Million Dollar Marriage Page 12

  “But I knew better. And it doesn’t matter. Look, Lucy, if you’ve changed your mind and want out of this arrangement, just say the word.”

  He looked at her, waiting. She drew a breath. “Do you want out of it?”

  His brows drew together. “I don’t know how to answer that.”

  “Well, neither do I.”

  He nodded, maybe seeing the futility of asking such a question now that it had been turned around on him. “If we stick with it…then I’d like for us to start over.”

  “Start over?”

  “Clarify the terms of our arrangement, and start over. No misunderstandings this time. Everything spelled out.”

  Lowering her gaze, she said, “About sex, you mean?”

  Holden blew air through his teeth. Then he turned and paced away. “I’d better get the bacon. I hope you’re hungry.”

  She wasn’t, but that didn’t seem to matter. By the time she had dragged on the robe, and hauled herself into the bathroom to brush her teeth and run a comb through her hair, he had a full-blown breakfast set out on the dining room table. Hash browns and hotcakes and bacon and eggs. A breakfast fit for a heart attack.

  He pulled out her chair, and she sat down. Then he refilled her coffee cup before taking his own seat.

  “Wow,” she said. “I didn’t know you could cook.”

  “There’s a lot about me you don’t know.”

  She nodded. “So, go on, will you? With…what you were saying before. About…terms.”

  Holden closed his eyes. “This is not easy for me,” he said.

  “No. Not for me, either. But I think it will be easier if you just lay it out on the table, Holden. Just get it said, and we’ll take it from there.”

  He nodded. “Okay. That’s what I’ll do then.”

  She looked at him, waiting. He delayed the inevitable by filling his plate, but when he’d finished, he looked down at the food as if he’d lost his appetite.

  “Holden…”

  “All right, here it is. I am attracted to you. It was unfair of me to try to tell you I didn’t want you, because I do.”

  She nodded. “Well…”

  “I guess I didn’t need to say that at this point. I pretty much let that bull out of the barnyard last night, didn’t I?”

  Her cheeks were heating, but she managed to nod.

  “So, uh, this would be the point where you say something similar to me,” he said.

  She looked up from her empty plate, where she’d been staring hard enough to burn holes for a full tick of the clock. “You already know I want you, Holden.”

  “It might have been the wine.”

  “It wasn’t.”

  “Okay. Okay, so we’ve established that. So here’s the thing. I…I am not—” He bit his lip. “I’m not a one-woman man, Lucy. I’m not husband material. I’m not the kind of guy who would be good for any decent lady to settle down with or fall in love with or anything like that.”

  She nodded. But she didn’t want to look at him just now, so she started putting food on her plate to avoid having to.

  “I married you to get my inheritance. That’s all. And once I do that, this thing will be over. I don’t want there to be any misunderstandings about that. I don’t want you to go thinking—or hoping—for anything different.”

  Again she nodded. “And you thought I would assume that if we had sex, that signaled some sort of change of heart,” she said slowly. “You were afraid I would start hoping for something…ridiculous. Like a real relationship with you or, God forbid, a real marriage.” She lifted her head, at last, and met his eyes. “Holden, you’ve done everything but hold up a neon sign telling me that isn’t going to happen. Trust me, I believe you.”

  He sighed, his shoulders slumping forward in relief. “Good. I just… I don’t want to end up hurting you again.”

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “I’m not gonna let you.”

  He nodded. Then he dug into his food without much enthusiasm. Ate for a few moments. Lucy did likewise, though she wasn’t much hungrier than he seemed to be.

  Then she lifted her head, sipped her coffee to wash down her food and said, “So where does this leave things between us?”

  He met her eyes, chewing, brows lifted as if he didn’t understand the question.

  “Regarding sex,” she said.

  Holden choked on whatever he’d just swallowed, reached for his coffee, and slugged enough of it down to clear his throat. Then he finally drew a breath and leaned back in his chair, staring at her.

