“You don’t have to leave your suit on if you don’t want to.” His eyes twinkled as he said it. “We appear to have the ocean to ourselves today.”
Tessa smiled at him and then pulled her shirt over her head. Her bikini top followed, and she stood before him with her creamy breasts bared to the sun. Still holding his gaze, she took the bottle of sunscreen and massaged lotion over them, her motions slow and seductive. She watched his Adam’s apple bob and his gaze lower to the movement of her hands, and she laughed. If he’d been teasing, she’d called his bluff.
“May I help?” he purred, stepping closer to her.
“By all means.” Tessa let him take over. In just minutes, she gasped with pleasure, her breathing ragged and uneven.
“Sit down,” he commanded, and gently pushed her to the cushioned seats along the edge of the boat. He poured more sunscreen into his broad palms and massaged the warm lotion into her skin, starting at her feet and working his way up over her delicate ankles to her calves and then the sensitive area behind her knee. Tessa sucked in a breath and Seth smiled, his teeth gleaming against his tan. His hands moved higher, rubbing the sunscreen along the length of her thighs before parting them to touch the sensitive skin along the inside.
“Seth?” Her voice wasn’t much more than a moan.
“Why not take it all off, Tessa?” he coaxed. “I will too. Would you like that? Only the two of us are here to see.”
She nodded, his gentle stroking hands again making the heat spiral through her and leaving her wanting so much more. His fingers hooked in the top of her briefs and Tessa lifted her hips so he could slide her bottoms down her thighs and toss them to the side. He stood up and slid his own trunks down so he was as naked as she. Tessa’s heated gaze traveled from his intense stare down over his furry chest to the thrust of his cock.
He was so close. She leaned forward and clasped him in her hand, enjoying his low moan as she massaged him from base to tip, and cradled his sac in her other hand.
“Tessa!” It came out on an agonized groan after she leaned forward and let her lips trace the path of her hands.
Tangling his fingers in her hair, he moaned in pleasure, and she teased him again and again. He pulled her up and sat on the seat, with her straddling him. Their hands continued to caress each other until he grasped her wrist to still her movements.
“Condom. In my shorts,” he gasped.
She found the packet and ripped it open before sliding it over his hard length. He lowered her onto his erection as though he wanted their coming together to last all day. Then he was buried inside her.
“Is it too much? You’re so tiny, I’m always afraid I’ll hurt you.”
“Never,” she whispered against his mouth. “We fit together just right.”
Bracing her feet on the seat and wrapping her arms around his neck, she began to ride him. Seth’s head lolled backward in complete abandonment as she brought him to a shivering, groaning orgasm. Still deep inside her, he caressed her with his fingers until she collapsed against him and found her own sweet release.
They swam, the ocean cool against their nude bodies, and then Seth once again massaged her with sunscreen before they dozed on a thick blanket atop the boat he’d named Wanton. She felt that way with him. She woke up to find him studying her, his golden eyes soft and serious.
“I’m falling in love with you, Tessa,” he admitted, his voice gruff.
She wanted to believe. Every instinct cried out to her that she could trust this man. He would not tell her what he thought she wanted to hear. If Seth said it, he meant it. She wanted to believe, but the part of her that had seen her trust destroyed so many years ago still held itself aloof, refusing to believe it was anything more than the afterglow of some really great sex.
“Seth…”
She knew wariness lingered in her eyes. Rather than hear her put a voice to it, he put his fingers over her lips. “Shh. You don’t have to say anything, Tess. I promised no strings and I meant it. I just wanted you to know you mean more to me than just an amazing lover.” He leaned over and kissed her. “Let’s go home.”
They went out to dinner that night, traveling north along the coast to enjoy some of the rowdier night life. Some of the bars they visited shocked Tessa, but Seth laughed and whisked her onto a dance floor crowded with couples not always of the opposite sex. They made love on the beach that night. Seth brought a thick blanket out with him. He undressed her by the light of the moon and then as the surf rolled in a few yards away, he rocked her in perfect time with the crashing waves until desire overtook both of them, making their movements hurried and intense. Their eyes locked just moments before Tessa arched underneath him. He caught her scream of pleasure with his open mouth and plundering tongue and rode her until he too slipped over that edge of ecstasy.
