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Jack hooked his thumb into his jeans pocket. “Go on.”
Marcos folded into his chair, grabbed a blue pen and twirled it in his hand as he contemplated. “I negotiate for Marissa’s shares and agree to allow her to stay in the company temporarily, while you and Hank Hollis will get the ropes and start a new team.”
“Hank Hollis.” His eyes narrowed to slits. “You’re not serious.”
He smiled the very same smile the Big Bad Wolf might have given Little Red Riding Hood. “Oh, but I am.”
Hank Hollis would redeem himself in Virginia’s eyes, right along with Allende. Marcos would make sure of it.
If Virginia had had any worries regarding her poor emotional state for the past twenty-four hours—other than having stupidly, blindly, foolishly fallen in love with Marcos Allende—she now had more proof for concern.
Pale-faced, she walked into the long tiled bathroom to stare for the twentieth time at the sleek white predictor test—the third one she’d used today—sitting next to the other two on the bathroom sink.
Pink.
Pink.
Pink.
All three were pink.
Of course. Because when it rained, it poured. Because when one thing went terribly wrong, everything went wrong. Because when your world collapsed on top of your head, really, nothing you could do would stop the crash.
Letting go her breath while the sting of tears gathered in her eyes, she leaned back on the white tiles lining the bathroom walls and slowly, weakly, dragged her body down its length until she was sprawled on the floor.
She was very, undeniably pregnant.
With Marcos’s baby.
There could be no more solid proof of her naïveté. She’d walked into his penthouse one evening with little in the way of emotional shields, without protection and without standing a chance. She might as well have torn out her heart and offered it in her hand. What had she expected would come out of it? Of all those pretend kisses, the laughter, the moments she could not forget?
Did she think he would say, “Step into my life, Virginia, I want you in it forever?”
Did she think he would say, “Marry me, amor, where have you been all my life?”
Oh, God. Covering her face with her hands, she considered what he would do when he found out about this.
A vision of him suggesting something bleak made the bile hitch up in her throat. She choked it back and shook her head, wrapping her arms around her stomach, speaking to herself at first, then below at the tiny little being growing inside her.
“I have to tell him.” And when a wealth of maternal love surged through her, she ran a hand across her stomach and determinedly whispered, “I have to tell him.”
Maybe she was more of a gambler than she’d thought. He might be furious, and he could turn her away, but still she found herself righting her hair and her clothes in front of the mirror, preparing for battle. Gathering up all the tests in the plastic bag from the drugstore and stuffing it in her purse, she once again headed back to Marcos’s office.
She knocked three times. “Mr. Allende?”
His friend Jack seemed to have left already, and now, as she entered, Marcos pulled up a file from a stack on his desk, studied it, set it back down, rubbed his chin then finally stared at her.
“Close the door,” he said, all somber.
She couldn’t read that expression. She tried for flippant and saucy. “I’m under orders to spend a lot of money on anything I fancy.”
“Are you now.” He frowned. “Who is this man who orders you around? Seems to me you should run far and fast away from him, Miss Hollis.”
The unexpected smile he shot her made her grin. “Did I mistakenly put whiskey in your coffee?” she asked, nearly laughing.
His eyes sparkled. “You might want to sit on my lap while you investigate.”
She approached his desk, thinking about the baby, his baby, growing inside her body. “I was wondering if you were busy tonight. I’d like for us to talk.”
