Public Relations

by Tibby Armstrong

  “Kevin!” Brenna plunked the cake plates down on the table and bestowed an arch look on her son.

  Liam openly grinned at Kevin from the other end of the table. In that moment, these brothers reminded Georgia of overgrown puppies, all nipping mouths and playful mischief. They goaded their brother, attempting to cajole him into a better mood. If it weren’t for her presence unsettling things, she had the impression it might’ve worked.

  “Are you twins?” Georgia asked, changing the subject for all their sakes.

  Kevin and Liam exchanged glances.

  “We could tell her no and see if she believes us,” Liam said.

  Peter snorted and visibly relaxed, the line of his shoulders gaining a little more distance from his ears.

  Brenna pushed open the door to the kitchen and stuck her head out. “Niall. Cake!”

  “But you have…” Georgia paused, wondering if Liam felt self-conscious about his eyes.

  “I’m a changeling,” Liam teased, putting her mind at ease. He waggled his eyebrows. “And the ladies love the two-color thing.”

  “Rat bastard has always made my life difficult.” Kevin shook his head and clucked in mock disgust. “If it weren’t for his compulsive need to be different, we could’ve gotten away with trading places.”

  “I told you to spend your birthday money on colored contacts for us both.” Liam smirked at some secret joke. “You didn’t listen.”

  “They were yellow! From the Thriller collection!”

  “Yeah.” Liam’s smile expanded into a shit-eating grin. He chuckled. “But can you imagine if we’d done it?”

  Kevin sat back so his mother could plunk a piece of cake in front of Georgia. She wondered that they didn’t sing “Happy Birthday” but was glad for it. When she sang, she sounded like a howling dog.

  Georgia watched Peter watch his brothers, open affection softening his expression. The kitchen door creaked, and Niall strode in to take his place on the step stool, outside the circle of family. Peter glanced Niall’s way, his gaze hardening.

  “Aren’t we going to sing?” Liam asked, glancing down at his plate.

  “You sing,” Peter said. “We’ll listen.”

  “Okay.” Liam shrugged, apparently unfazed at the idea of giving a command performance. “What should I sing?”

  “Show-off,” Niall said, but he sat forward, cake in hand.

  “Do the one about candles on your cake,” Kevin said, his wicked grin clearly saying he goaded his brother into something he shouldn’t do.

  “That’s a horrible, morbid song,” Brenna said, settling into a chair next to her husband who’d already dug into his piece of cake with gusto.

  “Tell you what?” Liam looked over his shoulder as if searching for something. “My guitar’s in the other room. Be right back. You guys eat. I’ll sing for my supper…er, cake.”

  Liam stood and strode out of the room. Georgia looked at Peter who said simply, “He’s a professional musician.”

  “Oh.” Searching her memory, she tried to figure out if she’d seen him on TV or heard his name on the radio.

  “Studio musician,” Peter clarified. “He tours with some bands too.”

  “He’s got the creepiest voice,” Niall said. “Nobody human should sound like he does.”

  Liam returned to the kitchen with his guitar. “Heard that.”

  Georgia washed down the sugary sweetness of the cake with a sip of tea and watched Liam pluck a few notes. Head cocked, he tuned the guitar with minute twists of the keys at the top of the neck. Finished, he straightened and looked Georgia in the eye. Regarding her with an intensity that made her squirm, he strummed a few experimental chords that quickly became rapid-fire flicks of his fingertips against the steel strings.

  “This one’s for you, Peter,” he said, glancing at his brother before returning his attention to Georgia and the song.

  When he sang the lyrics to John Mayer’s “Why Georgia,” she had to clutch at the table’s edge to keep from sliding off the seat onto the floor. The words, so intimate, made her wonder at Peter’s reaction, but she didn’t dare peek at his face. Instead, she let herself be carried away by the most beautifully mellow tenor she’d ever heard.

  As Liam hit the song’s high notes, he closed his eyes and tilted his chin up, wringing every last drop of sweetness from the song. Everyone stopped eating until he’d finished singing. On his last strum, Liam hung his head and seemed to absorb the instrument’s lingering resonance. Silence reigned until Peter cleared his throat.

