was a baby. A helpless tiny thing who couldn’t communicate its needs. She’d have to figure it out. By herself. The flutter behind her breastbone grew nearly audible. And then she realized that was the sound of her heightened pulse thundering in her ears.
Breathe. And again. She’d wanted it this way. Love between mother and child was absolute. Preordained. There was no potential for error, like there was when romance entered the picture, confusing everything with signals her brain couldn’t interpret. Thus, this baby would fill a need in her life that no man could ever hope to. She’d never be lonely again, yearning for something she couldn’t quite put a name to.
Plus, it would solidify her place among her business partners who valued the institution of motherhood. Or at least Alex and Cass did. Trinity had and always would march to the beat of her own drum, but regardless, she and Harper had long agreed about the value of a permanent man in their lives—zero.
Except this one. She squeezed Dante’s hand and swallowed. “I’m scared.”
“What? Why?” Clearly puzzled, he tucked a lock of hair behind her ear and smoothed it back, exactly as she’d envisioned he would when she admitted her fears. “You’re the most capable woman I’ve ever met. You’ve got this, hands down.”
“There’s some...other stuff going on. Fyra is in trouble.”
“What’s going on?” he asked softly. “Whatever it is, we’ll deal with it.”
The thick bands around her chest loosened. She’d come to LA precisely because Dante was the one person in her life she could turn to. If she could just talk about it, maybe a plan would come to her, some way to haul herself out of the professional hole she’d fallen into. Then the pregnancy decision wouldn’t seem so...ill-timed.
“Something happened with Fyra’s FDA approval for Formula-47,” she blurted out. A sudden burning behind her eyes mortified her. She never cried. Was this how it was going to be then? Emotions out the wazoo around the clock?
“What? Tell me,” he demanded instantly.
Formula-47 had been her first baby, conceived and crafted in her lab with one sole purpose—to heal scars and wrinkles better than plastic surgery because it used revolutionary nanotechnology that she’d developed. It was brilliant. And it might never see the light of day.
No. She would fix it.
She took a deep breath. “Phillip—Senator Edgewood—you know how I told you he was helping us grease the FDA wheels in Washington?”
“Sure, because you’re releasing your first product that requires FDA approval. I remember.”
“The committee suspended the request.”
It was nearly the worst moment of her life to hear those words come out of Phillip’s mouth. The process should have been easy. Submit an application for approval for Formula-47, which she’d poured two years of her life into perfecting, give the committee a tour of the lab, explain her formulary methodology, send samples and research. Done. Approval to sell the formula as a product would be in the bag.
Nothing had gone according to plan.
“What?” Dante’s expression mirrored the righteous indignation of his tone. “Why would they suspend the request?”
“They had questions about my samples. And my lab.”
The expletive Dante muttered made her smile.
“Your methods are beyond reproach,” he groused. “How dare they question anything about your lab.”
She couldn’t help but revel in his unconditional support, which was precisely what she’d come for. None of her partners really understood what the allegations had meant to her professionally. Personally.
Dante got it. Understood instantly why the whole thing felt like someone had driven a railroad spike through her gut.
“There’s more. I think the questions cropped up because someone deliberately sabotaged the samples.” Even uttering that heinous suspicion aloud nearly caused her stomach to revolt.
Because that was the bottom line. She had a traitor in her lab. Her lab. Her sanctuary.
Until she got that sorted out, she was afraid she’d never fully embrace or enjoy the next nine months.
Dante smoothed Harper’s hair back again because she was still trembling and that needed to stop. She didn’t have to know that her hair felt like satin under his fingertips and thus the soothing motion benefited them both.
“Sabotage,” he repeated and scowled. “That’s not cool. Who do you think it is?”
“I don’t know.”
She shook her head against his palm and he feathered a thumb across her temple, which shouldn’t feel so intimate, not in the midst of her crisis. But he couldn’t help the fact that step one in his seduction plan included getting Harper relaxed with him again.
She was upset. She needed him. Which naturally led to him comforting her and voila. Here they were, holding hands on a small love seat. His fingers toyed with her hair. They were a couple of millimeters shy of an embrace. One small sway forward and he’d have easy access to her lush mouth.
But he didn’t move. Not yet. Step one wasn’t complete. He couldn’t execute step two until he got her good and over her freak-out from the first time he’d kissed her. His mistake had been assuming one kiss was all it would take, and then they’d go back to normal, with his attraction to Harper easily handled and resolved.
Episode twenty-six of his show had been dedicated to that exact phenomenon. The mind played tricks on you sometimes, leading you to believe you had chemistry with a person, when in fact, the moment you locked lips, it became apparent there was nothing there. That’s why he’d thought it was best to get that part established immediately, especially since he’d been seventy-five percent sure the attraction between them only existed because of another very well-documented phenomenon—the allure of look-but-you-can’t-touch.
Hadn’t worked anything close to how he’d hypothesized.
And the whole game had changed with the addition of Cardoza, Harper’s pregnancy and her virgin state. A mere kiss wasn’t going to cut it. He wanted it all. And had no issue whatsoever with working for it.
They could go back to being just friends later. After he’d introduced her to the pleasures to be had when a man took his time with a proper seduction. After they’d burned out this spark. After he’d had the opportunity to revel in the fact that he might not have bested Cardoza at winning the Nobel, but he’d sure as hell beaten him in all the ways that counted.
“This FDA mess sucks,” he said simply. “What can I do?”
“You’re already doing it.”
She sighed with a little smile, oblivious to the way her chest rose and fell under her dress. She’d changed into a flirty number that dipped between her breasts, cradling them provocatively. It wasn’t
