The Marriage Contract
Kat Cantrell
A Billionaire's Baby PlanDesmond Pierce wants a child – but the conventional route won't do for the reclusive inventor. Enter McKenna Moore, a medical student willing to be a surrogate mom…and to marry by proxy without ever meeting her husband. But when the baby's health requires McKenna to not only face Desmond but also live with him, their chemistry explodes. Soon McKenna is in his bed, where he wants her to stay. But saying yes to making their marriage real puts McKenna's dreams at risk –and forces Desmond to re–evaluate everything he's ever wanted…
A Billionaire’s Baby Plan
Desmond Pierce wants a child—but the conventional route won’t do for the reclusive inventor. Enter McKenna Moore, a medical student willing to be a surrogate mom...and to marry by proxy without ever meeting her husband. But when the baby’s health requires McKenna to not only face Desmond but also live with him, their chemistry explodes. Soon McKenna is in his bed, where he wants her to stay. But saying yes to making their marriage real puts McKenna’s dreams at risk—and forces Desmond to reevaluate everything he’s ever wanted...
McKenna pulled back.
But Desmond still had her trapped between his body and the table. Her pulse thundered in her ears as they stared at each other.
“That was...”
“Amazing?” he supplied, his gaze hot. “Yeah. But I’m sensing we’re going to stop now.”
“See, we communicate just fine.” She gulped. “I’m just...not sure this is a good idea.”
They were not two people who had the luxury of an uncomplicated fling. They were married with a divorce agreement already hammered out. That was not a recipe for experimentation, and she wasn’t much of an experimenter anyway.
Where could this possibly go?
“Oh, it’s a good idea.” His piercing gaze tore her open inside as he promised her exactly how good it would be without saying a word. “But we both have to think so.”
With that, he stepped back, releasing her.
She took a deep breath and nodded. He was being gentlemanly about it, putting all the balls in her court. “I agree. And I don’t think that right now.”
Her mind didn’t, at least. Even if her body did.
* * *
The Marriage Contract is part of Mills & Boon Desire’s No. 1 bestselling series, Billionaires and Babies: Powerful men...wrapped around their babies’ little fingers.
The Marriage Contract
Kat Cantrell
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
USA TODAY bestselling author KAT CANTRELL read her first Mills & Boon novel in third grade and has been scribbling in notebooks since she learned to spell. She’s a Mills & Boon So You Think You Can Write winner and a Romance Writers of America Golden Heart® Award finalist. Kat, her husband and their two boys live in north Texas.
Dayna Hart: this one is for you because
Beauty and the Beast is your favorite.
Contents
Cover (#u1ff48034-7000-5f41-9a32-43d790e7bc15)
Back Cover Text (#ue9b46a0c-09f9-5861-abd7-a2ddd0fd8897)
Introduction (#uaf28b9cc-2bbc-5f16-9820-71a750f00b9b)
Title Page (#u2d5276e9-81d0-5b1e-8379-e1bf61469fc2)
About the Author (#ue7f93d81-4521-572f-aa5b-ede322372efe)
Dedication (#u47152599-0b67-5ecb-be99-acbb92e26f4e)
One (#u15a48c5d-a23e-538e-9397-58a27bb803cd)
Two (#u47ca635e-0899-5224-99e0-b12dd8b1c887)
Three (#u5f7bbc16-8417-5e14-af52-27df8b39ac2f)
Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
One (#u7e1b2b76-e8fc-59f0-9fe7-62db84f15bcd)
Despite never having believed in miracles, Desmond Pierce witnessed one at 7:23 p.m. on an otherwise nondescript Tuesday as he glimpsed his son for the first time.
A nurse in navy blue scrubs carried the mewling infant into the small room off the main hospital corridor where Desmond had been instructed to wait. The moment his gaze lit on the baby, he felt a zap of recognition in his gut.
My son.
Awed into speechlessness, Des reached out to touch the future.
Warmth and something totally foreign clogged his throat. Tears. Joy. Vindication.
Amazing. Who knew money really could buy happiness?
The kid’s face screwed up in a wail of epic proportions as if the nurse had poked him with a pin. Des felt his son’s distress with deeper empathy than he’d ever experienced before—and that was saying something. It winnowed through his pores, sensitizing his muscles almost to the point of pain as he held himself back from snatching the boy from the nurse’s arms.
Was this terrible combination of wonder, reverence and absolute terror what it was like for all parents? Or had he been gifted with a special bond because his son wouldn’t have a mother?
“How are you this evening, Mr. Pierce?” the nurse inquired pleasantly.
“Regretting the sizable donation I made to this establishment,” he growled and immediately bemoaned not taking a moment to search for a more acceptable way to communicate. This, after he’d vowed not to be his usual gruff self. “Why is my son crying?”
Better. More in the vein of how he’d practiced in the mirror. But the hard cross of his arms over his chest didn’t quell the feeling that something was wrong. The baby hadn’t been real these last forty weeks, or rather Des hadn’t let himself believe that this pregnancy would end differently than Lacey’s.
Now that he’d seen the baby, all the stars aligned. And there was no way in hell he’d let anything happen to his son.
“He’s hungry,” the nurse returned with a cautious half smile. “Would you like to feed him?”
Yes. He would. But he had to nod as emotion gripped his vocal cords.
An explosion of teddy bears climbed the walls behind the rocking chair the nurse guided him to. A vinyl-sided cabinet with a sink occupied the back corner and the counter was strewed with plastic bottles.
Des had done a lot of research into bottle-feeding, as well as all other aspects of parenting: philosophies of child rearing, behavioral books by renowned specialists, websites with tips for new parents. He’d committed a lot of it to memory easily, largely owing to his excitement and interest in the subject, but then, he held two doctorates from Harvard. There were not many academics that he hadn’t mastered. He was pretty sure he could handle a small task like sticking the nipple into the baby’s mouth.
Carefully she settled the baby into his arms with a gentle smile. “Here you go, Dad. It’s important that you hold him as much as possible.”
Des zeroed in on the pink wrinkled face and the entire world fell away. His son weighed nothing at all. Less than a ten-pound barbell. Wonder tore a hole through Desmond’s chest as he held his son for the first time. Instantly he cataloged everything his senses could soak in. Dark eyes. Dark hair peeking from under the knit cap.
Conner Clark Pierce. His son.
Whatever it took, he’d move heaven and earth to give this new person everything. Private tutors, trips to educational sites like the pyramids at Giza and Machu Picchu, a workshop that rivaled his father’s if he wanted to invent things like Des did. The baby would have every advantage and would never want for anything, let alone a mother.
The nurse pulled the hat down more firmly on the baby’s head. That’s when Conner started yowling again. The baby’s anguish bled through Desmond’s skin, and he did not like it.
The nurse turned to the back counter. “Let me make you a bottle.”
She measured out the formula over the sound of the baby’s cries, which grew more upsetting as the seconds ticked by.
Des had always felt other people’s pain deeply, which was one of the many reasons he avoided crowds, but his response to his son was so much worse than general empathy. This little person shared his DNA, and whether the suggestion of it sharpened the quickening under his skin or there really was a genetic bond, the urgency of the situation could not be overstated.
She finally crossed to Des, where he’d settled into the rocking chair, and handed him the bottle. Like he’d watched in countless videos, he held the nipple to the baby’s bottom lip and tipped it.
His son’s lower lip trembled as he wailed, but he would not take the bottle. Des would never describe himself as patient, but he tried diligently fourteen more times.
