Scottish Billionaire's Unwanted Baby Page 5

  “Do you ever visit?”

  “Will do shortly, I imagine. You see… my father’s just passed away.”

  I stared at him, aghast. “Oh, no. I’m so sorry. Did you just find out today?”

  “No. I got the call Friday.”

  Friday. I remembered him staring out at the skyline, looking sorrowful, mournful, lost. I remembered the way he’d clung to me after we’d made love, the way he’d nuzzled his face into my shoulder like he was looking for comfort. He had been looking for comfort, I realized, and I pressed the back of my hand to my mouth in a sudden spurt of guilt.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said again, the words slightly muffled by my knuckles. “I—Friday night—I didn’t know—or I wouldn’t have taken advantage of you—”

  He blinked at me, looking astounded, and then chuckled.

  “Lassie, no need for you to apologize. You weren’t the one taking advantage.”

  “But I did!” Without conscious thought, I reached out and took his hand in mine. “I didn’t know. I could see you were upset, but I didn’t realize something had happened to your father. If I’d known, I wouldn’t have—”

  He looked down at our linked hands, looking bewildered, as if no one had ever taken his hand before.

  “I’m glad you did,” he said, very softly but very firmly.

  I gulped, grateful that I didn’t seem to have done any harm. The idea that I might have helped lift his spirits somehow lightened my guilt. But I still couldn’t help worrying about him.

  “How are you doing today?” I asked. “Are you okay?”

  He glanced back up, his eyes widening slightly as if he was surprised by my concern. But then he shrugged. “As well as a grown man can be when his da dies, I suppose. But I must admit, I do have a wee bit of a problem. One I thought you might be able to help me with.”

  “I’d be happy to help, any way I can.”

  He took a deep breath.

  “The simple fact of the matter is, I need to get married. And I’d like you to be my wife.”

  I gaped at him for a moment, then realized he was joking. He had to be. I drew my hand back and burst out laughing, so hard I could hardly breathe.

  “Very funny,” I wheezed out. “What do you really need?”

  His eyes narrowed into icy slits of blue, making him look formidable, dangerous, and slowly my laughter died out. I swallowed nervously as the truth burst over me in a shocking wave.

  Holy shit. He’s serious.

  ***

  Angus

  I don’t like being laughed at.

  When Isla laughed at my proposal—a proposal that would have made practically any other woman in the world shriek oh my God yes!!!—I felt anger bubble up inside me. But then I thought about the way I’d phrased it and realized that it was no wonder she didn’t think I was serious. How could she?

  “I know it sounds absurd,” I said, choking back my annoyance. “But what I’m proposing here is a simple business arrangement. My father’s will specified that I have to marry within six months of his death, or the home where I grew up will be turned over to a heritage trust foundation. My mother will be able to live in it as long as she’s alive, but once she dies, I’ll lose it forever. And it’s… well, it’s my home.”

  She stared up at me, those green eyes huge. “But you live in New York. And you have a penthouse. A really nice one, too. I remember reading about it when I was doing research on your company.”

  “Yes. But a penthouse isn’t… well, it’s not the same thing.”

  “You could buy pretty much any house in Scotland you wanted, couldn’t you?”

  “Yes, but it wouldn’t be the same, either. Braehaven is part of my childhood. It’s part of me. Like your farm, Isla. It’s home. And I can’t lose it. I just can’t.”

  “I see.” Her eyebrows lowered, and I saw her give an infinitesimal shake of the head as if she’d already made up her mind to say no. Panic twisted in my chest—a panic I couldn’t quite understand. As the old saying goes, there are plenty of fish in the sea, and Isla was hardly the only trout I could toss a baited hook to.

  But oddly enough, she was the only one I really wanted to hook.

  “Let me sweeten the pot,” I said as persuasively as I could manage. I remembered that her parents had needed to sell her beloved horse just to get tuition together for her college education. Money mattered to her. For that matter, money matters to nearly everyone. “I’m asking a lot of you, I know, so… I’m willing to offer you five hundred thousand dollars, as well as a promotion to a mid-level architect position here at AS Architects.”

