Nothing Short of Perfect Read online

  She didn’t dare touch him. No point in risking frostbite, though part of her longed to. “Are you all right?” she asked in concern.

  “No.”

  Another thought occurred, a horrifying thought. “Oh, Justice, are you ill?”

  “My health is perfect, thank you.”

  Then what in the world had happened to him? She stiffened. He couldn’t have turned into this glacial, winter-bound man as a result of their encounter at the engineering conference. In order for that to be the case, their night together would have had to mean something to him, impacted his life in some way. And though it broke her heart to admit it, she’d long ago come to the conclusion that those glorious hours had meant nothing to him. Less than nothing. Otherwise he’d have tracked her down. At the very least he’d have responded to the endless letters she’d sent him.

  He lifted an eyebrow. “You wanted something to drink before you left?”

  Daisy released her breath in a sigh. This was going to be even harder than she’d anticipated. “I would, yes.”

  Justice led the way down a wide hall into a huge, impressive kitchen that looked like something out of a futuristic movie, though it seemed to be missing the normal collection of appliances. “Lights,” he requested and instantly a bank of recessed lighting flared to life.

  She stared in wonder, impressed. “Is that how you turn on the lights around here?”

  “Yes, if your voice is coded for computer authorization.” He paused a beat, his smile set well below frigid. “Which, yours is not. Water, tea, pop or something stronger?”

  “Water’s fine.” She swiped her hands along the sides of her jeans, fighting nerves. “I wouldn’t have told, you know. Where you live, I mean,” she added for clarification.

  He tapped a swift code onto a black glass plate affixed to the wall. With a soft hiss a pair of bottles slid out from a slot in the wood paneling. He handed her one, the temperature so cold her fingers went instantly numb. Twisting off the lid of the other, he stared at her while he took a long swallow. “I know you wouldn’t have told anyone,” he said.

  “Really?” For some reason his certainty pleased her and she relaxed enough to smile. “How do you know?”

  “Because Pretorius has jammed your cell signal. And he’ll continue to jam it until I tell him otherwise.”

  Her smile faded. “When do you intend to tell him otherwise?” she asked warily.

  “As soon as my uncle and I relocate. Until then, you’ll remain here as our guest.”

  She paused with the bottle halfway to her mouth. “Excuse me?”

  “You heard me.”

  “But…but you can’t do that,” she sputtered.

  “Watch me.”

  Dear heavens, he was serious. She could see it in the hard glitter of his eyes and intractable set of his jaw. She’d never seen him look tougher or more formidable, cloaked with a dark, dangerous edge. She would have panicked if she hadn’t also seen something else. Something that actually gave her hope.

  There in the tawny gold of his eyes, she caught the unmistakable flame of desire. He might fight it, he might deny it, he might have attempted to bury it beneath endless layers of ice, but she didn’t doubt for a minute he felt it.

  Daisy decided to test the possibility. “What am I supposed to do while you’re keeping me here?” She caught it again, just the merest flash. But it answered her question without his having to say a word. “You can’t be serious.”

  “You chose to come here. By doing so you assume the risk and consequences of your actions.”

  She invaded his personal space until they were only inches apart. Not that he backed down. “And making love is the risk and consequence I assumed by showing up on your doorstep? Oh, excuse me. According to you we’ve never made love, have we?” She wrapped air quotes around the words, “made love.”

  “I seem to recall your telling me it was just sex.”

  A cool smile snagged the corners of his mouth. “According to you, amazing sex.”

  Her temper shot straight through the roof. “Oh! How dare you throw that in my face after all this time. And how dare you decide to keep me here against my will. Just because you haven’t gotten any in a while and I conveniently appear on your doorstep, you think you can toss me in your bed and have your wicked way with me?”

  “Yes.”

  Her mouth opened and closed, but she couldn’t seem to do more than make odd little choking noises. Finally, her vocal cords kicked in. “Yes? That’s all you have to say? Yes? Have you lost your mind?”

