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Desmond had always been that weird kid at the corner table. Graduating from high school at fifteen hadn’t helped him forge a lot of connections. Neither had becoming a billionaire. If he’d tried to have a normal relationship with McKenna Moore, it would have ended in disaster in the same fashion as the one he’d tried with Lacey.
Bonds of blood, like the one he shared with his son, were the only answer for someone like him. This baby would be his family and fulfill Desmond’s craving for an heir. Maybe his son would even love him just because.
Regardless, the baby belonged to him. Desmond decided what would happen to his kid and there was no one on this entire planet who could trump his wishes.
Except for maybe his wife.
But he’d paid his law firm over a million dollars to ensure the prenuptial agreement protected his fortune and an already-drafted divorce decree granted him full custody. It was ironclad, or rather, would be as soon as he filed for the divorce.
She’d recover from childbirth, take Desmond’s divorce settlement money and vanish. Exactly as he’d envisioned when he’d determined the only thing that could fill the gaping hole in his life was a baby to replace the one he’d lost—or rather, the one Lacey had aborted.
Never again would he allow a woman to dictate something as critical as to whether his child would live or die. And never again would he let himself care about a woman who held even a smidgen of power over his happiness. One day, his son would understand.
“Ms. Moore,” he finally growled out long past the time when it would have been appropriate to start speaking. “We have a problem. Our son needs you.”
* * *
Desmond Pierce stood in McKenna’s hospital room. With a crying baby.
Her baby.
The one she’d been trying really hard to forget she’d just pushed out of her body in what had to be the world’s record for painful, difficult labors...and then given away.
McKenna’s eyes widened as she registered what he’d just said and her eye sockets were so dry, even that hurt. Everything hurt. She wanted codeine and to sleep for three days, not a continual spike through her heart with each new cry of the baby. The muscles in her arms tensed to reach for her son so she could touch him.
She wasn’t supposed to see the baby. Or hold him. The nurse had told her that when they’d taken him away, even though McKenna had begged for the chance to say goodbye. The cruel people in the delivery room had ignored her. What did they know about sacrifice? About big, gaping holes inside that nothing would ever fill?
For a second she’d thought her son’s father had figured that out. That he’d come strictly to grant her wish. The look on his face as he’d come through the door—it had floored her. Their gazes connected and it was as if he could see all her angst and last-minute indecision. And understood.
I’ve come to fix everything, he seemed to say without a word.
But that was not the reality of why Mr. Pierce was here with the baby. Instead he was here to rip her heart to shreds. Again.
They should leave. Right now. Before she started crying.
“He’s not my son,” she rasped, her vocal cords still strained from the trauma of birth.
She shouldn’t have said that. The phrase—both true and brutal—unfolded inside her with sharp teeth, tearing at her just as deeply as the baby’s cries.
He was her son. The one she’d signed away because it ticked all the boxes in her head that her parents had lined up. You should find a man, have lots of babies, they’d said. There’s no greater joy than children.
Except she didn’t want kids. She wanted to be a doctor, to help people in pain and in need. Desmond had yearned for a baby; she could give him one and experience pregnancy without caving in to her parent’s pressure. They didn’t approve of western medicine. It was a huge source of conflict, especially after Grandfather had died when homeopathic remedies had failed to cure his cancer.
Being Desmond Pierce’s surrogate allowed her a creative way to satisfy her parents and still contribute to society according to what made sense to her. That’s what she’d repeated to herself over and over for the last hour and she’d almost believed it—until a man had burst into her hospital room with a crying baby in his arms.
And he was looking at her so strangely that she felt compelled to prompt him. “What do you want, Desmond?”
They’d never been formally introduced, but the baby was a dead giveaway. Desmond Pierce didn’t look anything like the pictures she’d searched on the internet. Of course she’d had a better-than-average dose of curiosity about the man with such strict ideas about the surrogacy arrangement, the man who would marry her without meeting her.
But this man—he made tall, dark and handsome seem banal. He was fascinating, with a scruff of a beard that gave him a dangerous edge, deep brown hair swept back from his face and a wiry build.
