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“I don’t mean to be. And I don’t mean to belittle that guy. We were in college, and he was majoring in football. It was probably my fault for not being more discriminating my first and second time, but even then I was very involved in getting ahead. Choosing an ideal mate simply took more energy than I wanted to give. At the time, it hadn’t occurred to me to tell him specifically what I did and didn’t like, which probably would have made things better. But now, since you’ve presented yourself on the proverbial silver platter, I can hope the results will be much more to my liking. After all, you have a reputation for fulfilling such expectations.”
Reputation? He didn’t even want to get into that with her. If she’d been listening to gossip…Well, at least the gossip appeared to have been flattering. He gave a groan that was loud and rife with confusion. “I just don’t know, Olivia. I mean, this could all backfire.”
She was all business, not moved in the least by his dramatic display of frustration. “You’re afraid I’ll be privy to your awesome technique, decide I can’t possibly live without it or you and want to stake a marital claim?”
Actually she was pretty close to the mark. Not that he believed his technique was really all that awesome. But he knew women too often associated sex with love. He’d have to make it clear to her…
“I understand how you feel, Tony. I was concerned also, only for opposite reasons. Right now, you only want a baby, but as you see the woman who will give you your child grow, as you see the changes in her body—from you and your baby—are you certain you won’t transfer your affection for the child to the mother?”
He stared stupidly. “I hadn’t planned to watch any changes.”
“No? But I understood, from books I read long ago, that the changes were the most fascinating part. You won’t want to feel your baby kick? You won’t want to be in on any prenatal pictures taken? I saw a documentary on TV once that was incredible. The ultrasound showed every small movement the baby made. You could even count toes and fingers.”
His head began to pound with the growing complications. “I think…I think I may have more to think about.”
“I’m sorry. Now I’ve confused you.”
“You haven’t confused me. It’s just that I hadn’t even considered prenatal observation. All my thoughts had been directed solely on the baby after its birth. But of course I’d want to see and feel the changes.” He studied her closely. “You wouldn’t mind?”
“Mind what?”
“If I watched you closely? If I observed all the changes in your body while my baby grew and if I examined those changes, took part in them?”
She was silent again, her fingers worrying the edge of her coat. Then she shook her head and in a hushed tone, she replied, “No. I wouldn’t mind. If that was what you wanted—and if I got pregnant.”
“Olivia, there’s no reason to doubt you will. You’re a healthy young woman, in the prime of your childbearing years. I’ve already been checked, and the doctor assures me I should possess sufficient potency to see the job done.”
Olivia drew a deep breath and then held out her hand. “So. Do we have a deal?”
He was so aroused, he knew his hand would shake like the skinny branches on the naked tree shadowing the park, but he took her small palm in his anyway. His voice was little more than a croak when he said, “A deal.”
“When do we start?”
She may as well have said, when do you want to see me naked and touch me and come inside me, because the effect was the same. He had trouble drawing a breath as images too erotic to bear shot through his already muddled brain. It took all his masculine power to bring himself back in order. “I suppose you should find out when you’re…” He gulped, then forged manfully onward. “When you’re most fertile. Do you, ah, keep track of such things?”
“Of course. All women do, if they don’t want to be taken by surprise. How about if I let you know, then we’ll see what works for both of us?”
It irritated him no end that she could speak so calmly after practically ordering him to pleasure her, to make certain he loved her in a way she would never forget. His brain was busy concentrating on the myriad ways he’d see the job done; he could barely form coherent words, damn her. “That’s fine.”
“I’ll look at my calendar, find out exactly when I’m most likely to conceive, and then I’ll call you.”
“And you will take my home number now, Olivia. I don’t want to miss your call if I’m not in the office when…when you’re ready.”
Her smile now was confident and made his insides twist. “Whatever you say, Tony.”
Tony merely gulped, wondering if she would say that when she was naked beneath him, her thighs open, her womb ready to receive him and his sperm, her body his. He kept silent, words well beyond him, and determined to see the job done as quickly as possible. It was the only way to save his sanity.
