though he wouldn’t for a moment take those tempers seriously. Which was male arrogance at its most aggravating.
“I won’t hire you to nanny the boy because it wouldn’t set right for him to have a nanny he calls momma,” he said. “I don’t care to sort through the women I know to find one who’ll be as much a mother to him as she will be to kids of her own.”
Then he delivered a rapid-fire list that stoked her outrage higher with each item.
“I like your potential. Dress you up a little, get a little glamour on you, and I’ll be satisfied with the package. If you’re as good a wife as you are a mother, I’ll be satisfied with that, too, and you can adopt the boy.”
Claire was so infuriated by that list, especially his “get a little glamour on you” remark, that she could barely keep the red haze out of her vision.
“And if you’re not satisfied with ‘the package’?” Oh how she loathed those words!
“You aren’t the kind of woman who takes something on if you can’t commit yourself to it. And once you’re committed, you follow through, whether you made a good bargain or not. Farrah is just one example.”
The harshness on his face had eased into a look of self-satisfaction. He had her pegged, and he had no compunction against letting her know he had. And he held the one thing she wanted with all her heart, so he was confident she’d knuckle under to everything he’d listed.
But if she could find some way to tolerate this arrogant manipulator and bring herself to marry him, she’d become Cody’s legal mother. The courts could then be compelled to grant her equal standing in custody issues, should she and Logan divorce.
Claire knew instantly that if she submitted to such heartless blackmail and actually married this—this creature—that there would be a divorce on the horizon. As soon after she became Cody’s legal mother as was humanly possible.
That was the commitment she’d be making if she agreed to marry Logan Pierce.
But oh, oh how she’d love to punch that arrogant look off his face! Claire had never had violent feelings before today, she’d never lifted her hand to hurt anyone in her life. But she’d never felt so wildly angry and trapped and frustrated as this man had made her feel when she’d officially lost Cody to him. That had brought her close enough to hating him.
But her anger now and this trapped and frustrated feeling was suddenly so intensely personal that she was bubbling inside. And she was scared out of her mind over the idea of having to submit to anything even remotely sexual with him. She doubted she could even stand to hold his hand, much less kiss him. Never mind the rest.
Good sex, he’d said. At the moment, she couldn’t associate either the word “good” or the word “sex” with Logan Pierce.
Though she was compelled to ask what she did next, Claire knew right away that Logan could tell she wasn’t serious about the question, that it was merely a delay. She couldn’t associate the word “love” with Logan Pierce any more easily than the words “good” or “sex.”
“What about love? You’ve said nothing about love.”
Or respect, but she reckoned that asking him about respect was laughable at this point. Respect for her was something she’d force him to learn one way or another, whether he wanted to master that particular lesson or not.
It was remarkable how quickly his arrogant, self-satisfied look stiffened and went harsh again.
“I don’t put stock in love, Miss Ryan. It’s not important.”
Claire nodded, not surprised. “You don’t have any to give, either, is that what you’re saying?”
She didn’t wait for him to answer that. “Well, you’ll need to scrape up some for Cody. I don’t care about love from you, either, but I won’t stand for you to not be loving to the boy. I also won’t tolerate any kind of abuse from you. No dragging me around like you did earlier, and if you ever raise a hand to Cody or to me, you’ll never get a second chance.”
Now his dark brows lowered into surly whorls. “I’ve never raised my hand to a woman or a child, and I’ll be damned if I’ll let you think I would.”
She gave a small nod. “Good. That’s good. I’m very glad to hear that. And I’m sure you’ve figured out by now that any marriage we might make won’t be a one-way street with everything going only your way.”
“Then the answer is yes.”
“The answer is, I’ll think about it.”
His dark eyes glittered again and some of that arrogant satisfaction ghosted back over his harsh, unhandsome face. “Fair enough.”
Claire gave her head a decisive shake. “No it’s not fair, Mr. Pierce. None of this is. You might as well know now that I don’t think much of you for using the boy to manipulate me like this.”
She saw the flare of anger that caused, but the knock that came at the closed door to the hall startled her. Logan called out a terse, “What is it?” that diffused a fraction of the taut tension between them.
Elsa’s voice sounded subdued. “The boy’s awake.”
Concern for Cody waking up so soon distracted Claire, who promptly abandoned her things and hurried to the door to open it and rush through the house to Cody’s bedroom. The fact that Logan stayed behind in the den and allowed her to go alone gave her some much needed time to recover from the wild turmoil of raw emotion that tested her more savagely than anything ever had in her life.
What on earth should she do now? What could she do? The anxious questions answered themselves the moment she reached Cody’s bedroom and rushed across the room to take the boy in her arms. It seemed to take forever to quit shaking and regain her composure.
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