“Why is he refusing?” Des asked the nurse as the sense of something being wrong welled up in his chest again.
“I don’t know.” She banked the concern in her expression but not before Des saw it. “It’s not unusual for babies who are taken from their mothers to have difficulty acclimating. We can try with a dropper. A bottle isn’t the only way to get the formula into his body.”
Desmond nodded and bit his tongue as the nurse crowded into his space.
The dropper worked. For about five minutes. Then Conner started spitting up all over everything. The nurse frowned again and her expression tingled his spine.
Thirty minutes later, all three of them were frustrated.
“It seems he might have an allergy to formula,” the nurse finally announced.
“What does that mean? He’s going to starve?” Des shut his eyes in pure agony and scrubbed at his beard, which could probably use trimming but, like usual, he’d forgotten. Sometimes Mrs. Elliot, his housekeeper, reminded him, but only if they crossed paths and, lately, he’d been hiding out in his workshop in preparation for today.
For no reason apparently, since none of his prep had covered this scenario.
“No, we’re not going to let that happen. We’ve got some options...” She trailed off. “Never mind that one. I’ve been made aware of your wishes regarding your son’s mother, so—”
“Forget my wishes and tell me your suggestion. The baby has to eat,” Des insisted.
The nurse nodded. “The baby might breast-feed. I mean, this is highly unusual. Typically it’s the other way around, where we have to supplement a mother’s breast milk with formula until a lactation consultant can work with her, but—”
The baby’s wails cut her off.
“She’s still here? At the hospital?” He’d never met his son’s surrogate mother, as they’d agreed, but he was desperate for a solution.
“Well, yes. Of course. Most women take a couple of days to recover from childbirth but—”
“Take me to her.” His mind went to work on how he could have said that better, but distress wasn’t the best state for a do-over. “Please.”
Relief eased the nurse’s expression and she nodded. “Just a warning. She might not be willing to breast-feed.”
“I’ll convince her,” he countered as he stood with the baby in his arms.
His agreement with McKenna Moore, his son’s surrogate mother, had loopholes for medical necessities. Plus, she was still legally his wife; they’d married by proxy to avoid any legal snarls, but their relationship was strictly professional. Despite the fact that they had never met, hopefully being married would count for something. The baby had to eat—as soon as Desmond convinced Conner’s mother that she was his only hope.
Frankly, asking for her help was a last resort. Their agreement limited Ms. Moore’s involvement with the baby because Des wanted a family that was all his own. But he was desperate to look after his son’s welfare.
Out into the hall they went. At room 247, the nurse stopped and inclined her head. “Give me a second to see if she’s accepting visitors.”
Des nodded. The baby had quieted during the walk, which was a blessing. The rocking motion had soothed him most likely. Good information to have at his disposal.
Voices from inside the room drifted out into the hall.
“He wants to what?” The feminine lilt that did not belong to the nurse could only be McKenna Moore’s. She was awake and likely decent by this time since the nurse was in the room.
The baby stirred, his little face lifting toward the sound. And that decided it. Conner recognized his mother’s voice and, despite the absolute conviction that the best way to handle this surrogacy situation was to never be in the same room with the woman who had given birth to his son, Desmond pushed open the door with his foot and entered.
The dark-haired figure in the hospital bed drew his eye like a siren song and when their gazes met a jolt of recognition buzzed through all his senses at once. The same sort as when he’d glimpsed his son for the first time. Their son.
This woman was his child’s mother. This woman was his legally wedded wife.
McKenna Moore’s features were delicate and beautiful and he’d never been so ruthlessly stirred by someone in his life. He couldn’t speak, couldn’t think, and for a man with a genius IQ, lack of brain function was alarming indeed. As was the sudden, irrevocable conviction that he’d made a terrible mistake in the way he’d structured the surrogacy agreement.
He couldn’t help but mourn the lost opportunity to woo this woman, to get to know her. To have the option to get her pregnant the old-fashioned way.
How in the hell had he developed such a visceral attraction to his wife in the space of a few moments?
Didn’t matter. He hadn’t met her first because he hated to navigate social scenarios. He stumbled over the kinds of relationships that seemed easy and normal for others, which was why he lived in a remote area of Oregon, far from Astoria, the nearest city.
Desmond had always been that weird kid at the corner table. Graduating from high school at fifteen hadn’t helped him forge a lot of connections. Neither had becoming a billionaire. If he’d tried to have a normal relationship with McKenna Moore, it would have ended in disaster in the same fashion as the one he’d tried with Lacey.
Bonds of blood, like the one he shared with his son, were the only answer for someone like him. This baby would be his family and fulfill Desmond’s craving for an heir. Maybe his son would even love him just because.
Regardless, the baby belonged to him. Desmond decided what would happen to his kid and there was no one on this entire planet who could trump his wishes.
Except for maybe his wife.
But he’d paid his law firm over a million dollars to ensure the prenuptial agreement protected his fortune and an already-drafted divorce decree granted him full custody. It was ironclad, or rather, would be as soon as he filed for the divorce.
She’d recover from childbirth, take Desmond’s divorce settlement money and vanish. Exactly as he’d envisioned when he’d determined the only thing that could fill the gaping hole in his life was a baby to replace the one he’d lost—or rather, the one Lacey had aborted.
Never again would he allow a woman to dictate something as critical as to whether his child would live or die. And never again would he let himself care about a woman who held even a smidgen of power over his happiness. One day, his son would understand.
“Ms. Moore,” he finally growled out long past the time when it would have been appropriate to start speaking. “We have a problem. Our son needs you.”
* * *
Desmond Pierce stood in McKenna’s hospital room. With a crying baby.
Her baby.
The one she’d been trying really hard to forget she’d just pushed out of her body in what had to be the world’s record for painful, difficult labors...and then given away.
McKenna’s eyes widened as she registered what he’d just said and her eye sockets were so dry, even that hurt. Everything hurt. She wanted codeine and to sleep for three days, not a continual spike through her heart with each new cry of the baby. The muscles in her arms tensed to reach for her son so she could touch him.
She wasn’t supposed to see the baby. Or hold him. The nurse had told her that when they’d taken him away, even though McKenna had begged for the chance to say goodbye. The cruel people in the delivery room had ignored her. What did they know about sacrifice? About big, gaping holes inside that nothing would ever fill?
For a second she’d thought her son’s father had figured that out. That he’d come strictly to grant her wish. The look on his face as he’d come through the door—it had floored her. Their gazes connected and it was as if he could see all her angst and last-minute indecision. And understood.
I’ve come to fix everything, he seemed to say without a word.
But that was not the reality of why Mr. Pierce was here with the baby. Instead he was here to rip her heart to shreds. Again.
They should leave. Right now. Before she started crying.
“He’s not my son,” she rasped, her vocal cords still strained from the trauma of birth.
She shouldn’t have said that. The phrase—both true and brutal—unfolded inside her with sharp teeth, tearing at her just as deeply as the baby’s cries.
He was her son. The one she’d signed away because it ticked all the boxes in her head that her parents had lined up. You should find a man, have lots of babies, they’d said. There’s no greater joy than children.
Except she didn’t want kids. She wanted to be a doctor, to help people in pain and in need. Desmond had yearned for a baby; she could give him one and experience pregnancy without caving in to her parent’s pressure. They didn’t approve of western medicine. It was a huge source of conflict, especially after Grandfather had died when homeopathic remedies had failed to cure his cancer.
