Page 18 of A Nine-Month Deal With Her Husband

She needed to keep it together, to consider the future. Sleeping with him would be instant gratification, a wonderful step out of time, but it could have...unintended consequences. Ben was a potent man and she’d kissed him and propositioned him, something that normally took her weeks to do with other men. She was acting out of character and needed time and space to clear her head and start thinking clearly.

There was a blizzard outside and a bigger one happening inside her head.

She had to back off, with as much dignity as she could manage. ‘You’re right, with me wanting a divorce, and a baby, it’s too complicated, too messy,’ Millie told him. She bit the inside of her lip. ‘Sorry, I lost my head.’

‘Don’t apologise, Millie, it’s not necessary,’ Ben said and she heard regret in his voice. ‘Our marriage was once a very simple arrangement. Now it’s... n-not.’

She looked out of the window, hoping against hope that the storm had cleared and she could leave, find somewhere else to stay. But, no—if anything, the blizzard was just getting started. She was stuck here, feeling awkward and sexually frustrated. Not a great combination.

‘I’m sorry if all of this has inconvenienced you, Benedikt. I would go if I could.’

‘I’ll be in the kitchen...give me a half-hour or so. Whenyouare ready, join me.’

Millie nodded, understanding his need for some space. She needed that time, possibly more, for Sensible Millie to slap Turned On Millie back into shape.

Sleeping with Ben would be a ghastly mistake. But there was still nothing she wanted to do more.

In his kitchen, Ben heard her on the stairs as she made her way up to the guest suite. Running his hand through his hair, he walked over to a kitchen cupboard and yanked out a bottle and a shot glass. It might be a little early for alcohol—it was only two in the afternoon—but he desperately needed a drink.

After swallowing a shot of Brennivín, his Icelandic father’s favourite drink, he placed the empty glass against his forehead and closed his eyes.

Millie was upstairs, in one of the three spare bedrooms, and she was going to be sleeping in that bed tonight, tomorrow night. And he’d told her that nothing would happen between them...

Unless she asked.

Ben walked over to the window and placed his shoulder against the window frame and watched the wind toss big, feathery snowflakes on to the glass. The wind screamed its fury outside, and Ben could barely make out the huge branches of the trees in his garden and couldn’t see the gate or the street. The blizzard was causing chaos and disorientation outside. Millie did the same inside his mind. Ben was fairly certain both storms were going to intensify.

It had been obvious Millie wanted to leave after the dust settled on their kiss and, had there been a way, he would’ve helped her go. But the snow was thigh deep, the visibility impenetrable, the roads were undrivable and the wind strong enough to blow trucks off the road. This wasn’t weather you took chances in, it was supremely dangerous out there.

It was marginally less dangerous inside his house, for vastly different reasons. He and Millie were snowbound, forced to share the same house. If she were another woman he was attracted to, he’d consider it a perfect situation. With the storm raging, he wouldn’t be able to go into the office and he could spend long, lazy hours in bed, having sex, giving and receiving pleasure. He couldn’t remember when last, if ever, he had three days of uninterrupted time with a lover...

But the woman upstairs wasn’t just someone he was head-over-ass attracted to, but his wife of twelve years. His attraction to her was stunning, and inconvenient, mostly because he didn’t like how out of control Millie made him feel. He looked at her and he wanted, he touched her and he burned. He never dated women who made him feel more than a passing attraction, interest, who made him tip his head, intrigued. He ran, as far and as fast as he could. Millie made him feel all that and more and there was no damn place to run to, no way of putting some distance between them.

For the past two decades, sex had been a tool for pleasure, fun and a way to burn away stress. It had never been preceded by such need and constant thoughts of having her and how he would take her. Millie had been back in his life for a few hours, but the storm in his head matched the ferocity of the blizzard outside. She was a hurricane rushing through his soul, a tornado spinning through his mind. He wasn’t quite sure which way was up...

Absurd!

He wasn’t a man who allowed himself to get carried away, he prided himself on being rational and calm. He didn’t believe in love or excess emotion, he knew it always led to hurt and disappointment.

The woman he’d allowed himself to love had let him down and there was no way he’d allow that to happen again. He’d worked exceptionally hard to become the emotionally independent, sometimes ruthless, impassive man he now was and he’d never put himself at the mercy of needing a woman’s love again. Emotional distance and not allowing himself to have feelings of attachment to anything—not to money or people or things—gave him a sense of freedom and security.

Staying away from emotional situations also kept his stutter at bay.

Yes, he’d hesitated once or twice, and felt the prickles in his throat when his words took longer than usual to appear. But that could be due to stress, to the surprise of Millie dropping back into his life. There was nothing to worry about; he hadn’t spent enough time with Millie to know whether she could sneak under his defences, whether she was able to burrow her way inside his steel-hard carapace and look past his carefully constructed veneer of implacability.

But he had to be careful of her, he couldn’t start feeling more, feelinganythingfor his on-paper wife. And he knew he shouldn’t sleep with her...

He needed a good excuse to spend time away from her. Work would work and he could spend more time in his basement gym.

Ben tapped his empty glass against his thigh, his attention moving to what Olivier had said about their divorce. He had no problem with waiting to get divorced, it wasn’t a problem for him.

But he’d seen Millie’s look of horror and knew the waiting period would derail her plans to have a baby. She didn’t want to start this new chapter of her life until the ties were cut between them. He could understand that. He believed, like Millie did, that a clean break should be made before one moved on...

She wanted a child and he could see her with a baby. She had so much love to give and, like her mother, was warm and affectionate. Millie would be an exceptional mother, and he wanted that for her. He wanted her to be happy. But despite trying, he was finding it difficult to wrap his head around her using a sperm donor to fall pregnant.

Yes, yes, it was the modern way of doing things, a choice she had the absolute right to make—her body and her choice—but it just felt...wrong.

He couldn’t explain it, he just didn’tlikeit.

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