by Mia Carson
The women stayed close for a few minutes longer before finally sauntering off, and Viktor ran a hand over his head, pulling his knit hat off and scratching beneath it. Why couldn’t they have met somewhere else? Did she really have so little trust that she had to meet in public? Trying to rid himself of his irritation, he looked around the space again for a woman matching the description she’d given him. It wasn’t much to go on, but he kept his eyes peeled for a woman in a wool coat with a red purse and braided hair. Several more groups of women walked by, and he tried to look at them without making it obvious. Several were far from the type of woman he hoped would be meeting him, and he turned away immediately when they met his gaze.
“Where are you?” he whispered to himself.
His eyes danced around until they landed on a woman sitting alone on a bench across the way. When his gaze landed on hers, she hurried to look away but appeared deep in thought, her hands tugging on the long braid over her shoulder. Viktor smiled. She was far prettier than he imagined, and he let out a sigh of relief. Not that he wanted to come across as shallow, but spending his days with a woman he didn’t find attractive or who wasn’t his type was not his intention.
He thought of walking over to her, but she shook her head slightly, pushed herself up, and walked his way. Her hips hypnotized him as she moved, her legs lean beneath her jeans, but the wool coat covered up everything else. She stopped in front of him, chewing her lip.
“Hi,” she said without smiling. “I’m Evelyn.”
He held out his hand, and, after hesitating, she pulled hers out from her pocket and shook his. “Viktor Hartmann. Pleasure to meet you,” he said, not sure if he should be worried she looked so nervous. “Why don’t we find a table?”
“Right,” she muttered and gestured for him to lead the way.
Viktor wondered what was running through her mind to make her look so distracted. A waiter sat them at a small corner booth, giving them a bit privacy, and said he’d return with their coffees.
Silence descended over the table, and just as he opened his mouth to ask her a few questions, she undid her coat, took it off, and set it aside. The questions died in his throat, and he hoped she didn’t notice his eyes drag slowly across her body. The sweater was tight across her decent-sized chest, and he was tall enough to see her narrow waist. His hands curled into fists on the table, the urge to wrap his hands around that waist and pull her close nearly overwhelming him.
He averted his gaze quickly, happy for the distraction when the coffee arrived. He watched her fingers as she opened two sugar packets and dumped them in, but no cream. Her nails were bright red but far from perfect. Wondering what stressed her out enough to bite her nails created more questions, but she beat him to it.
“So, are you going to tell me why a guy like you has to hire a woman to have your baby?” she asked, genuinely curious as she stirred her coffee.
Viktor cleared his throat and tried to think of an answer that wouldn’t come across as rude, but he’d avoided it yesterday and didn’t feel the need to delve into it yet. “As I said, I have my reasons.”
“Right, of course you do,” she muttered, dropping her gaze to the table. Her fingers tightened on the spoon, and she shifted against the back of the booth.
“Why would a woman like you agree to be hired to have a man’s baby?” he shot back.
She dropped her spoon to the table with a clatter and glared at him. Viktor hadn’t noticed her eyes and was drawn in by all the facets of color within the brown irises. Flecks of green dotted the edges, and closer in, specks of amber were picked up by the overhead light.
“I have my reasons,” she replied tightly with a smile.
“Working two jobs must be hard,” he mused. “I can’t imagine the stress you must be dealing with.”
“Yes, stress, something I’m not sure a man in your position has ever had to deal with. Are you sure you can handle having a child?”
Viktor bristled, grinding his teeth. “I can handle it just fine. More than ready for it. Have been for years. I just want to ensure that your stress level will not be a problem if you decide to accept this contract.”
“If you’ve been ready for years, what took so long?” she pushed.
He placed his hands flat on the table. She was digging for answers, but he couldn’t find a reason to be mad—annoyed, yes. No one ever challenged him like this, but he wasn’t going to give her what she wanted, not until he knew more about this woman, knew if he could trust her. He remembered what Tucker told him last night about her past as a foster kid and wondered if he should bring that up yet. That might be crossing a line, and though she seemed to know exactly which buttons to push to annoy him, he refused to throw a cheap shot at her.
“Let me explain what the contract will entail and why I’m doing this,” he said quietly.
“I’m all ears,” she gibed, picking up her coffee mug and holding it with both hands before her face. The steam wafted over her face, and for a brief second, Viktor was entranced by the sight of her eyes through that steam and the steady way they held his gaze.
“I am looking for a woman willing to have my child—through insemination, of course—and who is willing to play the doting girlfriend. It needs to appear as though we have a loving relationship, but I don’t require that any such emotions between us be present.”
He paused to see if she had questions, but she just sipped her coffee.
“The relationship would be platonic, but this woman would be taken care of and would live with me and the baby. I would never dream of separating a mother from her child.”
She raised a brow at his words and anger flickered through her eyes, but it happened so fast he wasn’t sure it had been there. She nodded at his words and didn’t appear at all bothered by this arrangement. She listened to him better than Bridget had. By this point, that woman had been spewing questions left and right at him. Evelyn’s silence was disconcerting, and he had no idea what it meant.
