Page 19 of Pregnant After One Forbidden Night

Whatever the answer, it didn’t matter now. He knew, and therefore he was compelled to act.

If it was his job to know things, it was also his job to pivot in the face of new information.

He was going to be a father.

Though most would never have believed it, he liked children. They were honest and, in some ways, more skillful at manipulating the people around them than his most talented operatives. Obviously, his child would be even more so.

The corners of his mouth quirked up at the idea, followed by a flashflood of images of what a child of his and Jenna’s might look like.

They would have their mother’s eyes, he decided.

Fathomless brown eyes, a brilliant mind, and if they happened to exude the same glow of goodness as their mother, he would simply protect it with all of the vast resources he had at his disposal.

He had planned on a surrogate because he would never subject himself or his child to the humiliations of love and marriage—that part of his plan would remain intact. So, while he hadn’t anticipated Jenna’s presence, nor the timing, she had not entirely upset his plans. In fact, she’d enhanced them. Now his child would have a mother as well, and in that, they could do no better than Jenna.

He did not even need to be around examples of good mothering to know, and he never really had been.

After his experiences with his own mother, he had avoided seducing or even associating with mothers. The idea of being the kind of man his mother brought home—the ones who weren’t his father, as well as his father himself—filled him with disgust.

While he knew many wonderful mothers socially, their love and care for their children very evident in their behavior, they didn’t move in the kind of circles he did. The ones in those circles were like his own.

The danger in Jenna being the mother of his child was not an issue of her character, however. It was in her appeal to him. In the way he hadn’t ceased craving her, his desire only growing in her absence.

The danger with Jenna as the mother of his child was that he might disappear into her as his father had his mother.

His parents had fallen into each other like dolphins into a fishing net, a deadly entanglement that had ended in a wreck at the bottom of the sea and left no room for anything—or anyone—else.

And while the sea might be a metaphor, his mother had died in a wreck. A nasty one involving a motorcycle and winding cliff-side roads, strong intoxicants and a much younger man.

Not the cliffs of Redcliff, though. That was where her then thirteen-year-old son had been in residence, alone for his spring break.

She and her lover had died in Greece.

His father had called him from the capital to tell him, drunk and weeping.

In a way, it was true too, to say that his father had drowned. It had happened slowly and in alcohol, but it had been a drowning nonetheless.

Sebastian might not know exactly how to parent, but his parents had given him a stunningly good example of what not to do.

And, if he was lacking in the basic necessary traits that inspired a parent’s love, he was at least deeply effective at existing. He collected and digested information like no other, was a virtuoso in effectively disseminating its nutrients to their highest and best use with a speed and efficiency unmatched.

Just not when it came to Jenna.

When it came to Jenna, his plans had the strange habit of backfiring wildly.

It wasn’t an understatement to say that she had entirely upended his life—more so, in fact, than he had already been willing to acknowledge. And that was considerably, as he could admit to himself that he hadn’t been right in the head since the moment he’d laid eyes on her at the gala.

He had intended to rid himself of an intoxicating mystery.

If she had been like any other woman, he would have lost interest in her and moved on.

It had been a logical, if mistaken, course of action.

He had wanted to return her to invisibility, so that she was just another body in blue he barely saw. He had not intended to make her disappear from her own life. He had certainly never intended for her to become a permanent fixture in his.

He’d used protection, for heaven’s sake.

But, as he was slowly beginning to understand, where Jenna was concerned, his plans and intentions didn’t matter.

Of course, their encounter would constitute a statistical anomaly.

It hadn’t been enough that she’d already intruded on his mind constantly.

How could he be expected to function at all, now that he knew she was going to have his baby?

As a future duke or duchess, his child would be vulnerable. As the child of the head of Central Intelligence, even more so.

To his own mind, Sebastian was first and foremost an intelligence professional. However, it was an inescapable reality that he was also a Redcliff—the Redcliff. Regardless of the circumstances of their conception, any child of his would become a duke or duchess after him and would require all the appropriate protection. Managing that and keeping tabs on Jenna, both at a distance, while running his espionage empire would be impossible.

Therefore, he wouldn’t do it.

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