The glimmer of a smile curved his lips. "When I was thirteen, Haven, I was a hood. I majored in trouble and minored in suspensions. Mothers pulled their kids off the street the minute they saw me coming."
So that was why he seemed so dangerous. His past was still as much a part of him as the hair tied back at his neck.
It took a lot of emotion to be a hood, she thought. It took pain, fury, a sense of injustice, feelings of utter helplessness. Things not usually associated with a child of privilege.
"But you're not a hood now," she prompted, hoping he would volunteer more. "Somewhere along the line you changed."
"Outwardly, anyway," he acknowledged. "So what do you say? Shall we get married?"
He really was serious about this, Haven realized. What scared her silly was that she was seriously tempted to say yes.
"It's a heck of a step to take for someone not into commitments," she remarked.
"Don't think of it as a commitment," he said. "Think of it as a temporary measure."
"What happens afterward?"
"We quietly dissolve the marriage. You retain custody of Anna, and I establish visitation rights. We're right back where we are now, plus the Zieglars are gone for good."
"Why are you doing this?" she asked. "So far, the only people I see benefiting from this situation are Anna and me. What's in it for you?"
His gaze probing hers, Brady studied her, as if carefully considering his answer. As the seconds ticked by, the air seemed to take on thickness and weight, pressing in on them, pushing them closer to each other. Instead of feeling claustrophobic, Haven found herself cocooned in a world of softness and light.
The sensation took her breath away. She couldn't think, much less breathe. He was looking at her as if he were trying to crawl inside her skin, to see into the inner workings of her heart and brain, to read the very essence of her soul. The sensation was as erotic as it was disconcerting. Though she could feel the color rising in her cheeks, she couldn't look away.
"Don't you think I would benefit from being with my daughter?" he finally said in a voice that was slightly unsteady.
"Of course," she acknowledged, her own voice raw with emotion.
"Isn't that reason enough, then?"
She shook her head. "I don't think so. You don't have to marry me to be with Anna. All you have to do is assert your parental rights. There's something else, another reason you're willing to marry an absolute stranger. I want to know that reason before I give you an answer."
His smile was pure sin and upped her pulse rate to dangerous levels. It also effectively broke the spell she'd found herself under and served to remind her how dangerous this man actually was. Somehow, she'd forgotten that.
"Maybe," he said, his voice laden with sex, "I want your body badly enough to make the offer."
Haven refused to let him unnerve her. "The time has long since passed when a man thought he had to marry a woman to get her into his bed."
His eyes darkened. "Are you saying that if I ask, you'll come?"
Heaven help her, she probably would. "I'm saying I don't believe you're offering me marriage just to get me into bed. Besides, you already told me it was to be in name only."
He sighed. "What's in it for me, Haven, is that if we marry I won't be removing my daughter from a stable home. It's as simple as that. I told you before how important that was to me."
Yes, he'd told her. But he hadn't explained why. He was a man who would rather have her believe him a bum than reveal something personal about himself. That his reasoning was somehow tied to his adoption and his self-described years as a hood was obvious. Less obvious was how those two parts of his life fit together.
"Why is it so important to you?" she asked.
His gaze shifted away from hers. "I have my reasons."
She waited until the silence forced him to look at her again. "Please, Brady. I really need to know."
A stillness came over him. He was silent for so long she thought he might not answer. When he finally spoke, his voice was a monotone, and he'd fixed his gaze at a point over her right shoulder.
"When I was three years old, the child welfare authorities found me huddled under a table in a roach-infested apartment. My mother had disappeared a couple of days earlier. From what I've been told, my father fled the picture long before that. When they found me, I was eating a bag of flour because it was the only food in the kitchen."
Haven closed her eyes at the horror of his words. Just three years old—Anna's age—and already he'd known too much of the seamier side of life.
"Oh, Brady," she breathed.
He went on as if he hadn't heard her, as if he'd forgotten she was even in the room.
"After that, I was shuttled from foster home to foster home. I counted them once. Between the ages of three and thirteen, which is how old I was when Charles Ross adopted me, I lived in ten foster homes."
Haven knew that beneath his emotionless words lay an immeasurable pain. She could only imagine the terror he must have experienced the first time he'd bonded with a new family, only to be wrenched from their arms and sent somewhere else. After the third or fourth time, she supposed, he wouldn't have let himself care. And that was assuming his welfare had been entrusted to decent people. She didn't want to think what he would have endured had the homes he'd resided in been less than caring and sympathetic.
No wonder he didn't want to uproot Anna. That he was willing to marry a woman he didn't love in order to spare his daughter a measure of the pain he'd experienced was a testament to his integrity. Haven felt a fierce surge of admiration for him. Brady truly was putting Anna's needs before his own.
His voice had been so matter-of-fact that when he lowered his gaze and she saw his eyes, she drew in a sharp breath at the turbulence roiling in their gray depths. So alive were they with the pain of remembered emotion that she ached to reach out to comfort him, even as she knew by the way he clenched his hands rigidly to his sides that her comfort would be unwelcome.
