Lindsey gritted her teeth. “Yes, I want this decided by my next appointment. That’s two days away.”
“Okay,” Marissa said, “there’s the doctor.”
Slone cleared his throat loudly. “Do you really want your child to be spawned by a megalomaniac?”
“I can’t even believe you know what that means,” Lindsey grumbled.
Slone ran the hot water in the sink. “Next.”
“The lawyer is a nice possibility. He’ll be smart, like the doctor,” Marissa said, shooting an intrigued glance at Slone since he kept cutting into their conversation. “He has brown hair, gray-blue eyes, and he’s gone on to father two boys.”
“That’s a good option,” Lindsey said.
Slone interrupted. “Lawyers are sharks. Do you want your kid to argue with you over everything, and do anything to win?”
With a distressed frown, Lindsey flipped to the next page. “What about the handsome CEO?”
“Too arrogant,” Slone said.
She folded her arms. “My sister is about to be married to a CEO.”
“Cade’s different.”
At her wits’ end with Slone, Lindsey stood up from the table. “Would you care to impress me—us—with your brilliant suggestions?”
Marissa shot her a two-thumbs-up, which Lindsey ignored.
“Let’s see.” Slone dried his hands and came to Lindsey’s side. He bent over her shoulder, hovering close, investigating her choices.
At the same time, he offered her a tantalizing glimpse of his forearms. Lightly hair-dusted and tan, his arms looked smooth, taut. Ropes of muscle rippled when he flattened his hand next to the binder. As he told her to flip to the next one, she could barely concentrate on anything besides him and the unexpected sensations rippling through her abdomen.
“What about this one?” Slone said.
“Wh-which one?”
“Are you even paying attention?” He shook his head. “This guy. He’s the best of the bunch—and that’s not saying much.”
Lindsey gritted her teeth. “It’s not saying much when you disregard every option I remotely like.”
“You deserve better,” he said quietly.
“Well, they’re all I have.” Angry tears pressed against the backs of her eyes. “This is the other half of my child’s genetic code, so I’d appreciate it if you didn’t disregard my choices.”
Marissa stood up from the table and stretched. “I’d love to stay, but it’s my classroom’s turn for recycling duty tomorrow. You two enjoy arguing.”
After Marissa excused herself out the back door and started her car, Lindsey found herself alone with Slone, and not happy about it. She stabbed her finger on a random page without even looking at the man’s traits. “Why not him? Why not any of them?”
“They aren’t good enough.”
She balled her hands into fists. “Why do you even care?”
“Does it matter?”
Expelling a breath, she stood up from the table. “Thanks for being so helpful—not.”
He flung the damp dishtowel at the sink. “Then don’t ask. You don’t want my opinion,” he said, climbing the stairs.
“What if I do?”
He paused. “You don’t.”
Then he disappeared upstairs and left her alone for the night, yet again, curled up in a blanket in front of the wood-burning fireplace.
Contemplating the most momentous decision of her life, she stared at the dancing flames. She realized she’d bounced many ideas off of Slone over the past six weeks. First, because she had no one else to talk to. Second, he turned out to be a good listener. He considered her ideas and gave her thoughtful responses, amidst the sarcasm.
Actually, now that she considered it, they’d interacted quite often together. They’d created an intimate rhythm, an interrelated journey that wound through their hours and days. Maybe she found living with him so easy because she’d always had a roommate. But she found, thinking about it, Slone had a way of intuiting what she wanted to do, where she wanted to go, when she needed space, and when she desired his companionship. He was extremely observant, and she’d caught him sizing her up a few times to gauge her mood.
They were far from strangers. He probably understood her, and respected her boundaries, better than her last three boyfriends combined. And she honestly wanted his opinion about her selection, the thoughtful male perspective he’d offered her many times.
Evidently his perspective on this subject didn’t fall under the category of roommate benefits.
Her mind leaped into the gutter.
