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Chapter One

When Savannah Groggin opened the door of her Thurmont, Maryland, bed-and-breakfast to Ethan McKenzie, she wasn’t surprised to see her former boss, the in-house counsel for an Atlanta-based company where she had worked as a paralegal.

“Savannah, I’m so sorry,” Ethan said, as he entered her foyer. His short black hair was combed in the usual neat style she remembered from two years before. His brown eyes were serious, concerned. But wearing blue jeans and a T-shirt and not dressed in a suit, he looked much younger than she remembered. Also, the casual clothes made him seem more approachable than he had been when she worked for him, which was the first and only good thing she had noticed all day.

“You’re sorry?” Savannah said, looking at the floor because she couldn’t meet his eyes. In just twelve short hours, all the joy her pregnancy had brought her had been lost. Not only had she learned from the Georgia State Police that the sperm donation used to create the baby she carried belonged to her ex-boss, but also that her brother was a fugitive from justice. She bit her bottom lip to keep it from trembling, then said, “My brother and I are the ones who should be sorry.”

“I know you didn’t have anything to do with this,” he said urgently. “From the way this thing was set up, the police deduced you’re innocent. But even if they hadn’t told me you weren’t an accomplice, I worked with you long enough to realize, well, that you hadn’t known—”

“That my brother falsified records at the clinic where he worked and stole your sperm?”

Ethan grimaced at her frankness, then nodded. “Yes.”

Confused and tired from a long, difficult day, Savannah rubbed her hands along the small of her back. “Since we have a lot to talk about, could we sit in the living room?”

Ethan’s expression became distressed and his gaze fell to her stomach, which wasn’t yet huge with child, but was obviously swollen.

Suddenly, it hit her full force.

The baby in her belly belonged to both of them.

He cleared his throat. “Savannah, I’m sorry. I should have thought of that,” he said as he took her hand and led her into her quiet living room. Furnished with aging blue French provincial furniture trimmed in walnut, with thick navy velour drapes in front of white lace sheers, the room was dark and quiet.

Savannah turned on a lamp, shedding some much-needed light into the room, and sat on the sofa.

Ethan sat beside her and took her hand again. “Is there anything I can get you?”

“No. I’m fine.” Part of her almost wished he wouldn’t be so nice because it made her feel incredibly guilty. The other part was glad he was handling this better than she was. It was hard enough to come to terms with the fact that her brother had forged someone’s name, falsified records and stolen property all because she was concerned about getting a good father for the in vitro fertilization. It was almost too much to bear that Barry felt the only way he could fulfill his promise to her was to cheat a man she knew and respected.

Tightening his hold on her hand, Ethan said, “Savannah, though your brother had no right to do what he did, I also have to take some responsibility. I should have destroyed that sample two years ago when my wife and I divorced.”

“It’s very nice of you to say that,” Savannah said. “But you entrusted your property to a reputable clinic. You shouldn’t have had to worry that someone would steal it.”

“True. But I didn’t do what I was supposed to do, so I’m accountable, too,” Ethan said, sounding logical yet kind.

Immediately Savannah’s instincts went on red alert. She remembered that as an attorney this man was sharp and intelligent. There was only one reason he would take responsibility. He wanted it. And if he wanted responsibility that meant he wanted the baby.

In all the confusion about her brother, her fear of being thought of as an accomplice and her hours of being questioned by the police, Savannah hadn’t forgotten the real issue wasn’t the crime, but the baby. A man didn’t cryogenically preserve his sperm unless he wanted to assure he had a child someday. Though she probably wasn’t the mother he would have chosen, and this might not be the time he would have preferred, the deed was done. He had his child on the way. And he would get it.

Ethan might genuinely believe Savannah hadn’t been in on the scheme, but her brother’s misdeeds would cast a shadow of doubt on her credibility in court. Plus, Ethan was a wealthy man from a prominent, well-respected family. His father had been a senator forever. His mother had served on a president’s cabinet. Her baby, the baby she had been carrying for five months, the child she wanted more than her next breath of air, was as good as lost to her.

Desperately trying not to cry, she nervously fingered the long strawberry blond curls that fell across her shoulders to her bosom. “You want custody of the baby, don’t you?”

“Custody is one of the things we need to talk about.”

