Not the Boss's Baby. Sarah M. Anderson

      

       Chadwick was sitting behind his desk.

      Serena knew she shouldn’t think of him as Chadwick—it was too familiar. Too personal. Mr Beaumont was her boss. She worked hard for him, pulling long hours whenever necessary.

      It wasn’t a secret that Serena would go to the ends of the earth for this man. It was a secret that she’d always done just a little more than admire his commitment to the company.

      Chadwick Beaumont was an incredibly handsome man—a solid six-two, his sandy-blond hair neatly trimmed at all times. He would be one of those men who aged like a fine wine, only getting better with each passing year. Some days, Serena would catch herself staring as if she were trying to savor him.

      But that secret admiration was buried deep.

      She had an excellent job with benefits and she would never risk it by doing something as unprofessional as falling in love with her boss. They worked together. Their relationship was nothing but business-professional.

      She had no idea how being pregnant was going to change things.

      ***

      Not the Boss’s Baby is part of The Beaumont Heirs series: One Colorado family, limitless scandal!

      Not the

      Boss’s Baby

      Sarah M. Anderson

       www.millsandboon.co.uk

      Award-winning author SARAH M. ANDERSON may live east of the Mississippi River, but her heart lies out west on the Great Plains. With a lifelong love of horses and two history teachers for parents, she had plenty of encouragement to learn everything she could about the tribes of the Great Plains.

      When she started writing, it wasn’t long before her characters found themselves out in South Dakota among the Lakota Sioux. She loves to put people from two different worlds into new situations and to see how their backgrounds and cultures take them someplace they never thought they’d go.

      Sarah’s book A Man of Privilege won the 2012 RT Reviewers’ Choice Award for Best Mills & Boon® Desire™.

      When not helping out at her son’s school or walking her rescue dogs, Sarah spends her days having conversations with imaginary cowboys and American Indians, all of which is surprisingly well-tolerated by her wonderful husband. Readers can find out more about Sarah’s love of cowboys and Indians at www.sarahmanderson.com.

      To Leah Hanlin. We’ve been friends for over twenty years now, and I’m so glad I’ve been able to share this journey—and my covers!—with you.

      Let’s celebrate by getting more sleep!

      Contents

       Cover

       Introduction

       Title Page

       About the Author

       Dedication

       One

       Two

       Three

       Four

       Five

       Six

       Seven

       Eight

       Nine

       Ten

       Eleven

       Twelve

       Thirteen

       Fourteen

       Extract

       Copyright

       One

      “Ms. Chase, if you could join me in my office.”

      Serena startled at the sound of Mr. Beaumont’s voice coming from the old-fashioned intercom on her desk. Blinking, she became aware of her surroundings.

      How on earth had she gotten to work? She looked down—she was wearing a suit, though she had no memory of getting dressed. She touched her hair. All appeared to be normal. Everything was fine.

      Except she was pregnant. Nothing fine or normal about that.

      She was relatively sure it was Monday. She looked at the clock on her computer. Yes, nine in the morning—the normal time for her morning meeting with Chadwick Beaumont, President and CEO of the Beaumont Brewery. She’d been Mr. Beaumont’s executive assistant for seven years now, after a yearlong internship and a year working in Human Resources. She could count the number of times they’d missed their 9:00 a.m. Monday meeting on two hands.

      No need to let something like a little accidental pregnancy interrupt that.

      Okay, so everything had turned upside down this past weekend. She wasn’t just a little tired or a tad stressed out. She wasn’t fighting off a bug, even. She was, in all likelihood, two months and two or three weeks pregnant. She knew that with certainty because those were the last times she’d slept with Neil.

      Neil. She had to tell him she was expecting. He had a right to know. God, she didn’t want to see him again—to be rejected again. But this went way beyond what she wanted. What a huge mess.

      “Ms. Chase? Is there a problem?” Mr. Beaumont’s voice was strict but not harsh.

      She clicked the intercom on. “No, Mr. Beaumont. Just a slight delay. I’ll be right in.”

      She was at work. She had a job to do—a job she needed now more than ever.

      Serena sent a short note to Neil informing him that she needed to talk to him, and then she gathered up her tablet and opened the door to Chadwick Beaumont’s office. Chadwick was the fourth Beaumont to run the brewery, and it showed in his office. The room looked much as it might have back in the early 1940s, soon after Prohibition had ended, when Chadwick’s grandfather John had built it. The walls were mahogany panels that had been oiled until they gleamed. A built-in bar with a huge mirror took up the whole interior wall. The exterior wall was lined with windows hung with heavy gray velvet drapes and crowned with elaborately hand-carved woodwork that told the story of the Beaumont Brewery.

      The conference table had been custom-made to fit the room—Serena had read that it was so large and so heavy that John Beaumont had to have the whole thing built in the office because there was no getting it through a doorway. Tucked in the far corner by a large coffee table was a grouping of two leather club chairs and a matching leather loveseat set. The coffee table was supposedly made of one of the original wagon wheels that Phillipe Beaumont had used when he’d crossed the Great Plains with a team of Percheron draft