Nickolas-1 (20 page)

They agreed to meet at Muddy Misers in the old Putmun district. It was his favorite restaurant in this area, and served the best ribs in all of Ohio as far as he was concerned. He hoped Morgan thought so too.

Nick thought about her on the way over to his apartment. He’d treated her badly from the very beginning. When he thought about the night he’d...he hadn’t made love to her, but had basically raped her. And had created children by that act. He knew that now. Hell, he’d known it then. He wondered if she’d ever forgive him. He wasn’t sure he could forgive himself.

While he was at his apartment picking up a couple of changes of clothes, he called his good friend Thomas Shane. Thomas owned one of the most prestige jewelry chains in all of the Eastern part of the United States, and he lived right here in Zanesville. He made arrangements to meet him at one of the local branches in half an hour.

By the time Nick arrived at Morgan’s apartment, it was after midnight. He thought about taking a room for the night and seeing her first thing in the morning, but every light in her apartment was ablaze so he went to the back entrance. The bar was still open for business and the noise was horrendous. His children wouldn’t be living here, that was for sure.

He rapped twice on the door and waited for her to answer. He looked around the small area behind the bar and thought it was a nice and peaceful.

Someone had put in a small koi pond and there were several chairs sitting around the entire wooded area. There was a large chimney pot sitting on a bricked part of the patio with a stack of small cut wood sitting next to it. There were potted plants, flowers of every color and hue one could imagine crammed in and around everything. On a cool night like this in early June, he could just see the two of them sitting together in the swing under the large maple a few feet from the pot. He was still smiling when Morgan opened the door. But it faded quickly when he saw that she’d been crying.

“What’s happened?” He started to step into the room when she pressed her hand into his chest to stop him.

“Go away. Why do I have to keep telling you that? Is it just too much for your simple mind to comprehend? Here, let me help you understand. Then, next time, because I have no doubt there will be a next time with you, you may just leave when I say it. Go, as to leave behind, go away—to move along; travel; proceed. Away, in another place, in another direction—be gone. Understand?

Good, good-bye.” She almost had the door shut again, but he was just a little quicker.

Without thought to what he was doing, he cupped his hand behind her head and pulled her to his mouth. Heaven, he was tasting heaven and he didn’t know if he ever wanted to give it up.

She was stiff and rigid, not yielding to him at all. But as he pulled her body to his, he felt her lean into him slightly at first, then more as the seconds passed.

He captured her moan in his mouth, tasting her as she opened to him, for him.

Stepping more in the room, he moved her, shifted her around until she was nearly back against the opposite wall, him pressing against her.

He could feel every curve of her body, including her belly hard against him.

Her belly, swollen with his children, their children. He reached down and ran his hand across her mound and felt the first kick against his hand and at his groin.

Before he could register what he’d felt, he was doubled over in pain.

