Adored: A Masters and Mercenaries Novella (1001 Dark Nights) (9 page)

The door opened and Laurel emerged, followed by her sisters. She’d changed back into the same clothes she’d been wearing earlier, a sweet-looking floral print skirt, a pink blouse, and flats. Her hair was pulled back and she was looking more like her normal, competent self than before when she’d looked like she needed him.

She did need him. And Will was right. It was time to man up.

“Well, I think the two of you have a lot to talk about,” Lila said. “Mitch, weren’t you going to say something to Laurel?”

His heart was suddenly pounding because these were waters he’d promised he’d never, ever swim in again. He was about to dive into the deep end of the pool. “Yes. I do have something to say. Laurel, I’ll marry you.”

Will groaned again. “Buddy, we’re going to have to work on your delivery.”

Laurel simply turned and walked away.

He went after her because this time, she wasn’t getting away from him.

* * * *

I’ll marry you
.

Laurel walked toward the exit. It didn’t matter that she didn’t have a ride. She would catch a bus or walk to a train station. She was not going to stay there with Mitch “I’ll marry you because I have to” Bradford. He’d said the words with all the enthusiasm of a man on his way to an execution.

Pregnant. She was pregnant and Mitch knew, and now he was ready to do right by the woman he’d apparently soiled. That’s how her brother had reacted. For a moment, she’d been transported back in time to where Will was going to fight a duel over her lost honor.

She hadn’t lost a damn thing. No. She’d gained a whole other human being and all because she hadn’t been able to think straight when Mitch touched her.

That was absolutely no reason to marry the man.

“Laurel!”

She settled her purse on her shoulder and ignored him. There was a train station two blocks over. She knew exactly where it was because she’d come out to this hospital many times to see Will and Lila, though she never would again because neither of those ungrateful wretches had offered her a ride. They were cut off.

Actually, it served her right to have to hoof it. It proved that when a girl screwed up as totally as she had, she was on her own. Or she would be if Mitch would stop pursuing her.

“Laurel!”

She kept walking. Outside, it was a glorious day. It was spring and everything was in bloom. Even her damn womb.

Mitch caught up with her. “Laurel, sweetheart, I’m going to give you a chance to save this. Stop now and come with me. We’ll get something to eat and talk about this.”

She didn’t look his way. “I think I’ll take door number two.”

“You won’t like door number two,” he warned.

She was far too stubborn to care.

“All right then. Door number two it is.”

Laurel nearly screamed because one minute she’d been walking and the next she was up and in his arms, being cradled against that masculine chest of his. “Hey, you can’t do that. Put me down.”

“Nope. This is door number two and unfortunately, I’m parked on the other side of the lot.” Mitch had turned and was walking right back toward where they’d just left. “What have you had to eat today?”

She was oddly comfortable in his arms. She couldn’t remember the last time a man had picked her up and carried her around, her body protected by his. Probably not since she’d been a child and Will had carried her when she’d been hurt or sick. The sweetness of it pierced her. And then she remembered the only reason he was doing it was for the baby. “You should put me down. You’re going to throw out your back.”

He stopped and stared down at her. “What did you say?”

Oh, that was new. He was cold, arctic cold even as his arms tightened around her. “I said I’m too heavy and you should put me down.”

“That’s what I thought you said.” He started moving again, his eyes back up. “All right. I’m going to give you that one because I’ve never set rules with you. Here’s rule number one. I hear you insult yourself again and there will be punishment. How do you expect to raise a girl who gives a damn about herself if her mother doesn’t? How do you expect to raise a boy who respects women if his mother doesn’t care about herself? So expect the punishment for those infractions to be harsh.”

What was happening? And when the hell did Mitch become the voice of reason? She couldn’t come up with one logical argument. He was right. “What are you doing, Mitch?”

“Setting the rules. Now answer my question. When was the last time you ate?”

They were about to walk past the ER doors and toward the west lot. Naturally her siblings were now outside and they were all watching the show.

“She started a bowl of cereal this morning.” Lisa had impeccable hearing. “But it was the diet kind and she didn’t eat it because she had morning sickness. At the time I thought it might be a bug, but now we know it’s y’all’s illicit love child.”

