Baby Benefits (15 page)

Raina sighed as the truth sank in. “Don’t you see? Kitty isn’t really the problem. Long before she showed up, I was right there in front of him.” Pain pierced her heart as she said aloud for the first time what she’d always known, but dreaded admitting. “He just never wanted me.”

Raina looked away because she couldn’t stand to see the pity in her sister’s eyes.

After a moment, Lavender said, in an overly bloodthirsty voice, “If that’s the case, then why do you care? Why not just let him muddle through on his own?”

Good question. “Because I love him” was the only answer she could give. “Even though he doesn’t love me, I can’t let him make a mistake that I know he’ll regret for the rest of his life. Not if I can do something to stop it.”

Raina knew Derek desired her, there was no doubt about it. He didn’t love her, didn’t want a real relationship with her, but he did desire her. And she’d never seen even a fraction of that kind of spark in his dealings with Kitty. So what it came down to was this: he was too honorable a man to sleep with one woman while remaining engaged to another. Which meant the easiest, fastest way to convince him to dump Kitty was to seduce him herself.

But did she really want to be that woman? Geesh, did anyone want to be that woman? And perhaps, more to the point, did she really have it in herself to seduce him? After all, she’d spent the past nine years disguising herself as the consummate professional. Personality-less, humorless, sexless.

Could she cast all of that aside to seduce a man like Derek? He may not be the connoisseur of women Dex was before meeting Lucy, but he was certainly no slouch.

Compare that to her experience with men, which was—to say the least—limited. She’d had one brief passionate affair with Trey, whom she’d met in culinary school and who had dumped her when she’d dropped out. Since then the men she’d dated simply hadn’t inspired the kind of excitement she wanted in a relationship. Not that she’d had time for a relationship anyway.

And who was she kidding? No man had lived up to her ideal. No man could compete with Derek.

If she was honest with herself, if she left Messina Diamonds without at least trying to seduce Derek, she’d never forgive herself. And she might not ever get over him.

Did she really want to be the other woman? No. But it was the only way everyone could get what they wanted. She would to save Derek from the mistake of marrying Kitty. Isabella would get the devoted father she needed without the evil stepmother. And she would get the closure she so desperately needed. Even Kitty would get what she wanted—a life in New York City without a pesky stepdaughter to slow her down.

It was a win-win situation. If only she could pull it off.

Eleven

“We need to talk.”

At first, Kitty, who was lounging by the pool, didn’t give any sign she’d even heard him. After a long moment, he cleared his throat.

Finally, she raised a languid hand to her sunglasses and nudged them onto her head as she wedged herself up on her elbow. She sighed, managing to sound beleaguered. As if he was imposing upon her rigorous schedule of luxuriating by the pool in the mornings and getting massages in the afternoon.

“Where’s the child?” she asked.

“Isabella is with her aunt.” Since Kitty seemed determined to avoid Isabella’s company, he’d finally broken down and called Lucy to take Isabella for the morning so he could discuss things with Kitty. If Raina was right and Kitty didn’t want to raise Isabella, he’d rather know now than later.

“Thank goodness.” Kitty swung her legs over the side of the lawn chair and stood.

“You seem relieved.” As if that wasn’t a profound understatement.

“Well.” She smiled a very catlike smile as she closed the distance between them. “Having a baby around does make certain things very awkward.”

She stopped mere inches away from him. The delicate bikini she wore showed off her curves to their best advantage. Her body, buffed and oiled from all her time at the spa, gleamed with the falsely golden tone of a sprayed-on tan. She was as beautiful as she was unappealing.

She moved to plaster her body against him, but he deftly sidestepped her.

“And you don’t want children of your own someday?”

Kitty waved a dismissive hand. “I’m sure I will. But I’m only twenty-nine. I’m not ready for that yet.”

Only twenty-nine? Raina was only twenty-eight. And yet she seemed so much more mature. So much more what he wanted.

