More Than a Millionaire / The Untamed Sheikh

Chapter Four

Ryan’s audacity astounded Nicole. He was backing her into a corner, and she really didn’t like it.

She could feel her muscles tensing, her heart pounding and her hands trembling. She silently chanted her three P’s. Her mantra didn’t have its usual calming effect. The urge to tell him to go to hell nearly overcame her good manners, but volatile reactions never solved a problem. They only exacerbated the situation, and alienating him was the last thing she needed to do.

“You can’t impose on my private doctor’s appointments.”

“Would you like to bet on that? Your exams are also my child’s exams. I have the right to make sure you’re following doctor’s orders and not endangering my kid.”

She crumpled the cloth napkin in her lap and her toes curled in her shoes. “I would never do that!”

It took everything Nicole had to rein in her temper. For Patrick and Beth’s sake, for her baby’s sake, she had to find a solution—a peaceable solution. She excelled at finding ways to make the impossible happen at work. Wasn’t she known as the go-to girl? But compromise ideas were scarce now.

She’d learned that whenever a problem was this complex it helped to break it down into manageable increments and address each component separately. She needed time and distance away from Ryan to get her thoughts in line.

Carefully pushing her chair back from the table, she took a deep breath and then rose to her feet. “Thank you for lunch, but I’d like to leave now.”

He stood more slowly. “You haven’t finished your lunch.”

“I don’t think I can eat another bite. Morning sickness.” More like man sickness.

“It’s not morning.”

“The baby doesn’t wear a Rolex.” Ryan did—an expensive gold model like her father had gambled away at a casino. She remembered the screaming match that had ensued when her mother found out.

“I’ll drive you.”

She dropped her napkin beside her plate. “I’d rather call a taxi.”

“We haven’t finished our discussion.”

She couldn’t possibly remain polite in his company. “There’s no need. Please have your physician fax your health records to my office.”

“Mine?” His dark eyebrows winged upward.

“Yes. Yours. As you pointed out, I—we have every right to know if this baby will inherit something from you that might affect the pregnancy or delivery.”

“I told you I was healthy.”

“And you expect me to take the word of a stranger?” She threw his words back at him, and then smothered a wince.

That wasn’t nice, Nicole.

But maybe if he realized how ridiculously intrusive he was being then he’d back off.

“I’ll take care of it. But I’m not calling a cab for you. I brought you. I’ll take you back.” His inflexible tone and rock-hard jaw warned her arguing would be a waste of time.

Some battles weren’t worth fighting. As long as she won the war—and she would win—she could concede this one. “Fine. Lead the way.”

“Before you go, I have one more request.”

Her insides snarled into a tense knot at the calculating glint in his baby blues. Her control was already teetering on the edge. One teensy shove and she’d lose her temper.

“If you find my home unsuitable, then help me find another one.”

She blinked and swallowed, not liking the direction of his thinking. “Why would I do that? And why would you want me to?”

“Because we both want my child to be raised in a safe environment.”

My child. The words raised her hackles, her temperature and her heart rate each time he said them. But at the same time, she couldn’t help but be impressed that he cared enough to make the effort to provide a better environment. “A real-estate agent would be more knowledgeable.”

“Without a doubt. I’ll engage one to find the houses, but she won’t have a personal stake in my decision. You might as well know I intend to sue for sole custody, but worse case scenario, I’ll end up sharing with Beth and Patrick. Either way, I’m looking for a safe place, and I know you have a vested interest in my selection.”

He’d certainly laid his cards on the table. And while part of her respected him for his honesty, the other hated knowing his strategy.

Her lawyer had confirmed the courts would be unlikely to deny him some form of connection. If the worst case scenario he mentioned came about, the child’s welfare came first. And she’d rather her child live anywhere than here in a place where his or her safety would always be at risk.

“I’ll help you find a house. But don’t believe for one minute that equates to me accepting the inevitability of you as a parent to my—this baby. You are not parent material.”

One corner of his mouth quirked up with stomach-flipping, breath-catching effect. “Guess I’ll have to prove you wrong.”

