The Playboy's Office Romance

by Karen Toller Whittenburg

But his plans were scuttled at the edge of the dance floor when a somber-faced waiter met them. “Ms. Richmond?” he said. “You have a phone call. This way, please.”

  Bryce saw the sudden apprehension in her eyes, saw her tamp it down as she turned to him with a practical shrug. “Calvin probably tried to flush the remote again.”

  “At four, I was fascinated with the wonders of modern plumbing, myself,” he said, seconding her shrug. But she was concerned, and there was no way he was going to leave her until he, too, was reassured that everything, except perhaps the plumbing, was all right.

  Following her to the room where she took the call, Bryce tried to look nonchalant as he waited, but when her voice grew tense, when she said a throaty, frightened, “Yes, go. I’ll meet you at the emergency room,” he stopped pretending and stepped forward, offering comfort, concern, his readiness to help—anything she needed.

  “It’s Cal,” she said, hanging up the phone. “He’s running a high temperature and Bridget is taking him to the hospital. Do you think I can get a taxi?”

  “I have my car here,” he said and signaled the waiter with a look. “I’ll take you.”

  “No, I’ll…” She stopped, distracted. Her hands twisted, one around the other, and he cupped them within the circle of his, sharing her distress, taking her worry into himself, returning a measure of reassurance in its place.

  “You don’t have to face everything alone, Lara. I’m going with you and I’m staying with you until Calvin is back to speed.”

  A gentle shock of discovery coursed through him when he realized the gaze she lifted to his was filled with gratitude…and something more. Something that looked like, felt like…trust.

  But all she said was a shaky, “Let’s go.”

  Chapter Eight

  It was nearly three in the morning when Lara unlocked her front door and stepped back to let Bryce carry Cal inside. The child was draped over his shoulder in boneless slumber, skinny arms dangling, mouth open, head lolling, sleeping as emphatically as he did everything else, exhausted from the ordeal of being sick and the unsettling visit to the hospital. Not to mention the fact that it was hours and hours past his normal bedtime.

  “In here,” Lara whispered, although she didn’t think a bullhorn would have roused her nephew.

  She led the way to the spare bedroom which, in the last month, had become distinctly, chaotically Cal’s, and turned on the hall light so Bryce could see without the overhead. Leaning against the door-jamb, she watched him slide the loose-limbed sleeper beneath the tousled covers and felt a pang of almost unbearable sweetness. It felt good to be home, good to know Cal had only a bad throat infection and not some horrible, awful, untreatable disease. But it felt selfishly, wonderfully, best of all good not to be alone in the night in her hushed and shadowy house.

  Bryce had stayed with her throughout the hours of waiting at the hospital, had questioned the doctor more strenuously than she had done, had brought her coffee and found Cal a big, cherry sucker. Now he’d brought them all the way home and had tucked her nephew into bed.

  She didn’t know how to begin to thank him.

  “He’s a goner.” Bryce came to stand with her in the doorway, came to share with her the moment when watching a little boy sleep felt absurdly delicious. “With the medicine he’s taken and all the late-night excitement, he’ll probably sleep until noon tomorrow.”

  “Maybe.” Lara leaned down, slipped the straps of her Ferragamo sandals off her heels, and then tossed them, one after the other, into the dark hole of her bedroom. Her stockinged feet sank blissfully, thankfully into the cushion of the Berber carpet. “I don’t care if he gets up early, as long as he feels better. I’ve never seen him so listless.”

  “The doctor said he should be back to normal in a matter of forty-eight hours, maybe less. I’m betting on less.”

  “I don’t think I’ll ever be back to normal.” She pulled the door of Cal’s room nearly closed, leaving a crack wide enough for the light to rob the darkness of its demons. “Who knew kids could get sick so quickly? Or that it would be so terrifying?”

  “I imagine mothers all over the world feel the same way.”

  “I’m not his mother,” Lara said. “I’m not supposed to panic when he runs a fever or falls off his tricycle or bumps his head.”