OLIVIA SPENT THE REST of the weekend boning up on fertility procedures. Though she didn’t really have a regular cycle that could be timed and knew there was no chance she’d get pregnant, she thought it would still be easier to do things in the proper course, just so Tony wouldn’t get suspicious. She had to be able to claim a day her period would be due, so Tony wouldn’t think they’d been precipitous in their efforts.
When she decided to claim her best time would be that weekend, she suffered through a mixture of anticipation, guilt and plain old self-doubt. But she shook off her insecurities. Monday, after the new contract arrived, just as Tony had said it would, she used it as an excuse to get in touch with him.
She rushed the contract past her lawyer, insisting he give it top priority. If he thought her request unusual, he didn’t say so. He returned it, with a few minor changes, the next day. Olivia forced herself to take another day to look it over, but she okay’d it without her usual relentless perusal, then picked up the phone to set up a business luncheon through Tony’s secretary. It was only Wednesday morning, four days after she’d gotten Tony’s agreement, and already it felt like forever since the deal had been made.
Just as she hoped, his secretary came back with the news that Tony could make time to see her at their usual restaurant. They’d met there before to discuss business, but today was different. Olivia left her office with the contract in her briefcase, along with a book on fertility and an anticipatory smile on her face.
TONY WAS ALREADY SEATED when she arrived. He’d chosen an isolated table at the back of the restaurant, away from prying eyes and ears. Olivia silently approved his choice, and forced herself to greet him in a normal, businesslike manner. Tony stood until she was seated, his eyes never leaving her, then waited while the waitress handed them menus. Very few things, including excitement, ever dampened her appetite so she ordered a lunch of rich soup and a salad.
Tony surveyed her a moment longer, then asked, “You have a problem with the agreement I sent you?”
Olivia waved away his concern. “We only made a few minor alterations.”
“You always have alterations, Olivia, but I’d rarely call them minor.”
She grinned. He was right, after all. She was a shark, but proud of it. “You can’t expect me to blindly accept rules of your making, now can you, Tony? The revised contract will suit my purpose much better, as you’ll see.”
He gave her a small smile. “I don’t doubt I’ll approve it. I seldom win with you.”
The way he said that, with a touch of pride, confused her. Could he have been telling the complete truth, not just trying to gain her acceptance of his plan? Did he truly admire her business skills? She felt warmed by the very idea, especially since most of her other male associates either seemed intimidated by her or resentful of her confidence.
She sent Tony a cheeky grin and said, “You win all too often, anyway. Losing on occasion is good for your character.”
“But winning’s more fun.” Then he held up a hand. “In this case, though, you didn’t have to bother your lawyer. I already told you I’d give you whatever you wanted.”
“No.”
“Beg your pardon?”
Olivia wanted to make her point perfectly clear. Her conscience was nagging her enough about manipulating him emotionally. She certainly couldn’t do so professionally, too. “I want this latest agreement to stand on its own, Tony. It doesn’t have anything to do with…the other. Look over the agreement, judge it the same way you would any other, then get back to me.”
“And you’ll relent if I don’t approve of your changes?”
“Absolutely not.” She gave him another grin. “But I fully expect to have to work for them if they’re not to your liking.”
He looked amused, his chin propped in his palm, his elbow on the table. Then his gaze dropped to his napkin and he said, “Do you have anything else to discuss with me, Olivia?”
It was more than obvious what he was asking. She set down her salad fork and then pushed her plate to the side. After hefting her briefcase into her lap, she pulled out a slim volume on fertility and flipped the book open to the page she had marked.
Tony merely stared, his slouched position not so slouched now.
“I’ve been reading up on our latest subject, and it seems this weekend will be my most promising time. According to this book, I should be ovulating on Saturday, give or take a day.”
“So you’re due in two weeks? Right at the end of the deadline you set?”
Her two week time limit. Get her pregnant by then, or the deal was off. She almost groaned at her own audacity.
“That’s right. Two weeks exactly.” Actually she’d pulled that ridiculous number out of the air, just as she’d done with the deadline. She wouldn’t conceive, not with only one ovary. And her periods were irregular, often nonexistent, so there was no true time frame. You couldn’t get pregnant if you didn’t ovulate, which was a fact she’d been living with for a very long time.
