The Marriage Contract
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
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.