  In the narrow hallway, Bryce turned toward her with a puzzled smile. “Oh, come on, Lara. You love the little guy. Who says mothers have a monopoly on maternal feelings? My mother certainly never had many, and apparently, neither did Cal’s.” He paused, regarded her softly for a moment. “At least you were here to panic, Lara. That’s more than his mother’s ever done for him.”

  “But I’m…” She wasn’t his mother. She wasn’t supposed to be anybody’s mother. Ever. “I should have been calmer, less frantic when I saw him in the waiting room, slumped on Bridget’s lap like all the spark and spice had gone right out of him. Bridget handled the whole thing better than I did.”

  “Bridget is his baby-sitter. The minute she knew he was sick, she called you. She drove him to the emergency room, and she stayed just long enough to make sure he was going to be okay. Then she went home. She did exactly what she was supposed to do in an emergency, exactly what you pay her to do.” He moved closer, and her breath caught with the possibility he might be about to take her in his arms, offer the comfort she desperately needed, but could never ask him to give. “And you,” he continued, “did exactly what you were supposed to do. You held him, you soothed him, you cared. What’s wrong with that?”

  She shook her head, remembering how sharply she’d spoken to the nurse, how angry she’d been when the delays mounted up, how hot Cal’s little body had felt beneath the soothing stroke of her palm, how gut-wrenchingly scared she’d been. “I’m not cut out for this kind of thing.”

  “Cal doesn’t know that and, for what it’s worth, I was scared, too.”

  “You were?”

  “Of course.”

  “You hid it well.”

  “I’m a guy. We do that.” He shrugged. “There’s just something about Cal that gets under my skin, touches a tender spot in my heart. Maybe he reminds me of myself as a little boy…absent mother, misguided father…. I don’t know. But I do think you handled the situation tonight as well as anyone could. Better than most.”

  “It helped that you were there,” she said, because she needed to tell him that, because before tonight she’d thought she could handle any crisis on her own, because he’d helped when she didn’t, couldn’t even, think to ask. “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  He lifted his hand, tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, and it was all she could do to keep from leaning her cheek against his hand, betraying in a single gesture how weak she was. “Do you want a nightcap or something?”

  “Or something?” he repeated, his voice softly shifting from serious to teasing and giving the words a suggestive tweak. “What options does or something cover?”

  “Wine, beer, orange juice or chocolate milk.”

  “Hmm,” he said, considering. “That’s a tough choice. Do you have cookies?”

  “Unless Bridget ate them.”

  “Then I’ll take the milk.”

  Her lips started a slow upward tilt. “I’d never have figured you for a cookies-and-milk guy.”

  “I hope you’ll never stop being surprised by the kind of guy I really am.”

  The look in his eyes sent her stomach tumbling to her toes, then bungee-jumping back into her throat. She needed distance.

  The kitchen might be far enough.

  But once there in the brightly lit, blue and white kitchen, with him leaning casually against the pantry door, her shuttling in her stocking feet between refrigerator and the center island, the room seemed far too small to hold the two of them…and all the possibilities sparking like fireflies in the air between where he was and the spot where she couldn’t quite alight. “Looks like you’re in luck,” she said, setting
the package of cookies on the counter. “Not even opened.”

  “Doesn’t get any better than that.”

  “I’ll fix the chocolate milk.” She set the milk carton beside the cookies, then opened an upper cabinet and stretched to reach the box of Nestle’s Quik powder high up in its secret hiding place.

  “Here, let me do that.” And he was suddenly behind her, reaching above her, his hard stomach brushing against the curve of her back, his tuxedo sleeve sparking lightning strikes across her bare arm, his thigh in contact with hers, the satiny fabric of her gown clinging to the crisp summer weave of his trouser leg, the awareness of him rolling like thunder through her whole body.

  She wanted to blame the high emotion of the night for her reaction, wished she could believe it would evaporate with the morning dew. But in her heart, she knew this was an elemental attraction, pure and simple. Once acknowledged, it wasn’t going to depart without a fight.