Being Desmond Pierce’s surrogate allowed her a creative way to satisfy her parents and still contribute to society according to what made sense to her. That’s what she’d repeated to herself over and over for the last hour and she’d almost believed it—until a man had burst into her hospital room with a crying baby in his arms.
And he was looking at her so strangely that she felt compelled to prompt him. “What do you want, Desmond?”
They’d never been formally introduced, but the baby was a dead giveaway. Desmond Pierce didn’t look anything like the pictures she’d searched on the internet. Of course she’d had a better-than-average dose of curiosity about the man with such strict ideas about the surrogacy arrangement, the man who would marry her without meeting her.
But this man—he made tall, dark and handsome seem banal. He was fascinating, with a scruff of a beard that gave him a dangerous edge, deep brown hair swept back from his face and a wiry build.
Desmond Pierce was the perfect man to be a father or she wouldn’t have agreed to his proposal. What she hadn’t realized was that he was a perfect man, period. Coupled with the baby in his arms, he might well be the most devastatingly handsome male on the planet.
And then she realized. He wasn’t just a man. They were married. He was her husband. Whom she was never supposed to meet.
“The baby won’t eat,” he said over the yowls. “You need to try to breast-feed him.”
She blinked. Twice. “I need to do what?”
“The nurse said he’s allergic to formula. We’ve tried for an hour.” He moved closer to the bed with a purposeful stride that brooked no nonsense and held out the wailing bundle. “He needs you. This is the one thing I cannot give him.”
She stared at the wrinkled face of her child, refusing to reach out, refusing to let the wash of emotions beating through her chest take hold. The baby needed her and she was the sole person who could help. But how could she? Breast-feeding was far too nurturing of a thing to do with a baby she wasn’t allowed to keep.
How dare Desmond come in here and layer on more impossible emotional turmoil in the middle of her already-chaotic heart?
She’d done her part according to their agreement. The baby was born, healthy and the child was set for life with a billionaire father who wanted him badly enough to seek out an unusual surrogacy agreement and who had the means to take care of him. What more could Desmond Pierce possibly expect from her? Did he want to slice off a piece of her soul when he took her baby away for the second time?
“That’s too much to ask,” she whispered even as her breasts tingled at the suggestion. They’d grown hard and heavy the moment the baby had entered the room crying. It was simple physiology and she’d known she’d have to let her milk dry up. Had been prepared for it.
What she had not been prepared for was the request to use it to feed her son.
Desmond’s brows came together. “You’re concerned about your figure?”
That shouldn’t have been so funny. “Yeah, I’m entering the Miss USA pageant next week and how I’ll look in a bikini is definitely my biggest objection.”
“That’s sarcasm, right?”
The fact that he had to ask struck her oddly, but before she could comment, he stuck the baby right into her arms. Against her will, her muscles shifted, cradling the baby to her bosom, and she was lost. As he must have known. As the nurse had known.
She shouldn’t be holding the baby, but she was, and it was too late to stop the thunder of her pulse as it pumped awe and love and duty and shock straight to her heart.
My son.
He still cried, his face rooting against her breast, and it was clear what he wanted. She just hadn’t realized how deeply her desire to give it to him would ultimately go.
“There’s a clause in the custody agreement about the baby’s medical needs,” Desmond reminded her. “You’re on the hook for eighteen years if he needs you for medical reasons.”
“Yeah, but I thought that would only be invoked if he needed a kidney or something,” she blurted as the baby’s little fingers worked blindly against her chest. “Not breast-feeding.”
She couldn’t. Judging by how badly she wanted to, if she did this, it would be so much harder to walk away. It wasn’t fair of Desmond to ask. She was supposed to go back to Portland, register for school. Become a doctor like she’d dreamed about for over a decade. That’s how she’d help people. This evisceration Desmond Pierce wanted to perform wasn’t part of the plan.
“He might still need a kidney, too.” Desmond shrugged. “Such is the nature of sharing DNA with another human.”
Did he really not get the emotional quandary she was in? All of this must be so easy for him. After all, he was man, and rich besides—all he had to do was snap his fingers to make the world do his bidding. “You know breast-feeding isn’t a one-time thing, right? You have to repeat it.”
In the tight-knit community her parents belonged to, they raised babies as a village. She’d watched mothers commit to being a baby’s sole food source twenty-four hours a day for months. Some women had trouble with breast-feeding. He acted like she could just pop out a breast and everything would be peachy.
“Yes, but once we find an alternative, you can walk away. Until then, our agreement means you have a commitment to his medical needs.” He crossed his arms. “There is literally nothing I would not do to help my child. He needs you. Three months, at least. You can live with me, have your own room. Use a breast pump if you like. You want extra compensation added to the settlement? Name your price.”
As if she could put a price on the maternal instincts that warred with her conviction that whatever decision she made here would have lasting impacts that neither of them could foresee. “I don’t want extra compensation! I want—”
Nothing except what he’d already promised her. A divorce settlement that would pay for medical school and the knowledge that she’d helped him create the family he wanted. It felt so cold all at once. But what was she supposed to do instead? She rarely dated, not after three years with a ho-hum high school boyfriend and a pregnancy scare at nineteen, which was why she refused to go out with one of the men her parents were constantly throwing at her. Dating wasn’t worth the possibility of an accidental pregnancy.
She couldn’t be a mom and a doctor. Both required commitment, an exhaustive number of hours. So she’d chosen long ago which path worked for her. Because she was selfish, according to her mother, throwing away her parents’ teaching about natural remedies as if their beliefs didn’t matter.
So here was her chance to be unselfish for once. She could breast-feed for three months, wean the baby as he grew out of his formula allergy and go back to Portland for the spring semester. It was only a small addition to what had already been a year-long delay.
She’d wanted to experience pregnancy to better empathize with her patients. Why not experience breast-feeding for the same reason? She could use a pump if the baby had trouble latching on, just like any new mother. No one had to know that it was going to kill her to give up the baby a second time after she’d fallen the rest of the way in love with him.
She glanced up at Desmond, who was watching her hold the baby with an expression she couldn’t interpret. “I’ll do it. But you can’t stay in the room.”
His expression didn’t change. “I beg to differ. He’s my son.”
Great, so now he was going to watch. But she could still dictate her own terms. “Can you at least call the nurse back so I can make sure I’m doing it right?”
Instead of forcing her to push the call button, he nodded and disappeared into the hall, giving her a blessed few moments alone. The hospital gown had slits for exactly this purpose so it was easy to maneuver the baby’s face to her aching breast. His cries had quieted to heartbreaking mewls, and his eyes were closed, but his mouth worked the closer she guided him toward her nipple. And then all at once, he popped on like a champ and started sucking.
She was doing it. He was doing it.
Entranced, she watched her son take his first meal on this planet and it was almost holy. Her body flooded with a sense of rightness and awe. An eternity passed and a small sound caused her to glance up. Desmond had returned with the nurse, but he was just watching her quietly with far more tenderness than she would have expected.
“Looks like you’re a natural, hon,” the nurse said encouragingly and smiled. “In a few minutes, you can switch sides. Do you want me to stay?”
“I think I’m okay.”
Really, fetching the nurse had been an excuse to get Desmond out of the room. Women had been doing this for centuries, including those of her parents’ community who were strong advocates for removing the stigma of public breast-feeding. She wasn’t a frail fraidy-cat.
