Page 25 of The Boss's Baby Affair

The phone rang.

Nick rocked forward in the chair and picked up the hand-set.

Within seconds his hands were clenched around the instrument in a stranglehold. “Almost a hundred percent likelihood that she is Jennie’s biological mother!” he exclaimed. “How is that possible?”

The laboratory didn’t have an explanation—other than the unwelcome suggestion that Candace was, in fact, Jennie’s mother.

Nick wanted—needed—answers. And there was only one person alive who was able to provide them.

Grim-faced, he ended the call, rose from his desk and strode toward the door.

Candace was in the bath, when the door to the en suite flew open to reveal the tall, male frame of Nick Valentine. One look into his blazing eyes and her objections to his uninvited presence died.

Nick was in a towering rage.

His eyes were a scorching shade of black, his mouth pinched into a tight line. His fury made him look twice his normal size—which was already substantial.

Candace swallowed. Then moistened her lips nervously as his angry gaze skimmed the bits of her wet, naked body that weren’t hidden by the mounds of bubbles from the baby wash she’d snitched from the nursery. One hasty downward glance, following in the wake of the burning trail his eyes had left, revealed rosy tips peaked to hard nubs. Even as she instinctively covered her brea**sts with her hands, she knew her last-ditch attempt at modesty was futile.

She found her voice. “Get out!”

The flags of livid, burning color high on his cheekbones told her he wasn’t immune to her nakedness. Strangely enough that knowledge gave her the confidence she needed to sit upright in the bath.

If he wanted to ogle, let him damn well look.

Candace was pretty sure her body would hold no surprises that he hadn’t seen before. And she would have another reason to detest him when he feasted his eyes on her.

But instead of leering, Nick retreated to the doorjamb. “Get dressed,” he muttered, jerking his eyes back up to hers, his color high. “I want to talk to you.”

“It will have to wait until I’ve finished my soak.”

Two long strides across the expanse of polished black-slate tiles and he was looming over her. “This can’t wait.”

The bathroom that had seemed so decadently glamorous only minutes earlier was now suffocatingly intimate.

“I want you out of here.” Candace hoped she didn’t sound as shaky as she felt. “You’re my employer and I’m entitled to some privacy.”

When Nick bent forward, Candace tensed, snapping, “Do you want me to file a suit for sexual harassment?”

Then her breath rushed out her lungs as he scooped her out of the bath. Shocked by his action, she stared up at him. He was plastered against her, the water from her body streaming down his shirt. Their gazes clashed. Beneath his anger she detected a maelstrom of other pent-up emotions—heat and turbulence and a host of indefinable nuances that were impossible to read.

Candace decided the wisest course of action right now might be silence. Nick looked fit to explode.

He stepped back, grabbed a towel and wrapped it around her, pushing the edges into her nerveless hands.

“No harassment, see?” he snarled.

His actions had paralyzed Candace. “You can’t just walk in here and—”

“This is my house. I can do exactly as I please. You have ten minutes—that should give you time to dry yourself off and change.” Over his shoulder he tossed, “Don’t make me come and fetch you. I’ll be waiting for you in my study.”

Nick halted outside Candace’s closed bedroom door, his head in turmoil.

His ordered existence had been turned inside out. All that he’d thought was true…wasn’t. And the only person who could give him the answers he sought was naked, only one flimsy wall separating them.

God.

Nick broke into a sweat all over again as the unwanted memory of the pearlescent gleam of Candace’s wet, naked flesh flashed through his mind. He’d been tempted to strip off his clothing and get naked with her. Only her timely reminder that he was her employer had stopped him.

It had been hard enough to keep his imagination reined in before; now that he’d actually seen what previously he’d only fantasized about, his body was going into overdrive.

Yet everything had been complicated by the incomprehensible discovery he’d made. Candace wasn’t his daughter’s nanny…nurse, he amended. Candace was Jennie’s mother.

Nick didn’t understand it. The situation was too surreal to absorb. How had Jilly come to have Jennie? And what had happened to the baby his wife had been carrying? The baby who had been created at the Namkhet Island clinic.

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