  Lucy told herself not to be embarrassed, but she was anyway. Still, this was necessary. Her life was on the line, as well as her only chance at ever becoming a mother. This was important to her, dammit. More important than her pride or her morals or anything else.

  When he got hold of himself, Holden seemed to be searching for words. Finally he found some. “Look, Lucy, I don’t think sex between us is a hell of a great idea.”

  She lowered her head.

  “But…”

  She looked up again. “But?”

  Holden looked completely baffled. “Look, I’m not gonna kill myself trying to play the martyr here. I’m no saint, Lucy. And I’m not made of stone, either.”

  She shook her head at him. “You’re saying?”

  “I’m not going to initiate anything. Because I think it’s a mistake. I think you’re going to end up wanting more from me than I can give, and getting hurt.”

  She nodded. “But if…I’m the one to initiate things?”

  “After everything I’ve just said, you would still want to?”

  “Holden, we have to stay married for a year. I just don’t see why we can’t let ourselves…enjoy it.”

  He slanted her a glance. “You’re saying…you enjoyed it last night?”

  “What, you didn’t pick up on that when I was screaming your name?”

  He licked his lips, and she could almost see him remembering.

  “I have to tell you, it was a far cry from the first time.”

  His brows went up. “That bad, was it?”

  “Worse.” She smiled, but let it die when he searched her eyes again. “Holden, if I were to tell you that I still want you…”

  He closed his eyes. “Like I said, I’m not made of stone.”

  Smiling just a little, she nodded. It was going to work. She was going to get pregnant. Have a baby. Of her own.

  And remembering last night, thinking about how Holden had been with her, made her realize that the process of getting what she wanted wasn’t going to be an unpleasant one. In fact, just sitting here discussing it with him was making her temperature rise and her body grow moist and hungry.

  She pushed her plate away, got to her feet while Holden looked on. Time to seal the deal. Once more for good measure. She had to be sure. “I have a deal of my own to offer you, Holden.”

  He looked scared to death. “Wh-what would that be?”

  “Make love to me again. I’d like to try it once when we’re both sober. And after that…I’ll leave you alone.”

  He closed his eyes. “Lucy…”

  “Holden, you’re the one who just laid it all on the table. And this is me, initiating things.”

  “I don’t understand you at all.” He got to his feet, though, closing his hand around hers.

  She lowered her head. “Holden… I’m not all that…experienced. And the few times I have…been with a man…I never—I mean, he couldn’t make me…”

  Holden’s eyes slammed closed so hard and so fast she knew he understood what she was getting at. At least this much hadn’t been a lie. He shuddered visibly.

  “I like what I felt with you last night, Holden. I want to feel it again. And if you still don’t understand me, then—” she parted the robe, and let it fall slowly down off her shoulders to pool on the floor around her feet “—then maybe this will help clarify things for you.”

  “Holy mother of… Lucy….” His eyes said it all. He backed away
from the table, to come around it to where she stood, and he moved so jerkily that he knocked his chair over and didn’t even seem to notice. And then he stood in front of her, his gaze raking her body as fire came to life in his eyes.

  He was hers. Reduced to a trembling, totally erect slave willing to obey her every wish. And she knew it. It was kind of thrilling, actually, to realize that he was this powerfully attracted to her, when for so long, she’d believed him indifferent.

  And as he wrapped his arms around her, pulled her close against him, as his hands and his mouth went to work eliciting sensations she’d never known before, she thought maybe she wouldn’t keep her promise to leave him alone, after this. Maybe that was a promise she didn’t want to keep at all.

  Nine

  Lucinda Brightwater Fortune was not turning out to be at all what Holden had expected her to be. He’d thought she would be the way he’d always thought of her. Far above being overwhelmed by anything as earthy as sexual desire. He’d thought she would be cool, cold even, in the physical sense.

  She wasn’t.

