Married by Contract

At 5:20 in the morning, Jenn Castle was running hard on her treadmill and talking on the phone through her earpiece.

Yelling on the phone.

It was supposed to be a quick, professional conversation, getting confirmation on a few things from Jim, who was responsible for finances in her company. Part of the difficulty might have been that she’d woken him by calling so early in the morning, but part of it was certainly his fault for not being on top of things as much as he should.

When she realized she was raising her voice, she intentionally toned it down, huffing and sweating from her forty-minute workout. She didn’t like to talk that way to the people who worked for her, but patience had never been her strong suit.

“Okay, fine,” she gasped at last, after listening to a two-minute, somewhat garbled apology. “We’ll talk about it first thing. When will you be in?”

She frowned at his answer but managed not to complain about his estimated arrival time. By eight, she would have already been working in her office for two hours.

“Okay. Okay.” She gasped for air a few times. “Sorry about waking you up.”

It wasn’t until she disconnected the call that she noticed Nick was standing in the doorway of the room in their apartment they’d designated the “workout room.” He had a mug of coffee in his hands, and he’d obviously just gotten out of bed. His longish brown hair was a mess, his eyelids were heavy, and he wore nothing but a pair of ratty flannel pajama pants that should have been thrown out years ago.

He was watching her, his eyebrows arching in a very particular way.

She scowled at him as she slowed down to an easy jog. She needed to cool down so she could jump into the shower soon. “I was just talking on the phone.”

Nick didn’t answer. Simply took a slow sip of coffee, his green-gray eyes never leaving her face.

“I wasn’t working,” she continued since she knew how to interpret that look. “A quick phone call doesn’t count.”

“If you say so.”

She’d been having tension headaches almost every day for more than a year, and she’d finally gone to the doctor about them. She’d hoped there would be a quick fix, but he’d insisted that the only way to really get rid of them was for her to slow down at work and try to relax more.

Jenn wasn’t good at relaxing. She’d been raised by a grandmother who’d had very little money, and she’d worked hard all her life. Her grandmother had been a brilliant seamstress and had a habit of making beautiful dresses for all the new babies in their small town. For her senior project in college, Jenn had written a business plan for a company that would market and sell those beautiful handmade baby clothes. While she’d gotten her MBA, she’d started working on building the company, and in a few years, it was off the ground. Using her grandmother’s dresses as inspiration, she’d hired designers and seamstresses to make the clothes, and soon she’d had a lot of success in the Midwest. In the past few years, she’d managed to even grow nationally, and she wasn’t going to blow it all by taking it easy—not simply to get rid of some headaches. But she’d agreed to try to keep her workday confined to between six in the morning and six in the evening except for a few necessary business dinners.

Nick was aware of her new schedule, which was why he was being so obnoxious at the moment.

She usually cooled down for a little longer, but she didn’t want Nick to keep staring at her that way, so she slowed to a walk and then switched the machine off. “I’ve got to take a shower.”

Nick didn’t answer. He also didn’t move.

When Jenn reached the doorway, she widened her eyes since he was blocking her way out of the room.

He took another swallow of coffee. Dark bristles were visible on his finely cut jaw, and his eyelids were lower than ever. His bare chest and broad shoulders were right in front of her eyes since he was about eight inches taller than her. He was what Jenn had always mentally called one of those “hairy guys” since there was nothing waxed or unnatural about him. He had obvious hair on his chest and his arms and his legs. He perpetually needed to shave and get a haircut. Even his eyelashes were longer than they should have been.

She normally liked men who were better groomed, but for some reason, gazing at him now, Jenn couldn’t help but recognize how sexy and masculine he was, standing there half-dressed in the doorway.

She quickly pushed that thought out of her mind since that had never been Nick’s place in her life.

“You’re the one who has to smell me,” she said blandly, “as I stand here needing to shower.”

He gave a husky chuckle and finally moved out of the way, and ridiculously Jenn was in a better mood as she headed to her bathroom to get ready for the day.