“Is that your latest floozy?” Harlan Patrick spit the question from the opposite side of Ryan’s desk.

Ryan glanced at the photo lying on the top of the open file he’d composed on Hightower Aviation. He’d printed the professional shot of Nicole from the Hightower Web page. The photographer hadn’t managed to catch the fire in her aquamarine eyes or the golden glints in her light brown hair.

He wasn’t ready to share his surrogacy plan with his father yet or discuss how it had gone wrong. “I don’t sleep with every woman I meet.”

His father snorted in disbelief. He’d always believed the worst of his son—probably because until recently Ryan had given him reason to. Ryan had spent a lot of time acting obnoxious as a kid hoping his mother would get sick of his shenanigans and send him back to his father, but his strategy hadn’t worked. By the time he’d gone off to college the rebel pattern had become a habit.

But his partying and rebelling days were over. And while he would never deliberately deceive anyone, he wasn’t above letting his father’s tendency to jump to conclusions work in his favor for once.

Nicole Hightower was exactly the kind of woman his father wanted him to marry. Ryan had no intentions of marrying anyone, but if his father saw him and Nicole together and believed there might be a long-term relationship in Ryan’s future, then he wasn’t going to correct him. At least not now. There would be ample time for that later—after his father handed over the presidency of Patrick Architectural.

“Her name is Nicole Hightower. She’s a client services manager for Hightower Aviation Management Corporation.” He removed Nicole’s picture from the file, laid it to the side of his blotter and passed the folder to his father. “We should consider fractional ownership or leasing a plane from HAMC.”

“Why? So you can have another damned expensive toy? My God, Ryan, you risk your neck with no thought to who will take over Patrick Architectural if you kill yourself.”

The repetitive lecture that had launched Ryan’s current campaign set his teeth on edge.

“You already have a thirty-thousand-dollar motorcycle and a sixty-thousand-dollar boat. What next? A five-million-dollar plane? And I suppose you want to get your pilot’s license, too.”

Ryan bit back his irritation. “I don’t want or need a pilot’s license. Hightower maintains and staffs the plane. Patrick Architectural flies associates all over the country on a last-minute basis, and we pay a premium for those tickets. High tower guarantees that if we contract their services we could have our plane and their pilot on the runway within four hours or less.”

“Pretentious waste of money.”

“They’d fly us directly to our destination without connecting flights, layovers, limited flight schedules and other inconveniences. They can even land the jets at smaller airports when there isn’t a large hub near our destination.”

“The costs of owning a plane would be prohibitive.” His father dismissed the idea without even looking at the data. Typical.

“Not necessarily. I’ve talked to a Hightower representative. There are a variety of options. We can buy a plane outright, lease or even buy a specified number of flight hours per month or year in a pay-as-you-go program. The best deal is fractional ownership which means we’d only buy a oneeighth to one-sixteenth share, but a plane would always be available to us. When the size of our team required it, we’d be able to request a smaller or larger aircraft.

“The company makes it work for us. Their motto is Comfort, Convenience and Time Savings. From what I’ve heard, they deliver that promise.”

He rolled to his feet, circled the desk and tapped the folder in his father’s hands. “Turn to the chart on page six. Take a look at the data I asked Cindy to compile.”

God bless his assistant’s fascination with tracking the most ludicrous factoids.

He waited until his father did as asked. “This graph catalogs how much time our employees have lost over the past year on layovers, flight delays, inconvenient connector flights and last-minute cancellations or reroutings. They’re on the clock during that lost travel time. There’s your waste of money. Averaged out, our total travel expense comes close to covering the monthly cost for fractional ownership, but without the added benefit of a tax write-off and convenience. Access to our own plane would allow us to expand globally.”

His father’s gaze sharpened as the idea took root and the automatic rejection to any idea Ryan presented faded. Harlan ran a finger down the sheet as he perused the data a second time.

