“No.”
“Well, thank you for your honesty but you prove my point. Raising a child isn’t something you do on a whim because you think it might be fun. It’s hard work. She had colic for the first three months of her life and she screamed bloody murder for no discernible reason. Nothing I did worked. All I could do was hold her while she screamed. It was awful.”
He shuddered at the thought of a screaming infant but then he felt guilty for not being there. He should have that experience under his belt if it’d happened to his child. “It’s true I didn’t ask for this but now that I know about her, I can’t walk away. Give me a chance to show you that I’m not a bad guy. I can be a good father.”
“I can’t let you audition for the role of Aubrey’s father, no matter how good your intentions. Aubrey is my life. She’s everything I never realized I wanted until I saw her little face. I can’t take the chance that you’ll change your mind when things get tough.” He was perplexed until she added, “When I found out I was pregnant, I knew it was yours because I hadn’t been with anyone else since. So I did a little checking around. It wasn’t hard to dig up some unflattering stuff.”
“Like what?”
“Are you sure you want to know?” At his determined nod, she continued, “You’re a player who likes to party all the time and you’ve left a string of broken hearts in your wake, as well as someone who killed herself off the roof of your building. I can’t expose my daughter to that life. You have to understand, I want a traditional upbringing for my daughter and you simply can’t provide that with your background and your lifestyle.”
At the mention of Isabel, Nolan felt a wave of shame. Shannon didn’t know the half of what’d happened with Isabel and he’d prefer to keep it that way. “I wouldn’t bring Aubrey to the club. What do you take me for?” he asked, a bit more sharply than he intended. He drew a deep breath and tried again. “I’m just saying, I would not take Aubrey anywhere that wasn’t appropriate for a child and I’m a bit offended that you would imply that I would.”
She bit her lip and nodded. That one small gesture sparked a memory that he immediately pushed away. He didn’t need to remember how sexy she’d been or how she’d become even sexier since he’d seen her last. He fought to keep his gaze focused when he was overwhelmed by the urge to allow his gaze to drift to her belly, intensely curious — and strangely aroused — by the idea that she’d carried his child. Shaking himself free of the dangerous thoughts flitting through his brain like drunken fireflies, he retrained his attention to the issue at hand.
“I was scared,” she admitted at last.
Ah, fear, he could understand and fix. “I’m really not a bad guy,” he said, the corner of his mouth twisting in his signature half-smile that never failed to win him points. “Give me a chance to prove it.”
“And how do you propose I do that?”
“Let me show you that I can be a good father. Give me a few weeks to get to know Aubrey and you can take those weeks to get to know me. Seem like a fair deal?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“Life is filled with choices, love.” She stilled at his use of the endearment and he knew she was remembering their night together. He clenched his teeth behind his lips, trying to quell the arousal that flushed through his veins. He remembered quite vividly how she’d sounded when she came, shattering in his arms until she could barely move a muscle. He’d been equally as spent. He shook himself free of the memory and stood quickly. “Text me so I’ll have your number. Are you free this weekend? We can take Aubrey to the park.”
“Okay,” she agreed cautiously, rising. “But first, you must agree to my terms.”
“Such as?”
“We meet here and I drive.”
He quirked a smile, perplexed by her terms. “You know I can drive. I drove you to my place when you stayed with me at the penthouse.”
“Yes, I know you can drive and what you drive. There’s no room for a carseat and even if there were, I don’t feel comfortable trusting your skills with my child until I know you better.”
“Fine,” he agreed with a sigh. “I’ll be here Saturday around noon.”
“Okay. Until then, would you mind staying away?”
That didn’t play into his plans at all. He’d never had a woman treat him as if he had the plague before and he sure as hell didn’t like it either. But he agreed. “Fine.” He cast one final look at his darling child and wondered how he was going to keep himself occupied until Saturday. “Until Saturday, then.”
She nodded and let him out, closing and locking the door on his heels.
How was he going to win over a woman who plainly didn’t want him around? For the first time in his life, he didn’t have a clue but it was imperative that he find out.