  “I have to keep it at the very top, way in the back,” she said because talking seemed the best disguise. “Otherwise, Cal tries to climb the plate rail to get it. I guess I should be glad he’ll drink milk at all, even with this sugary chocolate powder in it. He’s only acquainted with two basic food groups, peanut butter and banana, so it’s good he likes milk, too.” She was chattering, filling the throbbing silence with meaningless words, hoping he wouldn’t notice anything unusual in her body’s sudden stillness, hoping he’d at least pretend what was happening, wasn’t.

  But when he set the boxy can on the counter, his hand curved around her waist, turned her half a turn, drew her inexorably forward, and held her without seeming to exert any effort to hold her at all. He brought his other hand up to tip her chin, his fingertips lightly caressing her throat as he lifted her face, her gaze to his. “You don’t have to be nervous, Lara. Nothing is going to happen that you don’t want to happen.”

  Her heartbeat drummed out a pulsating awareness, her lips parted in breathy expectation…and still she had to deny it. “Nervous?” she said with a weak laugh. “Me? With…with you?” She shook her head ever so slightly. “Don’t…don’t think for a…a second that you make me…nervous.”

  His hand opened beneath her chin and his fingertip traced a sensual trail across her cheek to the corner of her lips. “Good,” he said. “I want you to feel safe with me.”

  As if that was going to happen. “And why wouldn’t I?”

  His smile was as deadly seductive as the scent of orchids in moonlight. “Because you know I’m going to kiss you.”

  A kiss. She desperately wanted a kiss, needed human contact in the worst way. She could all but taste him on her lips, already feel herself falling into the haven of his embrace. “N-now?”

  “Is that what you want?”

  Oh, yes. And yes. And yes. Her breath hesitated, rushed out on a wish that slightly parted her lips. She knew he saw the invitation and recognized her bravado for the poor excuse it was.

  He seemed to debate with himself, his gaze dropping to caress her lips and then rising slowly again to her eyes. “Lara? Do you want me to kiss you now…or later?”

  She swallowed hard. “I never thought you were the kind of guy who asked permission.”

  The angled response of one eyebrow was the only answer, the only move he made.

  She couldn’t do this, wouldn’t play this game. “I thought you wanted milk and cookies.”

  “I do. It’s just a matter of whether I have them now…or later.”

  She moistened her lips, prepared to deliver the next scathing retort that came to mind, except her mind remained blissfully blank of everything except his nearness, the warmth of his breath on her face, the frantic urging of her impulses to pull his head down to hers, to kiss him now and end this mercurial torture.

  Then, miraculously, without her having to say a word, he bent his head and her eyelids drifted down as the warmth of him swirled closer. She raised her chin, waited as his breath wisped across her skin, waited as the barest touch of his fingertips stroked lightly at the corner of her mouth, eased across her bottom lip…and abruptly stopped.

  “Later, then,” he said and released her, withdrawing and leaving her to grasp the counter behind her for support.

  She recovered quickly though and, with a rush of outrage, wished she could get her hands on some rat poison to stir into his damn milk. “Don’t do that again,” she said.

  He turned back. “What? Insist you take some responsibility for something you want as much as I do?”

  “I won’t let you play games with me, Bryce, like you do with all your other women. Not tonight, or any other night. Don’t,” she repeated forcefully. “Do that again.”

  “This is the real deal, Lara. Not a game. And if I’m willing to take that risk, you should be, too.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.” Although she did.

  “Yes, you do. Don’t trivialize your feelings that way…or mine. Wherever this goes, whatever happens, we’re going to share it from beginning to end. Or we’re going to walk away from it now.”

  He shouldn’t have given her that option, should not have issued an either-or. Because once given, once on the table, pride insisted she take the challenge. “That’s easy enough then,” she said, hating the rigidity that made her so unwilling to give an inch. “We’ll walk away. Now. With no regrets.”

