Vegas Pregnancy Surprise by Shirley Jump Read Free Book Online Page A

to go their separate ways, as if the night never happened. It would just be a great memory, they’d agreed. Since then, he’d been happy with that decision. Yes, he’d thought of her. What man wouldn’t, with that long tousled mane of brown hair and those wide green eyes? But he’d left those thoughts in his memory. Not acted on them.
    Did Molly have some hidden agenda for being here? Something she wasn’t telling him? He sensed she was holding something back, but didn’t know if it had anything to do with her wanting to work for him.
    He watched her sip her drink, and in her heart-shaped face he saw only earnestness and honesty. Someone who was truly interested in his idea, the same one his best advisors had shot down as impractical.
    All these years, he’d kept that idea on the back burner, saving it for some elusive “someday” in the future. The one promise he’d left unfulfilled, thinking he’d find a way to get to it, somehow. Now Molly sat before him, offering him the chance to bring that idea to life.
    She’d called him “passionate” about the idea. Said she saw a man who was “alive, excited.”
    How long had it been since he would have used those adjectives to describe himself?
    Yes, he went to work every day, doing a job he loved, but he had lost that charge, that zest, a long time ago.
    No, not a long time ago. He could name the exact date his passion for this company had disappeared.
    When he’d lost the one person who made coming into work a memorable, fun experience. The person he had started the company with, built it with, the one that Linc had thought would always be there in the office beside his. From that day forward Linc had poured himself into the company, but being there had never been the same.
    And here Molly Hunter came along, opening a door he hadn’t even realized he’d shut.
    Until now. Damn.
    An odd thrill ran through him, a charge he hadn’t felt in…forever. Since the first days when he’d started the company with Marcus, when every day had been an adventure, and they hadn’t known if they were going to make a dollar or lose a dollar. For a man who kept his entire life on a tightly scheduled leash, the feeling was liberating. He recognized it—
    From the night he’d met Molly.
    It was a dangerous feeling. An addictive feeling. One he should put aside, as he had the morning after two months ago.
    But as his gaze locked on Molly’s emerald eyes, he found himself unable to let go of the idea he’d waited so long to bring to the table.
    “You’re really willing to uproot your life for this?” Linc asked her.
    She nodded. “I’m at a point where I’m…” She paused. “Ready for big changes.”
    Was he?
    Molly had certainly sprung a change on him when he’d least expected it. This woman, the one he’d thought he’d never see again, had suddenly popped up in his life—
    With an offer to stay.
    Albeit as an employee, not a girlfriend.
    But wasn’t that the perfect situation for him, really? For all his talk this morning with Conner, what time did he have to start a relationship? He’d stepped away once, thought he could have it all—ditch the schedules and the memos in exchange for some fun and freedom. When he’d done that, Linc had broken the only promise he’d ever made—
    To take care of his brother. And Marcus had paid with his life.
    No, Linc, decided, now was not the time, no matter how tempting the thought of rekindling that night with Molly might be. Maybe once he took the company public, had placed a board of directors in charge…
    And then where will you be? the little voice in his head asked. Alone? Old?
    Better that than leaving a wife and two kids alone and grieving.
    He was better off when his focus wasn’t split, when the company remained his top priority. When his managers below him could have their lives and then come to work, happier and healthier. Someone had to be the captain, and that someone was Lincoln.
    But…
    Molly’s idea