by Joanne Rock
Here the building bordered the fenced paddock area, and it was easy to lift the gate latch and bypass the main entrance where Coop and Devon were talking.
“Where are we going?” Lily asked, sounding wary as she held his hand tightly.
“Far away from Devon.” He knew his time with Lily was coming to an end, and he wasn’t ready for that to happen. “How about my guest lodge?” His rooms were far more private than hers.
He led her toward the small utility vehicle he’d driven here earlier in the day. With only a roll bar over the seats, the leather bench was sun-warmed.
“You’re suggesting we go back to your place?” She slowed her step behind him, letting go of his hand to hold back her hair where it blew in the breeze. She wore a knee-length black skirt with the same cowboy boots she’d had on the night before. And with a blue silk T-shirt and suede jacket finishing the look, she was definitely dressed more casually than usual, perhaps in deference to their ranching client.
He slid behind the wheel but didn’t turn the key, waiting for her to decide. “After what nearly happened between us in the tack room just now, don’t you think we should consider finding someplace more private?”
Her brows knitted, an incensed expression on her face. But no sooner had she opened her mouth—presumably to give him an earful—than she snapped her jaw shut again.
Instead, she slipped into the passenger seat and simply said, “Hurry.”
* * *
Her affair with Marcus was ending.
She knew it. He clearly knew it, too.
Yet somehow they’d found this window of time before they needed to walk away, and she didn’t want to look back with any regrets that she hadn’t taken this one last chance to be with him. After he parked the utility vehicle on the front lawn, they moved in unison toward the door. No words were needed.
He keyed in an alarm code and held the door open for her. She stepped inside the living area, following the same path she had the night before. This time, she didn’t wait for him to point the way to the master suite. She slipped off her boots and headed that way on her own.
Marcus was two steps behind her. Until he caught up and swept her off her feet so he could cradle her in his arms.
It was a kind of sweet madness happening between them, and she gave herself over to it one final time. Her body came alive at the feel of his arms around her, his warmth seeping through her clothes and into her skin. By the time he toed open the bedroom door, she was desperate to be naked, to strip away every last barrier between them.
She didn’t trust herself to speak, unsure whether she had words for the whirl of feelings that spun through her faster and faster. She could only focus on getting Marcus’s shirt off, a task made easier when he set her on her feet again beside his bed.
Pulling open one button after another, she bent to place a kiss on the flesh she’d bared. She couldn’t touch enough of him, her fingers skimming along the ridged muscles of his abs and then stroking down the indent at the center. She delighted in the shudder that went through him when she let her lips follow the trail her fingers blazed, a path blocked by his belt.
She worked the buckle with only a little aid from him, and in the end she held one of his hands captive so she could finish the task herself. She took pleasure from peeling away his clothes and freeing him, and even more pleasure from the ragged sound he made when she licked her way around the hard length of him.
With a growl, he hauled her to her feet. He skimmed her hair from her ear to whisper sweet praises there, words that prickled along her skin like a touch.
“I can’t wait to have you all around me,” he chanted while he drew her shirt off her. “I thought about doing this to you all morning long.” He reached beneath her bra to cup a breast in his hand, squeezing lightly. “About touching you. Tasting you.”
He kissed his way down her neck to her breasts, ministering to first one and then the other, licking through lace until he unfastened the clasp of her bra and let it fall away from her.
She was ready to come out of her skin by the time he lowered himself to the edge of the bed and drew her down to straddle him. Her skirt rode high on her hips, and he inched it the rest of the way up to make room for himself. She fumbled for the condoms still on the nightstand from the night before, tearing open the wrapper while he teased a touch through her panties.
“Please. Go slow.” She wanted him to wait. Needed to feel him inside her when the inevitable happened. “I’m so close.”
“Orgasms are free, Lily,” he breathed along her neck. “You can have all you want.”
His tongue flicked along the place where her pulse fluttered wildly.
She rolled the condom into place while he tugged aside the lace and satin of her underwear. Their eyes met for a red-hot instant as he lifted her hips and positioned her where he wanted her. Her heart thudded hard.
When he lowered her again, joining them, she knew she’d never feel like this again. Ever.
Emotions swelled and broke over her in waves, washing through her with truths she wasn’t ready to face. She hid her face in his shoulder, trying to just enjoy the moment, needing to make this time last. She poured herself into the passion, letting it touch her everywhere.
Marcus steadied her, helping her find the rhythm she sought, anchoring her. He rained kisses over her face, stroking fingers through her hair, down her back and, at last—between her thighs.
Her heart wasn’t ready for the end they catapulted toward, but her body took control, seeking everything his skilled hands offered. He molded her lips to his, guiding her hips with one hand while he feathered a touch against the tight bud of her sex.
The touch was her undoing.
She flew apart in his arms, her release a shattering completion that left her wrung out and clinging to him, one sensual shudder after another racking her. She could feel his finish, too, knew that he’d found that same incredible, sensual high that she had.
