by Nika Rhone
Amelia had evidently done them one better and totally blown a big old hole in the box, and she’d done it all by herself with no input from them.
And it didn’t appear as though it had gone well.
“How did he, uh…?”
“Respond?” Amelia bit her lip and then gave Thea a sheepish grin. “Well, he’s not gay, anyway.” The grin slipped away. “I think I’d almost rather he was.”
“What happened?”
“We were on the bed, and things were going the way I’d hoped. It was…nice.”
Nice? Thea couldn’t imagine describing sex with the man you loved as “nice.” Not after experiencing what she had just that morning with Doyle. It was hot, frantic, mind-blowing, toe-curling, even earth-shattering. Nice? Nuh-uh.
“He’d turned the lights down low, which was good because I was pretty nervous about getting naked in front of him. But I did it,” she said with pride, then gave a cheeky grin. “I wore some of the lingerie that Lil picked out when we went shopping for you. I’ll have to tell her she has good taste. Charles liked it. A lot.” She managed a giggle. “To be honest, I think I shocked him.”
“Good.” Thea tried to picture the look on the usually unflappable politician’s face when his quiet little fiancée stripped down to a set of racy, lacy undies. She couldn’t do it.
“Things kind of went fast after that.” Pink tinged her cheeks. “Maybe a little too fast, to tell you the truth. I was still pretty nervous and he was pretty eager, and…it was just starting to feel good when…”
“When?”
“He stopped.” The words were a mere whisper.
“He stopped? Like, he realized he was going too fast and slowed things down?”
“No, I mean he stopped.” The pink had turned a bright red, and Amelia wouldn’t meet Thea’s eyes as she rushed on. “He got up and sat on the edge of the bed. At first I thought he was opening the nightstand to get, you know, protection.”
“But he wasn’t,” Thea said, dreading where this was going.
Amelia shook her head. “He was answering his phone.”
“He…” Thea was sure she must have heard wrong.
“Answered. His. Phone.” Amelia spat each word as though it were a curse and then angrily wiped at the tear that ran down her cheek. “I hadn’t realized he put it there, and I didn’t hear it ring. He must have had it on vibrate.”
“You…he…” Thea closed her mouth with a snap, unable to string out a coherent response. She’d known Charles was an ambitious bastard, but this! It went beyond being insensitive. It was heartless and cruel, and she was going to make the bastard pay for every tear he’d made Amelia shed over him.
“I thought, okay, maybe it was something important, and he had to answer it,” Amelia said.
“Nothing is that important. Not even if it was the president himself.” Thea stopped and slid a sideways look at her friend. “It wasn’t…”
“No,” Amelia replied with a short laugh and then sobered. “I think it was Oliver.”
Which reminded Thea of why she’d come over to speak to Amelia in the first place. But somehow, Charles’s perfidy in derailing Mellie’s night out with the girls paled to insignificance compared to what the rest of the evening had brought about. Still…
“Remind me we have to come back to him,” Thea said, not wanting to interrupt her friend before she was finished. “What happened after Charles answered the phone?”
Amelia looked intrigued enough by Thea’s comment to want to ask more and then sighed and said, “He talked. I left. That’s it.”
“So not it.” Thea rolled her hand. “He started talking and you…”
“Waited for him.” Amelia grimaced at the admission. “At first I couldn’t believe he’d done it. Then I thought, he’ll tell Oliver he’d call him back and put the phone down in just a second. But he kept talking, and talking, and then he got up and went into the other part of the suite where they have their little portable office set up. He never even said a word to me.” She sounded so bewildered and hurt that Thea clenched her fists in impotent rage. “It was like he forgot I was even there.”
Every word that came to mind would have gotten her banished for life by Mrs. Westlake, so Thea settled for asking, “Do you want to kill him yourself or do you want me to help?”
“Believe me, the urge was there to do worse than that.” The ring of truth behind the words surprised Thea. Amelia was the last person she’d expect to do any kind of violence. She’d sucked at every self-defense class she’d ever taken, much to the despair of Paul Kent and the rest of the Westlakes’ security staff.
“Then what?”
“When I realized he wasn’t coming back, I got dressed and went out to the living room to get my bag. He never even turned around to look at me when I came in. So, I went down to the desk, had them call me a car, and came home.”
Thea couldn’t miss the way Amelia’s hands crept around to grasp her stomach as she finished her recitation, telling the missing ending to her tale. She’d most likely gone straight to her bathroom and thrown up her fancy dinner when she’d gotten home and then sucked down half a bottle of Maalox to stop the acid the unpleasant evening had churned up from eating straight out her belly button.
“Did the bastard call when he realized you’d left?” Preferably to beg her forgiveness for being such an insensitive prick.
“He called,” Amelia replied. “This morning.”
Way too late for it to count as anything other than another insult to poor Amelia’s pride. “What did he have to say for himself?”
“I have no idea. I wouldn’t answer my cell.”
“Good for you!”
“Then he called the house.”
“And?”
“I still wouldn’t talk to him.”
“Yes! Make him squirm.”
