The Pregnant Colton Bride. Marie Ferrarella

your administrative assistant, not your long lost soul mate, a small voice in his head insisted.

      Usually, that small voice had a great deal of wisdom going for it. But this time around, Zane just wasn’t so sure.

      Still feeling shaky, Mirabella told herself that she couldn’t just continue sitting there, saying nothing while Zane made assumptions. Dead-on assumptions, unfortunately, but still, she had to say something to defend herself. To not say anything made her seem either stupid, or indifferent to her situation.

      Or just plain brazen.

      She was none of those. She never had been. What she was, Mirabella thought, was completely overwhelmed. Never in her wildest dreams did she believe she would ever be in this sort of a situation. She’d thought if she ever did find herself pregnant, it would be because it had been a conscious choice on her part.

      Hers and her husband’s.

      Instead, things had just happened around her without her actual consent. This was not how she’d envisioned her life.

      Mirabella clenched her hands into fists on either side of her. She absolutely refused to allow herself to behave like a victim. And in order to not be a victim, she had to get out in front of this situation, had to take charge of it as well as of the rest of her life. Her pride would allow for nothing less.

      “Yes,” she replied in a quiet voice.

      “Yes?” he repeated, uncertain exactly what she was saying yes to.

      The time lapse between when he’d stopped talking and she had just spoken up had been large enough to leave a great deal of room for confusion. And right now he was confused as well as disappointed.

      “Yes, you’re right,” she told him stoically. “I am pregnant.”

      Again, he felt as if he’d just been sucker punched. Upbraiding himself that there was no reason for him to feel this way didn’t seem to change anything.

      “Are congratulations in order?” he asked in a subdued voice.

      He assumed, since Mirabella was making this admission, she intended to keep the baby, but he wasn’t about to take anything for granted, just in case. He waited to be told her intentions.

      “Right now,” she replied honestly, “I’m not sure just what’s in order. I’ll let you know when—and if—I ever stop being so damn sick.”

      Zane remained sitting on the sofa, shifting slightly so he was now on the far edge. He didn’t want to appear to be crowding her.

      “Have you been to see a doctor?” he asked her. Her welfare was still his main concern.

      “Oh, yes,” she told him with exaggerated feeling. It was the doctor who had indifferently informed her of her condition.

      Zane picked up on her tone of voice. “The doctor wasn’t reassuring?”

      “If by that you mean did he tell me about my options, yes, he did. To quote him, I could either ‘have it, or not have it.’ And,” she continued, trying not to allow her emotions to break through, “if I went with door number one, I still didn’t have to keep it once the ‘residency’ period was up. I could always give it up for adoption,” she said, quoting the doctor.

      The conversation she’d had with the doctor had left her so cold and numb, she’d spent the rest of the day and part of the next crying.

      “What are you going to do?” Zane asked her, forgetting for the moment that as her boss, he had no right to ask her questions of such a personal, probing nature.

      She took a deep breath, squaring her shoulders. “I’ll let you know the second I stop throwing up everything but the kitchen sink so I can think clearly.”

      Mirabella felt another wave coming over her and fought to keep it from overwhelming her. She pressed her hand against her stomach as if that could somehow contain and subdue the pending waves of nausea and keep them from coming up.

      “If this is what it feels like, why would any woman in her right mind ever want to be pregnant?” she asked miserably.

      He was doing his best to maintain a professional distance, but he just couldn’t help feeling sympathetic about what she was going through.

      “I’m definitely no expert, but I don’t think it feels like that for every woman,” he told her. “And from what I’ve heard, a lot of women think it’s all really worth it—once they get to hold their baby in their arms.”

      Zane paused for a moment, debating whether or not to ask her the next question. It turned out to be a very short debate.

      “How does the baby’s father feel about all this?”

      Mirabella stiffened, inadvertently recalling the man’s parting words to her. Words she had no desire to repeat. Nor did she want to remember anything about him, because he had turned out to be so very different from the man he had pretended to be.

      But that was on her, Mirabella thought the next moment. How naive could she have been not to realize some men would say anything just to get what they were after? It wasn’t as if she’d lived a sheltered life, she knew these things happened, that there were men—a lot of men—who lied.

      The problem was, she didn’t realize this could happen to her, that someone would knowingly and deliberately lie to her. The very fact that this had happened to her made her feel violated.

      But she was determined it wouldn’t destroy her.

      She turned her head to look at Zane. “I’d rather not talk about that if you don’t mind,” she replied a little formally.

      It was his cue to pull back, to drop the subject that wasn’t any of his business to begin with.

      But because Mirabella was his administrative assistant, because he interacted with her every day and relied on her being as efficient as she had been up until now, for this as well as so many other reasons, her well-being was his concern.

      In his view, the term well-being encompassed a great deal of territory.

      “But he does know, right?” he prodded, watching Mirabella’s face for a telltale clue. “The baby’s father does know about its existence? You did tell him, right?” He wanted to know.

      Mirabella shifted uncomfortably. It felt decidedly strange to her to be thinking about Kyle in the present tense now that he was dead. But the fact that he was dead really didn’t change anything. She didn’t want to admit to having slept with him, which, in turn, was to admit to being used by him.

      In her eyes it made her seem like a little fool—and worse. But since Zane was obviously not letting go of this, she made the nebulous admission and hoped that would be enough for him.

      “Yes, I told him. Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to drop the subject.” She began to get up. “I’d—”

      She stopped abruptly as another wave of nausea, this one far more intense than its immediate predecessor, suddenly caught her up in its grip. She dug the fingernails of her left hand into the arm of the sofa as if that could somehow channel the sensation she was feeling out of her body and into the inanimate object.

      It couldn’t.

      Caught up in all this, Zane saw that horrid color—pea green—reemerge and all but paint her complexion from the throat up.

      He could see by the sudden panicked look in her eyes that she felt she wasn’t going to be able to make it down the hall in time.

      He wasn’t about to allow her to embarrass herself in front of the other people on the floor. They were, in general, good people. But a lot of good people still loved to gossip. Some actually thrived on it, he recalled.

      With that in mind, Zane quickly got to his feet and out of her way.

      “Use my bathroom,” he volunteered. He saw she was about to demur and he quickly cut her off.