The Baby Contract

by Barbara Dunlop

  Her sister’s expression sobered. “He says he does. He sure acts like he does.”

  “If he’s willing to brave Judge Stern, he must have it bad.”

  “I know I have it bad.”

  Mila considered Zoey’s admission. She couldn’t help wonder how it would feel to truly fall for someone.

  She thought of Troy. But that was just lust. Aside from his good looks, intellect, work ethic and all-around sexiness, he was really quite annoying. She was under no illusion that her feelings for him were anything more noble than physical desire.

  That being true, perhaps it was something she could get out of her system. Maybe sleeping with him wasn’t the worst idea in the world. Perhaps he’d be a mediocre lover, and with that attraction off the table, he’d be just another guy to her. Maybe if she slept with him, she’d be able to focus on her work.

  She realized Zoey was watching her with curiosity.

  “Is this a happily-ever-after thing?” she asked, putting herself back on topic.

  “I don’t know.” Zoey smiled. “I’m not ruling anything out.”

  “Wow. Maybe don’t tell that to Mom up front.”

  Zoey laughed as the waitress arrived to pour coffee and take their order.

  Mila decided to add a couple of pancakes, while Zoey stuck with a grainy muffin and coffee. The young woman walked away.

  “Mom can’t throw Dustin in jail or anything, can she?” asked Mila.

  Zoey tore open a packet of artificial sweetener. “I like to think our judicial system has checks and balances against that.”

  “You like to think? You’re a lawyer. Shouldn’t you be certain?”

  “I’m pretty certain. But, you know, well, there’s always a chance of an unexpected verdict.”

  Mila tried to decide if her sister was joking because she wasn’t concerned, or if she was covering up her worry with humor. It could go either way.

  “What time do you do the obstacle course?” Zoey asked.

  “Eleven. I’m going straight there from here.”

  “Think you’ll make it this time?”

  “I don’t know. It’s really tough, but I have a plan. And I know where I went wrong last time.”

  “If you finish, will he hire you?”

  “I wish. It’s more like if I don’t, he definitely won’t hire me. If I finish, I take away one of his reasons to turn me down.”

  “You know his other reasons?”

  “Main one is that he doesn’t like women.” Mila realized how that sounded. “I mean, he likes women. But he seems to think they’re more decorative than functional.”

  Zoey canted her head to one side, wrinkling her nose. “I wonder what he sees in you.”

  Mila tried not to be insulted. “Thanks a ton.”

  “We both know you’re far more functional than decorative. And I’ve checked the man out on social media. His dates are all glam bombshells.”

  “My abs are better than theirs.” Even as she spoke, Mila didn’t know why she was arguing. She had no desire to be decorative.

  “If you like a six-pack on a woman.”

  “I don’t have a six-pack. They’re healthy, that’s all. I’m in shape.” She lifted her coffee cup. “Maybe I’m his walk on the wild side.”

  “It doesn’t fit the pattern.”

  “There doesn’t have to be a pattern.”

  “There’s always a pattern.”

  “Then what’s your theory?” Mila challenged. “Why is he propositioning ugly little me?”

  “Stop pretending to be insulted. If you wanted to be a bombshell, you’d wear makeup, buy some nice clothes, put on some heels. You know you could do it if you wanted to.”

  “I don’t want to.” Mila assured herself it was true. The last thing she wanted was for Troy to think she was pretty.

  “I’ll help. Anytime you want a makeover, just holler.”

  “I don’t—”

  “Hey, that’d be fun. Glam you up, throw him off balance, send the guy for a loop.”

  “I’d feel like a fraud. It would run counter to everything I’m trying to accomplish.”

  “I didn’t say it would be smart. I said it would be fun. How about this? If you get to a point where you are absolutely positive there is no way on earth he’s ever going to hire you, we do it.”

  “No.”

  “Give me a yes, sister.”

  “What would be the point?”

  “Satisfaction.”

  “Wouldn’t it just reinforce his belief that women are different after all?”

  “You’re not listening. It’s a parting shot, justice, revenge—call it whatever you like. It’ll keep him awake at night.”

  “You’re really not a nice person.”

  “And for all your tough-girl act, you can be a real doormat.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Have a plan, baby sister. If it all goes bad, have a final move in your hip pocket that will give you some measure of satisfaction.”

  “Is that what you do?”

  “Yes.”

  “And if Mom won’t accept Dustin?”

  “I’m not there yet. I’m nowhere near there yet. She will.” Zoey paused, uncertainty clouding her eyes. “Eventually.”

  Mila was hit with a wave of guilt. “I’m sorry. That was a thoughtless comparison. What I meant is that I’m not there with Pinion Security, either. I’m a long, long way from giving up.”

  This wasn’t about Troy. It was about a job, her career, her professional success. Troy was simply the manifestation of her current challenge. She’d rise to it. A Stern always did.

