Page 78 of Silver Fox's Christmas Scandal

Her phone rang, cutting through the intimacy of the moment. She closed her eyes, sighing softly.

"It's my mom," she said, glancing at the screen. "I have to take this."

I released her reluctantly, watching as she stepped into the hallway and answered with sudden and very fake brightness. "Hey, Mom. How are you?"

I heard fragments of the conversation—something about flight plans and Frank's health scare—things I maybe wasn't supposed to hear. When she returned to the bedroom, she was snapping her purse shut.

"Everything okay?" I asked.

"Frank had chest pains earlier. Turned out to be anxiety, but Mom's worried about their trip to Chicago next month. She needs to talk through the details." She held the phone to her chest protectively and talked in hushed tones, and I got the point.

It was going to take a while and she was going to leave, just like she'd done a million times before. Like this was nothing more than friends with benefits sex.

As she gathered the rest of her things, I felt the familiar ache of watching her leave.

But tonight, with Daniel's betrayal fresh in my mind and the board closing ranks against me, I couldn't let her walk away without saying something.

"Tessa." She paused at the bedroom door. "I want to see you tomorrow night. And the night after that." I got up and hurried over to her, my voice dropping to barely above a whisper so her mother couldn't overhear through the phone. "Every night, if we're serious about improving our chances."

Her breath caught, and I saw understanding flicker in her eyes. "Every night?" she asked quietly, covering the phone with her palm.

"If you'll have me."

She nodded, something shifting in her expression. "I'll have you," she said, smiling, and it wasn't a smirk of flirtation. It was something more that I clung to.

I might've been imagining it, but it appeared Tessa was happy with my insistence on seeing her more frequently.

Now, I just had to figure out how to get the board off my back, my ex-wife to stop having me spied on, my children to stop gossiping about me, and my life to stop spinning wildly out of control.

Because I was just desperate enough to throw caution to the wind and flush it all down the crapper to have Tessa forever.

23

TESSA

I'd never been so grateful for Frank Delgado's existence.

Mom's boyfriend had booked them a room at the Palmer House downtown, insisting my apartment was too small for three people and he didn't want to impose.

What he didn't know—what Mom thankfully didn't know—was that Lucian had been slipping into my bed three or four nights a week for the past month, claiming we needed to maximize our chances of conception.

Not that I was complaining.

Those stolen hours had become the brightest part of my increasingly complicated life.

He'd arrive after midnight when the building was quiet, disappearing before dawn.

We'd have sex like horny teenagers while getting almost no sleep, then lie tangled together while he asked about my day and made sure I was taking good care of my health—in case I conceived, he said.

It was sweet, the way he cared. And I'd almost have thought he was falling for me, except that he always turned it toward business at some point.

He was teaching me things about deal structure and market analysis that I'd never learned as his assistant, treating me as if I had a brain worth engaging.

My heart was getting dangerously attached to these nights, but I couldn't bring myself to pull away.

Even knowing it would all end when I got pregnant—when the physical need that brought him to my door was satisfied—I treasured every moment of intimacy.

The irony wasn't lost on me that I was falling deeper in love with a man whose child I hoped to carry, while he remained carefully distant about anything resembling real feelings.