It was pure coincidence that she’d set up her most fertile time to fall precisely within her deadline. She glanced up and wished she wore reading glasses, just to provide her with a bit of camouflage. But despite her embarrassment, she was determined to follow through. Tony had been more than a little reluctant to agree to her terms, and if this was to be her one big romantic rendezvous, she wanted his wholehearted involvement. She needed his wholehearted involvement. As with any deal, success required planning. And Olivia had formulated her plan well. By the time she was finished with him, Tony would be beyond ready; he’d be anxious.
She braced herself and said, “I think I can get a few days away. How about you?”
“A few days?”
“Well of course.” Olivia frowned at him. “According to the book, an extended amount of time might be necessary. Listen to this. The couple should have intercourse at least twice with an interval of six hours between. You see? There’s no reason to do it if we aren’t going to do it with proper enthusiasm. Things like this can’t be rushed.”
“I, ah…”
“There’s something else, too.”
Tony raised his brows, not deigning and frankly not able to verbalize at this point.
Olivia forged on. “It also mentions you should do without sex until then to allow your sperm count to build to a higher level.” She paused, taking a small sip of her tea, then pinning him with her gaze. She felt horribly deceptive, but determined just the same. This was to be her time, and hers alone. “You should be celibate until we’re together. Will that be a problem?”
“Olivia…”
She hurried to explain, wanting him to understand the supposed reasoning behind her request. It wouldn’t do for him to know her remarks were prompted by a possessive attitude, rather than a legitimate concern. “You don’t want to deplete your sperm, Tony, now do you?”
“No.”
“Good.” Olivia didn’t want to admit to the relief she felt, and she certainly didn’t want Tony to witness it, so she busied herself by smoothing back another page. Tony looked down and his eyes narrowed at the number of lines she’d highlighted. Olivia quickly tried to close the book, but Tony’s finger got in the way.
“What’s this? Other interesting facts you’ve made note of?” His voice sounded deeper than usual, and a little hoarse.
Olivia was very careful not to look at him. “A few.”
“They apply to us?” When she only nodded, he said, “Please, enlighten me.”
“Perhaps it would be better to wait until later—”
“But I’m dying of curiosity.”
His mocking tone brought her head up. “All right.” She held the book before her and made a show of clearing her throat. She’d bluffed her way through more than one difficult situation without losing her poise. “It also says, For further assurance of success the woman should lie still on her back for several minutes, preferably with the man still inside her, with her legs bent at the knee to allow a pool of sperm to remain near the cervix.”
Tony had just taken a sip from his glass as Olivia began her discourse. When he choked, spewing water across the small table, Olivia leaned over and pounded on his back, nearly unseating him. He caught her hand and stared at her, his face turning ruddy, until she finally subsided and pulled away.
Olivia felt satisfied with his reaction. If she could keep him off guard, he wouldn’t stand a chance of dissecting her motivation and discovering her perfidy. “Surely you know all this already? It was your idea after all.”
“No.” He vehemently shook his head. “My idea did not include staying still inside you for several minutes.”
“You find the idea repellent?” She did her best to look affronted, knowing his problem now didn’t stem from distaste, but rather from the intimate level of the conversation—and possibly his response to it. “You would prefer, of course, that I lie on a sterile table while a damn white-coated doctor probed me with a syringe?”
“Olivia…” He reached across the table and took her hand again. “I don’t think you have any idea how all of this is affecting me. I’m only a man, you know, and I’m not accustomed to this sort of conversation.”
His hand felt warm and dry and very large. Olivia closed her eyes, then experienced another wave of guilt. She was twitting him mercilessly for her own benefit, and he was having difficulty surviving it. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t carry on. The truth is,” she added, hoping just a touch of honesty would help smooth over the situation, “I’m a little uncomfortable, too. I’m trying to be as straightforward and open about this as I can, so that we can look at it in a purely businesslike fashion.”
