Leaving Cormac speechless on the couch, unable to tell her that there wouldn’t be any other women, Emily brewed herself a cup of chamomile tea, figuring she’d take it and her computer and escape to her room for the night.
Cormac was hot for her in the moment. It wasn’t something that would last forever.
Hot sex rarely did.
That’s where being in love came in to keep a marriage together.
Without it, their child was going to end up in a two-home, shared parenting life anyway. They might as well start out that way.
Save a whole bunch of hurt feelings.
Or at least prevent some of them. Feeling like she was going to cry, she dipped her tea bag in her cup, putting the emotionalism down to her out-of-whack hormones.
It turned out being pregnant was convenient as a scapegoat, too.
“Wait a minute.” Cormac’s words started in the living room but were coming toward her. “You don’t get to point the finger at me to cover up for your own sexual desires,” he said, coming out to stand in the doorway of the kitchen.
Effectively blocking her in.
She didn’t feel threatened. The man would move if she barged toward him. What she felt was...threatened. In an entirely different way. How dare he stand there and try to force her to sit with her emotions.
If she didn’t want to, she didn’t have to.
The choice was hers.
“I’m not covering up my sexual desires,” she told him. “I’ve admitted that I’m...attracted to you.” She could have left it there. But the moment—the damned emotion—demanded more. “That I want you like I’ve never wanted anyone before in my life.”
Okay, that was new. She’d never actually told him that.
But she couldn’t deny it, either.
His eyes lit up, but he didn’t come closer. He just braced his hands, shoulder-height, on both sides of the arch between the dining room and kitchen.
“You all but accused me of infidelity with some unknown woman in the future,” he said. “Why not just come out and say that you don’t see yourself being satisfied with only having sex with me for the rest of your life?”
Her mouth fell open. Again. She couldn’t help it. “I...because... I can’t imagine ever meeting another man who does it for me like you do.” The words tumbled out of her through the shock. He couldn’t be serious...
“I’m forty-three, Cormac. I’ve been around awhile. Seen a lot of men. I’m pretty sure there’s no one up ahead that’s going to equal your charisma.”
She hated being so much older than him.
He leaned into the kitchen more, his gaze brimming with emotion, and some pretty obvious fire, too, but he didn’t let go of the wall. “So...you are accusing me of not having what it takes to be faithful to you.”
Statement, not question. But she couldn’t let it go unanswered. “Not accusing. That’s the point. We aren’t in love. It wouldn’t be a traditional marriage. And have you seen yourself? You’re about as gorgeous as...” She stopped. Couldn’t go there anymore. “You exude sex appeal, Cormac. Women can’t help but pursue that.”
Herself included? Had she pursued him?
She remembered it more as him coming on to her, but...
Lips stiff, he looked put out. She hadn’t meant to piss him off. And so the bald truth came pouring out. “I’m forty-three, Cormac.” Yeah, they’d established that about a thousand times in the past few days. Or, she had, at least. “I’m going to be getting wrinkled long before you do. Less attractive. Stuff starts to sag, you know. And you...think about it. When I’m sixty, close to retirement, you’re still going to be in your forties...climbing to bigger successes...”
“Pfft,” he scoffed. “Are you kidding? No way you’re retiring at sixty. If anything, you’re going to be courting a judgeship. If you aren’t there already.”
A judgeship. She’d be lying if she didn’t admit she’d thought about it. More than once. Something to fly on into her fifties and beyond.
But it wasn’t an aspiration she’d ever spoken about. Not even out loud to herself.
And... “You’re missing my point. Picture me at seventy. Forced into retirement. You’ll be fifty-eight. Still out fighting crime. Even though you’ll own an agency by then and have a staff of your own on the street. The fact is, I’ll have aching bones and failing eyesight while you’re still a happening power.”
He shook his head. “I can picture you at ninety-five, if you’d like, to save time. I’ll be eighty-four and you’ll still be challenging me to be sharper, to figure things out so you don’t figure them out for me. I figure we’ll have equal wrinkles by then, if that makes you feel any better, and when I picture us lasting that long, as roommates with benefits, I’m looking back on our fifty years together and not finding one boring minute among them.”
