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It was so unfair, she thought as she drove through the iron gates and turned left onto Whitford-Maraetai Road. How could he have been so...so everything and so nothing all at the same time? Clearly she needed to hone her inner lie detector some more. First her husband, now this guy. What kind of message was she inadvertently transmitting to the universe that caused her to attract men for whom fidelity was a negotiable bond?
She might never know the answer to that, she told herself as she whipped along the road back toward the motorway interchange. But there was one thing she definitely knew—and that was that Ronin Marshall, and men like him, had no place in her life.
Ever.
Three (#ulink_b5b3e2e2-0968-579e-9287-78cb273fd674)
Two days later Ronin pushed open the door to Best for Baby and decisively rang the silver-and-crystal bell at the abandoned reception desk. Abandoned, no doubt, because he’d been fobbed off with the receptionist while Alison Carter hid from him here at her office.
He rarely lost his temper. In fact, he was known for being cool under pressure. But this had made his blood boil and, as did everything involving Alison Carter from the moment he’d met her in Hawaii, it churned up emotions that were both unfamiliar and uncomfortable.
The soft noise of a door opening made him wheel around to face her. He didn’t even give her a moment before he spoke.
“Why aren’t you at my house?” he growled, fighting to keep his voice level.
For a split second she looked taken aback, but her composure quickly settled back around her like an invisible cape.
“I sent my associate. Is there a problem?” she asked.
“Yes, there’s a problem. Your lack of professionalism is the problem.”
“My what? Are you complaining about the level of care my company is giving to your contract?” she answered, her face pale but resolute.
“I’m complaining that you’re not doing the job yourself.”
She squared her shoulders and lifted that dainty chin of hers a notch. “Deb has been with me since the firm opened, and she is equally capable of seeing to it that your nursery is completed on time.”
“Deb’s your receptionist, right?”
“Normally, yes,” she answered, with obvious reluctance.
“And how many contracts has she undertaken that are as time-sensitive as this one?”
“This is her first, but I’m still supervi—”
“Not good enough.”
“Your contract is with Best for Baby, not specifically with me,” she pointed out in what was, to his way of thinking, a totally unreasonable reasonable voice.
But beneath her sangfroid, though, he heard the tremor of unease. It gave him power he wasn’t afraid to use. Not when the ends justified the means. He wanted the best for his nephew, and that meant Ali Carter. If he had to make a stink to get her to handle his contract with her precious company personally, then a stink he’d darned well make.
“You will complete the contract with me, and only you.”
Or else ominously remained unsaid.
“Are you threatening me?” she asked, her voice obviously unsteady now.
“Do I need to? Your firm promotes itself as doing what’s best for baby. It’s your name behind that promotion. If I’m not mistaken, doing what’s best is the basis of your mission statement. Yes,” he said in response to the look of surprise that flitted through her blue-gray eyes, “I’ve done my research.”
“And your problem?”
Oh, she was good. He’d give her that. She’d pulled herself together, and if he hadn’t already heard that weakness just a few moments before, he’d have thought she had the upper hand right now.
“My problem is that I contracted with your company with the expectation that I would receive the best, not the second best.”
“I can assure you that Deb is as skilled and efficient as I am. In fact, she’s probably better for this contract, as she has no reason on earth not to be. She’s eager to work with you.” She left the words “I am not” unsaid, but they echoed in the air around them nonetheless.
“So you admit that you’re letting a personal issue stand in the way of your Best for Baby creed, as stated on your company website?”
“I...”
“Not terribly professional, is it?”
“I’m not compromising what my firm offers in any way by putting Deb on the contract.”
“But she’s not you. I want you.”
In more ways than one, he added silently. She picked up on the entendre, her cheeks draining of color before flushing pink once more.
“Well, we don’t always get what we want, do we?” she snapped back.
“Give me one good reason why you won’t work on this project yourself.”
“A reason?” her voiced raised an octave. She let out a forced laugh that hung bitterly in the air between them.
“Is that so difficult?”
His words became the catalyst that broke the crucible of her control.