He sipped his coffee, wetting his lips, before he continued. “As you know, my family is one of the oldest in this town, and we have a family legacy to uphold.” Sadly, he added mentally. “As such, my parents—who continue to hound me though I am a grown man—expected me to be married with a brood of my own by now. I was gone for a few years, and they believe I was acting the playboy, and now that I’ve returned home, I’ll never settle down.”
“But you weren’t,” she stated. It wasn’t a question, and he frowned.
“What do you mean?”
Her fingers tapped on her mug. “You weren’t being a playboy. You were dealing with a lot of pain.”
Her words made him sit back in the booth, and his face slackened. How the hell did she know that? No one except Tucker and his other friend Joseph had known what he’d really been up to while he was gone—trying to get over Mary and failing miserably—but he had slept with virtually no one while he was gone. In fact, he only recalled one woman, and it had been a crazy, drunken night outside New Orleans at Mardi Gras. She’d been gone before he woke up the next morning.
“And how would you know this?” he asked roughly.
“Nothing… never mind,” she said quickly and buried her face in her mug.
Viktor didn’t want to let it go, but the pained gleam in her eyes made him bite back his words. Had she really just read it off his face? He’d become an expert at hiding his emotions over the years, and this woman he barely knew had read him in minutes as easily as if he’d told her the truth. It should’ve unnerved him—ticked him off, even—but it fascinated him, and a sudden urge to know everything about her filled him.
“Anyway,” he said, struggling to pick up where he’d left off. “My family loves me too damn much, and they’re demanding I give up my playboy ways, which I did a long time ago, and work at starting a family. I need someone to help me with this so they’ll stop trying to be so damn helpful.”
“Right,” she said quietly, her eyes flickering to his and away a
gain. Another flash of pain skittered across her face, and her hands gripped the mug until her knuckles turned white and Viktor feared she’d break it. Carefully, she set it down and tugged on her braid, lost in thought.
Viktor didn’t have anything left to say, so he waited, watching those fingers run over her hair, entranced by the steady movement.
“You really think you’ll never be the marrying type?” she asked finally, breaking the trance.
“No,” he said firmly. “I’m afraid that is not in the cards for me—marriage or love.”
“So you'll create an illusion your family will believe for the rest of your life? Sure, sounds easy enough,” she said with a slow smile. “What could possibly go wrong?”
Chapter 5
So many things can wrong with this! Are you crazy? Just get up and walk away. Just do it! the voice yelled in her mind, but Evelyn pushed it aside. She admitted this was crazy, but at the end of the day, how could she possibly turn down a chance like this?
“Those are basically the terms of the contract,” he murmured. “Did you have any questions about them?”
Running her finger along the rim of her coffee mug, she studied his face. Pain flickered through his eyes, much like she used to see in her own every time she looked in a mirror. To others, he might be good at hiding it, but she’d learned to read people after all her years bouncing from one home to the next. That was how she could tell if the parents were good or not. If she could trust the other kids in the house. She stopped talking and watched instead, listened to what was happening around her. It gave her an edge to keep herself out of trouble. For the most part, anyways, but those were dark thoughts she didn’t want to get into.
She wanted to ask him about who had broken his heart so badly he wasn’t willing to risk it again but didn’t want to throw him off-balance any more than she already had. “Why not just adopt a child as your own? Be a single dad?”
He smiled and tugged at his beard. “The thought crossed my mind, but I can’t imagine raising a child on my own without a partner. I don’t think I could do that to someone so young.”
She nodded stiffly, remembering all the times she’d been thrown into a home with only one parent who couldn’t have cared less about the kids or being an actual parent to them. “Not a lot of people think like that,” she told him, struggling to ignore the horrors of her past.
The longer she studied his face, the more she saw the chinks in his armor. He was damn good-looking, and that beard fit him perfectly. There were laugh lines she could barely see around his mouth that weren’t covered by black hair, but it was the worry lines at his eyes that intrigued her. Even the tattoo on the back of his left hand threw her off. She thought it was the tree of life, done in intricate detail with roots that reached down to his fingertips. She’d thought this man would come strolling into the place with a haughty attitude, ready to lay claim to her life without taking her opinion into consideration. Instead, she found him struggling just as much as she was over how honest to be about a past that haunted him. His eyes—more silver than gray as he stared thoughtfully back at her—were filled with ghosts he hadn’t yet laid to rest. Maybe they were more alike than she thought. Maybe this wouldn’t be such a bad idea after all.
“How would it work?” she asked. “I mean, once we agreed on the terms and everything. How do you picture this playing out?”
“Before I answer that, are you sure you’re willing to give up whatever chance you might have at a normal relationship?” he asked, his brow furrowed. “Don’t you want the chance to find a husband? Have children with him?”
She laughed. “No, that’s not exactly something I’m looking for either, for various reasons.”
