Page 6

I cross the room, offering her one of the martinis—the “sopping wet” one with extra vermouth. “Well, depending on the choice you make tonight, Maine winters might be behind you for good.”
She pulls in a breath and lets it out in a rush, looking more troubled by the prospect than she did outside by the fire. “You’re really a ‘get down to business’ kind of guy, aren’t you? No foreplay, no romance, just sign away your firstborn on the dotted line and go pack your things, like some ogre in a fairy tale.”
“You know very well that I excel at foreplay.” I arch a wry brow. “And I believeyou’rethe ogre in that scenario. I told you; I have no interest in being a part of the child’s life. It’s explicitly stated in the contract that I will, in fact, refuse to do so, and thatefforts to force me into interaction with the offspring will render all benefits to you null and void.”
Her eyes narrow to slits as she searches my face.
“Something on your mind?” I ask after a moment.
She hesitates before slowly shaking her head back and forth. “No. I was going to ask who hurt you, but I already know you won’t tell me.” Her words connect like a sucker punch, a fact I do my best to hide as she adds, “But like you said, I’m good with people. I’m good at knowing why they do the things they do. And no one goes to this much trouble to have a baby and never see it again without some serious baggage in his past.”
“Or, maybe I simply have no urge to be a father,” I say in my best bored tone, refusing to give her any sign that she’s barking up the right tree. “Maybe I just want to pass on the genes my mother so desperately wants to see made manifest in a new generation, and be done with it.”
“Speaking of genes…” she says, taking a slow, lingering sip of her martini. After she swallows, her tongue teases across the seam of her lips, sending a visceral memory of the way those lips looked wrapped around my cock rocketing through my head.
That’s better. I’ll concentrate onthosememories, not the dark ones she came so close to summoning to the surface.
“Cancer on both sides of the family isn’t great,” she continues. “My mom’s was lung cancer, probably from smoking when I was little. But she hadn’t had a cigarette in decades, so there might be a genetic predisposition, too.”
“My mother was exposed to toxic chemicals as a child. So were all her sisters and her parents,” I explain. “The specialists I hired agreed that the contamination in the soil and groundwater is most likely the root of the diseases that plagued them their entire lives. And of the cancers that eventually killed them.”
Elaina winces. “God, I’m sorry. That’s awful.”
“It is,” I say, as dispassionately as if I’m talking about a junky souvenir shop closing down the block. I made my peace with “the family curse” a long time ago, and took my revenge against the people who caused it. Every man who invested a dime in that development, knowing full well their company had gotten the land dirt cheap because it wasn’t fit for human habitation, has faced financial ruin at my hands.
For a while, I considered embracing vigilante justice in more than an economic sense. But if I’d been caught, my mother would have been left with no family outside a federal prison. That knowledge helped keep my darkest impulses in check.
But just barely…
Yet another reason I have no business evenconsideringbecoming a parent. Well-adjusted people fit for childrearing don’t so much as flirt with the idea of murder, let alone have to spend a few months talking themselves out of it.
“But prior to exposure,” I continue, “both sides of my family were relatively healthy. Some heart disease, but as far as I can tell, nothing severe or with an early onset.”
She nods. “All right. I never knew my dad, so I can’t speak to that half of my DNA, but I’m healthy so far.”
“I’m not worried,” I assure her, not bothering to explainwhy.
She doesn’t need to know that my investigator tracked down her father, or that he was a healthy, if irresponsible, man living his best Peter Pan life on a fishing boat in Key West until he was struck by lightning and killed a few years ago. He was relatively easy to find. The fact that she hasn’t tracked him down herself must mean that, deep down, she doesn’t want to know anything about the man responsible for her dark hair and olive skin.
They certainly didn’t come from her red-haired mother…
“Okay.” She drops onto the leather sofa, giving her martini a thoughtful swirl. “So, we’ve covered the nuts and bolts. Shouldwe discuss how absolutely batshit crazy this is, or are we going to skip over that part?”
I ease into the mission-style chair across from her. “Unconventional, perhaps, but not crazy. From a contractual perspective, it’s a straightforward business arrangement with clearly defined terms.”
“Oh, come on, Hunter.” She kicks off her silver sandals and tucks her feet up, making herself at home. “You want me to pretend to be madly in love with you, knock me up, convince your dying mother we’re soulmates, and then have me raise a child alone while you send money from afar like some rich Wall Street creep who got his mistress pregnant and is afraid to leave his wife. That’s the definition of crazy.”
“Only you aren’t my mistress, and I don’t have a wife,” I say. “This won’t be an accident. It will be something we’re both choosing in advance. And yes, I can see that the deception aspect is outside the bounds of most business dealings, but that will only be a concern for a short period of time. She only has six months, nine, if she’s lucky.”
Her brow furrows again. “Jesus. This poor woman.”
“Don’t feel too sorry for her. She’s seventy-four.” I take a drink before adding, “Your mother only made it to sixty.”
Her gaze hardens, her eyes glittering as she asks, “How did you know that?”
“I read about it in the news. I’ve been following the Sea Breeze Gazette online since I finished my work here,” I lie. “I was sorry to see that you’d lost her.”
She nibbles her lip for a beat before relaxing back into the cushions, seemingly satisfied with my response. “Thank you. She would have been horrified to know I was eventhinkingabout getting pregnant out of wedlock, by the way. Even fake pregnant.”