The Marriage Contract

Desmond had always been that weird kid at the corner table. Graduating from high school at fifteen hadn’t helped him forge a lot of connections. Neither had becoming a billionaire. If he’d tried to have a normal relationship with McKenna Moore, it would have ended in disaster in the same fashion as the one he’d tried with Lacey.

Bonds of blood, like the one he shared with his son, were the only answer for someone like him. This baby would be his family and fulfill Desmond’s craving for an heir. Maybe his son would even love him just because.

Regardless, the baby belonged to him. Desmond decided what would happen to his kid and there was no one on this entire planet who could trump his wishes.

Except for maybe his wife.

But he’d paid his law firm over a million dollars to ensure the prenuptial agreement protected his fortune and an already-drafted divorce decree granted him full custody. It was ironclad, or rather, would be as soon as he filed for the divorce.

She’d recover from childbirth, take Desmond’s divorce settlement money and vanish. Exactly as he’d envisioned when he’d determined the only thing that could fill the gaping hole in his life was a baby to replace the one he’d lost—or rather, the one Lacey had aborted.

Never again would he allow a woman to dictate something as critical as to whether his child would live or die. And never again would he let himself care about a woman who held even a smidgen of power over his happiness. One day, his son would understand.

“Ms. Moore,” he finally growled out long past the time when it would have been appropriate to start speaking. “We have a problem. Our son needs you.”

* * *

Desmond Pierce stood in McKenna’s hospital room. With a crying baby.

Her baby.

The one she’d been trying really hard to forget she’d just pushed out of her body in what had to be the world’s record for painful, difficult labors...and then given away.

McKenna’s eyes widened as she registered what he’d just said and her eye sockets were so dry, even that hurt. Everything hurt. She wanted codeine and to sleep for three days, not a continual spike through her heart with each new cry of the baby. The muscles in her arms tensed to reach for her son so she could touch him.

She wasn’t supposed to see the baby. Or hold him. The nurse had told her that when they’d taken him away, even though McKenna had begged for the chance to say goodbye. The cruel people in the delivery room had ignored her. What did they know about sacrifice? About big, gaping holes inside that nothing would ever fill?

For a second she’d thought her son’s father had figured that out. That he’d come strictly to grant her wish. The look on his face as he’d come through the door—it had floored her. Their gazes connected and it was as if he could see all her angst and last-minute indecision. And understood.

I’ve come to fix everything, he seemed to say without a word.

But that was not the reality of why Mr. Pierce was here with the baby. Instead he was here to rip her heart to shreds. Again.

They should leave. Right now. Before she started crying.

“He’s not my son,” she rasped, her vocal cords still strained from the trauma of birth.

She shouldn’t have said that. The phrase—both true and brutal—unfolded inside her with sharp teeth, tearing at her just as deeply as the baby’s cries.

He was her son. The one she’d signed away because it ticked all the boxes in her head that her parents had lined up. You should find a man, have lots of babies, they’d said. There’s no greater joy than children.

Except she didn’t want kids. She wanted to be a doctor, to help people in pain and in need. Desmond had yearned for a baby; she could give him one and experience pregnancy without caving in to her parent’s pressure. They didn’t approve of western medicine. It was a huge source of conflict, especially after Grandfather had died when homeopathic remedies had failed to cure his cancer.

Being Desmond Pierce’s surrogate allowed her a creative way to satisfy her parents and still contribute to society according to what made sense to her. That’s what she’d repeated to herself over and over for the last hour and she’d almost believed it—until a man had burst into her hospital room with a crying baby in his arms.

And he was looking at her so strangely that she felt compelled to prompt him. “What do you want, Desmond?”

They’d never been formally introduced, but the baby was a dead giveaway. Desmond Pierce didn’t look anything like the pictures she’d searched on the internet. Of course she’d had a better-than-average dose of curiosity about the man with such strict ideas about the surrogacy arrangement, the man who would marry her without meeting her.

But this man—he made tall, dark and handsome seem banal. He was fascinating, with a scruff of a beard that gave him a dangerous edge, deep brown hair swept back from his face and a wiry build.

