Pursued (The Diamond Tycoons 2) (11 page)

Desi blinked first, glancing up at the twinkling lights that lined the nearby windows. “I just think you need to think about things.”

“I have thought about them.”

“For a few
hours
!”

“Sometimes a few hours are all you need.”

She rolled her eyes. “You’re being completely irrational.”

Her voice rose on the last couple of words, and that’s when it hit him just how upset she was by this whole discussion. Oh, she was fronting, pretending she was amused and exasperated, but there was something else underneath it all. Something dark, and maybe a little afraid.

It was the fear that gave him pause, that had him sitting back in his chair, studying her as he tried to figure out what made her tick. He didn’t have much luck, which was frustrating, but on this one small point, he would concede she was right. They didn’t know each other, and until they did, he couldn’t get a bead on her.

Which was only one more reason for them to move in together, he decided. Nothing broke down barriers like the forced intimacy of cohabitation. Instinct told him not to mention that to Desi, however, because it might send her running for the hills.

“What’s it going to take,” he asked, when the silence between them moved from uncomfortable to unbearable, “for you to agree to move in with me?”

“Nothing,” she answered immediately. “Because it’s not going to happen. Beyond all the reasons why two people who don’t know each other shouldn’t be moving in together, there are also the logistics. You live and work in San Diego. I live and work in LA. There’s no way I’m driving three hours, in traffic, to work and home every day. It isn’t going to happen.”

“If that’s your biggest objection, forget about it. We can totally fix it.”

“How can we fix it? Even all your money isn’t enough to make LA traffic move during rush hour.”

“Maybe not, but there are other ways to get to work besides a car.”

“Like what?”

“Like a helicopter.” He drained his water glass in one long sip. “See, problem solved.”

“Yes, but I don’t have a helicopter.”

“Maybe not, but I’ve got three.”

“Look,” she said, throwing her napkin down on the table and standing up. “We’re done talking about this. I’m going to the bathroom and when I come back we need a new topic of conversation. Because if we don’t, I’m out of here. And I can promise that neither the baby nor I will be pleased about looking for a bus stop in Beverly Hills.”

Eleven

B
y the time she got back from the bathroom—where she’d had more than a few WTF moments—Nic had paid the bill and was waiting to escort her out to the car. He hadn’t, however, come up with a new topic of conversation. Instead, he had a new twist on the old one.

“So,” he said as he slid behind the wheel of a car that cost significantly more than she made in a year and started the engine, “I think I’ve found a solution.”

“I didn’t know we had a problem,” she answered drily.

He ignored her. “You don’t want to move in with me, so why don’t I move in with you?”

She burst out laughing. She knew it was rude, especially when he looked so pleased with his suggestion, but she couldn’t help it. The idea of a multibillionaire slumming it in her tiny fourth-story walk-up in Los Feliz was hilarious, especially considering the fact that his
pantry
was bigger than her whole apartment.

The look he gave her as he backed out of the parking space was decidedly disgruntled. “I don’t see what’s so funny.”

“Really? You don’t?”

“No.”

She thought about enlightening him, but the truth was, he might actually have hit on the perfect solution for getting him off her back about this. He wouldn’t last a day in her apartment, so why not let him move in? The first morning he couldn’t get hot water or the air-conditioning went on the fritz, he’d be out of there. Billionaire playboys born with silver spoons in their mouths rarely knew how to rough it. Not that she’d met that many billionaire playboys—or even more than one, really—but she was certain her opinion would hold up.

“Okay, fine,” she said as he pulled into traffic. “You can move in with me.”

“Seriously?” He glanced over at her before fastening his eyes back on the road. “You mean it?”

“I do. If you’re willing to move into my place—which, I’m warning you, is small—then who am I to tell you no? But we need to lay down some ground rules if we’re going to do this.”

His smile quickly turned perplexed. “Ground rules?”

“Yeah, like who gets the bathroom when and who does what chores and no sex. You know, the usual.”

Now he was frowning and it was all she could do not to crack up again. It was wrong of her to be enjoying this so much, but she couldn’t help it. After all the tension of the day, messing with him was a welcome relief.

“Do you have a problem with any of those rules?” she asked when she’d finally managed to choke down her mirth. The last thing she wanted him to know was how utterly and completely she expected this to fail.

“Well, you can have the bathroom whenever you want and I’ll hire someone to do the cleaning and I’ll do the rest of the chores. But the no-sex rule—I’m not really okay with that one, no.”

“Oh.” She kept her voice as innocent as possible. “That’s kind of a deal breaker for me, to be honest.”

“But we’ve already had sex. And—” he made a point of glancing at her stomach “—you’re pregnant. So, I’m not really sure what the point would be of abstaining.”

