The Pregnancy Project
Get the data, formulate the problem and then solve it.
Her relationship with Dante was going to be the same today as it was yesterday, or she’d die trying to keep it that way. She refused to let either the baby or the kiss put a wedge between them, not when so many other things were out of her control. The FDA rejection being exhibit A.
Determined, she wandered through the open floor plan toward the kitchen in hopes of finding Dante and a cup of hot tea, and not necessarily in that order.
“Called it in one,” she murmured as she caught sight of his dark head bent over something.
She walked in and skirted the island. Dante glanced up.
His gaze softened behind his lenses, instantly turning his gorgeous eyes the color of melted chocolate. If he looked at other women like that, it was no wonder they were tripping over themselves to get to him.
Which was a totally uncomfortable thought, all at once. Did he look at other women like that, with that same blend of concern and affection? And why would she care? She didn’t. Dante was her friend and he could look at a woman any way he chose.
Except her. Definitely he could not look at her like that.
“I was just about to make a pot of tea,” he said as if nothing had changed.
Nothing had changed, she reminded herself sternly. He’d kissed her in some sort of misguided notion that there was something between them. She’d disabused him of that notion, and it was over. “That would be great.”
She cleared the squawk from her throat and wished the tension could be so easily dispelled.
Tea was one of their shared passions, one she cherished. When Dante came to Dallas, he always picked up a fresh bag of Gyokuro Imperial Green Tea—her favorite—from the Teavana shop at DFW airport and they drank it on the patio of her condo, which overlooked Victory Park. She loved their ritual more for the conversation and easiness than the tea, though it only took the barest whiff of the scent to make her mouth water.
He handed her a press pot and nodded to the loose-leaf tea in a container printed with Chinese symbols, which sat on the counter near his elbow. “I’ll boil the water if you scoop the tea.”
The familiar rhythm soothed her, and she moved around both the kitchen and the man with more ease than she would have expected. Maybe the weirdness was all on her. If she acted like everything was cool, it would be.
Tea made, they took their mugs onto the lanai that overlooked the lush pool and outdoor kitchen. Dante settled onto a cozy love seat and patted the next cushion, which she gratefully sank onto.
“Your house is beautiful,” she commented. “Why did it take me so long to visit?”
“A fair question.” He nodded once. “And the answer is?”
“Busy.” Her gaze drifted back to the landscape as she searched for the truth. “Fyra’s been a mess lately and Cass and Alex have had personal things going on. Leaves me and Trinity to hold the seams together.”
Regardless, Dante had always made time to come visit her. She’d written it off as a function of his insane travel schedule; of course it was easier for him to pop into Dallas. It was one of the major US airport hubs.
In that moment, with every nook and cranny of their relationship under a microscope, it felt...wrong. Unbalanced.
“Why did you come this time?” he asked quietly, and it was the opening she’d been looking for.
“I took my first pregnancy test this morning,” she admitted and forced herself to go on, no matter how uncomfortable the subject. Because regardless of what he’d said earlier, it still felt like an elephant in the room that they had to work through. “And then I took the next three.”
Surprisingly, he flashed a smile. “Because four gives you better odds of getting an accurate result.”
“You know me so well,” she joked automatically, but when his jaw tightened, she wished she hadn’t said it.
“I’m hoping to learn more,” he returned cryptically. “How did it feel? When you saw that it was positive?”
So many things had flooded her chest in that instant. How did she catalogue them for someone else—and a man at that? “The clearest sense of awe. Glee. Accomplishment.”
She’d picked the right donor, clearly, since the procedure had worked the first time. Of course she had. She’d done extensive research into genetics, legalities, odds—and Dr. Tomas Cardoza had been the obvious choice. Tomas had two doctorates, impressive Spanish ancestry and dark skin that would hopefully guarantee her child wouldn’t have to slather on as much sunscreen as its Irish mother. He’d agreed to be her donor, including signing away any paternal rights, and that was that.
Somehow, she didn’t think Dante would appreciate those details.
“I hate this.” She set her mug down and swiveled to face him, one leg bent underneath her. “I feel like I’m walking on eggshells, like I have to watch what I say or it’ll start another fight.”
He cocked his head. “Another fight? We’re not fighting. Are we?”
“Well...yeah. Earlier. When I told you I was pregnant. That was a fight.” Wasn’t it? He’d been so angry and disappointed in her.
“It was a conversation,” he corrected and set his own mug down in favor of taking her hand, holding it tight as he caught her gaze. “About something going on in your life. I didn’t handle it well. You surprised me, that’s all. But I care about you and want to know everything. It’s not okay that you think you have to hold one single thing back.”
Warmth spread across her palm, feathering outward. She stared at Dante and all at once, he morphed back into the man she’d loved for ten years. And then the warmth climbed into her chest as he smiled at her. It was so normal—and such a relief—she nearly wept.