“Fine,” she snapped. “You want my reason for not working directly with you, you can have it. Men like you who cheat on their wives and who expect the rest of the world to simply drop everything at their behest make me sick. Do you hear me? Sick! You’re scum. You swan around an exotic location under the guise of work and you pick up stray needy women. You betray everything about yourself as a decent human being and all the promises you’ve made before heading home—without so much as a goodbye, I might add—to your perfect life and your perfect wife. That’s why I won’t work directly for you. Satisfied?”
A lesser man might have staggered under her onslaught. He was not that man.
“I’m not married,” he said succinctly in the echoing silence that followed her unexpected tirade.
“Oh, and you think that makes it okay? Wife, partner—what difference does it make? You betrayed the mother of your child when you slept with me, which in my book makes you both a liar and a cheat.”
Ronin tamped down his increasing anger, forcing his voice to remain calm. “I repeat. I am not married. Nor am I currently in any kind of romantic relationship. The baby is not my son. Legally, he’s my ward.”
“Your...your ward?”
Ali clutched at the lapels of her blouse with a shaking hand.
“He’s my nephew. My dead sister’s son.” He sighed. Just saying the words ripped off the carefully layered mental dressing he’d been using to protect his emotional wounds. “Look, can we sit somewhere and discuss this like rational people?”
* * *
Ali let go of her blouse and gestured to the room behind her. “Please, come into my office.”
Her heart raced as her mind played over the appalling way she’d just spoken to him. She never lost it like that, ever. Not to anyone, and especially not to a client. But this was just a little bit too raw for her. The first time since her divorce she’d trusted anyone enough to even consider kissing them, let alone sleeping with them, and this had happened. She could be forgiven for jumping to the wrong conclusion, but she couldn’t be forgiven for the diatribe she’d just delivered. She’d be lucky if he didn’t rip up their contract right now and throw it back in her face.
Two facts now echoed in her mind.
The baby wasn’t his.
He wasn’t married.
“Take a seat,” she said, moving over to the carafe of iced water she kept on a credenza. She poured out two glasses and placed one on her desk in front of him. “Here. I know we both could probably do with something stronger, but it’s all I have on hand.”
“It’s fine,” he said. He reached for the glass and drained it with one long swallow.
“I apologize for jumping to conclusions, and for speaking to you like that,” she said as calmly as she could. She settled behind her desk and looked at him directly. “And I’m deeply sorry for your loss.”
Her eyes raked over him, taking in the shadows that lingered under his eyes and the fine lines of strain that hadn’t been on his face the first time she’d met him. She must have been too preoccupied to notice them when she’d seen him at his house the other day. He looked haggard, as if he’d been on the go non-stop.
“Thank you. It’s why I had to leave you so suddenly the night we met. My father called to say my sister and her husband had been in a fatal accident. My nephew was born by emergency C-section immediately before his mother died. I left your room on autopilot. I wasn’t really thinking clearly, I just knew I had to get home. By the time I realized how unfairly I’d treated you, I was already back here, and when I contacted the hotel, they said you’d checked out.”
“I understand,” she assured him, her heart breaking for the shock and pain he must have felt. She was close to her sisters and couldn’t begin to imagine how she’d feel if the same thing had happened to one of them. “I would have done exactly the same thing.”
He dipped his head in acknowledgment. “It’s been hell this past week. So much to organize, so many people to see.” He swiped a hand over his face. “And the baby. It would have helped if CeeCee hadn’t been such a superstitious thing and had organized the nursery already. I could have simply transported everything to my house.”
“Or stayed at theirs?”
“No,” he shuddered. “That would have been too much. I couldn’t.”
“What about your parents? How are they coping?”
“They’re devastated. The stress is playing havoc with my mother’s heart condition.”
Ali felt her heart break a little at the note of sheer anguish in his voice. She could tell he was holding on by a thread. Had he even had the chance to begin grieving himself?
“Oh, Ronin. I’m so sorry. If there’s anything I can do, just name it.”
