by Janice Sims
“May I see you in private?” she asked as she rose.
T.K. immediately got up. “Lead the way.”
When they left the kitchen, Nina turned to Patrick, distressed. “Why did he have to say that about the ring? Women are sentimental about their engagement rings. You can’t just chalk it up as a loss and buy another one if something happens to it. It’s special.”
Patrick glanced at the one-carat diamond on his wife’s finger. It had been all he could afford. He took her hand in his. He had almost been ashamed to present her with it when he had proposed. “You like your ring?” he asked softly.
Nina kissed his face enthusiastically. “I love it!” she said.
Patrick smiled at her. He adored her.
In her bedroom, Patrice closed the door after she and T.K. were inside. Turning to face him, she said, “You may think I’m being unreasonable because I got angry when you suggested replacing my ring if I should lose it or damage it, but this is important to me, Trevor. Money can’t fix everything. What was touching and special last night when you proposed you made commonplace and trivial when you suggested I treat the ring like an everyday bauble. Come on, that’s my engagement ring. You chose it. It’ll always be special to me.”
“Honestly, I was only joking,” T.K. tried to ex plain.
Patrice eyed him skeptically. “And maybe showing off a little in front of the soon-to-be-in-laws?”
T.K. thought about it and laughed suddenly. Maybe he had been bragging a bit. It was hard being T. K. McKenna without being perhaps a touch arrogant. “So what if I want your family to know that I can take care of you?”
“Believe me, baby, they’re not impressed with a big Hollywood hotshot. They’re more impressed with the guy who would go with them to move the cows to the south pasture. They don’t want their daughter and sister to marry some guy with plenty of money who isn’t going to cherish her. They think of Hollywood people with horror when they hear of all the divorces and infidelity out there.”
“Divorces and infidelity happen everywhere,” T.K. reminded her.
“Yes, but Hollywood has theirs broadcast all over the media,” Patrice said with a tired sigh.
T.K. looked deeply into her eyes and heaved a sigh. “I looked like a fool.”
“No, you didn’t. You were just being an alpha male who takes care of his woman. Every male in that kitchen is an alpha male. They understand you.” She walked into his open arms. “But we women have to tame you, sometimes gentle you down a bit.”
“Make us putty in your hands,” said T.K. as his mouth descended on hers.
It had been a while since they’d kissed like this. They were both hungry for it, and because of that, the kiss aroused them that much more. Patrice melted into his embrace, her body molded to his. She could not get close enough. Their tongues took pleasure from being reunited. It was so sweet that they stood there and kissed for several minutes and didn’t at first hear the knocking on the door.
Patrice hadn’t locked the door. She’d just shut it. She rarely locked doors in her parents’ house. “Coming in,” called Cady.
They flew apart, guilty expressions on their faces. Patrice was glad she hadn’t put on lipstick this morning because if she had it would be smeared all over T.K.’s mouth.
“Are you two all right?” Cady asked. “We were worried about you. Don’t want you calling off the wedding before we’ve even planned it.”
Patrice and T.K. stood there with their arms around each other’s waists, presenting a lovely picture of togetherness. “We’re over it,” Patrice said of their argument. “No worries.”
“Okay, I’ll leave you alone, then,” said Cady, smiling. “Breakfast’s getting cold.”
When she’d gone, they looked at one another and laughed. “Good thing she showed up,” T.K. joked. “We would have been naked in a couple minutes.”
Patrice knew he was right. Her body was still tingling with pleasure.
T.K. bent his head to kiss her again, and she ducked underneath his arm and headed for the door. “No, no, let’s eat breakfast and make up some excuse about seeing the city. Then we can get a hotel room.” Her gaze was serious. “I won’t be able to cope if I don’t make love to you soon.”
T.K. liked the sound of that. He followed her back to the kitchen.
“Did she take you to the woodshed?” asked Patrick Sr. as soon as they sat down.
T.K. nodded and smiled at Patrice. “She really let me have it,” he said.
Patrice kicked him underneath the table.