The nurse left. Now that the baby was quiet, she felt Desmond’s presence a whole lot more than she had before, like an extra weight had settled around her shoulders. He was so...everything. Intense. Focused. Gorgeous. Unsettling. Every time she glanced at him, it did something funny to her stomach and she’d had enough new sensations for the day, thanks.
Instead she watched the baby eat in silence until she couldn’t stand it any longer.
“What did you name him?” Her voice was husky and drew Desmond’s attention.
He cocked his head, his gaze traveling over her in a way that made her twitchy. “Conner. His middle name is Clark, after your father.”
That speared her right through the heart. She’d had no idea he’d do something to honor his son’s maternal heritage, and it struck her as personal in a way that dug under her skin. If all had gone according to plan, she’d never have met Desmond, never have known what he’d called the baby. She wouldn’t have looked them up or contacted either of them. Also according to their agreement.
Now it was all backward and upside-down because this was their son. And Desmond Pierce was her husband. She’d just agreed to go home with him. How was that going to work? Would he expect to exercise his husbandly duties?
That thought flittered through her stomach in a way that wasn’t difficult to interpret at all. Dear God. She was attracted to her husband. And she’d take that secret to the grave.
Mortified, she switched breasts under Desmond’s watchful eye, figuring that if she would be living with him, he’d see her feeding the baby plenty of times. Besides, there was nothing shameful about a woman’s body in the act of providing nourishment for her son. Somehow, though, Desmond made the whole thing seem intimate and heavy with implication, as if they were a real family and he was there to support his child’s mother.
Desmond pursed his lips, still surveying her as if trying to figure something out. “Have we met before?”
Her pulse leaped. “No. Of course not. You wanted everything done through your agent.”
Mr. Lively had been anything but. He was about a hundred and twenty years old and spoke slower than a tortoise on Valium. Anytime he’d contacted her about paperwork or medical records, she’d mentally blocked off four hours because that’s generally how long the session lasted. Except for when she’d gone with him to the courthouse to complete the marriage by proxy, which had taken all day.
Suddenly she wished they’d done this surrogacy arrangement a different way. But marriage had been the easiest way to avoid legal issues. The divorce settlement, which she’d use to pay for school, was a normal agreement between couples with Desmond’s kind of wealth. Otherwise someone could argue Desmond had paid for a baby and no one wanted that legal hassle.
She hadn’t minded being technically married when it was just a piece of paper. Meeting Desmond, being near enough to hear him breathe, changed everything. It felt bigger than a signature on an official document.
“You seem familiar.” He shook his head as if clearing it. “It’s been a long day.”
“You don’t say,” she said, letting the irony drip from her tone. “I’ve been here since 3:00 a.m.”
“Really?” This seemed to intrigue him.
“Yeah, it’s not a drive-through. I was in labor for something like fifteen hours.”
“Is that normal?”
She sighed and tried to shift her position without disturbing the baby. “I don’t know. This is my first rodeo.”
“I’m being insensitive.”
Nothing like calling a spade a spade, which McKenna appreciated enough to give him a break. “I’m sure we’ll get to know each other soon enough.”
Somehow she’d managed to startle him. “Will we?”
“Well, sure, if we’re living in the same house.”
And she could secretly admit to a curiosity about him that she’d have every right to satisfy if they were in close quarters. There was a certain amount of protection in the fact that her time with him had predefined boundaries. The last thing she needed was additional entanglements that kept her from fulfilling her dreams. “But only for three months, right?”
“We’ll do our best to keep it to three months,” he said with a sharp nod, but she had the distinct impression he hadn’t considered that inviting her to live in his house meant they’d be around each other. What exactly had she signed up for?
It didn’t matter. All that mattered was that he’d given her three months with her son that she was pathetically grateful for. It was like a gift, a chance to know him before he grew old enough to remember her, to miss her. A chance to revel in all these newfound maternal instincts and then leave before they grew too strong. She was going to be a doctor, thanks to Desmond Pierce, and she couldn’t let his monkey wrench change that.
Two (#u7e1b2b76-e8fc-59f0-9fe7-62db84f15bcd)
The house Desmond had lived in for the last ten years was not big enough. Twenty thousand square feet shouldn’t feel so closed in. But with McKenna Moore inside his walls, everything shrank.
He’d never brought a woman home to live. Sure, Lacey had stayed over occasionally when they were dating, but her exit was always prearranged. And then she’d forever snuffed out his ability to trust a woman as easily as she’d snuffed out the life of their “accident,” as she’d termed it. The baby had been unplanned, definitely, since their relationship hadn’t been all that serious, but he’d had no idea how much he’d want the baby until it was too late. He’d always made sure there was a light at the end of the tunnel when it came to his interaction with women after that.
There was no light where his baby’s mother was concerned. She’d brought her feminine scent and shiny dark hair into his house and put a stamp of permanence all over everything.
Did she know that he’d made a huge concession when he’d asked her to stay with him? This was his domain, his sanctuary, and he’d let her invade it, sucking up all the space while she was at it. Only for Conner would he have done this.
This, of course, looked an awful lot like he was hiding in his workshop. But he couldn’t be in the main part of the house and walk around with the semi-erection McKenna gave him by simply laughing. Or looking at him. Or breathing. It was absurd. He’d been around women before. Gorgeous women who liked his money enough to put up with his idiosyncrasies. None of them had ever invoked such a driving need.
He tried to pretend he was simply working. After all, he often holed up in his workshop for days until Mrs. Elliot reminded him that he couldn’t live on the Red Bull and Snickers that he kept in the corner refrigerator.
But there was a difference between hiding and holing up and he wasn’t confused about which one he was doing. Apparently he was the only one who was clear on it, though, because the next time he glanced up from the robot hand he was rewiring, there she stood.
“Busy?” she called in her husky voice that hit with a solid thwang he felt in his gut.
“Ms. Moore,” he muttered in acknowledgment. “This is my workshop.”
“I know.” Her brows quirked as she glanced around with unveiled curiosity. “Mrs. Elliot told me this was where I could find you. Also, we share a child. I think it’s okay if you call me McKenna.”
But she clearly didn’t know “workshop” equaled off-limits, private, no girls allowed. He should post a sign.
“McKenna, then.” He shouldn’t be talking to her. Encouraging her. But he couldn’t stop looking at her. She was gorgeous in a fierce, elemental way that coursed through him every time he got anywhere near her.
And when he stumbled over her breast-feeding? God, that was the worst. Or the best, depending on your viewpoint.
She was at her sexiest when she was nurturing their child. If he’d known he’d suddenly be ten times more drawn to her when she exuded all that maternal radiance, he’d never have invited her to live here.
Of course, he hadn’t really had much of a choice there, had he?
Obviously hiding out wasn’t the answer. Like always, raw need welled up as he watched her explore his workshop, peering into bins and tracing the lines of the hand-drawn gears posted to a light board near the south wall.
“This is a very impressive setup,” she commented as she finished a round of his cavernous workspace.
Her gaze zipped to the two generators housed at the back and then lit on him as he stood behind the enormous workstation spread out over a mobile desk on wheels where he did all of his computation. He’d built the computer himself from components and there wasn’t another like it in the world.
“It’s where I make stuff,” he told her simply because there was no way to explain that this was where he brought to life the contents of his brain. He saw something in his head then he built it. He’d been doing that since he was four. Now he got paid millions and millions of dollars for each and every design, which he only cared about because it enabled him to keep doing it.
“I can see that. It’s kind of sexy. Very Dr. Frankenstein.”
