the point, my dear,” Harlan said, as if it all made perfect sense. “The specific environment I designed for you is sleeping with a stranger. That’s why we waited until you fell asleep so we could establish your baseline readings before we let Nate join you in bed.”
“You can’t be serious.” She glanced at Nate, who seemed to enjoy watching her come unraveled. “I can’t sleep with him. I…I’m engaged.”
“Yes, I know, but I still don’t understand why you’re so upset.” Harlan’s brow crinkled. “All the possibilities were spelled out in the contract.”
She swallowed a groan. Apparently, Carleen had missed that little detail when she’d skimmed over the legal mumbo jumbo. “I’m upset because no woman in her right mind would put herself in a situation like this.”
“You have nothing to fear from Nate,” Harlan assured her. “He won’t hurt you.”
She looked between the two men. “So you really expect me to go through with this?”
“That’s completely up to you,” Harlan replied. “I never force my research subjects to do anything they don’t want to do. But I have to admit I’ll be very disappointed if you decide to return the money and quit the sleep study.”
She hesitated. Returning the money wasn’t an option. But how could she spend the next three weeks in bed with a stranger? She turned to Nate, hoping he’d at least act the gentleman and withdraw.
But the man lying beside her didn’t say a word. He just gazed back at her with eyes that she could now see were the same shade of verdant green as the leaves of the stately pin oak trees painted on the Graceland mural.
A keen intelligence shone from those eyes. And something else. Something that made her want to squirm beneath the covers. Mia wondered if she really could trust Nate. She wasn’t the best judge of a man’s character. Ian Brock was proof of that. But what choice did she have at this point?
“I suppose we could try it,” she said, surrendering to the inevitable, “at least for tonight.”
“Wonderful,” Harlan exclaimed, stepping up to the jukebox. “Now let me check to make sure all of these connections are still secure.”
“Why doesn’t Nate have to wear them?” she asked, knowing she probably resembled Medusa with all the cables sticking out of her head. The fact that she had washed off her makeup didn’t improve her mood, either.
At least Nate didn’t seem to mind her appearance. He settled back onto his pillow as Harlan tucked the covers around her.
“Nate’s vital signs aren’t relevant to my research,” Harlan told her. “For this particular study, I’m only interested in how your sleep patterns are affected at different phases of the relationship.”
“But we don’t have a relationship,” Mia reminded him. “We haven’t even met before tonight.”
Harlan grinned. “That’s why this study fascinates me so much. Because when you sleep with someone every night, even platonically, you have to develop some kind of relationship—good or bad.”
She glanced at Nate, wondering if this was some kind of test of her willpower. Having recently sworn off bad boys, she now found herself in bed with one. Only he far surpassed the Justins, Andrews and Ians of her past. Her awareness of him pulsed through every cell in her body, making her hot and cold at the same time.
Not a good sign.
Mia forced herself to look away and took a deep breath. If she could resist him, she could resist anyone. The key was to avoid him as much as possible while sharing the same bed. That meant not looking at him, not talking to him, and definitely not touching him.
Harlan lowered the volume on the jukebox. “Now let’s try this again, shall we?” He walked to the door, his hand resting on the night switch. “Goodnight, Carleen. Goodnight, Nate.”
Then he left them alone in the dark, the only sound in the room Elvis crooning a song that seemed appropriate for the occasion.
“All Shook Up.”
3
NATE HAD Carleen Wimmer exactly where he wanted her.
Now he just had to figure out a way to make her talk. Not that he had much in common with Elvis aficionados—even if this one had breathtaking brown eyes and a killer body that had him all shook up.
No wonder Tobias Hamilton wanted to marry her.
Nate couldn’t understand how anyone could find a trip to Germany more appealing than the woman beside him. Voluptuous didn’t begin to describe her. He’d climbed into bed with plenty of women, but the sight of her, asleep and unaware, had caught him like a sucker punch to the gut the moment he’d lain down beside her.
The silky waves of thick brown hair tousled on the white pillow. The way her wide pink mouth parted slightly, begging to be kissed. The generous cleavage that almost spilled out of the thin cotton nightshirt she wore. If he was her fiancé, he’d never leave her side or her bed.
But he wasn’t her fiancé. Not even close. He was her worst nightmare—if she had something to hide. That’s what he was here to find out, Nate reminded himself. And he couldn’t let a pair of big brown eyes—or a pair of erect nipples—distract him from that mission.
“You never answered my question,” he said, breaking the heavy silence between them.
She lay with her back to him, but he could tell by her stiff posture and erratic breathing that she was still wide awake.
“What question?”
He liked the husky depth of her voice. It brought to mind vintage movie starlets like Katherine Hepburn and Lauren Bacall. Strong, independent women who knew how to drive a man to distraction. “How a nice girl like you ended up in a sleep study like this.”
She rolled over to face him, her expression hidden in the shadows. “It’s a long story.”
“We’ve got all night.”
She hesitated, and for a moment he thought she was going to turn her back and ignore him. Instead, she slid her slender hands under her pillow, pulling it down in front of her like a protective shield. “I guess you could say I’m doing it for the money.”
“Me, too,” he acknowledged, though he didn’t tell her who was paying him. “So that gives us at least one thing in common.”
“Poverty?”
He chuckled. Not only beautiful, but witty. A lethal combination. “Okay, make that two things. I was talking about finding creative ways to make money.”
As he waited for her response, Nate knew it was too much to hope that she’d confess her upcoming marriage to Tobias Hamilton was her latest money-making scheme.
“I’m trying to save my business.”
Now he knew she was lying. He’d gotten access to Carleen