Desmond Pierce was the perfect man to be a father or she wouldn’t have agreed to his proposal. What she hadn’t realized was that he was a perfect man, period. Coupled with the baby in his arms, he might well be the most devastatingly handsome male on the planet.
And then she realized. He wasn’t just a man. They were married. He was her husband. Whom she was never supposed to meet.
“The baby won’t eat,” he said over the yowls. “You need to try to breast-feed him.”
She blinked. Twice. “I need to do what?”
“The nurse said he’s allergic to formula. We’ve tried for an hour.” He moved closer to the bed with a purposeful stride that brooked no nonsense and held out the wailing bundle. “He needs you. This is the one thing I cannot give him.”
She stared at the wrinkled face of her child, refusing to reach out, refusing to let the wash of emotions beating through her chest take hold. The baby needed her and she was the sole person who could help. But how could she? Breast-feeding was far too nurturing of a thing to do with a baby she wasn’t allowed to keep.
How dare Desmond come in here and layer on more impossible emotional turmoil in the middle of her already-chaotic heart?
She’d done her part according to their agreement. The baby was born, healthy and the child was set for life with a billionaire father who wanted him badly enough to seek out an unusual surrogacy agreement and who had the means to take care of him. What more could Desmond Pierce possibly expect from her? Did he want to slice off a piece of her soul when he took her baby away for the second time?
“That’s too much to ask,” she whispered even as her breasts tingled at the suggestion. They’d grown hard and heavy the moment the baby had entered the room crying. It was simple physiology and she’d known she’d have to let her milk dry up. Had been prepared for it.
What she had not been prepared for was the request to use it to feed her son.
Desmond’s brows came together. “You’re concerned about your figure?”
That shouldn’t have been so funny. “Yeah, I’m entering the Miss USA pageant next week and how I’ll look in a bikini is definitely my biggest objection.”
“That’s sarcasm, right?”
The fact that he had to ask struck her oddly, but before she could comment, he stuck the baby right into her arms. Against her will, her muscles shifted, cradling the baby to her bosom, and she was lost. As he must have known. As the nurse had known.
She shouldn’t be holding the baby, but she was, and it was too late to stop the thunder of her pulse as it pumped awe and love and duty and shock straight to her heart.
My son.
He still cried, his face rooting against her breast, and it was clear what he wanted. She just hadn’t realized how deeply her desire to give it to him would ultimately go.
“There’s a clause in the custody agreement about the baby’s medical needs,” Desmond reminded her. “You’re on the hook for eighteen years if he needs you for medical reasons.”
“Yeah, but I thought that would only be invoked if he needed a kidney or something,” she blurted as the baby’s little fingers worked blindly against her chest. “Not breast-feeding.”
She couldn’t. Judging by how badly she wanted to, if she did this, it would be so much harder to walk away. It wasn’t fair of Desmond to ask. She was supposed to go back to Portland, register for school. Become a doctor like she’d dreamed about for over a decade. That’s how she’d help people. This evisceration Desmond Pierce wanted to perform wasn’t part of the plan.
“He might still need a kidney, too.” Desmond shrugged. “Such is the nature of sharing DNA with another human.”
Did he really not get the emotional quandary she was in? All of this must be so easy for him. After all, he was man, and rich besides—all he had to do was snap his fingers to make the world do his bidding. “You know breast-feeding isn’t a one-time thing, right? You have to repeat it.”
In the tight-knit community her parents belonged to, they raised babies as a village. She’d watched mothers commit to being a baby’s sole food source twenty-four hours a day for months. Some women had trouble with breast-feeding. He acted like she could just pop out a breast and everything would be peachy.
“Yes, but once we find an alternative, you can walk away. Until then, our agreement means you have a commitment to his medical needs.” He crossed his arms. “There is literally nothing I would not do to help my child. He needs you. Three months, at least. You can live with me, have your own room. Use a breast pump if you like. You want extra compensation added to the settlement? Name your price.”
As if she could put a price on the maternal instincts that warred with her conviction that whatever decision she made here would have lasting impacts that neither of them could foresee. “I don’t want extra compensation! I want—”
Nothing except what he’d already promised her. A divorce settlement that would pay for medical school and the knowledge that she’d helped him create the family he wanted. It felt so cold all at once. But what was she supposed to do instead? She rarely dated, not after three years with a ho-hum high school boyfriend and a pregnancy scare at nineteen, which was why she refused to go out with one of the men her parents were constantly throwing at her. Dating wasn’t worth the possibility of an accidental pregnancy.