Had she just called him sexy? In the same breath as comparing him to Frankenstein? “Uh... I’ve always thought of myself as more like Iron Man.”
She laughed. “Except Tony Stark is a lot more personable and dresses better.”
Desmond glanced down at his slacks. “What’s wrong with the way I dress?”
Certainly that was the only part of her assessment he could disagree with—he was by no stretch personable and Iron Man did have a certain flair that Desmond could never claim.
“Nothing,” she shot back with a grin. “You just don’t look like a billionaire playboy who does weapons deals with shady Middle Eastern figures. Frankenstein, on the other hand, was a doctor like you and all he wanted to do was build something meaningful out of the pieces he had available.”
She picked up the robot hand he’d been about to solder for emphasis.
Speechless, he stared at her slender fingers wrapped around his creation-in-progress and tried like hell to figure out how she’d tapped into his psyche so easily. Fascinating. So few people thought of him as a doctor. He didn’t even see himself as one, despite the fact that he could stick PhD after his name all day long if he wanted to.
What else did she see when she looked at him? That same recognition he’d felt, as if they’d met in a former life and their connection had been so strong it transcended flesh and bone?
Or would that sound as crazy to her as it did in his head?
“I wasn’t aware I was so transparent,” he said gruffly, a little shocked that he didn’t totally hate it. “Did you want something?”
Her dark eyes were so expressive he could practically read her like a book. He rarely bothered to study people anymore. Once, that had been the only way he could connect with others, by surreptitiously observing them until everything was properly cataloged.
All it had ever gotten him was an acute sense of isolation and an understanding that people stayed away from him because they didn’t like how his brain worked.
She shrugged. “I was bored. Larissa is putting Conner to bed and it turns out that having a nanny around means that once I feed him, I’m pretty much done. I haven’t seen you in, like, a week.”
McKenna, apparently, had no such aversion to Desmond. She’d sought him out. So he could entertain her. That was a first.
“I had no idea you’d mark my absence in such a way.”
Lame. He was out of practice talking to people, let alone one who tied his brain in a Gordian knot of puzzling reactions.
But he wanted to untangle that knot. Very badly.
“Are you always so formal?” McKenna came around the long table to his side and peered over his shoulder at the monitor where he had a drawing of the robot hand spinning in 3-D. “Wow. That’s pretty cool.”
“It’s just a... No, I’m not—” He sucked in a breath as her torso grazed his back. His pulse roared into overdrive and he experienced a purely primal reaction to her that had no place between two people who shared a son and nothing else. “Formal.”
“Hmm? Oh, yeah, you are. You remind me of my statistics professor.”
“You took a statistics class?” Okay, they shared that, too. But that was it. They had nothing else in common and he had no reason to be imagining her reaction if he kissed her.
“Have to. It’s a requirement for premed.”
“Can you not stand there?”
Her scent was bleeding through his senses and it was thoroughly disrupting his brain waves. Of course the real problem was that he liked her exactly where she was.
“Where? Behind you?” She punched him on the shoulder like they were drinking buddies and she’d just told him a joke. “I can’t be in front of you. There’s a whole lot of electronic equipment in my way.”
“You talk a lot.”
She laughed. “Only because you’re talking back. Isn’t that how it works?”
For the second time she’d rendered him speechless. Yeah. He was talking back. The two conversations he’d had with her to date, the one at the hospital and this one, marked the longest he’d had with anyone in a while. Probably since Lacey.
He needed someone to draw him out, or he stayed stuck in his head, designing, building, imagining, dreaming. It was a lot safer for everyone that way, so of course that was his default.
McKenna seemed unacquainted with the term boundaries. And he didn’t hate that.
He should. He should be escorting her out of his workshop and back to the main part of the house. There was an indoor pool that stayed precisely the same temperature year-round. A recreational room that he’d had built the moment Mr. Lively called to say McKenna had conceived during the first round of insemination. Desmond had filled the room with a pool table, darts, video game consoles and whatever else the decorator had recommended. Surely his child’s mother could find some amusement there.
“Tell me what you’re building,” she commanded with a fair enough amount of curiosity that he told her.
“It’s a prototype for a robotic humanoid.”
“A robot?” Clearly intrigued, she leaned over the hand, oblivious to the way her hair fell in a long, dark sheet over her shoulder. It was so beautiful that he almost reached out to touch it.
He didn’t. That would invite intimacies he absolutely wanted with a bone-deep desire but hadn’t fully yet analyzed. Until he understood this visceral need, he couldn’t act on it. Too dangerous. It gave her too much power.
“No.” He cleared his throat and scrubbed at his beard, which he still hadn’t trimmed. “A robot is anything mechanical that can be programmed. A robotic humanoid resembles a person both in appearance and function but with a mechanical skeleton and artificial intelligence.”
It was a common misconception that he corrected often, especially when he had to give a presentation about his designs to the manufacturers who bought his patents.
“You are Dr. Frankenstein,” she said with raised eyebrows. “When you get it to work, do you shout ‘It’s alive!’ or just do a little victory dance?”
“I, um...”
She’d turned to face him, crossing her arms under her breasts that he logically knew were engorged from childbirth, though that didn’t seem to stop his imagination from calling up what they looked like: expanses of beautiful flesh topped by hard, dusky nipples. McKenna had miles of skin that Des wanted to put his hands on.
What was it about her that called to him so deeply?
“I’m just teasing you.” Her eyes twinkled. “I actually couldn’t imagine you doing either one.”
A smile spread across his face before he could stop it. “I can dance.”
“Ha, you’re totally lying.”
“I can dance,” he repeated. “Just not to music.”
He fell into her rich, dark eyes and he reached out to snag a lock of her hair, fingering the silky softness before he fully realized that he’d given in to the impulse. The moment grew tense. Aware. So thick, he couldn’t have cut it with a laser.
“I should...go,” she murmured and blinked, unwinding the spell. “I didn’t mean to interrupt.”
The lock of hair fell from his fingers as the mood shattered. Fortunately her exodus was quick enough that she didn’t get to witness how well she’d bobbled his composure.
He’d have sworn there was an answering echo of attraction and heat in her gaze.
He wasn’t any closer to unraveling the mysteries lurking inside her, but he did know one thing. McKenna Moore had taken his seed into her womb and created a miracle through artificial insemination.
What had once felt practical now felt like a mistake. One he couldn’t rectify.
But how could he have known he’d take one look at her and wish he’d impregnated her by making love over and over and over until she’d conceived?
Madness. Build something and forget all of this fatalistic nonsense.
Women were treacherous under the best of circumstances and McKenna Moore was no different. She just had a unique wrapper that rendered Des stupid, apparently.
Of course the most expedient way to nip this attraction in the bud would be to tell her how badly he’d wanted to thread all of his fingers through her hair and kiss her until her clothes melted off. She’d be mortified and finally figure out that she should be running away from Desmond Pierce. That would be that.
* * *
McKenna fled Desmond’s workshop, her pulse still pounding in her throat.
What the hell had just happened? One minute she was trying to forge a friendship with the world’s most reclusive billionaire and the next he had her hair draped across his hand.
She could still feel the tug as his fingers lifted the strands. The look on his face had been enthralled, as if he’d unexpectedly found gold. She hadn’t been around the block very many times, a testament to how long she’d been with James, her high school boyfriend, not to mention the years of difficult undergraduate course work that hadn’t allowed for much time to date. But she knew when a man was thinking about kissing her, and that’s exactly what had been on Desmond’s mind.