  Her eyes went enormous. “I don’t even have an architecture license yet. I won’t for quite a while.”

  “The firm will be happy to help you get one as quickly as humanly possible.”

  I saw her wavering. I was quite certain money was tight back on her family farm, probably for more reasons than just Isla’s tuition. I suspected her parents probably needed money badly enough that she didn’t want to turn me down outright. I decided not to push any further right now, and to let her think about it.

  In architecture, I’ve found one sometimes gets to the point where it’s best to stop talking to the client, and simply allow the project to sell itself.

  “You don’t have to make up your mind today,” I said as gently as I could. “But time is of the essence here, so if you could let me know your decision as soon as possible, I’d appreciate it.”

  “Yes. All right.” She rose to her feet, looking dazed.

  “One other thing, Isla.” I stood as well and looked down into her eyes. Those green, green eyes. “I don’t mean to give you the impression that this would be forever. My da’s will specifies that I have to be married for two years. So that’s all I’m asking for. Two years. But you do need to understand that you can’t ask for a divorce before that period of time is up.”

  “All right.” She nodded, and turned toward the door like a sleepwalker, reeling from shock. Silently, I watched her go.

  I was pretty sure she’d be back.

  Chapter Seven

  Isla

  “You would not believe what happened at work today.”

  Marnie looked up from the bags of takeout she was placing on my tiny kitchen table. “You decided to keep banging the boss?”

  “Marnie!”

  She grinned maniacally. “He still wants you, right? I knew he would. Didn’t I say he would?”

  “He wants me,” I admitted, “but not quite in the way I expected.”

  Marnie frowned as she began to pull boxes out of the bags. The scent of curry filled the air, rich and fragrant, and my mouth watered. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, he asked me to marry him.”

  A container of chicken tikka masala dropped out of her fingers, spattering the contents all over my tile floor. She didn’t seem to notice. She spun around to stare at me, her eyes huge.

  “He what?”

  “Asked. Me. To. Marry. Him.”

  Marnie blinked. “Girlfriend, you must really be something in bed.”

  “Shut up. It’s not about that.”

  “Marriage isn’t about sex? Since when?”

  “Well, sometimes it is. But this is more of a… business arrangement.”

  Marnie stared at me a moment longer.

  “Maybe you better explain this to me over dinner,” she said.

  Twenty minutes later, I’d dug Sleepless in Seattle out of my Blu-ray collection for our girls’ night, but the box was still sitting on the floor in front of the TV, unopened and forgotten.

  Marnie was halfway through her tikka masala (the five-second rule having been invoked, at least partly due to my obsessively clean apartment), and I was nibbling at my tandoori shrimp, without a lot of enthusiasm. My stomach was still churning with anxiety, even though I hadn’t talked to Mr. Scott again since his unexpected proposal this morning.

  Had it really only been this morning? It seemed like I’d been worrying
about this for days.

  “Let me get this straight,” Marnie was saying. “He offered you five hundred thousand and an awesome promotion, and you said… maybe?”

  “It’s not the way I wanted to get ahead in my career,” I answered, a little sullen. “I want to earn my way, Marn, not have someone just hand me a promotion.”

  “Yeah, but it’s a really good opportunity. I mean, look around you, Isla. Your apartment is crap.”

  I couldn’t really argue. My apartment was as prettily feminine as I could make it, with a rose-covered throw over the shabby old sofa, cheap prints in gilded frames on the wall, and some French provincial-style tables. It looked pretty good, considering I’d picked most of my stuff up at junk shops, but there was no disguising the fact that the apartment was approximately the size of a broom closet. (Though to be fair, in New York City a broom closet is actually considered pretty spacious.) Besides, the paint was peeling on pretty much every surface, the tile floors were chipped, and the pine floorboards were decidedly warped.

  “And your neighborhood has a really high crime rate,” she went on. “Think about what you could do, where you could go, with half a million and a decent salary.”

  “I could help out my parents,” I murmured.

  “Yeah, you definitely could. I know they sacrificed a lot to help you get through college.”