Except she was changing things. That was really her biggest fear, that she’d irrevocably damaged their relationship by getting pregnant. She and Dante told each other chemistry jokes and talked about quantum mechanics, not diapers and breastfeeding.
She centered herself with a string of biofeedback techniques. Everything was going to be okay.
“Then I want to start over. Dante, I’m pregnant.”
His eyebrows shot up in mock surprise, bless him. “That’s fantastic news. Congratulations. I can’t wait to meet the little version of you swimming around in there.”
And that, against all odds, made the whole thing real.
She had a life growing in her womb. A baby. One that would be hers and hers alone, who would be a brilliant addition to the world of science from an early age. She would raise him or her with all the best educational opportunities and be this baby’s everything, since she’d be a single parent.
That was when the panic started.
It 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.
Three
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 even all that low-cut, but it didn’t matter. On her, it was sexy.
Off her, it would be epic.
“How about if I do something that actually solves the problem?” he growled because he couldn’t keep the awareness from his voice. “I’ll come with you back to Dallas and we’ll tackle this together.”
It was perfect. So much so that he couldn’t quite believe this opportunity had fallen into his lap. He’d have every excuse to spend night and day by her side, just the two of them in a place that turned them both on—a chemistry lab—and then he’d swoop in at the eleventh hour to solve all her problems. He’d be the hero, short only of the white horse as he rode to her rescue.
Harper was both a virgin and a scientist. He couldn’t use run-of-the-mill strategies to get her into his bed and have any hope of success. As seduction plans went, this one was killer.
Harper’s eyes widened. “I can’t ask you to do that.”
“You didn’t. I volunteered. I have two weeks off from filming and nothing planned. Do you have the option to give the FDA new samples?”
Nodding, she bit her lip, her sharp mind clearly working through the idea. “But it’s a lot of work and my job, not yours. I have to fix this.”
She wasn’t connecting the dots fast enough. The idea of getting his hands on a real test tube made him nearly giddy. When was the last time he’d gotten dirty with the periodic table? Ages.
Harper and chemistry at the same time? He could not think of anything he’d enjoy more unless it involved her spread naked on the lab worktable, beakers shoved aside and forgotten, as he pleasured her with his mouth until she screamed his name.
Okay, that image had to go or he’d blow this carefully planned seduction.
“You’re pregnant, scared and said you needed my support,” he pointed out. “What better way can I support you than this? Let me help you create the new samples. I want to. It’ll be fun, not work.”
In response, she closed the gap between them, throwing herself deep into his arms in enthusiastic agreement.
His body reacted instantly, hardening in places she would surely notice in about two seconds since she’d nearly climbed into his lap. An erection the size of Minneapolis was impossible to hide.
“I thought I wasn’t allowed to hug you anymore,” he muttered darkly.
She stiffened and pulled back. Idiot. That’s what he got for opening his big mouth, but holy God, what was he supposed to do when she was clinging to him like Saran Wrap and smelled like something he wanted to take a bite out of?
“Sorry, I got carried away in my gratitude.”
Cursing inwardly, he willed back the rush of heat and grimaced. With any luck, it might look like a smile if she squinted. “I like hugging you. I was just—”
Enormously turned on. Gauging whether I could actually feel your nipples through your dress. Thinking about how seriously hot that kiss was.
He should quit while he was behind. Step one in his seduction plan did not include alienating Harper, confusing her or making a move too soon. She needed time and space to acclimate to him again or step two would die a nasty death.
Seduction was a science, not an art. There was no room for missteps.
Dante cleared his throat. “I’ll call my assistant in the morning to book me on your return flight. No arguments. We’re in this together.”
Her tremulous smile went a long way toward smoothing over his blunder.
“Thanks. You have no idea what this means to me. I finally feel like I’m back on track.”
That made one of them. But the genuine relief radiating from her expression warmed him. Not as well as her body had mere moments ago. But nicely enough. Because he did care about her and wanted to help. It was just a really awesome coincidence that the problems in her lab so neatly coincided with his agenda.
“I’m excited.” She clapped like a five-year-old presented with a birthday cake. “We haven’t spent two whole weeks together in...forever.”
“Not since college.” And even then, they hadn’t been under the same roof. Living in the same dorm, sure. But the dynamic had been completely different back then. He’d attended college on an academic scholarship and every grade counted. The hours he’d spent with Harper had most often happened at the library or in the computer lab. Studying.
“Ooooh, we’ll get to relive our glory days. It’ll be just like it was back then.”
“You mean when we had to exist on ramen noodles and four hours of sleep a night?” He grinned, only half kidding. “Speak for yourself, but I much prefer being able to afford a steak anytime I want it.”
And this time around, he had a much better idea how to get this woman into his bed. He’d had his share of girlfriends in college, mostly due to simple things he’d never have dreamed would be such chick magnets: manners, an old-fashioned insistence that a man should pay for dinner and zero interest in sports.