“Okay,” Savannah said, nearly paralyzed with fear. Tears threatened beneath her eyelids. She had gone through the tests, the processes, the first five months of pregnancy filled with so much joy that she could barely contain it. She wasn’t ready to let her unborn baby slip through her fingers. Not yet. “What are the other things you want to talk about?”

For several seconds, Ethan said nothing, then finally, quietly, he said, “I’ve been told my father’s friend, Sam Ringer, has decided to run for president of the United States and my father is his vice presidential choice. But Sam isn’t waiting around for his party’s convention to announce it. He’s announcing it in the fall so he can use my father’s pull to help him win the primaries and assure he gets the nomination.”

“Oh, my God,” Savannah said, feeling all the blood drain from her face, as the situation continued to worsen. Her baby had been created without permission. Her brother was a fugitive. The McKenzies were rich and powerful and would probably take her to court to get this child. And her custody battle with the son of a vice presidential candidate would probably start around the same time as the first primary, so every unhappy fact of her life would be fodder for the national news.

The picture of it flashed in her mind. She could see microphones and cameras shoved in her face, and vans with satellite dishes parked in her yard.

She shook her head in dismay. “This is going to be a circus.”

Ethan shifted on his seat. “Not really. I mean, it doesn’t have to be,” he said softly. Still holding her hand, he lightly tugged on her fingers and forced her to look at him. “Savannah, the only thing that makes this news is that your brother falsified records and you were impregnated without my knowledge. But if everybody thought you were pregnant because we were lovers, it wouldn’t be a big deal.”

Remembering again how cunning this man could be, a chill snaked through her. “So you want me to pretend we’ve been dating?”

He shook his head and said, “No, I want you to marry me.”

Savannah’s heart felt like it stopped beating. She laid her free hand on her chest. “Marry you?” she whispered.

“If you don’t marry me, and this story leaks to the press as it is, your brother will be the most popular, most sought-after fugitive in the world if only by the tabloids, and my father will be answering more questions about this baby than about real campaign issues. This story could overshadow every point he and Senator Ringer try to make and render their campaign irrelevant.

“But if you marry me,” Ethan continued, “I won’t press charges against your brother. He won’t be a wanted man anymore and our pregnancy and wedding will be a blip in the human interest pages of a few newspapers. Nothing more.”

“I see,” Savannah said, though she could hardly believe what she was hearing. Yesterday she was the simple, humble owner of a bed-and-breakfast that she had inherited when her parents were killed. Today she was receiving a proposal of marriage from a man considered one of the most eligible bachelors in the nation—because she was pregnant with his child and that child had been created in an unorthodox way, a way that involved forgery and theft.

“Before you agree,” Ethan said, again catching her gaze. “I have to tell you that if this is going to work we’ll also have to make everyone believe we’re a love match. That doesn’t mean that I’m going to fawn all over you, or that I’ll expect you to be my wife for real and forever. But it does mean that we’ll have to pretend to be in love for the general public, including my parents, and that you’ll need to move to Atlanta with me until after the baby is born. We’ll wait a month or two after that to make everything seem legitimate then we’ll quietly divorce.”

Savannah swallowed hard. “I need to move to Atlanta?”

“Yes. It’s where I live. It’s where you lived until two years ago. We worked together. It won’t be a stretch for people to believe we had a relationship.”

Overwhelmed with facts and possibilities, most of them bad, Savannah drew a long breath. “If I marry you, does this mean you won’t fight me for custody?”

“If you marry me I won’t fight you for custody, but visitation is an entirely different thing. I don’t want to be a weekend dad. I will be a big part of this child’s life.”

Well, the cards were on the table, Savannah thought, not entirely pleased, but at least relieved that Ethan wouldn’t take away her basic right as a mother. She knew she could probably use the marriage as further leverage to push him into some kind of visitation agreement right now, but she also recognized that she had more immediate concerns.

She couldn’t handle a cub reporter on a good day. Even though leaving her bed-and-breakfast posed an enormous problem for her, if only because she had bookings, getting her friends to take over for a few months was easier than defending her brother, herself and her baby in the court of public opinion.

She also had to take a share of the responsibility for Barry’s forgery and theft because she had made him promise she would get a good father for her baby. She had to take some responsibility for that, too.

Ethan again squeezed her fingers gently. “Savannah, I didn’t expect you to answer today. But I will need an answer first thing tomorrow.”

Glad to have a reprieve to think this through, Savannah tried to smile, but failed miserably. “Okay.”