Later, when Patrice was helping her mother with the dishes, Cady, who was washing while Patrice dried, cleared her throat. “My, oh, my, the way that man looks at you reminds me of the way your daddy used to look at me when we first met, like I was something good to eat and he was starving to death!”
Patrice looked at her mother with a shocked expression, but her eyes were lit with humor. “Momma, you know we kids don’t like to think of you and Daddy having a sex life. We were immaculate conceptions—all of us.”
Cady laughed. “You’re a fine actress, darling, but not that good. You take delight in the fact that your father and I still love each other. That gives you and T.K. hope. It tells you that marriages can last even in the twenty-first century. As for passion, I say grab all of it while you can. There’s a reason God made us passionate. It was to keep the family going. Family is important. Sometimes, it’s the only thing that’s important. Jobs come and go. There are fair-weather friends. But when a man and a woman come together in marriage and have children together, if they really love each other, now that’s worth getting up for every morning.”
Patrice had finished drying the dishes, and she now began putting them away in the cabinets above the sink. She regarded her mother. “Was there any time you thought you had made a mistake by marrying Daddy?” she asked. “I know you come from a well-to-do family in Charleston. I remember our girl cousins being so prim and proper and how much they looked down their noses at us. I never told you, but I was not happy going down South. They never made me feel welcome. I wondered where all that Southern hospitality they talked about was.”
Her mother laughed shortly. “I never fit in, either. My parents were both born into well-to-do families in Charleston. Theirs was a match made to unite two rich families. I don’t believe they were ever happy together. It’s sad, really. When I was growing up, I always told myself that I would not marry for anything except love—not only love but a passionate love. Your grandparents, God rest their souls, never expressed passion for anything. It was such a white-bread world. When I came to Albuquerque with some friends from college, I experienced something magical. Here was a land of spices. People here were of different nationalities behaving as if they didn’t care about their differences. What they cared about was a sense of community and their families. Then when I met your father, who was trying to make a go of the ranch on his own, I saw a man of strength and character. He wasn’t bad-looking either. We fell in love almost instantly. I mean this sincerely, my love. The first time we looked at each other, we knew that there was something powerful between us. I tried to fight it because I was this little Southern girl who’d been brought up by strict parents. I’d never gone out on a date until I was eighteen. At twenty-one, though, and fresh out of college, I exulted in my independence. I told my friends they would have to go back to Charleston without me. I was staying and marrying your father.”
“That didn’t sit well with your parents, I imagine,” Patrice said.
Her mother chuckled. “They actually came after me, but by the time they got here, your father and I had gotten married at the courthouse and had consummated the marriage several times to my utter satisfaction. I’ve never regretted marrying your father and staying in New Mexico.”
Patrice guffawed. “All right, now!”
“Three months after we were married I found out I was pregnant with you,” Cady said wistfully.
“You two worked fast,” Pat
rice said, still laughing.
“That’s why I made the honeymoon comment last night after you got engaged. We are very fertile women. It doesn’t take too many tries to make a baby in this family.”
That was food for thought for Patrice. Maybe condoms weren’t a good enough form of birth control for her and T.K. Work-wise she was booked well into the next year. She shouldn’t get pregnant for the next two years. However, if all precautions were a total bust and she turned up pregnant anyway, there was no doubt she would have the baby.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Patrice said of the women in her family being very fertile.
Cady gave her a smile and a quick hug. “So, what are you and T.K. doing on your last day in town?”
“I thought I’d take him to a few of my favorite places, if you can spare me in the kitchen for a few hours,” Patrice told her.
“I’ll put Keira and Nina to work,” her mother said. “They’ve been allowing you to help me in the kitchen since they know you love to cook. You and T.K. have fun.”
Half an hour later, Patrice and T.K. were in his SUV with her at the wheel. T.K. sat in the passenger seat with his sunglasses on, smiling. “Where’re we going?”
