Pacing in his office at Novateur, Ryder held the phone to his ear and listened to it ring as Jane’s words repeated over and over in his head.
“I don’t want him to know you—to trust that you’ll be there for him—only to have you change your mind and leave.”
The last thing he wanted to do was hurt Jane or Maddox. But the curiosity had him by the heartstrings, playing him like a damn marionette. Did his son look like him? Would Ryder feel an instant fatherly bond?
The need to meet his son was second only to his need to see Jane again.
Never once had he considered throwing away bachelorhood and settling down with one woman. Not until Jane. She was under his skin, a constant presence that had followed him around since the night he’d met her. Hell, he’d given up sex because of her.
That had to mean something.
Ignoring it would be a big kick to fate’s balls.
And he didn’t want to piss off fate.
On the second ring, Ryder sat down at his desk and nabbed a cherry Blow Pop out of the middle drawer. It had been years since he’d quit smoking, but the urge to have something between his lips never went away. If he had his way, he’d be sucking on Jane’s slippery clit or those perfect tits of hers, but beggars couldn’t be choosers.
There had to be a way for Ryder to claim his son and keep him safe. Would Maddox be safer having a father there to protect him or would he even need protection if Ryder stayed away from him?
By the third ring, he expected Jane’s voice mail, so when he heard Jane’s sultry voice saying “hello,” it took him a moment to realize it was actually her and not a recording.
“Hello?” she said again.
God, just the sound of her voice made him hot.
He tugged at the collar of his shirt as he sat back in his chair. “It’s Ryder.”
After a long pause, she spoke. “Ryder. I didn’t expect to hear from you.”
“I want to see you,” he said.
See you. Taste you. Do things to your body you couldn’t imagine in your wickedest fantasies…
“I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”
“Just dinner.” He planted his feet on his desk and reclined in his chair. “The two of us sharing a meal in public where we’ll remain fully clothed. I promise.” When she didn’t speak, he added, “We need to talk about where to go from here.”
“Does that mean you’re willing to acknowledge that Maddox is your son?” she asked, her voice softening.
He answered the only way he could. “Jane, this isn’t a conversation we should have on the phone.”
“So is Maddox the only reason you want to see me?”
A vision of her riding him, all sweaty and disheveled, with her head thrown back in ecstasy had him adjusting himself. “If I’m honest and tell you it’s because I haven’t been able to stop thinking about the way your pussy clenched around my cock as you came, would that work for or against me?”
She blew out an audible breath. “Jesus. I can’t do this right now.”
“How ’bout we do it at six?” When she didn’t answer, he laughed, realizing she’d misinterpreted his invitation. “Dinner, Jane. Get your head out of the gutter.”
“I can meet you at Andiamo at seven. I want to run home after work and spend some time with Maddox.”
“You can bring him,” he found himself offering. “If you want to.”
She paused. “I think it’s better if we wait until we talk. My roommate will watch him.”
He was surprised by the disappointment that swept through him.
“Jane? I’ll see you at seven.” Without giving her a chance to change her mind, he disconnected the call.
He still didn’t know how they’d work everything out between them, but he did know he wasn’t quite ready to say goodbye to Jane yet or give up the chance to meet his son.
A chuckle came from his doorway. “You look like the cat who just ate the canary,” Tristan said. “What’s got you grinning so early in the morning?”
Shit, he’d forgotten Tristan was working at Novateur today. He was in town for the Thanksgiving holiday. Since Tristan had taken the professor job in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, Ryder usually worked alone in the warehouse.
If Tristan hadn’t been here to point it out, Ryder wouldn’t have known he’d been grinning.
Finished with his Blow Pop, he tossed the stick into the garbage. “Jane agreed to have dinner with me.”
As Ryder’s closest friend, Tristan knew all about Ryder’s yearlong search for Jane and the evidence that had implicated her in the theft of Novateur’s designs. Yesterday, Ryder had informed Tristan that he had found Jane and believed she was innocent of the crime, and that she’d had his son.
Tristan strode into the office, stopping in front of Ryder’s desk. “You’re sure that’s a good idea?”
Ryder shook his head as Tristan sat in the chair across from him. “Maybe not, but walking away from her is not an option. Since the moment I saw her at the conference, I’ve been hooked. There’s just something about her that calls to me.”
“I get that. I do. It was the same for me when I met Isabella.” His friend’s brows pinched together. “Don’t take offense. I’m worried that you’re thinking with your dick rather than your head.”
Hard not to take offense.
“Why?” Ryder sat forward, bracing his arms on the desk. “Because I’m not capable of having a serious relationship with a woman?”
