Nicola Marsh - His Little Miracle - The Billionaire's Baby

This place was stunning, and she hadn’t even made it into his apartment yet.

Pressing the doorbell, she smoothed her skirt, her belly churning with nerves.

It had nothing to do with this place and everything to do with the man about to open the door, a man she couldn’t stop thinking about, a man with the potential to distract her from her number one goal: to make the Niche the best café in Melbourne.

She didn’t do distractions.

She couldn’t afford to.

Her success in the city was the only thing that kept the loneliness demons away, kept her focused enough to not lament the loss of her husband, a possible baby and a family that had betrayed her trust in them.

As the door swung open, she fixed a smile on her face and forced her hands to her sides. If she smoothed her skirt any more it would look as if she’d spent the last hour ironing. And it was bad enough she’d decided to change without him thinking she’d gone overboard.

‘Hey, Cam. Come on in.’

Easy for him to say. How was a girl supposed to walk when her knees started shaking the moment she caught sight of him in sand-coloured chinos, casual white shirt and barefoot, looking laid-back and slightly mussed and sexy all at the same time.

Willing her knees to behave—lock, lift, flex—she walked past him, his fresh-from-the-shower scent not playing fair with her poor wobbly legs.

‘Nice place. Though kind of small, isn’t it?’

He chuckled, took her suitcase, propped it near the door and propelled her into the monstrous lounge area with a gentle hand in her back, an innocuous touch that had no right playing havoc with her body.

‘I like my space.’

‘It’s yours?’

She stopped at the floor-to-ceiling glass windows, her breath catching at the incredible view of Melbourne and its surrounds spread out like a fairy-tale city in the dusk.

‘Yeah, I bought it off the plan when they were building this place.’

With a superhuman effort she bit her tongue to stop from blurting what she was thinking: how could he afford a place like this?

Instead, she focused on identifying landmarks, taking in the sweeping vista from the Blue Dandenongs mountain range to Port Phillip Bay, from the beautiful Botanical Gardens laid out like a lush green carpet to the sparkling waters of Albert Park Lake.

And she thought she had great views in her tenth-storey Docklands apartment!

‘You’re curious, aren’t you?’

‘About?’ she returned pseudo-casually.

Gesturing to a Chippendale sofa for her to take a seat, he smiled. ‘About this place.’

Sinking into the deep leather, she crossed her legs, grateful she’d gone with the mid-calf pencil skirt and not her favourite above-the-knee mini which she always slipped into after work.

‘I’m a little intrigued,’ she admitted.

Taking a seat next to her, he rested his arm across the back and leaned towards her.

‘With me or my place?’

Overwhelmed by his nearness, she took a deep breath, his aftershave filtering through her senses, the intoxicating scent of pure Blane encouraging her to bridge the short gap between them and bury her nose in the crook of his neck. Right on the tempting spot where his collar rested against his neck, where his impressive tan dipped away to broad shoulders covered in cotton, the sensitive spot she knew for a fact would drive him wild if she nipped it.

She could lie, pretend there was nothing between them, act as if he didn’t affect her one little bit. But that wouldn’t be fair to either of them, and they’d been through too much to start playing games now.

‘Both,’ she said, tilting her chin up to meet his gaze head on, challenging him to…what?

Say she intrigued him, too? That was a given considering he wanted them to have a second chance.

Tell her she was crazy for contemplating giving him what he wanted? That went without saying, for no matter how many times she evaluated this logically, her emotional side would creep up and give her a big whack over the head, urging her to go for it.

Kiss her senseless? Personally, the last option was her preferred choice, but for now she’d settle for a healthy dose of honesty, starting with how he came to afford a place like this.

Cupping her chin, he brushed a thumb along her jaw, sending shivers of longing through her.

‘Careful. Your new flatmate might go getting ideas if you say he intrigues you.’

Disconcerted by his unwavering stare, she aimed for light-hearted, anything to quell the urge to shove his hand away before she did something crazy like hang on to it for dear life.

‘So, tell me how you got this place. Let me guess. You’ve given up building to be a drug lord.’

‘No.’

‘You’ve discovered you’re the secret love child of Bill Gates?’

His mouth twitched. ‘No.’

‘Well, come on then, spill it.’

With a slow, sexy grin that did wicked things to her heart rate, he said, ‘We didn’t exactly get around to discussing my job the other night or earlier this evening, did we?’

‘That would be because you were too busy playing the burly builder.’

She smiled, wondering if he’d remember how she used to call him that, how she’d teased him mercilessly.

His eyes narrowed, losing none of their sparkle. ‘Playing, huh? Just for the record, we’re all grown up now, in case you haven’t noticed.’

Oh, she’d noticed all right; as her belly dropped in a frightening free fall, her core temperature ratcheted up by about a hundred degrees, and she itched to bridge the gap between them and clamber onto his lap.

See, she knew this cohabiting thing was a bad idea.

She’d barely made it through the front door, and already her imagination was overreacting while her body…well, needless to say, her body needed some attention, something she would definitely not be getting from Blane if she knew what was good for her.

‘Okay, so tell me about this building job of yours,’ she said, opting for a nice, safe answer, something that wouldn’t give him the opportunity to flirt considering she desperately needed a few moments to compose herself and stop thinking about exactly how he’d grown up.

‘Ever heard of BA Constructions?’

She shook her head, the name vaguely familiar, the type of thing she might have seen on billboards or scaffolding around the city. ‘Not sure.’

‘That’s my company.’

He pronounced it with the kind of unaffected casualness she’d come to associate with him from the first minute he’d bowled into her parents’ old-fashioned coffee shop and swept her off her feet, the quiet confidence of a guy who knew what he wanted and how to get it.

‘Tell me about it.’

‘The Melbourne Cricket Ground renovation? We were contracted to do it.’

Just like that, the proverbial penny dropped. BA Constructions wasn’t just any company; they’d made headlines for securing the megadeal to renovate Melbourne’s biggest sports stadium ahead of larger, more established construction companies. And there’d been something about making a financial magazine’s rich list, too…

‘BA Constructions, huh? Blane Andrews, CEO extraordinaire by the sounds of things.’

He shrugged, his self-deprecating smile adorable. ‘You know I’m basically a builder at heart. I worked hard, got the right contacts, put in the hard yards and it paid off.’

And how, if this swanky penthouse was any indication.

‘I’m happy for you,’ she said, instinctively reaching out to touch his hand, proud beyond belief he’d achieved so much.

‘Thanks. I did it for us.’

Heat infused his gaze, instant and smouldering, burning her with its intensity, drawing her to him like a moth to a scorching flame: hypnotic, inevitable, despite the struggle to escape.