  When he made love to her it was like nothing he’d experienced before in his life, and he had experienced a lot. She was hot, and hungry for him, and so responsive to his every touch, his every kiss, his every whisper. He hadn’t realized he’d married such a firecracker. But he had. And when she told him she hadn’t felt these things with any other man she’d been with, he was inclined to believe her. Maybe that was partly because it was good for his ego to believe her. And maybe it was just because he knew it was the same for him.

  What the hell he was supposed to make of that, he didn’t know. He just knew that if she wanted him, he didn’t have the strength to refuse her. He’d tried to be honorable and do the right thing by her, but he’d never claimed to be a saint.

  It was late morning by the time he got around to putting his clothes on and headed outside to survey the damage from the storm the night before. There were a couple of trees down. One of the trees had snapped the line from the generator to the house on its way. At least neither of them had hit the car when they’d come crashing down. And the driveway was still clear. He couldn’t stay here indefinitely, but he could clean up the mess. He headed back inside to get what he needed.

  “How bad is it?”

  Holden looked up at the sound of her voice. And when he saw her, he got an odd little shiver up his spine. She was like two women. Right now, she was Lucinda in the Sky again. Clean, a white cotton shirt tucked into her jeans, her still damp hair pulled back into a ponytail. She had that fresh, girl-next-door face on again. And he could hardly believe she was the same woman who’d clawed his back and panted hot words into his ear this morning.

  She looked as if she’d showered. He puzzled over that for a moment.

  “The lake,” she said, reading his face. “I went down and washed up there while you were out surveying the damage. So, how bad is it?”

  Damn. He would have liked to have gone with her, naked, into that cold water. Damn.

  “Uh, not too bad. There are a couple of trees down. I need to grab the chain saw out of the back room and clean up the mess.”

  “You want some help?”

  His brows went up. “You want to help?”

  She nodded. “I’m kind of eager to get back. Want to check in on that preemie and his mother.”

  Holden lowered his head. “I’m sorry we have to spend the morning like this. I’d hoped we could talk. Get to know each other a little better before we headed back.”

  She averted her eyes. “I kind of thought we had.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s not what I meant.”

  She nodded, lifted her gaze, looked slightly reluctant. “Well, we can talk while we work.”

  “Okay. I’ll get that saw.”

  She wouldn’t have expected him to power up a chain saw and attack a fallen tree like a seasoned lumberjack. She would have expected him to get on his cell phone and call for help, maybe order up a crew of blue-collar men to come and take care of this mess. She would have expected him to fix things up with his checkbook, not with his hands.

  And his arms, and his shoulders and…

  She was glad the chain saw made talking pretty much impossible. She didn’t want to get to know him any more than she already had. She was afraid of that. She hadn’t acknowledged the reason why, but it was in there just the same. All she wanted from Holden Fortune was a baby, and the money for her clinic, and to be allowed to keep right on seeing him as the kind of man he seemed to believe he was. A womanizer, a cad, a rogue just like his father.

  She didn’t want to learn otherwise. Because if he wasn’t a total bastard, then what she was doing was really horrible.

  But he was. Hadn’t he agreed to have sex with her as long as she didn’t expect any feelings along with it? No decent man would say something like that.

  Anyway, it didn’t matter.

  She tore her eyes off him as he worked, wearing a tank top now that revealed way too much of him for comfort. Lucy picked up the fireplace-size chunks of wood he sawed away from the tree, and stacked them in the woodpile near the front of the cabin.

  She tried very hard not to keep looking his way. And she also tried not to remember what it had been like to make love to him…last night, and then again this morning, and then again this morning, and—

  Hell. She’d expected it to be quick and clinical. No more intimate, really, than artificial insemination would have been. He was just a sperm donor, after all.

  But it hadn’t been like that at all. He played her the way Mozart played the piano. He made her body come alive, her nerves sing, her heart thunder. He made her wish—

  Oh, no. She wasn’t going to fall into that trap. No. Uh-uh.