“Fuck no,” Tristan said, frowning. “I just meant that I knew when you finally fell, you’d fall hard. And that’s what worries me. You’re not objective when it comes to Jane and as your friend, it’s my job to make sure you’re not making a mistake with her. A few days ago, you thought she was the enemy working for your father. Now you not only believe that she had nothing to do with the theft, based on her word alone, but you’re also accepting her assertion that Maddox is yours.”
Hands clenched, Ryder shot out of his chair. “Maddox is mine!”
Tristan was wrong. If anything, Ryder had prematurely judged Jane based on nothing more than his prejudice toward Keane.
If Tristan was surprised by Ryder’s outburst, he didn’t show it. “How do you know?” he asked calmly.
That was like asking Ryder how he knew the sky was blue. It just…was. He couldn’t explain it, but he knew in his gut that Jane hadn’t lied to him about Maddox.
And he didn’t need a damned paternity test to confirm it.
“Look,” he said, returning to his chair, “I appreciate you looking out for me, I really do, but despite your doubts, I am thinking with my head.”
“If you say so, then I believe you,” Tristan said, picking up a pen from the desk and flipping it in back and forth in his hand.
An awkward cough came from outside his office.
Isaac.
Like a child caught with his hand in the cookie jar, Ryder flushed with guilt. Had he heard Ryder shouting at Tristan?
If he had, Isaac made no mention of it as he entered the room and took the chair next to Tristan. “Good to see you both.”
As the silent partner in Novateur, Isaac stayed out of the day-to-day running of the business. The older man had served as a mentor to both Tristan and Ryder during college and had become a friend to them after they’d graduated. When Novateur had required financial assistance, he’d graciously saved their asses from having to close the business or take a risky loan from the bank.
“I didn’t know you were coming,” Ryder said.
Isaac’s gray eyebrows rose. “I wasn’t aware I needed an invitation.”
“I told him to come,” Tristan said, angling his body so that he could talk to both Ryder and Isaac. “You should know that I got another call from the army. They really want to talk to us about the automatous software we’ve developed.”
Ever since Novateur had filed its patent application, several branches of militaries, both in the U.S. and abroad, had been bombarding Novateur with calls about purchasing the patent and offering tens of millions of dollars for it.
And they weren’t alone. Since the software could be used in a variety of ways—anything from self-driven cars to robot soldiers—some of the world’s biggest corporations had also expressed their interest. Arms producer Sinclair Corp had been one of the most insistent of the bunch, but after blowing off one of its employees at the Mackinac conference, Ryder had refused to speak with anyone who represented Sinclair’s interests.
His code for making technology autonomous was not and would never be for sale.
Ryder crossed his arms. “I hope you repeated what I’ve told them a dozen times.”
Tristan gave a curt nod. “I reiterated that we are not interested, but they’re determined.”
Ryder had been working on the code since high school when his robotics teacher had first discussed the idea of autonomous weaponry. At the time, Ryder and his friends had played around with the idea of building a “killer robot” that would shoot paint rather than bullets. They’d failed miserably at their attempt, but for some reason, the idea remained Ryder’s own personal challenge.
And two years ago, he’d conquered it.
Previously, Novateur had been designing automatic kitchens, which required human input. But an autonomous kitchen wouldn’t require humans at all.
Grabbing his laptop, Ryder stood. “Come on. I know you’re both eager to see our first autonomous kitchen in action.”
Tristan and Isaac followed Ryder out of the office and into the warehouse. Novateur currently housed several samples of automatic kitchens for restaurants and bakeries to see in action, each one with different options that ranged in price from a few thousand to hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Ryder led them to the back corner of the warehouse, his heart racing in anticipation. This was the first time anyone other than him would see his creation.
From the outside, the kitchen wasn’t any different from the typical kitchen you’d find in any restaurant. The magic was hidden behind the stainless steel.
Isaac jutted his chin toward a large mixer. “Show me how it works.”
With Ryder’s press of a single switch on the wall, the entire kitchen went to work. Robotic arms reached from the mixer to the refrigerator and retrieved a carton of eggs. “This particular model is for a bakery. All the software is on my laptop. To make it easy, I’ve limited the bakery’s product to two kinds of cupcakes—vanilla and chocolate—and given the bakery a customer base of one hundred people a day.”
After cracking the eggs into the mixer, the robotic arm added the sugar and the mixer came to life with a whir. The ovens lit up as they preheated to baking temperature.
Ryder opened the program on his computer to show his partners and pointed to the columns on the screen. “Right now, the inventory of product is set on zero and based on how I’ve programmed it, the computer will have the kitchen make fifty of each kind. But suppose the bakery only sells ten of vanilla and thirty of chocolate today. Tomorrow, it will automatically adjust the quantity it makes to reflect that. Over time, it will use the historical data to figure out the necessary inventory and bake the exact quantity the store needs, and it will email suppliers to order the ingredients when numbers get low.”