“Oh, he has to do a lot more than squirm.” Amelia said, her eyes narrowing angrily. “He’s going to have to crawl.”
For all of about five seconds before he was forgiven given Amelia’s track record, Thea thought, but it was still good to see her friend making an effort to stand up for herself. She’d need to do a lot more of that to survive life with the overambitious jerk she was marrying, and his demanding mother.
“Of course, Mother doesn’t understand why I’m so upset about the evening being ruined, and it’s not like I can exactly explain that it wasn’t dinner that got interrupted.”
“God, no!” Thea pictured the disaster that conversation would provoke. Mrs. Westlake wasn’t much of a forward thinker when it came to sex. The fact that Amelia was still a virgin at the age of twenty-two was a testament to the stranglehold she kept on both her daughter’s morals and her privacy. It wouldn’t matter that Amelia and Charles were engaged. She’d view the events of the previous evening as yet another failure Amelia would have to do penance for.
“So now she’s mad at me for acting ‘childish,’” she air-quoted with a grimace, “and I have a bad feeling she’s going to get Charles’s mother involved if I don’t pick up the next time he calls.”
Tag-teamed by the dragons. Thea shuddered. “Maybe you should just answer and tell him he needs to come apologize face-to-face.”
“Yeah. I should.” She worried at her lower lip with her teeth for a second and then said quietly, “But what if he doesn’t think he has to apologize? What if he doesn’t think he did anything wrong?”
“Then you set him straight.”
“But if it was an important call—”
“Don’t.” Thea jabbed a finger at her friend. “Don’t rationalize, and don’t excuse him. He treated you like crap, and there’s no reason important enough in the world for that.” She sensed Amelia waffling in her resolution and decided the time was right to throw another log on the fire under Charles’s sorry butt. “Remember our plans to go to Platinum last night?”
“I’m so sorry I had to cancel on you. I was really looking forward to it. But when Charles asked me to
…” It only took a second for Amelia to put it together. “He asked me to dinner to keep me from going out with you and Lillian, didn’t he?”
Thea nodded. “Yeah, he did. And he sent Oliver to the club to check it out.”
“To vet it.” She shook her head in disgust. “So the whole evening was a sham. He never wanted to spend time with me. No wonder it was so easy for him to just…” She made a strangled sound in her throat and clenched her hands into fists as though she were picturing someone’s neck there for the wringing. “I am so sick of being manipulated. All he had to do was ask me not to go. He didn’t have to make up a lie.”
As much as she didn’t want to defend the jerk, Thea felt obligated to say, “He did clear the evening to spend time with you. Maybe it started out as an excuse to keep you away from the club, but you did get to spend some quality time alone together. Before, you know…” She trailed off, knowing there was no good way to describe the debacle of bedroom interruptus.
Amelia remained silent, but she seemed to be considering what Thea had said. She nodded. “I guess I’ll just have to see what he has to say for himself and take it from there.” She offered a tired smile. “Thanks. If I hadn’t gotten that all out, I think I probably would have had a nervous breakdown. Either that or run off and join the circus.”
It was an old joke from their first years of friendship. When life at the Westlake house had gotten too intense for Amelia, as it often had in the years before the senator’s bad heart forced him to retire, Thea and Lillian had offered to join her in running away to a fun and carefree new life under the bigtop.
“Why do that when you’ve got a circus of your very own right here to star in?” Thea teased, relieved that Amelia had recovered enough to find her sense of humor again.
“Yeah, but the clowns are running the show, so what chance do I have of ever getting center ring?” It was said as a joke, but there was all too much truth in those words. Amelia might have ceded control of her wedding plans to the dragons, but as much as she’d insisted otherwise, she wasn’t happy about it. The big question was, would she have the strength to try to wrestle ownership of that center ring back?
And what did it say if she didn’t even want to try?
There didn’t seem to be much else for them to talk about after that. As much as Thea wanted to share her news about the about-face her relationship with Doyle had taken that morning, she knew it would be cruel to bring it up after Mellie’s own disastrous evening. The same went for news about her apparent stalker. Throwing that out there now would be akin to tossing gasoline on her friend’s already smoldering nerves.
Doyle had wanted her to tell both Lillian and Amelia as soon as possible with the reasoning that they were the people who were usually closest to her when she was off the estate grounds and, therefore, would be in the best position to spot anything, or anyone, suspicious or unusual. Now, Thea debated the wisdom of telling Mellie at all. She already had more than enough to worry over. She didn’t need Thea’s problems heaped onto her own.
Maybe she would tell her next week, after the party, when things had calmed down a bit. Because she knew there would be a party, no matter the outcome of Amelia’s talk with Charles. No way would any of the parents, Westlake or Davenport, let anything spoil their plans to launch Charles’s career with all possible fanfare and media coverage.
Not even an unhappy bride.
Chapter Twenty-Six
“I want to go to the airport with you to pick up my parents.”
Doyle didn’t even pause to consider it. “No.”
Frowning, Thea dropped the basket of muffins she’d used as an excuse to visit his office on his desk with a thump. “Why not?”
“Because I said no.” Was the woman being slow on purpose, or did she really not understand what a disaster that would be?