Physically, at least.
His hoarse shout and tense body told her as much. Then with his spent body wrapping hers tighter, she dragged in the warm scent of him, breathing his breath, feeling closer to him than she ever had another soul in the world.
It made no sense.
But the connection was so real she couldn’t possibly deny it.
Lily, you fool.
She’d fallen as hard and fast as her mother ever had, ignoring every warning sign that she was wandering down that same path. Even when the evidence of her folly stared her in the face, his gorgeous body still warm around hers, Lily couldn’t regret what she’d done.
Only that it was over.
“Lily?” Marcus’s voice sounded off as he tensed beneath her.
Was he coming to all the same realizations?
“Mmm?” She lifted her head to look him in the eye, only to discover his attention wasn’t on her at all.
His gaze was fixed out the window. They hadn’t drawn the shades since it was daytime and there was no other building for miles.
“What is it?” She turned her head but couldn’t see anything from her awkward angle.
“Do you know anyone who might show up here in a limo?” He lifted her up with him as he stood.
“A limo?” It took her a minute to redirect her thoughts to the real world.
But as she found her feet and peered down to the driveway beneath them, she saw a liveried driver reach into the back seat. When he emerged slowly, an elegant older woman came with him, setting one delicate designer sandal on the tarmac.
Lily’s stomach sank all the way to hell as she recognized the woman’s face, even from a distance.
“My grandparents are here.”
Eleven
“It’s your call.” Marcus’s voice at her side somehow penetrated the panic buzzing in her brain. “Do you want me to stay with y
ou for this, or would you prefer I leave?”
Her grandparents were outside the house. They’d come all the way from Newport to Montana, and there could only be one reason why—they’d found out about her split with Eliot, and they weren’t pleased. As if things weren’t already complicated enough with her falling for Marcus while working for his brother.
She started to move around the room on autopilot. Finding her clothes. Dressing. She couldn’t possibly think through this until she had clothes on. Her body still ached with the sweet pleasure of what had just happened with Marcus, but her brain was screaming at her to get a move on.
“Lily?” Marcus prodded, reminding her that he’d been asking her something. “Are you okay?”
She blinked her way through the knot of worry and nodded. He was buttoning his shirt.
“I’m fine. I need to face them. I just didn’t think it would happen so soon.” The doorbell chimed, and her sense of foreboding deepened. She smoothed her hands through her hair, tucking strands behind her ears. “And actually, if you don’t mind, it might be easier if I spoke to them alone.”
She hated to ask him to leave, but he had offered. The mess was of her own making, so she wasn’t going to hide behind Marcus the way she had when Devon discovered them kissing earlier.
“Of course.” He followed her down the stairs. “You might as well use the living room here. I’ll make my excuses and head over to the main lodge to find Devon.”
She appreciated his thoughtfulness and regretted that their last intimate moments together had been stolen out from under her. But she’d always known it couldn’t last. Marcus himself had pointed out how different they were that first day they’d spoken down by the Bitterroot River. As a creative person, he couldn’t worry about what other people thought. But no matter how much she wanted to carve out a new future for herself, establish boundaries with her grandparents, she would never be the kind of woman who discounted the opinions of the people she loved.
“Thank you.” She wanted to say more. To tell him how much these days with him had meant to her.
But the doorbell rang again. For an extended time.
Sighing, she waited while Marcus opened the heavy wood door.
Her grandparents stood as a unified front, her grandfather dressed for travel the way he must have in another lifetime: sleek suit, understated tie, a tweed hat. Her grandmother was the more modern of the two, her ivory-colored pantsuit something a designer had probably sent her last week. Lily hugged them both briefly before Helen Carrington turned her attention to Marcus. Thankfully, he took care of introducing himself and welcomed them to Montana since Lily was still rattled from the surprise of having them show up on his doorstep.
Marcus could be as charming as his brother when he chose to be. He steered her grandparents into the living room, and Lily appreciated Marcus’s efforts at small talk while she used the time to remind herself that she could do this. She was a successful woman in her own right, after all. She’d scaled the corporate ranks quickly, and nothing her grandparents said about her choices in life could change what she’d achieved. Part of that success was because she’d been fortunate enough to join Salazar Media when the New York office had been a twelve-person shop. But she’d worked tirelessly to help them become a thriving business with multiple satellite offices and a bottom line that grew at a trendsetting pace in their industry.
By the time Marcus made his excuses to leave, Lily was ready. But no sooner had he walked out the door than her grandmother shot her a withering glare.
Helen Carrington wore her gray-blond hair pinned at her nape with a jeweled comb, and her shoes were from a designer that only a handful of women in the world could afford. None of those beautiful trappings softened the sting of her words, though.
“Is he why you chose to throw a Winthrop diamond back in Eliot’s face? After all their family has done for you?”