Tristan summed up the difference between their previous models and this newest one. “The computer learns.” He smiled. “Amazing.”
That was one word for it.
Dangerous was another.
When Ryder had made his breakthrough with the code, he had gone back and forth on whether to use it in their designs. In the end, he, Tristan, and Isaac had decided so long as the code remained secret, there would be no harm.
But in the wrong hands, the coding could be used for far more nefarious purposes.
Military drones. Guns. Robotic soldiers.
It was coming. The military would eventually develop a code on their own. Ryder couldn’t stop it from becoming a reality. But no way in hell would he help them.
Watching as the kitchen went to work filling muffin tins with batter, he grew somber.
Isaac turned to him. “You’re absolutely certain that no one will be able to figure out how to replicate our software if they have access to it?”
Ryder paused. “We’ve done as much as we can to protect it. The code is closed source, so it won’t be made public, and we’ve already filed a patent for it. But even if anyone is able to access it, they won’t find it easy to understand. I intentionally wrote it in obfuscated code so that even the most capable of programmers won’t be able to crack it.”
At least that’s what he hoped.
“I would have loved to see Keane’s face when he realized the designs he stole left out the part of the code that makes technology autonomous,” Tristan said with a smile.
Ryder didn’t need to see. He had enough memories of an enraged Keane to imagine it.
“But there’s something that doesn’t make sense to me,” Tristan continued. “What does Keane hope to gain by competing with Novateur, especially if he’s unable to manufacture autonomous kitchens?”
That was the million-dollar question.
Why start a new division of McKay that was doomed to fail? And why make Jane VP of it?
Ryder inhaled the sweet scent of cake batter. “I don’t know yet. But I’m going to find out.”
* * *
A few minutes before he was set to meet Jane, Ryder locked the front door of Novateur and walked the couple blocks toward the restaurant. During the summer, the shops stayed open and the sidewalks were filled with people of all ages, but on a fall weekday like tonight, it was much quieter after sunset. He inhaled the scent of Italian food as he made his approach to the trattoria and glanced at the watch on his wrist. Right on time.
He couldn’t believe how much he had been looking forward to seeing her again or that only a few days ago, he hadn’t known that Maddox existed. Now he couldn’t get that pesky F-word out of his head.
Forever.
Hell, he felt like a teenager going on his first date, down to the sweaty palms and damned nervous knots in his stomach. Once inside, he was brought to their reserved table and slid into the black leather booth. When the waiter stopped by the table a few minutes later with a basket of freshly baked bread, Ryder ordered a bottle of red wine.
Twenty minutes later, the wine sat unopened on the table, he’d eaten the entire bread basket, and he was still waiting for Jane.
Maybe she was caught in traffic.
Maybe she’d gotten stuck at work.
Maybe she’d…
He checked his phone again. No missed calls.
His throat grew tight as he realized there was a strong possibility that Jane had stood him up. Disappointment washed over him. She’d given him the impression that she wanted him to be a part of her and Maddox’s lives. Had he read the situation wrong?
And then she was there, taking off her coat and collapsing into the booth across the table from him as if she was exhausted. “I’m sorry I’m late.”
He blew out a breath and sat back in the booth, releasing the tension in his body.
She’d obviously changed from her work clothes, wearing a pair of jeans and a simple jade sweater. Her hair was up in one of those messy bun things that some women spent forever making look like they hadn’t spent any time on, and she wore her glasses perched on her cute little nose. There were remnants of makeup still on her eyes, but her lips were natural and her cheeks were pink from the night air. For some reason, seeing her like this reminded him of how young she really was.
She couldn’t be more than twenty-three and she was already a mother. A single mother, raising her son—their son—practically all on her own.
“I didn’t think you were going to show,” he admitted as he uncorked the wine and poured them each a glass of the merlot. He looked her over. Her eyes were slightly red and her mouth was pinched with tension. “Are you okay?”
She wrapped her fingers around the stem of her wineglass. “I had a bad day at work. One of our employees—a programmer from my division—killed himself over the weekend. It’s taken a toll on everyone, including myself.”
“I’m sorry. Were you close?”
“No. It’s just—” Jane shook her head. “I’m sure it’s nothing. You don’t need to hear about my day. That’s not what this dinner’s about.”
She was wrong, but he didn’t bother correcting her. He wanted to know everything about her.
“Do you have a photo of Maddox?” he asked, his pulse racing in anticipation of seeing his son for the first time.
She laughed and rummaged through her purse. Once she had her cell phone in hand, she fiddled with the screen. “I have hundreds. Want to see one from today? He was quite proud of himself for spitting his medicine out all over me.”