Desmond Pierce was the perfect man to be a father or she wouldn’t have agreed to his proposal. What she hadn’t realized was that he was a perfect man, period. Coupled with the baby in his arms, he might well be the most devastatingly handsome male on the planet.

And then she realized. He wasn’t just a man. They were married. He was her husband. Whom she was never supposed to meet.

“The baby won’t eat,” he said over the yowls. “You need to try to breast-feed him.”

She blinked. Twice. “I need to do what?”

“The nurse said he’s allergic to formula. We’ve tried for an hour.” He moved closer to the bed with a purposeful stride that brooked no nonsense and held out the wailing bundle. “He needs you. This is the one thing I cannot give him.”

She stared at the wrinkled face of her child, refusing to reach out, refusing to let the wash of emotions beating through her chest take hold. The baby needed her and she was the sole person who could help. But how could she? Breast-feeding was far too nurturing of a thing to do with a baby she wasn’t allowed to keep.

How dare Desmond come in here and layer on more impossible emotional turmoil in the middle of her already-chaotic heart?

She’d done her part according to their agreement. The baby was born, healthy and the child was set for life with a billionaire father who wanted him badly enough to seek out an unusual surrogacy agreement and who had the means to take care of him. What more could Desmond Pierce possibly expect from her? Did he want to slice off a piece of her soul when he took her baby away for the second time?

“That’s too much to ask,” she whispered even as her breasts tingled at the suggestion. They’d grown hard and heavy the moment the baby had entered the room crying. It was simple physiology and she’d known she’d have to let her milk dry up. Had been prepared for it.

What she had not been prepared for was the request to use it to feed her son.

Desmond’s brows came together. “You’re concerned about your figure?”

That shouldn’t have been so funny. “Yeah, I’m entering the Miss USA pageant next week and how I’ll look in a bikini is definitely my biggest objection.”

“That’s sarcasm, right?”

The fact that he had to ask struck her oddly, but before she could comment, he stuck the baby right into her arms. Against her will, her muscles shifted, cradling the baby to her bosom, and she was lost. As he must have known. As the nurse had known.

She shouldn’t be holding the baby, but she was, and it was too late to stop the thunder of her pulse as it pumped awe and love and duty and shock straight to her heart.

My son.

He still cried, his face rooting against her breast, and it was clear what he wanted. She just hadn’t realized how deeply her desire to give it to him would ultimately go.

“There’s a clause in the custody agreement about the baby’s medical needs,” Desmond reminded her. “You’re on the hook for eighteen years if he needs you for medical reasons.”

“Yeah, but I thought that would only be invoked if he needed a kidney or something,” she blurted as the baby’s little fingers worked blindly against her chest. “Not breast-feeding.”

She couldn’t. Judging by how badly she wanted to, if she did this, it would be so much harder to walk away. It wasn’t fair of Desmond to ask. She was supposed to go back to Portland, register for school. Become a doctor like she’d dreamed about for over a decade. That’s how she’d help people. This evisceration Desmond Pierce wanted to perform wasn’t part of the plan.

“He might still need a kidney, too.” Desmond shrugged. “Such is the nature of sharing DNA with another human.”

Did he really not get the emotional quandary she was in? All of this must be so easy for him. After all, he was man, and rich besides—all he had to do was snap his fingers to make the world do his bidding. “You know breast-feeding isn’t a one-time thing, right? You have to repeat it.”

In the tight-knit community her parents belonged to, they raised babies as a village. She’d watched mothers commit to being a baby’s sole food source twenty-four hours a day for months. Some women had trouble with breast-feeding. He acted like she could just pop out a breast and everything would be peachy.

“Yes, but once we find an alternative, you can walk away. Until then, our agreement means you have a commitment to his medical needs.” He crossed his arms. “There is literally nothing I would not do to help my child. He needs you. Three months, at least. You can live with me, have your own room. Use a breast pump if you like. You want extra compensation added to the settlement? Name your price.”