Kitabı oku: «Baby for the Tycoon», sayfa 5

Seven

Having lived his entire life in the northern half of California, Jonathon had weathered his share of earthquakes. He’d long ago gotten over whatever fear he might have had of them. But there were plenty of other act-of-God weather systems that scared the crap out of him. Tornadoes. Hurricanes. Tsunamis.

Anything that would swoop in and level an entire coastal plain deserved a healthy dose of respectful fear.

Clearly, Wendy’s family fell into that category.

About ten minutes after Wendy had disappeared to take a shower, her family had arrived on his doorstep in a tidal wave of hearty handshakes, welcoming slaps and tearful hugs. It was a bit overwhelming, given that he’d never met any of them and would have had no idea who they were if he hadn’t recognized her uncle, Big Hank, from the news clips he’d seen of the senator. And before Jonathon knew it, Wendy’s parents, Tim and Marion, had swept into the house, followed by Big Hank, carefully lending an arm to the infamous Mema.

Jonathon had barely recovered from the stinging clap on the arm from Big Hank, when he faced down Mema. After Wendy’s description, he’d half expected an old battleship of a woman. Instead, Mema was thin and stooped, fragile in appearance despite the strength of will that seemed to radiate from her.

A hush fell over the other members of the family as she shook his hand and appraised him. She had the wizened appearance of a woman who had lived hard and buried too many loved ones, but who was not yet ready to release her control over the rest of her clan.

She eyed him up and down. “Well, at least you’re real.”

“You doubted it?” he asked.

She sniffed indignantly. “I wouldn’t put it past Gwen to invent a husband just to defy me.” “I assure you, ma’am. I’m real.”

“As for what kind of father you’ll be for my great-granddaughter, that we’ll have to see about.” Then her steely gaze narrowed with sharp perception and raked over Jonathon a second time. Finally she gave a little nod. “I’ve never had much use for overly handsome men. But then, neither has my Gwen, so I suppose there must be more to you than good looks.”

He offered a wry smile. “I should hope so.”

It was almost thirty minutes later when Wendy came down. The guarded look on her face as she walked through the door told him she’d heard them before entering the kitchen.

She was greeted with hugs that lasted longer and more joyful tears than he would have expected, given the way she’d described the strained relationship she shared with her family. Throughout it all, she kept a careful eye on Peyton, who was currently being held by Wendy’s mother, as if Wendy expected that any moment the family might escape with the baby.

“What are y’all doing here?” she asked when she was finally able to get a word in edgewise.

He suppressed a smile. In five years, he’d never heard a hint of the Texas accent her family all sported. But three minutes in their company and she was slipping into y’alls.

“Oh, honey,” her mother cooed, her voice all sugary sweet. “Of course we would come for your wedding. If we’d had enough warning, we would have been here.” She shook her head, tears brimming in her eyes. “I can’t believe I missed the wedding of my only daughter.”

“I did tell you a week ago we were getting married. If you’d really wanted to come, you could have.”

“But Big Hank had the jet in D.C.,” her mother bemoaned, “and we had to wait until he could fit the trip into his schedule.”

Jonathon felt a pang of regret, but Wendy muttered, “I’m glad to know you found the idea of flying commercial more repugnant than the prospect of missing my wedding.”

Tim’s head snapped up. “Young lady, you’ll speak respectfully to your mother.”

“Or what?” Wendy asked, anger creeping into her voice. “You’ll cut off my allowance? The woman has missed almost every major event in my life since I was ten. And those that she showed up for, she criticized endlessly. I think she’ll live.”

“Gwen—” her mother started to protest.

Then Mema cleared her throat and both Wendy and her mother fell silent. Their heads swiveled to face her.

“In the wake of our Bitsy’s recent and tragic death, it is time for you to put aside your past differences.” She stared them both down. Mother and daughter both dropped their gazes. “Now, the flight from Texas was long and I’d like to clean up before resting a bit before lunch.” She turned to Jonathon. “I assume all the bedrooms are on the second floor?”

“They are,” he said, not sure what she was getting at.

“Very well, then. I noticed an office just off the foyer. I’ll sleep there. I don’t do stairs well. Big Hank, please arrange for a bed to be delivered before evening. In the meantime, I’ll rest on the sofa there.”