-5-
Shannon twisted beneath her shadow lover’s firm body, gasping as he plundered her mouth in the same insistent manner as his cock had penetrated her feminine heat. She groaned and gasped, clutching at his back, as he thrust against her, pummeling her with delicious friction that threatened to turn her inside out with pleasure. She shuddered, her nipples pebbled into hard points as they rubbed against the slightly furred chest of her lover, and she lost herself joyously to the sensation promising to clench her womb with rhythmic abandon until she tumbled into a toe-curling orgasm but as she built to that wonderful crescendo, her lover melted away into mist and she was left gasping and crying out in frustration as the good feelings dissipated with her lover and suddenly her eyes flew open to total darkness. She whimpered and rolled to her side, her body sweaty and unfulfilled as her pelvis area pulsed with unsatisfied need. “Damn it,” she said, returning to her back to stare at the ceiling. This was all Nolan’s fault. If he hadn’t shown up, she could’ve went on using him for her sexual fantasies without shame or guilt but now that he was here, she’d denied herself out of principle. And look what that had gotten her? Sexually constipated. She reached down and touched herself, barely flicking the swollen nub between her folds, and a riot of pleasure cascaded down her body. She closed her eyes and Nolan popped into her mental theater. Go away, she thought grouchily, determined to think of anyone else aside from Nolan Buchanan. But her mind wasn’t cooperating and she knew if she continued on this track, she’d lose that loving feeling quickly. Resigned, she allowed Nolan into her mind and immediately her pulse quickened as her finger worked the pleasure nub with a deft touch until she shuddered under the brunt of a quick and fairly boring orgasm. She sighed and rolled to her side, grabbing her pillow and hugging it to her. Why couldn’t she put Nolan in the appropriate place in her mind and leave him be?
Because against all odds, she was still attracted to him.
And not in a pleasant, ‘oh, he’s cute’ sort of way but rather in a ‘holy hell, I would fuck him in the dirty stall of a club bathroom’ and Shannon couldn’t really deal with that truth.
There was no future with Nolan Buchanan. So why even go through the motions of getting to know him?
She sighed, closing her eyes, knowing the answer even if she wasn’t willing to admit it out loud.
Deep down…a tiny spark of hope pulsed stubbornly, refusing to die — what if?
What if, indeed?
-5-
If good intentions accounted for anything, Nolan was a damn angel. He’d planned to stay in the hotel and watch Pay-Per-View or even catch up on his reading on his e-reader app on his smart phone but the minute he saw his twin grinning from the peephole, he knew his night was not going to be spent inside that room.
“What are you doing here?” he asked Vince as he let him into the room. “I told you to stay home.”
“Yeah, but I heard the yearning in your voice that practically begged for me to come and rescue you so get dressed, slap some cologne across your face and let’s see what’s shaking in this town. There’s sure to be a couple of hot bodies available for a little between the sheets action and I, for one, could use a little stress-relief.”
“What happened to your plans with the sub and the dungeon?”
“Penny happened,” Vince said wryly. “She found out and gave me a ration of shit for trying to drag Dillon out for a bit. Man, that girl has a temper. Funny thing, I think Dillon was relieved because his woman put the brakes on. If I didn’t know better I’d say Penny has neutered him.”
“Dillon?” Nolan questioned but then he recalled the gooey looks their older brother often sent his pregnant wife and he knew Vince was right. “Well, he seems to enjoy his neutered state so more power to him.”
“Yeah, whatever. C’mon, I’m getting antsy. I need a drink and someone to fuck and not necessarily in that order.”
Nolan laughed, enjoying the familiar thrill of the chase with his brother. They were hellions together and he loved the debauched circles his brother traveled without hesitation.
“So how’s it going with the kid?” Vince asked as they walked downstairs to the lobby. Nolan grimaced, not wanting to talk about Aubrey or Shannon, not when he was about to do a whole lot of things Shannon would certainly use as fodder against him. “That bad?” Vince surmised, misreading Nolan’s expression. “I told you to walk, man. Now you’ve got a mess to clean up. Think we could offer her money to go away and keep quiet?”
“For the last time, I’m not bailing on my kid,” Nolan cut in, irritated. “I already told you that. And it’s not going badly, it’s just I don’t want to talk about it right now. Okay?”