It was the right thing to say. The man couldn’t resist a competition.
He dove over John Doe, surfaced a few feet away from them, slicking back his jet hair. His eyes were bluer than the pool. “I suppose you’ll want a head start,” he said.
“Of course.” She set the rules. “Two laps. When Dom gets to the far end, I’ll start. When I get halfway, you can start. No calling interference on John, he’ll be everyone’s problem. Loser gets the drinks.”
She lost. “It’s John’s fault,” she griped, heaving herself up to sit on the side.
Adam swam over, grinning, and cupped her calf in his palm. “Drinks are in the cabana. Dom, what’ll you have?”
The boy swam over, tentatively, keeping Maddie between them. “Coke, please.”
“Gin and tonic for me.” Adam slid his hand up behind her knee. It felt amazingly sexy. She dawdled, hating to break contact.
Then John paddled into the middle of things. He’d found a ball somewhere. Adam let go of her to hurl it the length of the pool, and with a collective whoop, all three males raced after it.
And that, thought Maddie as she clunked ice into glasses, made playing barmaid worthwhile.
OF COURSE, WITH Adam, things were never that simple.
“I want dinner alone with you,” he said, managing to complain and command in the same breath.
“I already told Henry I’m eating with Dom.” Maddie peeled off her suit, then opened the bathroom door enough to stick her head out. Adam sat pouting on the edge of her bed. “You’re welcome to join us if you want.”
“You and I have things to discuss.”
“Whenever we discuss things, you piss me off. Let’s take a break and enjoy a meal for a change.”
He looked ready to argue, so she pulled her head in and turned on the shower, calling over her shoulder. “Maribelle can come too.”
“No.” All command, no equivocation. She smiled to herself. How to make Dom less objectionable to Adam? Make him the alternative to Maribelle.
“Okay, no Maribelle. Now get your wet ass off my bed and take a shower.”
“All right, let me in.” He stood outside the glass door.
“Beat it.”
“Gladly, if I can watch you soap up while I do it.”
“Har har.”
He flattened a palm on the glass. “Why are you being so difficult?”
“Because I don’t like you very much today. I’m still wondering if this whole trip is a setup to humiliate me. And even if it isn’t, men who neglect their children are my least favorite kind.”
He stepped back from the glass. “You don’t understand. It’s not black and white.”
“Explain it to me.”
“Let me in and I will.”
She remembered his hand on her calf, the silky stroke up her leg.
She opened the door.
He stepped under the spray, locked eyes on her soapy breasts. She let him look, while water streamed from his shoulders, sluiced down his arms.
Then he fisted his hands. His forearms flexed, his biceps jumped. And she couldn’t resist; she reached out and touched them.
That was all it took, a skim of her fingertips. He pushed her against the wall. Pinned her with his chest, groping her, kneading her, thumbing her breasts. His mouth crushed her lips. He took her tongue like he owned it.
She let him handle her while she handled him back, feeding him her tongue, palming his taut ass, rubbing her slick belly along the rigid length of his cock.
Steam swirled around them, rose from their skin. His lips slid along her jaw, down her throat. And he moaned, deep and low, a mating call that vibrated through skin and bones, to her veins. Unconsciously, she answered with a hum that rose from her belly, galvanizing him, galvanizing them both.
He caught her arms and wrapped them round his neck. Boosted her thighs and hooked them over his hipbones. Then he brought her down on him as he thrust up.
He gave her a heartbeat, just one to adjust, and then went at her like a stallion mounting a mare. His teeth clamped her shoulder, his fingers bruised her ass, and she held on for dear life, riding the heat as he pumped.
Water coursed into her eyes and she closed them, heightening sensation. The stubble scraping her jaw. The slip and slide of wet skin. His cock stretching her, filling her.
It was hard and fast, too frantic for finesse. He worked her sweet spots, driving her higher. She fisted his hair, dragging him closer. Her back slapped the wall as he pounded her. He muttered her name like a mantra. And still it wasn’t enough. She wanted him under her skin, running in her blood.
