Right by Her Side

“I have to be honest and up front about this pregnancy, Trent. You need to understand that I will never, ever give up my baby. I want you to give me sole custody.”

While he’d known that was what Rebecca was after, it made him almost angry to hear her say it. “Am I such a bad guy?”

Her gaze dropped. “You’re not a bad guy, no.” Color stained her cheeks and she pressed her lips together.

It made him think of the kiss they’d shared earlier. That surprising burst of heat. Maybe he would be better off distancing himself permanently from her. From the baby.

But he couldn’t! Memories slammed into him from all sides. Chubby cheeks, little fingers, hero worship. He couldn’t lose another child. He couldn’t.

“I have to be honest, too,” he said. “I can’t just walk away, Rebecca. Besides, our baby should have a mother and a father in its life. Full-time.”

Rebecca shrugged. “That’s ideal, but not a necessity.”

“Well, maybe we should get married.”

CHRISTIE RIDGWAY

A native Californian, Christie started reading and writing romances in middle school. It wasn’t until she was the wife of her college sweetheart and the mother of two small sons that she submitted her work for publication. Many contemporary romances later, she is happiest when telling her stories despite the splash of kids in the pool, the mass of cups and plates in the kitchen and the many commitments she makes in the world beyond her desk.

Besides loving the men in her life and her dream-come-true job, she continues her longtime love affair with reading and is never without a stack of books. You can find out more about Christie at her Web site, www.christieridgway.com.

Usa Today Bestselling Author

Right by Her Side
Christie Ridgway

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Be a part of

Because birthright has its privileges and family ties run deep.

She is pregnant with his baby, and when he learns of his impending fatherhood, he proposes a marriage of convenience.

Will love enter the bargain?

Trent Crosby: He conducted his personal life as he would a business meeting. So when he heard Rebecca’s news, he made her an offer she couldn’t refuse…until she did. Suddenly he had to raise the stakes and risk everything!

Rebecca Holley: She wanted her baby to have it all, so when Trent proposed a marriage of convenience, she was definitely tempted. He was charming and a good provider, but did he feel the same stirring of attraction that she felt? And did this have the potential to be more than just a business arrangement?

Baby recovered! After a frantic search, Lisa Sanders’s adorable baby was recovered unharmed and in good health. The tight community of Portland rejoiced! But one more mystery was still unsolved….

Because birthright has its privileges and family ties run deep.

AVAILABLE JUNE 2010

1.) To Love and Protect by Susan Mallery

2.) Secrets & Seductions by Pamela Toth

3.) Royal Affair by Laurie Paige

4.) For Love and Family by Victoria Pade

AVAILABLE JULY 2010

5.) The Bachelor by Marie Ferrarella

6.) A Precious Gift by Karen Rose Smith

7.) Child of Her Heart by Cheryl St. John

8.) Intimate Surrender by RaeAnne Thayne

AVAILABLE AUGUST 2010

9.) The Secret Heir by Gina Wilkins

10.) The Newlyweds by Elizabeth Bevarly

11.) Right by Her Side by Christie Ridgway

12.) The Homecoming by Anne Marie Winston

AVAILABLE SEPTEMBER 2010

13.) The Greatest Risk by Cara Colter

14.) What a Man Needs by Patricia Thayer

15.) Undercover Passion by Raye Morgan

16.) Royal Seduction by Donna Clayton

Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Prologue

T he man across the heavy, gleaming desk cleared his throat. “Rebecca, I know who fathered your child.”

Rebecca Holley blinked. When she’d been called away from her shift as an OR pediatric nurse to meet with Morgan Davis at the Children’s Connection facility adjacent to Portland General, she hadn’t known what to expect. Certainly not a statement of the obvious.

“Well, of course you know, Morgan.” Though the sperm donor had been anonymous to her, as director of the fertility clinic where she’d been inseminated, the man sitting opposite her had access to the complete records. Her palm slid across the lavender smock of her Minnie Mouse-printed scrubs to rest over her still-flat stomach. At seven weeks pregnant she’d yet to experience morning sickness, but the odd expression on Morgan’s face was beginning to make her queasy.

She cleared her throat. “What’s going on?”

“Rebecca…” His gaze dropped to the open folder on his desk and then moved back up to meet her eyes. “There’s no easy way to say this.”

Now her stomach mimicked a dying fish—flop, flop, flop. “The pregnancy test wasn’t wrong, was it?”