They agreed to head home around lunchtime. Neither one of them wanted the weekend to end, but reality had a way of intruding. Seth reached for her hand as they traveled and held it to his lips for a brief kiss. She accepted it as a benediction of sorts, a sign they were back to the real world where he was Seth Barrett of Barrett Newspapers, and she was the ever-capable Tessa.
Chapter 10
Monday morning Tessa called her bank again since she’d heard nothing back. The representative on the line insisted the mystery deposit was supposed to be in her account. Tessa insisted it wasn’t, and no one yet seemed to know the source of the unexplained money.
“Every time we try to pull up the transaction record, we’re getting an error message, Miss Edwards.”
“That’s because it is an error.” Tessa ground her teeth in frustration. “It’s not supposed to be in my account. Well, I’m sure someone will come looking for it. I can’t imagine ten grand would disappear from an account without someone, somewhere taking notice.”
“We’ll continue to try to correct the problem, Miss Edwards.”
She hung up in disgust. She’d certainly want to know what had happened to ten thousand dollars if it were hers. At this point, though, she felt it was the bank’s problem to resolve. She’d told them and would just pretend the money wasn’t there. Anything else would be foolish in the extreme. She understood their reluctance to remove the money when they couldn’t yet pinpoint if it was even there, but her unease over it lingered. She supposed most of that was due to her innate desire to have everything in order.
In the meantime, she had other tasks to complete, so she went back to work on Seth’s trip to the West Coast papers. He would leave mid-week to visit northern California and Oregon before returning home late Friday. Brandon had the jet on a trip to Dallas, so Seth would have to take a commercial flight. Tessa took care of booking and paying for the flight with the travel account, and returned to the itineraries and meeting schedules for each of the papers he would visit. Seth had insisted he fly back late Friday because he would be making a turnaround to be at his niece’s christening in North Carolina.
Tuesday, Tessa reviewed the final itinerary and meeting agendas and made last minute adjustments before faxing everything to the papers on the West Coast. Seth was back in a brooding mood again. Tessa knew it had to do with the subject of the meetings. The papers weren’t performing up to expectations, and Seth was going in to troubleshoot and, if necessary, fire managers who weren’t cutting it.
She called the bank once again after lunch, but they had still not resolved the problem. As she hung up, Seth captured her hand. “May I take you to dinner tonight?”
She swallowed at the hot look in his eyes, everything else going right out of her head, and nodded. She floated through the rest of the afternoon, feeling somewhat reassured. With the way Seth’s mood had been, she had begun to wonder if their weekend together had been a fantasy she had dreamed up because it was what she wished would happen. He picked her up at seven and took her to one of the most exclusive restaurants in the area. They sat in a back corner, where they had some privacy, and talked about their weekend at the beach.
/> “I’d like you to come with me to North Carolina this weekend,” Seth said.
Tessa looked at him with uncertainty. “But it’s a family event, Seth.”
“All the more reason for me to want you there.”
Tessa’s temperature climbed at the look on his face. His words of love on the Wanton hung there, seducing her. As he drove back to her house, he caressed her hand. He switched the ignition off when they arrived.
“Would you like to come in for some coffee?” Tessa asked, hoping he wanted more than that.
He nodded and came around to open the door for her. He escorted her up the sidewalk and opened the door that led into her small two-bedroom apartment. She’d furnished it with quality pieces that would withstand the wear and tear of a small boy.
“Have a seat,” Tessa said over her shoulder. “I’ll go get the coffee started.”
Seth grabbed her and twirled her back in his arms. “Forget the coffee.” He smiled. “I’d much rather sip this.”
