How to Sleep with the Boss
Page 17
By prior agreement, Patrick and Libby had arrived at the festivities separately. For the past two hours they had stayed on opposite sides of the room. Either Dylan or Zoe must have warned everyone not to make a big deal about Libby’s presence after a weeklong absence, because no one said a word out of place. All the attention was centered on Maeve—as it should be.
Still, it was a good bet that all the Kavanaghs knew Libby was no longer working for Patrick, and that things had ended badly.
After a sumptuous dinner, Maeve opened gifts. Her family and friends showered her with offerings of love and affection. For a brief moment, Libby allowed herself to grieve the fact that her own children would have only one grandmother. But then the moment passed.
She was luckier than most.
At last, when the babies were asleep and even the grown-ups were starting to fade, it was clear the party was over. Patrick stepped to the center of the room and gave his mother a hug. “I have one last gift for you, Mom.”
Maeve seemed confused. “But I thought the spa thing had your name on it, too.”
Little by little, the room fell silent. All eyes were on Patrick. “This is something more personal,” he said.
Unobtrusively, Libby removed the emerald from its resting place and slipped it onto her left finger. It had pained her not to wear it, even for this one brief evening.
Patrick stood—tall and strong—with an almost palpable air of contentment and joy surrounding him.
Maeve stared at her boy, her brow creased. “Well, don’t keep me in suspense. Where is it?”
Patrick grinned broadly, crooking a finger. “It’s not an it. It’s a who.”
Libby threaded her way through the crowd, smiling as the swell of exclamations followed her progress. When she joined Patrick, he put an arm around her.
“Mom,” he said. “I’d like to present my fiancée, Libby Parkhurst, soon to be the daughter of your heart.”
Maeve burst into tears, and the entire room fairly exploded with excitement. Libby lost track of the hugs and kisses and well wishes.
When some of the furor finally died down, Maeve held her close and whispered in her ear. “Thank you, Libby. Look at him. He’s beaming.”
And indeed he was. Libby’s heart turned over. If she had harbored any last doubts, seeing Patrick like this in the bosom of his family and so obviously exultant and happy made her own heart swell with emotion.
Patrick finally reclaimed his fiancée and dragged her out to the car. He leaned her against the hood and kissed her long and slow. “Come home with me, my love.”
Libby wrapped her arms around his neck, feeling the beat of his heart against hers. “I thought you’d never ask...”
* * * * *
Pick up all the books in THE KAVANAGHS OF SILVER GLEN series from USA TODAY bestselling author Janice Maynard.
In the mountains of North Carolina, one family discovers that wealth means nothing without love.
A NOT-SO-INNOCENT SEDUCTION
BABY FOR KEEPS
CHRISTMAS IN THE BILLIONAIRE’S BED
TWINS ON THE WAY
SECOND CHANCE WITH THE BILLIONAIRE
Available now from Harlequin Desire!
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NEVER TOO LATE
Brenda Jackson
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Excerpt from Tempted by the Texan by Kathie DeNosky
Chapter 1
Twelve days and counting...
Pushing a lock of twisted hair that had fallen in her face behind her ear, Sienna Bradford, soon to become Sienna Davis once again, straightened her shoulders as she walked into the cabin she’d once shared with her husband—soon-to-be ex-husband.
She glanced around. Had it been just three years ago when Dane had brought her here for the first time? Three years ago when the two of them had sat there in front of the fireplace after making love, and planned their wedding? Promising that no matter what, their marriage would last forever? She took a deep breath knowing that for them, forever would end in twelve days in Judge Ratcliff’s chambers.
Just thinking about it made her heart ache, but she decided it wouldn’t help matters to have a pity party. What was done was done and things just hadn’t worked out between her and Dane like they’d hoped. There was nothing to do now but move on with her life. But first, according to a letter her attorney had received from Dane’s attorney a few days ago, she had ten days to clear out any and all of her belongings from the cabin, and the sooner she got the task done, the better. Dane had agreed to let her keep the condo if she returned full ownership of the cabin to him. She’d had no problem with that, since he had owned it before they married.
Sienna crossed the room, shaking off the March chill. According to forecasters, a snowstorm was headed toward the Smoky Mountains within the next seventy-two hours, which meant she had to hurry and pack up her stuff and take the two-hour drive back to Charlotte. Once she got home she intended to stay inside and curl up in bed with a good book. Sienna smiled, thinking that a “do nothing” weekend was just what she needed in her too frantic life.
Her smile faded when she considered that since starting her own interior decorating business a year and a half ago, she’d been extremely busy—and she had to admit that was when her marital problems with Dane had begun.
Sienna took a couple of steps toward the bedroom to begin packing her belongings when she heard the sound of the door opening. Turning quickly, she suddenly remembered she had forgotten to lock the door. Not smart when she was alone in a secluded cabin high up in the mountains, and a long way from civilization.
A scream quickly died in her throat when the person who walked in—standing a little over six feet with dark eyes, close-cropped black hair, chestnut coloring and a medium build—was none other than her soon-to-be ex.
From the glare on his face, she could tell he wasn’t happy to see her. But so what? She wasn’t happy to see him, either, and couldn’t help wondering why he was there.