The question was, would he ever be able to accept comfort from another person, or would he remain stuck forever in what she'd begun to think of as his emotional hibernation? The sadness of that thought made her want to weep.
"How did a man like Charles Ross come to adopt you?" she asked.
Like a campfire snuffed out by a sudden downpour, Brady's eyes went blank. They were once again the cool gray of a misty morning.
"I went for a joyride in his car. He showed up at my hearing, saw something redeemable in me, and shocked everyone in the courtroom by asking to act as my foster father. The judge agreed. A year later, he adopted me."
"Sounds like he turned your life around."
"Without his intervention, my life would have taken a totally different path. I'd probably be in that prison you thought I was in." He drew a deep breath. "So, now you know why it's so important to me that Anna stays with you."
"Yes," she replied, "now I know."
"Then you agree that the only solution is for us to marry." He made it sound so logical. So unemotional. But there was nothing logical in the way her body reacted to him. There was nothing unemotional in the way she found herself wishing with all her heart that their marriage could be for a different reason entirely.
"It would only be a temporary arrangement?" she found herself asking against her better judgment.
"Just until we make sure the Zieglars are out of Anna's life permanently," he confirmed. "Which brings up another point. We can't tell anyone why we're getting married."
She blinked. "Why not?"
"For Anna's sake, we have to make everyone believe we're marrying for the same reason most everyone else gets married. It's the only way we'll be able to convince the court of the legitimacy of our relationship."
The rational part of her brain agreed with and even approved of the idea. However, the emotional part wanted nothing to do with it.
"You want us to pretend we're in love?" She heard the note of panic in her voice.
"Yes," he said calmly.
She bit down hard on her lip. "I don't think I can do that."
"Would it really be so hard?" He watched her, his gaze steady. "Do you find me so repulsive you can't even stomach the thought of smiling at me, or holding my hand in public? That's really all we have to do, you know. Give the world the appearance of a loving couple."
Haven only wished she found him repulsive. It would make things so much easier. Until this very moment, she hadn't known that lust could be so powerful, so all-consuming. Her heart faltered at the mere thought of holding his hand, and her pulse hummed so fast she feared she would grow dizzy. What she was most afraid of, though, was that the playacting would become real. For her, anyway.
"Can't I even tell Josephine?" If just one person knew, Haven would be able to stay grounded. The line between truth and reality would not be allowed to blur.
He shook his head. "Not even Josephine. By the way, what does she know about me?"
"Nothing."
His eyebrows shot up. "Nothing?"
"I was going to tell her eventually. I just didn't want to burden her right now."
"That makes things easier anyway."
Yes, she supposed it did. "I guess this means we'll have to live under the same roof."
"I think that goes without saying."
"Where's that roof going to be?"
"Since we don't want to uproot Anna, your house seems the most logical place. That, and the fact I'm renting a one-room efficiency."
She eyed him in surprise. "A one-room efficiency? What's a rich man like you doing in a one-room efficiency?"
"My needs are few," he said dismissively, and she knew she'd gotten all the personal revelation she was going to get from him that day.
"What do we do about Josephine?" she asked. "She does live in my third bedroom, you know."
He shrugged. "We'll work something out." Thoughts of what that something could be made her mouth go dry.
"What do we tell Anna?" she said quickly.
"The truth. That we're getting married. After all, it would look a little odd if this case went to court and she knew nothing about the marriage. Plus, I think she'll notice me hanging around the house."
"You don't want to tell her you're her father?"
"Eventually, when the time is right."
Could she do it? Haven wondered. Could she enter into a loveless marriage with a man she was far too attracted to for her own good? Could she pretend to the outside world that she was in love with him? When she thought of the alternative, she knew she had no choice.
"Have your lawyer draw up a prenuptial agreement for me to sign," she said.
"No agreement will be necessary, Haven. If I'd thought for one minute you'd take advantage of the situation, I never would have extended my offer."
It warmed her to know that he trusted her. He knew she would never use their short marriage to extort money from him, the same way she now knew he'd never try to take Anna away from her.
"When do you want to do this?"
"How does Saturday sound?"
Entirely too soon. "Can we pull it off so quickly?"
"Allegheny County law requires a blood test and a three-day waiting period, but I know someone who can help us bend the rules a little. How about we meet at lunch and apply for the license? We can also use the time to work up a cover story to tell everyone when we announce our news."
She looked at him with new respect. "How does a man who's not into commitments know so much about Allegheny County's marriage requirements?"
He rose from his chair and walked to the door. "Several years back, I helped a friend of mine elope."
He didn't believe in love, but he'd helped a friend to elope? He didn't believe in commitment, but he was willing to enter into one for the sake of a little girl? Was there no end to the contradictions that went into the making of one extremely puzzling man named Brady Ross?
"I think you should plan on coming to dinner again tonight," she said. "We'd better tell Josephine first."
"I'll be there. See you at noon." He paused, one hand on the doorknob. "By the way," he said, "are you allergic to cats?"
* * *
For hours after the arrangements for his marriage had been completed, Brady walked the city streets. His thoughts raced around in his brain like the three blind mice with their tails chopped off. When his legs threatened to buckle from exhaustion, he reclaimed his car from its parking space and began driving.