“No, no! You’re pregnant.” Leaning forward, he lowered his voice. “But we recently discovered a mix-up of some donor vials, so we went back and checked our recent insemination cases.”

A mix-up? Rebecca swallowed, trying to stay calm. He was telling her there had been a mix-up of donor sperm. As a nurse, she could see why the clinic would be concerned about an error, but how could such a thing affect her? She’d looked over the profiles of the donors and selected one with a working-class background—he’d spent time as an enlisted navy man like her dad—who was dark-haired and dark-eyed like herself.

But she wasn’t picky.

She let out a little laugh to cover her nervousness. “As long as the baby’s healthy, Morgan, it won’t matter to me—even if it’s as blond-haired as…Blondie.”

Morgan glanced down at the folder again and grimaced. “Your baby may very well look as you describe, Rebecca. We inseminated you with the sperm of a blond-haired man. A very wealthy, respected man…and one who didn’t provide his sperm for this purpose.”

“But that doesn’t matter, right?” Rebecca pressed her palm against her stomach. Don’t worry, Eisenhower. The nickname tumbled into her mind, and she almost smiled at the old family joke. It was the name Rebecca’s folks had used when referring to each of her four younger brothers and sisters before they were born. Apparently she was going to carry on the tradition.

Eisenhower, it’s going to be okay.

“Everything’s still anonymous, Morgan,” Rebecca continued. “I don’t know the man. I don’t know who the father is.”

Morgan shook his head. “But this man has a right to know he is going to be a father, Rebecca. Children’s Connection can’t keep this a secret from him.”

She found herself rising to her feet, her voice rising, too. “What? Why not?” Her protective instincts were quivering like antennae, though it was hard to wrap her mind around all the ramifications this “mix-up” might mean to her and her baby.

“It’s the ethical thing to do, Rebecca. You can see that.”

What she could see was her hopes and her dreams turning from something joyful to something dreadful. No, no! She couldn’t think like that. She wouldn’t. Her baby was still her baby. “Who is this man, Morgan? You let me talk to him and I’ll…I’ll straighten it out.” She’d explain what had happened and then assure him that she and Eisenhower expected nothing from him whatsoever.

Morgan frowned. “Rebecca—”

“You owe me, too, Morgan,” she said, her voice sounding thin and breathless. “You owe me the chance to talk to this man first.”

His frown deepened. “Rebecca—”

“Tell me who he is, Morgan.”

Morgan and his wife were in the process of adopting a baby and it must have given him sympathy for Rebecca’s fierce desperation because he glanced down at the file once more, then sighed. “The father of your baby is Trent Crosby, Rebecca. Trent Crosby, the Crosby Systems CEO.”

One

I t was past six o’clock when Rebecca steered her hatchback into a spot in the far corner of the Crosby Systems near-empty parking lot and turned off the ignition. Her fingers unclipped her Portland General Hospital name badge from her scrubs to stuff it into the purse on the passenger seat beside her.

Then she looked up at the rearview mirror, gazing at the reflection of the Crosby building’s gleaming glass front doors. “Okay, Eisenhower,” she said in a brisk voice. “It’s time for us to get this over with.”

Rebecca discovered that her legs didn’t share her can-do attitude, however, and that her behind was determined to remain glued to the vinyl driver’s seat. When she tried again to leave her car, again nothing happened.

“Eisenhower,” Rebecca muttered, “your mom’s no wimp. Honest.” But she was acting like one. She snuck another glance at the rearview mirror. It was the Crosby name that was spooking her. She knew about the family: they were powerful and they were rich. It didn’t help that she’d caught a glimpse of Trent himself at a charity auction last December, because beyond being powerful and rich he had something else intimidating going for him, too.

“You’re getting some seriously good-looking genes, Eisenhower,” she whispered. “No doubt about it.”

Maybe she shouldn’t have insisted on breaking the news herself, she thought. Maybe she should let Morgan tell him, man-to-man, and then she could wait for Mr. Rich, Powerful and Good-Looking to approach her.

But no! The last thing she wanted was to be at the emotional mercy of some man, right? Been there, done that, got the painful divorce.

So she forced her feet from the car, slammed shut the door, then reminded herself of the number of new situations she’d faced as a navy brat. Those eight moves in seventeen years had made her an expert at assessing new people and new surroundings and then finding a way to fit in—or at least fade into the woodwork. It was why she’d insisted on talking to Trent herself. She was practiced in making herself appear agreeable and non-threatening, certainly a big plus at a moment like this.

