She caught his subtle dig. “That’s what this is all about. Getting to know each other. Go ahead, ask me anything you want to know.”
“Devereaux, not Hamilton. Divorced or widowed?”
“Sort of divorced. I guess actually divorced.”
“You don’t seem too sure on that point. I hate to break it to you, but you can’t marry me if you’re already married to someone else. Our legal system considers it bigamy, and they tend to frown on it.”
“Our legal system also takes a dim view of embezzlement, which is why I came home to an empty house one day.” He was a Harvard brain, let him figure it out. Six years and counting and the humiliation still stuck with her like stink.
Andrew didn’t disappoint her. She watched realization dawn on him. Nick had made national news in absentia.
“You were married to the guy who disappeared several years ago with about twenty-five million of his investment clients’ money?”
“One and the same. It was six years ago and twenty-five-and-a-half million. No, I haven’t heard from him. No, I don’t know where he is. The courts granted me a divorce on grounds of desertion. Next topic. What else do you want to know about me?”
“Adoption?”
“On the waiting list for three years. I came close.” Kat studied the linoleum pattern on the kitchen floor. She could barely stand to think about Daphne, the bright-eyed two-year-old who’d come so close to being her daughter until the teenage birth mother changed her mind yet again and decided to keep the child. Kat couldn’t bear the emotional wrenching again. Resolute, she shifted her attention back to Andrew. “I can’t go through it again.”
A brief nod acknowledged that closed door. “Which are you more interested in, my genetics or my bank account?”
Kat got the impression Andrew was deliberately trying to goad her. In fact, she considered his question more than fair. He and his family were worth a small fortune. Plus there’d been that magazine article a couple of months ago naming him one of Florida’s most eligible bachelors. She wanted his genetic contribution, not a financial portfolio.
“Of course, there’ll be a prenuptial agreement. I’ll waive all rights to any of your money, as well as any future claims our child might make. In return, you’ll agree to forgo all parental rights. I want a sperm donor, not a dad.” That was important to her. As she’d explained to Bitsy, she refused to have her child bounced back and forth between parental households, subjected to stepparents who barely tolerated his or her presence. Kat had been down that road herself and wouldn’t send her child there. For a time, her son or daugher might wonder about the father’s apparent disinterest, but Kat planned to make his dedication to his career the culprit. It would also serve as a reason for their divorce. It might hurt for a time, but it would be less painful for the child than years of being the ball in a custodial tennis match.
“You’ve got this all worked out, don’t you?”
Kat knew she didn’t imagine the hint of admiration.
“Pretty much. We’d have to iron out a couple of details, but we’d both enter this agreement with everything laid out on the table.”
“You won’t object to me checking you out?”
“Oh, of course not. I checked you out.” His bare buns came to mind and ignited a slow heat. “Although there is one thing I’ll have to insist on.”
“Yes?”
“A physical showing a clean bill of health.”
“That’s understandable. Of course, I’d expect the same from you. If…and it’s a big if…I decide to consider this, when would you want to do it?”
Kat, still thinking about his bare butt, mentally slid between the sheets. “Not until after we’re married. That’s the whole point of getting married.”
“I
“Oh, of course. The sooner you make a decision the better.” Kat rummaged through her canvas bag and pulled out the only piece of paper she could find, a bank deposit slip. Where the heck was a pen when you needed one? She settled for an eyeliner pencil and scribbled out her number. “Think about it and give me a call.”
Andrew stared at the paper lying on the counter between them. Kat shoved it nearer to him and walked to the door where she summoned Toto from the nether regions of the cottage. Something nagged at her. Something she was forgetting. She mentally ticked everything off. She had her purse, her keys and her dog.
When it hit her, she whirled to face him. “And I’ll want a sperm count. There’s no point in wasting each other’s time.”
“SHE SAID WHAT?” Edward Sommers threw back his head and laughed until tears rolled down his face. Andrew stopped pacing Edward’s book-lined office and sank into one of a pair of matching leather chairs. He eyed his brother-in-law and fellow attorney across the desk and wished Kat Devereaux’s parting comment amused him as much as it had Edward.
“It’s the first time I’ve had a woman refer to sleeping with me as ‘wasting time.”’ And it rankled.
Edward gave way to another bout of laughter. He sighed and mopped a handkerchief at his face. “That’s Kat.”
“Why haven’t you or Bitsy mentioned her before?”
“As in introducing you? Matchmaking?” Edward assumed the virtuous look he usually reserved for juries.
“Bitsy’s been throwing women at me since I was in grad school. What about Ms. Devereaux?”
“She tried. Kat was never interested.”
Andrew discovered, much to his chagrin, that was not the answer he wanted to hear. “So she didn’t want to date me but now she wants to marry me?”
“That seems to sum it up.”
Just what the hell had Kat Devereaux considered wrong with him? “Why didn’t she want to meet me before?”
“Said you sounded too much like a…I believe the exact term she used was ‘stuffed shirt.”’
Andrew experienced a knee-jerk reaction. “I am not a stuffed shirt.” Conservative. Perhaps a bit reserved. But a stuffed shirt? He’d stepped out of his conservative mold when he’d agreed to appear as one of the state’s most eligible bachelors. And that had proved nothing but trouble since.
Across the desk, Edward smirked at his denial and toyed with a pen. “May I be frank?”
“By all means.”
“How long have we known each other, Andrew?”
“It’s common knowledge we’ve known each other for the better part of fifteen years.”
“Correct.”
Andrew templed his fingers and prodded. “The point, Edward?”
“You just made the point, Andrew-we’ve known each other fifteen years, ten of which I’ve worked at the same firm with you and eight of which I’ve been married to your sister, and you still call me Edward. Not Eddie or Ed or even Sommers, but Edward. No one calls me Edward.”
“Well, you’ve never called me anything but Andrew,” he countered.
“That’s not true. I called you Andy-once. The look of distaste on your face was so plain, I never made that mistake again.”
“Okay, I concede,” Andrew said, knowing Edward was right. But he wasn’t interested in what he called his brother-in-law, or vice-versa. Kat and her proposal kept flitting through his mind. Along with her incredible legs.
“You’re seriously considering this, aren’t you?” Edward didn’t seem surprised.
“This firm has been a part of my family for almost a century. It’s my heritage. I refuse to let my father deny me a partnership just because he believes partners should be married and stable. Marriage was his sole stipulation. What’s your opinion?”
“It could work. It could get you what you want without costing you half of everything in the end if you have a prenuptial. The way I see it, you have two immediate choices-Kat or Claudia. Straight up, I’d take Kat any day. I
