Harlequin Desire February 2013 - Bundle 1 of 2: The King Next DoorMarriage With BenefitsA Real Cowboy (Kings of California)

by Maureen Child

  Dull thunks registered, and Lucas’s hands delved inside her shirt, yanking down her bra and palming her breasts. Buttons. He’d popped all the buttons on her shirt and they’d thunked to the floor.

  Four seconds later, he stripped her. Then he tore off his jacket, ripped the rest of his clothes half off and boosted her onto the counter. Cold stone cooled her bare bottom and sizzled against her fevered core.

  Less than five minutes after he’d walked in the door, he spread her legs wide and plunged in with a heavy groan.

  She dropped into the spiral of need and hooked her legs behind him, urging him on. His mouth was everywhere, hot and insatiable. His thrusts were hard, fast. She met him each time, already eager for the next one. Pinpoints of sensation swirled and then burst as she came, milking his climax.

  What happened to slow down?

  They slumped together, chests heaving, her head on his shoulder and his head on hers. She put her arms around him for support since her spine had been replaced with Jell-O.

  “Um, hi,” she said, without a trace of irony. If this was what their relationship would look like going forward, the view agreed with her quite well.

  “Hi,” he repeated, and she heard the smile in his voice.

  “How was your day?”

  He laughed and it rumbled against her abdomen. “Unproductive except for the last ten minutes. You distracted me all day. Don’t disappear tomorrow morning. I’d like to wake up with you.”

  The explosive countertop sex had been hot, but the simplicity, the normalcy, of his request warmed her. “It’s not my fault you’re such a heavy sleeper. Set an alarm.”

  “Maybe I will.” Carefully, he separated from her and trashed the condom. He helped her to the floor and gathered up her clothes, which he handed off, then began pulling on his own clothes with casual nonchalance. “I have another favor. I swear I was going to ask first but, darlin’, you have to stop looking at me like that when I come in.”

  When his muscled, inked torso disappeared behind his ruined shirt, she sighed. Those tribal tattoos symbolized Lucas to a T—untamed, unexpected and thoroughly hidden beneath the surface. One of his many layers few people were aware existed, let alone privileged enough to experience. How lucky was she?

  “You looked at me first.” Of course, he always looked at her like a chocoholic with unlimited credit at the door of a sweetshop. “What’s the favor? Do I get another dress out of the deal?”

  He grinned and kissed her hand. “Of course. Except this time, I intend to take it off of you afterward.”

  “Or during.” She shrugged and opted to toss her irreparable blouse in the trash. Lucas might end up buying her a new wardrobe after all, by default. “You know, if it’s boring and you happen to spy a coat closet or whatever.”

  His irises flared with heat and zinged her right in the abdomen. “Why, Mrs. Wheeler, that is indeed a fine offer. I will surely keep it under advisement. Come with me and let’s see about your dress.”

  Mrs. Wheeler. He’d called her that before, and it was her official title, so it shouldn’t lodge in her windpipe, cutting off her air supply.

  But it did. Maybe because she’d just been the recipient of a mind-blowing climax courtesy of Mr. Wheeler.

  He took her hand and led her upstairs, where the couture fairies had left a garment bag hanging over her closet door. Her fake husband was a man of many, many talents, and she appreciated every last one.

  “By the way,” Lucas said. “When I ran into the maid earlier, I told her we’d had a little misunderstanding about a former girlfriend, but you were noble enough to get past it. I hope that’s okay. Any excuse for why we weren’t sharing a bedroom is better than nothing, right?”

  “More than okay. Perfect.” And not just the excuse. While she still basked in the afterglow of amazing sex, everything about Lucas was perfect.

  The deep blue dress matched her eyes and eclipsed the red one in style and fit. Lucas leaned against the doorjamb of the bathroom, watching her dress with a crystalline focus and making complimentary noises. His attention made her feel beautiful and desired, two things she’d never expected to like.

  Lucas Wheeler was a master of filling gaps, not creating them. Of giving, not taking. Ironic how she’d accused him of being selfish when trying to convince him to marry her.

