Free The Outsider by Rosalyn West

one man doesn’t mean I’m willing to jump into bed with another.”
    He actually blushed and she found that so surprisingly honest, she began to entertain seriously the preposterous notion.
    “I’m not asking you to jump into anything, ma’am.” His face was red but the uncomfortable cant of his eyes said he didn’t find the idea totally abhorrent. “I’m a banker, not a poet. I’m thinking more a business merger than a … a—”
    “An intimate arrangement?”
    He nodded, gratefully. “Exactly. We’re strangers, that’s true, but we each want things the other can supply. I’m suggesting a trade-off. I’ll save your reputation. I’ll give you my name and raise your baby as my own.”
    “And what do you get?” She couldn’t help the suspicion edging into that question.
    “I get someone waiting for me when I finish at work. I get a meal on the table, someone to ask how my day was, clean clothes. I’m so sick of washing out my own socks.”
    “You want me to take care of you?”
    A fierce defensiveness gripped his features. “I’mnot an invalid. I can take care of myself. I don’t need a nursemaid.”
    “I didn’t mean—what I meant was, do you want me to be your servant?”
    He relaxed and waved off her flat assumption. “No. No, that’s not what I want. I want—ah, hell, I want someone to keep me from being so lonely I want to scream. I want a family. I want that baby.”
    His fervor alarmed her. He was so sure, so enthusiastic, it scared her. But she was thinking about it. Thinking hard and fast, and seeing her susceptibility, Dodge hurried on.
    “You need security and I need companionship. Most marriages aren’t made on more than that, are they?”
    It was starting to sound so good when the whole meaning of the word “marriage” sank in. As she’d told him, she knew marriage wasn’t the solution to every problem. It sometimes created more problems than it solved. Starla would allow him no illusions.
    “I won’t sleep with you.”
    He was too startled by her candor to respond at first, then he answered gruffly. “I wouldn’t expect you to. I enjoy my privacy, too. Separate beds, separate rooms. I have no problem with that. Once we get to know each other a whole helluva lot better, we can discuss the arrangements again, but for now, you can trust me—like a brother. I’ve had plenty of practice there.”
    Could she? Could she trust him? It all came down to that. Trust was something she guarded aszealously as love. Neither had ever applied to more than a few people. She loved her brother but didn’t trust him. She’d trusted the man who’d left her with his illegitimate legacy, but she hadn’t loved him. She trusted Patrice, and Patrice said she could trust this man who was offering her a much needed salvation.
    Or was she making another huge mistake?
    Sensing her lingering hesitation, Dodge made a final petition, his words simple, his tone level, his manner completely open.
    “It’s like this, Miss Fairfax, I come from a big family. I’m not used to taking a step without falling over someone. I don’t want to be alone anymore, especially not here, where I couldn’t drag a smile out of someone with a team of horses.”
    “Then why stay?”
    It was a simple question, but he approached it like it held the complexity of the universe.
    “I can do good here. What started out as a favor to a friend has become personal. I love a good challenge and I don’t accept failure, Miss Fairfax. Not in anything I put my mind to. I’ll be a good husband to you and a good father to that baby. I’ll respect you, I won’t hurt you, and I’ll never lie to you. If you can do the same, I think we’ll have a pretty good shot. What do you say?”
    He put out his hand. She ignored it to ask one more thing.
    “Why would you want me for a wife? Because of the challenge?”
    He grinned at her brittle tone and summed it up briefly. “You make me feel alive.”
    He kept his hand suspended, the