  He went nose-to-nose with her. “Once again, yes! I lost my mind nineteen months, fifteen days, six hours, twenty-eight minutes and twelve seconds ago. And I want it back, which is precisely what you’re going to do. Having you here in my bed should return some modicum of sanity to me. It’s a perfectly logical solution to an utterly illogical problem.”

  Daisy couldn’t recall Justice ever coming so close to losing his temper. Not to this extent. Always in the past he’d shown impressive self-control and restraint. Whereas she’d fly off in a thousand different directions, spewing emotional lava like a human volcano, he would pull tighter, deeper, one by one shutting off all those hot, torrid outlets until he had everything tamped down and safely buried.

  Well, not this time. Not now. She knew that if she pushed so much as one more button, she could stand back and watch him blow. Her finger itched to try it, and yet, she hesitated. What would be the cost if she tipped him over the edge? What would it do to him to have that control ripped away? He’d hate it. Despise himself. And she simply couldn’t do that to him. If he ever opened to her, actually expressed those emotions and revealed his vulnerability, it would be his choice. She wouldn’t force it on him.

  Daisy allowed the seconds to slip by, allowed the simmer and boil to cool. Allowed the volcano to slip back into dormancy. “You have a lot of nerve, Justice,” she told him quietly.

  “You’re correct.” He wrapped control around himself like a blanket of snow. Even so, she could sense the heat of desire lingering beneath the ice. “That doesn’t change the fact that you’ll do whatever I tell you.”

  For some reason his comment made her smile. “Anything?”

  “Anything and everything,” he confirmed.

  Her amusement faded and she lowered her gaze so she wouldn’t betray her reaction. She doubted she could conceal the intense longing that gripped her. The underpinning of desperation and want. It wasn’t fair. Not after what he’d done. Not after all the time and distance separating them. “I thought you didn’t want me.”

  To her relief, Justice didn’t deny it. “Apparently, I was wrong. I guess we both were.”

  “An affair, is that what you’re proposing?” She looked at him again, allowing a hint of her own yearning to slip through. “I stay here for however long it takes you to find a new place to hide—”

  “I’m not hiding.”

  Daisy couldn’t help herself. She laughed, the sound almost painful. “Oh, please.”

  “I’m protecting my privacy. If the general public knew where I lived—”

  “The general public couldn’t care less. Maybe the media would express some interest. But I suspect the only ones you need to worry about are other mad scientist wannabes.” She leaned her hip against the kitchen table. “So, what’s the real reason, Justice?”

  He took a slow drink of his water, no doubt to give himself time to consider the most logical response to her question. He must have come up empty, because he asked instead, “How did you find me?”

  She’d been waiting for that, wondering when he’d get around to it. “I had help, which is another reason you can’t keep me here against my will. Jett will eventually grow concerned and alert the authorities.”

  “Jett.” His eyes flamed before he regained control. “Boyfriend? Husband? Lover?”

  Two could play this game. She folded her arms across her chest and lifted an eyebrow. And waited.

  “How did t
his Jett person find us, Pretorius?” Justice asked while his heated gaze remained locked with hers.

  To Daisy’s shock, a disembodied voice responded. “I’m working on it.”

  “Work harder. I want him traced and shut down.”

  “You think I don’t know that? I know that. This Jett is good. Real good.”

  “I thought you were the best.”

  “Go to hell, Justice.”

  Much to Daisy’s relief, a peeved tone rippled through Pretorius’s voice, confirming his status as a living, breathing human versus a machine. Even though Justice had claimed Pretorius was his uncle, she wouldn’t have put it past him to have considered that some sort of private joke. Of course, that would mean Justice would need to possess a sense of humor, something he’d probably worked long and hard to eradicate, along with every other emotion.

  Well, except desire. That remained fully operational.

