The Marriage Contract

“I know.” Her brows quirked as she glanced around with unveiled curiosity. “Mrs. Elliot told me this was where I could find you. Also, we share a child. I think it’s okay if you call me McKenna.”

But she clearly didn’t know “workshop” equaled off-limits, private, no girls allowed. He should post a sign.

“McKenna, then.” He shouldn’t be talking to her. Encouraging her. But he couldn’t stop looking at her. She was gorgeous in a fierce, elemental way that coursed through him every time he got anywhere near her.

And when he stumbled over her breast-feeding? God, that was the worst. Or the best, depending on your viewpoint.

She was at her sexiest when she was nurturing their child. If he’d known he’d suddenly be ten times more drawn to her when she exuded all that maternal radiance, he’d never have invited her to live here.

Of course, he hadn’t really had much of a choice there, had he?

Obviously hiding out wasn’t the answer. Like always, raw need welled up as he watched her explore his workshop, peering into bins and tracing the lines of the hand-drawn gears posted to a light board near the south wall.

“This is a very impressive setup,” she commented as she finished a round of his cavernous workspace.

Her gaze zipped to the two generators housed at the back and then lit on him as he stood behind the enormous workstation spread out over a mobile desk on wheels where he did all of his computation. He’d built the computer himself from components and there wasn’t another like it in the world.

“It’s where I make stuff,” he told her simply because there was no way to explain that this was where he brought to life the contents of his brain. He saw something in his head then he built it. He’d been doing that since he was four. Now he got paid millions and millions of dollars for each and every design, which he only cared about because it enabled him to keep doing it.

“I can see that. It’s kind of sexy. Very Dr. Frankenstein.”

Had she just called him sexy? In the same breath as comparing him to Frankenstein? “Uh... I’ve always thought of myself as more like Iron Man.”

She laughed. “Except Tony Stark is a lot more personable and dresses better.”

Desmond glanced down at his slacks. “What’s wrong with the way I dress?”

Certainly that was the only part of her assessment he could disagree with—he was by no stretch personable and Iron Man did have a certain flair that Desmond could never claim.

“Nothing,” she shot back with a grin. “You just don’t look like a billionaire playboy who does weapons deals with shady Middle Eastern figures. Frankenstein, on the other hand, was a doctor like you and all he wanted to do was build something meaningful out of the pieces he had available.”

She picked up the robot hand he’d been about to solder for emphasis.

Speechless, he stared at her slender fingers wrapped around his creation-in-progress and tried like hell to figure out how she’d tapped into his psyche so easily. Fascinating. So few people thought of him as a doctor. He didn’t even see himself as one, despite the fact that he could stick PhD after his name all day long if he wanted to.

What else did she see when she looked at him? That same recognition he’d felt, as if they’d met in a former life and their connection had been so strong it transcended flesh and bone?

Or would that sound as crazy to her as it did in his head?

“I wasn’t aware I was so transparent,” he said gruffly, a little shocked that he didn’t totally hate it. “Did you want something?”

Her dark eyes were so expressive he could practically read her like a book. He rarely bothered to study people anymore. Once, that had been the only way he could connect with others, by surreptitiously observing them until everything was properly cataloged.

All it had ever gotten him was an acute sense of isolation and an understanding that people stayed away from him because they didn’t like how his brain worked.

She shrugged. “I was bored. Larissa is putting Conner to bed and it turns out that having a nanny around means that once I feed him, I’m pretty much done. I haven’t seen you in, like, a week.”

McKenna, apparently, had no such aversion to Desmond. She’d sought him out. So he could entertain her. That was a first.

“I had no idea you’d mark my absence in such a way.”

Lame. He was out of practice talking to people, let alone one who tied his brain in a Gordian knot of puzzling reactions.

But he wanted to untangle that knot. Very badly.

“Are you always so formal?” McKenna came around the long table to his side and peered over his shoulder at the monitor where he had a drawing of the robot hand spinning in 3-D. “Wow. That’s pretty cool.”

“It’s just a... No, I’m not—” He sucked in a breath as her torso grazed his back. His pulse roared into overdrive and he experienced a purely primal reaction to her that had no place between two people who shared a son and nothing else. “Formal.”

“Hmm? Oh, yeah, you are. You remind me of my statistics professor.”

“You took a statistics class?” Okay, they shared that, too. But that was it. They had nothing else in common and he had no reason to be imagining her reaction if he kissed her.

“Have to. It’s a requirement for premed.”

“Can you not stand there?”

Her scent was bleeding through his senses and it was thoroughly disrupting his brain waves. Of course the real problem was that he liked her exactly where she was.

“Where? Behind you?” She punched him on the shoulder like they were drinking buddies and she’d just told him a joke. “I can’t be in front of you. There’s a whole lot of electronic equipment in my way.”

“You talk a lot.”

She laughed. “Only because you’re talking back. Isn’t that how it works?”

For the second time she’d rendered him speechless. Yeah. He was talking back. The two conversations he’d had with her to date, the one at the hospital and this one, marked the longest he’d had with anyone in a while. Probably since Lacey.

He needed someone to draw him out, or he stayed stuck in his head, designing, building, imagining, dreaming. It was a lot safer for everyone that way, so of course that was his default.

McKenna seemed unacquainted with the term boundaries. And he didn’t hate that.

He should. He should be escorting her out of his workshop and back to the main part of the house. There was an indoor pool that stayed precisely the same temperature year-round. A recreational room that he’d had built the moment Mr. Lively called to say McKenna had conceived during the first round of insemination. Desmond had filled the room with a pool table, darts, video game consoles and whatever else the decorator had recommended. Surely his child’s mother could find some amusement there.

“Tell me what you’re building,” she commanded with a fair enough amount of curiosity that he told her.

“It’s a prototype for a robotic humanoid.”

“A robot?” Clearly intrigued, she leaned over the hand, oblivious to the way her hair fell in a long, dark sheet over her shoulder. It was so beautiful that he almost reached out to touch it.

He didn’t. That would invite intimacies he absolutely wanted with a bone-deep desire but hadn’t fully yet analyzed. Until he understood this visceral need, he couldn’t act on it. Too dangerous. It gave her too much power.

“No.” He cleared his throat and scrubbed at his beard, which he still hadn’t trimmed. “A robot is anything mechanical that can be programmed. A robotic humanoid resembles a person both in appearance and function but with a mechanical skeleton and artificial intelligence.”

It was a common misconception that he corrected often, especially when he had to give a presentation about his designs to the manufacturers who bought his patents.

“You are Dr. Frankenstein,” she said with raised eyebrows. “When you get it to work, do you shout ‘It’s alive!’ or just do a little victory dance?”

“I, um...”