She's Having the Boss's Baby

She's Having the Boss's Baby
Kate Carlisle

“It’s a business deal.”

And apparently the conditions and facts and figures were laid out for him on her laptop.

Even when she got all prim and proper on him, Aidan wanted her.

And now that he’d given himself permission to want her, he couldn’t seem to stop. If listening to her presentation meant having her in his bed, he would get through this.

But as she went through her slides, he had to interrupt. “Only at night? What about mornings? Or lunchtime? We could use my conference table…The thing is, I don’t think we should be too rigid about this. In fact…”

He slipped his arm around her and walked her to the couch. “I think it’ll take a lot of pressure off you if we start practicing right away.”

About the Author

New York Times bestselling author KATE CARLISLE was born and raised by the beach in Southern California. After more than twenty years in television production, Kate turned to writing the types of mysteries and romance novels she always loved to read. She still lives by the beach in Southern California with her husband, and when they’re not taking long walks in the sand or cooking or reading or painting or taking bookbinding classes or trying to learn a new language, they’re traveling the world, visiting family and friends in the strangest places. Kate loves to hear from readers. Visit her website at www.katecarlisle.com.

She’s Having

the Boss’s Baby

Kate Carlisle

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)

This book is fondly dedicated to my smart and talented friend Jurene Hogan, one of the great romance readers of the world.

One

“What else can go wrong today?”

Aidan Sutherland stared at the latest cryptic email from his foreman on the nearby construction site and swore. Usually, Aidan let stuff like this slide right off him. Despite his power and wealth, he prided himself on his easygoing nature and smooth ability to roll with the punches. It wasn’t like him to complain or whine about an unexpected setback.

But this latest problem was number fifty-seven in a whole list of complications and snafus that had cropped up today. And hell, it wasn’t even lunchtime. Enough was enough.

He read the foreman’s message over again and confirmed that as far as problems went, this one wasn’t too earth shattering. Aidan would need to get it taken care of within twenty-four hours though, so he would have to re-prioritize a few agenda items and shift some man power, and the issue would be solved. No sweat.

“So why am I sweating it?” Irritated with himself, he shoved his chair back from his desk, stood and crossed the wide expanse of his penthouse office suite to the wall of windows. As he stared out at the lavish grounds of the gorgeous Alleria Resort that spread out in all directions, his irritation slowly dissolved and satisfaction rose up in its place.

With a quiet laugh, Aidan thought back to the days when this island paradise had been little more than a pipe dream. As youngsters, he and his twin brother, Logan, had plotted and dreamed of becoming like one of their comic book superheroes. Iron Man, maybe, or Batman, with wealth and power beyond imagination. If they could wangle a superhero talent like X-ray vision, that would be a bonus. But above all, their imaginary scheme involved amassing a vast empire, and for two California kids who were swimming before they could walk, what would better serve as their empire headquarters than a remote tropical island? They would conduct business from a couple of hammocks under a shady coconut palm tree.

Aidan watched as a catamaran set sail from the marina below. He and Logan had pretty much achieved the dream—although their hammock and palm tree headquarters had been traded in for several large suites at the Alleria Resort Hotel. Not bad for two working-class guys who’d spent much of their youth surfing and partying.

For several of those years, the brothers had been lucky enough to sweep most of the surfing competitions they’d taken part in. They’d managed to collect enough prize money to finally fulfill the promise they’d made to their father years before. More than anything else, Dad had wanted them both to go to college.

No one was more surprised than Aidan and Logan when they were accepted to one of the most elite universities on the East Coast. While there, as legend had it, they’d won the deed to their first bar in a fraternity poker game.

Aidan and Logan had also excelled in all their classes, graduated with highest honors, and gone on to collect MBA degrees. But those dry facts had little or no entertainment value, so these days, most business magazine articles featuring the Sutherland brothers chose to highlight their misspent youth by recounting sordid tales of surfing, gambling and partying.

Aidan and his brother didn’t really care what the articles claimed. The truth was that they had succeeded beyond their wildest dreams through a capricious combination of business acumen, poker winnings, surfing philosophy, sweat and hard work. Added to all that was some good timing and a hell of a lot of dumb luck, and the result was the present-day empire known as Sutherland Corporation. Now their lavish bars and exclusive resorts could be found in every part of the world, including their very own island, Alleria.

They were living the dream.

The Alleria Resort had become the number-one destination for discerning travelers the world over. It also doubled as the headquarters of Sutherland Corporation. And thanks to the brothers’ stewardship, the entire island of Alleria was now a bustling, thriving port of call in the Caribbean.

