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He’d frazzle if he didn’t make Maggie his lover. When he’d kissed her at Cape Cod, he’d made time stand still, pretended it didn’t mean anything. He’d have to let her go. She was having a baby and he wasn’t the right guy for her. His fight with want had run out. They could be right for each other, right now. He couldn’t be her one, and that was okay because she didn’t want a permanent man in her life. It was a no-brainer. They could be together for one night without hurting each other.
Heads turned as the couple walked through the hotel to the limo waiting at the curb. Alex took Maggie’s hand and she slid in. He followed her onto the back seat. She’d been so pre-occupied with choosing the little-black-dress-to-die-for and the best-high-heels-in-Manhattan that she hadn’t asked Alex a single thing about the charity.
“What’s this gala in aid of? Fill me in. I need details.”
“It funds small projects to help underprivileged kids, mostly here in the States. Tonight’s one of their big fundraisers. A night like this attracts publicity to the work The Wells Wish Foundation does.”
“You have a children’s charity named after you?”
“It’s nothing to do with me and Nick. It’s our mother’s pet project. She’s a bit of a fanatic. We help out with the annual gala. But that’s about it. I’m no good with kids.”
Methinks Alex doth protest too much!
He acted like kids were an alien species. Yet he’d been sweet with the family at the zoo. And here he was putting his face to a children’s charity.
“Listen,” he started to explain, “My mother’s a bit pernickety when it comes to her charity.”
“Pernickety? What’s that?”
Alex grunted out a fractured laugh. “Fussy. She gets hung up on minutiae. Her heart’s in the right place and I know she’s a total diva, but she’s in a much better place than she was few years ago. She means well. I don’t want you to think badly of her.”
“I won’t. I don’t. Why would I?”
“There’s been such a lot written about her over the years. After my dad left she stopped eating, got much too thin. She got by – just about – on a self-prescribed diet of over-the-counter drugs and herbal remedies. When that stopped working she got hooked on sleeping tablets and alcohol. Eventually things got so bad that she was admitted to rehab.”
Maggie felt the urge to scrape at one of her nails. She’d covered them in a clear, shiny polish and if she did, she’d ruin them. She and Alex used to joke about their families. What they hadn’t really done before today was tell the whole truth. He would barely talk about his father and she’d had next to nothing to say about hers. When he spoke about his mother, he made light of things, throwing out quips about how she outdid her soap character with her real-life scandals.
“Sometimes I think her obsession with the children’s charity is her way of making up for not loving Nick and me enough when we were kids. It’s not that she didn’t care; she just couldn’t show it.”
Maggie admired his honesty. She’d seen through his comedic version of Cassandra. After all she’d done the same. Instead of talking about the woman who’d made the first, deep crack in her heart, she’d painted a clown of a mother to her friends. She was someone with a perma-tan and an unhealthy devotion to karaoke, who ran a bar in Spain.
“I guess she fell out of love with herself.” She pictured the last article about Cassandra she’d happened upon in a magazine at the fertility clinic. It said she’d cleaned up her act and found “lurve” with a younger guy. She’d taken years to get over the blow of Drake leaving. She’d kept his name after the divorce and forced contact with him to continue the only way she knew how, sparring with him publically in the press. At long last she’d let it go, found equilibrium in new love and pride for her sons.
“It must be hard to love your children if you hate yourself,” Alex agreed. “Look, there’s a couple of things I need to warn you about.”
“Too late. We’re here.” She touched his upper arm gently. Beneath smooth fabric, she felt rock-firm muscle. “It’ll be fine,” she assured him, “I’m excited to meet Cassandra.”
The limo pulled up outside the Empire State Building. Glancing upwards into the twilight sky Maggie saw that the tower’s lights were pink, white and blue for the night – magical. Out of the limo in an instant, Alex offered his hand to Maggie. As she stepped out his arm banded around her and flashes popped. Alex tensed, giving out the requisite Jago vibe. Under his breath he cursed the press presence. He dipped his head and whispered in her ear. “If they ask questions, say nothing. Leave any comments to me.” The hairs on the back of her neck rose. His strong arm circled about her waist made sweet, honeyed heat swirl at her core.
She smiled easily. “Happy to.” The words came out in a throaty whisper.
Compared to the movie premiere, the charity gala was low key. There were a few photographers on the street and just one reporter. Alex looked ahead purposefully, his face frozen, jaw clenched, walking her quickly towards the entrance in the protection of his arm, strangely less relaxed in this setting than he had been on the red carpet.
“Alex!” A beady-eyed reporter with tousled fair hair that made him look about fourteen and as though he just got out of bed beckoned. “Can you spare a moment for a couple of questions?”
“What do you need to know?”
“Tell me about the projects funded by Wells Wish?”
“There’ll be a press release.” He held Maggie close. “You’ll get all the details you need there.”
She’d pasted on a fixed smile. It was her second outing in the glare of publicity and she was wary, but she steeled herself, determined to nail the being-on-show thing as Alex continued. “The charity mainly funds play schemes, literacy programs, theater-in-education initiatives.” His touch and his deep drawl swirled through her senses.
A sly smile contorted the reporter’s ever-so-slightly lopsided features. “Any plans to fund a nursery? Baby-and-toddler groups? Breast-feeding awareness?”
Alex’s jaw tightened. “Not that I’m aware of.”
Maggie smiled like a waxwork of herself, panicky inside at the reporter’s hints.
He turned his attention on her. “When’s the happy event? I hear congratulations are in order.”
She almost gawped. Sticking to Alex’s advice, she said nothing.
Bedhead Boy honed in on Alex. “You must be excited,” he probed. “Are you looking forward to becoming a dad?”
Maggie’s jaw hit the floor. She wanted a hole in the ground to open up and swallow her whole. She pulled herself together. If she was going to snag TV work she’d have to be able to think on her feet. Before Alex could utter a word, her reply sliced through the night air.
“Alex is not the father.” Her skin turned to goose flesh, but she persevered, “I’m having a donor-sperm baby.”
Alex’s hand gripped her waist tighter, hastening their move away. He turned back to the reporter and said with studied calm. “It’s great news. I’m thrilled for Magenta.”
Inside the building, milling amongst hundreds of guests, when the pressure of effusive greetings and social niceties settled down for a moment, Maggie cornered Alex. “How did that reporter know that I’m pregnant?”
“Your guess is as good as mine.” He gave a big shrug. Harsh tension shadowed his features. “Someone told the press. It was on the net.”
“You knew?” She couldn’t control the wobble in her voice. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I was going to. I got side-tracked trying to warn you about Cassandra and her color scheme.”
Maggie’s