  As they entered the Calliope Foundation Charity Ball, a cluster of Wheelers surrounded them. Lucas’s parents, she already knew, but she met his grandparents for the first time and couldn’t help but contrast the open, smiling couple to Abuelo’s tendency to be remote.

  Matthew joined them amid the hellos, and his cool smile reminded her she owed Lucas one asset of a wife. It was the very least she could do in return for his selflessness over the entire course of their acquaintance.

  A room full of society folk and money and lots of opportunities to put her foot in her mouth were nearly last on her list of fun activities, right after cleaning toilets and oral surgery. But she kept her hand in Lucas’s as they worked the room; she laughed at his jokes, smiled at the men he spoke to and complimented their wives’ jewelry or dress.

  There had to be more, a way to do something more tangible than tittering over lame golf stories and smiling through a fifteen-minute discourse on the Rangers’ bull pen.

  “Are these clients or potential clients?” she asked Lucas after several rounds of social niceties and a very short dance with Grandfather Wheeler because she couldn’t say no when he asked so nicely.

  “Mostly potential. As I’m sure you’re aware, our client list is rather sparse at the moment.”

  “Is there someone you’re targeting?”

  “Moore. He still hasn’t signed. Matthew invited another potential, who’s up here from Houston. George Walsh. He’s looking to expand, and if I’m not mistaken, he just walked in.”

  If Walsh lived elsewhere, the Lana fiasco probably factored little in his decision process. “Industry?”

  “Concrete. Pipes, foundations, that sort of thing. He’s looking for an existing facility with the potential to convert but wouldn’t be opposed to build-to-suit.” He laughed and shook his head. “You can’t be interested in all this.”

  “But I am. Or I wouldn’t have asked. Introduce me to this Walsh.”

  With an assessing once-over, he nodded, then led her to where Matthew conversed with a fortyish man in an ill-fitting suit.

  Matthew performed the introductions, and Cia automatically evaluated George Walsh. A working man with calluses, who ran his company personally and preferred to get his hands dirty in the day to day. Now what?

  Schmoozing felt so fake, and she’d never been good at it. Lucas managed to be genuine, so maybe her attitude was the problem. How could she get better?

  Though it sliced through her with a serrated edge, she shut her eyes for a brief second and channeled her mother in a social setting. What would she have done? Drinks. Graciousness. Smiles. Then business.

  Cia asked Walsh his drink preference and signaled a waiter as she chatted about his family, his hobbies and his last vacation. Smiling brightly, she called up every shred of business acumen in her brain. “So, Mr. Walsh, talk to me about the concrete business. This is certainly a booming area. Every new building needs a concrete foundation, right?”

  He lit up and talked for a solid ten minutes about the weather, the economy and a hundred other reasons to set up shop in north Texas. Periodically, she threw in comments about Lucas and his commitment to clients—which in no way counted as fabrication since she had firsthand experience with his thoughtful consideration and careful attention to details.

  Somehow, the conversation became more than acting as an asset to Lucas and enhancing his reputation, more than reciprocation for upholding his end of the bargain. She’d failed at drumming up donations for the shelter, despite believing in
it so deeply. Here, she was a part of a partnership, one half of Mr. and Mrs. Wheeler, and that profoundly changed her ability to succeed.

  It reiterated that this marriage was her best shot at fulfilling her mother’s wishes.

  “Did I do okay?” she whispered to Lucas after Matthew took Walsh off to meet some other people.

  Instead of answering, he backed her into a secluded corner, behind a potted palm, and pulled her into his arms. Then he kissed her with shameless heat.

  Helplessly, she clung to his strong shoulders as he explored every corner of her mouth. His strength and solid build gave him the means to do the only thing he claimed to want—to take care of her. It wasn’t as horrible or overbearing as she might have anticipated.

  It was...nice. He understood her, what she wanted. Her dreams. Her fears. And they were partners. Who had amazing sex.

  When he pulled back, the smile on his face took her breath.