And yet, Kitty’s words were believable. At twenty-nine she obviously wasn’t adult enough to share her life with a child. She wasn’t ready to give up being the center of attention.

If Derek was going to marry, then he definitely wanted someone who was ready. Not just ready to be a wife, but a mother also. He’d had the responsibilities of an adult from the time he was a teenager. The last thing he needed was to have to wait for his wife to grow up, too.

“This isn’t going to work,” he stated baldly.

Kitty’s expression soured. “I knew it would come to that.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “You would really dump me for a child?”

“She’s my child.”

Kitty’s nose bumped up in the air, obviously offended. “And for her, you’d blow a business deal that would make you millions? I suppose you think that’s noble or something.”

“No. I merely think it’s necessary.”

Kitty’s expression grew even more unpleasant. “You’ll regret this,” she sneered. “You’ll never do business with Biedermann Jewelry again.”

She would have stormed back into the house in a fit of pique, but he stopped her with a hand on her arm. She stopped and turned back to face him, her eyebrows raised in obvious indignation.

He took her left hand in his, raising it so her three-carat engagement ring sparkled in the sun. “That’s where you’re wrong, Kitty. Biedermann Jewelry will do business with us, for one reason. You like diamonds. The prettier the better. And right now, the best diamonds in the world are coming out of our mines. So I’m guessing you’ll eventually get over being dumped by me. Especially if I let you keep the ring.”

For a moment, Kitty continued to glower at him. Then she snatched her hand away and her scowl began to fade. “We’ll see.”

Unless he was mistaken, Raina was trying to seduce him.

Sure, there was a chance that seduction wasn’t at all what she had in mind and that his exhaustion was leading him astray. After a week and a half of late-night feedings and stress-filled days, that was certainly a possibility. But it was a slim one. Or maybe it was just that he’d spent most of the week and a half with Raina. Not the businessy, professional Raina he was used to, either, but the tempting, sexy Raina who seemed determined to wear down his self-control. So maybe he was just being overly optimistic.

He’d known Raina a long time and he’d never before seen her like this. Playful. Enticing. Absolutely, charmingly seductive.

At the moment, she stood just a few feet away from him, in the kitchen. In the past few days, the shorts she’d been wearing had gotten shorter and shorter. Her tops, skimpier and skimpier. The shirt she wore today was a clingy cotton of sea-green, with a V-neck deep enough to reveal the tops of her breasts. Her shorts revealed the entire length of her slender tanned legs.

Once again, Isabella was with Lucy and Dex. It wasn’t an arrangement Derek wanted, but Dex had insisted. Apparently he’d been offended that Lucy got to watch Isabella without him a few days ago. So when he had some time free in his schedule, he’d absconded with his niece.

Derek had agreed only because he’d been wanting time alone with Raina to talk. However the instant Dex left with Isabella, Raina had launched into an elaborate demonstration of how to make homemade baby food.

He looked up from the banana Raina had him mashing. “Are you sure this is necessary?”

“Of course,” she chirped, bending over to pull a pan of sweet potatoes out of the oven.

If she hadn’t been so bound and determined to cook her way through the afternoon, he would have pulled Raina into his arms and kissed her senseless. But first they needed to talk. And she wasn’t letting him get a word in edgewise. As it was, his frustration with her was proportionate to his sexual frustration.

“In the next few weeks Isabella is going to start eating solid foods. And there’s no reason she can’t have a tempting variety of foods, rather than just bland cereal and jarred mush.” Raina swiped her finger through a bowl of something orange. “Here, try this.”

She held her finger up to his lips. Heat sizzled between them when his gaze met hers. Slowly he lowered his mouth to the dollop of food she’d extended to him. When he sucked her finger into his mouth, her eyelids fluttered closed for a second.

The food was warm and sweet on his tongue. “Delicious,” he murmured. “What was that?”

“Butternut squash.” Her eyes snapped open and pink flushed her cheeks.

“Positively tempting.”

