Never in her entire life had she whimpered. With need, or anything else. Fragments of warning flickered in her mind like snowflakes, only to melt in the blinding, white-hot fire that threatened to consume her.
Please—oh, please…
Had she said it aloud?
Daring to take the lead, she shifted her position so that she could kiss his eyelids, each in turn, then his nose, that crooked, aggressive masculine blade of a nose. She kissed his chin, drawing her tongue lovingly along the angle of his jaw, then she buried her face in his neck, nibbling her way down the most sensitive trail to the hollow at the base of his throat.
He was groaning as if he were in great pain. “God, Diana, what are you doing to me? I’m only human,” he whispered hoarsely.
“I’d noticed that,” she murmured, heady with the unaccustomed feeling of power.
With one hand he threw off the covers. “You’re not cold, are you?”
She laughed, a shaky sound that sounded different. Almost daring. “Do I feel cold?”
“Ah, Diana, Diana…what am I going to do with you?”
“I thought you knew. One of us probably ought to know what we’re doing.” She laughed softly again, trying to sound as if the earth wasn’t shifting under her feet. She had never felt more unsure of herself, yet she couldn’t have turned back now if her life depended on it.
His hands began a slow, incendiary journey of exploration. Fondling the sensitive slopes of her breast, he lowered his head to scour one nipple with a hot tongue.
A stifled sound escaped her, and her thighs quivered with the need to cradle his narrow hips.
“Not yet,” he murmured at her small, instinctive movements. “You drove me quietly out of my head—now it’s your turn.” Matching actions to words, he proceeded to salute each needy part of her body, leaving kisses in each small hollow, tracing the crest of each separate curve with his lips, his tongue.
Her eyes widened, then closed tightly as molten lava flowed through her body, filling the valley of her desire. She pleaded with him incoherently. Bits of phrases—mostly sighs and whimpers.
Instead of mounting her, he took her hand and, one by one, kissed each finger. Then he nibbled the pad at the base of her thumb. His tongue traced a path across the hollow of her palm. Not until she was gasping for breath did he roll onto his back and lift her over him. Settling her astride his hips, he brought her down on him with exquisite slowness until her long, satiny legs were curled at his sides.
Somewhere along the way he had sensed that she had a thing about being in control. This much he could do for her, he thought—his last rational thought as the pressure built to unbearable levels.
Desperately he tried to hold back—to prolong the mind-shattering ecstasy, but it was too late. Far too late. Easier to hold back the sea, the rising sun….
In his last lucid moment he heard a cascade of sound. A soft, disbelieving Oh, oh, oh!
Seven
He left her sleeping—left with the feeling that something more was needed. That words that should have been spoken had gone unsaid. But even if he’d known the words, he wouldn’t have spoken them.
Not this soon—not after mind-boggling sex. No lawyer in the world would accept words spoken under such circumstances. He was no lawyer, but even he knew the meaning of undue influence. Business was business, pleasure was pleasure, and trying to mix the two—trying to change the rules in the middle of the game—was asking for trouble.
Will made coffee, folded a slab of cheese into a slice of bread and let himself out, locking the door behind him. There was no crime in the area, unless a few straying horses and a broken fence could be considered crime. More a case of the grass-is-always-greener, he thought wryly as he went over his preflight checkup.
One of the skills he had cultivated over the years was an ability to prioritize. Making a deliberate effort to disconnect his emotions, he focused on the problem at hand.
The immediate problem, he amended. Unless he misjudged the woman he’d left in his bed, that particular problem was going to require time, the patience of a saint and the tact of a diplomat.
A little while later, while circling over the Royal Municipal Airport, he completed the disconnect, knowing that the sooner he could find out what the hell was going on at Wescott Oil, the sooner he could get back to the ranch.
To Diana.
Hunger drove her downstairs. Diana showered and dressed in record time, hoping Will hadn’t yet left so that she could settle things between them.
Praying he had, because she hadn’t the slightest idea what she was going to say. Thank you, I had a lovely time, didn’t quite seem to cover it.
He was gone, of course. It was half past ten. So she made herself a hasty breakfast of half a cup of whole-grain cereal with skim milk and three dried apricots and a pint of coffee, to take out onto the deck. Sooner or later she would have to cut back on the caffeine, but not yet. Not when her whole life had unexpectedly taken a dangerous new turn. A woman needed a few vices to get her over the rough patches.
She let the kittens outside, then she bundled up in Will’s flannel-lined denim jacket, sat out on the deck and watched the steam rise from her coffee mug. It was going to take more than caffeine, she mused, to get her through this particular patch.
Of all the crazy things to do! It wasn’t as if she was in love with the man.
Of course, she hadn’t been in love with Jack, either, but at least she’d had a good excuse. Her mother’s needs had come before all else.
How could she have allowed herself to think pregnancy was a good enough excuse? This was the twenty-first century. Wescott Oil paid well, the benefits were great—they even had child care. And single mothers were almost the norm these days. While it was far from an ideal situation, not every marriage was made in heaven. Her parents’ marriage certainly hadn’t been.