From the moment Haven told him about the petition, there had been no question that he would do anything to keep the Zieglars away from Anna. No question that he didn't know the first thing about being a single parent to a little girl. No question that he would not remove Anna from the security of Haven's home. Marriage had been the only option. He'd made the decision willingly and with his eyes open. He didn't regret it.
So why was his mind in such a turmoil?
Because of a woman. A beautiful woman with red hair, creamy soft skin and bottomless blue eyes. A dangerous woman, whose power lay not in her beautiful face, which he enjoyed looking at far more than was sensible, but in her love for a little girl who wasn't even her daughter. To Anna, Haven Adams was everything Brady had ever dreamed of in a mother. That was far more seductive than mere physical beauty alone.
Beginning with his own mother, the women in Brady's life had been anything but gentle and nurturing. Even the women he'd dated hadn't been able to see past his adoptive father's fortune and his bad-boy behavior to the man he was inside. As a result, he'd remained relatively untouched by them. To be fair, a few of his foster mothers had tried to get close, but by that time he'd grown so hardened by his experiences he hadn't been willing to give them a chance. With her fierce protectiveness of his daughter, Haven had revived a part of his heart that Brady had thought long past resuscitation.
Try as he might, he couldn't forget how she'd looked when she'd pleaded with him to assert his parental rights and claim Anna. He couldn't forget the shadows under her eyes that had bespoken her sleepless night and had made her beauty even more haunting and ethereal. He couldn't forget the look of horror on her expressive face when, at her incessant prodding, he'd recounted the events of his childhood.
Still, that didn't mean he was about to behave like a damn fool and fall for the woman. He knew better than to do that, although refusing to be drawn to her was taking on the proportions of a full-time job. Being a part of his daughter's life meant dealing with Haven Adams on a recurring basis. It meant marrying her temporarily to ensure Anna's safety. If they had an affair, it would only make their dealings more difficult once it ended. And it would end, just as their marriage would. It always did.
The last thing he wanted to think about right now was how an affair would be sanctioned legally once they were married.
Surprise jolted through him when he looked out the windshield and saw he'd brought the car to a halt in the driveway of a two-story stone house with green shutters. Then he smiled. His subconscious had directed him to the one place he needed to be right now. Though he and Haven had discussed having people from the center act as witnesses at their marriage, he now knew exactly who he wanted to have by his side on Saturday.
Ambivalence forgotten, Brady climbed out of the car and hurried up the curved cobblestone path. Anticipation filled him as he raised his hand and pressed the doorbell.
The door was flung open by a giant with curly black hair, scowling blue eyes that were almost hidden by bushy black eyebrows, and hands as big as hams. When the giant saw Brady, incredulity crossed a homely face made even more so by the crooked nose that had been broken at least a dozen times. A second later, Brady found himself engulfed in a bear hug so tight he couldn't breathe.
"Careful," he managed to gasp. "My … ribs … aren't as strong … as they used to be."
"Brady, you son of a gun!" Pete Loring roared in a voice deeper than a cellar. "You're back."
Grabbing Brady by the arm, his former
foster brother hauled him inside and closed the door. Wincing, Brady gingerly moved his shoulder to make sure it hadn't pulled loose from its socket, while Pete boomed, "Eileen, come quick. Brady's here!"
Eileen Loring was as round as her husband was tall. She'd been born with a happy face that was a perfect circle, with warm brown eyes, a button nose and a mouth that tilted upward even when she was angry. Her hug was just as fierce as her husband's.
"Look at you," she groused when she stood back to examine him. "You're so thin! There's no meat on you. Come on out to the kitchen this minute. I have an apple pie just waiting to be sliced."
"We couldn't get much out of the army, other than you'd been taken hostage," Pete said after he and Brady had taken a seat at a rectangular oak table. "Every time I called, they gave me the same runaround. Said you were okay, that they were negotiating for your release, and no, they couldn't give me a definite date for your return."
Pete looked him over from head to toe. "You seem to have survived your adventure well enough."
Leave it to Pete, Brady thought gratefully, to downplay the entire ordeal. It was, he knew, out of deference to his wife's tender sensibilities, and not to a lack of caring. Eileen had the gentlest heart Brady had ever encountered. Pete refused to take her to see any movie that wasn't a comedy, because dramas made her sob so much. She cried at the news, and when she heard a sad story. She even grew misty-eyed when someone stepped on a bug.
"Yes," Brady said, "I survived." He gazed at the big man seated across from him and felt a lump lodge in his throat. "Damn, Pete, I've missed you."
They'd known each other since they were twelve and both had been sent to the same foster home. If possible, Pete Loring had been even wilder and more uncontrollable than Brady. It was a wonder his foster parents had survived the two of them. Or put up with them for longer than twenty minutes. Popular opinion at the time had held that they'd both come to a sorry end. But, by some miracle, they hadn't. They'd both been turned around: Brady by Charles Ross, and Pete by a strong, spirited, tenderhearted young woman named Eileen Tobias.
"I've missed you, too, bro," Pete said. "What happened to the mission?"
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