Heidi Rice - One Wild Night - Magnate's Mistress...Accidentally Pregnant! / Hot Boss, Boardroom Mistress / The Good, the Bad and the Wild

“All I’m saying, Chris, is that if those papers are what I think they are—and the look on your face tells me they are—then don’t. Don’t do to Ally and your child what was done to you. You can work this out. She doesn’t deserve it and your child deserves to have its mother.”

Marge sat back in the chair and folded her hands in her lap—the signal that she’d said her piece and was done. Now he was faced with a dilemma. He’d let his temper carry him to this point—Ally had been served with these same papers first thing this morning. At least he had Marge’s information before he had to talk to Ally about them and made the situation worse. In fact, he was surprised he hadn’t had an angry phone call already. It was a lot to think about, and he needed to plan his next move carefully.

The intercom on his desk buzzed, and Grace cut in. “Mr. Chris, there’s a—Hey! Wait!” At the same moment, his office door burst open and Ally stood there, chest heaving and curls rioting around her head. She held a familiar manila envelope in one white-knuckled hand.

“You bastard! How dare you. You—” Anger choked off her words.

Grace was right behind her. “I’m sorry. I tried to stop her.”

Three women looked at him. Grace in apology, Marge in question and Ally…Well, he was just lucky looks couldn’t kill.

So much for time to think and plan.

It was a good thing she didn’t own a gun. It had taken a little while to figure out the legalese, but once the meaning of those papers had sunk in, fury consumed her. Even the unflappable Molly had been taken aback at the extent of the lawsuits.

That fury had only grown during the drive to Charleston, and she’d broken every speed limit in two states in her rush to confront Chris. Now that she was here, she was itching to do him physical harm, especially since he had the gall to look surprised to see her.

She couldn’t form words. Every phrase she’d practiced on the drive was trapped behind the anger choking her.

While the blond-haired assistant sputtered behind her, a matronly woman rose from the chair in front of Chris’s desk. As she turned, Ally saw both concern and, oddly, affection in her eyes.

“You must be Ally. You’re even lovelier in person.” The woman’s kind smile and gentle pat to Ally’s arm as she passed seemed surreal. “Let’s go, Grace.”

The older woman ushered the younger one out and closed the door behind her, leaving Ally alone with Chris, who looked remarkably calm and unperturbed for someone who’d just served enough legal papers on her to put that lawyer’s child through college with the expense.

“Would you like to sit?” Chris came around from behind his desk and gestured toward the chair the woman had just vacated.

Had she crossed into the freaking Twilight Zone? “I don’t know if I should. You’d probably use my decision to sit against me later.”

She couldn’t tell if the slight inclination of Chris’s head was meant to be mocking or conciliatory as he perched on the edge of the desk. The jerk.

“I expected I’d hear from you today. I kind of assumed you’d call, though.”

Molly had suggested the same thing, claiming distance would make it easier to deal with Chris and his outrageous demands. She’d been too mad to listen. “You questioned my competency, my fitness to be a parent. You’re demanding my medical records and serving me with an order to keep me from traveling outside Georgia or South Carolina, and you wonder why I came to confront you in person? Maybe we should be questioning your mental stability.”

“Actually, my attorney did all of that. I just told him I wanted my child and that you were unwilling to come to an agreement.”

How dare he try to blame her for this? “So you decided to serve all this—” she tossed the envelope onto the desk “—on me? It won’t work. I’m not going to let you take custody of this baby. I’ll fight you.”

“But you won’t win.”

A red haze clouded her vision, and she curled her hands into fists, her nails digging into her palms. “This is the twenty-first century. I have rights, and no judge in the universe would rule in your favor. I’m not incompetent.” She lifted her chin in defiance. That much she was sure of. She was the poster child of competency.

“Maybe not, but it’ll still cost you buckets of money to prove it.”

All the air left her lungs at his matter-of-fact pronouncement, but Chris just shrugged. “I hate to be the one to break this to you, but it doesn’t really matter if I can do half of what’s in that envelope. My lawyers will serve you with motion after motion, and you’ll be forced to respond to each one.”

The possibility of a long, legal battle sobered her. It wouldn’t matter if she was in the right; the repercussions would be horrific—not only on her, but on her family, on Molly, on the baby. Especially on the baby.

“Zillion-dollar endorsement deals will buy a lot of legal expertise, Ally.”

Dear God, he was right. She didn’t have the money to fight. She’d be bankrupt just responding to a fraction of the motions in that envelope. And if she couldn’t fight him, would he win simply by default? Her stomach dropped. She’d made a horrific mistake in angering him, and she’d walked straight into this mess with her pride and anger. But what could she do now?

Chris seemed to realize when that last thought crystallized for her. He indicated for her to sit again, and took the other chair. “Maybe now you’ll be more open to negotiation.”

Negotiation? Just the two of them? She looked carefully for the trap, but Chris’s face was the picture of friendliness and conciliation. Oh, she’d love to kill him. “You mean to tell me…You did this to…This was all just scare tactics?” Hesitant relief now mingled with her earlier anger, and the emotional toll left her drained as her head spun. As much as she’d like to turn on her heel and march out of there, she needed to sit.

“No, not just scare tactics. If we can’t come to a workable solution, I will do whatever it takes. Hopefully, it won’t come to that.”

She tried to sort her scrambled thoughts, but those blue eyes locked on hers didn’t help the process. She’d spent the past three days trying to figure out what to do, and she wasn’t any closer to a solution than she was when Chris had stormed off her front porch. Trying to balance what was right for the baby with what would be good for them both in the long run…Chris’s arrival had thrown all of her carefully made plans into the wind.

Then those papers had arrived and she hadn’t been able to think at all. Chris’s sudden willingness to be reasonable just brought back all of her earlier problems—this time coupled with the suspicion she wasn’t going to like these negotiations.

Anger had kept her not-just-in-the-morning sickness at bay so far today, but as it ebbed, nausea swept back in. She fumbled in her purse for the bag of saltine crackers stashed there. She nibbled slowly on one, grateful for the stalling tactic, as Chris frowned. Then he left, returning a minute later with a paper cup.

“Ginger ale. It should help.”

She nodded her thanks and sipped carefully. A few deep breaths later, her stomach settled some and the queasiness waned.

“I’m guessing discussing this over lunch is out of the question?”

Looking up, she saw a hint of laughter in those blue eyes, and the corner of his mouth twitched. He found her nausea amusing, did he? Next time, she’d just let fly on his shoes. See how funny he thought that was. “I’ll stick with the crackers.”

Of course, sitting in Chris’s office with those horrible papers still on his desk waiting for him to tell her what he wanted from her wasn’t helping her stomach much, either. Chris certainly had the upper hand in this “negotiation,” and she knew it. You have no one to blame but yourself, her conscience nagged. You fired the opening shot. She needed to forget about her stomach and focus on keeping Chris reasonable—