Friends with benefits?
No. Big fat no. She’d be using him as a means to her own end.
That wasn’t fair.
Although she’d bet her first full-time teacher’s paycheck that Slone would be a sexy, accomplished, unselfish lover. A man who took his time with a woman’s body, satisfying her needs before he met his own.
Friends with benefits…
Deep inside, her abdomen pulsed with yearning. She longed to be touched by big male hands, calluses rasping over her sensitized skin. She ached to be held and kissed, his tongue sweeping into her mouth in an unhurried exploration. She wanted to be tasted, his lips open and dragging down her neck, leaving a hot trail of steam. She needed to be filled by a man’s arousal. Filled by Slone.
She shivered.
So many benefits.
And she shouldn’t be thinking about any of them. She definitely shouldn’t be lusting after the man who slept in the next bedroom.
She’d always meant for her fertility adventure to be a chaste experience. No emotions involved. No complicated explanations owed to her child. No interference later on, should the man change his mind and challenge her for custody.
This situation with Slone couldn’t become friends with benefits. No matter how desperately her hormone-laced, sex-craving body ached for him.
God, she needed sleep, which the darn fertility drugs weren’t allowing her. She tossed and turned dozens of times throughout the night.
Every time she woke, restless dreams faded of Slone above her, making love to her. Telling her it would all work out all right.
Never once did she believe him.
Chapter 2
Slone prayed that Lindsey would wake up late today.
Because he had.
He hadn’t slept well, waking with knots in his neck. That happened every time Lindsey pored over her stupid binder. He hated that binder.
Since he took colder showers than she did, he notched the handle to the right. He stepped inside the glass frame, letting the warm spray pelt his shoulders.
Normally they stuck to a tacit schedule. He woke and showered in their shared bathroom. Then she rolled out of bed and took her shower, long after he’d shaved and completed his manscaping. Not that his hygiene mattered, since Lindsey wouldn’t notice him as a flesh and blood guy unless he stepped out of the pages of her damned “man files.”
But, God, he wanted her. Despite her vegetarianism.
His lips curved in a smile.
Slone would’ve tapped that the day he met Lindsey, if not for her oh-so-helpful sister, Kylie, explaining he needed to protect Lindsey. He’d do just about anything for Kylie. That fact had settled itself long ago. He’d come to terms with it…before he’d met Kylie’s younger sister, with even more intense, bewitching turquoise eyes.
Who else dared to have eyes that made him willing to trade his soul to the devil to have her? Turned out, Lindsey did. Once, he’d thought he was attracted to Kylie. That didn’t compare to the intensity of emotion he felt toward Lindsey. Indescribable, electrifying, like he’d been waiting to stare into her turquoise depths all his life. Kylie and Lindsey might have had similar eyes, but with Lindsey he found something more. An insane desire he’d never had for any woman before. He didn’t know how to describe it. His nerve endings sparked to life when she walked into the room.
And he’d sacrifice his soul any day for the chance t
o have her in his bed, until this sexual torment loosened its grip, and he’d taken his fill of her.
Though that might require longer than a day.
Yeah, he’d need an entire weekend with her in exchange for his soul, which was tortured and blackened and broken beyond repair, so what did he need it for anyway? A weekend was about all the devil would bargain for.
Then again, he probably shouldn’t taint her. Lindsey didn’t deserve his internal wreckage.
Still, a dangerous, selfish piece of him wanted to be associated with her forever. He wanted to offer her what the men in her binder couldn’t give. He wanted to make love to her, to make a baby with her, to have something real and lasting…
Damn, he had no business thinking these thoughts. His career as a bodyguard made him unsuited to be a father. Besides, she’d made it clear she didn’t want the father in her child’s life. That’s why she’d go to a stranger before ever considering him.
The pulsing water against his neck didn’t soothe the knots. They grew tighter the more he thought of driving Kylie to the clinic for her “pre-evaluation” checkup. She was amazing. Smart. Beautiful. Selfless. And deeply intriguing.