He lifted his face, eyes wild and blue. “Come,” he panted, “come with me, all over me.”
“Yes,” she gasped out, “yes yes yes.” Clasping his cheeks, she pulled his face down to hers and took his lips, kissing him as she’d never kissed a man before, taking the passion he poured into her, absorbing it, loving it, and trading her own, until they exploded, the violence driving their lips apart even as their bodies fused into one.
ROLLING OFF THE pillows they’d stacked in the middle of her bed, Maddie mumbled, “Whatever you’re taking, you should buy the company.”
He raised his head, eyed her. “Name your price.”
She snuffled a snort, peeled back one lid. “Nobody gets it up again in ten minutes.”
“You have that effect on me.” He flopped back. “And you’re increasingly addictive.”
She rolled her eye toward the clock. “I’m getting Dom in half an hour. Is that enough time?”
“I should be good for one more.”
“Funny. I mean is it enough time to explain.”
He knew very well what she meant. But he wasn’t in a hurry to change the mood. During sex, she focused on him completely, responsive and willing and up for anything. Trusting, as she was at no other time.
But when the subject shifted to Dom, he knew she’d cut him no slack. And he didn’t want her to. What he wanted was to make her understand.
“Maribelle tricked me. I cared for her, more than I’d ever cared for a woman, but it wasn’t enough for her. She got pregnant simply to tie me down, even though I had no imminent plans to leave her.”
“But she knew it was coming, right? I mean, with your history, even up to that point, a woman would have to be brain dead to think you’d settle down willingly.”
“Does that excuse bringing an unwanted child into the world?” He stuffed a pillow under his head. “She made a person, Maddie, and then demanded that I care about him.”
“Do you?”
“You see the lengths I’ve gone to. He’s safer than Fort Knox.”
“So was your Monet.”
“Don’t remind me.” He would have sat up, but she put a hand on his chest. Light as a feather, it nailed him to the bed.
He laid his own hand over it, hoping she wouldn’t withdraw it. He’d keep talking if he must, just to keep it there.
“It’s not enough,” she said. “A good parent protects a child from more than gunmen. What about the bogeyman under the bed? Fear of the dark, the future, all the unknowns?”
“He’s not alone. Maribelle, for all her faults, is a surprisingly good mother. Or rather, she’s become one. In the early years, she didn’t let Dom slow her down. She left him for weeks at a time. Monaco, St. Tropez. Back to Hollywood. Spending the money I gave her. She had affairs, slept around, trying to wound me, no doubt.”
He folded an arm behind his head, remembering that he’d kept loose tabs on her, but that was all. And he’d left Dom to the nanny, feeling as little guilt as Maribelle had.
“She’s grown out of that now,” he said, realizing it was true. “She’s seldom away for more than a few days. She spends most of her time with Dom.”
“Stuck in that villa.”
He shrugged. “She redecorates it twice a year, top to bottom. When I’m away, she and Dom have the run of the grounds. And I’m frequently away.”
“Ever asked yo
urself how that makes Dom feel? Knowing that you despise him?”
“I don’t despise him.” He just didn’t want to see him, didn’t want to be reminded of the things Dom reminded him of.
“Have you ever hugged him, or ruffled his hair, or swung him up on your shoulder?”
“No. But my father never did those things to me either. He barely noticed I was alive.”
“So it’s a cycle of abuse. Emotional abuse. You’re doing to him what your parents did to you.”
It was one thing to admit it to himself, another to hear it from her lips. He wasn’t quite ready for that. Sitting up, he glowered down at her where she lay curled like a kitten against the pillows.
“It’s not the same,” he said. “No one will ever drag him into an alley and kick him till he pukes, or hold him down while their friends beat his face to a pulp. No one will ever break that boy’s nose, or his spirit. Not as long as I have a nickel to my name.”
Her eyes had gone green against the rumpled sage sheets. Calm and deep, watching him with compassion, unusual for her.