She had another shot at getting out of here. Lila would be the weak link. Lisa had obviously become a spy for Team Mitchell and Will was being a jerkface. “Lila, go and get security. Tell them I’m being kidnapped. Mitch, let me down now.”

Lila smiled and gave her a friendly wave. “No, honey. I think he’s being the sensible one.”

“You take care of her.” Will’s words were for Mitch.

“I intend to. She might not like how I do it though. Can someone pack a bag for her? I’m afraid if I let her inside her apartment, she’ll lock me out.”

“Damn straight I will.”

“I have a key,” Lisa said. “I’ll do it. Come on, Laurel. Don’t look at me that way. He’s doing the Dom thing. And isn’t this kind of what you wanted? Mitch and a baby? Looks like you get both.”

Mitch and a baby. Was that what she’d wanted?

Mitch thanked Lisa and then strode toward his massive, gas-guzzling SUV she’d thought at first was to make up for his penis, and then she’d seen his penis. His penis probably needed the roomy interior of the SUV to feel comfortable.

Mitch and a family were what she had wanted, but she’d been willing to settle for just Mitch. Now it was Mitch who would be settling.

“If I set you down are you going to run?”

And be less mature than she’d already been today? One thing was right. They needed to talk. “No.”

He gently set her on her feet and opened the door. “Will you please eat something? I’ll take you anywhere you want. We need to figure out how this is going to work.”

She’d wanted enchiladas earlier in the day, but now all she could think about was pasta and she knew exactly where to get it. “Take me to Top.”

Twenty minutes later, she sighed as Sean Taggart placed a plate of pasta carbonara in front of her. She’d already inhaled a Caesar salad. She might have been nauseous this morning, but she was ravenous now.

“Are you sure I can’t get you a glass of wine? The sommelier has this paired with a Chablis that truly complements the creamy texture of the dish,” Sean explained. He was dressed in his chef whites. She was much more used to calling him Master Sean and seeing him in leathers, but then Sean Taggart was a Master of more than one thing. He was definitely a master with pasta and sauces.

She was about to turn him down when Mitch decided to take over.

“She can’t because she’s pregnant.”

Why did she suddenly feel like every eye in the place was on her? The crowd was light at this time of day, and it seemed like Mitch had shouted out into an almost silent room.

Sean held out a hand, a smile creasing his handsome face. “Really? That’s exciting news. Congratulations, man. I didn’t know you two were even seeing each other.”

That was just like a man. “We’re not seeing each other and how do you know the baby is his? Maybe it’s someone else’s. And I’m barely pregnant.”

“The baby is absolutely, one hundred percent mine, and we’re definitely seeing each other now. We’re getting married,” Mitch declared with ruthless determination.

Sean put a friendly hand on Mitch’s shoulder. “Good to hear it, man. Let us know when the wedding is and we’ll be happy to cater. Macon’s been dying to do a wedding cake. He and Ally got married in Vegas so he didn’t do his own. You two enjoy and let me know if I can get you anything else. The dessert this evening is a bread pudding, so you’ll want to save room.”

She was almost distracted by that. Almost.

“Why did you tell him that?” She leaned over so she could maybe minimize the damage. The servers were looking her way and whispering behind their hands. It wouldn’t have been a big deal if it was Ally. She knew Ally, but there were two women she didn’t know talking about her “engagement” that wasn’t going to happen. “He didn’t need to know that.”

Mitch looked at her over his porterhouse with truffle mashed potatoes and shrugged. “Everyone’s going to find out anyway. And there’s no such thing as being barely pregnant. You’re either pregnant or you’re not.”

“Well maybe I would like more than three minutes to process it before we tell the world that we screwed up.”

“Did we?”

She sat back, regarding him. He looked tired. Like he wasn’t sleeping or he was staying at the office. He did that at times. She would walk in and find him asleep on the couch in his office and she would close the shades and put a blanket over him and try to let him get an hour or two. “What is that supposed to mean, Mitch?”

This was the type of conversation that would typically upset her stomach. Not so now. She couldn’t resist the siren call of that creamy sauce or the bacon and pancetta. Even the noodles were perfect.