  * * *

  Troy didn’t feel a single scrap of satisfaction seeing Mila fail a second time on the obstacle course. Watching through the security monitor, via the cameras positioned around the course, he shouldn’t have been pulling for her, but he was. Intellectually, he knew she’d have used her success as another argument in her quest for a permanent job. And he didn’t want that.

  But emotionally, he’d been with her on the run, through the mud, along the balance beam and over the wall. She’d made it farther this time, but she was still a long way from completion.

  He assumed she’d come upstairs to shower, so he waited in the apartment. Kassidy was in her room, taking her own nap while Drake took his. He and Mila wouldn’t be completely alone, but he would take what he could get. She’d been avoiding him for days now, as if she needed to put an exclamation point on her refusal to take their physical relationship any further.

  He got it.

  She was off-limits.

  That didn’t mean they couldn’t have a conversation. For a woman who claimed to want a permanent job, she had a funny was of relating to the boss.

  He parked himself in the living room, where he’d hear her knock. He surfed through some news channels, then picked up a technology magazine. He checked his watch, wondering what was taking her so long.

  Finally, he called the control room to see if she was on her way.

  The staff member on duty reported that Mila had returned from the obstacle course with Vegas. They’d gone into the locker room and hadn’t yet come out.

  Troy checked his watch again. More than half an hour had gone by. Why were they still in the locker room?

  And then it hit him. Perhaps she’d been hurt. Maybe Vegas was administering first aid. She could have cut herself on the barbed wire in the mud crawl. Maybe she’d injured an ankle jumping off the rope wall. She could have dislocated a finger or gashed her arm. He’d seen all of those things and more happen on the obstacle course.

  He was out the door and down the hall in a flash. He didn’t have the patience to wait for the elevator. Instead, he bounded down the stairs, coming out on
the main floor on the back side of the building. From there, it was a short trot to the locker room.

  One of the security agents was coming through the door.

  “Female inside,” he warned Troy.

  “She okay?” asked Troy.

  “In the shower.” The man grinned and waggled his brows.

  Troy nearly slammed him into the wall.

  But that would take time, and he wanted to find out what was going on.

  He breezed through the door. A second staff member was washing his hands.

  “Where is she?” Troy barked.

  The man jammed his thumb toward the back of the facility.

  As he walked, Troy could hear the shower running.

  She was in the shower. She might be fully dressed, but he had a terrible feeling she wasn’t. She was making a statement. She wanted to be one of the guys. No more showering in the boss’s bathroom—she was going all out.

  He rounded the corner and nearly plowed straight into Vegas.

  Vegas stood, arms over his chest, feet planted apart in front of the shower room doorway.

  “That’s as far as you go,” he said to Troy.

  “Don’t tell me she’s—”

  “Naked? Yeah, she’s naked.”

  Troy took a step forward, ready to give Mila a piece of his mind.

  “Oh, no, you don’t,” said Vegas.

  Troy stopped himself. “Has she lost her mind?”

  “The guys aren’t going to bother her,” said Vegas. “But just in case anyone’s tempted, I thought I’d stick around.”

  “She could have come upstairs. She knows she should have come upstairs.”

  “You saw?” asked Vegas.

  Troy hesitated over his answer, not wild about Vegas knowing he’d monitored her attempt. “I saw.”

  “She’s disappointed.”

  “I know.”

  The security cameras monitored from a distance, but when the buzzer rang, her body language was pretty telling.

  “I doubt she wants to talk to you.”

  “She wants to talk to you?” Troy knew he sounded jealous, but he didn’t particularly care.

  “I’m not talking to her,” Vegas offered easily.

  “Were you? Did you? What did she say?”

  “She wants to try again.”

  Troy felt some of the tension leave his body.

  She wasn’t hurt. She wasn’t demoralized. She was just as feisty as ever.

  “There’s no point,” he said.

  “Maybe not,” said Vegas. “But she won’t get any static from me.”

  Troy stood up a little taller. “You think I’m giving her static?”

  “You do spend a lot of time telling her what she can’t do.”

  “Well, she can’t do that. It’s not humanly possible.”

  “Hey!” came Mila’s voice over the shower spray. “I can hear you talking.”

  Troy winced, and he did an immediate recap of the conversation. Had he been insulting?

  Vegas smirked.

  “Shut up,” said Troy in an undertone.

  “Go away,” said Mila.

  “Come out here,” said Troy.

  “I’m busy.”

  “I need to talk to you about Kassidy.” It was partially true.

  It took Mila a moment to answer. “Fine.”

  The water shut off.

  Troy looked to Vegas. “You can go guard the main door now. Don’t let anyone else in.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “There’s nobody left but me.”

  “You’re the guy I’m guarding her against.”

  “Give me a break.” Troy raised his voice. “Mila? Okay if Vegas leaves?”

  “Up to him.”

  Vegas didn’t move.

  “He thinks I might try something.”

  “Not and live,” she called back.

  Vegas grinned.

  “She says she can take care of herself,” said Troy.

  “I believe she can. Watch yourself.”

  “I’m not going to try anything.”

  “You’ll want to. I’m just sayin’ don’t do it.”

