3 Brides for 3 Bad Boys (14 page)

He nodded, wondering if said towel would provide adequate covering for their discussion later. No way was he getting back into his pants.

They were write-offs, and he doubted she had anything that would fit him.

He stepped under the hot, pulsing spray, wishing Daisy had opted to join him.

It would have been a whole lot more fun. The warm water restored some of his equilibrium, but he grimaced when he had to wash his hair with shampoo that smelled like the herbal tea a former secretary had drunk every morning at her desk. Chamomile, or something.

When he got out of the shower, a pair of running shorts and T-shirt were waiting on the vanity counter.

He hadn't heard her come in, which was probably a good thing since he might have done something he'd regret. Like drag her fully clothed into the shower with him.

He eyed the frosted glass door of the enclosure and wondered how much she'd seen when she'd brought the clothes in. Imagining her looking at his naked body did bad things to his self-control, and he forced his mind down different paths.

He slipped on the shorts and then the T-shirt. They fit way too well to be anything belonging to her. He wondered if he was wearing her dead husband's clothes. The thought gave him the creeps.

When he stepped out of the bathroom, he could hear a shower running somewhere else in the house. What would she do if he joined her? Would she get mad? Would she scream? Throw soap at him? Or … welcome him? She'd told him no to sharing a shower, so he had no way of finding out.

He wanted her to trust him, to know that when he gave his word, he kept it.

So, he went in search of the kitchen. He made pretty good coffee for a guy who'd had a housekeeper most of his life. He'd given up a lot of things when he went to New York to run the Sloane Electronics offices there.

He'd wanted to be independent, and that meant learning to do everything for himself, including the cooking.

The coffee was just finishing when she walked into the kitchen. She'd pulled her black hair up into a ponytail and changed from her work attire into a pair of navy blue flannel pajama bottoms with little white sheep all over them and a clingy T-shirt the same color as her pants. She looked cute and sexy. Very sexy.

Was she wearing a bra? He couldn't see the lines of one, and the longer he stared, the more pronounced her nipples got. Definitely no bra.

"Stop that!"

He looked up into snapping brown eyes. "Sorry."

She was blushing, which was something he realized he liked. It made him feel all man to evoke such a vulnerable reaction in her, plus it let him know her thoughts were running parallel to his own.

"Yes, well … is that coffee I smell?"

He gave her a look that told her he wasn't fooled by her bland conversation. He knew what she was thinking, and it was making him hard all over again. "Yeah."

"May I have some?"

He shrugged. "It's your house."

She nodded and scooted around him to get mugs down from the cupboard and fill them both with the fresh brew. "Do you want anything in yours?"

"No."

She handed him his mug, and he sat down, watching with amusement as she doctored her coffee with enough milk and sugar to turn it a soft shade of tan.

He shook his head as she sat down. "Why don't you just heat the milk up and add sugar to it?"

"I do, at night before bed sometimes." She sighed. "I probably shouldn't. I could stand to forgo the sugar on a lot of things, I guess."

"Why?"

She looked at him as though he was teasing her. "Come on, isn't it obvious? I need to lose a few pounds."

"You're kidding, right?" She wasn't anemic, but she wasn't too big either.

"You're perfect."

"That's not what my husband thought."

He didn't have a good feeling about this. "What did he think?"

"That I was fat."

"He said that?" Good thing the guy was dead or Carter would have decked him.

"Yes. The women in his crowd thought anything bigger than a size three was moo-queen material."

"What were they, a bunch of drug addicts?"

He'd seen enough of that in New York. Pencil-thin women who kept their figures using recreational drugs. So, they were skinny as hell, but about as rational as a woman going through PMS.

She shocked him when she nodded. "Yes."

"What about your husband?"

"He died of an overdose of heroin."

He said a word his mother had told him never to use in front of a lady.

Daisy winced. "Yeah."

"I'm sorry."

"It's over."

"You're probably a little leery about marriage then, huh?" He hadn't expected that complication.

But she shrugged. "I don't know."

"Hey, I'm not wearing his clothes, am I?"

She smiled, shaking her head. "They're my brother's. He stays here when he's in town visiting the family."

"Where is he the rest of the time?"

"All over the world."

"What does he do?"

"He's a merc."

If she'd been going for shock value, she'd gotten it. In spades.
"Your brother is a
mercenary?"

"Amazing, isn't it, that a boring, plain Jane like me could have a brother who does something so scandalous? My little sister is a model, too, or at least she was until last year. I'm the unexciting one in the family."

"You don't bore me, or didn't you get that earlier?" How could she think so little of herself? "You're sexy."

She laughed, just as if he'd made a joke.

"I'm not kidding. Do you seriously think I come in my shorts for every woman I kiss?"

Her laughter dried up like a drop of water on an Arizona highway. She put her hands to pink cheeks. "Don't say things like that."

"All right, as long as you don't mind me doing them, because that's not an option."

She took a sip of her coffee, choked and started coughing to beat the band. He jumped up and got her a glass of water, made her drink at least half of it before sitting back down again.

"Tell me about your proposition," she said, still sounding a little wheezy.

"I want you to marry me. In exchange I'll settle a lump sum of five hundred thousand dollars on you."

Her coffee cup went flying, and they spent the next five minutes cleaning up the mess.

Afterward, he dragged her into the living room. "I think we better finish our discussion in here. The kitchen isn't a safe place for you."

She let him draw her down onto the couch. "It's not the kitchen. It's you. You just offered me a half a million dollars to marry you."

He didn't figure the problem was that she wanted more money. "My dad died four years ago."

"I know." She laid her hand on his thigh in comfort, but comforting feelings were not the ones heating up his insides at that small touch. "I'm sorry."

