Page 53 of His Captor

As if on cue, Hayden stepped gingerly into the doorway and knocked softly on the doorframe.

“Anything I can do to help?” he asked, his eyes trained on me with warmth and genuine concern.

I caught my breath as Rachel glanced from me to Hayden and back again. Her expression brimmed with curiosity, not to mention the sparkle of someone who thought they knew some juicy gossip.

I wanted to come clean so badly it hurt, but the latest bomb Colin had dropped on me via Victory Holdings just had me spooked and scared for my omega and my child.

“No, I don’t think so, Mr. Kipling,” I said with a tight smile. “We’ve got this.”

Hayden’s hopeful expression clouded over, and he frowned at me. “Alright, sir,” he said, stepping back out into the office. He even grabbed the doorknob and shut the door behind him, a little too forcefully.

“Trouble in paradise?” Rachel asked, one eyebrow raised.

I stared right back at her, a thousand different replies zipping through my brain. Part of me wanted to tell her off. Part of me wanted to deny everything. All of me didn’t want to explain the circumstances under which I’d gotten Hayden pregnant.

“I don’t want him to get hurt,” I told Rachel softly, as if speaking the truth too loud would let not only the entire officeknow, but would shoot the information straight to Colin and his dubious friends.

Rachel crossed her arms and silently chastised me for my tight lips.

I shifted in my chair, then gave up.

“It’s a long, complicated, slightly embarrassing story that I don’t really want to share, but yes, Hayden and I are sort of together.”

Rachel gaped in surprise. “You haven’t even known each other two weeks.”

“He’s carrying my child.”

I could have knocked Rachel over with a feather. “Why didn’t you say anything when I hired him? Did you send me his resume on purpose? But no,” she answered herself, “I head-hunted him. You didn’t have anything to do with the process.” She paused again, then said, “You did look shocked when I introduced you.”

“I didn’t know who he was,” I said, then cleared my throat and added, “I knew him under a different name.”

“A different—okay, I’m going to stop asking questions now,” Rachel said, her mouth twitching and her eyes glinting with humor. She schooled her expression a moment later and said, “You don’t want Hayden to get hurt. Got it.”

“You know Colin,” I told her, suddenly feeling like I had an actual, genuine friend who understood the complexity of the situation. “He’s pissed off and he thinks he has nothing to lose. He’ll go after Hayden and the baby if he thinks it will hurt me.”

“You don’t think he would actually physically hurt them, do you?” All humor disappeared from her expression.

“I don’t want to find out,” I said. “Especially since he’s with Victory Holdings now.”

Rachel nodded slowly and blew out a breath. “I absolutely get it. And I won’t tell anyone what I know.”

“Thanks,” I said. “And now I need to call Joseph Harvey to figure out what the hell has caused him to drop his deal and to talk him out of it without making him twice as anxious by revealing some very bad people are out to get us.”

“Yeah, good luck with that,” Rachel said in a strained voice. “I’ll do my best to keep the lid on here and move things forward like nothing is wrong.”

I sent her a grateful smile as she left my office, but the fact of the matter was that everything was wrong. Everything was wrong, and if I didn’t figure out how to fix it quietly and completely, my business would go under. But more importantly, the omega I was quickly falling in love with and our baby might be hurt or worse.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Hayden

Who knew that a little old startup security company could have so much intrigue swirling around it?

Mace was incredibly tense for the rest of the day after losing the Harvey contract and being served with a lawsuit by Victory Holdings. Everyone in the office was very much on edge, myself included. No one wanted to think that the company they’d just started working for might go under because someone was trying to sabotage it, which was the rumor that flew through the cubes before we all left for the weekend at five, but I liked it even less, since apparently I could pop any second.

“I guess I understand why we haven’t come out to the rest of the office yet,” I said on Saturday afternoon, as Mace and I sat on the living room floor in my apartment, assembling a changing table for the baby. Well, Mace assembled, I splayed, rubbed my itchy belly and sore boobs, and felt extraordinarily sorry for myself.

“I’m trying to keep you out of things,” Mace said, eyes zeroed in on the joint between two sides of the table as he turned the screw with an allen wrench. “Colin is working with some dangerous people and?—”

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