Allison Leigh - The Billionaire's Baby Plan / Marrying the Northbridge Nanny - The Billionaire's Baby Plan

His gaze drifted from her face, down her body, and back up again. “Something visited me in my dreams,” he allowed.

There was no mistaking his implication and she flushed so hard, she was practically seeing him through crimson.

Or else that was her fury.

She’d never been so close to losing control. She wanted to yell and pound her hands on something.

He would make a satisfying target.

She took a deep breath, waiting until her vocal cords didn’t feel as if they were strangling her. “I have no intention of being your broodmare, and even less intention of allowing you to ruin my institute!”

“You might want to think about it,” he suggested, when she turned on her heel and started walking away from the fountain. “I’ll give you until tomorrow afternoon. That’ll give my media director time to leak the…appropriate news.”

He’d been talking with his media director for much of their drive to Greenwich. She felt even sicker. She looked back at him. “Appropriate.”

“Don’t agree to my…proposal—”

“Proposal!” She snorted. “Insane proposition, maybe.”

He barely paused over her interruption. “—and it’ll be just as I’ve described. A hailstorm of disaster will come down on the institute by the time people tune into the evening news. But if you do agree, I’ll work equally hard at ensuring the world never knows what sort of thievery you have going on in your family. And the only thing in the news will be a human interest blip about our upcoming marriage.”

She hated, absolutely hated the fact that there was a stinging burn deep behind her eyes. There was no way she’d show any sort of weakness in front of this man. “Why should I trust you?”

He held up his hand. “Scout’s honor.”

She stared at him, her hands curling and uncurling at her sides. “I’ve never come as close to wanting to hit someone as I am now.”

“Your brother Derek would make a better target.” His voice was flat. “He’s the one who put you in this position.”

And how badly she wanted to be able to deny it.

But she couldn’t.

Derek. Her own brother. The one she’d always been able to turn to. He’d been the one to teach her to drive when her father was too busy to and her mother was disinclined to. He’d been the one to help her pass her high-school math classes, to whisk her away for a day of sailing when all the rest of her friends were primping for the prom that she’d never been asked to go to. She’d gone to the same university as he; he’d told her what teachers were good and which ones to avoid. He’d taken her out for her first legal beer.

And he’d been her biggest supporter when it came to convincing their father that she—youngest of the Armstrong siblings—had what it took to become the head administrator of the institute.

She hated him for what he’d done to all of them. Couldn’t understand how he could have done what he’d done.

And she wished like hell that she could cut off the memory of all that he’d meant to her.

“Come on, Lisa.” Rourke’s voice dropped gently; the predator sensing weakness. “It won’t be so bad. A handful of years at the outside is all you’ll be giving up. And in exchange, the institute will be set for the next fifty years when the next generation takes over. You can expand. Open another location on the west coast if you want. The sky will be the limit.”

She didn’t care about expansion. Or new sites. She cared about the site—the only site—they had. She cared about what it would do to her father if the institute fell from grace while it was under her watch. Gerald’s health had been declining for years. She wasn’t sure if he could survive such a mammoth, shocking disappointment.

She and Paul and the others at the institute had all agreed that it was best to keep Derek’s horrible misdeeds from their parents. It wouldn’t solve anything if they knew, and would only upset them.

She pressed her fingers to her temples.

But if Rourke was to be believed—if she didn’t go along with his plan—there was no way that her parents wouldn’t learn what Derek had done.

It was unbearable to even contemplate.

“My driver can take you back to your hotel,” Rourke said, and she decided she was losing her mind to think there was a hint of compassion in his voice. “You have some thinking to do.”

“According to you, there’s no thinking to be done. Agree or suffer the consequences.”

“The institute can’t hide its financial precariousness much longer. Even if I did nothing, the truth would come out.”

“But you’re prepared to help it along.” Her voice was thick. She looked at him, wishing she could understand what was ticking behind his impenetrable gaze. “And for what? What did we ever do to you?”

His eyes narrowed. “I don’t like thieves.”

“I don’t like drivers who run red lights,” she exclaimed. “But I don’t take it so personally that I deliberately go hunting them down!”

“I didn’t hunt you down, sweetheart. You came to me. I’ve just come up with a solution that benefits us both.”

She shook her head. His gall was unbelievable. “You can whitewash it all you want, Rourke, but coercion is still coercion.”

He sighed faintly. “The more you keep thinking along those lines, the harder this all will be. My advice to you is to focus on the advantages.” His lips twisted a little. “That’s what I’m doing.”

She watched him.

The silence between them slowly ticked along, broken only by the soft gurgle of water spilling tranquilly over the edges of the fountain.

“I don’t see why we would have to marry,” she finally said. Maybe…maybe…she could tolerate being a surrogate mother for him. But that didn’t necessitate a pointless marriage.

A glint sparked in his eyes. The wolf scenting blood. “My child won’t be born a bastard.”

She looked up at the blue sky, then back at him. “Come out of the Dark Ages,” she said impatiently. “People hardly care about that anymore!”

“My mother still cares.” His expression was inflexible. “I care.”

So they’d all suffer through a sham of a marriage just so his heir wouldn’t be born out of wedlock?

“I suppose I should be grateful you don’t have some moral objection to divorce, too!”

“If I did, it went by the wayside well enough thanks to my ex-wife.”

She’d been aware that he was divorced, yet her furtive research when she’d first met him hadn’t managed to unearth any details about the woman. He’d been paired with dozens of women—from famous models to actresses to heiresses. But there’d definitely been no details of his former wife. “How long ago were you married?” Maybe he was nursing a broken heart and taking it out on her because she was female.

“A lifetime.”

“Right.” He wasn’t that old. Only four years older than she. “What happened?”

“Nothing that concerns you.”

“It does if I’m going to be putting your ring on my finger,” she returned. “Since I assume, to go along with your other antiquated notions, that you’ll be wanting me to wear one.”

“You think it’s old-fashioned for a couple to exchange rings along with their vows?”

She wanted to stomp her foot. Because she didn’t think it was old-fashioned. She thought it was right and it was true and it was what people in love did. People who were committing themselves to each other for the rest of their lives.

Like Sara Beth and Ted had done. Like Paul and Ramona were going to be doing.

Certainly not for Rourke and her.

The very idea of it struck her as blasphemous.

“There is just one more detail,” he added.