  Georgia chanced a sideways glance. A strange pallor had stolen over Peter’s skin. His pale complexion contrasted with the red of his parted lips, and his fingers dug into his thighs hard enough to turn his knuckles white as well. She didn’t understand what had struck him mute, but the sentiment was shared. She only hoped she looked better than he did.

  Chapter Twelve

  Peter pushed away his cake and stood. Hooking a thumb toward the backyard, he explained when all eyes alighted on him, “I have to bring our bags out. Da, we’ll do presents tomorrow?”

  Ronan, who’d already returned to his model, nodded distractedly while Liam strummed an idle melody on his guitar. To Georgia’s mind, Peter fled the room as if the hounds of hell nipped at his heels.

  The front door opened and closed. Apparently he’d decided to take the long way around. Not knowing what else to do, Georgia looked toward the sink and reached for her and Peter’s dishes on the table.

  “Don’t you dare even think it,” Brenna said, shooing her. “Go. See if you can do something with him. I gave up trying years ago.”

  “Thank you.” She glanced to Ronan. “Sorry we ruined your birthday dinner by being late.”

  Niall snorted. “Ma only ever orders enough pizza for us five. Pete never shows on time.”

  “Oh,” Georgia said, a little stupidly, she knew, but knowing family secrets—secrets even Peter hadn’t been let in on—felt wrong, especially when she wasn’t really here as more than a paid employee.

  With a guilty glance at Niall, she skirted around his step stool and out the back door without her coat. Fresh footprints in the snow showed her Peter had already come around the house. Huddled in on herself for warmth, she trudged across the backyard toward the boathouse as wet snowflakes pattered like raindrops against her skin.

  Outside she could see the boathouse for what it was. Like a second home, it perched on the edge of the lake with a quiet elegance that reminded her more of Peter’s taste than that of anyone else in the family. Two stories high and vivid red, the building appeared to be a modernist statement on quaint old New England. The back sported no windows or doors, only an arbor that likely provided a shady barbeque spot in the warmer months.

  A side door spilled light onto the snow, a beacon when she left the main house. Georgia approached the entrance and peeked through the glass panes at the top of the door. The water’s reflection danced off the ceiling in a wavy pattern that suggested the place was currently devoid of any waterborne vessel.

  She raised her hand to knock, hesitated, and glanced back at the main house. Should she give Peter some time alone? He hadn’t exactly invited her to go with him, and he’d seemed to need some space from everyone when he’d left. She stood, shivering in indecision, staring across the yard, until Peter swung the door wide, making her jump.

  “Planning to come in?”

  She stepped inside and closed the door. “Am I disturbing you?”

  “Interesting question.” He pivoted, his retreat visibly tactical.

  He’d changed into navy pajama bottoms and wore nothing else. As he walked, the material clung to his muscled ass. Transfixed, she leaned back against the door.

  “Keep looking at me like that, and we’ll never make it upstairs.”

  Her gaze flew to his face. He stared at her over his shoulder, one hand on the stair rail. Mortified, she tried to come up with an excuse for ogling him and failed. A bashful grin lifted her lips.

&n
bsp; “Sorry. You’re…” She shrugged and looked away, at a loss.

  Water lapped against the boathouse pylons in a rhythmic tempo, and light rippled across the room, casting a magical glow. The pungent scent of cedar competed with the more actively organic odor of algae and damp air. Peter remained perched at the bottom of the stairway, regarding her until she had to look at him or go crazy with wanting to know his thoughts.

  “Want to come up?” He inclined his head, indicating the space above. “It’s warmer.”

  Feeling not a wee bit like a fly entering the spider’s web, Georgia nodded and moved around the hull-shaped hole in the floor to follow Peter’s ascent.

  “Did you build this place?” she asked as they emerged into a great room of sorts.

  Exposed rafters and a glass-fronted woodstove at the room’s center gave it the feeling of a luxurious cabin. One wall was made of glass and overlooked the lake’s inky surface. Leather sofas and a recliner surrounded a bearskin rug on one side, while a bed made of huge logs took a place of prominence on the opposite side of the central stairwell.

  Georgia looked from left to right at the top of the stairs, while Peter crossed to a small kitchen and withdrew two bottles of water from the fridge.