Ryan shoved his hands in his pockets and walked to the window overlooking downtown Knoxville. “The packet includes Hightower Aviation’s brochure. Read the documentation and you’ll see that a plane could be an expedient asset for us. If we set up the aircraft as a mobile office complete with wireless Internet and a fax machine, we could work midair and-or meet with clients on the way to a site. A bedroom suite containing a full bath is also available so we can fly overnight and arrive rested and ready to work first thing in the morning—negating the additional expense of a hotel room. An airplane is not a frivolous waste of money.”

“And the girl?”

His father wasn’t stupid. Ryan had known he wouldn’t be so easily distracted. He faced his father, who also happened to be his mentor and sometimes his enemy. “As our client services representative Nicole would be our main contact. When we need to travel we’d call her directly and tell her our requirements—right down to which meals we’d want served on the flight. It’s her job to make it happen.”

“You think she’d be assigned to us?”

“I’m told she’s the best they have. We would make her part of any deal we strike.”

His father tapped the edge of the folder on Ryan’s desk. “I’ll give it a look, but I doubt it’s feasible.”

Another wave of irritation washed over Ryan. “If it weren’t feasible, I wouldn’t have presented the idea to you.”

“We’ll see.”

Ryan smothered his frustration. History had shown his father would do everything he could to prove Ryan’s idea a bad one. Only when he couldn’t, would he come around.

Ryan looked forward to the day his father retired, leaving Ryan as president of Patrick Architectural. But first he had to prove he could handle the job, or his father would sell the firm his great-grandfather had started right out from under him.

Days like today convinced Nicole she was doing the right thing. She sank onto her sofa and pried her pumps off her swollen feet Saturday afternoon with a smile on her face.

Seeing Beth’s excitement as they raced around Knoxville shopping the baby goods sales filled Nicole with a sense of purpose and rightness. This would work out. All she had to do was keep the fly out of the ointment. The fly being Ryan Patrick.

Thinking of him made her smile fade. The three days without seeing or hearing from him had been good and relaxing. She’d even forgotten about him several times. For a few minutes.

Exhaustion slammed her suddenly from out of nowhere. During the past month her morning sickness had been minimal and manageable, but she hadn’t been able to eliminate the fatigue. When it hit, it hit hard and fast. Yawning, she stretched out on the cushions and pulled a floral woven throw over her legs.

She was floating in that hazy just-before-sleep stage when her doorbell rang. Forcing open her eyes, she blinked at the cuckoo clock on the wall until her eyes focused on the hands. Beth had dropped her off barely ten minutes ago. Her sister must have forgotten something.

Nicole levered her body upright, trudged barefoot to the front door of her town house and yanked it open. Instead of Beth, Ryan Patrick stood on her welcome mat—a most unwelcome sight. Surprise knocked her back a step, and her warm and fuzzy good mood evaporated instantly.

Her lack of shoes gave him the height advantage. She had to tip her head way back to look at him. He looked gorgeous in a black polo shirt with his bright blue eyes and an afternoon beard shadowing his angular jaw.

“How did you get my home address?”

“Your clinic file.” His thorough head-to-toe inspection made her yearn to smooth her hair and check her makeup which was ridiculous considering she didn’t care what he thought of her appearance.

How dare he invade her personal space? Antagonism prickled over her. She tried to rein it in. Tried and failed miserably. She could feel her face getting hotter. “Did you need something so urgently you couldn’t call?”

“I called and left a message. You didn’t reply. I don’t have your cell-phone number.”

And he never would. “I’ve been out all morning and just returned home. I haven’t checked my machine yet. What do you want?”

Ooh. That hadn’t sounded friendly. Tamp the hostility, Nicole.

“We have an appointment to look at a couple of houses this afternoon.”

“We?”

“You agreed to help me search.”

So she had. But today? She needed time to prepare for his company and time to concoct excuses to avoid him. “And if I’m busy this afternoon?”

“Are you?”

She’d love a nap, but admitting weakness to the enemy was never good strategy. Times like this made her miss the caffeine she’d given up for her pregnancy. She needed a jolt to put up with Ryan. “Nothing that can’t wait.”

“Grab whatever you need and let’s go.”