Lindsey had a way of looking at the world that took him beyond his daily routine. She encouraged him to want to make himself a better person. She’d graduated with an English major, a Spanish minor, and gone down to the Andes Mountains to live as a vagabond for three months, to teach orphaned children English, to give them a head start at their otherwise dismal futures. She even handed him a painted rock one of the children had decorated, which she’d bought to lend the orphanage money, and had given away to friends and family here in the States. He imagined the smiles on those kids’ faces when they saw her every morning. The same smile he wore, when she wasn’t looking.
The conversations they’d exchanged in the past six weeks had cemented his already admirable impression of her. Lindsey, with those crystalline eyes, saw things most people didn’t see.
As a skilled Navy SEAL, he’d been trained to look for nuances of emotion and personality. Somehow, she did that without training. Innately, she’d acclimated herself to their daily schedule. He hadn’t needed to say a word. One night he cooked, and she did the dishes, and vice versa. He’d never felt so comfortable, so easy, with a woman. Not even his ex-girlfriends.
They worked well together. While that might be a far cry from the compromises required of parenting, he believed he’d offer better potential when it came to her future baby than any of the strange, weird, self-absorbed men who jerked off into a cup and got paid for it. The thought made him sick inside.
Hitting the lever, he shut off the shower. He flicked his hair, ran his hands down his face, and grabbed his towel.
After drying himself, he whipped the white cloth around his waist and tucked it in. He scooted the floor towel with his feet over to the sink.
He’d just lathered up his face when Lindsey walked through the door. “Oh.” Her sleepy eyes rounded. “Sorry, I didn’t expect to see you in here.”
“Got up late. My bad.”
“No worries.” She yawned. Damn, he wanted to see her sleep-heavy eyes the morning after he’d made love to her all night. “I must be off schedule.”
“You’re not. I am.” He glanced at the steep vee of her robe and instantly went hard beneath his towel. He moved in front of the sink so the mirror didn’t reflect the proof of his attraction. “What brings you out of bed earlier than usual?”
She combed her hands through her tousled hair, strands his fingers longed to dive into. “I didn’t sleep well last night.”
He reached for his razor at the edge of the sink. “That makes two of us.”
She blinked. “You didn’t sleep well either?”
“It’s hit or miss.”
“Mmm,” she hummed in acknowledgement. “I’ll bet as a bodyguard you have times where you have to be spot on, ready for the enemy. And other times, like the weeks you’ve spent with me, are so boring you can’t figure out what to do with yourself.”
She had his job pegged. He paused with his razor in hand, glancing at her reflection in the mirror. Instead of going back to her room, as he’d expected, she stood watching him in the bathroom while he shaved.
Under the heightened awareness of her stare, he felt his multi-bladed razor scrape across every hair on his neck as he scooped it upward.
“You know,” she said, “it would conserve water if you filled the sink first, instead of running the tap constantly.”
“Probably.” He tugged the plunger up to close the drain, let the sink fill partway, then shut off the handle. “Are you a total granola girl? Or do you save your eco spiel just for me?”
Reaching past him, she grabbed the mouthwash. “I’m not a geo-Nazi. But I try to be conservative for the earth when I can.”
“Geo-Nazi.” He snorted. “Haven’t heard that one.”
She tossed back a capful of mouthwash, swished it between her cheeks, then spat it into the sink.
He spread his arms. “Really? You expect me to dunk my razor into your swill?”
Wiping her mouth, she wore a sheepish expression. “Sorry. I’m not used to living with a man.”
He saw an open opportunity to gain further insight into her life and took it. “You’ve never lived with a guy?” he asked, draining the sink, the lingering foam leaving a ring around bowl.
“Plenty of roommates, yes. But never a man.”
“Idiots,” he muttered, filling the sink with fresh water.
He caught her frown in the mirror behind him. “What does that mean?”