“I told you it would be better than that jarred stuff. Now, don’t you agree it was worth it?”

He glanced around the kitchen. It looked almost as if a hurricane had hit. Dishes of food lined the counters. The sink was piled high with the dirty food processor bowls and blades. Ice cube trays were stacked ready to go into the freezer, each full of tiny individual servings of different foods.

“I don’t know that I’m ready to admit to that.”

She chuckled. “What are you complaining about? Your housekeeper will be here tomorrow to clean up the mess. And in the meantime, you’ve made enough food to feed Isabella for several weeks.”

He studied Raina, wondering if she really was trying to seduce him. She’d been wiggling around the kitchen all morning. Bumping innocently against him. Offering him tasty nibbles of various foods. Her eyes were flashing. Her cheeks were flushed. She was beyond tempting. And he was once again seeing a different side of her.

“You love this, don’t you?”

She looked up at him, cocking her head to one side. “What?”

“This.” He gestured to the kitchen. “Cooking.”

“I do.” She shrugged, turning her back to him to spoon the butternut squash into yet another ice cube tray. “I always have loved it.”

“I didn’t know.”

“There are—”

“I know.” He cut her off, turning her to face him again. “There are a lot of things I don’t know about you.” He brushed a golden lock of hair off her forehead and tucked it behind her ear. “Was I such a tyrant to work for that you felt like you could never be yourself around me?”

Her brow furrowed. “No,” she began, but then abruptly broke off. Her frown deepened as she seemed to be considering what to say next. But then she smiled seductively and wiggled a little closer. “As a matter of fact—”

But he stepped out of her reach before she touched him. All morning long it had been like that. Every time he tried to talk to her, she deftly sidestepped the conversation by throwing temptation in his face. Frankly he was getting tired of it.

“Raina, stop it.”

Her frown turned into a pout. Not one of Kitty’s aren’t-I-cute pouts, either, but a genuinely annoyed scowl. She quickly buried it beneath another seductive shimmy.

“Derek,” she murmured, her voice low and honeyed.

She was tempting, all right. But she wasn’t what he really wanted. He wanted the real Raina. Not the coolly professional Raina who’d been his assistant. Not this overly sensual seductress. He wanted the woman who could give as good as she got. Who would get in his face and bully him if she needed to.

So when she reached out her fingers to brush against his cheek, he grabbed her hand in his and held it. “Raina, we need to talk.”

Anger flashed through Raina like a spring flood. She’d been trying her damnedest to seduce Derek all morning. And the bastard just wouldn’t crack. Well, she’d had enough. She snatched her hand from his and waggled her finger at him like a scolding mother.

“You know, a lot of men would be more than happy with me.”

He blinked in dispassionate surprise. “Excuse me?”

“I’ll have you know that some men consider me quite a catch.” Men she hadn’t dated because she’d been too in love with Derek.

“I’m sure they do.”

His baffled tone didn’t diminish her pique at all. “Men at work ask me out all the time. Mike Kaplan from payroll. Scott Thompson from research. Geesh, even Dex used to ask me out on occasion.” She stopped mere inches from him. “I’m pretty.” She poked him in the chest.

Surprised, he retreated until he bumped against the counter. “You are,” he agreed in a tone so amiable it only angered her more.

“I’m smart.” Again she poked him in the chest.

“Undoubtedly.”

“I keep in shape.”

“I’m sure you do.”

“And I’ve been told that I have a very nice rack.” She punctuated each of the last three words with an additional poke.

His gaze automatically dropped to her chest. But she didn’t give him a chance to admire the view he’d been ignoring for far too long. Instead, she prodded his chin up with her poking finger and forced him to meet her gaze.

“So why in the world—” she propped her hands on her hips, her anger and indignation so tight in her chest she thought she might pop “—have you been fighting this so hard? Are you really that devoted to Miss-I-Don’t-Care-About-Anyone-But-Myself Kitty or are you just that dang stupid?”