  She piled more wood.

  The sound of the chain saw finally died away, and Holden began helping her pick up logs and stack them. She glanced at the fallen tree. All the big parts had been cut into manageable hunks, and the smaller, bushy limbs laid all over the place.

  “Now we can talk,” Holden said, grinning at her as he brought a stack to where she stood near the woodpile.

  She shrugged, and her nerves kicked in. “About what?”

  “About you. I told you a whole lot about my family last night, so I figure it’s your turn.”

  “Oh.” She thought a second. That wouldn’t be so bad. She couldn’t learn anything too deep about him if she were the one doing the talking, right? Not that she really suspected there was anything all that deep to learn. He was just what he seemed. “Well…let’s see. What do you want to know?”

  Side by side, they walked back to the driveway, their arms loaded with wood. It smelled good, the mingled scents of chain saw exhaust and sawdust and the wood itself.

  “What made you decide to become a doctor?”

  She went still for just a moment, then straightened with her arms loaded down. “My mother.”

  “She encouraged you?”

  “She…died when I was twelve.”

  “Oh, hell. I’m sorry, Lucy.”

  “It’s all right. It was tough, but I got through it. It was ovarian cancer. When I started studying medicine I realized there had been warning signs. If enough had been known back then, they might have been able to prevent it.”

  Holden’s eyes were on her, soft and sympathetic. “Matthew’s mother died of cancer, too. I’m pretty sure that’s why he took up medicine.”

  She nodded. “It’s not an uncommon motivator.”

  “So what were these warning signs you mentioned?”

  Shrugging, Lucy carried her logs to the pile, and unloaded them one by one. “She had a lot of trouble conceiving, which is why I’m an only child. I imagine there were precancerous cysts even then. If someone had caught on, diagnosed them soon enough…” Another shrug, and a sigh.

  “Then, what?”

  “I don’t know. The sane thing would have been to have her ovaries removed. But I’m not sure she’d have done it. She wanted
another child very badly.”

  “But she wouldn’t have died trying. Would she?”

  Lucy brushed the sawdust from her hands. “She might have. The maternal urge can be pretty powerful, you know.”

  He frowned, and she didn’t like that look, so she hurried back to the wood scattered on the ground, to pick up some more.

  “It must have been tough on you, losing your mom when you were so young.”

  “It was.”

  “And what about your dad? He must have been there for you, helped you get through it, huh?”

  Lucy shook her head. “Not really. Dad kind of withdrew into his grief after Mom died. He was there but he wasn’t, you know? He was sort of…disconnected. Distant. It was like he shut down emotionally.”

  “In what way?”

  More wood. Another trip to the pile. “Well, he stopped feeling. He didn’t get mad, or sad or happy or anything. He just seemed to hover in some state of…nothing.”

  “So you aren’t close to him anymore.”

  “No. I mean, I pay the obligatory visits at Christmas and Father’s Day. He calls on my birthday. But there’s not much of a bond there anymore. Once Mom was gone, we just grew apart. He moved to Dallas right after I left for college.”

  “That’s really sad, Lucy.”

  She lifted her chin, forced a smile. “Sure a far cry from your family, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah. Sometimes mine are too close and too involved.”

  “I got that impression at our, uh, wedding.”

  “Logan? Hell, he’s got chivalry coming out his ears. Probably thought you needed fair warning, and he’d be the only one noble enough to give it to you.”

  “I suppose his intentions were good.”

  “Yeah, well, they usually are. He doesn’t exactly approve of my life-style. None of my family does.”

  Her lips pulled tight. Holden’s gaze was too sharp, too attentive, and he noticed. “What?” he asked.

  “I was just thinking how disappointed they’ll be when they realize this marrying and settling down routine of yours was all a sham.”

  He shook his head. “You’re probably right. But we’ll have plenty of time to worry about that later.”