Aidan returned to his desk and grabbed his coffee mug. While he refilled it from the coffeemaker on the sideboard, he thought about his twin brother. Logan was currently in Europe on his honeymoon with his bride, Grace.

“That’s why everything’s been going wrong lately,” he realized aloud. “Too many weddings.”

Once the happy couple returned, things would get back to normal around here, Aidan thought. Well, not right away, he amended. Because speaking of weddings, his own father would be taking the plunge soon, too. Aidan shook his head. As if he wasn’t already surrounded by enough blissful lovebirds to mess up his mojo for years to come!

He couldn’t begrudge Dad and his beloved Sally their nuptials, though. The two had found each other after years of living alone, so Aidan was happy for them. Still, all of his problems had seemed to start around the same time that everyone began to get happy and fall in love.

Dad and Sally had decided to conduct the ceremony right here on Alleria next month, so that was one more item that needed to be coordinated. In the meantime, Aidan was scheduled to fly to California this coming weekend to take care of some legal business that had to be finalized before Dad married Sally Duke.

“Damn.” He’d forgotten to get started on those documents for his father. What the hell? It wasn’t like Aidan to forget something like that. Was he losing his grip? Hell no, but he had lost his secretary. She’d abandoned him to marriage, too. Just when he’d needed her most, his trusted ally had fallen in love and gone off to Jamaica to marry her sweetheart. Why did the woman have to quit the same week Logan left town?

At the risk of repeating himself, what was the deal with all these weddings lately?

All that creeping happiness had begun to close in on him and he was pretty certain it had caused the balance of nature to shift. The end result was that Aidan kept forgeting stuff. It made an odd sort of sense, really. Aidan would never in a million years have anything to do with the state of matrimony himself, and yet here he was, surrounded by weddings. It was downright bizarre. No wonder Aidan had taken his eye off the ball. Everything in his carefully organized world was going up in smoke lately.

He pulled out his smartphone and compared his electronic calendar with the written schedule he kept on his desk, checking to see if anything else had fallen by the wayside lately. Ordinarily, he was on top of every single detail of Sutherland Corporation business, but as he checked his calendar, he noted that since Logan’s wedding a week ago, he’d allowed a few things to drift. They wouldn’t cause any major problems, but that didn’t excuse his forgetfulness.

The Erickson deal, he noted, would have to be handled within the next three weeks. With Logan away on his honeymoon, Aidan decided to hand the project off to Ellie. He’d been doing that a lot lately, he admitted to himself, but only because he was knee deep in other plans and strategy involving the boutique hotel the Duke brothers were about to break ground on a few miles away on the north shore of the island. The Dukes were his cousins and were experts at negotiating with the unions, but they weren’t here on the island. Not yet, anyway.

And frankly, Ellie would handle the deal better. While there were no better negotiators on earth than Aidan and Logan, Ellie brought an extra touch of nuance to any discussion. She could handle Erickson, the union bosses and the Dukes with no problem, he thought. Not that he would pile all that on her, but the fact was, if she was in charge, they’d get done. Clearly, with all that was going on, Aidan had to admit he couldn’t depend entirely on his own memory right now.

As a rule, Aidan thrived on meticulous attention to detail. And didn’t that sound like he walked around with a giant stick up his ass? He didn’t. He was cool, calm and laid-back at all times, damn it. An easygoing guy. But he still expected things to run smoothly and he paid his well organized team a lot of money to make sure they always did.

“Knock, knock.”

“What?” he demanded, whipping around to glare at whoever was here to aggravate him.

“Ooh, not a good time?”

“Ellie.” Aidan relaxed instantly at the sight of Eleanor Sterling, his senior vice president, standing at his office door. “Come in. Sorry I barked at you.”

“Something not going smoothly?”

“Nothing that can’t be fixed,” he said. “A little mix-up over at the construction site, but we’ll work it out. In fact, you’re just the person I wanted to talk to about it. But you go first. What’s on your mind?”

“I have a list of things to go over with you,” she said, holding up the small, sleek computer tablet that was never out of her sight.

“Of course you do,” he murmured, chuckling. When had their super-efficient, proactive, forward-thinking senior vice president ever not had a list?

Even when his world was tipping crazily out of balance, he could count on Ellie to be exactly who she was. His ruthlessly organized, efficient right-hand man. Woman. Person.

Ellie approached his desk and Aidan’s breath got caught somewhere in his throat as he watched her plant herself in the chair opposite him and cross her stunning long legs.