He was going to kill her. Right then. Right there. Break her heart wide open and she’d be done.
To hell with stalkers. Or preeclampsia. Or hemorrhaging.
She was going to expire from a torn heart.
She couldn’t die. She had a baby on the way. A miracle she’d never thought to experience. No way she was going to miss it.
She was going to need help.
The baby had a father. Deserved to be fully loved by him.
Emily had to defend her heart against him. To save herself. And him.
Out of nowhere, the solution appeared.
She looked at him and said, “How about if we just live together?”
He wanted it legal.
The immediate response startled Cormac—loner that he was. Having an out as simple as moving if things weren’t working did seem like the perfect solution.
Yeah, it meant that anytime Emily decided he was too much of a pain in the ass, she could just pack up herself and his kid and go, but...
“Okay.”
Holy hell!
She’d agreed to be with him. Full-time.
The ramifications...he couldn’t even start...where...when...moving...boundaries between them...loss of independence...no space of his own... Emily to come home to, coming home to him...being there to watch his kid grow inside her...living full-time with the kid after birth...blind...blind...blind.
“Okay? You sure?”
No. His mind was reeling. But he said, “Yeah, I’m sure,” the words carrying a truth he wasn’t sure he understood.
He got the body language, though. As Emily met his gaze, smiling, he was instantly hard. And didn’t turn away. That look...alluring, tempting, promising and needy, too...he hadn’t seen it in full force for two long months.
But he had been dreaming about it ever since.
“And as soon as you find yourself wanting sex with another woman, you tell me and we move to separate bedrooms,” she said. The prosecutor laying out her case. Firm. In control.
If you didn’t count the way she was moistening her lips. And those nipples...hard through the sweater.
When had he become obsessed with breasts?
Her breasts.
He wasn’t going to be the one to bring infidelity into their home. But...whatever.
“Fine.”
“I mean it, Cormac. The sex has to be monogamous or not at all.”
The sex. Now, that he could sign on for. He nodded.
And...she hadn’t said she’d move out if he found someone else, she’d just move bedrooms. Or he would.
It was all a little much. There’d been no one serious since Willa, not because there weren’t offers, but because he had the life he wanted.
But now there was a kid coming.
And the mother...
He definitely wanted to be there for her in any way he could, to have her close so he knew when she needed help, and to have his kid growing up living with him.
Mostly what he wanted in that moment was to scoop up the most incredible woman he’d ever slept with and carry her down the hall. To leave behind everything else—the worries, the dangers, the changes, the cases, the questions—and lose himself in her.
Which was exactly why he’d broken up with her.
“I know it’s not what either of us chose for our lives,” he said slowly. “But I really do believe that if anyone can make this situation work, it’s us.”
“You’re really going to push this,” she said, and he wondered if she’d been messing with him when she’d suggested living together. Challenging him.
Calling his bluff?
What the hell, she hadn’t been serious about suggesting they live together?
“We’re too independent, too used to doing things our own ways, Cormac.”
“A baby doesn’t fit in either of our lives,” he countered. Two could play that game.
When she didn’t argue, he moved a little closer to her. “Our independence is what’s going to make this work, Em. Because we’re equally that way. We aren’t going to need from each other what most people look to get from their spouses.”
He almost convinced himself.
He’d get there.
“And it doesn’t feel to you like there’s something missing?”
He didn’t know what he felt. Wasn’t used to checking in with emotional stuff.
“It feels like we’re coming up with the solution that fits us, and will serve our baby the best.”
He’d rather she marry him. Make it legally official. In case of emergency or whatever else he wasn’t coming up with right now.
“No sense in buying two cribs, two high chairs, I guess,” she said then. “But if you do meet someone, or you just want out, you have to promise to be honest about it. To let me know. I give you my word you would still have shared parenting and full say in the baby’s life.”