She couldn’t be a mom and a doctor. Both required commitment, an exhaustive number of hours. So she’d chosen long ago which path worked for her. Because she was selfish, according to her mother, throwing away her parents’ teaching about natural remedies as if their beliefs didn’t matter.
So here was her chance to be unselfish for once. She could breast-feed for three months, wean the baby as he grew out of his formula allergy and go back to Portland for the spring semester. It was only a small addition to what had already been a year-long delay.
She’d wanted to experience pregnancy to better empathize with her patients. Why not experience breast-feeding for the same reason? She could use a pump if the baby had trouble latching on, just like any new mother. No one had to know that it was going to kill her to give up the baby a second time after she’d fallen the rest of the way in love with him.
She glanced up at Desmond, who was watching her hold the baby with an expression she couldn’t interpret. “I’ll do it. But you can’t stay in the room.”
His expression didn’t change. “I beg to differ. He’s my son.”
Great, so now he was going to watch. But she could still dictate her own terms. “Can you at least call the nurse back so I can make sure I’m doing it right?”
Instead of forcing her to push the call button, he nodded and disappeared into the hall, giving her a blessed few moments alone. The hospital gown had slits for exactly this purpose so it was easy to maneuver the baby’s face to her aching breast. His cries had quieted to heartbreaking mewls, and his eyes were closed, but his mouth worked the closer she guided him toward her nipple. And then all at once, he popped on like a champ and started sucking.
She was doing it. He was doing it.
Entranced, she watched her son take his first meal on this planet and it was almost holy. Her body flooded with a sense of rightness and awe. An eternity passed and a small sound caused her to glance up. Desmond had returned with the nurse, but he was just watching her quietly with far more tenderness than she would have expected.
“Looks like you’re a natural, hon,” the nurse said encouragingly and smiled. “In a few minutes, you can switch sides. Do you want me to stay?”
“I think I’m okay.”
Really, fetching the nurse had been an excuse to get Desmond out of the room. Women had been doing this for centuries, including those of her parents’ community who were strong advocates for removing the stigma of public breast-feeding. She wasn’t a frail fraidy-cat.
The nurse left. Now that the baby was quiet, she felt Desmond’s presence a whole lot more than she had before, like an extra weight had settled around her shoulders. He was so...everything. Intense. Focused. Gorgeous. Unsettling. Every time she glanced at him, it did something funny to her stomach and she’d had enough new sensations for the day, thanks.
Instead she watched the baby eat in silence until she couldn’t stand it any longer.
“What did you name him?” Her voice was husky and drew Desmond’s attention.
He cocked his head, his gaze traveling over her in a way that made her twitchy. “Conner. His middle name is Clark, after your father.”
That speared her right through the heart. She’d had no idea he’d do something to honor his son’s maternal heritage, and it struck her as personal in a way that dug under her skin. If all had gone according to plan, she’d never have met Desmond, never have known what he’d called the baby. She wouldn’t have looked them up or contacted either of them. Also according to their agreement.
Now it was all backward and upside-down because this was their son. And Desmond Pierce was her husband. She’d just agreed to go home with him. How was that going to work? Would he expect to exercise his husbandly duties?
That thought flittered through her stomach in a way that wasn’t difficult to interpret at all. Dear God. She was attracted to her husband. And she’d take that secret to the grave.
Mortified, she switched breasts under Desmond’s watchful eye, figuring that if she would be living with him, he’d see her feeding the baby plenty of times. Besides, there was nothing shameful about a woman’s body in the act of providing nourishment for her son. Somehow, though, Desmond made the whole thing seem intimate and heavy with implication, as if they were a real family and he was there to support his child’s mother.
Desmond pursed his lips, still surveying her as if trying to figure something out. “Have we met before?”
Her pulse leaped. “No. Of course not. You wanted everything done through your agent.”
