The Contract: Sunshine Read online

  “Next batch of cookies are ready!” She announced cheerfully.

  Yoon rolled his eyes. Cookies for goodness sakes! And it wasn’t the kind of cookies he hoped to be snacking on this morning. He was more interested in what her cookies tasted like.

  She couldn’t be a paid escort, he reasoned. Did escorts bake cookies and cook breakfast like a 5-star chef? He looked down at his plate. She had even decorated the side of the plate with curly green stuff like one would find in a restaurant.

  As a matter of fact, why did he have this curly green stuff in his refrigerator? His last housekeeper never served him a plate that was decorated.

  He needed to take inventory of his own kitchen. He rarely went in the kitchen except to get something to drink out of the refrigerator. This was the first time in the three years he lived in this particular condominium that he sat down and ate a meal in the breakfast nook area.

  Yoon usually ate in his office or on the sofa in front of the television when he was alone and in the formal dining room when he had guests.

  He was stunned Sunshine had found the ingredients she needed in his pantry to make the chocolate chip cookies. Why would his last housekeeper purchase chocolate chips? Brown sugar? If she had been baking cookies for anyone, it wasn’t for him. Maybe she just never got around to making them. He did keep her busy with his impromptu dinner and cocktail parties and his friends were definitely not the cookies types.

  “Sunshine?”

  “Yes?” With oven mitts, she placed the hot pan of cookies on a waiting rooster shaped black iron trivet.

  “My housekeeper of all things?” he asked suspiciously. “Why?”

  “Why not?” Her eyebrows lifted in question. “Okay I will be honest with you. As of tomorrow, I will officially hit my rock bottom. I had an eviction notice on my door this morning.”

  “I see.” Yoon didn’t know what to say. He’d never been good at empathizing foolishness when it came to money.

  “Let’s just say I hoped the preacher thought I looked like a million dollars yesterday in that beautiful designer suit and shoes that set me back three months rent.

  Yoon choked on the juice he was finishing up. “You used your rent money to buy expensive clothing?” He managed to asked between clenched teeth even though hearing it the first time was one time too many. How could she be so such a reckless idiot?

  He held his tongue. He practically bit it off, but he resigned himself to hold verbalizing his judgment. She was already feeling the outcome of her foolhardiness by receiving an eviction notice. He didn’t see a reason to kick her when she was already down.

  Sunshine picked up the spatula and carefully moved the warm cookies to a silver contraption she called a “cooling rack.” Another item he didn’t know he owned or why the housekeeper would buy it.

  It could have been any one of the many housekeepers he went through that purchased these items. They may have had good intentions like baking him cookies, but after one of his infamous clientele parties, didn’t stick around long enough to follow through.

  He couldn’t pass judgment on Sunshine when he haphazardly paid out household expenses without looking at the receipts to see what he was actually purchasing and if it was necessary.

  The difference was he could afford to do so. He didn’t notice because a few thousand a month didn’t matter to him one way or the other. But to Sunshine, it meant having a roof over her head and food in her stomach. So why did she chance it on one date with a guy her mother set up for her to meet? What was he missing in this scenario?

  “Sunshine, what about your mother? Can’t you call her and tell her your situation?”

  “No way,” she replied with hesitation shaking her head. Her freshly scrubbed face, void of all makeup, scrunched up as if she smelled something bad. “My mother is the reason I’m in this mess. I don’t want anything to do with anyone in my family until I can be completely independent of them. As you can see, I’m not off to a good start,” she admitted with a sheepish smile his way.

  Yoon thought her completely adorable at that moment. Any anger he had felt at her confession of stupidity fell aside. At the moment she looked like a grownup sixteen-year-old.

  From her bare feet; the hanging shapeless t-shirt on her petite frame; the ponytail atop her head bouncing about like one of those yapping dogs that overcompensated for their size by barking too much. Her soft features, saddened when she thought he wasn’t looking, told him she wasn’t as strong and carefree as he first believed.

  Yoon also found it hard to believe she was the paid escort he first believed her to be because of the expensive clothing and lack of monetary resources. Also the fact that she had been the sexual pursuer the night before, he assumed she was giving him a taste of what he could have. And she had him. He was prepared to be very generous for her present and future services as he had with the women he dated in the past.

  Yet, surprisingly the woman he woke up to this morning was nothing like the one that he held in his arms last night. This woman was vulnerable. This woman that he stared at now scared the hell out of him because she touched some deep seeded need inside him that he thought had died after he failed at his first marriage.

  Seeing Sunshine like this in his kitchen and in his shirt cooking the food that he bought and moving around the kitchen as if she’d lived there since the day he moved in brought out a protective instinct in him.

  His eyes soaked her in as she flitted from the kitchen island back to the countertop and next to the oven to spoon up yet another batch of cookie dough onto the cookie sheet. She fingered up a dollop of cookie dough and sucked it off her finger.

  Yoon’s body ignited again in intense awareness of her sexiness, a sexiness he thought was all intentional to snare him the night before. He now could see it was just Sunshine being Sunshine.

  His heart raced with a sense of panic. It was happening too fast. Had he gone crazy or had his mother been right about too much loneliness would eventually drive him insane? How could this woman, in less than twenty-four hours, make him question all the conclusions he made about himself and his life?

  Sunshine brought out a domestic need he thought he was incapable of feeling. He spoke to his father about it and several of the men that worked with him after they would cry off a late night of working or going out for drinks afterwards because they wanted to go home to their wives. He couldn’t imagine any man wanting to hurry home to their wife unless they were trying to prevent her nagging.

  Watching Sunshine baking those cookies of hers made him understand why those men rushed home to their wives. They were afraid they would miss something.

  Such as the way she wears her hair. The way she looks in the clothing she wears. The way her eyes gleam when her cookies turn out perfectly and that unexpected smile she turns on you when she catches you staring...like...right...now. Yoon’s breath caught in his throat.

  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 murmur
ed.

  He was talking more about her more than the cookie; but oblivious 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 currently 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 divorced him.

  He had been so busy making money and aiming for success during 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 father’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 container 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.

  Chapter 7

  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, m
y 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.