Harper had always eluded him, though he’d felt a buzz the very first time he’d laid eyes on her.
“I loved college. Remember the spring break when neither of us could go home because we’d grossly underestimated the reaction of that substrate to the graphene?” She touched his arm enthusiastically, lost in her story. “We had to do the whole experiment over again and the project was due in like a week and a half. I was so panicked but you were Mr. Calm.”
“I remember,” he murmured, but not the same way she did, obviously.
Dante hadn’t gone home for spring break ever. Or Christmas, summer break, random weekends. Because his foster home hadn’t been a home, it had merely been where the people who’d agreed to raise him lived, and when he walked out the door at eighteen, he’d never returned. He’d loved college, too, but only because it gave him somewhere to go, somewhere to succeed. A place to belong.
A friend in Harper Livingston.
“Those were the days. We didn’t have much, but we had each other.” She smiled fondly, and his own return smile bloomed automatically.
Harper had been the first person in his life to really care about him, what he thought, whether he was eating well. He’d conveniently forgotten all of that in the heat of the moment, focusing so hard on how to get to the next step with her that he’d lost sight of why Harper had stayed so firmly in the friend zone all these years.
He needed her, too, as the one stable relationship he’d ever had. The only person who had ever demonstrated what it meant to value one another. It was the closest thing to love he’d ever felt.
Was he confusing that with attraction?
Guilt and agitation squeezed his chest and he didn’t like it. There was a reason they called him Dr. Sexy instead of Dr. Emotional Expert. Physical chemistry he understood, very well. The psychology of the unquantifiable feelings between people, not so much.
If he succeeded with seducing Harper and got her naked and breathless, would that screw up their bond?
No, surely not. They were both adults and neither of them had much use for the emotional part. It was one of the many reasons they were still friends after all these years. They had a lot in common. The squiggle in his chest was nothing more than a reminder that he had a stake in ensuring nothing ever affected their friendship, even sex. Especially not sex. He’d keep one hand on the ripcord and shut down his seduction campaign if even a hint of a complication reared its ugly head.
Harper slid a cool hand up his arm to squeeze his shoulder, leaning in to kiss his cheek. Somehow, he managed to mask the sound of his lungs strangling over a breath as he fought to keep from turning his head to capture her lips with his.
“I’m so glad I jumped on a plane,” she said brightly, thankfully clueless to the mayhem happening on his side of the wicker love seat.
He should be thrilled. Clearly, she was back to being relaxed around him. Step one could be labeled a rousing victory, rousing being the operative word. Unfortunately, step two promised to be more of the same since the goal would be to make her aware of the spark between them. So she could act on it when she was ready.
“Let me take you to dinner,” he returned hoarsely.
He had to get some traction on step two before he lost the lone speck of sanity he had left.
* * *
Harper spent an inordinate amount of time dressing for dinner, taking a hot shower to wash the airport from her skin, then using the enormous three-way mirror to carefully apply a spate of cosmetics that she’d personally had a hand in developing. A swipe of Prague Sunset lipstick finished off the look.
The results sang, if she did say so herself.
She stepped into a dress the shade of cotton candy, which should have competed with her hair, but didn’t because Harper had a near-savant ability to mix color. It was what made her exceptional at her job.
She had a healthy appreciation for how chemistry improved a woman’s natural assets. She’d built a career on it. Only to see the culmination of her dreams screech to a halt due to tainted lab samples. And for the first time in a month, she finally felt hopeful about the future of Fyra. Dante was going to help her fix the problems and the FDA would approve the new samples. Simple.
That more than anything had dissolved the weird tension between her and Dante. He’d brightened at the thought of helping her and honestly, it sounded like fun to her, too.
Her stomach rumbled. She hadn’t eaten lunch and after the...fiasco at baggage claim, the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups had lost their appeal. Dinner sounded like exactly what the doctor ordered.
She went in search of Dante through the labyrinth of halls in his enormous home, wandering toward the sound of running water. Being unfamiliar with Dante’s house, she didn’t realize it emanated from his shower until she was already in the doorway of his bedroom. She raised a hand to knock just as he strode from the adjoining bathroom, bare chested, towel draped over his lower half. The terry cloth had settled low on his lean hips, almost to the point of indecency. But the uncovered part was enough to set off all sorts of bells and whistles in her head.
And other places.
A brilliant green dragon tattoo spread over his left shoulder, spiraling down around his upper bicep, accentuating sinewy muscles that she’d never seen before, but had certainly felt. His torso had turned sleek and brown, as if he’d spent time in the sun, and crisp hair lay against his chest in a trail leading to the stuff underneath the towel.
Her mouth went dry and her legs locked. Her brain might have melted, too. Or she wouldn’t have stood there staring as he caught sight of her and grinned, totally unaffected by his state of undress.