That would be a huge mistake.
She needed to walk out of this house in three months unencumbered, emotionally and physically, and Desmond was dangerous. He held all the cards in this scenario and if she wanted to dedicate her life to medicine, she had to be careful. What would happen if she accidentally got pregnant again? More delays. More agonizing decisions and, frankly, she didn’t have enough willpower left to deal with those kinds of consequences.
And what made her near mistake even worse was that she’d almost forgotten why she was there. She’d fallen into borderline flirting that was nothing like how she usually was with men. But Desmond was darkly mysterious and intriguing in a way she found sexy, totally against her will. They shared an almost mystical connection, one she’d never felt before, and it was as scary as it was fascinating.
Okay. Seeking him out had been an error in judgment. Obviously. But they never crossed paths and she was starting to wonder if she’d imagined that she’d come home from the hospital with a man. It only made sense that she should be on friendly terms with her baby’s father.
Why that made sense, she couldn’t remember all at once. Desmond didn’t want a mother for his son. Just a chuck wagon. Once she helped Conner wean, she’d finally be on track to get her medical degree after six arduous years as an undergrad and one grueling year spent prepping her body to get pregnant, being pregnant and then giving birth.
In a house this size, there was literally no reason she ever had to see Desmond again. She’d managed to settle in and live here for over a week without so much as a glimpse until she’d sought him out in his workshop.
Her days fell into a rhythm that didn’t suck. Mrs. Elliot fed her and provided companionable but neutral conversation when McKenna prompted her. Clothes magically appeared cleaned and pressed in McKenna’s closet. Twice a week, her beautifully decorated bedroom and the adjoining bathroom were unobtrusively cleaned. All in all, she was drowning in luxury. And she wouldn’t apologize for enjoying it.
To shed the baby weight that had settled around her hips and stomach, she’d started swimming in the pool a couple of hours a day. Before she’d gotten pregnant, she’d jogged. But there were no trails through the heavy forest of hemlocks and maples that surrounded this gothic mansion perched at the edge of the Columbia River. Even if she found a place to run, her enormous breasts hurt when she did something overly taxing, like breathing and thinking. She could only imagine how painful it would be to jog three miles.
The pool was amazing, huge and landscaped with all sorts of indoor plants that made her feel like she was at a tropical oasis on another continent instead of in northwest Oregon where she’d spent the whole of her life. A glass ceiling let in light but there were no windows to break the illusion. She could swim uninterrupted for as long as she liked. It was heavenly.
Until she emerged from the water one day and wiped her face to see Desmond sitting on one of the lounge chairs, quietly watching her. She hadn’t seen him since the workshop incident a week ago that might have been an almost kiss.
“Hey,” she called, mystified why her pulse leaped into overdrive the second her senses registered his presence. “Been here long?”
“Long enough,” he said cryptically, his smooth voice echoing in the cavernous pool area. “Am I disturbing you?”
He’d sought her out, clearly, since he wasn’t dressed for swimming and wore an expectant expression.
So she lied. “Of course not.”
In reality he did disturb her. A lot. His eyes matched his name, piercing her to the bone when he looked at her, and she didn’t like how shivery and goose-pimply he turned her mostly bare skin. There was something about him she couldn’t put her finger on, but the man had more shadows than a graveyard. She could see them flitting around in his expression, in his demeanor, as if they weighed him down.
Until he smiled. And thank God he didn’t do that more often, because he went from sexy in an abstract way to holy-crap hot.
So she’d do everything in her power to not make him smile for however long he planned to grace her with his presence. Hopefully that would only be a few minutes. If she’d known he was going to make an appearance, she’d have brought something to cover her wet swimsuit, like a full suit of armor made of inch-thick chain mail.
The way he was looking at her made her feel exposed.
She settled for a towel, draping it around her torso like a makeshift toga, which at least covered her pointy nipples, and sat on the next lounge chair, facing him.
Desmond was wearing a white button-down shirt today, with the sleeves rolled to his forearms and, despite teasing him the other day about his fashion sense, he had such a strange, magnetic aura that she scarcely noticed anything extraneous like clothes. All she saw was him.
“Are you settling in okay?” he asked.
She had the sense the question wasn’t small talk. “Sure. What’s not to like?”
His eyebrows quirked. “The fact that you’re here in the first place.”
“You’re making it worth my while, remember?”
That shouldn’t have come out so sarcastically. After all, she’d been the one to shake her head at monetary compensation, which he’d likely have readily ponied up.
But he was making her twitchy with his shadowy gaze. After visiting his workshop, she’d looked up the things he’d invented and his mind was definitely not like other people’s. Innovation after innovation in the areas of robotics and machinery had spilled onto her screen along with published papers full of his endless theoretical ideas.
She was not a stupid person by any stretch, having graduated with a bachelor’s degree in biology and a 3.5 grade point average, but Desmond Pierce existed on another plane. And that made him thoroughly out of reach to mere mortals like her.
But he was still oh, so intriguing. And they were married. Funny how that had become front and center in her mind all at once.
He nodded. “I’m sorry my request has delayed your own plans.”
Clearly he didn’t get offended by her jokes that weren’t funny. That was a good thing.
“I have my whole life to be a doctor. Conner will only be a newborn for this small stretch of time.”
It was a huge concession, and she had her own reasons for being there, none of which she planned to share with Conner’s father. But her pathetic gratefulness for this time with her son wouldn’t go away, no matter how hard she tried to think of breast-feeding as a task instead of the bonding experience it was proving to be.
Conner would not be her son legally once Desmond filed the divorce decree that spelled out the custody arrangement—she’d give up all rights. Period. End of story. She hated how often she had to remind herself of that. She was already dreading the inevitable goodbye that would be here long before she wished.
“That’s true. I do appreciate your willingness, regardless.”
“Is that the only reason you popped in here? To thank me?” She flashed a grin before thinking better of it. They weren’t friends hanging out, even though it seemed too easy to forget that. “I would have taken a text message.”
“I despise text messages.”
“Really?” Curiously, she eyed him. “Electronic communication seems like it would be right up your alley.”
He shifted uncomfortably, breaking eye contact. “Why, because I’m not as verbally equipped as others?”
“Please.” She snorted before realizing he was serious. “There’s nothing about you that’s ill equipped. I meant because you’re the Frankenstein of electronics.”
Thoughtfully, he absorbed that comment and she could see it pinging around in his brain, looking for a place to land. Then he shrugged. “I don’t like text messages because they’re intrusive and distracting, forcing me to respond.”
“You can ignore them if you want,” she advised and bit back another smile. Sometimes he was so cute. “There’s no rule.”
“There is. It’s like a social contract I have to fulfill. The message sits there and blinks and blinks until I read it. And then I know exactly who is sitting on the other end waiting on me to complete the transaction. I can’t just let that go.” His brows came together. “That’s why I don’t give people my cell phone number.”
“I have your cell phone number.”
“You’re not people.”
She couldn’t help it. She laughed. And that apparently gave him permission to smile, which was so gorgeous she had a purely physical reaction to it. Somehow he must have picked up on the sharp tug through her insides because the vibe between them got very heavy, very fast.
Mesmerized, she stared at him as the smiles slipped off both their faces.
Why was she so attracted to him? He wasn’t her type. Actually she didn’t have a type because she’d spent the last six years working her ass off to earn a four-year degree, putting herself through college with as many flexible retail and restaurant jobs as she could score. She couldn’t do the same for medical school, not unless she wanted to be fifty when she graduated.