Her penchant for him to be with someone else was beginning to annoy him.
A lot.
It was like she was trying to push him off on someone else...
Just like with the age stuff...
Unless—what if she was the one who had doubts about being fulfilled with someone so much younger than she was?
Could be that when she reached an age where she wanted to retire, she wanted to be with someone who was at that same point in life?
Or when she started to show her age, her partner did, too?
Maybe she thought some guy in his mid-forties would be more mature than Cormac was.
Growing cold inside, he stared at her. Had she just been playing with him two months before? Was he a damned boy toy?
Shaking his head, he dismissed the thought even as it occurred to him. There’d been nothing lopsided about his relationship with Emily. They’d been equals in every sense.
He’d bet his life on that one.
But...
Staring at her, he understood what she’d been trying to tell him.
They might know what was and wasn’t inside their relationship, but others would have their own ideas. Some would judge.
“Would you like to tell the world that we’re just roommates?” he asked, needing a beer. He was unable to fathom how life had careened so far out of control.
“What would be the point? Everyone’s going to know that you’re the father of my child.”
Right.
His siblings were going to have a hard time believing that one.
He was watching her, trying like hell to come up with something. He was the guy who found the answers. It was his thing.
When her eyes started to fill, he thought it was the light at first. Some weird glow coming from...nowhere. The closest light was the dining room behind them.
“Em?”
She blinked. Smiled. Which drew his attention to the fact that her lips were trembling. She shook her head.
And a tear dropped to her cheek.
“I’m sorry,” she said, standing and then turning toward the hall.
“Hey.” He stood, too. Reached for her hand and when she didn’t yank it back, pulled her toward the couch with him. He sat close beside her as she dropped down, but not close enough to touch.
“We’ll get through this,” he told her, certain of that one.
She nodded.
“Yeah, you’re the one doing the physical work, but I’m going to shoulder this every bit as much.”
And he shouldn’t be pressuring her.
She nodded again, wiping her eyes. But the tears hadn’t stopped.
“Look, whatever way you want it to go, that’s what we’ll do.”
Another nod. He didn’t seem to be helping at all.
“Talk to me, Em.”
“It’s just hormones.”
Somehow, he doubted that. But he chose to keep the opinion to himself.
With a sob that became half shudder, she looked at him, shaking her head again. “I just can’t make sense of this week,” she said. “Nearly being kidnapped, finding out the guy’s so sick he’s stalking me. And spying on us. I’m afraid to go outside. I’ve got this jerk of a detective on the case of my career, and a witness who’s skipped. And... I’m pregnant?”
Nodding, he ran his hand through her hair. Just to touch her. For him. For her.
“Just when you think you’ve got life under control and firmly in your grasp, it throws you a curve ball,” he said. He ought to know. He’d been lobbing them since his mother died. And then, at just fourteen, when his father passed.
She moved her face into the hand at her hair. Just closed her eyes and held him with her cheek. He remained steady, needing to be just whatever she needed in that moment. He didn’t worry about himself getting through whatever came.
He’d mastered that one.
But her...carrying a child that you find out you really want and fearing that your body won’t cooperate. That alone would be enough to unhinge a person.
And if she continued with a healthy pregnancy, in a few months, everywhere she went, people would know her secret. They were only going to know his if he told them.
Her face moved inward, until her lips were touching his palm. His other hand raised to support the back of her head, intending to help her take whatever comfort she needed.
“Make love to me, Cormac.”
He barely heard the words at first. Wasn’t sure they weren’t just a figment of his own desire.
“Take me to our place...just long enough for me to find myself again...”
She’d stopped kissing his flesh. Was staring straight into his eyes, her gaze wide-open. Clear.
“Please.”
“I won’t apologize in the morning,” he told her, his voice thick with the need he’d been aching with all week.
“I won’t ask you to.”
She leaned in then, her lips meeting his, and he lost whatever restraint he might have hoped he’d have.
Picking her up, he carried her down the hall to his bed.