The Contract: Sunshine (14 page)

A husband not at home would have missed the way his wife sucks in on her luscious bottom lip when she fills the glasses with milk and he would have missed her dropping pieces of ice in one of the glasses. 
Milk on the rocks
?

“There you go,” Sunshine smiled at him placing warm cookies on a saucer in from of him with a tumbler of milk, his without ice.  If he hadn’t been watching her, he might have never known she liked ice cubes in her milk.

She lifted up his discarded breakfast plate from the table and raked the leftovers into the garbage disposal, turning on the faucet and flipping up the switch.  It churned and grinded loudly and he smiled at the domestic bliss of the situation. 

Yoon bit down into the warm cookie and chocolate oozed over his tongue.  He closed his eyes and sighed.

“Good?”

He opened his eyes to find her leaning across the table with her elbows braced on the table top and her chin resting on her hand while the other hand’s fingers roll tapped a tune that like her butt dancing at the oven only she could hear.

“Chocolate and surprisingly...very sweet,” he murmured. 

He was talking more about her more than the cookie; but obl
i
vious to the turmoil that was running rampant inside him in regards to her presence amongst all his private things, she said, “Drink some milk; it helps until your ‘sweet tooth’ kicks in,” with a impish giggle and a saucy wink.

She practically danced away from the table, picked up the pan of cookie dough, slipped it inside the heated oven and set the digital timer for however long chocolate cookies took to bake.

“Sunshine, may I ask who are you baking all these cookies for?”  Yoon asked noting she was cooking a dozen cookies at a time and cu
r
rently there were eight separate plates lined up on the raised buffet top of the kitchen island and another dozen baking in the oven.  He wouldn’t bother to point out the never ending jumbo bowl of cookie dough that looked like at least two or three more batches were waiting to be spooned and baked.

As if she just realized what she was doing, she looked around and gasped.  “Aw, shoot!  I did it again.  I’m so sorry.”   She nibbled on her forefinger nail.  “They freeze well,” she murmured weekly knowing that was no answer.

Another thing a husband hurries home to see
, Yoon thought.  His beautiful wife baking non-stop and biting at her nail instead of sharing her worries with others.  Yoon now realized why his wife d
i
vorced him.

He had been so busy making money and aiming for success du
r
ing the time he should have been discovering more to love about her, he was never home long enough to know who she was or she him.  They were two strangers sharing a household. 

Now that Yoon had money and success independent from his f
a
ther’s well known political name, he could take the time to notice these small things about this woman in much less than the three years he spent with his ex-wife.

Who better than he to understand Sunshine’s need for complete independence in order to deal with a life with her family? 

He didn’t even try to convince himself that he knew all there was to know about Sunshine, but he knew at this moment more about her than he ever knew about his first wife after three years.  If someone were to ask, all he could do was read off to them the qualities that were listed on the sheet from the matchmaker of her suitable family background.

His eyes followed her around the kitchen and this time he got to see the lavender lace panties as she bent over to reach for a plastic co
n
tainer with a lid out of the bottom cabinet.  His mouth went dry.

Thankfully she wasn’t in the position long or he would have had his penis in his hands and her head shoved up inside that cabinet pushing the crotch aside and buried deep to the nut sac before he could say...

“Sunshine?”

“Humph?”  She lifted the big glass bowl in her arms preparing to spatula out the contents into the plastic container.

“Marry me.”

Crash!
  The glass mixing bowl hit the floor.

Of all the things I've lost, I miss my mind the most...

Sunshine was stunned.  She couldn’t even find an apology for breaking the mixing bowl. 
Marry him?  Had she heard that correctly?

Yoon guffawed at her.  She wondered if he had turned a shade lighter because he just realized what he asked her and was regretting it, until he hurried from behind the table in the breakfast nook and rushed into the kitchen area.

“Don’t move!” he ordered.  Fear, stark and vivid, glittered in his exotic eyes. 

She heard the crunching sound of glass beneath the straw weaved rubber sole thong flip-flops he wore as he closed the space between them and wrapping his arm around her back and the back of knees, he lifted her up out of the shards of glass and exited around the other side of the kitchen island where there were bigger pieces scattered.

“I’m so sorry for breaking your bowl, Yoon,” Sunshine fretted.  “I haven’t been here a short time and I’ve already made a mess of things.”

“Nonsense,” he frowned and sat her down on the sofa in the living room.  “It was an accident and it was my fault.  I shouldn’t have just blurted my proposal out like that without explaining exactly
what
I was proposing to you.”

She watched his dark head as he dropped down on his knees, took her ankle in his hands and searched her legs and feet for signs of any cuts from flying shards.

“I heard you,” she gulped.  “You asked me to marry you.”  She wondered why he seemed to avoid looking at her face.  He was most likely feeling regret at his hastiness.  “You didn’t mean it?”

His sexy eyes looked up at her.  “I don’t say things I don’t mean.”

“But you don’t love me,” she pointed out the obvious.

“No.  I don’t.”

“Then why would you want to marry me?”