  “More than okay,” he said. “Are you angling to join the firm?”

  “Well, my name is Wheeler,” she said in jest, but it didn’t seem as funny out loud. That was a whole different kind of partnership. Permanent. Real. Not part of the plan.

  “Yes. It is.” He lifted her chin to pierce her with a charged look. The ballroom’s lighting refracted inside his eyes, brightening them. He leaned in, and the world shrank down to encompass only the two of them as he laid his lips on hers in a tender kiss. A kiss with none of the heat and none of the carnal passion sizzling between them like the first time.

  It was a lover’s kiss. Her limp hands hung at her sides as her heart squeezed.

  Oh, no. No, no, no.

  “We have to find that coat closet. Now,” she hissed against his mouth. Sex. That’s all there was between them, all she’d allow. No tenderness, no affection, no stupid, girlie heart quivers.

  His eyebrows flew up. “Now? We just got he— Why am I arguing about this?”

  Linking hands, he pulled her along at a brisk trot, and she almost laughed at the intensity of his search for a private room. Around a corner of the hotel’s long hallway, they found an empty storage room.

  Lucas held the door and shooed her in, slammed it shut and backed her against the wood, his ravenous mouth on hers.

  The world righted itself as the hard press of his body heated hers through the deep blue dress. This, she accepted. Two people slaking a mutual wild thirst and nothing more.

  “Condom,” she whispered.

  He had about four seconds to produce it. An accidental pregnancy would tie her to this man for life, and, besides, she didn’t want children. Well, she didn’t want to cause herself heartache, which was practically the same thing.

  “Right here. I was warned I’d need it.”

  Fabric bunched around her waist an instant later, and her panties hit the ground. He lifted her effortlessly, squashing her against the door and spreading her legs, wrapping them around him.

  The second he entered her—buried so deep, every pulse of his hard length nudging her womb—she threw her head back and rode the wave to a mind-draining climax.

  Yes. Brainless and blistering. Perfect.

  When she came down and met the glowing eyes of her husband, a charged, momentous crackle passed between them.

  She’d keep right on pretending she hadn’t noticed.

  * * *

  Warm sunlight poured through the window of Lucas’s office. He swiveled his chair away from it and forced his attention back to the sales contract on his laptop screen. Property—dirt, buildings, concrete or any combination—lived in his DNA and he’d dedicated his entire adulthood to it. It shouldn’t be so difficult to concentrate on his lifeblood.

  It was.

  His imagination seemed bent on inventing ways to get out of the office and go home. In the past few weeks, he’d met a sprinkler repairman, an attic radiant barrier consultant and a decorator. A decorator. Flimsy, he had to admit.

  A couple of times after showings, he’d swung by the house, which was mostly on the way back to the office. Through absolutely no fault of his own, Cia had been home all those times, as well, and it would have been a crime against nature not to take advantage of the totally coincidental timing.

  Ironic how a marriage created to rescue his business was the very thing stealing his attention from business.

  Moore had signed. Walsh had signed. Both men were enthusiastic about the purchases they’d committed to, and Lucas intended to ensure they stayed that way. Cia’s interactions with them had been the clincher; he was convinced.

  His dad had gone out of his way to tell Lucas how good this marriage was for him, how happy he seemed. And why wouldn’t he be? Cia was amazing, and he got to wake up with her long hair tangled in his fingers every morning.

  The past few weeks had been the best of his life. The next few could be even better as long as he kept ignoring how Cia had bled into his everyday existence. Every time they made love, the hooks dug in a little deeper. Her shadows rarely appeared now, and he enjoyed keeping them away for her. He liked that she needed him.

  If he ignored it all, it wasn’t really happening.

  Matthew knocked on the open door, his frame taut and face blank. “Dad called. Grandpa’s in the hospital,” he said. “Heart attack. It’s not good. Dad wants us to come and sit with Mama.”

  Heart attack? Not Grandpa. That heavy weight settled back into place on his chest, a weight that hadn’t been there since the night he met Cia.

