Free For Her Son's Sake by Katherine Garbera - Baby Business 03 - For Her Son's Sake

moment they’d met. He hadn’t planned on sleeping with his longtime enemy but he had. Now he was paying the price. He wasn’t the best when it came to relationships but he did know that a guy couldn’t have soul-sex with a woman and then just walk out.
    Not only was that death to the relationship—wait a minute, was this a relationship? Was that what he wanted? He felt as if he was on dangerous new ground and had no idea what to do next.
    He’d spent too long in the bathroom staring into the mirror over the sink and hoping he’d see something other than his reflection, but he’d still been the same guy he’d always been. Someone who just didn’t seem to feel emotions the way other people did.
    The plan he’d concocted in the bathroom as he’d washed up seemed stupid now. There were no two ways about it. Faking a casual feeling he didn’t feel wasn’t going to work. For one thing he’d never been built that way. He wasn’t any good at pretending.
    He stood there feeling awkward and it had nothing to do with his nakedness. It had to do with letting Emma down easy. Even though he knew that she didn’t love him, it was impossible for her reaction to be anything other than a type of heartbreak.
    She didn’t give herself easily or cheaply the way he did. He’d made love to a lot of woman without ever feeling a single thing for most of them. But Emma had that soft look in her eyes that told him she was starting to let herself care for him.
    “Are you going to say something?”
    “I’m not sure what to say,” he admitted, rubbing his hand over his chest and walking farther into the room. She’d folded his clothes and put them on the end of the bed. He found his boxer briefs and pulled them on and then turned to face her, hands on his hips.
    “We both know that I’m not the man you’d pick to sleep with,” he said at last.
    “Yet here you are in my bedroom,” she said, trying for a lightness that failed.
    “Indeed. I’m not sure if I should apologize. Hell, Em, I’m not sure at all what to do.”
    She sat up, curling one leg underneath her and leaning forward. “Talk to me. Tell me what’s going on.”
    He wanted to share—no, he didn’t. He wanted to beat a hasty retreat but turning tail and running away wasn’t part of his make-up any more than faking it was.
    “You’ve confused me,” he said.
    “Good.”
    “Good?”
    “Yes, it’s about time I figured out how to shake the great Kell Montrose.”
    “Is that what this is about?” he asked. Was she playing some kind of game with him to get some sort of intimate revenge given that he’d taken over her company?
    She shook her head and tipped her head down a little, breaking eye contract with him. “I wish. Then I’d be able to just wave toward the door and tell you to hit the road.”
    “But you want me to stay?”
    He turned away from her, shoving his hands in his hair. Should he want to stay? Was that the proper thing? He’d had affairs, so he shouldn’t feel this conflicted. This attached. But he did.
    She was different. She was complicated. Ugh!
    “I don’t know,” he admitted, turning back to face her.
    “Then leave,” she said. “It can just be sex.”
    It would never just be sex. He’d be haunted by this night and the way she’d made him feel, by the emotions she’d awakened, for the rest of his life. He knew it. He could deny it and make a break for it. Leave Malibu and go back to his chic apartment in downtown L.A. Or he could man up and face this. Face her and all the tough implications that sleeping with his enemy brought for him.
    Because he couldn’t separate the sexy woman who set fire to his body and his soul with the deep-seated hatred he held for the Chandlers.
    “I don’t think so,” he said at last.
    He couldn’t help but think that his entire world was going to be shaped by this. He’d thought that if they slept together he’d be able to clear his head. Stop the fantasies and random sexy images that