Jonathon watched in amazement as a senior U.S. senator practically leaped to help his mother out of the kitchen. A moment later, Wendy’s father had been sent out to the limo to instruct the driver where to bring the bags, and her mother had retreated to the nursery “to get reacquainted with her great-niece.”

The second Jonathon and Wendy were all alone, she practically threw up her hands. “Why didn’t you come get me the second they arrived?”

“You were dressing. I told them they could wait until you came down.”

She tilted her head, studying him as if he were some foreign life form she’d never seen before. “You stood up to them?”

Ah. So that’s what had her so puzzled. “Yes. I stood up to them. Do people not normally do that?”

She gave a bemused chuckle. “No. People don’t normally do that.” Shaking her head, she started carrying coffee cups from the kitchen table to the sink. Almost under her breath, she said, “I once dated a guy whose parents were lifelong members of Greenpeace. He’d spent every summer since he was ten on boats protesting whaling in Japan. He’d marched on Washington forty-four times before he was twenty. He’d been a vegan since he was three. Within thirty minutes of meeting my family, he was eating barbeque and smoking cigars out on the back porch with Big Hank.” Shaking her head, she started rinsing out coffee cups and loading them into the dishwasher. “Within a week, he’d accepted a job working for my dad.”

Jonathon studied the tense lines of her back. Her tone had been sad, but resigned. “The guy sounds like an idiot.”

“No. He was very smart. The last I heard, Jed was VP of marketing for Morgan Oil. And Daddy would never promote anyone that high up who wasn’t brilliant.”

Jonathon gently turned her away from the sink and tipped her chin up to look at him. “That’s not the kind of idiot I mean.”

Her gaze met his, confusion in her eyes for a minute. Then her gaze cleared as she realized his meaning. Pink tinged her cheeks and pulled away from his touch. Tucking her hair back behind her ear she swallowed. “Thank you. For standing up to them, I mean. For everything.”

“You’re welcome.”

She gave a bitter laugh. “You say that now. But you don’t actually know what you’ve gotten yourself into.” She looked pointedly at the kitchen door through which her family had left not long before. “This nonsense with them sweeping down on us unannounced? Inviting themselves to stay here? Ordering a bed for Mema to sleep on? This is all just the beginning. It’ll only get worse.”

“Of course it will,” he stated as blandly as he could. “You think I didn’t know that the second I opened the door?”

“I… I don’t know. I guess… Most people don’t see them for what they are.”

“Try to have a little faith in me,” he chided.

“I’m just warning you. My dad and Uncle Hank will woo you with their good ol’ boy charm. And just when you think that you’re their buddy and they’re nothing more than simple roughnecks, they’ll use that keen intelligence of theirs to manipulate you. And if they can’t control you, they’ll try to squash you.”

“Consider me warned.” He nodded. “Coming here was obviously a power play. They think they have the upper hand because they’ve chosen the time and location of the showdown. They’re trying to establish themselves as the decision makers in the relationship. What about your mother? She seems harmless enough.”

“Um, no.” Wendy thought about it. Of all the family members, her relationship with her mother was the most complicated. There were times when she actually liked her mother. Of course, she loved all of them, but her mother she actually liked. But she’d never understood her. And her mother had her moments of being just as vicious as Uncle Hank. “In all those scuba-diving trips you take, you ever been in the water with a jellyfish?”

“Several times. They sting like hell.”

“Exactly. They look delicate and frail, but they have more than enough defenses. That’s my mother in a nutshell. She can play the victim, but she’s as smart as—” That’s when it hit her. “Oh, crap.”

“What?”

“The bedroom!” She leaped to her feet and dashed for the stairs.

Jonathon snagged her arm on the way past. “What?”

She whispered, just in case anyone was close enough to hear, “The guest bedroom. Where I slept last night.”

He continued to stare blankly at her. Seriously? Mr. Genius couldn’t figure this out?

She lowered her voice to a hiss. “Last night. On our wedding night. I slept in the guest bedroom.” She resisted the urge to bop him on the forehead. “And now my mother is upstairs with Peyton. And if she sees the guest bedroom, she’ll realize we didn’t sleep together last night.”

This time, she didn’t wait around to see if his sluggish brain had started working at normal speed. Instead, she pulled her arm from his hand and made a break for the stairs. He was hot on her heels as she took the stairs two at a time.