“The point is what I said back at the restaurant. I don’t know you. And my one and only one-night stand excluded, I’m not in the habit of sleeping with men I don’t know. So, yeah, it’s a deal breaker.”

“I’m your only one-night stand?”

She did laugh then, at the sheer ridiculousness of his response. “Seriously, that’s what you got out of what I said? That you’re my one and only?”

“No, I heard all of it. But that was definitely the most interesting part.”

“Of course it was,” she said with a snort. “You are such a guy.”

He shot her an amused look. “I never claimed to be anything else, sweetheart.”

“Don’t call me that.” The words were instantaneous and forceful, welling up from a place she hadn’t thought of in years.

“What?” He looked mystified. “Sweetheart?”

“Yes, that. Don’t
ever
call me that.”

“Sure.” He held up a placating hand. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“You didn’t upset me,” she contradicted him.

He didn’t respond, but the silence spoke louder than any words ever could. He knew she was lying, knew she’d had a strong and immediate reaction to that word. And still he wasn’t calling her on it. She didn’t know if that endeared him to her or just pissed her off.

It took a few minutes for the awkwardness to wear off, but Nic finally asked for directions to her apartment.

She kept her voice light and relaxed when she gave them, and eventually the last of the tension eased away. At least until he’d parked his car and started following her up the stairs to her apartment.

“Is there an elevator?” he asked after they’d started on the third flight.

“Nope,” she answered cheerfully.

“That’s going to be a problem for you the last couple months of your pregnancy, don’t you think?” She could practically hear the wheels turning in his head as he tried to figure out how to use this to get her out of the apartment and into his house.

Not that she would let that happen.

“I already asked my doctor about it. She said it should be fine—exercise is good for me and the baby. She did warn that if I ended up having a C-section, I wouldn’t be allowed to go up and down them the first few weeks, but at this point there’s nothing to indicate I’ll have anything but a normal delivery.” She smiled at him blithely.

“So, there are early indicators that someone might need a C-section?”

“Yes, but I don’t have any of them.” She reached for his hand, squeezed it, as they finally made it to her door. “Relax, Nic. Everything’s fine with my pregnancy so far. It’s totally boring, which is a good thing, my doctor assures me.”

He still didn’t look convinced, but he let it go as she unlocked her apartment door. “Are you coming in?” she asked after she’d stepped into her three-foot-by-three-foot entryway.

“Do you want me to?” He watched her face closely as he waited for her answer. “You look pretty tired.”

She felt pretty tired. The day had brought so many emotional highs and lows she felt as if she’d run a marathon—or maybe two. The exhaustion of her first trimester had disappeared a few weeks ago, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t tired at the end of every day. As Stephanie had told Desi the other day when she’d been caught napping in the break room, making another person was pretty hard work.

But she and Nic still had things to talk about—such as her ground rules and whether or not he really wanted to do this now that he’d seen just how small her apartment was. “It’s fine,” she told him, stepping back so he could enter.

He must have read the tiredness on her face, though, because he shook his head. “I think I’ll get going. Let you get some rest.” He pulled his phone out of his pocket, then looked a little shamefaced as he asked, “Can I get your number again? I promise not to erase it this time.”

“I guess we’ll just have to wait and see about that,” she said.

She’d meant it as a joke, but his eyes shot to hers. He was deadly serious—deadly earnest—when he told her, “I’m not going anywhere, Desi.”

Yeah, that’s what they all said. And somehow it had never quite worked out that way for her. Oh, they all had a really good reason for why they had to leave—or why she had to—but the results were always the same. Her, alone, trying to pick up the pieces of a heart broken by too many people too many ways and too many times.

But she was done with that, she told herself as she rattled off her phone number. Done with opening herself up to someone only to watch the person walk away. So she’d give Nic a chance, she’d let him into this baby’s life, but that was it. There was no way she would let herself depend on him. No way she would let him hurt her when he finally decided to walk away.

It had taken him eight weeks to erase her from his phone when she didn’t answer his texts. Once the baby was born and everything got harder, how long would it take him to leave them both?

Not very long was her bet. Not very long, at all.

“Get some sleep,” he told her after saving her number. “I’ll call you tomorrow and we’ll talk about the logistics of me moving in. I want to do it as soon as possible.”

“How soon is that?” she asked warily.

“This coming weekend, if that’s okay with you. I’d do it sooner, but I know you have work and the last thing I want to do is rock the boat for you at the paper.”

