Who had time for labor when she was facing a ton of work finalizing Niko’s burial arrangements and continuing to manage his estate? Then there was Kiara’s show in Paris. She had promised to help her with her artist’s statement and had somehow deluded herself into believing she could attend.
Really, Scarlett? Due next week, yet planning to fly to Paris in three?
Denial was a wonderful thing—until it stopped working. It was screeching to a halt while she stood on the hand towels, waiting for Kiara and deliberately avoiding thoughts about how Javiero would react to everything he would learn today.
To this.
Not for the first time, she tried to will herself back in time and make a different decision. She’d been processing her employer’s refusal of further treatment and frustrated with certain decisions he had made with regard to his errant sons. Maybe those two men didn’t deserve much consideration, given their mulish refusal to see their father in his last days, but Scarlett had been compelled to prod them one last time.
Valentino Casale had never been cooperative with her so she hadn’t expected any better than the brush-off he’d given her. Javiero, however, possessed a more solid sense of family. A heart.
At least, that was what she wanted to believe.
Maybe it was wishful thinking on her part.
What Javiero had in spades was a magnetism she had barely been able to resist the handful of times she’d met with him. It had taken everything in her to keep from betraying her reaction to him.
He must have known. He was too smoldering and sophisticated and experienced to not know when a woman was swooning over him. Maybe he’d even privately laughed at her for it. Maybe that was why he’d made a move that day. He had probably sensed she’d mentally slept with him a thousand times and was dying to make it reality.
She hadn’t expected it to happen, though. Not really. Seeing him at all had been a rare overstep on her part, moving beyond the tight constraints of her employer’s dictates and acting of her own volition. She was still trying to explain to herself how she’d been in Madrid at all, let alone how she had wound up in Javiero’s bed.
A quiet sense of injustice had driven her. She knew that much. Had she also been affected on a basic level by Niko’s failing health? Had she longed to assert the beginnings of life to hold off the shadows closing in on the end of one?
Or had it been as simple as a secretive yearning on her part to have a final connection with a man she would never have an excuse to see again once Niko was gone?
She hadn’t expected Javiero to give her the time of day after his father’s death. As it was, he only tolerated her in deference to his mother. Javiero’s attitude toward Scarlett had always been...not hostile, but disparaging. He hadn’t liked that she worked for his father. He couldn’t respect her for it.
She’d had no idea how he might react to her pregnancy. Perhaps she’d been in a bit of denial then, too, not expecting their passionate afternoon could change her life—or create one! By the time she had suspected and had it confirmed, though, she had not only desperately wanted this baby—she had seen a poetic sort of balancing of scales in her carrying Javiero’s child.
Not that Niko had viewed it that way. He’d been a hard man. A nightmare to work for, actually, and suddenly cynical of her motives. They’d had an extremely rare disagreement when she told him—rare because, until then, Scarlett had made a career of acting on his command.
You went behind my back, he had accused her.
I told them you were dying because they deserved to know.
She had stood by that decision even though he’d been angry at her for it.
Surprisingly, her pushback had earned his grudging respect, proving her tough enough in his eyes to take control of his holdings. He’d added her baby to his will, too, ensuring Javiero’s child would inherit the half of his fortune that Javiero had declined.
And life altering as this pregnancy was proving to be, she didn’t regret it. She patted her swollen belly, excited to meet him or her.
Just. Not. Today.
Where was Kiara?
Into her ruminations a strange sensation accosted her. A faint, dull ache in her lower back grew more insistent. Tension wrapped outward until it squeezed across her middle.
A contraction?
Well, duh. Of course that was what was happening, but, come on! She nearly pounded her fist against the wall in frustration.
What had she thought, though? That she would still go into that meeting, bare as a Scotsman under her skirt while she looked her baby’s father in the eye and admitted...
She hung her head in her hands and bit back a whimper.
The main door opened. She lifted her head, relief washing over her. As she started to call out, however, she realized the person she could see through the crack in the door didn’t have Kiara’s voluptuous figure or curly black hair.
Oh, dear Lord. That slender woman in a bone-colored skirt suit was Paloma Rodriguez, Javiero’s mother.
Scarlett never swore, but she tilted her head back and mouthed a number of really filthy words at the ceiling. She texted Kiara again, suspecting Kiara had silenced her phone for the meeting.
Javiero’s mother was smoothing her hair, checking her makeup, unconsciously betraying how important it was that she appear flawless to the rest of the people in that boardroom, most particularly her rival for a dead man’s affections.
Scarlett had to make a split-second decision. No matter how this day played out, Javiero would finally learn she was having his baby. She wanted him to hear it from her.
As his mother started to leave, Scarlett forced herself to speak though she could hear the quaver in