His heart skipped a beat and he shot up tall in his seat. “Is he sick?”
She gave him a slight smile, letting him know she hadn’t missed the panic in his voice. “No. He has reflux—don’t worry, it’s not uncommon for babies—and the doctor put him on this awful-tasting stuff that I give to him in a syringe. Every once in a while, he spits it out. Today, he suddenly learned how to spit it out at me, so that we’re both covered in smelly medicine. He was pretty proud of himself.” She held her phone out to him, her hand trembling. “Would you like to see?”
At that moment, he realized how difficult this was for her, how much she feared his rejection, and it was like a kick to the gut to witness. He was an asshole for making her even doubt for a second how much he wanted them both.
Their fingers brushed as he took the phone from her hand, sending a jolt of lust through him that he felt like a tingle at the head of his cock. And all from a fucking innocent touch of their fingers. He’d had women sucking his dick who hadn’t gotten him this aroused.
There wasn’t a chance in hell he was going to keep their relationship platonic. A fire like theirs didn’t burn that strong every day. She was a fucking unicorn in his world, one he intended to ride often and frequently.
But for now, he’d pretend tonight’s dinner was only about Maddox.
His eyes landed on the screen and his chest filled with pride.
He hadn’t been around a lot of babies and the ones he usually saw all looked the same to him, like bald wrinkled aliens dressed up in Easter pastels with no discerning features or distinct personalities.
But none of them had been his son.
Perfect was the first thing that came to mind.
Maddox was neither wrinkled nor bald. Like Jane, his son had a crown of curly brown hair, only much shorter. He had golden skin as if he’d spent a lot of time outside, but was more likely a hint of his Mexican heritage. Thank God she hadn’t dressed him in pastels. In the photo, he sat in some kind of blue seat that propped him up, wearing a Detroit Red Wings T-shirt, red sweatpants, and a mischievous smile.
But it was his gray irises that had Ryder gasping out loud as any lingering doubt about being Maddox’s biological father disappeared. A lump lodged in his throat. “He’s got the McKay eyes.”
Jane dropped her chin and shrugged. “Yeah, I felt pretty stupid when I realized you, Keane, and Finn all have the same eyes as my son and I never put it together.”
“Why would you? You and I met miles away from here. And obviously, my father and brother never mentioned me to you.”
“No, they’ve both spoken about you, but they must not have used your name.” She tilted her head and frowned. “Huh. Keane doesn’t have any family photos in his office.”
While that fact seemed to confuse Jane, he wasn’t surprised. Keane had never been a sentimental man. “Of course not. That would mean he actually cared.”
“I’m sure that’s not why,” Jane said quietly.
He wasn’t going to start another argument about Keane. They’d just have to agree to disagree. At least for now. Otherwise, Jane would never believe it when Ryder started cozying up to his father. “Let’s not waste time talking about Keane. Tell me more about Maddox.”
She lit up, her smile widening and her eyes twinkling. “He’s brilliant. And I’m not just saying that because I’m his mother.”
For the next hour, in between dinner and glasses of wine, Ryder scrolled through hundreds of photos of Maddox and listened to Jane brag about their son. He’d missed so much. The first time he’d rolled over from back to front (he wasn’t sure why that was significant, but apparently, it was a big deal). His first smile (Jane swore it wasn’t gas). His first Halloween (he greeted trick-or-treaters as a bumblebee). And dozens of other memories that were lost to Ryder forever. Damned if he would miss another.
After she polished off a slice of tiramisu, he returned the phone to her. “Did you have a good pregnancy?”
“Mostly. I was pretty emotional. I mean, I think that’s normal. I’d burst into tears at the drop of a hat. Anything from one of those commercials about neglected dogs to breaking the tip of my pencil. My coworkers all kept boxes of tissue on their desk for me. Oh, and I got really huge. I wasn’t one of those cute girls with the perfectly round basketballs in the middle. Nope. I can’t tell you how many times women came up to me and asked when my twins were due.”
“I’m sure you looked beautiful.” Just the idea of her swollen with their child had him discreetly adjusting himself beneath the table. “It sounds like you must have been relieved to give birth.”
She sank her teeth into her lower lip. “That was…scary. I was actually driving to work when my water broke and the contractions started. Within an hour, I was ten centimeters dilated and ready to push. There was no time to process anything. It was like one minute I was all alone and then I blinked and I was a mother. You know?”
“I think I understand what that’s like.” Two days of knowing and he could barely wrap his mind around the idea of being someone’s father.
Her eyes widened. “I guess you do. You didn’t even get the nine months to process it.”
“I know what would help.” He reached across the table and took her hand. “It’s time to meet my son.”