“Ah, Morgan ...” was all he could manage as he fell to the floor. Damned woman had kneed him hard.

~~~

Morgan couldn’t believe he’d shown up. But then when he’d kissed her, she didn’t know what to think. For that matter, how to think.

He’d been lying on the kitchen floor for nearly ten minutes now. About five minutes ago, she’d taken him in a cushion from the couch and a blanket from the bed. She couldn’t shut the door completely because he was still hanging half in and half out of it. She didn’t want him to freeze while he was laying there.

Stupid, arrogant dickhead. What was he doing here anyway?

Morgan looked up as, a few minutes later, he staggered in the part of the room she’d set up as her office. When he first showed up, she’d been finishing up on Byron’s site. He’d startled her out of her zone when he’d knocked. She almost hadn’t answered it, thinking it was the Sugars again, but looked anyway. Now, looking at him, she wished she hadn’t.

“That wasn’t playing fair. Kicking a man there hurts worse than anything known to man,” he said as he fell onto her couch.

“Oh, well, next time, I’ll pull out a gun and shoot you there. Maybe it won’t hurt you so much, but I’m betting your recovery time is a lot longer. What are you doing here at twelve-thirty in the morning anyway?” She looked down at her screen when the noise alerted her that the program she was loading was finished. She clicked on the next part of his site and ran it.

“I told you that you’re coming home with me. Since you seem to like it here better, I’ve decided to move in with you. I brought some of my things. I’ll have the rest brought over tomorrow sometime.” He nodded toward the garment bag and suitcase just inside the door to her apartment.

“Oh no, you don’t. There’s barely enough room in this place for me and my stuff. You are not moving in here too.” She stood up, but too quickly, and had to grab the table for support. He was there in a flash. And before she knew it, he had her scooped up in his arms and was sitting on the couch with her in his lap.

“Sit still before I paddle your butt. You know, you need a keeper. What would you have done if you’d of fallen on your face and hit your head?”

“It’s a stupid question since I wouldn’t have been getting up because you wouldn’t be here to aggravate me. Let me go, you pigheaded swine.” She struggled harder to get off his lap. In her haste to move, she inadvertently realized he was aroused. She stopped and looked at him.

“Sit still, Morgan, or we won’t be going anywhere for a very long time. I want to talk to you.” His voice was huskier and harder.

Well, she hadn’t meant to do anything to him. Morgan blushed all the way to her toes. Men could be turned on by the weirdest things, she thought. “I want you to let me go. I don’t...just let me sit over there and I’ll listen to you.” For several seconds, she didn’t think he was going to let her. He moved his arms from around her and she scrambled to the other side of the couch, as far from him as she could get.

“You’re having my children, Morgan, and I don’t want them raised by strangers. I want us to raise them.” Of course he would. His family would do a good job of it too, she thought. She’d seen them all with Meggie. She knew they’d love these too.

“I don’t know what that has to do with you moving in here. If you want to adopt them, then all right, I guess. There were only a few stipulations to the adoption I wanted. I don’t think you’ll have a problem with that.”

“How much? How much to adopt my own children, Morgan?” His voice had changed again. She looked at him sharply. He was angry. Well, so was she.

“Money. It all boils down to money with you, doesn’t it? If anyone wants anything from the exalted Nickolas Grant, there must be a monetary gain for them, right? Well, fuck you. One million dollars. You give me one million dollars and I give them to you, no strings. Now that we have that settled, I want you to get out. And stay out. If you come near me again before the deal is closed and you have your children, then I will put them on the black market and you’ll never see them again.” She got up, went to the door, opened it, and waited for him to go. Her heart was crushed and she was barely holding onto her tears and anger. When he picked up his things and walked out the door, she closed it quietly and clicked the lock.

Walking back to the living room, she sat down where he’d been sitting, pulled the little blue sleeper from her pocket and burst into tears, sobbing into it.

“You sure you want to do this? It doesn’t seem all that smart to me, especially coming from you.” Devin had been arguing with him for nearly two days about the money to Morgan. Devin wanted to set it up as a trust for her, given to her as soon as Nick had the babies. But Nick had his own ideas.

“No, this is how I want it. Those are the terms I want, and she’ll either abide by them, or I’ll sue her ass. I’m tired of fucking around with her.” And he was too.

“You know that by you marrying her, she’d be able to receive alimony from you when you divorce. Because the way you two fight, it could only end that way or death for one or both of you.”

“She’s the one who wanted the million. She’ll have it. But on my terms. You have the house ready for her?”