“It means that I didn’t use a condom and you didn’t ask me to use one.”

She leaned over. “I didn’t think. I wasn’t thinking, Mitchell.”

He cut a piece of steak but didn’t eat it. “Do you usually not think?”

“Of course not.” How did she put this without sounding pathetic? “Not that there have been many times for me to not think.”

“I never have sex without a condom, Laurel. I’ll be honest, there hasn’t been a lot lately, but that’s simply not something I do. I’m always careful. The last thing I want is to get trapped again.”

“Well, I guess I should thank you for at least being honest.” Maybe she was going to lose her appetite.

He reached across the table and put a hand on hers. It was the first time he’d willingly touched her outside the kiss or that night they’d had sex or when he was trying to kidnap her. Tender. He was trying to be tender with her and it made Laurel stop.

“I wasn’t saying you trapped me, Laurel. I was wondering if maybe deep down I wanted to be trapped with you. I was wondering if subconsciously maybe we knew what we were doing and we took the risk anyway because deep down we wondered if it wouldn’t be so bad.”

She’d wondered the same thing herself. “Maybe we did.”

“How many boyfriends have you had?”

“How many girlfriends have you had?”

He shrugged. “Two. But if you’re asking about women I’ve slept with, it’s a lot more. I’d ballpark it at thirty.”

That was a big number. And only two girlfriends? “You married both of your girlfriends?”

“No. Margot was my college girlfriend. We went to law school together and when we got out, I built my firm from the ground up. My father threw me a bone and got me hooked up with a man named Garrison Cage.”

She knew his business story. She’d spent long nights looking him up on the Internet. “The tech guru. That’s why they called you the Silicon Counselor.”

He’d been a legal consultant to some of the biggest tech firms in the business. He’d made millions before it all fell apart.

“Yeah, I had a partner in the firm. Nolan Pence. We got close in law school. He was kind of my first friend, I guess. I moved around a lot as a kid. I never made close friends. Anyway, he decided he liked both the company and my wife. I’d been stupid because I’d made Margot a partner even though she wasn’t practicing at the time. She was mostly fucking Nolan. They had the majority of the firm behind the two of them, so I was asked to leave.”

Yes, she knew that part, too. “So who was the other girlfriend if it wasn’t your second wife?”

She asked the question with a cautious tone because this was the first conversation they’d had about his personal life. They’d had long lunches talking about the law or sports or politics, but they’d never done this.

They’d had sex and made a baby and they’d never even gone on a date.

“I had a girlfriend when I was a teenager. My mom sent me to boarding school the last couple of years of high school. Best thing that ever happened to me. Her name was Natalie. She went to the girls’ school. I guess I was wrong. I guess she was really my first friend. We were together for three years.”

“Did you break up when you went to college?”

He shook his head. “She died. Car accident. She was coming home with some friends and a drunk driver killed them all. I found out from the news the next day because all the people who would have told me were dead.” He took a quick drink of the Coke he’d ordered. “Those were my two girlfriends. I wouldn’t call Joy so much a girlfriend as a hookup gone wrong. I left San Francisco and moved to LA, where I started a new firm, and I met Joy at a Hollywood party. I was drinking a lot back then. I woke up in Vegas married about two weeks later. The marriage lasted three years and then she divorced me and now she’s living in our old Hollywood Hills house that I still pay the upkeep for. So that’s how I have two girlfriends and two wives but not the same. Now, I’ve politely answered your question. Could you please answer mine?”

She felt a little battered. He’d spoken in a monotone, but how was she supposed to handle that? The girl he’d loved had died and he’d tried twice more and gotten screwed in every way a man could. And she expected him to try again? The enormity of his losses weighed on her, but she answered him anyway. “I’ve had three serious boyfriends and that’s how many guys I’ve slept with, too. Well, four now.”

Three boyfriends. Not a one of them had cheated on her. There was no grand trauma in her past concerning men. Her high school boyfriend had moved away for college and they’d drifted apart. The guy she’d dated through college had asked her to marry him, but she’d known they were far too similar and broken it off. And she’d split up with her recent boyfriend shortly after she’d met Mitchell Bradford and realized she couldn’t feel for the man anything close to what she felt for Mitch.