She had to remember that this man held the keys to her future and to keep her wits about her.
Desmond cleared his throat and the moment faded. “I didn’t seek you out to talk about text messages. I wanted to let you know that Larissa has resigned her position. Effective immediately.”
“The nanny quit?” That sucked. She’d liked Larissa and had thoroughly approved of Desmond’s choice. “And with no notice? Nice. Did she at least give you a reason?”
“Her mother had a stroke. She felt compelled to be the one managing her mother’s care.”
“Well, okay. That gets a pass.”
Unexpectedly, McKenna’s eyelids pricked in sympathy as she imagined her own mother in a similar circumstance, lifeless and hooked up to machines as the doctors performed analysis to determine the extent of the brain damage the stroke had caused. Of course, her mother would have refused to be cared for in a real hospital, stubborn to the end, even if it led to her own grave. Like it had for Grandfather, who had shared the beliefs of their community.
McKenna was the outcast who put her faith in science and technology.
“She did the right thing,” McKenna said. “Have you started the process of hiring a replacement?”
“I have. I contacted the service I used to find Larissa and they’re sending me the résumés of some candidates. I’d hoped you’d review them with me.”
“Me?” Oh, God. He wanted her to help him pick the woman who would essentially raise her child? How could she do that?
A thousand emotions flew through her at once as Desmond nodded.
“It would be helpful if you would, yes,” he said, oblivious to her shock and disquiet.
“You did fine the first time without me,” she squawked and cleared her throat. “You don’t need my help.”
“The first time I had nine months to select the right person for the job,” he countered. “I have one day this time. And I trust your judgment.”
“You do?” That set her back so much that she sagged against the weave of the lounge chair.
“Of course. You’re intelligent, or you wouldn’t have been accepted into medical school, and you have a unique ability to understand people.”
She frowned. “I do not. Mostly I piss people off.”
Her mouth was far too fast to express exactly what was on her mind, and she did not suffer fools easily. Neither made her very popular with men, which was fine by her. Men were just roadblocks she did not have time for.
Desmond cocked his head in the way she’d come to realize meant he was processing what she’d just said. “You don’t make me mad.”
“That’s because I like you,” she muttered before thinking through how that might come across. Case in point. Her mouth often operated independently of her brain.
His expression closed in, dropping shadows between them again. “That will change soon enough. I’m not easy to get along with, nor should you try. There’s a reason I asked you to be my son’s surrogate.”
She should let it go. The shadows weren’t her business and he’d pretty much just told her to back off. But the mystery of Desmond Pierce had caught her by the throat and she couldn’t stop herself from asking since he’d brought up the subject.
“Why did you ask me?”
Surely a rich, good-looking guy could have women crawling out of the woodwork to be his baby mama with the snap of his fingers. Obviously that wasn’t what he’d wanted.
Coolly, he surveyed her. “Because I dislike not having control. Our agreement means you have no rights and no ability to affect what happens to Conner.”
“But I do,” she countered quietly. “You put me in exactly that position by asking me to breast-feed him. I could walk away tomorrow and it would be devastating for you both.”
“Yes. It is an unfortunate paradox. But it should give you an idea how greatly I care about my son that I am willing to make such a concession. I didn’t do it lightly.”
Geez. His jaw was like granite and she had an inkling why he considered himself difficult to get along with. Desmond didn’t want a mother for his son because he wasn’t much of a sharer.
Good to know. Domineering geniuses weren’t her cup of tea. “Well, we have no problems, then. I’m not interested in pulling the parental rug out from under you. I’m helping you out because I’m the only one who can, but I’m really looking forward to medical school.”
This time with Conner and Desmond was just a detour. It had to be, no matter how deep her son might sink his emotional hooks.
Desmond nodded. “That is why I picked you. Mr. Lively did a thorough screening of all the potential surrogates and your drive to help people put you head and shoulders above the rest. Your principles are your most attractive quality.”
Um...what? She blinked, but the sincerity in his expression didn’t change. Had he just called her attractive because of her stubborn need to do things her own way? That was a first. And it warmed her dangerously fast.
Her parents had lambasted those same principles for as long as she could recall, begging her to date one of the men who lived in their community and have a lot of babies, never mind that she had less than no interest in either concept. The men bored her to tears, not to mention they embraced her parents’ love of alternative medicine, which meant she had nothing in common with them.
How great was it that the man she’d ultimately married appreciated her desire to become a medical doctor instead of a homeopathic healer?
And how terrible to realize that Desmond Pierce had chosen her strictly because he expected she’d easily leave her child without a backward glance.
He was right—she would do it because she’d given her word. But there wasn’t going to be anything easy about it.
Three (#u7e1b2b76-e8fc-59f0-9fe7-62db84f15bcd)
Since the nanny had left him high and dry, Desmond was the one stuck sorting out his son’s 3:00 a.m. meltdown. Conner woke yowling for God knew what reason. Larissa had always taken care of that in the past, leaving Des blessedly ignorant to his son’s needs.
Unfortunately, after twenty minutes of rocking, soothing, toys and terse commands, nothing had worked to stop the crying. If he’d known Conner would pull this kind of stunt, Des would have gone to bed before 1:00 a.m. Two hours of sleep did not make this easier, that was for sure.
Desmond finally conceded that he no longer had the luxury of pretending McKenna didn’t exist just to keep his growing attraction to her under wraps. Larissa’s printed instructions clearly said the baby nursed at night. He’d been hoping for a miracle that would prevent him from having to disturb Conner’s mother. That did not happen.
So that’s how he found himself knocking on her door in the dead of night with a crying baby in his arms. Definitely not the way he’d envisioned seeing McKenna Moore in a bedroom. And he’d had more than a few fantasies about McKenna and a bed.
She answered a minute later, dressed in a conservative white robe that shouldn’t have been the slightest bit alluring. It absolutely was, flashing elegant bits of leg as she leaned into the puddle of light from the hall.
“Woke up hungry, did he?” she said with more humor than Des expected at three in the morning. “Give him here,” she instructed and, when he handed over the baby, cradled him to her bosom, murmuring as she floated to an overstuffed recliner in the corner of her room.
Funny. He hadn’t realized until this moment that she sat in it to feed Conner. He’d envisioned her snuggling deep into the crevices to read a book or to chat on the phone with her legs draped over the sides. McKenna seemed like the type to lounge in a chair instead of sitting in it properly.
The lamp on the small end table cast a circle of warmth over the chair as she settled into it and worked open her robe to feed the baby. Instantly, Conner latched on and grew quiet.
“You can come in if you want,” McKenna called to Desmond as he stood like an idiot at the door, completely extraneous and completely unable to walk away.
“I would...like to come in,” he clarified and cleared his throat because his voice sounded like a hundred frogs had crawled down his windpipe. Gingerly, he sat on the bed because the love seat that matched the recliner was too close to mother and child.
Similar to the other times he’d watched McKenna breast-feed, he couldn’t quite get over the initial shock of the mechanics. It was one thing to have an academic understanding of lactation, but quite another to see it in action.
Especially when he had such a strong reaction, like he was witnessing something divine.
The beauty of it filled him and he couldn’t look away, even as she repositioned the baby and her dark nipple flashed. God, that shouldn’t be so affecting. This woman was feeding his son in the most sacrificial of ways. But neither could he deny the purely physical reaction he had to her naked breast.