“We’re going to Old Town,” Patrice said as she drove. It was an overcast day, looked like snow again in the afternoon. She breathed a sigh of relief. It wasn’t as cold here as it had been in Wyoming.
“Are we going sightseeing today?” T.K. asked, watching her profile. He knew where they would eventually end up, but perhaps Patrice wanted to go someplace else so that when they returned to the ranch she could say they’d been seeing the town and not have to totally lie about that whereabouts.
“No, we’re going to Hotel Albuquerque at Old Town,” Patrice told him. “It’s in the middle of the historic Old Town Plaza and museum district, an area that’s been there over 400 years.”
“You seem a little nervous,” T.K. observed.
“I wish we had left a bag in the car when we arrived, but we didn’t. I had a hard time sneaking an overnight bag and a garment bag into the car. There’s always somebody around the house.”
T.K. laughed. “Why would you sneak a bag out of the house? We aren’t going to spend the night.”
“You don’t check into a luxury hotel without bags,” Patrice said, perfectly serious. “They don’t rent rooms by the hour.”
T.K. laughed harder. “Darlin’, you are so innocent in some ways. As long as you’ve got the money to pay for the room they don’t care if you use it for an hour or a month.
“That’s your business.”
“Okay,” Patrice said skeptically. “I’m not walking into that hotel empty-handed, that’s all.”
“You’re so stubborn,” said T.K.
“Yes, I am,” agreed Patrice.
The minute she and T.K. began walking toward the registration desk, however, Patrice was glad she was taking steps to be careful. Behind the desk was Lucy Lopez. She’d had no idea Lucy worked there! Lucy hadn’t looked up and seen her yet.
Patrice turned to T.K. “You’re going to have to get the room on your own. The woman behind the desk is Keira’s sister-in-law. Keep your sunglasses on. Hopefully she won’t recognize you. I’ll wait for you by the elevators.” She handed him the bags.
T.K. humored her. It was obvious she was concerned that it would get back to her family that they’d gone to a hotel while they were visiting.
At the desk, he registered as Trevor Kennedy McKenna. Lucy Lopez smiled at him, her eyes roving over his muscular frame and his face, but she didn’t seem to connect him with the actor, T. K. McKenna.
Room key in hand, he joined Patrice at the bank of elevators. Several other people were waiting for the conveyance as well. He leaned down to whisper in her ear, “Mission accomplished. I don’t think she recognized me.”
“Good,” Patrice whispered back.
On the ride up to their floor, they stood in the back of the elevator, arms around each other’s waists. The other five passengers were obviously tourists. They were talking about historic Old Town and their visit to see the annual River of Lights display at the Rio Grande Botanic Garden.
“We went there, didn’t we?” asked T.K.
Patrice nodded. “Yes, the first day we were here, all the Christmas lights?” she said, giving him a brief description of the attraction in order to enhance his memory.
“Oh, yeah, they were something else,” he said appreciatively.
One of the women, an attractive black woman in her mid-thirties, turned to look at T.K. and cautiously asked, “Aren’t you T. K. McKenna?”
T.K. laughed shortly. He pulled off his sunglasses and said to Patrice, “I told you I looked like T. K. McKenna with my head shaved.” Then he said back at the woman, “She even thinks so.”
Patrice smiled at the woman. “Please don’t encourage him. I’ll never hear the end of it. No, my fiancé isn’t T. K. McKenna.”
The woman squinted up at T.K. and wrinkled her nose. “Come to think of it, he’s not as tall as you are, is he? They always look bigger on the screen. I hear Tom Cruise is only five-seven. He looks bigger in the movies.” She smiled at T.K. again. “But I’m with you. You do look an awful lot like him.”
When they got to their suite, Patrice unlocked the door and stumbled into it laughing. “We go to all that trouble of getting around Lucy unnoticed and then you get recognized on the elevator!”
T.K. frowned. “I hated confusing the poor woman. But I did it to save your reputation.” He laughed shortly. “You should have seen your face when you spotted Keira’s sister-in-law behind the registration desk. You were bug-eyed.”