  He cracked the cap on one bottle and held it out. “Here. Make yourself at home.”

  She crossed the room, and he met her partway. Above her head a white patch caught her attention. A snow-covered skylight, reinforced with steel, ran the length of the room, bisecting the roof into a stargazer’s heaven.

  “That must be gorgeous in the summer.” Georgia took the water from Peter’s hand as she spoke.

  Their fingers brushed, and her skin heated all over. The bottle tumbled from her hand and rolled across the floor. She chased after it, snatching it up before it disappeared under the bed. She straightened, intending to join Peter in the center of the room, and froze.

  He was there. Directly behind her.

  Peter closed the minute distance between them. She sobered, looking at the bed. Guessing his intent, she faced him slowly. Could she do this again? With this man? Let him in when the only guarantee she had was a broken heart?

  His words to his paid lover echoed in her head as her eyes searched his.

  Don’t make the mistake of falling for me… At the end—and it will end—I won’t be in love with you. And I will let you go.

  Expression grim, he seemed to struggle against himself. Passion lit his eyes. His nostrils flared as he apparently tried, and failed, to bank the flames.

  “I want you,” he said finally and cupped her nape.

  Fingers threaded in her hair, he reeled her in, and she let him. As if she could’ve done anything else when her body needed all her spare energy to remain upright. Knees locked, breath coming in shallow gasps, she faced down her first kiss with Peter Wells with almost all the bravery of Jeanne d’Arc at the stake.

  “Don’t hurt me,” she murmured just as his lips, firm and moist, brushed across hers.

  He lifted his head, a deep frown drawing his brows together. His gaze searched hers before his attention dipped to her mouth.

  “Don’t let me hurt you,” he said and moved in for the kill.

  PETER TILTED GEORGIA’S head just so and took charge of the kiss. Tender and deliberate, he darted his tongue along her seam before nipping at the plump softness of her lower lip. She moaned and melted into the embrace. All soft. All woman. He ran his free hand down her back to steady her against him, conscious all the while of the bed looming directly behind her.

  Careful, his inner gentleman said. She’s not used to this.

  All the better to seduce her with, his Big Bad Wolf replied.

  A flash of Gigi in her red dress, her lush ass visible under the drape of her fur, assaulted his inner vision, momentarily unbalancing his equilibrium. When he would have lifted his head, however, Georgia twined her slender arms around his neck and pulled him down, deepening the kiss.

  Berry-sweet brightness burst across his taste buds as he tamed her seeking tongue, pushing it back into her mouth with his own. He plundered her without mercy, showing her who had control here and who would maintain the upper hand. Nobody seduced him. Nobody.

  A water bottle thudded to the floor and rolled. Delicate fingers burrowed in his hair. Georgia stood on tiptoe and pressed her breasts against his naked chest. He tightened his grip and captured her answering gasp as his trophy. Dipping his fingers to the crest of her ass, he trailed them with deceptive laziness along the peach-soft flesh below her waistband.

  Georgia’s trembling turned to shaking. He caressed lower, exploring the nerve-rich crevice between. She mewled into his mouth and arched. So responsive it made him ache to throw her on the bed and get her off. Just to see how long it would take. Was it him she responded to, or was she more experienced than she’d let on last night?

  He lifted his head to study her, and she whimpered. A pleading, desperate sound that blasted a hole in his control. Liquid heat surged up his shaft, a warning. When was the last time he’d been wound so tight? A decade, at least. Possibly longer.

  All damned night, he’d fought with his instincts.

  Don’t seduce her again, the gentleman said. You’ll only hurt her worse tomorrow.

  She wants it, Big Bad reasoned.

  For the moment, the wolf won out. He’d decided as he waited for her in the boathouse that he’d use this weekend to get her out of his system. Just because she tempted him more than most women didn’t mean she’d stick.

  Removing his supporting hands, he gave Georgia a little push to her breastbone. She didn’t fall so much as collapse onto the mattress. Breasts practically begging for his touch, she braced on her elbows and regarded him with wide-eyed wariness. The wolf growled his approval.