She stopped at the top, breathing rapidly through her mouth and she looked around for her parents. A long gallery hall ran from the top of the stairs to the guest room at the end. They’d have to pass the nursery to get there.

Crap, crap and double crap.

This was going to be tricky. She crept down the hall, praying that Jonathon would walk as softly. Or head back downstairs if he couldn’t.

She tiptoed right up to the doorway and pressed herself against the wall, listening. She heard the faint, steady creak, creak of a rocking chair.

If her mom was sitting in the chair rocking Peyton, there was a good chance Wendy could sneak past to the guest bedroom, make the bed and sneak out with anyone being the wiser. Or more importantly, becoming suspicious.

Slinking past the door, she heard two things that would have stopped her in her tracks if she hadn’t been in such a desperate hurry. The first was Jonathon’s heavy footfall behind her. The next was her father’s voice from within the nursery.

She glanced through the open door, but saw no one. Maybe they’d make it. But when she heard the rocking chair still, she grabbed Jonathon’s hand and made a dash for it.

If her parents heard them and followed, she and Jonathon would never have time to actually make the bed. Certainly not neatly enough to put her father off the scent.

And this wasn’t the day to leave up to fate.

Pulling Jonathon into the room after her, turning him so his back was to the door, she flashed him a wry smile. “Sorry about this.”

“About what?”

She only had an instant to appreciate how charming he looked with that bemused expression on his face before she launched herself at him. They both tumbled backward onto the bed in a tangle of arms and legs. He might have gasped with surprise. She didn’t have a chance to notice, as she pressed her mouth to his and kissed him.

The second Jonathon felt Wendy’s mouth on his, he gave up trying to figure out what she was doing. She’d been babbling about the bedroom one minute and kissing him like a woman overwhelmed by desire the next. A smart man knew when to hold his questions for later.

Instead, he wrapped his hand around the back of her head and deepened the kiss. Her lips moved over his in sensual abandon, her tongue stroking against his in the kind of soul-deep kiss that made a man forget everything except the burning need to possess.

Desire pounded through him, heating his blood and tightening his groin. He fought against the desperate need to strip her naked and plow into her. A need that had been building within him for what seemed like years. Hell, probably had been years. As desperately as he wanted her, he didn’t want this. This frantic, rapid rush of sex without fulfillment.

He wanted more. He wanted all of her.

Rolling her over onto her back, he took control of the kiss. Her hand had started pulling his shirt out from his waistband. If her hot little hand so much as touched his bare chest, he’d lose the last shreds of his control. So he grabbed both her hands in his and pulled them over her head, pinning them there. She let out a low groan, arching her back off the bed.

Yes. This was what he wanted: her, on the brink. As desperate and needy as he felt.

He slowed the kiss down, exploring every sweet corner of her mouth. Loving her sleepy flavor, the faint hint of coffee. The smooth heat of her tongue against his. Her hips bucked against his as she ground the vee between her legs against the length of his erection. Even through the multiple layers of her clothes, he could feel the heat of her.

But it wasn’t enough. Merely kissing her would never be enough. Not when there was so much of her body left to explore. That silken shoulder that had been tempting him for so long. That tender swath of skin along her collarbone. The hollow at the base of her throat. The glimpse of her belly he sometimes saw when she rose up on her toes to get a fresh ream of printer paper.

His hand sought the hem of her shirt. He slipped his hand up to her rib cage, relishing how incredibly soft her skin was. He felt the edge of her bra and hesitated. He’d waited years to touch her naked skin. His hand damn near trembled at the prospect.

But was this really what he wanted? A quick grope in the guest bedroom when her family was just down the hall?

No, he wanted her naked. Laid out before him like a feast. He wanted hours. Days.

He wanted—

Jonathon’s head jerked up as he pulled back from Wendy and sent her a piercing look.

Her family was just down the hall. What the hell had she been—

A sound came from the doorway. A man clearing his voice.

Jonathon whipped his head around and saw Wendy’s parents standing in the doorway. Her mom, a perfect, older version of Wendy, stood with her hands propped on her hips, but the teasing smile on her lips softened any reproach in her gaze. Wendy’s father, on the other hand, looked ready to throttle him.

With good reason.

The man had just caught him groping his daughter like a desperate teenager.