She snorted. “Yeah, well, I think that boat has already been rocked pretty hard today.” The memory made her wince even as it brought the guilt back. She’d almost ruined Nic and his brother, almost brought down their entire company, and yet here he was, telling her that he didn’t want to disrupt her job. If things had been reversed, she’d probably be calling for his head on a silver platter, baby or no baby.

“I’m sorry,” she told him. “An apology is not close to being enough when my carelessness nearly cost you and your family everything, but I don’t know what else to say.”

“Clean slate, remember?” He leaned over then and pressed a lingering kiss to her forehead. “We’re starting over.”

Were they? His gentle, platonic kiss somehow managed to send heat sizzling along her nerve endings. Because from where she stood, it felt as if they were picking up right where they’d left off eighteen weeks before.

It was an alarming idea, considering the close quarters they would be living in. And the no-sex rule she was serious about enforcing. Chemistry between them had never been a problem, and she knew if she let him back in her bed, getting rid of him would take a hell of a lot longer than it would otherwise. After all, how would they find out how incompatible they were in real life if they never actually got out of bed?

She knew this, understood it, even believed it wholeheartedly. And still her body swayed toward him, still she tilted her face up for a kiss that shouldn’t happen. Still she longed to feel his hard, calloused hands brushing over her skin.

Nic’s eyes darkened as she stared up into them. They turned the same green as the storm-tossed Atlantic, and she felt more of her resistance give way. If he kissed her right now…if he
touched
her, she wasn’t sure she’d have the strength to say no.

But in the end, he did neither. Instead, he took a couple of steps back, until he was no longer in touching distance. He gave her a sweet smile—sweeter than anything she thought a guy like him was capable of—and said, “Go get some sleep. I’ll call you in the morning and we’ll get the details of my move worked out. We’ll both feel better then.”

She was glad he sounded certain, because suddenly she was anything but. Still, she nodded, gave him the best smile she could muster. “Yeah. We’ll talk tomorrow.”

They stood there for several long seconds more, neither of them taking the first move to break the new and tenuous connection between them. All she had to do was step back and close the door. All he had to do was turn and walk away. And still they silently watched each other. Silently imagined what might be coming next…for both of them.

Despite her best intentions, she felt herself softening toward him. Felt herself wondering if maybe he would stick around for a while—for the baby, of course, not for her.

But after everything she’d been through, after all the people she’d had to tell goodbye over the years, even thinking he might stay for the baby felt like a weakness. More, it felt like a betrayal.

And so she found the will to step back.

Found the will to whisper a soft good-night.

And somehow she even found the will to close the door in Nic’s very handsome, very sexy, very sweet face.

By Sunday, Desi still wasn’t over her moment of weakness. In fact, she’d spent the better part of the week berating herself for it even as she felt herself falling a little more under Nic’s spell with each day that passed.

He’d called her twice a day, every day, just to check on her. He had a small basket of fresh fruit delivered to her doorstep each morning and a healthy, delicious dinner delivered each night. He even drove up from San Diego one day to meet her for lunch so he could check on her and the baby. And through it all, he had never voiced a word of dissension at the increasingly ridiculous rules she’d insisted on making up for their living arrangement.

The guy definitely had his eye on the endgame, and that wasn’t going to do. Not when he was being so nice about it. And not when she felt as if she was one small step away from getting sucked into a vortex of need and want and emotional attachment.

Wasn’t going to happen.

Which was why, on this fine Sunday morning in July, she stood in the middle of her very small kitchen watching her neighbor Serena direct her burly boyfriend and brother, telling them where in Desi’s apartment they should put the French provincial sofa they were currently carrying. Not that it really mattered. The thing would dominate the room wherever they put it.

How could it not? It was huge and ugly and the most atrocious shade of hot pink she had ever seen. It was also curved and hard as a rock and would be absolutely miserable for Nic to sleep on. One night on the thing and his back would never be the same.

At another time, she might feel badly about conspiring to torture Nic while he was being so determinedly supportive, but desperate times called for desperate measures. He was moving in later that afternoon, and with the way her stupid pregnancy hormones were all out of whack, she didn’t trust herself not to jump him. Or much worse, fall for him.

Which was why she’d begged Serena to let her borrow her friend’s most prized piece of furniture. It would cost Desi a couple of hundred bucks and an entire day spent at the spa, but at this point, that seemed a small price to pay. Nic had to go and he had to go fast.

She would make those words her mantra and use them every time she felt her resolve weakening. Which lately seemed to be every time she saw Nic or heard his voice on the phone or even thought about him—which she was doing more and more lately.

Stupid pregnancy hormones.

By the time Nic showed up at her door with two suitcases and a laptop case filled with electronics, she was a wreck. Especially since she hadn’t had anything to do but sit around and wait for him to appear.