Patrice put her shoulder bag on the foyer table and went to him to relieve him of the bags he was carrying. She placed them beside her bag on the table. With this done, she got out of her coat and hung it on the hall tree next to the door and turned to face him. T.K. had already removed his coat and thrown it onto a nearby chair. His gaze roamed over her luscious body in jeans and a royal blue sweater. Patrice took a deep breath as she watched him, her chest rising and falling.
No words were needed at this point. They fell on each other, kissing hungrily. T.K. pulled her sweater over her head and kissed her again. Her chest pressed against his, but she wasn’t satisfied with the feel of his shirt. She broke off the kiss long enough to unbutton his denim shirt and pull it off him. He undid the clasps on her bra, and finally, they were skin to skin. They both sighed contentedly. Her nipples hardened at the first touch of his skin on hers. T.K. jerked her roughly against him, then picked her up fireman style and tossed her butt-first onto the king-size bed. He took the time to remove her shoes and drop them onto the floor. Patrice unbuttoned her button-fly jeans, and he grasped them by the hems and pulled them off her. All that was left on her were a very small pair of panties.
T.K. got out of his athletic shoes, socks and jeans. He wore boxer-briefs. They were molded to his body, and the bulge in them was quite impressive. Patrice looked at that bulge and suddenly remembered. No condoms. She didn’t have a single condom with her. “Condoms?” she croaked, looking desperately at T.K., willing him to say he’d remembered them.
He chuckled and went to get his wallet out of his jeans’ pocket. “The old standbys,” he said as he held up a couple for her to see.
“Not too old, I hope,” said Patrice.
“Trust me,” he said as he knelt on the bed, tossed the condoms in their wrappers onto the bed where they’d be within easy reach and grasped the waistband of her panties and began pulling. Patrice lifted her hips a bit to help him. When the panties had been tossed behind him, he spread her legs and simply looked at her a moment. He loved everything about her body, how her full breasts felt in the palms of his hands, how her firm round bottom looked like a perfectly formed peach. He leaned down and kissed her mouth. She wrapped her arms and her legs around his body. She sighed with pleasure, and her tongue made love to his. She might have all the physical attributes of every ot
her woman he had made love to in the past, but she certainly used them in a unique, thoroughly satisfying fashion. With her, he knew that she was enjoying herself as much as he was. She pushed it to the limit every time. Because of that, it felt new and exciting every time they made love.
She gestured for him to roll her over so that she would be on top. He happily obliged.
He knew what she was after, getting him out of his boxer-briefs. He admitted that he liked it when she released him and held him in her hands. He moaned softly when she reenacted the scene that had been in his mind.
Patrice held him in her hand. His hard member pulsed with a life of its own. She bent and licked the tip. He throbbed in her hand. She took this as an indication it was time to put the condom on. He never liked coming before her; he said it made no sense since he would have to wait a few minutes before he was hard again. He wanted her to get her pleasure first.
So she took her pleasure. After putting the condom on him, she climbed onto his member and rode him until he was crying out for release. She had come once and was approaching another explosion.
Their bodies had a thin layer of perspiration, and it was with sweet pain coupled with intense pleasure, a few minutes later, that she cried out as another climax rocked her and he grabbed her hips and pumped her hard before crying out in release himself. She fell onto his chest a bit breathlessly and kissed his mouth, biting his lower lip, felt his member throb some more inside of her and then suckled his lower lip.
Momentarily, she laid her head on his chest. T.K. sighed. He even liked it when she lay on top of him afterward, their bodies slick, warm and satisfied. “It’s always over way too soon for me,” he said softly in her ear.
She looked into his eyes. “Yes, but I like this time together, just holding you.”
T.K. smiled. He didn’t want to ever be parted from her for any reason. He thought about their first argument. He would try to be more sensitive about her workingwoman sensibilities and not be so blasé about the cost of things. Had he been a rich man for so long that he no longer knew how to think like the average American? Had he become elitist? He hated to think that he had. He would work on that.