His lips tasted hers with a gentle demand that soon grew to ravenous proportions. She sighed against his lips, and his hands dropped to caress her bottom through her skirt. He dragged his mouth from hers and pressed her face against his broad chest.
“Lord, I’ve wanted to do that for the past forty-eight hours. I nearly bent you over my desk a couple times. The fantasy was so strong I swore I could feel my hands rubbing your ass, pushing your panties out of the way so I could plunge my tongue deep inside and taste your sweetness.”
He bent now and swung her into his arms. “Where’s your bedroom, Tessa? I think dessert is definitely on the menu, and I am a starving man.”
Tessa giggled and pointed down the hall.
He dwarfed the room with his size. As soon as they entered, he let her slide to her feet, so she could feel every aroused inch of him before he began to undress her. It was erotic to watch him as he removed her clothing piece by piece while he was still clothed in his dinner suit. When she stood before him nude, he let his eyes roam over her.
If he was a man ready for dessert, then she was a woman also starving. Tessa stepped forward and grabbed his tie. “My turn.” She kissed and caressed each part of him she bared, leaving him gasping when she knelt and wrapped her mouth around him, pleasuring him with her lips and tongue.
He pulled her up with a muffled groan and their lovemaking intensified, soon plummeting them both over the edge. As she lay on the silky sheets, he slid the head of his cock along her opening and pushed forward, filling her so they could think of nothing else while he rocked his hips. Seth arched his back and drove into her with a guttural growl of the most intense pleasure. His seed spilled into her and it was only then they remembered the condom still lying on the bedside table.
Seth stroked the hair back from her face. “I’m sorry, sweetheart,” he murmured. “I’m afraid we got a little carried away.”
“It’s okay,” Tessa dismissed. “The timing probably isn’t a factor anyway.” They dozed for a little while in each other’s arms and the next time, Seth made sure the condom was in place. Tessa had no idea what time it was when he woke her up with a kiss on the cheek.
“I’ve got to go, sweetheart, but I’ll call you as soon as I get back.”
Tessa smiled, her brain still fogged with sleep. “Bye, Seth.”
He kissed her one last lingering time on the lips and then he was gone.
* * * *
It seemed strange to be in the office the next day without Seth barking orders from the next room. Everything was so quiet and deserted, as if his mere absence had sucked the very life from the building. In a way it had. Brandon was seldom in town for long, spending a lot of time on the road in both business and pleasure. From the amount of work Seth handled, Tessa suspected Brandon’s share was mostly pleasure, and neither brother seemed happy with that. Of the elder Barlow-Barrett, there was seldom any sign, and she thanked heaven. Seth and Brandon were both strong-willed men, but they stepped around their father like they were walking on eggshells.
Tessa tried her bank again to see if they’d gotten any further in figuring out how the extra money had landed in her account, but they were still reading an error message and no one had filed any complaints yet that any money had been incorrectly credited.
“Can’t you put it in escrow or something since I’ve explained it doesn’t belong to me?” Tessa asked, her patience wearing thin.
“We’ll see what we can do,” the employee handling the discrepancy told her.
Right after Tessa returned from lunch, her extension rang. “Miss Edwards,” the young woman from her bank greeted her, “we located where the deposit came from and the date.”
Tessa listened to the girl and a cold knot formed in her stomach before she said, “That’s not possible. I was returning from Chicago that day, and I would never have authorized a deposit to my personal bank account from Barrett’s travel account. Transfer the funds back to Barrett’s account immediately, and I’ll try to figure out where the error occurred.”
Tessa hung up the phone, perplexed. She didn’t even like to think about the Chicago trip between being stuck in the elevator and the disastrous scene with Seth at the hotel. She was still trying to recall all the details from the trip when her phone rang again with an interoffice call. Tessa checked the caller ID and saw it was Miss Tallmadge, the senior Barrett’s secretary.
“Tessa Edwards here. How may I help you, Miss Tallmadge?”
The older woman’s voice sounded even colder than normal. “Mr. Barrett would like to see you in his office, Miss Edwards.”