“I don’t see any cuts,” he sighed and stood towering above her.   His gaze briefly gave the rest of her an once-over.  “I’ll go and sweep up the glass and get you a pair of my house slippers.  I also think I have a one-size-fits-all caftan that was given to me as a gift from a client.  It will do until we can retrieve your things”

“Stop.”  Sunshine reached out and clasped his hand with hers halting him from escaping.  “Tell me, Yoon.  Why would you propose to me, a practical stranger?  What will you get out of this arrangement?”

“Don’t be such a romantic, Sunshine.  People marry for other reasons than love all the time.”

She heard the cynicism in his voice and wondered who or what put it there. 

“But I am a romantic, Yoon, and if you knew me better, you would have known that about me and not ruin the first proposal I’ve ever received with analytical reasoning.”  She looked him in the eyes. 

“Then in the contract I will have drawn up, one of the stipulations will be that if you were to fall in love with another man, I will let you go,” he spoke bluntly.

“And if you were to fall in love with another woman?”

“I won’t.”

“You know this, just like that?”  Sunshine asked, skeptical since he answered way too quickly for her to believe it.

“I tried before because it was in everyone’s best interest if I could fall in love with my ex-wife, especially because she was an asset to my family and a daughter to a man my father could not afford to make into an enemy,” he explained.

“So your first marriage was an arranged marriage like the one your mother is trying to force you into now with Leslie?” she asked.

“Yes,” he nodded shoving his hands in his blue jean pockets.

Pop.  Pop.

Sunshine sighed and leaned over to tug his hands out of his pockets and hold them in hers.  “Don’t,” she chastised.  “Your--”

“Knuckles will grow fat,” he finished with a half grin.

“Yeah,” Sunshine chuckled.  “You’ve heard that too?”

“Yes, last night from you when took and held my hands in your sleep.”

Sunshine looked at his pale golden hands nestled in the brownness of her own.  “You have wonderful hands.  It would be a shame to alter them in any way.  Do you play an instrument?”

“Piano and guitar.”

She nodded.  “I play the piano also.  My teacher told me my fingers were too short to ever consider being a professional.  As if I wanted to be,” Sunshine snorted.  “I only did it because my grandmother insisted.

“I only did it to get my mother off my case,” Yoon confessed.  Their eyes caressed and held.  “See, we both have infuriating busybody family members that think they know what is best.  That is already one thing more I have in common with you than with my first wife.”

She let go of his hand.  “This is why when you marry again you should follow your heart, be completely reckless and love foolishly.”

“It has never happened.  It
will
never happen,” he assured her tapping his finger to her nose.  “I have been accused of being a cold fish, a loveless bastard.”

“That’s because she didn’t love you,” Sunshine deduced.

“Actually my ex-wife loved me very much,” Yoon surprised her by saying.  “She wanted me at all costs.  Just like Leslie is doing now, my ex did the same because what she wanted was all that mattered to her.”

“She probably hoped her love was enough to soften your heart and make you fall in love with her,” she said dreamily.

He rolled his eyes and crossed his arms over his chest.  His legs slightly parted as he looked down his nose at her.  “You really got it bad and I hope it’s not catching.”

“
Tsk
. Well if it’s catching, you better not fall in love with
me
,” she warned playfully.

“And what if I did?”  He took the bait.

“Then you would be deliriously happy, of course.”  Her lashes fluttered.

“Of course...not!”

She made a childish face and licked her tongue at him before becoming serious again. “I take it that you were the one who finally ended your marriage?”

“Of course not.”  He sounded affronted at the assumption.  “I would have remained married to her for the rest of her or my life if that is what she wanted.”

“But why?!”

“I take my responsibilities seriously.”  He spoke as if it was obvious and she was too dense to understand.

Honestly, she didn’t understand.  She didn’t understand when her mother married for money and she couldn’t understand marrying for a business transaction either.

“Yet you’re no longer married,” Sunshine stated the obvious.  “Is it because she eventually fell in love with someone else?  Is that why you are offering me a ‘get out of jail free’ card?”

“I resented her for loving me and I went out of my way to make her miserable that first year by ignoring her.  I felt sorry for her the second year and started to soften.  By the time I decided to be practical and make a go of it because I was married to her anyway, she filed for a divorce.  At the time there was no other man.  She just couldn’t stand to be in a one-sided love affair anymore.”

“No one likes to be
forced
,” Sunshine said pointedly.  “So you couldn’t help how you felt about her.  The resentment was already there.”

Her veiled threat wasn’t lost on him for he laughed causing the hiding dimples to out in an appearance.

Yoon laughed.  “
Touché.
”  With a smirk, he added, “This is why
this time
I’m not resorting to blackmail.  I’m asking you... to you know.”

“Marry you.”

“To
continue
your role as my supposed lover by upgrading your part from fiancée to ‘wife’ instead.”

“Oh you don’t want me to really marry you,” Sunshine deduced.  “You want to pretend we ran off and got married in Vegas.  Oh be still my heart, you sure know how to woo a girl,” she laughingly feigned a faint on the sofa.

“No wooing and no pretending,” Yoon said.  “We would really have to get married Sunshine if we’re to be believed.  My parents aren’t idiots.  If we don’t get married, there will be no marriage certificate on file for them to find and they would know it’s a lie.”