No Ring Required. Laura Wright

was Mary’s turn to laugh, though the sound felt a little forced. “Ivan’s all right. Not much going on upstairs, though.”

      “What a shocker,” Olivia said sarcastically. “Inherited wealth?”

      “Yes.”

      Olivia rolled her eyes as she stood up and headed into the kitchen. “Do you want something to eat? I made blueberry muffins, and, not to toot my own horn or anything, but both attorneys offices downstairs came up to ask where that amazing scent was coming from.”

      Mary’s stomach rolled rudely at the thought of food and she headed toward her office. “Maybe later.”

      “Okay. Oh, hey, Mary?”

      “Yeah.”

      “Mr. Curtis called.”

      Mary felt a tremor of nervous energy move through her, and suddenly she felt unable to breathe. She hadn’t spoken to him since Saturday, since her breakdown in the parking lot.

      She poked her head out of her office and gave Olivia a weak smile. “Let me guess. He no longer requires my services.”

      Wielding a saucepan in one hand and an egg in the other, Olivia looked perplexed. “No. Actually, he asked if you could come by his house today at four-thirty.”

      “What?” There was no way she had heard Olivia correctly.

      “Four-thirty,” Olivia repeated. “His house.”

      “Oh. Okay.” Well, sure. Why should he make the trip to her office to can her when he could do it in person? Her heart pounded so hard in her chest the movement actually hurt.

      “Is he an inheritance jerk, too, Mary?”

      Mary shook her head. “No, self-made all the way.”

      Olivia nodded. “I thought so. He always sounds down-to-earth when he calls. That’s pretty refreshing.”

      Mary went back into her office on unsteady legs and dropped into the chair behind her desk. She had to be ready to hear whatever he had to say. There was no doubt he was going to fire her, but what if he wanted to tell her that he was bringing her father back up on charges?

      The queasy, dizzy, anxiety-ridden feeling she’d been having since yesterday came back full force, and she put her head down on her desk. Her eyes remained open, and even in the semidarkness of her self-made tent, Mary saw what she’d collapsed upon. The plans for Ethan’s nursery—a nursery she hadn’t even begun. With a groan she pushed the plans off her desk and into the trash can.

      Ethan’s housekeeper, Sybil, who Mary had only seen twice before—right before the staff and caterers arrived for a party—answered the door with a vexed expression. “Hello, Ms. Kelley.”

      “How are you, Sybil?”

      The woman released a weighty breath. “Mr. Curtis is in the game room. Let me show you the way.”

      “Game room?” Mary repeated, following behind the housekeeper. She’d been in Ethan’s house several times and she’d never seen a game room.

      Glancing over her shoulder, Sybil rolled her eyes. “It’s where he goes when he’s brooding.”

      Brooding? Mary tried not to register the shock she felt. First of all, she couldn’t imagine Ethan showing anyone his emotions—it just wasn’t his style. And second of all, did he know that the woman he paid to run his household talked about him this way? She’d bet not.

      They passed the dining room and library, then rounded a curve into a hallway that Mary had never ventured down, or even remembered seeing. When they came to a door, Sybil knocked once, then said to Mary, “Here we are.”

      “Should I just go in?” Mary asked when she heard no answer.

      Sybil nodded. “He’s expecting you.”

      After the woman walked away, Mary gripped the knob and pushed the door open. For a good thirty seconds after entering the large room, Mary thought she’d just stepped into kid’s fantasyland, Chucky Cheese. But since she didn’t smell pizza or see a large, furry gray animal with whiskers, she knew she must be in Ethan’s game room.

      The room was a perfect square, with one wall devoted to windows that faced the backyard and lake. It was as if the room was meant to have a screen or drape down the center as a divider, as the right side was completely devoted to every arcade game imaginable. Being a fan of arcades from way back, Mary recognized skeet ball right away and smiled wistfully. There was also basketball, air hockey, pound the squirrel, racecar games and many more she saw but wasn’t familiar with. Then there was the left side of the room, which couldn’t have been more different. It was an office, with a very modern desk and furnishings in charcoal gray and chrome, and in the middle of it sat Ethan, reading the newspaper.

      She had an urge to turn around and leave before he saw her, but instead she walked into the room and parked herself beside the foosball table. “Quite a setup you got here.”

      Still hidden behind the New York Times, Ethan muttered a terse, “These are all the things I couldn’t afford when I was a kid. I wanted to have them now.”

      Mary Kelley was no genius, but she sure understood his meaning: he’d had nothing growing up and was hoping to give this to his child. The child he’d thought was coming. The child he’d blackmailed a woman into creating with him.

      She got it, and she felt Sybil’s pain, and she, too, rolled her eyes. Why couldn’t he have been in his library beside the bar drinking like any normal pissed-off male?

      She fiddled with the handles on the foosball table. “Do you play?”

      “I rarely play games,” he said, still masked by the Times.

      Neither did she, and she was having quite enough of this one. “Listen, you wanted to see me.”

      “Yeah.” The paper came down with a snap, and Mary saw his face for the first time since they’d stood outside the doctor’s office and she’d told him the truth. As he stood and walked over to her, he looked like a determined, really angry devil, his black hair slightly spiky and his blue eyes fierce with a need to hurt. He stood close, stared into her eyes and said in a punishing voice, “I have never felt such disgust with anyone in my life.”

      It was a strange thing—in that moment, spurred on by those words, Mary’s nerves suddenly lifted and she was no longer afraid of what he was going to do about her and her father. The only thing she felt in the moment was the need to strike back. “I know that feeling. I had it about a month ago. But we were standing in your office, not your playroom.”

      His eyes blazed. “What you did was beyond low.”

      “You’re right.”

      “And you have nothing to say.”

      “Just this. Need I remind you that you basically forced me into—”

      “I never forced you to do anything,” he interrupted darkly. “It was your choice—”

      “Choice?” she repeated. Was he kidding? “What choice did I have? Tell me that?”

      “You could have walked away.”

      “And left my dad to…what? Go to jail. Never.” She glared at him. “But you don’t understand that kind of devotion, do you? You’ve never loved anyone that much—so damn much that you’d make a great sacrifice for them.”

      His gaze slipped to her belly.

      She shook her head, not about to pity him. “No, Mr. Curtis. That wasn’t a sacrifice. That was a need to be met, a blue-blooded medal to hang around your neck to make you finally feel worthy.” His nostrils flared, and he looked dangerously close to exploding, but Mary wouldn’t back down. “At least the child would’ve belonged to the old-money club, right? And maybe you, too, by association? No, it doesn’t work that way.” She was yelling