"Thanks. He left a will."

Her lips quirked. "Most men in his position would have."

"Not like this one."

"What do you mean?"

"The will stipulates that I have to be married within five years of his death or Sloane Electronics goes on the auction block and the proceeds are to be put in a memorial fund at the hospital in my father's name."

"That's ridiculous!"

"I agree. Unfortunately, it's also legit. My dad could not control the finances while he was alive, but he could control them in his death. My grandfather's will was a little screwy, too."

"I hope you aren't going to be so stupid."

"To try to control people with money?" He shook his head. "No. Even the thought disgusts me." That's why he wanted to give her the lump sum on their marriage.

He didn't want her to feel trapped like his father had in a marriage he no longer wanted.

Not that Carter thought his dad's choices had been all that great, but too many people had been hurt by his mother's and his grandfather's use of money to control. Carter would never be guilty of that.

"So you want me to marry you in order for you to keep your company?"

"Yes. It's not my mother's only source of income, but it's a big part of it, and I've just worked out terms to split the company with my brothers." They'd both refused an equal split, but had agreed to take a small percentage of Sloane Electronics as part of their individual holdings. His brothers were every bit as determined as he was. "I'm not letting it go on the auction block."

"Brothers? I thought, I mean… "

"That Rand was my only brother?"

"Yes."

"Apparently my father didn't keep it zipped when he was out of town on business either … at least on one occasion. I've got a brother who's a year younger than me. We just found out about him not too long ago."

"What's he like?" She seemed totally diverted from the original subject.

"He looks like a football player with a crew cut, but he's about as conservative as any man I've ever met. I like him. So do Rand and Phoebe."

"You and Rand used to be enemies."

"I was never his enemy, not really, but it took our father dying and time away, living on my own, for me to accept I was his brother."

"And Rand accepted you, too?" she asked, sounding fascinated.

He wished it had been that easy. "That took some doing. He had a lot of reasons not to trust anyone named Sloane."

"But you're not like your father."

"Yeah, I finally figured that out, and so did he."

"What about your other brother?"

"Colton?"

"Is that his name?"

"Yes."

"Was he glad when you found him?"

"You know, he was. Of course, he knew about us, or me at least in a conceptual way, so he wasn't shocked when I called. His mom raised him pretty unconventionally, but he values family."

"That's really neat."

Four years ago, discovering he had another brother wouldn't have made him all that happy. He'd spent his childhood paying for his father's indiscretions, but he'd finally come to accept that good could come from bad, and he agreed with Daisy. Having a couple of brothers was in fact pretty neat. "Yeah."

"And you want to split your company with them?"

"It's not just my company. It's their heritage, too."

She didn't argue about it with him like his mother had, like his darned brothers had. She simply nodded. "Why don't you just contest the will?"

"That would bring a lot of media exposure, something that would hurt my mother." Appearances were all that mattered to Cassandra Sloane.

Again, that was not how he chose to live his life, but he loved his mother. As cold as she was, she was still the woman who had given him birth, and he owed her whatever protection he could give her from harm.

Besides, he liked the idea of marriage to Daisy.

She chewed on her bottom lip. "You're right, Mrs. Sloane wouldn't like that, but I don't think she'd like you marrying one of your employees either."

She'd have to come to terms with it. He'd made one mistake trying to marry a woman his mother would deem worthy. He wasn't about to make another.

"Unless you aren't planning to tell her?"

"What do you mean not tell her?" He turned toward Daisy, his knee coming up on the couch and brushing her thigh. "Of course I'll tell her. She's my mother."

"Oh." Her hands twisted in a knot in her lap. "I thought maybe you planned to keep it a secret and then get an annulment or something after the terms of the will were satisfied."

"Right. After today, do you really believe we can share a platonic marriage?"

That was one of his chief reasons for wanting to marry her. He wanted her in his bed every night and as many mornings and afternoons as he could manage.

"But… "

"I want you in my bed, Daisy. All of the time."

"So, what you're really saying is that you want to pay me to go to bed with you and fulfill the terms of your father's will?"

C h a p t e r F o u r

D
aisy watched in fascinated wonder as Carter seemed to swell with indignation.

His chest puffed. His eyes narrowed. His expression went completely rigid.

"I don't need to pay a woman to go to bed with me."

"So you
don't
want me to go to bed with you?"

"That's not what I said."

She smiled. That's what she thought, but it paid to be sure. "So, you do want me?"

"Yes."

"And you want to pay me?"

He jumped up and stared down at her, wrath glittering in his blue eyes, making them look much darker than usual. "I'm not paying you to have sex with me."

"You're paying me to marry you."

He relaxed a little. "Yes."

"And you don't want the marriage to be platonic. I mean, you're planning on consummating it and everything."

"I plan to do a whole lot more than just consummate our marriage."

She actually shivered from the sensual promise in his voice. "And you want to pay me five hundred thousand dollars to do it." It was a lot of money.

"I want you to have options," he bit out from between clenched teeth, "to be able to end the marriage whenever you want to."

"So, this marriage doesn't have a time limit?" She wondered why not. He couldn't really want to be stuck with her for the rest of his life.

"Our marriage will be as permanent as any other marriage."

That could be taken a lot of ways.

"You mean you want kids and everything?" This was get ting stranger by the minute.

He shrugged. "Yeah. I guess. If we think that's a good idea sometime in the future."

"You don't love me."

His face went stiff. "I'm not good at love, but I know I can do fidelity. Boy, do I know."

She wondered at the frustration in his voice, but she didn't ask about it. She was more interested in his assertion he wasn't good at love. "You loved Phoebe."