  “I think I found how he traced us. Shutting him down. Okay, he’s cut off.”

  Justice offered a wintry smile that perfectly matched the raw November day. “Is that it?” she asked. “We’re now invisible to Jett? You do realize that I got here with a GPS. I was tracked every step of the way.”

  “It won’t take long to relocate.”

  “I find that difficult to believe unless you already have a backup site ready to go.” The glitter in his tawny gaze confirmed her guess. “Okay, fine. You know something, Justice? You go right ahead. Keep me here until you and your uncle are ready to run to wherever your new cave is located. Then you can hang from the rafters in the privacy of your latest den of doom and gloom. Frankly, I don’t give a damn.”

  “I already told you we’re not in hiding. And mad scientists hide in basements not in rafters.”

  Okay, that was definitely a joke. Who knew? Not that it mattered. She brushed the comment aside with a sweep of her hand. “Whatever. That’s not why I’m here. You’re so worried about the hows and whys of my finding you that you’ve totally ignored the main question.”

  “Such as the reason you wrote twenty-six letters and requested they be forwarded to me? Not to mention why, after all this time, you’ve gone to so much trouble to track me down? Those main questions?”

  He’d received her letters and still never got in touch? Fury ripped through her. “Yes, those main questions,” she said through gritted teeth.

  “Don’t keep me in suspense. What could you possibly have to say that we didn’t cover nineteen months and fifteen days ago?”

  He wanted it straight? Fine. She’d give it to him straight. “You have a daughter.”

  Five

  Justice had always considered himself a rational man. Intelligent. Sensible. Calm and collected. His emotions firmly within his control. But with those four simple words he discovered just how mistaken he could be. Only one other time had he experienced this severe a brain disconnect—the hours following his accident. He opened his mouth to say something, only to discover that every last word had emptied from his mind.

  “Wha—”

  “What’s her name? It’s Noelle.”

  “Whe—”

  “When was she born? Eleven months and a handful of days ago. Christmas morning, to be exact. If you need further exactitude, which I’m sure you do, they recorded the precise time on her birth certificate. I’ll arrange for you to receive a copy.”

  “Ho—”

  “How do I know you’re the father? Because you’re the only man I’ve slept with in the past three years. No doubt you’ll want a DNA test and I have no objection. I thought you should know about Noelle, so I’ve spent the past year and a half trying to track you down without success. But then, since you received all my letters, you already know that, don’t you?” She paused for a beat. “Are you listening, Pretorius?”

  “Uh—” came his uncle’s disembodied voice.

  “I thought so. I can hear the family resemblance. It only took Jett a few short weeks to find you.” She shot Justice a steely look. “I think that means my computer expert outcomputes your computer expert. Now. What were you saying about keeping me here?”

  The logjam clogging Justice’s vocal cords cleared. “Son of a bitch!”

  Daisy planted her hands on her hips, glorious in her outrage. “I trust you won’t use that sort of language around our daughter. She’s quite verbal for so young an age. She tries to parrot everything you say.”

  “I want her.”

  Something very much like hurt flashed across Daisy’s expression and her eyes darkened to the deep green of a mountain forest. For some reason it shredded his defenses and arrowed straight to the emotional core of him. How was that possible? How could a single look possess the power to stir a combination of guilt and defensiveness? He’d worked diligently for over a year and half to eradicate any and all reactions to her from his emotional makeup. And yet from the instant she appeared on his doorstep he’d discovered that he hadn’t eradicated anything at all. One glimpse of her elegant face glaring up at the camera and desire came storming back, eclipsing logic and self-determination.

  It defied comprehension.

  He hastened to amend his earlier statement. “I want both of you.”

  He hadn’t helped his cause. Her chin shot up and her eyes flashed with green fire, full of feminine fury, mingled with a gut-wrenching anguish. “I don’t think you deserve me. And I know you don’t deserve Noelle.”

  “If that’s what you believe, why are you here?”