“Yes, it’s in her name, along with the checking account and car. Nicky, if she didn’t hate you before this, she certainly is going to now.” Nick didn’t care how much she hated him. In fact, he relished the idea of her hating him. If she hated him, then she couldn’t pull him back into her web. And maybe he could get over this obsession to be with her. He wanted things he’d never…things he had never thought to have.

Nick frowned when he thought about her asking for the money. Well, he thought again, she hadn’t asked for anything. He’d asked. He could still see the look of hurt on her face when he’d asked her how much. But it was an act; he knew it was.

“Just make sure she signs the contact as soon as possible. I want to get things ready on my end and ensure that everything is ready for my sons.” He walked out of Devin’s office and up to his own. Without speaking to the new secretary, he went into his office to start his day. He’d been missing too much work lately and needed to get things back on an even keel again.

“Dr. Grant, your mother is on line one,” the disembodied voice said over the intercom on his desk. He’d been sitting there for nearly an hour and he hadn’t even signed into his computer. Shit.

“Hello, Mom. What’s going on?” He’d been avoiding her too since leaving Morgan’s house. He’d just remembered to call her and tell her not to go to her house just as she was pulling up in front of Morgan’s apartment that morning.

He’d only told her that he no longer needed her to persuade Morgan to marry him; he’d worked out an alternative solution.

“I want you to meet me for lunch today. I’ll see you at Bergen’s at one o’clock.” He could tell by her voice that she was upset about something, but decided not to ask.

“I have other plans that I—”

“Perhaps I didn’t make myself clear. I didn’t ask you to meet me, Nickolas Patrick. I said to meet me. And you had better not be late.” And then she hung up.

Nick knew he was in deep trouble if she was using his middle name as well as his first full name. He tried to think about what he’d done, and the only thing he could think of was Morgan. She’d called her.

Looking at the clock on his wall, he realized he had about an hour before he had to meet his mom, so he called Damon. He knew that Morgan had a doctor’s appointment today at ten and he wanted to know if she’d shown up and what was going on.

That same morning after leaving her apartment, he’d had Devin draw up a temporary contact with her stating that she would see the doctor of his choice from now on. It had taken him the better part of a day to convince Damon to take her as one of his patients. Morgan had given Damon permission to give Nick any information he wanted about her pregnancy, so he was invoking his rights by calling.

“It’s Nick, did she show up?” Tansy had answered the phone when he’d called and when he told her who he was, she seemed less than happy to speak to him. Tough.

“Hello, to you too. Yes, she was here. I did a thorough exam and the babies are fine. She gained three pounds, which is normal this late in the second trimester. Their heartbeats are normal, and they are very active,” he told him.

“How did she look? Is she eating? I mean, I read that the babies will gain weight whether there is sufficient intake from the mother or not.” He’d been reading a lot too. Damon had given him four books and he’d bought nearly all the ones he could find at Borders Books.

“I can’t tell you that. The babies are fine. They appear to be gaining weight and are active.” Something was off. The last time Morgan was in his office, he had gone on for hours about her health, blood pressure, and her ankles swelling.

“What do you mean you can’t tell me? It’s a simple question. Is she all right?

“I mean I can’t tell you anything about Morgan. I can give you any information you want about the infants, but according to the contract she has with you, you aren’t to get any more than that. I kinda like it too. So, you can threaten me all you want. But that’s the way it goes from now on.” Nick realized that Damon was enjoying this. Damn it all to hell. Why did his family like her better than they did him? He knew the answer to that. Because he was being an ass.

“So you’re telling me that if her ankles were swollen up to five times their normal size, you wouldn’t tell me?”

“Nope. Not unless it was going to harm the babies. Then I’d be obligated to tell you, sorry to say.”

“Damn it, Damon, this is serious. Is she all right? I demand that you tell me if she’s eating properly and is healthy.”

Nick heard Damon laughing, braying actually, as the phone went dead in his hand. He’d hung up on him. His own brother had hung up on him.

Nick was five minutes early for his lunch date with his mom. Bergen’s was busy, as they normally were on Fridays, but he had no trouble finding her. He kissed her on her offered cheek and sat down after she did.

“When are you marrying Morgan? I heard from her that you’re setting the entire thing up. She was just to show up and shut up.” His mother had always been one to cut right to the point.

“Ten o’clock tomorrow morning, in Judge Carlton’s chambers. I didn’t tell her she had to shut up; I merely suggested she hold her tongue. And I gave her a choice of wedding plans. She’s the one who said she didn’t care.”

“Well, I’m going to be there. And you’ll give her your grandmother’s ring too. If you’re going to go through with this farce, then you might as well go all out.” She reached into her bag and pulled out the little jeweler’s box and slid it across to him. He opened the box and looked at the ring that had been in his family for seven generations.