Читать книгу The Marriage Contract - Kat Cantrell - Страница 9

Two

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.