Read The Stud for Free Online

with a harsh scar to attest to the dangers he'd met and a mature and imposing body to match.
    "No comment?" he asked.
    "No. "
    "Want to know what I'm wearing?"
    "No. "
    "That's good, because I'd be hard put to come up with a respectable answer. "
    He was testing her, she knew. He was trying to see if she was squeamish, which would matter if she had a son. "You're not wearing anything?" she asked nonchalantly. "Aren't you cold?" Her cheeks weren't. Thought of Spencer sprawled naked on his bed heated them, and the thought wouldn't seem to fade.
    "Are you cold?" he asked in a low, silky voice.
    "I'm wearing clothes. "
    "At two in the morning?"
    "A nightgown. I'm always cold. "
    "You need a man to warm you. "
    The statement was a sexist one. She might have taken offense if she hadn't been so sure of her feelings. "I have a goose-down comforter. I pull it up when I'm cold and throw it aside when I'm not I drop my dry cleaning on it and pile my books on it, and I've been known to stamp around on it when I'm cleaning the dust off the ceiling fan. It takes whatever abuse I heap on it, and it doesn't complain. It's more indulgent and less demanding than any man would be. "
    Spencer was quiet for a minute. When he spoke again, his tone was serious. "A baby might throw up all over your comforter. It might keep you up all night if it had a fever, make you sit in the doctor's office for hours the next day. It might cry every time you tried to put it back in its crib. How would you feel men?"
    "Badly, if the baby was sick. Helpless, if there was nothing to do but wait out the bug. Certainly more than willing to hold the poor thing if that was the only relief it could get. "
    "But why do you want that?" he asked, returning to his original question. "You have a perfectly orderly life. A baby will destroy orderly in a few short days, and it won't be restored for eighteen long years. Have you thought of that?"
    "I have. "
    "And you're still game?"
    "I am. "
    "Why?"
    He sounded as though he was without a clue, legitimately puzzled about why she would willingly and knowingly wreak havoc with her life. He was challenging her, demanding that she make her case in a way that he could understand. She sensed that he was also looking for reasons why he should father a child.
    After only the shortest pause this time, she said, "I guess the best way to explain it is to go chronologically. " Her gaze touched the scrolled picture frame on the dresser. The faces smiling from it made her heart catch. "It's been eight years since my parents' plane went down. I was twenty-seven when that happened, and over the next three years, I was too busy dealing with the immediate future to think of the distant one. Then I turned thirty. McCue's was healthy. I was relaxed at its helm. I had time to think about my parents' deaths and my own mortality, and it hit me that the McCue name would die with me. " As fate had it, she came from generations of single-child families. "I'm the last one left. If I die, McCue's will be sold. There's no one to pass it to. That's sad. "
    "You could have a child who doesn't want a thing to do with McCue's. "
    "True, but at least that child would have the proceeds from it to hopefully do something worthwhile with his or her life, and the thought of that gives me comfort. I don't want my family line to end with me.
    After a moment, he said, "Okay. I can buy that For starters. "
    "And that's all it was. Once I had the bug in my ear, I couldn't get it out. At first, it was just that idea of keeping the family line going, but then the physical part began. "
    Her hair was in a ponytail high enough on her head to be out of the way when she slept. She wrapped her fingers around the band and drew them the length of dark waves to the ponytail's end. It was a gesture she had made hundreds of times in her life, usually when she was either deep in thought or nervous. She was a little of each just then.
    "I'm listening, " Spencer said.
    Her voice was