Wendy’s dad growled—actually growled—with displeasure and took a step toward him. Wendy’s mother grabbed her husband by the arm. Though the petite woman couldn’t possibly have had the strength to stop the man in his tracks, her touch still gave him pause.

“Wendy, your father and I will be waiting for you in the hall. Why don’t you come out in a minute when you’ve had a chance to get yourselves… under control.”

A moment later the guest bedroom door closed.

Jonathon rolled off Wendy, planted his feet firmly on the ground and dropped his head into his waiting hands.

What a mess.

Wendy’s parents—waiting in the hall with her dad looking as if he wanted to chew his ass out—were the least of his worries. Whatever criticism they’d deliver he’d take.

None of it would come even close to the talking to he was going to give himself. He’d completely lost control. For several moments there, he’d forgotten where they were. Forgotten that she wasn’t really his to take whenever he wanted. Forgotten that this was merely a sham.

Worse still, she hadn’t. Clearly, she’d manipulated the situation—manipulated him—all so that her family wouldn’t notice the fact that she’d obviously slept in the guest room. And it hadn’t even occurred to him that that’s what she had been doing.

He drew in several deep breaths, but barely felt calmer. The scent of her was heavy in the air, and with every breath she only seemed to fill more of the room, rather than less. That faint pepperminty smell that was uniquely her. His very hands seemed steeped in her.

He sat fully up, looking over his shoulder. She’d scrambled back into the corner of the bed, pressed against the headboard. She looked almost afraid of him. He didn’t blame her. His control felt too shaky just now to offer her any reassurances.

She bit down on her lip as she tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. It was a ridiculous effort, fixing that one strand of hair when the rest were still so mussed.

“I—” she started to say, then cleared her throat. “Boy, that was close.”

Not trusting himself to say anything just yet, he merely raised one eyebrow. Apparently she had no idea just how close that had been. Just how lucky she was that her parents had walked in, since he’d been about three minutes away from taking her right there.

“I—I’m sorry,” she stammered. “I couldn’t think of any other way to distract them from the bed.”

He pushed himself to his feet. “I doubt your parents noticed the bed.”

She scrambled up onto her knees. “No. I mean, that was the idea, right?”

He gave a tight little nod, hating her a little bit in that moment. Or at least hating that she was still thinking coherently when he’d lost the ability. “Yeah,” he said as blandly as he could manage. “Apparently it was.”

“I—” She climbed off the bed, coming to stand right beside him. “I’m sorry.”

He was struck suddenly by how petite she was. Standing flat-footed beside him, the top of her head barely reached his chin. And yet, she never seemed small. She had more than enough personality to fill a woman half a foot taller. And more than enough strength of will to stand up to him.

He hadn’t been able to face her father without embarrassing himself a few minutes ago, but her endless stream of excuses certainly killed the mood. She hadn’t been as affected by the kiss as he had. Fine. But she could damn well stop harping on it.

“Stop apologizing,” he ordered. “We all make mistakes. I’m just not used to making such stupid ones.”

She opened her mouth as if to say something, but snapped it shut again when he brusquely smoothed down her hair. Then, since he couldn’t seem to keep his hands off her, he pressed one quick kiss to her forehead. “Let’s go face your parents.”

Eight

Some things are embarrassing no matter what your age. Having your father stare down your boyfriend is one of them.

At seventeen, she and her boyfriend had been caught necking in the back of his truck. The make-out session had been bad enough. Worse still was the fact that her date had been high. Her father wasn’t very forgiving of that sort of thing. Never mind that she hadn’t known it at the time. She’d gotten reamed. He’d had the poor boy arrested. And had her hauled in and tested for drug use just to make a point. Was it any wonder the next year when she went to college she’d picked one thousands of miles away?

She’d always assumed that would be the low point of her boyfriend/father debacles. But this—oddly enough—felt worse.

Maybe it was because Devin—or had it been Drake?—had been carefully chosen for his many red-flag qualities. He’d been guy number twenty-six in her ongoing teenage quest to piss off her parents.

As she followed Jonathon into the hall, she held her breath, half afraid of the argument to come and half relieved to be escaping Jonathon’s one-on-one scrutiny.