  Lucas rose on unsteady legs. “What? No way. Grandpa’s healthier than you and me put together. He beat me at golf a month ago.”

  Protesting. Like it would change facts. His grandfather was a vibrant man. Seventy-five years old, sure, but he kept his finger on the pulse of Texas real estate and still acted as a full partner in the firm.

  When Lucas had graduated from college, Grandpa had handed him an envelope with the papers granting Lucas a quarter ownership in Wheeler Family Partners. A careworn copy lined the inner pocket of his workbag and always would.

  “I’ll drive.” Matthew turned and stalked away without waiting for Lucas.

  Lucas threw his laptop in his bag and shouldered it, then texted Helena to reschedule his appointments for the day as he walked out. Once seated in Matthew’s SUV, he texted Cia. His wife would be expected at the hospital.

  The Cityplace building loomed on the right as Matthew drove north out of downtown. They didn’t talk. They never talked anymore except about work or baseball. But nothing of substance, by Matthew’s choice.

  They’d been indivisible before Amber. She’d come along, and Matthew had happily become half of a couple. Lucas observed from a distance with respect and maybe a small amount of envy. Of course his relationship with Matthew had shifted, as it should, but then Amber died and his brother disappeared entirely.

  Lucas sat with his family in the waiting room, tapped out a few emails on his phone and exchanged strained small talk with Mama. His dad paced and barked at hospital personnel until a dour doctor appeared with the bad news.

  Lucas watched his dad embrace Mama, and she sobbed on his shirt. In that moment, they were not his parents, but two people who turned to each other, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health.

  Apart from everyone, Matthew haunted the window, stoic and unyielding as always, refusing to engage or share his misery with anyone. Not even Lucas.

  The scene unfolded in surreal, grinding slow motion. He couldn’t process the idea of his grandfather, the Wheeler patriarch, being gone.

  Cia, her long, shiny hair flying, barreled into the waiting room and straight into Lucas. He flung his arms around her small body in a fierce clinch.

  The premise that she’d come solely for the sake of appearances vanished. She was here. His wife was in his arms, right where she should be. The world se
ttled. He clutched her tight, and coconut and lime wafted into his senses, breaking open the weight on his chest.

  Now it was real. Now it was final. Grandpa was gone, and he hadn’t gotten to say goodbye.

  “I’m glad you came,” Lucas said, and his voice hitched. “He didn’t make it.”

  “I’m sorry, so sorry. He was a great man,” she murmured into his shirt, warm hands sliding along his back, and they stood there for forever while he fought for control over the devastating grief.

  When he tilted his head to rest a cheek on top of Cia’s hair, he caught Matthew watching them, arms crossed, with an odd expression on his face. Missing his own wife most likely.

  Finally, Lucas let Cia slip from his embrace. She gripped his hand and followed silently as he spoke to his dad, then she drove him to his parents’ house with careful attention to the speed limit.

  Mama talked about funeral arrangements with his father and grandmother, and through it all Cia never left his side, offering quiet support and an occasional comforting squeeze. Surely she had other commitments, other things she’d rather be doing than hanging out in a place where everyone spoke in hushed tones about death.

  Her keys remained in her purse, untouched, and she didn’t leave.

  It meant a lot that she cared enough to stay. It said a lot, too—they’d become friends as well as lovers. He hadn’t expected that. He’d never had that.

  For the first time, he considered what might happen after the divorce. Would they still have contact? Could they maintain some kind of relationship, maybe a friends-with-benefits deal?

  He pondered the sudden idea until Matthew motioned him outside. Cia buzzed around the kitchen fixing Mama a drink, so he followed his brother out to the screened-in porch.

  Matthew retrieved a longneck from a small refrigerator tucked into the corner, popped the top with the tail of his button-down in a practiced twist and flopped into a wicker chair, swigging heartily from the bottle.

  Lucas started to comment about the hour, but a beer with his brother on the afternoon of his grandfather’s death didn’t sound half-bad. Might cure his dry throat.