Nor was her own. Strictly speaking, it was a temporary legal arrangement between two consenting adults to provide for the security of a third party. Her baby. If Will hadn’t rushed her—if he had allowed her more time to consider her options, she would never have taken such a drastic step.
And now, after last night, what should have been a straightforward business arrangement had become complicated beyond belief.
He probably considered it a quid pro quo. Damn all men.
Taking a sip of coffee, she burned her tongue and swore, more than the slight injury called for. She was still sitting on the deck, soaking up sun now that the morning chill had dissipated, when Tack and Emma drove up.
Diana rose to greet them. Tack headed for the barn while Emma came up onto the porch, her plump face oddly flushed. There was something about her smile that made Diana suspect that bingo wasn’t all they’d played last night.
“Where’s Mr. Will? Did you two make out all right for breakfast? I should have thought to make a sausage and cheese casserole and leave it in the refrigerator.”
“We did fine.” Diana collected her empty cereal bowl and coffee mug and followed the older woman inside. “Will had to leave first thing this morning. Something came up at work.”
Emma shook her head and made a sound with her tongue and teeth. “That man. I declare, I don’t know what it is with men and their work,” she said as she took off her coat and reached for her apron. “Tack’s just like him. Can’t stand to be away from those horses of his more’n a few hours. You’d think they were his children, the way he frets about the least little sniffle.”
“Yes, well. If you don’t need me for anything, I think I’ll take a walk. This is a lovely place to walk, much nicer than Royalty Park.”
Emma took a roast large enough to feed a small army from the freezer and glanced at the kitchen clock, as if wondering if she had time to thaw and cook it for dinner.
“Uh…count me out,” Diana said. “If Will’s not back by noon, I think I’ll drive back to town. I’ve still got some unpacking to do.” And if Emma thought she was still in the process of moving
in with Will, so be it. It was the literal truth—she did have some unpacking to do, including those old files of Jack’s, which were probably of no use to anyone at this point.
Before Emma could argue, she hurried back to the bedroom and changed into her most comfortable sneakers, taking time while she was there to stuff her belongings back into her suitcase. She looked around at the room—at the bed—and sighed. She could have loved this place, but it was Will’s home, not hers.
Striding out briskly for her walk, she followed the fence lines, pausing now and then to admire the horses. Quarter horses, Will had said, not that she would know one variety from another. She could tell a mule from a horse, and a cow from a mule. She knew from her brief experience that horses smelled like dried grass and manure, which, surprisingly enough, wasn’t quiet as unpleasant as it sounded.
Maybe pregnancy affected her olfactory senses, as well as everything else.
One of the brown ones, more curious than the others, trotted over to the fence and blew its nose. Sort of a whuffling sound. It looked friendly, but Diana wasn’t about to risk her fingers. “Nice horsey,” she said.
The horse shook her head and backed away, and Diana continued down the dusty road. Walking always helped clear her mind. Exercise was more important now than ever. But even before she set out to walk her daily two miles, she knew what she had to do. If Will came back and she was still here, things would be awkward to say the least.
Dear heavens, they had made love and it had been the most splendid, mind-shattering thing she’d ever experienced! How could she go on living in the same apartment, working in the same office building with Will and not want to do it again? It would be like trying to walk lightly across a lake of quicksand.
It hadn’t mattered with Jack—working with him days, sleeping with him nights. Every speck of feelings she’d had had been focused on her mother. With Jack she’d merely gone through the motions, and apparently that had been enough. He hadn’t wanted more from her—although he’d told her once that her aloofness intrigued him.
With Will, aloofness wasn’t even a remote possibility. She could just imagine going upstairs with him after the late news. What would they say, “Good night”? “See you in the morning”?
Or, “Shall we try for an encore…my bed or yours?”
The question was bound to arise, even if the words weren’t actually spoken, and at the moment she wasn’t prepared to deal with it. Her life was complicated enough as it was. Sleeping with a temporary husband—worse yet, falling in love with him—would only make matters worse. As long as she could hold on to her common sense and not get carried away by any romantic ideas, she stood a good chance of remaining in control.
“So that’s what I’m going to do,” she told Emma half an hour later, drinking a glass of tomato juice with a slice of lemon on the side. “I’ll have to drive Will’s car.”
“I’ll keep both kittens until you find out if you can keep them in town. When Will brings the plane back, he’ll need some way to get back to town. Had you thought about that?” Clearly the woman was puzzled by more than their modes of transportation.
“What about the trucks? Couldn’t he drive one of those back to Royal?” A week ago Diana couldn’t have pictured him driving a dusty pickup truck. Now she could.
Now she could picture him in far too many ways for her own peace of mind.
“I reckon he could. Lord knows, we got enough of ’em around here. Next time you two come home, you can drive the car and he can bring the truck back, then everything’ll be back in its rightful place.”
Everything but her. Diana sighed. This was just one more indication of how inconvenient her life had become since she’d entered into a marriage of convenience.