  “They did. I owe them an awful lot.”

  “So think about it. Think about it really hard, Isla. Chances like this don’t come along every day. For most of us, they never come along at all.” Her voice was very serious, but then she grinned at me. “Plus, Angus Scott is hot.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed, sighing. “He’s definitely hot.”

  “But then again, I’ve read that he has anger issues. Is he really an asshole?”

  “He can be,” I admitted. “But he’s never been anything but nice to me. I don’t think he’s abusive or anything, if that’s what you’re asking. He might be a little controlling, a little alpha. But I think I could live with that.”

  “You might need to push back. Don’t let him run roughshod over you. Sometimes you’re too nice, Isla. You’ll have to stand up to him.”

  “If I decide to do this. I haven’t decided yet.”

  Marnie looked at me for a long moment.

  “I think you have decided,” she said at last, more gentle than usual. “Was he really that great in bed?”

  “It wasn’t that he was amazing or anything,” I said, though I definitely hadn’t had any complaints. “It was just… I don’t know, Marn. It was like we connected somehow. I can’t explain it, but it was more… more intimate than anything I’ve ever done with anyone else.”

  “Maybe he feels the same way,” she suggested. “Maybe that’s why he proposed to you, specifically.”

  I snorted. “I don’t think so. I mean, he’s probably been with like a gazillion other women. I’m not special.”

  “Of course you are,” she said loyally. “And if he has the sense God gave a goose, he’s noticed that already.”

  I chuckled at the expression. “I’m pretty sure he has plenty of sense, Marnie. But I don’t think he wants me for anything but a business arrangement.”

  “Are you sure?” She popped the last of her food into her mouth and spoke as she chewed. “I mean, he could ask anyone, couldn’t he? Why do you think he picked you?”

  I thought about that. Why me, indeed? Just because I was the last woman he’d slept with? But that didn’t make sense, either. He must have a little black book (or the smartphone equivalent) full of women’s phone numbers. So why had he asked me?

  I thought about the way he’d fucked—no, made love—to me, the way he’d kissed me, the way he’d pressed his face against my shoulder afterward, and a little flare of something very like hope flared in my chest. I didn’t imagine Angus Scott was in love with me. He barely knew me, after all.

  But maybe I didn’t imagine that connection between us.

  Maybe, just maybe… he felt it too.

  Chapter Eight

  Angus

  I’ve made my decision.

  Isla had sent me the terse text half an hour ago. I’d sent her back an equally terse text, telling her I was sending my driver to pick her up and drive her to my penthouse, where we could discuss the matter.

  I was pretty sure I knew what her answer was, but even so, I was aware of a buzz of nervousness in my stomach. Or maybe it was anticipation. I wanted to see her again, wanted to see her with an eager feeling I hadn’t experienced for a long time.

  Once again I wondered what it was about this particular young woman, why I wanted her specifically, rather than the dozens of other lovely women who’d ecstatically accept my proposal. But I shoved the question to the back of my mind for now. I wanted her, and that was all there was to it.

  Regardless of why, there was no question that I wanted to impress her. So I was cooking up a light meal—raw oysters for an appetizer, and steak and potatoes, with a salad on the side. A Baccarat decanter full of Latour Bordeaux sat on the counter to breathe. I have a very good French chef in my employ, and he generally turns out spectacular culinary masterpieces for me when I entertain ladies. But tonight I’d given him the evening off. For some reason, it was important to me that Isla knew I was a good cook.

  The doorbell rang, and I knew my driver had escorted her up my private lift and left her in the marble-floored anteroom. I strode from the kitchen, across the apartment, and opened the door. And there she stood, in worn jeans and a blue NYIT T-shirt. Her hair was pulled back into a messy ponytail, and the nervousness in my stomach grew, because she didn’t look like a woman who planned to say yes.

  “Thank you for coming.” I took her hand in mine and drew her in, closing the door behind us. She looked around, blinking, and I tried to see the apartment through her eyes: the original art on the walls, including an enormous Jackson Pollock canvas that dominated one wall of the living room; the floor-to-ceiling windows that lined most of the apartment, with the dark rectangle of Central Park directly in front of us, and the lights of the city all around it; and the comfortable, classic modern furniture. I’d tried to make my apartment as homelike as a penthouse could be, but it was also unmistakably grand.

