Page 57 of Bedding the Baby Daddy

The last few months replayed in his head in both slow and fast motion. He felt as if his life were a spinning top that someone had just flicked to the side.

Gio, reading Dante’s face, took a step back, a little stunned himself. “You?”

Gio took a step forward then, instantly furious on Aurora’s behalf. “You’re the asshole that left her without so much as a good luck?”

Dante scraped a hand over his face, wishing that his blood would start pumping again so that he could just think.

“Was she showing?”

“What?”

“That day in her office, was she showing? If I’d walked in and you hadn’t been blocking her belly, would I have known she was pregnant?”

“Yes, that’s how I found out in the first place.”

“Oh god. I didn’t see. I didn’t know.” Dante crouched down and dragged his hands through his hair. He needed air. He looked up at Gio in absolute horror at what he’d done. “She said ‘us’. She said ‘our lives’.”

“What?”

“I thought you two were together. That she was leaving me for you. She said ‘us’ and I thought she meant you two. But she meant her and the baby. She thought I knew she was pregnant and was throwing her away. FUCK.”

Gio, reached down and dragged Dante back to standing. “Okay man, that’s really bad. Jesus, really bad. But you’ve gotta find her and explain. Step one. Just explain. Okay?”

Dante was already tearing away from his hands and jogging back into the party. His eyes wild and his heart racing.

When he spotted her standing in the corner of the ballroom, sipping from a glass of ice water and politely nodding her head at something George Mills Junior was saying to her, Dante literally stopped in his tracks.

First it was her face that stopped him. Her precious, gorgeous face, all sharp lines and big eyes. Pregnancy had made her just a bit softer, but no less beautiful. And then his eyes travelled down. To the swell of her breasts. And further down, to her rounded belly. Full with child. His child.

Dante couldn’t breathe. He wished he could say it was because of how beautiful she was, how happy he was to take this next step with her. But there was a healthy dose of raw fear in there as well. A kid. His kid. Holy shit. Dante sidestepped to the bar, signaled for a glass of whiskey, took a quick slug. He glanced around the room, clocked Michelle talking with Rose over by the buffet, then set his sights back on Aurora.

He steeled himself. Nothing left to do but nut up and go talk to her.

* * *

“So I told him that’s a firm ‘no’. If he wants to mess around with my money then I’m just going to take it elsewhere,” George Junior said, snorting into his drink in a move he’d seen his father execute many a time. It didn’t quite have the same effect.

Aurora did her best not to yawn but she wasn’t sure she could handle another word from George Junior without passing out from boredom. The man was obviously trying his best to impress her with his newfound business acumen. He’d started the conversation with his eyes glued to her belly. From there, he’d talked nonstop about how responsible, competent, and reliable he was. Aurora was vaguely touched that George Junior was still interested in her, even with the baby on board. But she was also ridiculously annoyed that the ‘romance’ her mother implied she had in store for herself tonight was currently staring down the front of her dress.

Aurora pointedly cleared her throat and George Junior blushed, right down to the shiny bald patch at the crown of his head.

He took a deep breath. “You know, Aurora, I’m a very rich man.”

She raised an eyebrow.

“I could make it so you’d never have to work again,” he plowed on.

Aurora shifted on her feet, which were really starting to kill her. She thanked god that Gio was starting to jog toward the stage. The second he auctioned off his consulting services, the night would pretty much be over and she could get the hell out of here and face-plant into her bed. No wait, she thought, looking down at her large belly… She could side-plant onto her bed. Then George Junior’s words filtered up to her. This guy was a real class act. Not.

“Are you offering to pay me for my services, Mr. Mills?”

George Junior opened and closed his mouth like a fish out of water. “Not exactly. I’m just saying that if we were to be… close, then you’d have access to certain resources.”

Bile rose in Aurora’s throat as she took a decisive step backward. Smack into a solid, warm wall that pressed one hand against her lower back in the most familiar, delicious way. Her heart stopped.

“How many times am I going to have to tell you to quit while you’re ahead, Junior?” Dante’s voice washed over her.

George Junior’s eyes narrowed. “Callaghan. I thought you skipped town. Left all your business deals in the breeze?”

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