“I know, and I understand.” He hesitated, then released her fingers and leaned back in his chair. His gaze seemed hot, and very intense. “But I don’t think it’s going to work, Olivia.”
CHAPTER THREE
HER HEART SKIPPED A BEAT and a swelling sensation of near panic threatened to suffocate her. Had she pushed him too far? “You want to call it off?”
“No!” He abandoned his casual pose and was again leaning toward her. “No, I just don’t think I’m going to be able to look at this as anything but personal. I’ve thought about it a lot over the past few days and I don’t believe it’s at all possible to sleep with a woman—a woman I know and admire—and pretend that it isn’t the least bit intimate. I do think we can get past that, though, if we both try.”
“I’m not sure I understand.” At least he wasn’t canceling on her, and that was all that really mattered.
“I think we should look at this as something of an adventure. So long as we limit our socializing to the…ah…process, we should be able to keep things in perspective.”
“I see. No friendly visits between appointments.”
“Exactly. We’ll meet when we have to in order to see things through, but the rest of the time our relationship, such as it is, will remain the same.”
“Which is strictly business.”
“Yes.”
Olivia toyed with her fork. For some ridiculous reason she felt insulted. Her tone was a touch acerbic when she remarked, “That serves my purposes just fine. I’ll enjoy you while you employ all your manly skills to impregnate me.” A mental image formed with her words, and she had to catch her breath. “As to the rest, if you’ll recall, I don’t have time for frivolous dating.”
He curled his hand into a fist and searched her face, looking as if he wanted to say more, but then he shook his head, and said, “All right, we’re agreed then. And this weekend is fine for me, also. Should we begin Friday evening?”
“I’ll be at the Southend location that day, but I’ll finish up about six.”
“That’s good for me.” He reached out to straighten his knife and fork, and Olivia saw that his hand was shaking. She shook, too, in impatience. “I’ll make arrangements for us somewhere private, then meet you there. That way, no one will see us together, which I think is important. We need to maintain our social distance.”
It was the physical closeness that interested Olivia, not the social distance, so she nodded. “I’d just as soon no one suspected us of enhancing our relationship, too. I don’t want to start any nasty gossip and end up in a scandal.”
He chuckled. “At least you wouldn’t have to worry about your folks catching wind of it. My entire family lives nearby, and they all think they need to straighten out my life. Anytime the mere hint of a scandal surfaces, I find them all at my door ready and willing to butt right in.”
“And what we’re conspiring to do goes beyond the ‘hint’ stage. It defines the word scandalous.”
“Which means my family would have a field day.”
Olivia was fascinated. She’d often wondered what kind of upbringing Tony had, especially in light of the fact she had no family at all. He was such a good person, she supposed his family had to be pretty good, too. “So they have no idea what you’re planning? I mean, with the baby and all?”
“Hell no. My family is old-fashioned. They definitely believe in doing things in the right order.”
“Marriage first?”
“Yep.” He grinned again, that ready grin that made all the ladies of his acquaintance smile in yearning. “They’ve been very diligent in trying to get me married off. Every damn one of them has produced at least three prospective brides. I can’t make them understand that I’d prefer to do the choosing myself when I decide the time is right.”
Olivia suddenly realized they’d already broken their new set of rules. Learning about Tony’s family definitely went beyond business and was dangerous besides; the more she knew about him, the more fascinating he seemed. It had taken her no time at all to become accustomed to wanting him, to accepting him as a desirable man. Every day, every minute it seemed, her feelings for him grew. She began to wonder if those feelings hadn’t been there all along, waiting to be noticed.
It was a very scary prospect. She couldn’t afford, professionally or emotionally, to get overly involved with him. So she changed the subject, away from his family, and tried to dwell on something less intimate.
Their soup was delivered and throughout the rest of the lunch they discussed Olivia’s new shop and Tony’s proposed agreement. To his credit, Tony argued fiercely, but Olivia wore him down. The meal ended with Tony promising to have his lawyer okay everything and return the finalized papers to her very soon.
They stood on the curb outside the restaurant, the lunch-time crowd flowing around them, and Tony touched her arm. “Friday at six.”
“I’ll be ready.”
