Shocked, Claire gaped at him. “Just like that, you’re giving up family?”
“My family isn’t the white picket fence, nice guys who sit around a Thanksgiving table counting our blessings. We keep secrets. We hide things. I’d rather be alone than be with them.”
He sucked in a breath. “Bed is made. Bella is sleeping. If there’s nothing else for me to do, I’d like to go downstairs to make some west coast calls.”
“Sure.”
He headed for the door, but stopped. “Make yourself at home. Shower if you want. Get yourself some cocoa or a snack in the kitchen.”
She nodded.
He walked out of the room, closing the door behind him.
She glanced at Bella, sleeping soundly in the crib, and lifted her duffel bag from the floor beside the bed. She rummaged around until she found pajamas and her cosmetics case and took those into the big bathroom.
After pulling out her body wash, shampoo and other shower essentials, she stripped and walked to the big shower. She smiled. Good grief. Such luxury! She’d given up being pampered almost a decade ago, but suddenly a shower with sixteen body jets seemed like a lot of fun.
But when she was in the cube, being pelleted with warm water, the echo of the spray in the shower brought her up short. When she stepped out and dried herself in the ultrasoft towel, the sound of nothing—not another person, not a car on the street, not a TV or radio or CD player…nothing—assaulted her.
This was how he lived.
This man who rejected family, who said he didn’t need people, who said he loved his life, lived with servants and silence.
DRESSED in her pajamas and robe, Claire took Matt up on his offer and made herself a cup of cocoa in the cool, impersonal stainless-steel kitchen. Her every movement echoed around her in the quiet, underscoring the emptiness of the house.
A huge ball of empathy for Matt lodged in her tummy and the temptation was strong to go in search of him—if only to provide company. She suspected he was in the den, but with the size of his home, she also knew he could have a totally different office in another wing somewhere and her trip would be wasted.
Still, she stopped at the bottom of the stairs in the foyer. Her intimate knowledge of the pain of loneliness wouldn’t allow her to let anyone else suffer. But he didn’t want help and she didn’t want him to think she was interested in him romantically. They might have kissed and both enjoyed it, but they’d agreed they wouldn’t pursue their attraction. Plus, as he’d said, he had Bella to be his family. He didn’t need anyone else. What business was it of hers to think that wasn’t enough? Why should she care that he had family he didn’t wish to see?
She shouldn’t.
The wise course would be to simply do what she was here to do—help him care for Bella tonight—and leave him tomorrow.
She climbed the steps, walked through his bedroom to the single bed near the crib and removed her e-reader from her duffel. Curled under the covers, she read for an hour, so engrossed in her book she didn’t even feel time passing and suddenly the bedroom door opened.
Matt walked in. “Hey.”
She set down her e-reader. He looked tired and sad. Longing to make him happy rose up in her. But they’d agreed not to get any further involved than they had to be for Bella.
So she said, “Did you get your calls made?”
“Yes.” He rolled his shoulders as if exhausted. “Bella still sleeping?”
“Soundly.” She glanced at the crib and smiled. At least something was going right. “In the four days I had her, she usually woke around ten. Since she slept past that, I think she’s happy with the new crib.”
He breathed a sigh of relief. “That’s good.”
Claire narrowed her eyes. If he’d been worried that the baby wouldn’t like the new crib, why had he insisted they buy one? They could have easily gone to his ex-wife’s home and retrieved Bella’s old one. So why had he argued?
He motioned toward his room. “I’ll just take a few minutes in the bathroom—brush my teeth and stuff—and I’ll check on you guys again.”
Once again telling herself that things about him and his life were none of her business, she simply said, “We’re fine. You don’t need to check on us.”
He nodded and left the room. But in the bathroom, he leaned against the sink. He could smell her. The scent of flowers saturated the entire room. It could have been her soap or her shampoo. It didn’t matter. Whatever it was, it swirled through his nostrils, tickled his senses and awoke needs he didn’t want to feel for a sweet woman like Claire.
He shook his head. Could she have picked more prim and proper pajamas? Pink like cotton candy, the pants went the whole way to her ankles and the top buttoned at her throat.
He might have thought she’d dressed so primly to make a point, but something in his gut told him pajamas like those were what she regularly wore to bed. She wouldn’t try to entice a man.
He frowned. She didn’t have to. For some reason or another her proper clothes were sexier to him than the slinky red and black cocktail dresses worn by women with long nails and big ideas for how to pass the time until dawn.
With Claire he’d be the one doing the seducing….
Groaning, he told himself to stop thinking about her. He stripped, showered and brushed his teeth in record time. He walked to the closet at the back of the room and rummaged until he found an old pair of pajama bottoms, a gift from Charlotte, and slid into them, along with a robe.
If she wanted to be proper, he would be proper.
He strode through his bedroom, to make one more check on them, but Claire only said, “Good night,” and rolled over onto her side.
Okay. Fine. She wanted to go to sleep; he would go to sleep. It was late. After eleven. He didn’t have a problem with that.
Still, he tiptoed toward the crib for one final look at sleeping Bella. Her lashes rested on her plump rosy cheeks. Her lips were bowed in a smile. He wondered if she was dreaming about her parents and his heart skipped a beat. Even with all the trauma in his life, he couldn’t imagine what she was going through. He prayed he would be a good dad to this poor sweet child.
Then he left the room, shrugged out of his robe and climbed into bed—his bed on a pedestal.
Unable to relax, he sighed, plumped the pillow. He’d slept in this exact bed for years, lots of years, and suddenly tonight it seemed wrong for him to be in this big bed, like some king.
He wasn’t a king. He was an outcast. An outcast who’d used his wits and education to best every competitor who came his way.
He’d won.
Yet, tonight it didn’t feel like he’d won. Caring for Bella made him feel ill-equipped and vulnerable. And merely considering breaking his promise to his sisters, Charlotte especially—the only person in his family he still spoke to—and not meeting the family he didn’t want to meet, had also put him on edge.
Which was probably why he’d let some things slip to Claire when she’d asked about his family. He’d never wanted to talk about them before. But suddenly, with her, it was so easy to spill his guts. He blamed it on nervousness over