And if Kayla said no, Andreas would find a wife. One way or another.
“Come, Kay-love. Marriage between us will give you the safety and security you crave. From this point forward, no matter what business lies between us, you will know where you belong, where you have always belonged. With me.” She could not doubt the sincerity of his words, but they also proved that he knew just what buttons to push to get to her.
And that helped her stay just that little bit wary. “But marriage isn’t a business contract. I’m not sure you understand that.”
“Is it really so different?”
“Yes.” She needed him to understand that.
“If you say so, but I keep my promises. You know this. Once I sign a contract, I keep my side of the bargain, just as you will always keep yours. I do not break my word.”
She knew that in business and life as she’d seen it with Andreas, he had a deep well of integrity. She could not deny his words, but still...who wanted to see their marriage likened to a business arrangement?
Andreas did, apparently. Kayla was not so enamored by the classification.
“What kind of promises are you proposing we make?” She wanted it spelled out, needed to be sure that Andreas understood the kind of commitment he would be making and what she would require him to make.
What might be just another business deal for him, though apparently with much longer duration, was her life and her chance at the family she craved.
“Fidelity, lifetime companionship, family. It will be a real marriage in every sense of the word. How could it not be?”
“I don’t know. You tell me. You’re the one talking about it being like a business contract.”
“Because that is what I know. What I understand.”
That she could believe. He’d never understood the emotional devastation he’d wreaked when he broke up with her so he could bring her on board in his fledgling company.
“What about love?” she asked.
There was that look again. Disgust warring with anger. “My mother said she loved my father. Only that love destroyed her life.”
“But not all relationships blow up like theirs did,” she had to point out.
“My father claimed to love his wife, but he cheated on her. I will never take a mistress, or even have a one-night stand.”
“That’s about integrity and commitment, not love.”
“According to many they are the same thing. My father has plenty of integrity in business. It was his supposed love for my mother that gave him the freedom to cheat, to bring about her disgrace with her family.”
Kayla didn’t have an answer for that and she didn’t need one.
Andreas was not finished. “He said he loved me, that as his son, I was precious to him, but never once did he take into account my needs, my feelings, much less a single thing I wanted. He did nothing but disrupt and destroy the life my mother worked so hard to give me. Love is an excuse people give to justify their selfishness with others, or their own bad decisions.”
Her heart hurt, bleeding from the wounds his words inflicted. “I don’t believe that.”
“What do you know about love?”
The stark demand of the question hit her like a physical blow. Kayla nearly blurted out her six-year-old secret then, but self-preservation kept her silent. “I know that you just got through promising you would love our children, all of them.”
“That is different,” he dismissed with a wave of one hand. “Melia Kostas taught me how to love a child as she loved me.”
And despite how his father’s love had caused major havoc in Andreas’s life, apparently the big bad tycoon was still unafraid to love his own children.
“But you can never love me?” She picked at the wound in her heart like a sore tooth, needing him to say the words.
“Does it matter?” he asked, sounding pained. “Doesn’t what we have transcend romantic drivel?”
Transcend love? Was he serious? But she could see he was. “A man who claimed to love you might walk away from both you and his children. It happens often enough, but I will never leave you.”
She took a deep breath and then spoke some of the most difficult words she’d ever said. “I’ll give you my answer back in Portland.”
Instead of the anger she expected, Andreas nodded. “I expected as much.”
He had?
He tipped his head down and kissed her, his lips firm but gentle. “I know you, Kay-love, no matter what you may think.” He tugged at the haphazard tuck at the top of the towel. “Until then, why don’t we spend more time exploring the benefits of joining our lives and our bodies, hmm?”
She had no answer as her mouth was too busy kissing him back, her body too intent on getting close to his.
They made love into the evening, ordered dinner via the special room service menu only available for their floor and the one below, and then returned to Andreas’s bed, insatiable lovers who had spent too long apart.
* * *
Kayla was unsurprised when Andreas insisted on accompanying her to her meeting with Sebastian Hawk. That didn’t mean she had to like it.
She crossed her arms and glared up at him. “You aren’t part of this deal, Andreas.”
“I’m not leaving you alone to tear around New York on your own again.”
“You’re being ridiculously controlling.”
“I am not trying to control you.”
“Aren’t you?”
“No.”
“Then why come to the meeting?”
“Is it so hard for you to believe I want to watch out for you? You are brilliant in the lab, Kay-love, but Hawk is a shark at business.”
For a man who didn’t believe in love, he certainly threw the word around a lot. She couldn’t decide if she liked it or it just hurt more to hear him using it, knowing there were no feelings of love behind it. “Oh, you mean like you?”
“Don’t you want a shark sitting beside you?”
“Undermining my position?” She gave him a sour look. “No, thank you.”
“You believe I would do this?”
“You won’t?” she asked, stunned.
“You have my word.”
She stared at him. Could she trust him? If she didn’t, she could only give one answer to the marriage question once they got home.
Sighing, still trepidatious, but certain she had to take a leap of faith, she said, “Okay, you may come, but I mean it, Andreas. No undermining my deal with Sebastian.”
Andreas didn’t bother to answer, he was too busy texting Bradley to fix the reservations at the restaurant to accommodate one more person.
“Seriously? Andreas, he’s probably still sleeping.”
The chime of a return text said she was wrong, until she saw Andreas’s wince. Yeah, the überefficient PA had not liked being woken, but she had no doubt the reservations would get updated to a table for three.
* * *
Sebastian Hawk was already at the table when Kayla and Andreas arrived at the upscale restaurant for their meeting.
He stood from the table set formally with full linens, shaking Kayla’s hand first. “It’s very nice to see you, Miss Jones.” He turned to Andreas. “I wasn’t expecting you, but I wondered at the extra place setting.”
“Andreas is convinced you’re going to try to eat me,” Kayla said with her usual forthrightness. “And please, call me Kayla. Formality makes me nervous.”
Andreas winced, but Sebastian Hawk laughed. With the warmth in his smile and gorgeous features, it was easy to see why an Arabic princess would walk away from her intended prince to marry this man.
“Then by all means, let us dispense with it. You will call me Sebastian.”
“Stop flirting with her, Hawk. Your wife would not approve.”
“Lina understands the difference between polite conversation and flirting, Andreas.”
Andreas frowned, but took his seat after helping Kayla into her brocade dining chair. They ordere
d their food before Sebastian broached the subject of business. And it was then that she discovered just how dedicated Andreas was to her interests, as well as the difference between this glam restaurant and the one they’d been to for dinner.
The waitstaff here were attentive, but clearly used to business being conducted over lunch as they handled the food service with subtle difference.
“I’m thrilled you want to stay on at KJ Software.” Sebastian’s handsome face creased in a genuine smile. “As far as I’m concerned, you are the reason the security software is so much above the others in the industry.”