Page 43 of Baby Bombshell for the Boss

“You trust me, right?”

“You know I do.”

“Then come on,” he said. “I promise it will be worth your time.” He held a hand out to her, and after some hesitation, she took it.

He led her past the elevators to the service door that opened on the short stairway to the roof. Ivy frowned as she followed him up. “Are we allowed to be doing this?”

“I do own this building,” he said.

“I didn’t know that.”

“If you decide you want to move out of my place but stay nearby, I can let you have one of the other units,” he said. “That would be easy. Not that I want you to move out. I’d like you to stay as long as you’re willing. But if you wanted your own space, that’s an option.”

He pushed open the door that led onto the roof. Ivy gasped. The whole space was covered in lit candles. “When did you do this?”

“I came up here on my way home,” he explained. “I left the office early.”

“You really didn’t have to do that.”

“I wanted you to have a surprise for your birthday. Do you like it?”

“I love it,” she said softly. “You can see the whole city from up here.”

He nodded. “You can even see the Statue of Liberty.” He pivoted her to face in the right direction. “You have to look between the buildings, but it’s there, do you see it?”

She nodded, squinting. “I think so,” she said. “Do you know I haven’t been there since I moved to New York? I thought I would go in the first week I lived here, just to check it off the list, but things got crazy and I never made the time.”

“You and I will check it out sometime,” he told her. “Maybe once the baby is born. That would be a fun little outing as a family.”

As a family. Just saying those words had felt special. Was that what they were? A family?

He led her over to the reclining lawn chairs he’d placed up here. On another occasion, he might have laid out a picnic blanket so that they could sit on the roof itself, but he knew how hard it was for her to sit on the ground and get herself back up these days. He helped her settle into the chair and showed her how to recline it. Then he poured a glass of cider for each of them.

“To another trip around the sun,” he said, raising his glass to her.

She clinked hers against it. “And to our family,” she said, and it thrilled him to hear the word repeated back to him so easily.

He reclined his chair beside hers and gazed up at the stars. The building was tall enough that you could actually see a few of them, not like the view from down on the street level.

“This is really pretty,” Ivy said.

“You like it?”

She reached out and took his hand. “I love it,” she told him softly.

“I’m so glad.”

“I’ve been feeling as if I was all alone in this city,” she said. “I know you’ve been here for me all the time, and I don’t take that for granted, but I also felt like the real reason you’ve been so good to me has been the baby.”

“That’s not the only reason,” Elliot said quietly. This was as close as he dared come to admitting that he had feelings for her. That wasn’t something he could even admit to himself. But he did care for her. He did want her to have a good and memorable birthday.

He wanted to spend it with her. To be a part of the memory of tonight.

He dropped the armrest on his chair, then reached over and lowered the armrest on hers. There was only an inch between them, and now he got up and pushed the two chairs together so that there was no space there at all. He laid back down, put his arm around her, and pulled her close against him.

She was breathing rapidly. He could feel it. He thought her heart must be beating as fast as his own, and that was a thrilling thought.

He turned to look at her and found that she was already looking at him, and all the resistance and willpower that he’d spent the last several months clinging to just slipped away in an instant.

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