She finished packing her suitcase, stripped the bed and offered to do a load of laundry, hoping Emma wouldn’t take her up on it. She needed to be gone by the time Will got back. The next time she saw him she intended to have her armor in place and her arguments all lined up.
“We’ve done the honeymoon,” she would say, “and it was lovely, it really was. But now I intend to go back to my own apartment. You see, if we stay together, I might want to make love again because it was the most…the most…”
She didn’t know how to describe it, she only knew that if it happened again, some part of her that had remained untouched for twenty-eight years would be seriously threatened. And she simply couldn’t afford to have that happen.
What was the slogan she’d seen once on a T-shirt? Life Is What Happens When You’re Busy Making Plans.
Too true, she told herself as she braked at the end of the long drive, then turned off onto the highway. And, speaking of making plans, she would have to go by the personnel office first thing in the morning to find out where to report. The sooner she got her life back on a nice, stress-free track, the better.
Something was wrong. Something was definitely going on here, but for the life of him, Will couldn’t put his finger on who was involved and whether or not it was deliberate.
Yeah…it was deliberate. Frowning at one of several computers in his private office, he wondered what he had missed. He’d gone over every entry on every single account until he’d practically memorized the damned things. In a company the size of Wescott Oil, that was a considerable feat.
Conclusion? Whoever had fiddled with the books was either incredibly smart or incredibly lucky. Will worked alone. For the time being he had to be suspicious of everyone with access. It had taken him all day and half the night to home in on the trouble area. Now he knew the accounts involved. All he had to find out was how many of his employees had access, narrow it down and go from there. He had a feeling the trail might lead eventually to an offshore account. Grand Cayman, perhaps—even Guam.
Eric was in the clear; it was Eric who had discovered the problem. On the other hand, knowing that the discrepancy would soon be discovered by the outside audit anyway, a smart crook might play innocent by pointing out the problem.
“Damn, damn, damn,” Will swore tiredly. His collar was open, his shirtsleeves rolled up. He looked, as Tack was fond of saying, as if he’d been rode hard and put away wet. Diana wasn’t the only one who was fond of old cowboy movies.
Diana…
He couldn’t afford to be distracted until this mess was settled, but it was hard to keep the firewalls in place when he was so damned tired. God, he’d hated to leave her this morning. Every instinct he possessed had urged him to hold on to her—not to let her get her second wind and start thinking about what had happened. He had a feeling she’d been as stunned as he was at the intensity. Over the years he had slept with a number of women. Among them had been a few screamers, a yelper, even one or two groaners. Nothing had ever affected him like the startled symphony of notes that had cascaded over him when Diana had climaxed.
Even thinking about it now, he felt his body stir to life.
“Lady, you and I have some unfinished business once I get back to the ranch,” he muttered. Reaching over his shoulder, he worked on a few of the knots at the back of his neck, wishing those in his head were as easy to reach.
He’d done about all he could do until he caught a few hours of sleep. Maybe tomorrow, with a fresh perspective, he could lay it all out so that it made sense.
Reaching for the phone on his desk, he let his hand fall back. Too late to call now. Emma would know that if he wasn’t back by dark, he wouldn’t be coming until tomorrow. He was too tired to fly, anyhow. What he wouldn’t give, though, to stand under a shower until he ran out of hot water, then crawl into bed with Diana and hold her—just hold her in his arms. Absorb her warmth, her sweetness, the calm stoicism she’d shown in the face of what had to have been some pretty heavy stuff.
He still had a lot to learn about the woman he’d married, but one of the more endearing qualities he’d discovered was her ability to stand there with tears running down her face and calmly make the decisions that had to be made.
Unflappable
. Yeah, that described her. Or maybe flappable on the surface, but deep inside, where it counted, she had her own north star.
Will’s car stood out like a sore thumb in the parking lot behind Diana’s apartment, but there was nothing she could do about it now. It was too late, and she was too tired to play car tag. Half her clothes were at his place, but she had enough to get by with.
First thing in the morning she would drive his car to his apartment and walk to work. Before she settled on her next move, she had to know where she would be working.
Awkward didn’t begin to describe the situation she found herself in. Will wasn’t going to like it, either. Him and his rule about mixing business with personal matters. Jack had had no such rules.
But she couldn’t afford to think about Jack now. She refused to think about what Will would say when he found her working nine floors below, in a tiny cubicle.
She got out the iron and pressed a beige wraparound skirt and a darker tunic top, both of which would serve nicely as early maternity wear. Her hair, which she’d worn in a single braid at the ranch because Will liked it that way, would be twisted up on top of her head and anchored with a small clip and a few hairpins. If she was very careful, no one would guess how many butterflies were fluttering around in her stomach.
And if worse came to worst and there was no place for her at Wescott, she would look elsewhere for a job. It would have to be here in Royal, because she still had almost a month left on her lease. At the moment she’d be hard-pressed to come up with a security deposit on another place, much less a month’s rent in advance.
After putting away the ironing board, she yawned, but was too keyed up to sleep. She was hungry, but too tense to risk eating. When Will got back to the ranch and discovered she’d left….
The Millionaire's Pregnant Bride Page 10