Her parents were waiting for them in the hall. Her mother sent a wan smile, a hint of apology in her eyes. Her father, on the other hand, looked as if he could happily strangle Jonathon with his bare hands. Which was saying something, because Wendy had always figured it her father was going to murder someone, as a lifelong hunter and a member of the NRA, he would opt for a gun rather than sheer brute force.

Even with Devin—or was it Derek?—her father hadn’t seemed this mad. Normally, she knew how to handle her parents. Twenty-three solid years of pushing their buttons made her an expert at undoing the damage. But just now, she was drawing a blank. Every brain cell she had was still stuttering with the memory of that soul-searing kiss.

He could have taken her right there, with her parents on the other side of the door, and she would have been okay with that. More than okay. She would have been begging for more.

Not a good thought, that one.

Since she could barely put a single coherent thought together, she was infinitely thankful that Jonathon seemed to be recovering more quickly than she was.

He draped an arm over her shoulder in a possessive, but nonsexual way. Giving her parents a distant nod, he said, “Mr. and Mrs. Morgan, I’m sorry you saw that.”

“Oh, no need to apologize—” her mother began.

“You’re sorry we saw that.” Her father talked over her mother. “Or you’re sorry you did it?” His tone was as ice-cold as his reproof. “Because to my way of thinking, a man who loves his wife doesn’t fool around with her in the middle of the morning when her family is in the house and the child they hope to rear is in the next room.”

“Dad!”

“Now, Tim—”

Jonathon held up a hand, stopping both her protest and her mother’s. He drew out the moment just long enough for everyone to know he wasn’t about to just kowtow to her father’s bullying. “And to my way of thinking, a family that respects their daughter doesn’t show up on her doorstep unannounced.”

Her mother opened her mouth, looked ready to say something, then pressed her lips into a tight line and stomped off down the stairs.

Wendy’s father continued to glare at Jonathon. Jonathon did a damn fine job of glaring back.

“If you think making my wife cry will endear you to me,” her father said through gritted teeth, “then you’re sorely mistaken.”

Wendy wanted to protest. Those hadn’t been tears in her mother’s eyes. Just anger. But Jonathon didn’t give her a chance to point it out.

“The same goes for you. Sir,” Jonathon bit out. But apparently he couldn’t leave well enough alone. Because a second later he stepped closer to her father and said, “And I’ll have you know, that before she agreed to marry me, I never once so much as touched your daughter at work. I have the greatest respect for her intelligence. And her decisions. I’m not sure you can say the same.”

Both men seemed to expand to fill their anger. Any second now, they would either start bumping their chests together like roosters or one of them would throw the first punch.

She figured they were equally matched. Her father was a solid six-five, and a barrel-chested two hundred and fifty pounds. Plus, he’d worked on rigs alongside roughnecks in his youth. Jonathon, on the other hand, had grown up poor, spent a few weeks in juvie, and had two older brothers, both of whom had criminal records. She figured he could probably handle himself.

She looked from one man to the other. Neither of them seemed to be willing to budge. Finally, she just shook her head. “I’m going to go talk to Mom. You two, sort this out.”

She gave Jonathon’s arm a little squeeze, willing him to see her apology in her eyes. Then, as she walked passed her dad, she laid a hand on his arm. “Dad, I’m not seventeen anymore. And if Jonathon was planning on besmirching my honor or whatever it is you’re worried about, then he probably wouldn’t have married me. Give him a chance. You have no idea how good a guy he is.”

She went down the stairs, half expecting her father and Jonathon to come tumbling down after her in a jumble of brawling arms and legs. And she tried to tell herself that if they did, it wasn’t any of her business.

Peyton was apparently asleep again, because a stream of lullabies could be heard through the baby monitor sitting on the kitchen counter. Her mother was doing what most Texas women do when they’re upset. Cooking.

Wendy gave a bark of disbelieving laughter.

Her mother’s head jerked up, her eyes still sharp with annoyance. She had a hand towel slung over her shoulder, paring knife in her hand and a chicken defrosting in the prep sink.

She gave a sniff of disapproval before returning to the task at hand, dicing celery.

Wendy bumped her hip against the edge of the island that stretched the length of the kitchen. That honed black granite was like the river of difference that always divided them. Her mother on one side: cooking to suppress the emotions she couldn’t voice. Wendy on the other: baffled at her mother’s ability to soldier on in silence for so many years.

“You might as well just say it,” her mother snapped without looking up from the celery.

