HIS: An Alpha Billionaire Romance (Part One) Read Free Page A

the bathroom and practically walked into his chest. He was right there, in the middle of my bedroom. My bed, in all its unmade glory, was just a foot to his left. Could this be any more awkward?
    “Ana?” He touched my face with the back of two fingers. “You’re pale.”
    “It’s not every day the father of my baby shows up on my doorstep and demands to talk to me.”
    “Yes, well, it’s not every day the surrogate carrying my child disappears without telling me the procedure worked.”
    “How did you find out?”
    He shrugged. “A private detective. It didn’t take much for him to track you down, or for your frequent visits to the obstetrics clinic, or pictures of your growing belly to express the obvious.”
    “Why would you track me down if you didn’t know about the baby?”
    His eyes dropped from my face briefly. “I had my reasons.”
    I felt a little bit of a cold chill wash down my spine at the same time my lower belly began to smolder again. I was afraid I knew what he was talking about, and I really didn’t want to entertain what that might mean.
    His eyes came back up to mine again, and I wanted to fall into them. He was so handsome! I would have to be inhuman to be able to resist his charms. The memory of his lips on mine was still so strong that it might have happened this morning instead of more than three months ago. My lips remembered that touch; my skin remembered the touch of his hands on my back, my ribs…I so wanted him to touch me again. And then I remembered the way he pushed me away that afternoon and the shame that rushed over me when I realized that I’d allowed myself to fall into the arms of not only a married man, but the man married to a woman I was quickly considering my friend.
    I started to walk around him, needing to put space between us. He grabbed my arm and—thanks to that growing baby bump—I lost my balance and fell against his chest. His hands came around me, pressing against the small of my back, forcing me forward just enough that my distended belly pressed against his pelvis.
    “It’s so firm,” he said, a touch of wonder in his voice. He stared down at my belly, his hand coming around to touch the side of it. A lot of women are embarrassed by their growing baby bumps, but I was proud of mine. However, having Nicolas touch me made me conscious of myself in a way I hadn’t been before.
    I tried to back away again, but he was still holding me with one arm around my waist, his hand pressed to the small of my back. He pulled me close to him again, his free hand sliding over my belly to cup the very top curve of the bump.
    “The baby’s about the size of an apple now. Did you know that?”
    I nodded. I had an app on my phone that told me each week how big the baby was and what I should be experiencing as far as symptoms went.
    “It’s amazing to think you have an entire human being growing inside of you,” he said, awe and grief mixed in his voice.
    It was the first thing he’d ever said that I whole heartedly agreed with.
    I pressed my hand to the top of his, both stilling it from moving any further along the curve of my abdomen and to offer some sort of comfort. I wondered if he was thinking about Aurora. She’d only been gone a little less than three months, just a week and a few days less than my mom. I wondered if he’d grieved the way I had. As I still did. But, somehow, I doubted it.
    “You’ve been seeing a doctor, right? Everything’s okay?”
    “Everything’s right on track.”
    “Do you know what it is?”
    I shook my head. “I’m supposed to get a sonogram in a month that should show the sex. But I haven’t decided yet if I want to know.”
    “I do,” he said. “It’d make it much easier to prepare the nursery.”
    And with that, my desire to comfort him was gone. I pulled away and again tried to move around him. This time he let me go.
    He followed me into the living room, but instead of sitting back in the armchair he’d abandoned