  One deft tug had her jeans unfastened. The next bared her down to her lacy thong. A darker patch of pink polka-dot material showcased what he’d done to her with a simple kiss. His grin was slow and feral as he dipped low and shoved Georgia’s thighs wide. She arched. He ran his nose along the musky plumpness at her apex. Tonguing her from bottom to top, he discovered the kernel of her clit through her panties, clamped on with his lips, and sucked hard. He drew her in and rolled the cotton-covered sweetness against his tongue.

  Nails scraped his scalp, his shoulders, his neck. By the time he was finished, she’d be wrecked. A complete mess of tangled hair and languid limbs. He’d wring every drop of pleasure from her, leaving nothing behind but the husk of the woman she’d once been.

  “Don’t hurt me,” she’d said. As if he was capable of anything else.

  He paused, panting, and looked up the landscape of creamy skin to kiss-swollen lips and fluttering lids. With the scent of sex and Georgia’s rain-soft skin surrounding him, he made the mistake of thinking with his brain. If they did this, she’d just be another lay. Did he want that for her? For himself? Shock sprayed like buckshot, peppering his arousal and dimming it as effectively as a white dress and the “Wedding March.” He pushed off the mattress.

  “I’ll take the couch.” He choked on the words and spun away.

  Unable to look at Georgia, not wanting to absorb the bewildered hurt he imagined etched on her brow, he snatched the mohair afghan off the back of the sofa and a pillow from the recliner. Flinging both to the leather sofa, he switched off the lights in the living area and tried not to hear her slowing gasps.

  She cleared her throat. Sat up. He rolled over, presenting her with his back. Listened as she padded around looking for things in the medicine cabinet. He knew she’d found the extra toothbrush he’d laid out for her when he heard the rhythmic brushing, then the sound of her rinsing.

  A dull ache throbbed in his temples and his cock, its pulsing beat a reminder he had a heart. “Why Georgia” indeed. He grimaced at his brother’s choice of song and pulled the afghan tighter around his shoulders.

  Eventually Georgia turned off the light in the sleeping area. He listened as she punched the pillows. Rol
led and punched again. Laid down in a huff, trying to get comfortable. Peter moved to his back, folding an arm under his head. The white strip of skylight above made him wish for summer and the stars.

  What the hell had just happened? One moment he had a willing bed partner—someone to slake his carnal thirst—and the next he’d banished himself to a too-small sofa. He sat to face the room, his skin making a sticking sound against the leather. Peering through the dark, he barely made out Georgia’s slight form under the mountain of white quilt. Only a darker patch where her hair fanned across the pillow gave any indication she occupied the bed.

  A bed big enough for two…

  Telling Wolf Man to shut up, he lay down again. His head banged the sofa arm with enough force to make his teeth clack together. He winced and rubbed at the tender spot.

  When was the last time he’d kissed a woman? He thought back through six or seven now nameless, faceless women and came up empty. What had made him kiss Georgia? He pondered the question until his head ached. She’d been so good with his father. When she’d clasped both his hands in hers and looked warmly into his eyes, something had broken free in Peter. He had understood then, her friendship with Gigi Montrose notwithstanding, that Georgia was a good person. Someone he could trust.

  His family had accepted her with so little question, though they had to wonder how he’d gotten so close to her in such a short period after the gossip column’s revelations. Yet something about her sweetness and open, artless manner made them believe. She was just Georgia being Georgia, and they adored her for it.

  Dinner had made him ache for something he hadn’t wanted in a long, long time. His family. Usually he made sure he arrived late enough and left early enough that they never ate together. Given the animosity between him and Niall, and his strained relationship with his father, it seemed easier all the way around. Besides, what did he have in common with his brothers and parents? What had he ever had in common with them since his father’s accident?

  Peter swallowed hard, fragmenting the ache building in his chest. Giving up on sleep altogether, he sat and rummaged in the dark for his laptop bag. With the screen’s soft glow lighting the room, he propped his back against the arm and put his feet on the cushions as he opened his e-mail. More than twelve hundred yellow envelope icons lined up like infantry in his in-box. He shot each of them with his mouse pointer, one by one, until only five remained and the soft glow of dawn permeated the snow-caked skylights.