One Kiss in... Miami: Nothing Short of Perfect / Reunited...With Child / Her Innocence, His Conquest. Katherine Garbera

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      “If that’s what you believe, why are you here?”

      He caught her wariness before she wiped every thought and emotion from her face, closing down and shutting him out. She’d never done that before. He suspected she’d never been capable of it until recently. When they’d last been together she’d been open and forthcoming, her opinions and feelings out there for everyone to see. Was he responsible for so dramatic a change? Had their night together caused her to regard the world with such caution? He flinched from the thought, from the idea he was capable of inflicting that level of pain on anyone, though for reasons he couldn’t bring himself to analyze, Daisy in particular.

      “You deserved to know about your daughter. Now that you do, I’m finished here.”

      She was keeping something from him, he could tell. “It’s more than that, isn’t it?” He could also tell she had zero intention of explaining herself. “Never mind. Considering how guarded I am about my own privacy, I won’t intrude on yours.”

      “Thank you.”

      “But if I can help, I will.” He had no idea where the words came from. He certainly hadn’t planned to say them, an unfathomable lapse on his part, but they caught her attention.

      She studied his face for a long, tense moment. Then her head jerked in a nod. “Thanks. I appreciate it.”

      Whether she realized it or not, Daisy’s announcement offered him the perfect opportunity to achieve the goals he’d set more than two years ago—to create a family. To have someone in his life who mattered. Who cared. Though she didn’t and couldn’t meet his conditions for an engineering apprentice, any more than those for the perfect wife, the potential existed to shape her to fit many of the same parameters. Hell, he’d even be willing to alter his lifestyle somewhat to suit her requirements for a husband. Within reason, of course.

      And then there was Noelle. He struggled to draw air into his lungs at the thought of his progeny. A daughter. He had a child! It stunned him how much that simple fact changed the means by which he processed information. He found he craved her, sight unseen. Wanted and needed them both in ways he found inexplicable. No matter what it took, he’d give Daisy whatever she required in order to have his ready-made family part of his life.

      He crossed to a sturdy wooden table and pulled out a chair, formulating a swift game plan. “Let’s sit and talk about this. Are you hungry?”

      Annoyance flashed. “Let me get this straight. Now that you know about Noelle you’re willing to feed me?”

      “No,” he responded mildly. “Since I planned to keep you here until we relocated, I would have gotten around to feeding you. Eventually.”

      That provoked a smile. A tiny one, but a smile nonetheless. The impact of it far exceeded what it should have, based on all rational consideration. And yet, just as at the engineering conference, it drew him in, put thoughts and ideas in his head he’d spent every day since their night together working to eradicate. How many potential apprentice/wives had he interviewed since Daisy? How many times had Pretorius tweaked his Pretorius Program in an effort to find the “perfect” woman? How many failures had there been?

      And all because none of them were Daisy, he now realized.

      Oh, they’d suited his conditions to a T. Every last miserable one of them had engineering credentials. Were brilliant, rational, sensible women in complete control of their emotions. A few were even more attractive than Daisy, though for some inexplicable reason their beauty left him cold. To be fair, none of them revealed any true meanness that he’d noticed, still he wouldn’t call them kind. Perhaps their very lack of emotional depth prevented them from exhibiting the qualities Daisy possessed in distressing excess.

      Regardless, his search had ultimately resulted in only one serious candidate … along with the indelible memory of Daisy. Now he had the ideal opportunity to mold the woman he actually wanted into the perfect wife.

      “I thought we were going to talk,” she prompted with another of her irresistible smiles.

      “Talking is the easy part.”

      Again, the wariness. “And the not-so easy part?” she asked.

      “I don’t cook and neither does Pretorius.”

      She glanced around. “Maybe that explains the lack of appliances.”

      “There’s a fully stocked refrigerator and freezer in the cabinet behind me, as well as a full complement of appliances.” He took a seat beside her. “I also have someone stop in once a day and prepare our meals, so you can cross that concern off your list.”

      She blinked. “I didn’t realize I had a list.”

      “I’m making one for you.”

      Daisy’s eyes narrowed. “And why would you do that? And why should it matter whether or not you can cook, or whether or not you have someone fixing your meals? It has nothing to do with me.”

      Now for the hard part. No point in delaying the inevitable. Better to get right to it. “It’s about to have a lot to do with you, because I want you and Noelle to move in here with me and I’ll do whatever it takes to make that happen.”

      She shook her head before he even finished speaking. “Forget it, Justice. I’m not interested in having you in my life any more than you’re interested in being in mine.”

      He lifted an eyebrow. “You’d rather share custody of Noelle?”

      The breath left Daisy’s lungs in a rush. “What?”

      “You said she’s mine. Now that I know about her existence, I’m willing and able to be a father to her. There’s only two ways that’ll work. Either we live together or we shuttle her back and forth between us. I’m thinking it’s in our daughter’s best interest for her to live with both of us. Together.”

      Her gaze swept the room and he struggled to see it through her eyes. Despite the state-of-the-art equipment and electronics tucked neatly behind warm oak cabinets, it came up lacking. Empty. Cold. Aw, hell. Dark and dusty, even with the lights.

      “You want us to live out here, in the middle of nowhere?” she asked in disbelief. “What sort of life is that for a child?”

      “We can work around any of your objections,” he insisted doggedly. “There are reasons I choose to live in the middle of nowhere.”

      “Such as?”

      “Pretorius? Permission, please.”

      There was a momentary silence, then, “Tell her.”

      “My uncle has a social anxiety disorder. It’s one of the reasons I was put in foster care after the death of my parents. The courts didn’t consider Pretorius an acceptable guardian.”

      Compassion swept across Daisy’s expression and he realized that it was an innate part of her character. It always had been. “Agoraphobia?” She hazarded a guess.

      “That’s probably part of it. More, it’s people in general he has difficulty handling.”

      “Huh. I have that same problem … with certain СКАЧАТЬ