  Her hand rose to her ponytail, self-consciously, and I knew what she was thinking: I don’t belong here.

  But she did belong here. Somehow, seeing her here in faded jeans and an old T-shirt, I was more certain of that than ever. I couldn’t explain how, but I knew that she fit my apartment and my life.

  She fit me.

  “It’s beautiful,” she said at last.

  “Thank you. Come on out to the kitchen. I’d better get back to my steak.”

  “Steak?”

  “I thought I’d make us some dinner.”

  She blinked up at me for a moment, then one corner of her mouth tipped up in a small smile.

  “Good thing I was too nervous to eat earlier, then.”

  I escorted her into the kitchen, and she perched on one of the stools, leaning both elbows on the marble countertop. I turned back to the huge, copper-trimmed La Cornue range and looked over my work. My fillet steak—what Americans call filet mignon—was almost ready, and so was my Madeira sauce.

  “Just a moment longer,” I said. “In the meantime, would you care for a few oysters?”

  She lifted an eyebrow at me, and I knew she was thinking of the old notion that oysters are an aphrodisiac. But she reached out, took one of the half shells, and tipped it into her mouth, swallowing appreciatively.

  “That’s very good.”

  I swallowed one too. It was salty, tasting of the sea, calling to mind images of seagulls calling and waves crashing against the sand. I watched her lift another to her lips, watched her throat work as she swallowed, and something in my gut tightened. I turned back to the range.

  “I think it’s ready.”

  She sniffed the air appreciatively. “It smells heavenly.”

  I
pulled the beef off the grill and began to slice it, serving it on antique Spode plates with mashed potatoes and the sauce, with mushrooms and green beans on the side. I placed it in front of her, along with a small salad, and picked up the decanter to pour her a glass of wine.

  “We can eat in the dining room if you prefer,” I said. “But it’s a little large for two people. I usually eat in the kitchen.”

  “This is fine.” She looked at her plate with a skeptical expression. “Did you really cook this all by yourself?”

  “Yes. I gave my chef the night off.”

  She speared a mushroom, popped it into her mouth, and chewed thoughtfully. “Somehow I hadn’t imagined you as the domestic type.”

  I hadn’t imagined myself that way either, until recently. But I judged it best not to say so. I put on my native accent like a shirt I hadn’t worn in a while and grinned at her.

  “Och, lassie, there’s much ye dinna know aboot me.”

  She chuckled and dove into the steak with enthusiasm. She ate like she did everything else—devoting her full attention to it. Unlike a lot of women I’d met, she didn’t nibble at her food and pretend to be disinterested in eating. She looked like she was enjoying it whole-heartedly.

  I liked that about her.

  We spoke of inconsequential things for a while—whether she’d liked the stretch Rolls I’d sent for her, the terrible traffic on this side of town, the gathering tang of autumn in the air. I don’t know quite how I got back round to the topic, but before long I found myself talking about Braehaven again.

  “Parts of it are crumbling,” I told her. “It’s a fine old house, but it’s needed attention for many years now. It’s practically crying out for attention.”

  She glanced around the apartment, looking into the living room, where silver-gray upholstery and chrome furniture sat, ruled over by Pollock’s gaudy splatters of paint.

  “It sounds lovely,” she said, “but not really the sort of place I’d imagine you’d want to live. Not really.”

  “Ah, but I’m going to modernize it.” I took out my phone and began paging through the photo app, showing her a sketch I’d done of the floor plan, and then one of the elevation I’d drawn. “See how it still has the grandeur, the historical flavor? But I want to integrate the medieval parts of the castle with the more recent additions a little better and add a few touches of my own. I’d add in this glass room overlooking the walled garden, something like a modern conservatory. And I’d alter the front, like so, enlarging the windows and curving this wall to soften the look of it. When I’m finished, the house will look friendlier, more approachable, more modern.”