Mr. Lively had been anything but. He was about a hundred and twenty years old and spoke slower than a tortoise on Valium. Anytime he’d contacted her about paperwork or medical records, she’d mentally blocked off four hours because that’s generally how long the session lasted. Except for when she’d gone with him to the courthouse to complete the marriage by proxy, which had taken all day.
Suddenly she wished they’d done this surrogacy arrangement a different way. But marriage had been the easiest way to avoid legal issues. The divorce settlement, which she’d use to pay for school, was a normal agreement between couples with Desmond’s kind of wealth. Otherwise someone could argue Desmond had paid for a baby and no one wanted that legal hassle.
She hadn’t minded being technically married when it was just a piece of paper. Meeting Desmond, being near enough to hear him breathe, changed everything. It felt bigger than a signature on an official document.
“You seem familiar.” He shook his head as if clearing it. “It’s been a long day.”
“You don’t say,” she said, letting the irony drip from her tone. “I’ve been here since 3:00 a.m.”
“Really?” This seemed to intrigue him.
“Yeah, it’s not a drive-through. I was in labor for something like fifteen hours.”
“Is that normal?”
She sighed and tried to shift her position without disturbing the baby. “I don’t know. This is my first rodeo.”
“I’m being insensitive.”
Nothing like calling a spade a spade, which McKenna appreciated enough to give him a break. “I’m sure we’ll get to know each other soon enough.”
Somehow she’d managed to startle him. “Will we?”
“Well, sure, if we’re living in the same house.”
And she could secretly admit to a curiosity about him that she’d have every right to satisfy if they were in close quarters. There was a certain amount of protection in the fact that her time with him had predefined boundaries. The last thing she needed was additional entanglements that kept her from fulfilling her dreams. “But only for three months, right?”
“We’ll do our best to keep it to three months,” he said with a sharp nod, but she had the distinct impression he hadn’t considered that inviting her to live in his house meant they’d be around each other. What exactly had she signed up for?
It didn’t matter. All that mattered was that he’d given her three months with her son that she was pathetically grateful for. It was like a gift, a chance to know him before he grew old enough to remember her, to miss her. A chance to revel in all these newfound maternal instincts and then leave before they grew too strong. She was going to be a doctor, thanks to Desmond Pierce, and she couldn’t let his monkey wrench change that.
Two (#u7e1b2b76-e8fc-59f0-9fe7-62db84f15bcd)
The house Desmond had lived in for the last ten years was not big enough. Twenty thousand square feet shouldn’t feel so closed in. But with McKenna Moore inside his walls, everything shrank.
He’d never brought a woman home to live. Sure, Lacey had stayed over occasionally when they were dating, but her exit was always prearranged. And then she’d forever snuffed out his ability to trust a woman as easily as she’d snuffed out the life of their “accident,” as she’d termed it. The baby had been unplanned, definitely, since their relationship hadn’t been all that serious, but he’d had no idea how much he’d want the baby until it was too late. He’d always made sure there was a light at the end of the tunnel when it came to his interaction with women after that.
There was no light where his baby’s mother was concerned. She’d brought her feminine scent and shiny dark hair into his house and put a stamp of permanence all over everything.
Did she know that he’d made a huge concession when he’d asked her to stay with him? This was his domain, his sanctuary, and he’d let her invade it, sucking up all the space while she was at it. Only for Conner would he have done this.
This, of course, looked an awful lot like he was hiding in his workshop. But he couldn’t be in the main part of the house and walk around with the semi-erection McKenna gave him by simply laughing. Or looking at him. Or breathing. It was absurd. He’d been around women before. Gorgeous women who liked his money enough to put up with his idiosyncrasies. None of them had ever invoked such a driving need.
He tried to pretend he was simply working. After all, he often holed up in his workshop for days until Mrs. Elliot reminded him that he couldn’t live on the Red Bull and Snickers that he kept in the corner refrigerator.
But there was a difference between hiding and holing up and he wasn’t confused about which one he was doing. Apparently he was the only one who was clear on it, though, because the next time he glanced up from the robot hand he was rewiring, there she stood.
“Busy?” she called in her husky voice that hit with a solid thwang he felt in his gut.
“Ms. Moore,” he muttered in acknowledgment. “This is my workshop.”
