Chapter Ten
‘Good morning. Coffee?’
She startled as, bleary-eyed, she entered the kitchen to find Aristotle very much still in situ.
Her hands instinctively reached for the short hem of her nightshirt—it barely covered her hips.
Then again, she’d had no expectation of finding him here.
Based on past experience, Aristotle was usually gone by now.
Today, though, he wasn’t even wearing a suit.
‘Why aren’t you at work?’ she asked defensively, thinking of the bird’s nest that was her hair and her make-up-free face. She glanced quickly at the clock which showed it was after eight.
When she looked back at him, her pulse went into overdrive, because his gaze was roaming her body as though mentally undressing her, remembering every curve and indent of skin, every colour and shade, every inch.
‘Aristotle—’ she said unevenly.
It was meant to be a warning, but she heard the longing in her voice. The plea. Take me. She swallowed quickly. Last night had been a mistake, but as for getting him out of her system, there wasn’t a hope in hell of it being so quickly achieved.
‘We didn’t finish our negotiation last night.’
‘Is that what that was?’
‘Every contract is a starting point. This is a draft. I expect you to have changes to make.’
‘And you’ll go along with them?’
‘If they’re reasonable. Hence the term negotiation.’
Her eyes fell to the document between them as his words took on a whole new meaning. Or perhaps it was that they coincided with the thoughts she was already having, about the way they sparked off each other, and how hard it would be to contain that.
‘I think we should write in a sex clause,’ she said, half holding her breath.
The air between them thickened and sparked with electricity.
‘As in, no sex?’ His voice was hard to read.
She moved to the contract and flicked through the corners, fidgeting her way through the awkwardness of this. ‘I don’t think that’s practical.’
More sparks in the atmosphere, and she felt her skin tingling.
‘We have to make sure it is.’
‘But what if there’s another way?’ she insisted.
‘Okay. I’ll humour you.’
Her lip twisted at that. Last night, over dinner, it had been easy to let those old doubts creep back in, her lack of confidence with men, and this man in particular, ingrained in Rosie.
But she wasn’t that shy twenty-year-old any more, and she had no reason to doubt that Aristotle’s desire for her was authentic. And as overpowering as her own for him.
‘Do you want me?’ she asked, crossing her arms over her chest, ignoring the intense vulnerability that came from asking this question.
He stared at her for so long that the vulnerability stretched and grew, but then he nodded once. ‘Obviously.’
A spark of pleasure ignited in her bloodstream. His honesty was not a surprise, but it was very welcome.
‘Did last night make you want me less?’
She held her breath, waiting for his answer, hoping it would match hers.
‘Aristotle?’ she prompted when he just stared at her wordlessly for so long she wondered if he was going to ignore her.
‘No.’ The word almost seemed dragged from him, from the depths of his soul, against his will. ‘If anything, the opposite is true.’
Triumph flared inside of her. ‘I feel the same,’ she said quickly. ‘Honestly, I think we’d be na?ve to stand here and act like it’s not going to happen again.’
His jaw clenched. ‘We do have a say in that.’
‘Do we?’ she murmured. ‘If that were true, last night would never have happened, right?’
He dragged a hand through his hair and shifted his head in what she took to be a nod.
‘So, what if we prepare for that?’
He crossed his arms, studying her, waiting for her to continue.
She glanced down at the contract, flicking the corners once more. ‘Let’s try to build in some parameters around it. Such as how often is okay, and the fact we both know it’s just a physical thing. Like an itch we have to scratch from time to time. Until we don’t.’
‘Until we’re over it?’ he prompted.
She nodded quickly. ‘And how that happens. I just think it’s super unrealistic to pretend we can control this.
’ She swallowed. ‘I mean, maybe it’s hormones, or the fact we made a baby together, but it’s just hard to imagine us living together and not occasionally making that same mistake all over again. ’
He continued to stare at her.
‘So, given that this contract covers pretty much every contingency imaginable, it would be shortsighted not to include a sex clause.’
‘Just in case.’
She nodded once.
‘Agreed.’