“There is,” he said, pulling himself together before her eyes. “Given the circumstances, you’ll understand why I need you to complete the nursery. I don’t want any mistakes or oversights. Everything has to be perfect.”
She was about to point out that she wouldn’t have put Deb on the assignment—with Best for Baby’s reputation hanging on it—if she hadn’t been confident that things would be done to his satisfaction. Instead, completely understanding how vital this all was to him, she murmured her assent.
“So you’ll come back on the job?” he asked, lifting his head and looking straight into her eyes.
She could see the worry behind them and his concern that everything be perfect.
“Yes, but better than that, you’ll have two of us for the price of one. Deb will continue to assist—for good reason,” she clarified when it looked as if he might protest. “There is a great deal to be done in a very short time. Two heads will be better than one in this case. She’s already coordinating the work crews. I’ll get started on the nursery supplies and furniture tomorrow.”
The tension that had gripped his frame from the moment she’d laid eyes on him seemed to slowly leach out.
“Good,” he said on a harshly blown out breath. “Good. You know, I always imagined that one day I’d fill my house with a family. I just never thought for a minute it would happen like this.”
He got up to leave and Ali rose with him. At the main door to her office he turned to her, composed once again.
“I’ll be working from my home office tomorrow. Will I see you?”
Ali ran through a mental checklist in her head before giving him an affirmative nod. “Probably after lunch time. I’ll bring some curtain swatches just to make sure we’ve got the right match with the walls.”
“Fine. I’ll key you in to the biometric reader at the gate and the front door so you can come and go as you wish.”
She blinked at that.
“You’d trust me with that?”
“Why not? You aren’t going to steal the family silver, are you?”
“No, of course not,” she laughed in response.
“Then what’s the problem? It’ll be more convenient while you’re coming and going in the next few days.”
And, no doubt, it would ensure that it was her and not Deb going to the house, Ali thought after he’d gone. The idea wasn’t unappealing—now that she knew he wasn’t a dirty cheater.
He wasn’t married. As the thought came back to her, she couldn’t help it—an ember of longing flickered to life deep inside her once more.
* * *
As soon as Deb returned to the office, Ali explained she’d be back on the nursery outfitting as well. Her friend seemed unfazed about the change in seniority.
“Many hands make light work, and there’s certainly plenty of work on this job to go around,” Deb said, cocking her head to study her friend. “I get the feeling, though, that there’s something you’re not telling me.”
Ali tried to hold her gaze and refute the underlying question on Deb’s face but in the end she gave in.
“Look, I don’t want to go into details, but long story short, I met Ronin once a little while ago and we kind of hit it off, but nothing eventuated. Of course, when we got this contract and I saw him again, I assumed the baby was his and that he had been married when we first met.”
“Oh,” Deb said on a long sigh of understanding. “I get it. You must have been pretty mad, huh?”
“You could say that,” Ali responded. Her stomach twisted sickly with the memory of how she’d spoken to Ronin earlier that day.
“But it’s all sorted now, right?”
“It looks that way.”
“So are you going to, y’know, see him again? And don’t get all coy on me and say that naturally you’ll see him in the course of the job. That’s not what I mean, and you know it.” Deb smirked and crossed her arms.
Ali shook her head slightly. Deb knew her too well. That was exactly what she’d been about to say. “No. We won’t start seeing each other like that. He’s just been through the wringer with the loss of his sister and her husband, and he has the additional pressure of keeping an eye out for his parents—not to mention the worry of the baby.”
“Sounds like he needs a bit of distraction then, wouldn’t you agree?” Deb said with a slow wink.
“I think distraction is the last thing he needs right now,” Ali replied firmly, determined to close the subject. “Now, tell me, how did the paint finish turn out?”
They discussed the dove gray walls with white trim that had been painted that morning, and Deb showed Ali a couple of photos she’d taken with her tablet. Ali gave an approving nod at the contractor’s work.
“They’re fast and they’re good, aren’t they? We should pay a little over their premium for doing the job on such short notice. There’s a large enough buffer in the budget for that, isn’t there?”
