to ebb.

      And then he’d told her she was free to go to her mother right away. She’d never needed time off at short notice before, and wouldn’t necessarily have expected such care from him. She knew how driven he was. A lot of men as successful as he was would have been far more ruthless with their staff’s personal time. It turned out he didn’t have total tunnel vision, however.

      She remembered how she’d let her head rest against his chest, listening to his breathing and his heart, and how she’d wrapped her arms around him as close and tight as they would reach. She’d felt the prickle of his belt buckle against her stomach, and the squashy nudge of her breasts against his ribs. While it was happening, she’d felt too shocked about her mom to react as a woman, but as she relived the moment now, in a slightly calmer state, her skin began to tingle.

      “Okay. So,” Nick said. “Do you need extra cash? I’ll write you a check.”

      “I don’t need it, Nick,” she answered. “I just need the time. You’re giving me that, and I’m grateful.”

      “Don’t come back too soon.”

      “No, I won’t. Thank you again. So much.”

      “Don’t worry about it. Just take care of your mom.”

      Celie didn’t see Nick for a week.

      She barely saw her apartment, either, as her mom needed a lot of time, at first in the hospital and then at home. After a week, her mom still wasn’t too confident on her crutches, but by this time Celie’s sister, Veronica, had organized to come up from Kentucky, with baby Lizzie, for as long as she was needed, which meant that Celie could go home and back to work.

      The apartment sent out its silent “Good to see you” message, the moment she walked through the door. The clock on the side table had stopped, the air was a little stale and surfaces needed dusting. On the windowsill, Celie found a torn shred of white broderie anglaise fabric, left there like a message on a Post-It note.

      A message for her.

      She had no doubt of that.

      But where had it come from, who could have put it there, and what did it mean?

      “Hey, what’s going on here? Why are you doing this to me? I’m not the right person for it,” she said aloud to the room, and when she turned, she almost expected to see the woman fixing her hat in front of the mirror, wearing a broderie anglaise blouse.

      But no one was there.

      I’m talking to my apartment, she realized. How weird is that?

      At least the solution to this problem was obvious, and within her control.

      Don’t do it.

      Celie hadn’t had any memorable dreams while at her mom’s, but tonight they again cut through her sleep. The baby cried. Or was it a doll? She kept seeing strange figures and forms, some of them reassuringly like people, others just the suggestion of a human shape. What were they made of? Plaster? Metal? None of the images stayed long enough for her to identify them. Bright lights flashed, startling and dazzling her, and she thought there must have been an explosion.

      Where was the baby in all of this? Was it in danger?

      She jumped out of bed and rushed to look for it.

      No, not it.

      Him.

      Nick’s baby was a boy. Hadn’t the woman in front of the mirror said so, last week? Celie sniffed the air, in search of the acrid, firecracker smell of explosives but, thank goodness, couldn’t detect it anywhere.

      Couldn’t find the baby, either. His cries still shrilled in her ears. Why didn’t Nick go to him tonight? His inaction distressed her. The baby was his. The woman had implied it, and Celie somehow knew it herself, in any case.

      The baby belonged to Nick, only tonight Nick didn’t seem to be around.

      “He doesn’t know,” she told the woman frantically. “Nick doesn’t know the baby’s crying. He doesn’t know about the baby at all.”

      “He will,” she answered, with the calm smile that made Celie feel as if everything was all right. “He’ll find out. You can tell him, if you want.”

      “And the explosion?”

      “It’s not an explosion. The baby is miles from there, anyhow, on the other side of town. No one’s in that kind of danger.”

      And this meant that Celie could sleep, so she did. This was very easy, because of course she’d been asleep all along. None of this was real.

      In the morning, it felt great to be back at work, and even better to be busy—back the way life used to be, in this job, very safe and structured and efficient, with no time to think of Nick Delaney as anything except Celie’s driven, demanding employer. She wore her severest navy pinstripe suit and rocketed through the tasks Nick had given her with barely a pause to sip her coffee.

      He had scheduled a long day. Meetings and conference calls ran until five, ahead of tomorrow’s demonstration of proposed new menu items by the resident team of Delaney’s food scientists and chefs. Delaney’s rotated its menu seasonally, four times a year, and although Ohio was currently clothed in spring colors, the new offerings for the coming fall were already in planning.

      Celie wasn’t surprised, midafternoon, when Nick announced, “I’m going to go visit a couple of the restaurants tonight, check out the atmosphere.”

      Nine years ago, there had