The man stiffened and swallowed then fumbled with a folder on his desk. “I’m sure that won’t be necessary. Ms. High—our other client seems like a reasonable, understanding woman. Once I explain the situation to her—”
“I’ll handle it. You’ve screwed up enough. You can cover up your mistake with words like incident, circumstance and situation, but the truth is you’ve committed malpractice and negligence.”
Sweat beaded beneath the man’s receding hairline. Ryan eyed him without blinking. Once the man paled, Ryan knew he’d get what he wanted without the aggravation of lawyers. Good. He did not want his father to catch wind of this disaster.
“Ahem. I’ll get you the information, sir.”
Ryan settled back in the chair when the director hustled out. Next on his agenda: find this woman and convince her to give him his baby—the way the surrogate he’d chosen had agreed to.
She would be the best aunt her baby could have.
And it would be enough. It had to be.
Nicole Hightower rubbed one hand over her unsettled stomach and reached for a cracker with the other. She was finally going to have Patrick’s baby.
And Beth’s.
Her fingers spasmed around the stylus of her PDA at the reminder that her dream wasn’t going exactly as she’d once planned.
She shoved the bland whole-wheat cracker into her mouth and tried to focus on the calendar in front of her. She needed to schedule the client’s pilot, crew and plane maintenance for the next three months. She usually loved keeping her customers happy and their travel stress-free, but today her private life kept distracting her from the workload on her desk.
Relinquishing her baby would be hard, but she could handle it because she would be not only a godmother, but also a hands-on aunt. Her sister had promised, and Beth kept her promises. Nicole had always been able to count on her big sister—even at the times when she hadn’t been able to count on their parents. Carrying a child for Beth was the least Nicole could do.
And since her sister would continue to work at Hightower Aviation Management and bring the baby to work every day, Nicole looked forward to going down the hall to the on-site day care and visiting her—Beth’s—baby during lunch. Even from her desk she’d be able to observe her b—niece or nephew. She clicked on an icon on her computer screen and a live feed from the company nursery filled her monitor. The caregivers bustled around, tending to the adorable children of HAMC’s employees.
The intercom buzzed jarring her from her tangled thoughts. She quickly broke the nursery link. “Yes?”
“There’s a Ryan Patrick here to see you.”
Nicole smiled over her assistant’s mistake. “You mean Patrick Ryan.”
“No, I don’t. I’m not talking about your brother-in-law,” Lea whispered. “I’m talking about the gorgeous black-haired, blue-eyed, towering hunk of manhood standing in the reception area. His business card says he’s the VP at Patrick Architectural Designs. That’s one of Knox-ville’s most prestigious firms, in case you didn’t know. Are we expanding again?”
“As far as I know Hightower Aviation isn’t planning to build any new structures.” But then her oldest brother, Trent, the CEO, didn’t tell her everything. As the youngest Hightower offspring until recently, Nicole was often kept out of the loop.
She double-checked her calendar to make sure she hadn’t forgotten an appointment and found no one scheduled for another hour. Then, because she didn’t like to go into a meeting unprepared, she typed Patrick Architectural Designs into her Internet search engine. A series of links popped up on her screen. She chose the one that looked the most useful, clicked and scanned the Web page. There were no pictures of the man in question, only of buildings designed by his company and a brief company history. Impressive. They’d been around awhile.
“Patrick Architectural is a commercial firm with projects across the continent,” she said into the intercom. “Do you think Mr. Patrick might be a potential client?”
Although normally new clients came to her through the sales department after they’d purchased, leased or bought shares in an aircraft.
His name was an interesting coincidence, though.
“I prefer my fantasy to your logic,” Lea quipped.
“You always have, Lea. Bring him back.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Nicole brushed the crumbs from her silk blouse and into the trash can then slid the sleeve of crackers into her drawer. She rose just as Lea tapped on her door and pushed it open.
The man striding into her office like he owned the place was everything her assistant had said and more. Lea hadn’t mentioned her visitor’s short hair had a curl that he couldn’t quite subdue or that his shoulders filled out his navy suit jacket like a tailor’s dream above a flat stomach, lean hips and long legs. And his eyes weren’t just blue; they were an amazingly intense shade of cobalt. Those eyes assessed her now as he would a Learjet he was considering purchasing.
Nicole fought the urge to check her neckline and the corners of her mouth for more crumbs.
“Nicole Hightower?”
Even his voice had a deep and slightly rough sexual fantasy quality. Not that she ever fantasized about clients. That would be totally unprofessional.
And too much like her mother.
She walked around the corner of her desk and extended her arm. “Yes. How can I help you, Mr. Patrick?”
His handshake was warm and firm and electrified.
Giving up caffeine must be having unforeseen side effects on her system. Why else would she experience a faux espresso buzz on contact? She broke the connection as quickly as courtesy allowed.
His intense gaze shifted to Lea and conveyed something that made the redhead snap to attention. “I’ll just…go now.”
Surprised, Nicole watched her usually unflappable assistant hustle out the door and close it behind her.
Nicole reappraised the man in front of her. Besides tall, dark and gorgeous, he had some kind of magical talent. She’d have to figure out what trick he’d used to make Lea leave without saying a word.
Lea wasn’t only an employee. She was also a friend and sometimes the line between friend and supervisor blurred—like when Lea had voiced her vehement disapproval of Nicole’s decision to become a surrogate for her sister and brother-in-law. But that was because Lea knew how Nicole felt about her sister’s husband. They’d been college roommates when Nicole had fallen head over heels in love with Patrick. And Lea had been there to help pick up the pieces after Patrick had eloped with Nicole’s sister Beth.
Lea was convinced that the entire “baby debacle,” as she referred to it, was going to blow up in Nicole’s face now that she was pregnant.
“Please sit down, Mr. Patrick, and tell me what I can do for you today.”
Nicole felt his gaze on her the entire way around her desk as she returned to her seat. Pregnancy had made her breasts larger. She hoped it hadn’t done the same to her behind. Not that she cared what he thought of her butt.
After she sank into her seat he lowered himself into the chair across from her desk. The old-fashioned courtesy surprised her. Fewer and fewer men practiced it these days—especially among the megarich she dealt with through work.
“Congratulations on your pregnancy.”
His words stunned her. She hadn’t told anyone except Beth, Patrick and Lea. The parents-to-be had the right to know, and Lea had caught