“I didn’t say anything,” Wendy protested.

“But you were thinking it. You always did think louder than most people shout.”

Wendy blew out a breath. “Fine. It’s just…” Anything she said, her mother would take as a criticism. There was probably no way around that. “You’re alone in the kitchen for less than five minutes and you start cooking?”

Her mother arched a disdainful brow. “Someone has to feed everyone. You know Mema isn’t going to want to go out to eat. God only knows what the food is like up here.”

Wendy laughed in disbelief. “Trust me. There are plenty of restaurants in Palo Alto that are just fine. Even by your standards. And we’re a thirty-minute drive to San Francisco, where they have some of the best restaurants in the world. I think on the food front, we’re okay. And if Mema doesn’t want to go out, there are probably two dozen restaurants that would deliver.”

Naturally, having food delivered wasn’t something that would have occurred to her mother. Back in Texas, all of the Morgans lived within a few miles of each other, in various houses spread over the old Morgan homestead, deep in the big piney woods of East Texas. Sure you could have food catered out there, but not delivered. As a kid, Wendy used to bribe the pizza delivery guys with hundred-dollar tips, but that only worked on slow nights.

Her mom sighed. “I’ve already—”

“Right. You’ve already started defrosting the chicken.” Here her mother was, making chicken and dumplings. Wendy could barely identify the fridge, given that it was paneled to match the cabinetry. She walked down the island, so she stood just opposite her mother. “Give me a knife and I’ll get started on the carrots.”

Her mother crossed to a drawer, pulled out a vegetable peeler and knife, then pulled a cutting board from a lower cabinet. A few seconds of silence later and Wendy was at work across from her mom.

Her mother had always been a curious mix of homespun Texas farmwife and old oil money. Wendy’s maternal grandparents had been hardscrabble farmers before striking oil on their land in the sixties. Having lived through the dustbowl of the fifties, and despite marrying into a family of old money and big oil, her mother had never quite shaken off the farm dirt. It was one of the things Wendy loved best about her mom.

“You used to love to help me in the kitchen,” her mother said suddenly.

Wendy couldn’t tell if there was more than nostalgia in her voice. “You used to let me,” she reminded her mother. She paused for a second, considering the carrot under her knife. “But you never really needed me there. I stopped wanting to help when I realized that whatever I did wasn’t going to be good enough.”

Her mother’s hand stilled and she looked up. “Is that what you think?”

Wendy continued slicing the carrots for a few minutes in silence, enjoying the way the knife slid through the fibrous vegetable. As she chopped, she felt some of her anger dissipating. Maybe there was something to this cooking-when-you’re-upset thing.

“Momma, nothing I’ve ever done has been good enough for this family.” She gave a satisfying slice to a carrot. “Not my lack of interest in social climbing. Not my unfocused college education.” She chopped another carrot to bits. “And certainly not my job at FMJ.”

“Well,” her mother said, wiping her hands on the towel. “Now that you’ve landed Jonathon—”

“No, Momma.” Wendy slammed the knife down. “My job at FMJ had nothing to do with landing a husband. If all I wanted was a rich husband, you could have arranged that for me as soon as I was of age.” Picking the knife back up, she sliced through a carrot with a smooth, even motion. Keep it smooth. Keep it calm. “I work at FMJ because it’s a company I believe in. And because I enjoy my work. That’s enough for me. And for once in my life, I’d like for it to be enough for you and Daddy.”

“Honey, if it seems like I’ve been trying to fix you your entire life, it’s because I know how hard it is to not quite fit in with this family. I know how hard this world of wealth and privilege can be to people who are different. I didn’t want that for you.”

“Momma, I’m never going to fit into this world. I’m just not. Your constant browbeating has never done anything except make me feel worse about it.”

Her mother blanched and turned away to dab delicately at her eyes, all the while making unmistakable sniffling noises. “I had no idea.”

Wendy had seen her mother bury emotions often enough to recognize this for the show it so obviously was.

“Oh, Momma.” Wendy rolled her eyes. “Of course you did. You just figured you were stronger than I was and that eventually you’d win. You never counted on me being just as strong willed as you are.”

After a few minutes of silence, she said softly, “I’m sorry,

Mom.”

Her mother didn’t pretend to misunderstand. “Apology accepted.”