  “Go away. As far as I’m concerned, she’s one of the guys.”

  “Uh-huh.” Vegas’s voice dripped skepticism as he walked away.

  Mila appeared in the doorway, her hair soaking wet, her bare shoulders covered in droplets, and a big towel covering her from chest to knees.

  “What about Kassidy?” she asked.

  Troy had to clear his throat.

  “She’s okay, right?” asked Mila.

  “She’s taking a nap.”

  Mila smiled, her sparkling eyes and the glimpse of her white teeth turning him on. “That’s our girl.”

  He forced himself to concentrate. “I need an update.”

  “On?”

  “On everything. Your investigation. The current security plan. Her upcoming performances. Anything you believe might be relevant.”

  “No problem.” Mila crossed to a bench that held her wet clothes.

  “How did those get out here?” He was trying to picture the logistics of her in the shower and Vegas in the doorway, and who knew who else coming and going.

  “Vegas,” she said.

  “He saw you naked?”

  “What if he did?”

  Troy was advancing on her before he had time to think it through. “Tell me he didn’t.”

  She met his hard gaze. “He didn’t. He reached his hand around the doorway and I gave him my clothes.”

  “Are you sure he didn’t peek?” Troy couldn’t help but think, for himself, it would have taken ethics of steel to keep his eyes averted.

  “Is this junior high? Of course he didn’t peek. And the world wouldn’t have come tumbling down if he had.”

  “Is that a yes or a no?”

  “That’s a mind your own business, Troy Keiser.”

  The color was high in her cheeks, and he was suddenly, blindingly reminded that she was naked under the towel.

  Vegas had been right. Troy wanted to try something. He desperately and absolutely wanted to try something.

  He curled his hands into fists and forced himself to take a step back.

  “Get dressed,” he managed through the roaring in his ears. “Meet me upstairs.”

  Eight

  Mila had been smarter this time. She’d packed a change of clothes and another pair of boots in a duffel bag, knowing what she’d look like at the end of the obstacle course.

  She stepped into her jeans and tugged a rust-colored T-shirt over her head. Her leather ankle boots were scuffed and worn, but they fit her like a glove and were both sturdy and comfortable. They gave her confidence.

  She tied her wet clothes into a plastic bag and stuffed them into the duffel. Her hair was still wet, but she’d combed it out. She slung the bulky black bag over her shoulder, jazzed at the prospect of seeing Troy, even knowing her buzz of arousal was a seriously dangerous state.

  She exited through the open doorway, finding Vegas standing guard.

  “I hope that wasn’t too inconvenient,” she said as they walked side by side down the hall.

  “I didn’t mind,” he answered.

  He looked as though he didn’t. And it helped. Vegas seemed both immensely capable and down-to-earth.

  “I meant for everyone else,” she told him. “It’s hard to be one of the guys when you have to lock them out of their own showers.”

  “I doubt anyone had a shower emergency in the past fifteen minutes.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “I do,” he said.

&nbs
p; He pressed the button to call the elevator.

  “You did good out there,” he told her.

  “I failed miserably.” She hadn’t expected to magically pass, but she had hoped to improve her result more than she’d managed.

  “You’ve got grit, Mila. They’ll be impressed by that.”

  “Troy?” she couldn’t help but ask.

  “Troy doesn’t want to be impressed. He’s looking for reasons not to be impressed. But you already know that.”

  “I don’t know what to do,” she admitted. “It’s...” She wanted to say complicated. She wanted to say impossible. But she didn’t want to admit the depths of her discouragement to Troy’s partner, of all people. “I really don’t know what to do.”

  “If you sleep with him, you’ll never be one of the guys.”

  Mila gaped at Vegas’s blunt words.

  The elevator door slid open, but she didn’t move.

  He touched her arm and guided her inside, coming with her. “If you don’t sleep with him, both of you will go stark raving mad.”

  She felt her face heat with embarrassment. “What did he tell you?”

  “Nothing. I have eyes. And I’m paid to be observant. And I saw the expression on your face that day at the shooting range. You turned away from Troy, but you were looking at the camera.”

  She could only imagine what she had revealed to a man like Vegas. “Are people gossiping?”

  The elevator rose.

  “Maybe,” said Vegas. “Though not to me. They’re more interested in seeing if you wimp out. And they want to see if Troy cracks on his no-women rule.”

  “I guess they all know about that?”

  “They all know about that.”

  The number panel flashed past floor five.

  “What about a different job?” Vegas asked. “Somewhere other than Pinion.”

  “Settle for second best?” She shook her head. “That’s not in my makeup.” And it wasn’t in her family’s makeup. A job at Pinion might be challenging. But it was what she wanted, and it’s what she’d go after.

  “You’ll really try again?” Vegas asked.

  She assumed he meant the obstacle course. “In a couple of days.”

  “Stay lower in the mud crawl. Use your core strength and save your arms. And don’t do the whole course again for practice. Work on the technical parts, the low walls, the logs and the ropes. Don’t waste your energy with bad technique.”