“It means,” he said, dunking his razor in the fresh water, “they’re idiots for not grabbing you up when they had the chance.”
“I’m nothing special.” She gestured at the water filling the sink. “Obviously. I spit my mouthwash into your shaving pool. I don’t have the instincts for male/female cohabitation.”
“That can be learned,” he said. “You’re doing just fine with me.”
“Not really, but it’s nice of you to say so.”
In the mirror he saw her gaze fixate on his back. Then he dreaded yet welcomed her touch as she reached out to trail her fingertips across his scars. His erection leaped beneath the towel, and he leaned into the sink.
“Tell me about them.”
Instead of telling her, he was tempted to ignore his unshaven face, pin her against the wall, and drop his towel. Instead, he replied, “What do you want to know?”
Her lips parted. “How can a man’s back hold so many scars? So many memories I’ve never heard about?”
Throat convulsing around a swallow, he knew no one wanted to know his memories. Even her, though she was the first—and only—woman who’d ever asked. “Get captured by the enemy in the Middle East, and you’ll find they have no mercy for your flesh.”
“What happened to you?”
“Nothing worth the brain cells to remember it.”
“What about this one?” she asked, fingering a particularly gnarly scar that consumed his back, from his left shoulder to his right rib cage.
“That’s classified.”
“How?” she breathed. He heard the horror in her voice. “How could some government official reward you for this level of abuse?”
“I’ve endured worse things, and better things, for my country.” That was all he was willing to say, though inwardly he flinched in remembered pain as she touched the scar.
“My sister said you told her the same thing.”
“She has a good a memory.”
“What about your memories?” Lindsey whispered.
The question sliced through his soul. “Some I keep. Some I choose to forget.”
Unexpectedly, she embraced him from behind. He watched her arms cross in front of him. “I’m so sorry. For all of them.”
He said gruffly, “That’s sweet, honey, but not necessary.”
He felt her cheek press innocently against his heinously scarred ba
ck. “Every kindness is necessary.”
He swallowed. “Lindsey, can I be honest with you?”
“Of course.”
“If you don’t walk away right now, I will make love to you. And I’m not going to be sorry. And I don’t care what donor you had in mind.”
Her cheek abandoned his skin. “Are you serious?”
Steadily he met her gaze in the mirror. “Very.”
“Oh, okay. Um.” She stepped away from him. “Sorry?”
He’d flustered her. A nice boost for his pride. “Yeah, sometimes I’m too honest. Right now, you need to go back to your room. And I’ll go to mine.”
“That’s probably…for the best…”
The hesitation in her voice affected him like a siren song. He watched her edge away then dash to her bedroom. She shut the door, and shut him out.
If that wasn’t enough proof he had no business pursuing her, then he was a complete fool. Maybe wishing he could give her what she wanted, instead of some other random guy, made him the greatest fool of all, but he wasn’t ready to give up. Not entirely.
Once he approached an obstacle, he wasn’t a man to give up. Even if she asked of him the impossible—to be the man she wanted, the man he longed to be—he’d do it.
For her.
For no one else but her.
*
It had grown too cold in Denver to have Slone stay in his truck while she spent seven hours substituting in the second grade classroom, or volunteering Thursdays at the elementary library.
In anticipation of him joining her inside the school, Lindsey had arranged a meeting with the superintendent. She and Slone owed Dr. Hudson a solid explanation for Slone’s presence alongside her, although she harbored concerns about Dr. Hudson’s reaction. Would he ask for her resignation before she even started?
Fidgeting in the chair next to Slone, counting the number of tiles on the ceiling, she hoped her bodyguard wouldn’t cause alarm or impact her full-time status come January.
“A hundred and twenty,” Slone said, flipping the page of a magazine, reading an article about the pros and cons of testing children’s intellect at a young age.
The Bodyguard's Baby (Billionaire Bodyguard Series) Page 2