Chapter Nine #3
‘We’re getting married so I can be in his or her life. I can see how important your job is to you—I would not walk away from my business interests, either. But I intend for my child to be raised with me.’
‘I never saw you as the paternal type, Aristotle.’
His eyes held hers for a beat. ‘That makes two of us.’
But he was brushing her off. Giving her a pithy response rather than explaining why he’d reacted so strongly.
Something though had locked into place inside of her, telling her that, without a shadow of a doubt, there was a reason for him to have reacted as he had.
In London, he’d virtually kidnapped her, and left no real possibility for her to refuse his proposal.
‘You know what’s not in here?’
He waited for her to continue, but there was a wariness to him now, as though he knew questions had been raised inside of her that she wanted answered.
‘The day-to-day stuff.’
‘Such as?’
‘What time will you be home from work? Will we eat dinner together as a family, like this?’ She gestured to the table.
‘Will you help with bathtime? Read books to the child after dinner? Will you take him or her to school, or does that fall to a nanny—or me? How often do we go home to your mother’s, to see our parents? What about my mother in London?’
He sat back in his chair, his face a study in relaxation. ‘Some things will have to work out as we go.’
‘But what kind of father will you be? You keep saying you want to be here for our child. What does that mean?’
‘I want to be in their life.’
‘In what way?’
‘Isn’t it obvious?’
‘This is the first time I’ve seen you pretty much since we got to Athens,’ she pointed out. ‘You leave for work early, you come home late. Is that what it will be like when they’re born? Will “being there” for our child mean kisses on their forehead while they sleep?’
‘No,’ he denied flatly and then, with another quick show of emotion, he reached for his water glass, hand curling around it until his knuckles were white. ‘It means I’ll be in their life, however they need.’
She contemplated that. ‘This contract is the most thorough document I’ve ever read. You have a paragraph in here about what happens if either of us ends up in a coma, for God’s sake. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to discuss the far more likely future outcomes.’
‘I have no opinion on this,’ he said after a beat, placing the glass down slightly harder than necessary.
‘You are a man who has an opinion on everything.’
‘Not children, and how to raise them.’
‘Yet you’re adamant that getting married is the “only” way. Why?’
His eyes narrowed. ‘Are you regretting your acceptance of my proposal?’
‘It wasn’t a proposal, and we both know it. It was an insistence.’
A muscle jerked low in his jaw. ‘What would you have done if our positions had been reversed?’
‘And you were pregnant with my baby?’
It was a joke, but it fell flat. His expression didn’t change. His eyes continued to bore into her with a look of barely contained frustration.
‘If I somehow had the power to make all the parenting decisions, and chose to keep you out of their life. If you had the ability to act, to pull whatever strings you could to make sure that wouldn’t happen, wouldn’t you have done it?’
She opened her mouth to say something, but his words replayed in her head, and a different kind of comprehension dawned, suspicion unfolding.
‘Is that why you slept with me just now?’ she asked.
His expression shifted then, but she didn’t notice.
‘Was it some kind of insurance policy? A way to keep me here, in case I don’t sign this? ’
He stared at her as though she’d sprouted ten heads. ‘If I had my way, our marriage would be this—’ he gestured to the contract ‘—and nothing more. Sex should be no part of this.’
‘Just what every woman likes to hear.’
‘You are not every woman, Rosemary. You are pregnant with my child, and soon you will be my wife. Our marriage will run more smoothly if we don’t make that mistake again.’
She winced at that.
‘You know it was a mistake,’ he growled, but he moved then, reaching out and putting his hand over hers, so sparks began to simmer just beneath her skin.
‘But it was the most enjoyable mistake I’ve ever made.
Including the other two times we’ve slept together.
I should never have been with you. Not once.
Not twice. Not tonight. But there is something about you… ’
Her throat felt thick as she swallowed. ‘It won’t happen again,’ she said, pulling her hand away and caressing it in her lap. The sparks he’d ignited were like flames now. ‘You know, I’m really tired. All that dangerous scaling of ladders, you know…’
‘That reminds me,’ he said, not missing a beat. ‘I’m putting in a handyman clause.’
She was too emotionally drained to argue with him. ‘Do what you want,’ she said, pushing back her chair. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow,’ she said, with no idea if that was true or not.
The last thought Aristotle had before giving up on sleep altogether was the realisation that sleeping with Rosemary definitely hadn’t succeeded in getting her out of his system. If anything, it had driven her deep, deep inside of it, so she was all he could think of, all he could want.
He’d thought that going over the contract with a simple platter dinner would re-establish a businesslike footing, putting them both on the same page once more.
Removing sex from the equation. But watching Rosemary eat was its own torturous kind of foreplay.
The way her fingers delicately collected grapes and popped them into her mouth, her lips juicy from the olives, her cheeks still flushed from being made love to, her hair tousled in a way that made him itch to reach over and grab it, to drag her head to his so he could kiss her senseless for the rest of the night.
Having sex with Rosemary had been a mistake, just like he’d said, but, unlike most mistakes Aristotle had ever made, this was one he couldn’t promise he wouldn’t repeat.
Even when he knew he shouldn’t, every fibre of his being was aching to be with her again.
So much so he wanted to forget about common sense and go to her room and kiss her awake, stir her to that same fever-pitch she’d been in for him earlier that evening.
Of course, he’d never do it. He was on the brink of losing control, but he still had just enough left to keep those feelings at bay.
He gave up on sleep though, and stalked into the bathroom instead, turning the tap to blast icy water out. A cold shower might help—at least, for now.