She let out a breath she hadn’t realised she’d been holding onto. ‘I mean, we don’t have to get your lawyers to actually put it into the contract. We can do it ourselves.’ She flushed to the roots of her hair. ‘The contract, I mean.’
His eyes sparked to hers, amusement lighting their obsidian depths. He reached for the front page of the contract, which had only their names on it, and turned it over, then retrieved a pen from the top drawer.
On the occasions that Aristotle Machairas and Rosemary Machairas/Richardson have sex, both parties acknowledge it means nothing.
She read along over his shoulder, and suggested, ‘Both parties agree to notify the other if they develop feelings.’
He transcribed that, word for word.
‘Anything else?’ she murmured, only now realising how close she was standing to him, and taking a subtle step to the side.
He began to write once more.
If either party wishes to initiate a sexual relationship with another person, they will first discuss it with the parties to this agreement.
Her heart pounded hard then dropped to her toes.
She hadn’t even thought about other people.
With good reason. It wasn’t as though she’d had a hectic dating life.
Between the two times she’d had ill-considered sex with the man she was going to marry, she’d been with two other men.
Both short-lived, unsatisfying and uncomplicated.
But Aristotle was nothing like Rosie. He’d been with more women than he could count.
‘Good?’ he asked, turning to face her, with no idea of the small emotional bomb that was detonating inside of her.
The parts of her that wanted to scream nooooo at the thought of Artistotle—her husband-to-be, the father of her child—having affairs with other women.
Oh, he’d no doubt be very discreet, for the sake of their child, and his reputation, but what did that matter?
She’d be married to him, knowing he was driving other women wild, while she was home with their baby?
Her stomach twisted at the perils of the situation she found herself in.
She couldn’t say why it unsettled her so much, because emotions weren’t involved.
Yet a possessive heat stole through her, making it impossible to contemplate a time when this man would not be hers. She stifled the thought immediately.
He was not hers.
He’d probably never be anyone’s.
And that was for the best, because Rosie felt exactly the same way.
She’d seen first-hand what that kind of possessiveness could do to a person, and a life.
Her mother had ‘loved’ her father to the point of derangement.
When he’d chosen to leave she’d sought out every tool at her disposal to make his life miserable.
To destroy him however she could, including withholding his only daughter from him.
That sort of attachment—‘love’—was a recipe for disaster.
It was completely outside of what Rosie ever wanted in her life.
‘Good,’ she agreed, forcing a breezy-seeming smile as her eyes dropped back to the contract. ‘Perfect. Shall we shake on it?’
He turned to face her, and the sparks that were humming just beneath the surface exploded in a multicolour array of lights and heat. ‘I can think of better ways.’
She pushed up onto the tips of her toes, face angled to his. ‘Such as?’
He wrapped his arms around her back, pulling her to him and lifting her onto the kitchen bench, so he stood between her legs, kissing her masterfully, until there were no thoughts of other women, of contracts, of anything but this in her mind, and it was a state of bliss—even when she knew it was temporary.
Aristotle had always favoured ‘no commitment’ relationships.
No promises. Nothing serious. He had shied away from any sort of commitment, from anything that he might come to depend on—and then risk losing.
At first, it hadn’t been a conscious decision.
He’d just ended things whenever his partner had seemed too serious, breaking up with a woman before she could break up with him.
At some point, he’d realised what he was doing, and why.
He didn’t need a masters in psychology to recognise that everything could be traced back to the discovery of his adoption. The sense that his whole self-view had been forged on a lie. Nothing and no one could be trusted. It was a protective shield, in the same way this contract was.
Because with Rosemary, and their baby, he was doing something he’d never, ever wanted. He was opening himself up to someone else. Not Rosemary per se, but their baby. In committing to be in this baby’s life, he was committing to be a parent, a father.
For all that his own father had kept the truth of his parentage from him, he had also been an excellent role model. A steady constant in Aristotle’s life, until he wasn’t.
But in order to enter into this marriage, his ‘family’, he needed some protections. Some guarantees that there were guardrails in place to prevent it from getting messy. To protect him from wanting more from Rosemary than was wise—to protect them both.