Page 8 of A Nine-Month Deal With Her Husband

She’d never let that happen to her and wasn’t prepared to take the chance on loving someone who might end up trying to change or cage her. She didn’t want her baby to have to live with, or witness, anything similar.

Millie heard the sound of a throat clearing, blinked and looked at the coffee cup Einar held out to her. She took it with a shaking hand and immediately lifted the cup to her lips, desperate for a jolt of the hot liquid, for a hit of caffeine. Being back in Iceland, the first time in for ever, had her feeling more emotional and off balance than she’d expected.

She had to pull herself together before she met Benedikt.

‘Hello, Millie.’

Millie spun around, saw his tall frame standing at the door and tried to replace the cup on its saucer. She missed by a mile and coffee spilt on to the pale, hardwood floors and splattered over her boots.

Damn. She’d really been looking forward to that cup of coffee.

As his assistant wiped up coffee, Ben looked at Millie, taking in her similarities, cataloguing the differences. The black, Goth-inspired hair was gone and so was the thick makeup she wore back then. She’d pulled her hair, as sleek as an otter’s coat and roughly the same colour, into a sleek tail and her makeup, if she wore any, was understated. Dark eyelashes and gently arched eyebrows framed her clear, light green eyes. Once too skinny, she’d filled out and his mouth watered as he took in her gentle curves. Put simply, she was gorgeous.

‘Hi, Benedikt,’ she murmured, her hand on her throat.

The last person he’d expected to see today, or see any time soon, was Millie. He’d been preparing to leave his office when her call came in—he’d already sent everyone but Einar home. That she was in his city shocked him and he was insanely curious as to why she wanted to meet.

She’d never expressed any interest in the company and he made all the decisions concerning their now jointly owned business. They communicated via infrequent emails.

They’d been legally married for more than a decade, but he knew little about her and her life.

So why was she here?

Ben forced his feet to move and hoped his normal implacable mask was in place as he walked over to her. He took her elegant hand in his, felt the tingle of attraction skitter over his hand and up his arm, and bent his head to kiss her cheek. She smelled of wildflowers and something deeper, darker, sexier.

‘Hello, M...’

Hell! Her name wouldn’t move over his tongue. Shock held him rigid and his grip on her hand tightened. Was he about to stutter?Now?And after so long? It had been years since he’d struggled with his speech, but this woman—hiswife—had his words catching in his throat.

He tried to stop the slide into the past, to push away the unrelenting memories of being a child, cursed with shyness and a terrible stutter, raised to believe he was a disappointment, frequently told his profound stutter was something he could overcome if he worked hard enough and wasn’t ineffective and weak. His uninterested, nuclear engineer mother also thought mocking and denigrating him for his affliction would cure him of it sooner.

It hadn’t.

He’d eventually, with no help from her, learned how to converse normally. He thought he had his stutter under complete control until a year before Jacq’s death. While trying to make a toast to his then bride-to-be at his engagement party, it had roared back into his life. His fiancé hadn’t been impressed when he walked away from the podium after two sentences and ripped into him for not telling her he had a ‘disability’.

That he’d met her at a business conference where he was the keynote speaker and hadn’t stuttered once during his ninety-minute presentation, or since that day, went straight over her head. Accepting that his stutter only appeared when he felt emotional, he quickly found the solution: if he avoided emotion, his stutter would never raise its ugly head again. So far, his theory had proven true.

He and Millie weren’t emotionally connected, so why did he stumble?

Recalling his training, and those hard, endless lessons, he took a deep breath and kissed Millie’s other cheek to buy himself some time. He cleared his throat to gain another few moments of calm before he spoke. ‘Hello, Millie. You’re looking—’

Her eyebrows lifted. ‘Older?’

He wanted to tell her she looked fantastic, that he hadn’t expected her to pack such a punch. He settled for telling her she looked lovely. The girl he remembered had amused him and he’d admired her courage, but this woman had his knees melting and his heart thumping. He’d always mocked the idea of having butterflies in his stomach—it was such a asinine notion!—but his were about to take flight. Ben felt sweat pooling at the base of his spine and he swallowed as his eyes drifted over her body, taking in her full breasts, long legs and round hips.

His wife packed a hell of a sexual punch.

Ben stepped back and looked at Einar, who’d crossed to the other side of his office to give them some privacy. ‘Would you please pour Ms Piper another coffee, Einar? Then you can go home.’

Einar nodded. ‘Certainly.’

Einar did as he asked and, after reminding him that the weather was closing in and he shouldn’t dawdle, left him and Millie alone.

Ben checked his watch. He had to leave the office within the hour, no longer. That would give him enough time to get home before conditions drastically deteriorated. Ben walked to the drinks trolley in the far corner of the room to pour himself a whisky, which he threw back. He lifted the bottle and nodded his approval. The whisky was part of a limited run from a distillery in Speyside. Fantastically expensive, but exceptional. It was technically too early to drink, but it wasn’t every day his wife in name only made an unexpected appearance.

‘May I have one of those?’

He nodded, poured a decent measure into her glass and carried the glass over to her. He pushed the heavy tumbler into her hand and his fingers brushed hers, a touch as light as a feather and as hot and fast as an electrical shock. Power ran up his hand, through his arm, and smacked into his heart. His gaze connected with hers and found cool green lightning in her eyes. Her chin lifted, just a little, and he noticed the flush on her cheeks, the tick in her jaw.

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