Page 7 of The Plan

It explained why he had been the first man to touch Veronica. Her first.

He had been her first.

And he had had to ruin it right after. He should have at least held her. Right there on the office couch. It was big enough. He could have carried her there and just held her. He’d slept there countless times before. He should have just wrapped her up in his arms…and held her.

He wished…

Someone knocked on his locked door.

He cursed. He’d closed his doors promptly at five, ten minutes after leaving that asshole Felner in the clerk’s office. He had to head out to the ranch where his parents lived. They had something they wanted to discuss with their children.

The knocker kept persisting.

They weren’t going away and they knew he was in here. The lights in his office were a dead give-away—and his truck was parked out front.

He wasn’t going to escape.

George had no choice.

When he entered the hallway and saw the woman standing at his office front door, his heart sped up. His palms slicked. His entire body tensed.

Veronica was back.

She’d come back.

George hurriedly unlocked the door.

5

Oh,he lookedgood.

Ronnie had always loved it when he had his suit coat off and his shirtsleeves rolled up. The tie hung around his neck and his honey-colored hair stuck up all over his head. He did that sometimes, when he was stressed. He wore his reading glasses. Sometimes he forgot to take them off. She loved it when he wore his glasses.

His chest was hard and sculpted from years of ranch work. He looked just as good without his clothes as he did with them. Her cheeks flamed at that stray thought.

“Veronica, why are you here?”

There was no welcome in his tone. That had her hesitating. Her stomach rolled, something it had been doing for a month—which had prompted that fateful test in the first place—and reminded her of what was at stake here.

She was pregnant, unemployed, broke, and alone. That was what was at stake here. And this man held control over her world for the moment.

It was probably best to get this over with. So that she could make the kind of plans she needed to make. She’d walked to the drug store, bought three more tests, and took them all.

And confirmed it. Pink lines, blue lines, tiny letters spelling it all out. It was real.

The baby was real. And changed everything.

Ronnie was terrified she was going to find herself living with her parents again. At least temporarily. Talk about scary. “We need to talk.”

“About what? I mailed your last check.”

“Yeah, that’s not it.” She stepped into the office, and slipped off her rain coat. She dropped it to the waiting room couch. “Better sit down, Georgie…”

She heard his growl at the nickname he hated. She’d taken to using it only when he got on her last nerve, with his ridiculous sense of arrogance, about six weeks into her tenure with his little firm.

Yes, he was a brilliant man. But did he have to act like that made him more special than the rest of the world? If he also wasn’t one of the nicest, softest-hearted, most loyal men she knew—she wouldn’t have liked him at all. She definitely wouldn’t have taken her clothes off with the man. That was rather a given.

“Veronica, what’s going on? I have plans for tonight.”

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