  He caught her wariness before she wiped every thought and emotion from her face, closing down and shutting him out. She’d never done that before. He suspected she’d never been capable of it until recently. When they’d last been together she’d been open and forthcoming, her opinions and feelings out there for everyone to see. Was he responsible for so dramatic a change? Had their night together caused her to regard the world with such caution? He flinched from the thought, from the idea he was capable of inflicting that level of pain on anyone, though for reasons he couldn’t bring himself to analyze, Daisy in particular.

  “You deserved to know about your daughter. Now that you do, I’m finished here.”

  She was keeping something from him, he could tell. “It’s more than that, isn’t it?” He could also tell she had zero intention of explaining herself. “Never mind. Considering how guarded I am about my own privacy, I won’t intrude on yours.”

  “Thank you.”

  “But if I can help, I will.” He had no idea where the words came from. He certainly hadn’t planned to say them, an unfathomable lapse on his part, but they caught her attention.

  She studied his face for a long, tense moment. Then her head jerked in a nod. “Thanks. I appreciate it.”

  Whether she realized it or not, Daisy’s announcement offered him the perfect opportunity to achieve the goals he’d set more than two years ago—to create a family. To have someone in his life who mattered. Who cared. Though she didn’t and couldn’t meet his conditions for an engineering apprentice, any more than those for the perfect wife, the potential existed to shape her to fit many of the same parameters. Hell, he’d even be willing to alter his lifestyle somewhat to suit her requirements for a husband. Within reason, of course.

  And then there was Noelle. He struggled to draw air into his lungs at the thought of his progeny. A daughter. He had a child! It stunned him how much that simple fact changed the means by which he processed information. He found he craved her, sight unseen. Wanted and needed them both in ways he found inexplicable. No matter what it took, he’d give Daisy whatever she required in order to have his ready-made family part of his life.

  He crossed to a sturdy wooden table and pulled out a chair, formulating a swift game plan. “Let’s sit and talk about this. Are you hungry?”

  Annoyance flashed. “Let me get this straight. Now that you know about Noelle you’re willing to feed me?”

  “No,” he responded mildly. “Since I planned to keep you here until we relocated, I would have
gotten around to feeding you. Eventually.”

  That provoked a smile. A tiny one, but a smile nonetheless. The impact of it far exceeded what it should have, based on all rational consideration. And yet, just as at the engineering conference, it drew him in, put thoughts and ideas in his head he’d spent every day since their night together working to eradicate. How many potential apprentice/wives had he interviewed since Daisy? How many times had Pretorius tweaked his Pretorius Program in an effort to find the “perfect” woman? How many failures had there been?

  And all because none of them were Daisy, he now realized.

  Oh, they’d suited his conditions to a T. Every last miserable one of them had engineering credentials. Were brilliant, rational, sensible women in complete control of their emotions. A few were even more attractive than Daisy, though for some inexplicable reason their beauty left him cold. To be fair, none of them revealed any true meanness that he’d noticed, still he wouldn’t call them kind. Perhaps their very lack of emotional depth prevented them from exhibiting the qualities Daisy possessed in distressing excess.

  Regardless, his search had ultimately resulted in only one serious candidate…along with the indelible memory of Daisy. Now he had the ideal opportunity to mold the woman he actually wanted into the perfect wife.

  “I thought we were going to talk,” she prompted with another of her irresistible smiles.

  “Talking is the easy part.”

  Again, the wariness. “And the not-so easy part?” she asked.

  “I don’t cook and neither does Pretorius.”

  She glanced around. “Maybe that explains the lack of appliances.”

  “There’s a fully stocked refrigerator and freezer in the cabinet behind me, as well as a full complement of appliances.” He took a seat beside her. “I also have someone stop in once a day and prepare our meals, so you can cross that concern off your list.”

  She blinked. “I didn’t realize I had a list.”

  “I’m making one for you.”