“Just remember that the longer you take to decide the less possible this scheme becomes,” he said quietly. He studied her, then rubbed his thumb across her knuckles. “Today, the clinic and a handful of police know. By tomorrow night, you can add a hundred people to that list. This time next week, you can add millions. But with the right word from me, I can have that police report filed away or destroyed as if it never existed.”

“What about the people at the sperm bank?”

Ethan smiled. “Since I could sue the clinic into bankruptcy for this, once I tell the owner I’m not pressing charges, a smart man would shove the paperwork so far back in the corner of his filing cabinet that it would never again see the light of day. Even if one of the employees sold the story to a tabloid, with that paperwork ‘lost’ there would be nothing to back it up and we could easily deny it.

“But if we let another twenty-four hours go by,” Ethan continued, “then this window of opportunity is gone because too many people will know the truth. You need to agree before seven tomorrow morning or all bets are off.”

Savannah nodded.

“Okay. I’m going to let you alone now to think about this because I can tell by looking at you that you’ve had enough excitement for one day.”

His voice softened marginally and Savannah recognized that though he was pushing her into making a huge decision, he was doing it gently, like a man taking care of her. Only then did it fully register that he was still sitting beside her, holding her hand. And only then did the knowledge that she was pregnant with his child completely sink in. Her body flushed as the heat of embarrassment spiraled through her. Though they hadn’t been physically “intimate” with each other, they were none the less sharing the most intimate experience any two people could share. Together they had created a child, a child who was growing inside her.

Savannah felt strange and awkward and suddenly faint.

Grateful that he was leaving, she cautiously slid her hand from his and took a slow breath before she said, “You’re right. I’ve had so much news in the past twelve hours that I need time to digest at least some of it before I can make this decision.”

“You rest then,” he said, rising. “And I’ll be back early tomorrow morning.”

Savannah nodded and rose from the sofa, too. As she did she noticed the way the lamplight glistened off Ethan’s shiny black hair. Though she didn’t want to be making these kinds of observations, she realized that her child could look exactly like him. He or she might have Ethan’s eyes and Ethan’s hair. Their baby could have his brains and his talent, or, better yet, their baby could really be somebody important like Ethan’s father….

Reminded of the prominence of Ethan’s family, the queasy feeling in her stomach turned into full-fledged nausea. She had just been asked to marry the son of a man who might become the next vice president of the United States. Worse, he was one of the most eligible bachelors in the world because he wasn’t merely rich, he was gorgeous. Absolutely gorgeous. She’d noticed before, of course. She would have been blind not to, but working with him and being married to him were two different things.

“We will be getting divorced, right?”

“As soon as reasonably possible after the baby’s born,” Ethan agreed, walking to the door. “But that gives us time to talk about visitation.”

Ethan smiled at her and Savannah returned his smile, but Ethan didn’t for one second believe she was okay with all this. Which suited him just fine because he wasn’t a hundred percent sure he was okay with it, either. In fact, having her wary rather than excited at the prospect of becoming his wife was actually a point in her favor. He meant it when he said he didn’t think she had any knowledge of this scheme to use his sperm, but now that the baby had been created, he had to take steps to ensure she didn’t get any crazy ideas. Like blackmail. The shy, sweet paralegal he worked with two years ago would never think to use his child as a ploy to get money but he wasn’t so sure about the new Savannah he had found here this evening.

She didn’t even look like the woman he remembered. Instead of having short unruly red hair, she now had long tresses that cascaded all around her so that the riot of curls was flattering, not disheveled. Though her pregnancy concealed it, she must have lost some weight because her face was thinner…prettier. She wasn’t wearing an ounce of makeup, yet she looked beautiful in a way she never had when she worked at Hilton-Cooper-Martin Foods. The past two years had matured her into an absolutely stunning woman.

A stunning woman swollen with his child, Ethan thought, then swallowed hard. She wasn’t merely a beautiful woman to whom he would be attracted if circumstances were different, she was somebody he had worked with, a wonderfully innocent woman he had liked and respected, and the baby she carried was his. He wanted to hug her. He wanted to take care of her. He wanted to forget that this situation had repercussions and allow himself to tumble headfirst into the magic of becoming a parent. He wanted to bask in the knowledge that finally—after thirty-five years—he was about to become a father!

But he couldn’t. He knew he couldn’t. He wasn’t entirely sure how this situation was going to play out. So he had to be ready for whenever Savannah decided to make her move….

