Mindy Klasky - The Mogul's Maybe Marriage

“How far along are you?” Ethan asked, his tone deceptively mild.

“Ten weeks.” Sloane watched him closely while he flashed through the math, waiting to see anger light his eyes, denial tighten his jaw. She didn’t see either of those emotions, though. Instead, there was something else, something she had no idea how to read.

He set his shoulders. “Is it mine?”

She nodded, suddenly unable to find words. Hormones, she thought as tears sprang to her eyes. Stupid pregnancy hormones.

Wonderful , Ethan thought. That made two women he’d driven to tears that week.

He hadn’t expected this. Not once, in all the times that he’d thought of Sloane, had he imagined that their one night together had led to a baby. A baby that was half Hartwell genes.

Half a potential for such a disaster that his breath came short.

MINDY KLASKYlearned to read when her parents shoved a book in her hands and told her that she could travel anywhere in the world through stories. She never forgot that advice. These days, Mindy works and plays in a suburb of Washington, DC, where she lives with her family. In her spare time, Mindy knits, cooks and tries to tame the endless to-be-read shelf in her home library. You can visit Mindy at her website, www.mindyklasky. com.

Mindy Klasky

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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To my fellow Arent Fox summer associates—

who laughed with me as Sloane was born

Ethan Hartwell was not accustomed to waiting.

He glanced over in annoyance, not bothering to hide the action from the sour-faced assistant who guarded the inner office. His BlackBerry buzzed and he accepted another appointment for that afternoon. He forwarded a scheduling notice about his Seattle trip the following week.

Hartwell Genetics couldn’t afford to get left behind, not with domestic and international demand exploding for the company’s gene-based medicines.

If he was going to be kept waiting like a recalcitrant schoolboy outside the principal’s office, then he might as well get his homework done.

Another buzz. More email. Ethan cleared his throat to get the attention of the gray-haired Gorgon. “I’m going back to my office,” he said.

Before he could carry through on the threat, the door guard raised a talon to her ear. She nodded at whatever secret message she received, then leveled cold eyes toward Ethan before intoning, “You may go in now.”

Games. If he’d announced his decision to leave fifteen minutes earlier, then he would have been granted admittance that much sooner. He shoved his BlackBerry onto his hip and twitched the legs of his trousers into perfect place. For full effect, he shot the cuffs of his shirt, making sure that his wristwatch glinted in the overhead lights. He told himself that his deep breath was to complete the image, to cement the vision of Ethan Hartwell, M.D., MBA, third-generation president of Hartwell Genetics and the most eligible bachelor of Washington, D.C., for three years running.

In reality, he merely needed a moment to clear his head before he entered the inner sanctum.

The handle turned smoothly under his lean fingers, and the door glided open in silence. Ethan’s black wing-tips left deep impressions in the cream carpet as he crossed the room. He ignored the framed pictures on the wall, photographs taken with the President, with political and business leaders from throughout the civilized world. The United States Capitol was centered in the picture window behind the massive mahogany desk, as perfect as a movie backdrop. With the force of long habit, Ethan crossed behind that desk, approaching the imposing throne that housed the office’s lone occupant.

He bent at the waist and settled a faint kiss on a cheek that smelled of baby powder and lilacs. “Good morning, Grandmother,” Ethan said.

Margaret Hartwell’s eyes gleamed like agate chips as she waved him to one of her uncomfortable Louis XIV chairs. “Will you join me for a cup of tea?”

Ethan swallowed a sigh. It was faster to accept his grandmother’s hospitality than to argue with her. He poured with the ease of familiarity, placing a gleaming strainer across her china cup, dropping in two cubes of sugar, adding a generous dollop of milk. He took his own black, strong and bitter. Determined to conclude their conversation and get back to work, he said, “Grandmother—”

“I finished reading the newspaper this morning, before I came into the office,” she interrupted.

He, too, had skimmed the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times while his chauffeured car had been stuck in morning traffic. “The new treatment is performing well,” he said. “We should move on to stage-two trials next month.”

As if he needed to tell his grandmother about pharmaceutical development. As Hartwell Genetics’s former president and current chairman of the board, Margaret Hartwell chased down medical news like a ravenous greyhound. Maybe that was why she had the capacity to annoy him so much—they were too much alike: driven, determined and downright dogged about pursuing every last business lead.

“I’m not speaking about stage-two trials,” she said acerbically. “I was referring to the gossip page.”

Ethan raised one eyebrow. He and his grandmother might be united on the business front, but they were miles apart where his personal life was concerned. “Grandmother, we’ve had this discussion before. You know that I can’t control what the papers print.”

She settled her teacup in her saucer with a firm clink. “You can control the fodder you give those imbeciles. I’ve told you until I’m blue in the face—your actions have a direct effect on this company.”

He shoved his teacup away. “I hardly think that my drinking champagne on a hotel rooftop is going to influence our second quarter earnings.”

“She’s a showgirl , Ethan.”

He laughed and rose to his feet. “There haven’t been showgirls since you were a debutante, Grandmother. Natasha is an actress . And don’t worry. She flew back to California this morning.”

“You will not walk out of my office while I am talking to you!”

He shouldn’t have been surprised by the iron in his grandmother’s voice. He knew that he brought out the worst in her, and vice versa, for that matter. All of a sudden, he was an abandoned little boy again, being chastised by the only relative who had stuck around to raise him. He was the sixteen-year-old who had been expelled from Washington’s finest private school—again—for playing tricks with the headmaster’s public address system. He was the twenty-year-old who had been thrown off the college tennis team for sneaking his girlfriend into the tournament locker room. He was the twenty-seven-year-old who had celebrated receiving his medical degree and his business degree on the same day, only to crash his Porsche into the Tidal Basin.