“Is this about the stalker?” She thrust her chin up, making Doyle want to kiss her on it. Which was the problem. He stepped closer until he was crowding her against the desk.
“No, it has nothing to do with that, and everything to do with this.” He leaned in close, leaving just a whisper of breath between their bodies. Thea arched into him, tipping her head up for the kiss she expected. He didn’t think she even realized she was doing it. Doyle kept his lips just above hers and whispered, “You want me. Your body gives you away. There’s no way your mother wouldn’t notice.”
Thea frowned up at him. “You want me, too.” Not a statement, but more of a demand.
“Damn right I do, which is something your father wouldn’t miss. Which is why you’re not coming to the airport.” He palmed the back of her head and held her as he kissed her, long and deep, before finding the willpower to let her go.
God, she made him crazy! He’d never experienced this kind of desire before. After four nights of having her in his bed, his body should have been sated enough that he could be around her without acting like a horny sixteen-year-old who’d just figured out how his dick worked.
Before he could step back, Thea grabbed both sides of his face and pressed her mouth back to his in a kiss even more carnal than the one before. Her arms slid around his neck, anchoring him in place and pressing the front of her body tight to every aching bit of his. It took every ounce of willpower he possessed to not grind himself into her to relieve some of the pressure building in his groin.
Just as they were reaching the point where Doyle wasn’t certain he could keep from lifting her onto his desk and seeing what she was wearing under that long, wispy skirt, Thea broke the kiss with a gasp for air. She pulled back just enough to be able to look at him without either of them going cross-eyed.
“We’re telling them about us when they get home.” Again, not a statement, but a demand. Doyle gave her a gentle smile, sensing her underlying anxiety.
“Yes, we’re telling them about us when they get home.”
She searched his eyes and then gave a brisk nod. “Okay, then.”
Doyle stepped back and let her slip around him. Turning, he watched her check her clothes and hair quickly before opening the door. Doyle bit back a grin at her wasted efforts. The rosy, swollen lips and the flushed cheeks were more of a giveaway than a slightly rumpled blouse.
His staff was trained observers. Just because they hadn’t come right out and said anything didn’t mean some things had gone unnoticed, like, for instance, the fact that Thea had spent every evening so far that week at his bungalow, not leaving until well after dawn each morning. Something, he realized with a sigh, that wasn’t going to be happening again anytime soon. Not with her parents back in residence.
The thought of not having Thea in his arms while he slept at night brought a curious ache to his chest. It had only been four nights, but already it felt so comfortable and natural to have her there that he wasn’t sure he’d be able to sleep well with her gone. Which was ridiculous, but there it was.
A problem for later, he decided. After he gauged Frank Fordham’s reaction to the news of his security chief’s involvement with his daughter. Adult or not, Thea was still the man’s little girl. There was always the chance things could get ugly before they were resolved to everyone’s satisfaction.
And that wasn’t even taking into account the fact that he might very well be fired for telling Thea the truth against orders. That was the main reason he didn’t want Thea going with him to the airport. He planned to set Frank Fordham straight about everything that was going on as soon as possible, which was why he was going with the limo himself to make the pickup. The fact that Evelyn Fordham would be right there next to her husband listening to the same hard truths was something that Frank would just have to deal with. Doyle was done with lies and misdirection. From here until the end, everything was going to be aboveboard.
The possible consequences were just too serious to do otherwise.
A quick look at the clock told him he still had about half an hour before he and Simon needed to leave for the airport. He smiled to himself, thinking he could h
ave avoided the entire argument with Thea simply by telling her who the driver was for the trip. She would have found half a dozen excuses not to go all on her own.
Poor Simon. The man had begged more than once to have a chance to redeem himself by being put back into the rotation of Thea’s detail. So far Doyle had resisted, not wanting a mutiny on his hands from Thea. But Simon had been persistent to the point of becoming a pain in the ass about it, so Doyle had relented and assigned him to the party detail for Saturday. He’d be outside, out of Thea’s sight, so there wasn’t anything she could really bitch about. With luck, she’d never even know he was there.
Just as he was reaching for the muffins Thea had left behind, a brisk knock preceded the door being shoved open and Red slipping into his office. Doyle tensed. Sensing the unspoken question, Red shook his head. “No. Nothing in today’s mail.”
Doyle relaxed, but only a little. “It’s been over a week. I expected there to be another one by now.” Judging by the perp’s previous escalation, there should have been another letter by now, or maybe even another gift. Especially after the way the last letter had bragged about how they were soon finally going to be together “as they were meant to be.” His appetite gone, he dropped the muffin back in the basket untouched.
“Maybe he got spooked.” Red took one of the chairs opposite the desk. He peered into the basket and plucked out a blueberry muffin.
“By what, though? It’s not like we’re any closer to figuring out who he is.”
“Maybe he’s done. He’d taken things as close to reality as he could without the actual follow-through. Maybe it was time for the fantasy to end before it could be ruined for him by realizing it was never going to happen anyplace but in his twisted little head.” Breaking the muffin in half, Red took a large bite.