She's Having the Boss's Baby. Kate Carlisle

his mind. Exasperated, he swallowed the rest of the scotch and headed back to his suite before he found himself howling at the moon like the rest of the lunatics in the world.

      Ellie yawned, then finished the last of her tea and shut down her computer. She should’ve gone to bed an hour ago, but since she knew she wouldn’t sleep anyway, she had spent more time sifting through the family photos her sister, Brenna, had sent from Atlanta. A picture of Brenna with her darling husband, Brian. One of Brenna and Brian with their two adorable children. Various shots of the kids on their new backyard jungle gym. And the latest one, a blurry ultrasound photo of Brenna’s unborn baby.

      Doctor’s pretty sure it’s going to be a boy, Brenna had written in the email. Lilah’s so excited to have another brother. No annoying little sister to deal with.

      Ellie smiled. She could hear Brenna laughing as she wrote those words, since it was Ellie who’d been the annoying little sister Brenna had dealt with all her life. And thank goodness for that, Ellie thought.

      Now Brenna had her own wonderful family and Ellie couldn’t wait to see them all again. That was another reason she had chosen the Atlanta clinic. She would get to visit with her sister’s happy, loving family again.

      Ellie and Brenna hadn’t always been this happy. Growing up, their mother had been absent most of the time, even when she was sitting in the same room with them. That was what happened when a woman became so obsessed with a man who wanted nothing to do with her. Rather than give any love or attention to her own children, their mother had kept it all inside, saving it up, just in case their father ever returned. Except he never did. He didn’t want anything to do with them. He had moved on, found another woman to marry, a woman who gave birth to children he cared for much more than he had ever cared about his first two daughters.

      But Ellie’s mother never gave up on him, never stopped loving him or chasing him, never stopped pretending that he would come back one day. She was always ready, always perfectly dressed and coifed in case he showed up at the door. She insisted that the girls be ready, too. And in her own subtle way, their mother never stopped blaming Ellie and Brenna for causing him to leave. That is, when she managed to remember that she had two children who needed her.

      One day, when the girls and their mother were enjoying a rare moment of fun at a local hamburger stand, their mother thought she spied their father walking down the sidewalk. She raced outside to catch him, saw the man cross the street and blindly dashed after him. She was struck and killed by a city bus.

      It was one of many lessons that Ellie took with her into adulthood. She would never, ever cling to or chase after a man who didn’t love her. Ellie wouldn’t do to her own child what her mother had done to Ellie and Brenna.

      After all, she didn’t want to get hit by a bus.

      More than that, she refused to allow her self-esteem to be shattered as her mother’s had been. Her mother had made a fool of herself over and over again. She had deluded herself for years and, slowly but surely, the delusions had replaced reality. Ellie would never allow that to happen to her.

      She carried her teacup over to the sink and rinsed it out. As the water ran, she thought about the tiny creature in her sister’s ultrasound photo, silently waiting to be born into a loving family that couldn’t wait to greet their newest little member.

      Ellie was so excited for Brenna. The two of them had basically raised themselves after their mother died, staying under the radar so that the county wouldn’t send Ellie into foster care. How they’d managed it, they still didn’t know. But it meant that they were fiercely loyal to each other. Brenna had taught Ellie so much more about life and real love than she’d ever learned from her mother.

      One thing Brenna always wished for herself and Ellie was that someday they would each have their own big, boisterous families to love. She imagined how Christmas mornings would be, with their children staring in awe at all the colorful packages under the tree. It would be a noisy, busy, frenzied moment when they all ripped into their presents and shouted out their joy and excitement.

      Ellie smiled at the memory. Now that Brenna’s dream had come true, now that she had Brian and a wonderful family of her own, Ellie couldn’t be happier. They were her family, too.

      Brenna always told Ellie that someday it would happen for her, too. She would meet a man who would love her and want to start a family with her. Ellie had thought she could wait for that day. But five days ago, Blake broke up with her—probably a good thing—and the very next day, her sister announced she was having another baby by way of sending the ultrasound photo.

      “You’re going to be an auntie again!” the email subject line announced gaily.

      Gazing at the fuzzy outline of Brenna’s third child, Ellie had realized that someday might never come for her. She might always be an auntie, never a mom. That’s when she’d impulsively made the decision to do something about it. She would go it alone. And she would do it right away, before she could think about it too much and pick apart all the reasons why she shouldn’t do it. She phoned the Atlanta fertility clinic that very minute and made the appointment.

      So that was done. Now she just had to deal with one more wrinkle in her plan.

      Aidan.

      As Ellie recalled Aidan’s reaction to her news, her cheeks flushed with heat. Why not do it the old-fashioned way? he’d asked her. Would it have shocked him to hear her reply, “Are you offering to do the job?”

      Yes, it would’ve shocked him and probably would’ve ended her career at Sutherland Corporation. It wasn’t often that female employees were fired for sexually harassing the male boss, but there was a first time for everything.

      Aidan had promised to try and convince her that the time-honored, man-woman route was the way to go, but she doubted he would bring up the subject again. Especially after she’d made her pitiful confession that she didn’t even have a man around to do the job for her, so to speak.

      If only Aidan had offered his own services.

      “Oh, good grief.” She felt herself blushing even worse than before. Was she out of her mind? Aidan was her boss, in case she’d forgotten. There was no end to the list of complications and ramifications of having her own boss be the biological father of her child.

      Sadly though, her biggest problem had nothing to do with the fact that Aidan was her boss. It had to do with the fact that she had wanted the man for years. Secretly, of course. She hadn’t dwelled on her feelings for him in a long time, and she blamed their discussion about babies and sex for making her think of it now. Except for that conversation, she considered her crush on him mainly shallow and, well, sexual. Nothing wrong with that, right? The man had a great body! He was smart and funny and nice, too. God help her if she ever began to obsess over him, because if her feelings deepened, she would be in big trouble. Hadn’t her mother gone through life pining over a man, worshiping him from afar and losing herself in the process?

      No, Ellie would never become dependent on a man. She liked Aidan, thought he was sexy, but that was it, thank goodness. There was no way she would ever turn into her mother.

      “Hell, no,” she muttered defiantly as her hands rolled into fists at the very idea. She tossed her lightweight bathrobe on the bed and climbed under the covers. But as she fluffed her pillow, she wondered what it said about her when, despite the fact that Aidan would never make the offer to get her pregnant, she knew that if he did, she would have a hard time rejecting the offer. No matter how hard she had tried to avoid the attraction she felt for him, a direct proposition would be too tempting to pass up.

      “Because you are crazy,” she said aloud. But that didn’t seem to matter as she continued to reflect on the joys of giving birth to a baby boy whose father was Aidan Sutherland. Her child would grow up to be handsome, rugged, gregarious, smart and athletic, just like his daddy.

      She sighed. And even though it would never happen, the thought was so pleasant that she continued to dwell on it as she drifted off to sleep.

      Two days later, Aidan held his regular weekly meeting