So there was absolutely no reason to hesitate. Squaring her shoulders, she faced the company entrance and…

…let her gaze wander to the freshly painted Dumpsters off to her right. She told herself she wasn’t putting off the inevitable. She told herself it was because her attention was snagged by several appliance-size, empty cardboard boxes sitting beside them. Boxes of the ideal size and condition for that playhouse she’d been promising to make for her favorite pediatric patient.

Rebecca glanced up at the cloud-filled sky. It had rained that morning and now it looked as if it might rain again. She could take the few moments necessary to flatten the boxes and stow them safely away in her car.

It wasn’t stalling!

It wasn’t as simple as it should have been, either. First, her slick-soled white nurse’s shoes slid on a patch of squishy mud in the Dumpster area, sending her down on one knee and sprouting a dirty stain on her pants leg. Second, the boxes had stubborn, reinforced corners that resisted her efforts to collapse them. Third, when she indulged in a foot-stamp of frustration, she sent a spray of mud droplets into the air, to land who knew where.

Fourth, when she crawled beneath the open end of the largest box to see if she could find a way to flatten the thing from the inside, she heard a man’s voice float through the air. “Can I help you?”

She froze. Whoever belonged to that deep voice, perhaps he wasn’t talking to her. Perhaps he was talking to someone else in the lot, someone having an innocuous, employee-going-home problem such as too much to carry or a recalcitrant car door lock. Some run-of-the-mill, easy-to-resolve problem.

Happening to someone else. Please.

“You there in the box,” the man spoke again, squashing her hopes. “Can I help you?”

Rebecca cleared her throat. “Are you, um, talking to me?”

“Believe it or not, you’re the only one wearing cardboard in my entire parking lot.” There wasn’t a whiff of humor in the voice.

His parking lot? Was this Trent Crosby? This was as bad as it could be.

In the evening light coming through the open top flaps above her head, Rebecca glanced at the muddy knee of her scrubs, then the fine sprinkling of drying dirt on her forearms, then the corrugated camouflage surrounding her. Oh, Eisenhower, this isn’t the meeting I planned for us.

“I was just, uh, driving by and spotted the boxes,” she said.

“Just driving by, huh?”

She swallowed her groan. The company was located at the farthest corner of a business and industrial complex that could only be reached by a dead-end parkway. It was impossible to “drive by” the place. Instead of answering, she edged toward her car—she hoped she was heading in that direction, anyway—taking her disguise along with her. The scurrying box had to look ridiculous to him, she knew that, but not half as ridiculous as she would feel if she had to introduce herself to Mr. Rich, Powerful and Good-Looking when she was dirty, disheveled and not yet ready to meet him.

Her box bumped into something. She halted, uncertain of what that something might be.

“Come on, now. Exactly what are you doing in our garbage?”

The close proximity of the voice made it clear she’d bumped into him. She chanced a peek upward. The giant-size box was taller than the man, so she couldn’t see his face and he couldn’t see hers.

“Stop playing games, damn it. What the hell are you doing with our garbage?”

But she didn’t need to see him to understand he was more than suspicious. “It’s not garbage,” she replied, hoping to placate him. “It’s a box.” Moving like a hermit crab, she set off in the general direction of her car once more. “For a playhouse.”

There was a moment of silence.

She bumped into something again.

Him. He’d moved to block her way, she realized, as the box was whisked over her head, leaving her blinking in the now-brighter light. Though she resisted the urge to cover herself, she had to look up—it was instinctive—and then she jumped back and looked away. That was instinctive, too. Like the sun, blond-haired, brown-eyed Trent Crosby was dazzling.

There was no chance she was carrying his child, she decided, his lean features and rangy body already forever etched in her mind. He had a confident, very male brand of beauty that oozed power and wealth. He couldn’t be the father of her baby, absolutely not, because such a thing went against the laws of the universe. They were from two different worlds. The last time she’d tried bridging such a gap, she’d found herself taking a shortcut to humiliation and heartache.

“A playhouse, you say.” He repeated her words in a flat, cool voice.

Rebecca could only nod, hyperconscious of everything that was wrong with her, from her muddy scrubs to the way her brown hair frizzed when there was rain in the air. She reached up both palms to slick back the inevitable, messy tendrils that were surely springing at her temples, smoothing them toward the efficient twist she wore during work hours.

