Four months later
This was not happening.
Dear God, please let this not be happening. Violet stared down at the thin strip of plastic. The one that said in digital block letters, PREGNANT.
Maybe she’d done it wrong. Peed on the wrong end or something. Yeah, that was it. She’d never taken a pregnancy test before. She hadn’t even studied. She’d failed due to a lack of preparation, that was all.
Luckily, Violet had bought three separate tests because redundancy wasn’t just redundant. It was confirmation that her night of wild passion four months ago with a stranger named Ben had not left her pregnant.
Crouched in the bathroom off of her bedroom, Violet carefully read the instructions again, trying to spot her mistake. Remove the purple cap: check. Hold the other end: check. Hold absorbent tip downward: check. Wait two minutes: check.
Crap. She’d done it right.
So she did it again.
The next two minutes were hell. The panic was so strong she could practically taste it in the back of her throat, and it was getting stronger with every passing second.
The first test was just a false positive, she decided. False positives happened all the time. She wasn’t pregnant. She was suffering from a low-grade stomach bug. Yeah, that was it. That would explain the odd waves of nausea that hit her at unexpected times. Not in the morning either. Therefore, it wasn’t morning sickness.
And the low-grade bug she was fighting—that’s what caused the positive. It had absolutely nothing to do with that night in the Holloway Inn four months ago. It had nothing to do with Ben or V or...
PREGNANT.
Oh, God.
One was a false positive. The second? Considering that she’d had a wild night of passionate sex with a man in a hotel room?
What the hell was she going to do?
She didn’t have a last name. She didn’t have his number. He’d been this fantasy man who had appeared when she’d needed him and been gone by morning light. She’d woken up in his room alone. Her dress had been cleaned and pressed and was hanging on the bathroom door. Room service had delivered breakfast with a rose and a note—a note she still had, tucked inside her sock drawer, where Mac would never see it.
Your pleasure was my pleasure. Thank you for the night.
He hadn’t even signed it Ben. No name, no signature. No way to contact him when she had a rapidly growing collection of positive pregnancy tests on the edge of her sink.
She was screwed.
Okay, so contacting Ben was out, at least for the short term. She might be able to hire a private investigator who could track him down through the hotel’s guest registry, but that didn’t help her out right now.
“Violet?” Mac called out from downstairs. “Can you come down here?”
She was going to be sick again, and this time she didn’t think it was because of morning sickness.
How was she supposed to tell her big brother that she’d done something this wild and crazy and was now pregnant? The man had dedicated the past twelve years of his life to keeping her safe after their parents’ deaths. He would not react well.
“Violet?” She heard the creak of the second step—oh Lord, he was on his way up.
“Give me a minute!” she called through the door as she grabbed the two used tests and shoved them back in the box. She hid everything under the sink, behind her maxi pads. Mac would never look there.
She needed a plan. She was on her own here.
Violet stood up and quickly splashed some cold water on her face. She didn’t normally wear a lot of makeup. She had no need to look pretty when she was managing the Double M, their family ranch. The ranch hands she’d hired had all gotten the exact same message, no doubt—hitting on Mac McCallum’s little sister was strictly forbidden. Which irritated her. First off, she wasn’t hiring studs for the express purpose of getting it on in the hayloft. Second, she was the boss. Mac ran McCallum Enterprises, the energy company their father had founded, and Violet ran the Double M, and the less those two worlds crossed, the better it was.
Because Mac did not see a ranch manager, much less a damned good ranch manager. He didn’t see a capable businesswoman who was navigating a drought and rebuilding from a record-breaking tornado and still making a profit. He didn’t see a partner in the family business.
All he saw was the shattered sixteen-year-old girl she’d been when their parents had died. It didn’t matter what she did, how well she did it—she was still a little sister to him. Nothing more and nothing less.
Violet had wanted so desperately not to be Mac’s helpless baby sister, even for a night. And if that night was spent in a stranger’s arms...
And here she was.
She’d just jerked her ponytail out of its holder and started wrenching the brush through her mane of auburn hair when Mac said, “Violet?”
She jumped. She hadn’t heard Mac come the rest of the way upstairs, but now he was right outside the door. “What?”
“An old friend of mine is downstairs. Rafe.”
“Oh—okay,” she said, feeling confused. Rafe—why did that name sound familiar? And why did Mac sound...odd? “Is everything okay?”
Ha. Nothing was okay, but by God, until she got a grip on the situation, she was going to pretend it was if it was the last thing she did.
“No, it’s fine. It’s just—Rafe is the sheikh, you remember? From college?”
“Wait.” She cracked the door open and stared at her brother. Even though she’d hidden the evidence, she intentionally positioned her body between him and the sink. “Is this the guy who had the wild younger sister who tricked you? That Rafe?”
“Yeah. Rafiq bin Saleed.” Mac’s expression was a mix of excitement and confusion.
“What’s he doing here right now?” Violet asked. “I mean, correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t he blame you for his sister’s—what did you call it?”
“Compromising her innocence? Yeah.”
“So why do I have to meet this jerk?”
“He’s in town. He’s apologized for his behavior years ago.”
Violet stared at him. Men and their delicate attempts at friendship. “And you’re okay with that?”
“Yeah,” Mac said with a shrug. “Why wouldn’t I be? It was a misunderstanding. His father was the one who was mad. Rafe is making amends.”
After twelve years? That seemed odd. Men. “And you’re