  “No regrets?” His eyes narrowed, his lips tightened, then eased into a rueful smile. “In that case, I think we both deserve to know what we’re missing.” And he covered the two steps dividing them, pulled her roughly into his arms and claimed her lips in a kiss so raw with desire, it called up every ounce of suppressed passion within her and took it prisoner. Weeks of anticipating, of thinking about this kiss, could not have prepared her for the blinding rush of emotion that sent her arms sliding around him, sent a profound weakness attacking her limbs, sent her heart crashing against her rib cage in a tell-tale, tremulous beat.

  She had never been seduced so swiftly, if in fact, she had ever before been seduced at all. Doubt wavered beneath an onslaught of longing, tussled with her pride and convicted her of being achingly human. And needy. She’d never known she could need anything so desperately as she needed Bryce’s kiss, his touch, the fire that burned now like a fierce hunger inside her.

  How could she have known it would be like this? How could she have guessed he would steal from her the illusion of control without warning or recourse?

  Or had she known? Had she understood somehow, in the farthest, most secret corner of her being, that Bryce would be the one man she could not resist, was probably the one man who could, and would, break her heart? Was that the reason she’d kept him at arm’s length for so long?

  And now, now that she was in his arms and he in hers, she knew there was no going back, no dignified way to excuse herself. Maybe it was the trauma of the evening, maybe it was the romancing that had come before, maybe it was simply a fate she’d been avoiding since the first moment she met him.

  Whatever it was, she was a goner.

  As was her resolve.

  And, just that quickly, the fight went out of her and she gave herself over completely to the pleasure of his kiss, gave herself permission to respond with all the hunger and need she’d kept suppressed for so long. Her fingers tangled in the softness of his perfectly trimmed hair and she savored the feel of his lips…less demanding now, more exploratory and seeking. As his hand slid to lightly—so lightly—massage the hollow of her back, the kiss changed again, became a sensual, ebbing tide of slow movements from one corner of her mouth to the other.

  It was good. So good, that when he drew back, ending the moment with a soft, swift, final touch of his lips to hers, she knew a deep, stabbing disappointment.

  She opened her eyes then and looked full into his, saw his desire for her there, as surely as he must see hers for him. And she knew he would not stay unless she asked, unless she said, this is what I want. You are what I want.

  He let go of her, wit
h clear regret, and stepped back. His voice, when he spoke, was husky with constrained desire. “Can I, uh, still have the milk and cookies?”

  Gathering her courage, ignoring her pride, she offered him a wry and wistful smile. “You may have anything you want, Bryce, as long as you spend the rest of the night with me.”

  He blinked in surprise and then slowly his expression turned so tender it caught hold of her heart. “Lara,” he said softly. “You take my breath away.”

  She had to tell herself to breathe, too; beg her heart to stop pounding so hard and so fast as he drew her forward again, gently this time, as if they had a lifetime to redeem the promise of that first kiss.

  “I’m not in love with you,” she said because it seemed necessary, somehow, to declare that up front, even if the words sounded hollow, even though they felt false on her tongue.

  His hand came up to caress her cheek. “That’s all right. At the moment, I’m enough in love for both of us.”

  That thrilled her, scared her, and the barriers flew up before she could stop them. “It’s just that I can’t be alone tonight. I don’t want…shouldn’t be alone if…if Cal wakes up and is worse instead of better and needs to go back to the hospital and, well, I don’t think I can handle that alone and I thought that…”

  “You don’t have to justify this, Lara. Just let it be.” Then he nibbled at her lips, provocatively, persistently drawing her into a series of kisses so stealthy and seductive, she didn’t care what circumstances had brought this moment into being. She didn’t care that he was the last man on earth she ought to be kissing, or that she’d missed a good opportunity, perhaps her last, to walk away without regret. Too late now, as her hands slipped around his neck, as her body curved into his, as her lips opened, moist and welcoming, beneath his.

  Let it be, he’d said.

  Let it be, her heart agreed.

  BRYCE DIDN’T CARE why she’d asked him to stay. He didn’t mind if her asking him to stay was as much reflex as reaction, as much hedge against being alone and uncertain as true surrender to the seductive power of his kiss. He was simply amazed she’d asked, gratified that for once he’d been in the right place at the right time with the right woman.