“You’ll have to come up with something better than that. You get a playhouse at a toy store, not a Dumpster, sweetheart. I can guess what you’re really after.”

Her head jerked up. “Huh?”

In a light charcoal suit, white shirt and true-blue tie, Trent Crosby was staring down at her through narrowed eyes. “Our history—both past and very recent—has made us careful, honey. And ruthless. You won’t find our company secrets in these garbage bins, but regardless, we prosecute wanna-be corporate spies, even little cuddly ones like you.”

“What?”

He smiled at her, a cold display of perfect white teeth that sent shivers running for cover down her back. “And if you’re not off my property in thirty seconds, I’ll be happy to haul you into the security office for an after-hours strip search.”

She didn’t need ten seconds to be back in her car and accelerating out of the parking lot. A glance in her rearview mirror confirmed what she could feel in the second flurry of shivers rolling down her spine. He was watching her leave, his crossed arms shouting out his satisfaction.

“Believe me, Eisenhower,” she whispered. “He can’t be your daddy.” Because the heat of humiliation on her cheeks told her Trent Crosby was from a different world, all right. The Planet of the Jerks.

At 4:00 p.m. the next day, Trent Crosby departed the executive conference room of Crosby Systems, his mind teeming with the details of the new contract he’d sewn up that afternoon. He decided to draft a memo on it to the Research and Development Department before leaving for the day. Between the memo and the reports stacked up on his desk for review, he’d be in his chair well past midnight. The thought made him almost cheerful.

He was more comfortable at Crosby Systems than in the morgue he called home.

Half a hall-length from his office, his assistant waylaid him, snatching the coffee mug out of his hand and tsking. “Nuh-uh-uh. Remember how even bossier and more bad-tempered we get on too much caffeine? We can’t have another five-pot day.”

Ah. An impending skirmish with the battle-ax who ruled the top floor. Damn, Trent thought, things kept getting better. He drew in a deep, threatening breath and glowered down at her. “We aren’t having a five-pot day. I am. You drink that disgusting green tea.”

“I’m going to live forever on that green tea,” Claudine retorted.

“Then I’m praying for my own early grave.” He made a grab for his cup, but she whisked it behind her back. Strong-arming her was tempting, but Trent was wary of that determined glitter in her eye, even if she was on the upside of sixty.

Even after ten years of her working for him, she could still scare the hell out of him.

“I said no more coffee,” Claudine declared again. “We don’t want you polishing that nasty mean streak of yours on the pretty young woman who just arrived.”

“Nasty mean streak? Don’t blame that on the coffee, you old biddy. It comes from putting up with you.” Then he frowned. “Wait a minute. What pretty young woman?”

“The one in your office. And don’t ask me what she wants. She said her business is personal.” Claudine reached up to straighten his tie.

He batted her hand away, wondering who had personal business with him. He, as a rule, didn’t get personal with people.

His assistant stretched toward his tie again, and again he evaded her fussing. “Leave me be, you old bag. Which reminds me, aren’t you past our mandatory retirement age yet?”

She snorted. “I’ll be here, still cleaning up your messes when you retire. Now get into your office and find out why a nice woman would have personal dealings with a temperamental dictator like you.”

He narrowed his eyes. “Harridan.”

She mimicked his glare. “Tyrant.”

“Fishwife.”

“Martinet.”

Then they smiled at each other and set off in opposite directions.

Trent was still smiling when he pushed open the door to his office. But the smile died as the “nice” and “pretty” woman in one of his visitors’ chairs jumped to her feet and swung around to face him. It was the box lady.

“You,” he said.

The first thing out of her mouth was something he already knew. “I’m not a corporate spy.”

Of course she wasn’t, he acknowledged, letting out an inward sigh. But he’d been grinding his teeth through a brutal headache yesterday when he’d glimpsed someone skulking around the Dumpsters and he’d flashed on the ugly explanation. Claudine accused him of cynicism.

The way he figured it, expecting the worst of people ensured he was never disappointed.

“I know you’re not a spy,” Trent admitted to the young woman. “As you were scuttling to your car, I realized you couldn’t be.”

She blinked. “What cleared it up for you?”

The little thing had big brown eyes, the long-lashed kind that made him think of Disney characters or his sisters’ baby dolls. “The scrubs. Maybe if they were that sick, surgical green, but ones like yours…” He gestured, indicating the loose-fitting pants and smock that enveloped her. Today they were lemon-yellow and printed with cross-eyed clown fish. “Not spy wear.”

