Page 2 of Bedding the Baby Daddy

It was true. George Sr. was a trusted client. Honest, fair, and genuinely personable. How he’d ever spawned George Jr. was a complete mystery to Aurora. She peered down at the little man with a moment’s worth of speculation.

He jumped at her momentary attention like a man trying to snatch a salmon out of the river with his bare hands. “He had other plans tonight, unfortunately. Have you given any more thought to my offer?”

Across the room, the woman at Gio’s side threw her head back and laughed at something he whispered in her ear. Aurora’s stomach tightened. Oh god. She’d never seen Gio whisper in someone’s ear. Christ. Christ on a fucking cracker. Aurora felt herself spin away from time and place for a moment. It had been a good laugh too. Nothing put upon or manufactured about it. As much as she hated to admit it, Aurora was starting to think that in different circumstances she might actually like Gio’s woman. That thought merely made her stomach clench even tighter.

Aurora tried to focus on George Jr.’s pinched little face. His eyes zipped up from her chest the second he realized she was looking at him again.

Aurora bit down her irritation. That kind of thing had been happening to her since she was about fifteen years old. In so many ways, men were a simple and predictable species. “I’m sorry, what were you saying, Mr. Mills?”

Something flared in George Jr.’s eyes when she referred to him so formally and it made Aurora want to puke. She never in a million years wanted to know what thought had put that lecherous look on his face.

“I was asking if you’d given my offer any more thought. You remember? I talked to you about it when we ran into one another on New Years? My beach house?”

Oh yes. The beach house. The little twerp had had the nerve to invite her, cold turkey, to a private weekend at his beach house in Malibu. Just the two of them.

“Funny,” Aurora couldn’t quite bite back the retort. “I thought that was more of a proposition than an offer.”

George Jr.’s cheeks instantly went bright red. “I merely wanted to—”

“See if Ms. LeMonde could be enticed by your daddy’s money?”

The deep voice came from behind her and so did the large, warm hand at the small of her back. Everything in Aurora’s body tightened.

Great. Just what she needed right now.

Dante fucking Callaghan. She was so not in the mood for his oxygen sucking presence. Even so, she had to stop herself from instinctively turning around to admire how stunning he was sure to look. His light brown hair was short but somehow always looked a little bit messy and his sharp face was always shadowed and his blue eyes were always lit with an inner fire that made her feel warm when she stared into them too long. Dante wasn’t loud or obnoxious, but he was enormous and commanding. Filling every room with his broad shoulders, all-seeing eyes, and constantly half-amused grin.

George Jr. sputtered and turned even redder than before. Dante was still standing just behind her, but she could practically feel his barely restrained amusement. She looked at her hands as one of his big paws plucked her untouched champagne away from her and replaced it with a fresh one.

Finally, he stepped in front of her, and Aurora was immediately swallowed up in the endless night sky of his deep blue eyes. Damn those gorgeous eyes. They just had to be attached to one of the most irritatingly sexy men in history.

“I was insinuating nothing of the sort, Aurora!” George Jr. insisted, puffing up like a balloon. “If you must know, Callaghan, I was simply—”

“Do yourself a favor and quit while you’re ahead, Junior,” Dante said, taking a casual sip of his drink and sliding even closer to Aurora.

Aurora barely stopped herself from choking on the champagne she was swallowing. She’d always known that Dante was irreverent, but George Mills Jr. was the son of one of the most influential men in the city. As one of the best financial analysts in the business, Dante often teamed up with Gio on projects, which was the reason Aurora saw him so often.

Too often for her comfort.

George Jr., apparently choosing to retreat, at least for now, stiffly nodded in Aurora’s general direction and turned on his heel.

Somehow she managed to bite back her smile of gratitude. “Honestly, Dante,” Aurora said, looking at him admonishingly.

“What?” He raised his hands in an almost childlike gesture. “He was being a dick, so I made him feel like a dick. What’s the harm in that?”

Aurora rolled her eyes and put a few more inches of space between them. “The harm is that he’s the son of our biggest client.”

Suddenly feeling as if she couldn’t stand another minute of this—work obligations be damned—Aurora set her glass down and started to walk away.

“Oh, come on, LeMonde, you know that Mills isn’t going anywhere, no matter how many times Junior gets his feelings hurt. He swears by you and Gio.”

“That may be true,” she retorted immediately, the words hot on her tongue and surprisingly easy to let loose. After what felt like a lifetime of repressing the things she wanted to say at the moment she wanted to say them, it was nice to be able to speak to someone with a little spice. “But what’s the point in testing the theory? It’s just like you to act without thinking and then disappear, no cares for the person who’s going to have to clean up your mess!”

“What mess?” he demanded, getting in front of her and stopping her progress. “What person?”

Aurora pulled up short and longed to press her hands to her hips. But she knew exactly what that would look like. Two people fighting on the edge of a work party. As such, she folded her hands carefully in front of her and gritted her teeth into what she hoped would look like a polite smile to anyone watching from afar.

“George Jr.’s bruised little ego is the mess I’m referring to. And I’m going to be the one who has to nurse it back to health next time he comes by the office. All while desperately attempting to avoid his…” Hands? Eyes? Breath? Each option was equally abhorrent so Aurora gave up choosing. “Everything!”

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