He realized he was rasping, fighting for air. Sweat beaded his chest.
“I protect him,” he said, his voice rough with emotion. “No one can hurt him here.”
“No one,” she said, “except you.”
“PIZZA!” DOM SHOUTED, utterly at ease with Maddie. “Can John have some too?”
Two stories above them, Adam couldn’t hear her response, but it brought on a gale of giggles as the boy wiggled his butt into the chair.
Henry had lit torches around the terrace perimeter. They glowed brighter as the sun inched below the horizon.
Now he cut the pie and slid slices onto plates, filled glasses with wine and soda. And unobtrusively removed the third place setting.
Adam watched them, his son and the woman he loved, sitting at a small round table on his terrace while the only dog he’d ever owned circled round them.
Behind him, the door opened and Henry barged in. “You’re an ass,” he said bluntly.
Adam glanced over his shoulder, then back down at the terrace. He couldn’t argue the point with a straight face.
“Go down there,” Henry urged. “Eat pizza with your son. Drink wine with your woman.”
Adam shook his head. “I’d only raise false hopes all around. Mine as much as theirs.”
“Why false? Why not claim this boy of yours? He couldn’t be more like you.”
“Is that supposed to recommend him?”
“To anyone else in the world, yes.” He joined Adam at the window. “And Maddie. For the love of God, look at her. Thumbing her nose at the mighty Adam LeCroix. Defying you just by eating pizza.”
He turned to Adam, uncharacteristically impatient. “You’re fucking it up, Adam.”
He was right, and yet Adam stayed glued to the floor.
“Forget the Matisse,” Henry hissed. “The Monet. The fucking Lady in Red. Your treasure’s down there.” He jabbed a finger at the terrace. “Go and get it.”
Through the window, Adam heard Dom’s giggling again. Maddie wagged a finger at John Doe, who slinked away with a crust in his mouth.
It was a silly, homey sight, and he wanted to laugh at Henry, to scoff at the fancy of Adam LeCroix as a family man.
But he couldn’t force a sound past the lump in his throat.
For ten years, since Maribelle betrayed him, he’d walled up foolish notions like hearth and home. Then Maddie, hard-nosed, smart-mouthed, pocket-sized Maddie, swanned right through the wall like it was tissue paper.
She was right, he thought, the whole business was a setup, but not to humiliate her. Just the opposite. The plot had been conceived, organized, and perpetrated by his back brain because his front brain was too stubborn to know what was good for him.
Half a decade ago, Maddie had intrigued him, attracted him, and nearly nailed him to the wall. Because that last part had pissed him off, he’d dismissed the rest of it and put her out of his mind.
He was—and he was just learning this—expert at burying inconvenient emotions.
But when the Hawthorne thing came up, his tricky subconscious put it all together and, voilà, once he was in the same room with Maddie again it was just a matter of time—say, five minutes—before even his thick-skulled front brain knew he had to have her.
It took a bit longer to understand that he wanted more than sex. After Maribelle, relationships involving organs located above his waist were off-limits. But with Maddie, he wanted it all.
Dom, though, was more than he’d bargained for. He’d deliberately—and cruelly—withheld affection from the boy since conception. Now, in one afternoon, he’d stopped seeing Dom as a gun held to his head or even as evidence of his foolishness.
Instead, he saw his son.
The change in perspective staggered him.
Henry crossed his arms. “There’s no going back, you know. You can’t pretend anymore that he doesn’t exist, your own flesh and blood. I saw you in the pool. You were happy.”
Happy.
Adam gazed down at the terrace, at the woman he cared for, the son she’d brought to his doorstep. Even the dog he’d craved as a child.
It was everything he wanted, though he hadn’t known it until now.
The question was what to do about it.
HANDS IN HIS pockets, heart in his throat, Adam strolled onto the terrace. John loped across the flagstones to greet him.
Rubbing the dog’s floppy ears, he forced his lips up at the corners. “Sorry I’m late, I had some things to take care of.”