He seemed surprised, and she braced for an onslaught of questions, but he didn’t ask them. “Once you decide that you’re ready to carry the child, you’ll move in with me, and once that happens, you won’t have to work unless you absolutely want to. You’ll be taken care of and only expected to be the mother of our child and act like my loving girlfriend when family or friends are around.”
“And you don’t expect anything… else?” she said quietly, hoping her face wasn’t as red as it felt.
“No, nothing of the sort,” he assured her. “We would simply be there to raise the child together as parents, but no marriage required and no intimacy of any kind.”
“Except around family,” she corrected. “Be a bit strange if you never kissed your girlfriend.”
“Good point,” he muttered, and she caught the way his lips twitched in approval as he gazed over her body again. She’d caught him doing it earlier and waited for the usual wave of discomfort but felt nothing of the sort. The lack of negative sensations was strange, and she kind of liked having him look at her like that, even if nothing could ever come of it.
“We’ll figure it out,” she told him. “What family would I be meeting?”
“Parents, of course,” he said as he waved the waiter over for a refill. She set her mug towards the edge of the table for one. Once it was poured, he grabbed two sugar packets and handed them to her without breaking stride. Evelyn smiled at the gesture and tried to focus on the conversation when his fingers brushed hers. “I don’t have any siblings, but several of my cousins are very close to me.”
“Are they married?”
“Almost all of them, and most have kids,” he said, his face lighting up.
Evelyn grinned with him. At least he did, in fact, like kids—had to for his face to glow just thinking of his nieces and nephews. “So you’re the doting uncle they all love?”
“I have my moments,” he smirked. “What else is an uncle supposed to do?”
Her smile fell, and she stared into the bottomless pit of her coffee mug. “I wouldn’t know,” she whispered, her face scrunching as the old pain reared its head. She’d never had any uncles or aunts, and didn’t know her cousins, if she had any. Hell, she had never even met her grandparents. As far as she knew, they were all dead or didn’t know she existed. Or worse, knew and never wanted her.
“Evelyn?” he said gently as he stretched his hand across the table as if to hold hers but stopped at the last second. “Are you alright?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I’m great.” She grimaced and tried to put a smile back on her face.
“You want to tell me about your family? Will they be alright with this?”
She nodded and laughed bitterly. “My family is very, very tiny,” she said, not meeting his gaze. “My… uh, my parents were drug addicts, amongst other things. Died when I was six, from overdoses—or that’s what they told me. I was there when they did it.”
“Evelyn, I’m—”
“Don’t,” she said, cutting him off. “I’ve heard that word too many times, so I appreciate it, but don’t say it. Please.” He nodded. She tried to figure out why the hell she was even telling him any of this. The adoption records were sealed. He would never have found that part out if she hadn’t told him, and usually, she never told anyone. So why did she just tell him without even a sliver of embarrassment?
“What happened afterwards?” he asked, breaking the tension building.
“I went into foster care. When I was twelve, I moved in with the Turners, and they kept me until I was eighteen. Even let me stay around so I could go to college and have a place to live,” she said, letting their love fill her and pull her back out of the darkness of her past. “Technically, they’re my parents, but other than that, I don’t have any other family.”
He folded his arms on the table, his muscles bulging beneath his shirt. Despite the serious tone their conversation had taken, Evelyn was drawn to them and wondered where the urge to reach out and grab them came from. That beard was driving her crazy, too, and she wanted to feel if it was rough or soft. Usually, when she was around attractive men, all she wanted to do was hide. She could never be fit for someone like him, yet he sat there watching her with the eye of someone who liked what he saw in more ways than one.
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nbsp; She shifted and glanced away, trying to understand the flare of emotions rushing through her body. Things she’d never felt before, but no way. This couldn’t be anything more than a friendly relationship. She couldn’t deal with intimacy for reasons only three other people knew about.
Not sure what to say that wouldn’t lead to more questions, Evelyn waited to see what he would say next because she wanted the attention off her for a while. When he looked like he was going to ask her another question, she spoke first.
“Like your tattoo, by the way. Why’d you get it?”
He glanced at it and smiled. “I thought it looked cool.”
“Really? Is that all?” she asked, laughing. “Doesn’t seem like a good reason to get one.”
“Yeah, well, that’s what you do when you listen to your friends, and your family owns a logging business,” he muttered. “It turned out better than I thought it would. Could’ve been worse.”
“You know what that means, right?” she said and held out her hand for his.
He hesitated but placed his hand in hers so she could study the back of it. She traced her finger along the delicate lines.
“This is the tree of life,” she told him. “Balance in all things.”
“Interesting,” he smirked.
Evelyn narrowed her gaze at him and laughed. “You did know, you liar,” she said, letting go of his hand. “You don’t make that a habit, do you? Lying about small things?”
“Not usually.” He pulled his hand back and sipped his coffee. “Usually, I’m quite the gentleman.”
She laughed with him, amazed at the easiness of it. If nothing else, a friend would be nice to have. Not a man she considered her brother, like Ajay. Just a friend. Someone to talk to about her day, her worries, her dreams. Someone she could count on to be there for her.