The Secretary's Bossman Bargain

Why didn’t he move? Was he just going to stand there? Why didn’t he hold her? Why was he here? He was angry she quit? Angry she hadn’t collected her items? Did he miss her just a little bit?

She sucked in a breath when he spoke.

“I’m afraid this won’t do.”

The deep, quiet, accented voice washed over her like a waterfall. Cleansing. Clear. Beautiful.

Oh, God. Would she ever not love this man?

She pushed up on her hands, glad her vitals were no longer on display or else Marcos would know exactly how hard her heart was beating. “Marcos, what are you doing here—”

He looked directly at her as he advanced, overpowering the room. “I had to see you.”

She sucked in breath after breath, watching him move with that catlike grace, his expression somber. Her body quaked from head to toe. The unfairness of it all; he was so gorgeous, so elegant, so tempting. So unreachable. And she! She was so…so beat-up, tired, drained. Hospitalized. Oh, God.

Her lips trembled. As if she weighed next to nothing, he bent and gently scooped her up against him, and Virginia liquefied.

I almost lost our baby, she thought as she wound her arms around him and buried her face in his neck.

He inhaled deeply, as though scenting her. Then, into her ear, his voice ringing so low and true it tolled inside of her, “Are you all right?”

Only Marcos could render such impact with such softly spoken words. Her entire being, down to her bones, trembled at his concern. And then came more. It was just a breath, whispered in her ear, and he whispered it with fervor.

“I love you.”

Her muscles clenched in protest, and her head swiveled to her father’s when she spotted him at the open doorway. The weathered man’s face was inscrutable and his suit was perfectly in place; only the ravaged look in his eyes spoke of what he’d done.

He’d told Marcos about the baby?

“You lied to me, you left me, and yet I love you,” Marcos continued, his voice so thick and gruff, as though he were choking.

After the fear, the cramps and the possibility of losing her baby, Virginia had no energy. She just wanted him to speak. The sturdiness of his hard chest against hers gave her the most dizzying sensation on this earth. She’d thought she’d never feel his arms again and to feel them around her, holding her so tight, was bliss.

She didn’t realize she was almost nuzzling his neck, breathing in his musky, familiar scent, until her lungs felt ready to explode.

“Do you think we could pretend,” he whispered into the top of her bent head, “the past two days never happened, and we can start again?”

More pretending? God, no! No more pretending.

But she refused to wake up from this little fantasy, this one last moment, refused to lift her face, so instead she rubbed her nose against the side of his corded neck. A st

range sensation flitted through her, like the soaring she felt when she played on the swings as a child.

His voice was terse but tender as he wiped her brow with one hand and smoothed her hair back. “And our baby?”

Shock didn’t come close to what she experienced. Her nerves twisted like wires. “P-pardon?”

“You lost our child?”

For the first time since Marcos had come through that door, Virginia noticed the red rimming his eyes, the strain in his expression. Even his voice seemed to throb in a way she’d never heard before.

She moved not an inch, breathed no breath, as her mind raced to make sense of his question. Then she glanced out the small window, not at what lay beyond, just at a spot where Marcos’s face would not distract her. “What makes you say that?” she asked quietly, her fingers tugging on themselves as she scanned the room for the possible culprit behind this misunderstanding. Her father.

“Look at me.” Marcos’s massive shoulders blocked her view as he leaned over the bed rails. His breath stirred the top of her head as he scraped his jaw against her hair with absolutely no restraint, and then he spoke so passionately her middle tingled. “Look at me. We’ll have another baby. I’ve always wanted one—and I want one with you.” He seized her shoulders in a stronghold, his face pained and tortured as he drew away and forced her to meet his gaze. “Marry me. Today. Tomorrow. Marry me.”

“I— What do you mean another baby?” After many moments, she pinned Hank Hollis with her stare. “Father?”

Wide-eyed, her father hovered by the opposite wall, shifting his feet like an uncertain little boy. He opened his mouth, then snapped it shut, then opened it again, as if he were holding on to great words. “I told him you’d lost the baby.”