Maddie’s eyes gleamed in the torchlight. “No problem.” She pushed out a chair with her foot. “Henry’s bringing out another pizza.”
He sat down. Dom hadn’t said a word. Adam didn’t know what to think. For years, the boy had begged for his attention, but these last few months he’d made himself scarce. Had he given up on his father?
He made himself meet his son’s steady gaze, made himself hold those deep blue eyes, so like the eyes that looked back from the mirror each morning. And he made himself smile. Not the chilly slant of tight lips the boy was familiar with, but a warm smile that came from the heart. The same smile that had come so naturally while cavorting in the pool, but that now seemed like the biggest risk he’d ever taken.
And his son smiled back. Adam’s heart beat again. He lifted his gaze to Maddie’s. She was smiling too.
Finally, it seemed, he’d done something right.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
TIPTOEING BACK TO bed, Maddie took a minute to rake a greedy eye over the bod she was about to pounce on.
Adam had rolled onto his back, one long arm outflung, the other cocked behind his head, both corded with lean muscle. His chest and those one, two, three, yes, four rows of washboard abs looked extra tanned against the white sheets.
And a dark triangle of hair pointed south like a road sign, as if she might otherwise miss the three-hundred-thread-count tent that housed his most excellent equipment.
She’d have to be blind.
His eyes were closed, half hidden under a jumble of black satin hair. But his full lips curved into a smile. “I can feel you staring.”
“Really? How does it feel?”
He opened his eyes, licked them down her naked body. Steam rose from her skin.
His smile deepened. His fingers did a come-to-me curl she didn’t try to resist. Settling her cheek into the notch of his shoulder, she looped her thigh over his, a perfect fit.
A warm, fuzzy feeling fizzed under her ribs. She tried not to think about it, but it was hard to ignore. It had been humming along since last night, since they played Ping-Pong with Dom, Adam left-handed to give them a chance.
He’d routed them anyway, even with John on his team costing him a point for every stolen ball. And she—usually the sorest of losers—couldn’t summon a pout, because they’d had so much fun, laughing and trash talking like a nice, happy family might do, if such a thing existed.
&nbs
p; Which it didn’t, as all three of them—four, counting John—could attest.
Yet for one night they’d forgotten that, and now, even with the morning sunlight slanting through the window, the warm fuzzies persisted.
She resigned herself to enjoy them.
For now.
Stroking her palm over the planes of Adam’s pecs, she felt the rise and fall of his deep, steady breath. With a fingertip she traced a line lower, strummed the washboard.
“I don’t get it,” she murmured. “How can you have four rows with Leonardo cooking for you?”
“I work out like a demon.”
“Pfft. You haven’t lifted anything heavier than a wine bottle.”
“I lifted you, darling, more than once.”
True. And getting flipped and rolled and tossed around was The Hottest Thing Ever.
She snaked lower, fingertips dipping under the edge of the sheet. “So you benched me a few times. How else do you burn calories?”
“I climb. Run. Lift weights.” He rolled his hips, urging her south.
She paused to play in the springy hair.
“Fight?” She couldn’t help being curious.
He didn’t reply. She inched away from the tent pole.
“Yes,” he hissed out. “Fight, if you must know.”
“Why?” She spread her palm on the flat ground between his hipbones.
“It feels good.”
“Getting hit feels good?”
“Not at the time. But surviving feels good. Winning feels good.”
“You’re an unusual guy, Adam.” She used her nails lightly.
“At the moment, I’m like any other man with a hard-on. Now for God’s sake, Maddie.” His hand came down over hers and shoved it under the tent.
“IT’S BUSINESS,” ADAM said, straight-faced.
Maddie pursed her lips. “Sounds like more fun and games to me.”
“Hardly. The vineyard’s a recent acquisition, overdue for a visit from the new owner.”
Armed with facts and figures about the Piedmont region and the quantity and quality of the Barolo produced by his newly acquired winery, he braced for the grilling.
The Wedding Vow Page 23