Still he allowed himself one tiny father-to-be indulgence and asked, “Are you okay to be alone tonight?”

“I’m fine,” Savannah said. “I just need to get accustomed to all this.”

“Yeah, me, too,” Ethan agreed, because he was sure that once his own astonishment and excitement abated, he wouldn’t have to worry about being attracted to her or overwhelmed with the joy of becoming a father. His common sense and logic would return and he would be just fine.

But when he again caught her gaze, he saw sadness in her eyes and suddenly recognized that while he was fighting the desire to rejoice over getting a child she was being forced to adjust to having to share her child. From the pain in her eyes it was a devastating blow.

Again he remembered her as she was when she worked with him. Shy. Sweet. Vulnerable. Guilt tightened his chest and made him draw a deep breath.

“I know this has been an awful day for you. I don’t feel right leaving you by yourself.”

“I’m not going to be by myself. I have friends coming over in a few minutes,” she said, backing away from him. “Since I got pregnant, we’ve made Friday night our poker night.”

“Poker?”

The question in his voice must have amused her, because she smiled. “What? You think women don’t like to gamble a little or get together for a weekly gossip session?”

He wished she hadn’t told him she liked to gamble, but in some ways he was glad she had because it brought him back to earth with a hard thump. He didn’t know how much she had changed in the past two years. She might not have had any part in stealing his property, but now that she knew he was the father of her baby it wasn’t a stretch to realize she would soon see she could make this work in her favor.

Before Ethan had a chance to say anything, there was a quick knock at the door. Her guests didn’t wait for an invitation to enter, and Ethan had to jump out of the way as the women he assumed were her poker pals entered around him. Redheaded twins, a blonde and a brunette made up the quartet. Each of the women was in her early twenties. All wore simple jeans and colorful T-shirts.

“Hi, Savannah!”

“Hi.” She paused, glanced at Ethan and drew a quick breath. “This is Ethan McKenzie. Ethan, these are my friends, Andi, Mandi, Becki and Lindsay.”

Ethan said, “How do you do?”

“How do you do…?”

Four pair of eyes eagerly assessing him might have cowed another man, but Ethan held their gazes steadily, making his own quick assessment of things. Just from the cornered expression on the face of the brunette, Ethan knew her poker buddies weren’t simply here for a night of playing cards. He would bet his last dime they came here every Friday night more to check up on Savannah than to gamble and they would take care of her. The smartest thing for him to do would be to get the hell out of here and regroup before he said or did something that he regretted, if only out of compassion for the woman carrying his child.

His child.

He almost couldn’t believe he was about to have a baby. The knowledge overwhelmed him. Took his breath. Which was exactly why he had to be careful. The last time he let an emotion control him, it cost him much more than he could afford to risk.

He looked at Savannah and forced himself to see her objectively, honestly and through the filter of unhappy possibilities. “We’ll talk tomorrow.”

She nodded. “Okay.”

The second he was out the door, Savannah turned to her four friends. Protectively placing her palm on her stomach, she said, “I’m in big trouble.”

“What?” Becki, one of the twins, groaned. “Please don’t tell me that good-looking guy is suing you or something.”

“Or something,” Savannah said, leading her friends into the living room, where they sat on the sofa and round-backed chairs, tucking their feet beneath them and getting comfortable, though they continued to stare at Savannah with rapt attention.

“He’s the father of this baby,” Savannah said, then looked from blond-haired, blue-eyed Lindsay, to the red-haired twins Mandi and Becki, to dark-haired, dark-eyed Andi. “I didn’t know it. He didn’t know it. But Barry did. Ethan had sperm cryogenically frozen for some reason when he was married. Apparently, my fear about getting a good father for the baby led Barry to search the banks of people who had sperm stored but weren’t donors. When he found Ethan’s name he knew we had our father because we knew Ethan to be a good man since I had worked with him. So Barry forged Ethan’s signature to get his sample mainstreamed into the donor banks to be used for my pregnancy.”

“Oh, boy,” Mandi said slowly, her blue eyes widening with each word.

“Yeah, oh, boy.”

“So, is this guy pressing charges?” Lindsay demanded.

Savannah licked her lips. “Not if I marry him.”

“You’re kidding!” Becki gasped, flopping back on her chair as if flabbergasted.