Because the comment was so unlike her grandmother, Lily chose to let it slide. She knew it came from a place of old hurts and fears tied to Lily’s mother. Still, it stung.
Her grandfather briefly put an arm around his wife. He was old-school dapper, his gray suit custom-tailored to his shrinking frame, his gray hair thickly pomaded to remain in place.
“We just don’t understand this change of heart,” he explained more gently, his expression genuinely perplexed. He steered his wife toward the sectional sofa, as if taking a seat would help de-escalate things. “Eliot is already like a part of the family. We thought you loved him.”
Lily followed them, lowering herself onto the edge of an oversize wooden rocker near the window.
“I thought I did, too, but we realized there’s a reason we keep delaying the wedding. We’re better as friends than we are as a couple.” That had become even more clear to her after being with Marcus. “And I’m still trying to sort out what to do next, which is why I thought Eliot and I were going to keep the news between us for a little while longer.” It hurt to think that he’d gone to Devon and her grandparents almost immediately after she’d told him she wanted to wait to break the news. They’d been friends for a long time before they were a couple.
He’d owed her that much.
“And this is how you sort it out?” Her grandmother took in Lily’s wrinkled skirt and bare feet. “By making yourself at home with the man you work for?”
The sting from those words was sharper than before, and it tried Lily’s patience. Even though she was sleeping with Marcus, her grandmother was over the line. Lily was an adult.
“Grandma, that feels like you’re passing judgment on a situation that is mine and mine alone. I love you, but I don’t feel like my romantic life is a place for group decision making.”
Her grandfather tilted his head, as if considering the point. But her grandmother drew in a sharp breath, her gaze narrowing.
“This isn’t just about your ‘romantic life.’ If you didn’t care for group decision making, perhaps you shouldn’t have gotten involved with the heir to our biggest competitor in the first place.” She spoke so forcefully that she was shaking a bit and had to steady herself by gripping Granddad’s arm harder. “The decisions you want to make by yourself affect many, many people.”
The accusation reverberated in her mind, sounding similar to something Lily herself had said to Marcus earlier in the week.
You don’t need to become so completely self-absorbed that you discount the preferences of others.
Lily followed the memory of that conversation like Ariadne’s thread, finding her way out of this argument. Marcus had asked her a question that had spurred the end of her engagement.
If you weren’t worried about other people’s opinions, would you still make the same choices?
The answer to that had been so sure, so certain, she’d been rattled to the core.
“I’m truly sorry that I’ve disappointed you. Both of you.” It really did hurt to know they felt let down. “But I can’t marry a man I don’t love for the sake of a business merger.”
The words that made so much sense in her head didn’t appear to make a dent in her grandmother’s displeasure. If anything, Helen Carrington appeared even angrier, her lips pursing with disapproval.
But her granddad jumped into the fray again, patting his wife’s shoulders and explaining, “You don’t have to marry him forever, darling. A year would do the trick. Hell, eight months would give us time to get the companies merged...”
He kept talking, but Lily couldn’t believe her ears. She’d thought her grandparents would be upset with her lack of constancy in breaking up with Eliot. Not for a moment had she considered they might be more incensed that she didn’t march to the altar for purely business reasons.
Disillusion slammed her hard.
“You flew all the way to Montana to tell me I should have a marriage of convenience for the sake of Carrington Financial?” She
didn’t know why she asked. Her grandfather couldn’t have been clearer on that point.
“We’d like to think we taught you to put your family first,” he said diplomatically.
“We raised you to be the COO of a company,” her grandmother added, putting a finer point on it. “We damn well thought you appreciated sound business practices.”
Lily shot to her feet, agitated. She paced the floor in front of the wide windows.
“I would never do something so underhanded to Eliot.” She needed to end this conversation and shut down that whole line of thinking.
Besides, if she wanted any chance of keeping her position with her company, she needed to tie up her business here so she could rejoin Marcus and Devon. She wanted to help them keep the company together, and now that she understood both of the Salazar men better, she thought she might know a way to help them keep the peace.
“Underhanded?” Her grandmother’s eyebrows rose in surprise. “Eliot’s the one who spoke to us about the arrangement. I’m sure he was as surprised as any of us that you weren’t going through with it.”
Shock rippled through her. Had her whole engagement been a sham? Was she the only one who hadn’t known it was strictly based on a merger?
“I was unaware,” she murmured lamely, restraining the urge to blurt out that Eliot was surely seeing someone else while he was in London.
If her grandparents were this nonplussed about a marriage of convenience, they surely wouldn’t be scandalized by her suspicion that Eliot was dating other women.
“So you’ll reconsider?” Her grandfather pressed.
“If Eliot wants the merger, why can’t it happen without us marrying?” Lily asked.
“His father will never allow it without a marriage,” her grandmother supplied impatiently. “Winthrop is in a better position than Carrington Financial, but Eliot doesn’t have his father’s business sense. I believe Eliot would be glad to turn over some of the burden of running the company to you.”