She didn’t respond, only continued standing there, staring at him with…anticipation? Expectation? Trent stared back, cursing Claudine for denying him his jolt of caffeine. He needed something to pop out the apology Big Brown Eyes obviously awaited.

“Look—”

“Look—”

They spoke the word at the same time and when she broke off, she flushed. It took his attention off those Bambi eyes and onto her fair, fine-pored complexion. For a second he wondered what her skin would feel like beneath his stroking thumb.

Damn, he needed that coffee.

“Look, I’m sorry, okay?” he said, shoving his hands in his pockets. “Is that what you’re after?”

“No!” Her head shook back and forth. “I don’t want anything from you. That’s, uh, that’s why I’m here.”

Okay. Stumped by that puzzling remark, he watched her suck in her bottom lip, worry it a moment, then let it pop free. Inside his pockets, his fingers curled as he found himself with a sudden fascination for her mouth. Her little suck-worry-pop had flushed it rosier. The lips looked soft and pillowy.

He hadn’t had a good nap in a long, long while.

Forcing himself to look away, he crossed to his desk and sat down. Get your mind back on business, Trent. Think of the memo. The reports. The satisfying hours of work ahead.

He didn’t have the time or inclination for romance, and this woman, with her baby-fine skin and her wavy hair, had a face that resembled a sentimentalized Victorian valentine. The face alone shouted she wasn’t his type, but then there were those figure-shrouding scrubs. Trent liked women who wore tight minis and flashy Manolos, women who liked their encounters as brief as their skirts and their men as blunt and to the point as their high heels.

This woman didn’t come close to that description.

Determined to get her out of his office and get on with the rest of his workday, he focused on her Portland General Hospital name tag. “Well, Rebecca Holley, R.N., I’m a busy man. Why, exactly, did you stop by?”

She sank into the chair across from his desk, doing that distracting suck-worry-pop with her lower lip again. “This is a little difficult to say….”

But to his shock, she managed to get it out, anyway, in a few brief sentences. A mix-up at Children’s Connection. His sperm. Her pregnancy. Throughout her explanation, Trent could only stare at her again, numb.

Disbelieving.

Disbelieving and numb.

When she wound down, he realized she expected a response from him. “My sisters put you up to this,” he tried. “It’s a little late for April Fools’, but—”

“I wouldn’t joke about something like this,” she snapped, her spine straightening and her voice sharpening. “I wouldn’t joke about my baby.”

Baby. Baby.

Memories rushed into his mind. His sisters as chubby, chortling infants. The hero worship in his little brother’s eyes. The hair rising on the back of his nine-year-old neck the day Robbie Logan had gone missing while playing at their house. Twenty-plus years later, the choking sensation in his lungs when he’d learned his baby nephew had been kidnapped.

Then that sickening, bat-to-the-gut blow when his wife had stood in an examining room at Children’s Connection and finally admitted that the only fertility problem she suffered from was him. That she’d lied about going off the pill because she didn’t want to bear his child—or even be married to him any longer.

Yesterday’s headache slammed into the base of his skull and lingered there, pulsing pain. “It’s a joke,” he said aloud, his voice harsh. “It’s got to be someone’s idea of a joke.”

His gaze lasered on the pretty little Victorian valentine who might not be a spy, but who was playing some criminal game all the same. He pointed his finger at her, but kept the volume of his voice under strict control. “And I won’t be laughing if you’re still sitting here when I get back.”

With that, he rose to his feet and stalked toward the door. He pulled it open.

“Wait—”

But he didn’t pay attention to the woman. Instead he marched unseeing into the hall, almost knocking his assistant over. His hands shot out and he steadied her. “Sorry, Claudine. I’m sorry.”

She stared up at him. “Trent? What’s the matter?”

Nothing. Everything. It couldn’t be true. He swung his head around, trying to find something else to focus on. Proposals. Reports. Spreadsheets. The business details that had always filled his life.

But he couldn’t turn off thoughts of chortling babies, missing children, kidnapped toddlers. Hopes that had never been born.

Then he sensed movement behind him, and knew he couldn’t stay a moment longer. He couldn’t face her, the woman who’d dredged up all this in his mind. Already heading for the stairs, he called back to Claudine, “Take the rest of the afternoon off. You deserve it.”

“No! The company bully is giving me time off? And going home early himself?”

He didn’t have the heart to come up with a matching insult. But that was good, wasn’t it?

After all, hearts were a damn inconvenience.