He couldn’t stop being unnaturally attracted to her any more than he could stop the sun from rising. Seeing her with Conner only heightened that attraction.
Mother and child together created a package he liked.
He shouldn’t have stayed. But he couldn’t have left.
This quandary he was in had to stop. McKenna would be out of his life in two months and he’d insist that she not contact him again. Hell, he probably wouldn’t have to insist. She was resolute in her goal of becoming a doctor, as they’d discussed at the pool yesterday.
In the meantime he’d drive himself insane if he didn’t get their relationship, such as it was, on better footing. There was absolutely no reason they couldn’t have a working rapport as they took care of the baby together. At least until he hired a new nanny.
“Is it okay that I brought him to you?” he asked gruffly. “I don’t know what you worked out with Larissa.”
He felt like he should be doing more to care for his son. But all he could do was make sure the woman who could feed him was happy.
“Perfectly fine. She’s been trying a bottle at night with different types of formula to see if she can get his stomach to accept it when he’s good and hungry. Hasn’t worked so far.” McKenna shrugged one shoulder, far too chipper for having been woken unceremoniously in the middle of the night. “So I take over when she gets frustrated.”
“She didn’t mention that in her instructions.” Probably distracted with trying to pack and deal with travel arrangements on such short notice. So he reeled back his annoyance that he hadn’t followed the routine his son was probably used to. It wasn’t anyone’s fault.
Clearly he needed to take a more active role in caring for Conner. This was the perfect opportunity to get clued in on whatever Larissa and McKenna had been doing thus far.
“Taking care of a baby is kind of a moving target,” she said.
“Speaking from your years of experience?” He hadn’t meant for that to come out sarcastically.
But she just laughed, which he appreciated far more than he should.
“I come from a very tight-knit community. We raise our babies together. I’ve been taking care of other people’s children for as long as I can remember.”
Mr. Lively had briefed him thoroughly on the cooperative community tucked into the outskirts of the Clatsop Forest where McKenna had grown up. Her unusual upbringing had been one of the reasons she’d stood out among the women he’d considered for his surrogate. “Surprising, then, that you’d be willing to give one up.”
She contemplated him for a moment. “But that’s why I was willing. I’ve seen firsthand what having a child does to a mother’s time and energy. You become its everything and there’s little left over for anything else, like your husband, let alone medical school, a grueling residency and then setting up a practice.”
“It’s not like that for you here, is it?”
“No, of course not.” She flashed him a smile. “For one, we’re not involved.”
He couldn’t resist pulling that thread. “What if we were?”
The concept hung there, writhing between them like a live thing, begging to be explored. And he wasn’t going to take it back. He wanted to know more about her, what made her tick.
“What? Involved?”
The idea intrigued her. He could read it in her expressive eyes. But then she banked it.
“That’s the whole point, Desmond. We never would have had a child together under any other circumstances. You wanted to be a single father for your own reasons, but whatever they are, the reality is that neither of us has room in our lives for getting involved.”
A timely reminder, one he shouldn’t have needed.
Even so, he couldn’t help thinking he was going about this process wrong. Instead of hiding out in his lab until he’d fully analyzed his attraction to McKenna, he should create an environment to explore it. That was the only way he could understand it well enough to make it stop. What better conditions could he ask for than plenty of time together and an impending divorce?
“As long as you’re happy while you’re here,” he said as his mind instantly turned that over. “That’s all that matters to me.”
He was nothing if not imaginative, and when he wanted something, there was little that could stop him from devising a way to get it. One of the many benefits of being a genius.
She glanced up at him after repositioning the baby. “You know what would make me happy? Finding a nanny with an expertise in weaning when the baby has formula allergies.”
“Then, tomorrow, that’s what we’ll do,” he promised her.
And if that endeavor included getting to know his child’s mother in a much more intimate way, then everyone would be happy.
* * *
The next morning, McKenna woke to a beep that signaled an incoming text message.
She sat up and reached for her phone, instantly awake despite having rolled around restlessly for an hour after Desmond had left her room with the baby.
Definitely not the way she’d envisioned him visiting her bedroom in the middle of the night, though she shouldn’t be having such vivid fantasies about her husband. Hard not to when she’d developed a weird habit of dreaming about him—especially when she was awake—and fantasies weren’t so easy to shut off when she had little to occupy her time other than feeding the baby.
Desmond’s name leaped out at her from the screen. He’d sent her a text message.
That shouldn’t make her smile. But she couldn’t help picturing him phone in hand as he fat-fingered his way through what should be simple communication.
Come to my workshop when you’re free.
God, he was so adorable. Why that made her mushy inside, she had no clue. But, obviously, he didn’t realize she was bored out of her mind pretty much all the time. She was definitely free. Especially if it meant she got to visit Frankenstein’s wonderland again.
She brushed her hair and washed her face. Rarely did she bother with cosmetics as she’d been blessed with really great skin that needed little to stay supple and blemish free. Why mess with it?
In less than five minutes, she was ready to go downstairs. Desmond glanced up from his computer nearly the moment she walked through the glass door of his workshop. “That was fast.”
She shrugged casually, or as casually as she could when faced with a man she’d last seen in the middle of the night while she’d been half-naked. “I’m at your beck and call, right?”
Something flashed through his expression that added a few degrees to the temperature. “Are you? I thought you were here for Conner.”
“That’s what I meant,” she corrected hastily, lest he get the wrong idea.
Though judging by the way he was looking at her, it was already too late. He was such a strange mix of personality, sometimes warm and inviting, other times prickly. But always fascinating. And she liked pushing his buttons.
She shouldn’t be pushing any buttons.
Desmond was not her type. There were far too many complications at play here to indulge in the rising heat between them. “But apparently I can be persuaded to make myself available to his father, as well. Pending the subject of discussion, of course.”
Desmond crossed his arms and leaned back in his chair, his expression decidedly warmer. “What would you like to talk about?”
She shrugged and bit back the flirtatious comment on the tip of her tongue. She was pretty sure he hadn’t summoned her to pick up where they’d left off the last time she’d made the mistake of cornering him in his workshop—when she’d been convinced he was about to kiss her.
“I figured you had something specific you wanted. Since you crawled out of the Dark Ages to send me a text.”
The corners of his mouth lifted in a small smile that shouldn’t have tingled her spine the way it did.
“Isn’t that your preferred method of communication? I can adapt.”
The ambience in the workshop was definitely different than the normal vibe between them. If she didn’t know better, she’d think he was flirting with her. “You don’t strike me as overly flexible. Maybe I should be adapting to you.”
His gaze narrowed, sharpening, making her feel very much like a small, tasty rabbit. Never one to let a man make her feel hunted, she breached the space between them, skirting the long end of the worktable to put herself on the same side as Desmond.
Apparently she was going to let him push her buttons instead.
Last time she’d cornered him, he’d been guarded. Not this time. His crossed arms unknotted and fell to his sides, opening him to her perusal, and that was so interesting, she looked her fill. The man was beautifully built, with a long, lean torso and a classically handsome face made all the more dashing by a sparse beard. It was a perfect complement to his high cheekbones, allowing his gorgeous eyes to be the focal point.
“What would that look like?” he murmured. “If you adapted to me?”
“Oh, um... I don’t know. How do you like to communicate?”
He jerked his head toward the back of the workshop without taking his eyes off of her. “I build things. Shape them, put the pieces where they go based on the images I have in my head. I communicate through my hands.”
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