“It gets worse. His father is…”

“Parker McKenzie,” Andi said. A reporter who was part of a team that covered the Washington beat for several newspapers, Andi knew everybody on Capitol Hill. She had facts at her disposal that the general public wouldn’t have. She also knew backgrounds that frequently got forgotten. “He’s a senator who had to live down the pasts of a starlet mother and drug-using pro-football player father. His son’s sperm theft would be the final embarrassment of his career. But his son’s marriage, even a hasty marriage, would go virtually unnoticed.”

“That’s approximately what Ethan said,” Savannah confirmed.

“He’s right,” Andi said, combing her fingers through the mop of thick, blunt cut sable hair that fell to her shoulders. “A marriage would make this ‘problem’ a nonissue.”

“So you think I should marry him?”

“I don’t know what you should do—” Andi began.

“Marrying him virtually guarantees legal standing in a custody suit,” Mandi interrupted.

“He doesn’t need to marry her to get legal standing,” Lindsay said, as all eyes turned to the law student. “He has legal standing. He is the baby’s father. Actually, it’s probably more documented than if you had gotten pregnant because you were lovers. He doesn’t even need DNA tests. He has papers that prove his sperm created your baby.”

All eyes then turned to Savannah. “Does he have papers?” Becki asked.

“The Georgia State Police told me Barry forged Ethan’s signature to mainstream his sperm for use by the clinic. So, that’s one paper. They also had search warrants that let them roam the entire bed-and-breakfast looking for clues of where Barry might be. Since police don’t get search warrants from judges without a good reason, I’m assuming it’s all documented somewhere and that’s why Barry went into hiding.”

Becki caught Savannah’s gaze. “Do you know where Barry is?”

Savannah shook her head. “No. All I know is he called me and told me that he was leaving for a new job in Canada. Though he avoided telling me where the job was, I knew something was wrong. Then eight hours after he called, the police arrived and told me that when the clinic was auditing their procedures, they randomly chose my pregnancy to follow to make sure everything had been done properly. Apparently, Barry only got away because he saw what case they were going to audit and he left before they began pulling files. No one noticed he was gone until after they called Ethan. Because he had not originally been a sperm donor, they had to confirm he had reclassified his sample. Ethan, of course, had not. When they started putting two and two together with my pregnancy, Ethan’s reclassified sperm and Barry’s absence, it was already too late.”

“He does look guilty,” Becki said sadly.

“Yeah, he does,” Savannah agreed. “The ironic thing is that I don’t even know where to find him to tell him Ethan is dropping the charges if I marry him.”

“And just like that Barry can come home?” Mandi said skeptically. “No punishment, no problems.”

“He didn’t really do anything wrong,” Savannah insisted. “I’m the one who said I couldn’t do this without a guarantee that I would get a good father. He promised me a good father. He delivered.”

“Yeah, he delivered, all right,” Becki said. “He could have delivered you to a jail cell.”

“That’s not what he intended.”

“Savannah, you’ve got to quit defending that kid,” Mandi said.

But Lindsay stopped her with a look. “Barry is Savannah’s brother,” she quietly reminded Mandi, but Savannah knew what she was really saying.

“He’s my only family,” she said, not needing to remind everybody of past tragedies. “Besides if I don’t marry Ethan, he could sue for custody. And he’ll win because I can’t fight the McKenzie money.”

“Oh, Savannah,” Andi said, jumping from her chair to rush over and hug Savannah. “I don’t think you need to worry about him suing for custody. These people can’t afford bad press. Even if you don’t marry him, I don’t think he’s going to try to take this baby away from you.”

“You think the baby’s safe?”

“I think that if you stand your ground, the McKenzies will settle for whatever you are willing to give them to keep this out of the papers.”

“I agree,” Lindsay said, obviously thinking this through from a legal perspective. “Fathers have more rights than they used to, but if the McKenzies try for custody it will end up as a lawsuit. And if what you’re saying is true, Ethan McKenzie can’t afford an ugly lawsuit any more than he can afford for this story to leak. You’ve got some leverage here, too. If nothing else, you can expose the truth.”

“Except you don’t have the papers that prove any of it, do you?” Becki asked.

Savannah shook her head. “No.”

“Then get them,” Lindsay said. “Don’t wait until the evidence is mysteriously lost or destroyed. Call tomorrow. Because whether you marry him or not, the papers that prove you used in vitro fertilization are your best bet for making sure Ethan sticks to any deal you guys make.”