“What time?” Tessa inquired as she started to check her schedule on the computer.
“Now.”
Tessa was left with the click of the phone disconnecting. She sat for a moment, wondering at the abrupt summons to Barrett senior’s office. Was he going to dress her down for spending most of the weekend undressing his son? But hot on the heels of that irreverent thought, something else occurred to her, and cold seeped through her. Could it have something to do with the money that had ended up in her account? Was it possible that at the same time she’d been trying to figure out where it had come from, they had also been trying to figure out where it had gone? As she racked her brain about how it could have happened, she walked up to the next floor and down the long hallway carpeted in a sound-deadening pile.
She had been so upset when she came home from Chicago that evening and had rushed in the house. She’d wanted to hide her tears from Zach… Tessa paused outside the door to Alexander Barlow-Barrett’s suite of offices. Her computer and bag… Zach had brought them in. Had he… She shook her head. No way. He couldn’t have known the account number, could he? She went over and over possible scenarios as to how he might have accessed the account as she turned the knob. Although she didn’t want to pin it on Zach, she couldn’t fathom how it could be anyone else.
If at all possible, Tallmadge looked even icier than usual. She punched the intercom as soon as Tessa walked through the door.
“Miss Edwards is here, Mr. Barrett.” Tallmadge examined her with cold, colorless eyes. “Come with me.”
Tessa made a face behind the older woman’s back at her imperious tone, but worry haunted her. She knew Zach had been angry at Seth, but surely he wouldn’t… She didn’t even want to go there, and she knew no matter what happened, she would never admit it might have been her little brother who had fiddled with the Barrett account. She would do anything to protect him. He was a kid.
“Miss Edwards.” Alexander Barrett’s tone was as cold as a nor’easter blowing in as he turned toward her. He did not invite her to sit. “The accounting department has been researching an irregularity with one of our accounts, and it was brought to my attention you might know something about it.”
“Which account would that be, sir?” Tessa inquired, trying to stall for time. Sweat trickled down her spine. If any of this came back to Zach, her aunt and uncle would return to court seeking custody again.<
br />
“The travel account Seth and Brandon use,” Barrett said.
“What seems to be the problem?” Tessa asked, but inside she quaked.
“A matter of some missing funds, ten thousand dollars worth. I spoke to Seth, who said you are the only one who’s accessed the account in the last month.” Alexander Barrett paused. “Now, Miss Edwards, let’s stop playing games. Perhaps you should tell me what’s going on.”
Tessa raised her chin. She hated lying, but Zach had to come first. “I know nothing at all about it.”
“Then perhaps you would care to explain the note I have from your own bank saying you authorized a deposit this morning from your account to replace the money.”
Tessa could do nothing to hide her involuntary start.
“Ah, I see we’re jogging your memory.”
“I have no idea how the money ended up in my account to begin with,” Tessa protested, but she knew it sounded weak. He’d caught her in a lie, so her credibility was shot.
Alexander Barlow-Barrett eyed her with all the warmth of a pit viper. “For the sake of my son, who seems to value your…services, I am not handing you over to the police. However, as of right now, your employment with Barrett is terminated.”
“Seth…” Tessa started to protest, but if anything Barrett’s gaze became even more glacial.
“Knows what I am doing and agrees it is the only course. Since he’s out of town and can’t do it himself, he’s left your departure in my hands.” With one last look that dismissed her as being no more important than a speck of lint, he went back to the papers he’d been scanning. “Tallmadge will escort you out.”
Tessa was in shock. Seth knew? He had agreed–without even talking to her? She barely heard Tallmadge as she returned to her desk. She grabbed a picture of Zach and the fisherman’s loop Seth had tied and followed Tallmadge into the elevator. Tessa closed her eyes the whole way down, refusing to let the older woman see her fear at being in that confined space. She ignored the strange glances they received as Tallmadge walked with her all the way to the sidewalk, where a cab waited.
Balancing Act Page 13