The CEO's Accidental Baby

The hotel room reeks of regret — champagne, musk, a faint wisp of jasmine from the candles burned down on the nightstand. Emma Larson: I am lying on a bed that is so much bigger than my own, tangled in sheets better than anything I own in my tiny Brooklyn apartment. I’ve got a headache, a gift from last night’s Knight Enterprises masquerade ball, where I let the music and the masks take me out of character. I blink up at the ceiling, gilded and blinding, trying to patch together the blur of it: a stranger’s hands on my waist, his breath hot against my neck, the way we were laughing like we’d known each other all our lives. My gold mask lies crumpled on the pillow beside me, where he should be. But the bed is empty, and there’s no sign of him except for the pain in my heart.I straighten up, wincing as the room starts to spin. My dress, a shimmery thing I borrowed from Mia, is a puddle on the floor, my heels abandoned somewhere by the door. I’ve got to get to work. I’m an analyst in tr

I can’t help feeling as if Liam Knight’s eyes are burning into me too, that I’m in the spotlight when I never volunteered for it. Two days have passed since the bathroom stall, since those pink lines changed everything for me, and I’m still walking a high wire at Knight Enterprises — pretending like nothing is wrong. My desk is a stronghold of spreadsheets and coffee cups, but my mind is on him — on that low, teasing laugh from the masquerade ball, the way his hands felt so certain, so right. It’s ridiculous. He’s my boss, the unattainable CEO, not some strange man who’d seduce me in a hotel room. But when he’s near my heart betrays me, thumping as though it knows something I do not.This morning, I am holed up in my cubicle, sifting through emails when my phone vibrates. Mia, texting again: You positive you’re all right? You’ve been strange since the gala. I ignore it. She’s too perceptive with me, and I’m not yet ready to spill the truth about the pregnancy—or my fear that possibly

Though my computer’s clock reads post 6:30 p.m., Knight Enterprises is a ghost town: the buzz of the offices has been replaced with the soft hum of the fluorescent lights. The seat of my chair His email is eating a whole through my mind My office 7 PM Orion Project is a fucking beast And now I have to wade into it with only him at my side While every look from those gray eyes asks me a question I can’t answer. I’m Emma Larson and it’s my job to hold it together for the patients in our facility — women with crisis pregnancies, all the charity cases of this year and whose unborn child shares its father with Vanessa, my CEO and nemesis. Knight has his fingerprints all over. He’s closer than you think. The words haunt me, a puzzle that I’m not sure I want to solve.I push the note down into my purse, next to the abandoned pregnancy test I can’t bring myself to throw away. My stomach has been in knots all day, from a cocktail of nervousness and the baby, my baby — making its presence known

The only light in the Knight Enterprises office now is the fluorescent glow of my desk lamp, which creates long shadows in my cubicle. It’s after 8 p.m. and I’m swamped with revisions from my Orion project, but I can’t stop thinking about yesterday’s near-faint and the terrible way Vanessa zeroed in for the kill. I’m Emma Larson, the analyst who’s supposed to be the ice queen but who is now just a bundle of nerves, racked with a secret that is becoming increasingly difficult to conceal. Liam’s concern in the conference room—those gray eyes searching mine—keeps replaying, and I’m more convinced than ever that he’s the man from the masquerade ball. But knowing it and proving it are dissimilar things, and I am running out of time to learn which is worse.My stomach is settled now, but exhaustion is seeping in, making each keystroke seem like a marathon. Mia’s texts have graduate

The morning light seeping into my Brooklyn apartment is too bright, as if it’s spotlighting every frayed nerve I have left. I’m Emma Larson, the analyst who is supposed to keep her eye on the ball now — and Vanessa’s Post-its when I get home, “Quit now or I make sure everyone knows” — it’s a grenade I can’t unpin. I slept fitfully, my dreams a mass of Liam’s gray eyes, the masquerade ball, Vanessa’s smirk tightening around me like a noose. And I’m not just nauseous because I’m pregnant; I’m also sick to my stomach about what I did last night: sending Liam proof that Vanessa’s numbers are fake. It was a shot across the bow, but now I’m waiting for the fallout, and frankly I’m not feeling ready for it.I lumber into Knight Enterprises with the weight of the pregnancy test and Claire’s cryptic note, “He’s closer than you think,”&e