Resigned to a few miserable hours, she put on her shoes, scooped up her purse and followed him out the door with a serious lack of enthusiasm weighting her steps. She’d rather spend her day staked to an ant hill than beside him in his Corvette.

His absolute certainty that he’d win custody of her baby unsettled her and made her doubt her ability to do her job. Her job was to give Beth and Patrick the family they yearned for.

He negotiated his way out of downtown and headed east on the interstate before glancing in her direction. “You left the house early this morning. I called at eight.”

She wasn’t in the mood for chitchat, but the situation demanded she keep things civil. When she caught herself studying the way his khaki pants clung to his long, muscular thighs she quickly transferred her attention to the rolling hills outside the windshield.

“There was an early-bird sale across town. Beth and I were shopping for baby things. She gets teary-eyed and chokes up when she handles the tiny clothes. I bet you don’t do that.”

A beat of silence passed. “I thought pregnant women were supposed to be the emotional ones.”

“Maybe she’s having sympathy pains. Studies show that some husbands have sympathy morning sickness. Apparently adoptive mothers-to-be can, too. Beth and I were always close.” Sometimes too close. Sometimes she’d wondered if Beth were living vicariously through her, because her sister preferred to stay at home and read or watch movies then hear about Nicole’s adventures later.

“If men appear to share morning sickness it’s only because watching their wives heave makes them want to do the same.”

She struggled with the juvenile urge to stick out her tongue at him. She knew Beth shared her roller-coaster emotional swings—swings which had grown worse for both of them since Ryan had exploded into their lives two weeks ago—because she’d witnessed a few wild fluctuations. “You are a cynic.”

“Not a cynic. A realist. I see things for what they are.”

And he was bitter, too, from the sounds of it. “What do you know about pregnant women?”

“I spent nine months with my ex-wife.”

Shock stilled her breath. That implied he had fathered a child before. “You said firstborn Patricks always took over the family firm. Why isn’t this child?”

“She wasn’t mine.” The hard, flat words opened a Pandora’s box of questions.

“I’m not following. She was your wife’s child but not yours?”

A nerve twitched in his clenched jaw. “Yes. The neighborhood is a mile ahead on your left.”

She’d spotted the signs for several Douglas Lake housing developments a few miles back, but location didn’t interest her at the moment. His evasion did.

“We’ve proven you’re fertile, so she obviously didn’t need to use donor sperm. Was she involved with someone before you? No, wait. You said you were with her for the full nine months. You’re going to have to explain that.”

He sliced a quick, hard glance her way. “And if I said it’s none of your business?”

“I’d remind you you’re the one who told me to ask questions about your sexual history.”

He pursed his lips and blew out a slow breath. “My girlfriend was screwing my best friend. I was too blind to see it. When the pregnancy test turned up positive she swore the baby was mine. I married her. Turns out she lied.”

Poor guy. From the sounds of it, like her father he’d been wronged by the woman he loved. But unlike her father, Ryan hadn’t hung around for more of the same bad medicine. But then everyone knew her father only stayed because the money came from her mother’s side of the family, and her mother owned the lion’s share of Hightower Aviation.

“I’m sorry. How long ago was that?”

“Fourteen years.”

“Were you involved in her pregnancy before you found out?”

“Every damned day. Through every doctor’s appointment, every time she hugged the toilet and every midnight craving.”

No wonder he was such a jerk now. Betrayal could make you bitter—if you chose to let it. She’d chosen not to. Just as she’d chosen not to let sympathy soften her dislike of him.

“How did you find out? Did your wife eventually tell you?”

“Hell no. My best friend was African-American. Let’s just say my beautiful blond wife’s daughter was the spitting image of her daddy.”

Ouch. So he’d lost a wife, a best friend and a child at the same time. Triple whammy. “Have you kept in touch with them?”

“Why would I?”

Typical male. “Is she happier with him than she was with you?”

“How the hell would I know? And why would I care?”

“If you truly love someone, then you want them to be happy—even if it’s not with you.” That’s what she wished for Patrick.

Ryan looked at her as if she’d lost her mind. “That’s bull.”