Page 5 of Secret Baby Daddy

I did not call anyone else.

There is a kind of crisis that requires you to arrive alone, unaccompanied by an entourage that might later be subpoenaed, and I have learned to recognize those mornings from a single line of dialogue.

Cordelia Merrick had used the word discretion three times in ninety seconds.

That is always the tell.

I walk through the double mahogany doors into the main drawing room.

Floor-to-ceiling windows offer an unobstructed view of Central Park, the morning sun glinting off the reservoir.

I stop dead.

A man stands by the window with his back to the room.

Bespoke charcoal suit across broad, rigid shoulders.

Dark hair cropped with military precision.

A tablet in one hand, swiped through with clinical efficiency.

He turns around.

My teeth lock together.

Dominic Calder.

“Ms. Vale.”

He says my name like it requires a sanitation process.

I walk forward and plant my feet on the antique Persian rug.

“Calder. I see the Merricks have decided to turn a public relations problem into a military occupation.”

“They have a security threat.”

He sets the tablet on a glass side table.

He is six foot three of unyielding concrete.

His eyes are a sharp, analytical gray, and they scan my face, my outfit, and my posture in two seconds flat, catalogue my existence, and dismiss it as a non-issue.

“I am here to secure the premises. You are here to write a polite apology.”

“I do not write apologies. I manage realities.”

I drop my briefcase onto an armchair.

“And I certainly do not need a glorified bodyguard stepping on my press strategy.”

We have spent a full year in the same orbit.

Twelve months of Consortium galas, joint logistics meetings, and bitter professional friction.

My phone holds a terrifyingly long thread of increasingly elaborate text messages between us, mostly debating the basic definition of competence.

He thinks my methods are theatrical.