CHAPTER ONE
PREGNANT.As Ellie Jensen came up the stairs from the subway, her body was still shaking. She dimly heard taxi drivers yelling curses and honking their horns. Vendors were already setting up hot dog and pretzel carts on the sidewalks. After a long, gray winter, New York had finally surrendered to the brilliant warmth of May.
But Ellie was cold to the bone. She hadn't felt her fingers or toes for hours. Not since she took the pregnancy test that morning and saw those two parallel pink lines
Pregnant.
She was getting married in six hours, and she was pregnant.
With another man's baby.
Her boss's baby.
Ellie stopped dead in front of the Serrador Building. She craned her neck to look up at the thirtieth floor, and panic ripped through her.
Diogo Serrador, the dark, ruthless steel tycoon who'd employed her for the last year, was going to be a father.
I cannot get you pregnant, querida. She still remembered his sensual voice that hot night, riding the hot drumbeat of Rio's Carnaval. He'd whispered against her skin, Do not worry. It's impossible.
And she'd believed him!
How could she have been so stupid? With her history, how could she have fallen prey to the oldest cliché in the world—an innocent country girl moving to the big, bad city and getting seduced by her arrogant, wealthy, vastly sexy boss?
She should have left the company at Christmas, when Timothy did. At the very least, she should have given notice weeks ago—as she'd promised him she would. But she'd kept procrastinating. As if something would stop her from losing the city she loved. The life she loved. The man she…
She stopped the thought cold.
It had been just a crush. A wild, heart-pounding crush. Then a seduction…
Ellie's heart hurt as she looked up at the brilliant blue sky above the sweetly singing birds. The air was fresh and warm. The world was new.
But the news of her pregnancy wouldn't make Diogo a father. She knew that already. The notorious playboy had his choice of gorgeous, brilliant women. He took them out, treated them like goddesses, then discarded them like last night's rubbish. If women like that couldn't hold his attention, no wonder he'd forgotten Ellie, a high school dropout with cheap clothes and unremarkable looks!
Diogo Serrador, a decent father?
The most likely scenario was that he'd carelessly offer her money for an abortion.
“Oh…” Covering her face with her hands, she cursed him aloud, causing the pedestrians hurrying past her on the sidewalk to give her a wide berth.
As inconvenient a shock as this pregnancy was, Ellie had already come to love this baby ferociously. This child was hers. Her family.
But Diogo had the right to know. Didn't he?
Ellie ground her teeth. She would fling his lie back into his face!
She pushed open the building's wide revolving door and took the elevator to the thirtieth floor. Determination steeled her as she passed the glassed-in offices down the hall.
“You're late,” Carmen Alvarez snapped at Ellie as she passed her desk. “The numbers you gave me last night were all wrong. What's the matter with you, girl?”
Ellie felt the floor move beneath her in a sway of nausea. She'd nearly been sick twice on the subway ride from her tiny Washington Heights studio apartment. She'd been queasy for months. That should have warned her, but she'd told herself her cycle was erratic. She couldn't be pregnant. Diogo Serrador had given his word! I cannot get you pregnant, querida.
“Are you sick?” Mrs. Alvarez demanded with narrowed eyes. “Partying all night?”
“Party?” Ellie gave a weak laugh. That morning, when she'd finally been unable to zip up the black pencil skirt or button her close-fitting white shirt, she'd gone to the twenty-four-hour drugstore and bought a test from the pimply-faced teenager at the cash register. “No, not a party.”
“Then it's some man,” the older woman said. “I've seen this before. Wait right there.” Holding up her finger in warning, the executive secretary answered the phone. “Diogo Serrador's office,” she chirped brightly, turning away.
One of the other junior secretaries crept up to pat Ellie's shoulder.
“Did you see Mr. Serrador's picture in the papers this morning?” Jessica said in a sweet Southern drawl. “He took Lady Allegra Woodville to the benefit last night. She's so elegant and beautiful, don't you think? But then she comes from an upper-class background, just like he does. Blood will tell, my mama always used to say, class—” she looked over Ellie with hard eyes “—or trash.”
Ellie ground her teeth. She never should have confessed her infatuation for Diogo—or her heartache after Rio.
Jessica saw her job simply as a way to pass the time until she found a rich husband, and she'd long ago set her sights on Diogo. Ellie had been trying to warn the girl with her own heartbreak.