Page 26 of The Boss's Baby Affair

He’d watched Jilly’s body changing. Every time he returned from an overseas trip sourcing products, or returned from a visit to one of the cross-country garden centers, her pregnancy had advanced. The baby had been born while he was overseas.

Had there been a switch? So where was Jilly’s baby? Or had the baby died? Was there something wrong with it? Where was it? And then when had Jilly arranged for Candace to be impregnated? Or had Candace already been pregnant and sold her child?

That was the scenario he liked least of all.

But Nick was struggling to make sense of it all. His feet had carried him outside the nursery. Softly he pushed the door open and went in.

Jennie was lying in her crib, in some kind of white jumpsuit with pink ears on the hood.

Nick found himself grinning down at her, and for the first time since the unwelcome call from his doctor, the coiled tension that had him strung tighter than a bow started to unwind.

“Ears…?” He shook his head. “Who on earth designed ears for the top of a baby’s head? You’re not a rabbit!”

Jennie flapped her arms, and Nick could’ve sworn her eyes gleamed with humor. He bent close to her and whispered, “I never understood why Jilly was so desperate for a baby—” Nick broke off and gulped “—until I met you.”

It was a life-changing admission.

Only now, almost too late, was he coming to realize how much Jennie meant to him. He’d resented her. She’d underlined the emptiness in his life: the wrong wife, the wrong life. It had taken the realization that he might lose the baby to realize that he wanted another chance.

Fine time for that to happen.

He gazed down at the baby. The fluffy ears atop her round head made her look incredibly cute. Her mouth moved and she blew a raspberry, then her face broke into a smile.

A wave of emotion swamped Nick. Only one thing was certain. Jennie wasn’t his. He’d known it when Jilly had stopped all the talk about their baby. Even though he’d never called her on it, and maintained the fiction that the IVF had been successful—with his sperm. So how had he allowed this to happen? How could this little imp have crawled into the empty space in his heart?

Naturally, Candace wanted Jennie back. What mother wouldn’t?

A tight chill settled over him.

Well, he wasn’t going to make it easy.

For whatever reason, Candace had chosen to give Jennie up. She might regret her decision, but she’d made it, she’d signed a surrogacy agreement and he could find the document and make sure she stuck with whatever terms it entailed. He was sure Jilly would’ve adopted Jennie…he’d need to check whether he could’ve been included in the adoption without his knowledge.

But Jennie had been living with him for the past six months and Candace hadn’t shown any interest in the baby during that time. No court would ignore that.

A premonition of the battle to come flashed before his eyes. He’d find out all the facts, get top legal advice. As far as he was concerned, he had as much right to the baby as Candace. More, in his mind. Then there was the fact that he’d been misled…made to believe the baby was his wife’s child. Surely that would carry weight, too?

Because he wasn’t about to give Jennie up. Not without a fight.

Candace would have to live with the choice she had made.

Nick’s study was a surprise.

Candace hadn’t been inside Nick’s private domain before, and it was a total departure from the highly polished and reflective black-white-and-acid-yellow decor of the rest of the house.

This space was welcoming…

Homey.

Under normal circumstances the deep-brown leather sofas would’ve invited her to sink down, and the rows of books on the wooden shelves would’ve tempted her to browse between the covers. But now the sight of Nick standing with his back to her—arms akimbo, looking out the window into the darkness beyond—caused her stomach to knot. She was all too conscious of the huge divide between them. She was a nurse, a working woman, accustomed to long shifts; he was a millionaire, a man with a fortune at his command.

But what did it matter that he wore three-hundred-dollar jeans while hers had cost thirty dollars at Kmart? Or that his loafers were made of the finest Italian leather, whereas her slippers had come out of the supermarket bargain box? What did wealth matter when it came to love?

He swung around. His face was sterner than she’d ever seen it. “I have some questions I want answered.” He gestured to the nearest sofa. “Sit down.”

Candace perched on the edge and her strung-out nerves almost gave out. She pulled herself together. “I assume you wanted to see me because you have the test results and you’ve discovered that I was telling you the truth—and now you’re ready to apologize to me.”

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