Before she could swallow the lump in her throat to ask, he crossed his arms over his broad chest, intensified his glare and said in that too sexy voice she knew so well, “I thought that was your car parked outside, Sienna. What are you doing here?”
Chapter 2
Dane wet his suddenly dry lips and immediately decided he needed a beer. Lucky for him there was a six-pack in the refrigerator from the last time he’d come to the cabin. But he didn’t intend on moving an inch until Sienna told him what she was doing there.
She was nervous, he could tell. Well, that was too friggin bad. She was the one who’d filed for the divorce—he hadn’t. But since she had made it clear that she wanted him out of her life, he had no problem giving her what she wanted, even if the pain was practically killing him. But she’d never know that.
“What do you think I’m doing here?” she asked smartly, reclaiming his absolute attention.
“If I knew, I wouldn’t have asked,” he said, giving her the same unblinking stare. And to think that at one time he actually thought she was his whole world. At some point during their marriage she had changed and transitioned into quite a character—someone he was c
ertain he didn’t know anymore.
She met his gaze for a long, level moment before placing her hands on her hips. Doing so drew his attention to her body; a body he’d seen naked countless times, a body he knew as well as his own; a body he used to ease into during the heat of passion to receive pleasure so keen and satisfying, just thinking about it made him hard.
“The reason I’m here, Dane Bradford, is because your attorney sent mine this nasty little letter demanding that I remove my stuff within ten days, and this weekend was better than next weekend. However, no thanks to you, I still had to close the shop early to beat traffic and the bad weather.”
He actually smiled at the thought of her having to do that. “And I bet it almost killed you to close your shop early. Heaven forbid. You probably had to cancel a couple of appointments. Something I could never get you to do for me.”
Sienna rolled her eyes. They’d had this same argument over and over again and it all boiled down to the same thing. He thought her job meant more to her than he did because of all the time she’d put into it. But what really irked her with that accusation was that before she’d even entertained the idea of quitting her job and embarking on her own business, they had talked about it and what it would mean. She would have to work her butt off and network to build a new clientele; and then there would be time spent working on decorating proposals, spending long hours in many beautiful homes of the rich and famous. And he had understood and had been supportive...at least in the beginning.
But then he began complaining that she was spending too much time away from home, away from him. Things only got worse from there, and now she was a woman who had gotten married at twenty-four and was getting divorced at twenty-seven.
“Look, Dane, it’s too late to look back, reflect and complain. In twelve days you’ll be free of me and I’ll be free of you. I’m sure there’s a woman out there who has the time and patience to—”
“Now, that’s a word you don’t know the meaning of, Sienna,” Dane interrupted. “Patience. You were always in a rush, and your tolerance level for the least little thing was zero. Yeah, I know I probably annoyed the hell out of you at times. But then there were times you annoyed me, as well. Neither of us is perfect.”
Sienna let out a deep breath. “I never said I was perfect, Dane.”
“No, but you sure as hell acted like you thought you were, didn’t you?”
Chapter 3
Dane’s question struck a nerve. Considering her background, how could he assume Sienna thought she was perfect? She had come from a dysfunctional family if ever there was one. Her mother hadn’t loved her father, her father loved all women except her mother, and neither seemed to love their only child. Sienna had always combated lack of love with doing the right thing, thinking that if she did, her parents would eventually love her. It didn’t work. But still, she had gone through high school and college being the good girl, thinking being good would eventually pay off and earn her the love she’d always craved.
In her mind, it had when she’d met Dane, the man least likely to fall in love with her. He was the son of the millionaire Bradfords who’d made money in land development. She hadn’t been his family’s choice and they made sure she knew it every chance they got. Whenever she was around them, they made her feel inadequate, like she didn’t measure up to their society friends, and since she didn’t come from a family with a prestigious background, she wasn’t good enough for their son.
She bet they wished they’d never hired the company she’d been working for to decorate their home. That’s how she and Dane had met. She’d been going over fabric swatches with his mother and he’d walked in after playing a game of tennis. The rest was history. But the question of the hour was: Had she been so busy trying to succeed the past year and a half, trying to be the perfect business owner, that she eventually alienated the one person who’d mattered most to her?
“Can’t answer that. Can you?” Dane said, breaking into her thoughts. “Maybe that will give you something to think about twelve days from now when you put your John Hancock on the divorce papers. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have something to do,” he said, walking around her toward the bedroom.
“Wait. You never said why you’re here!”
He stopped. The intensity of his gaze sent shivers of heat through her entire body. And it didn’t help matters that he was wearing jeans and a dark brown leather bomber jacket that made him look sexy as hell...as usual. “I was here a couple of weekends ago and left something behind. I came to get it.”
“Were you alone?” The words rushed out before she could hold them back and immediately she wanted to smack herself. The last thing she wanted was for him to think she cared...even if she did.
He hooked his thumbs in his jeans and continued to hold her gaze. “Would it matter to you if I weren’t?”
She couldn’t look at him, certain he would see her lie when she replied, “No, it wouldn’t matter. What you do is none of my business.”
“That’s what I thought.” And then he walked off toward the bedroom and closed the door.
Sienna frowned. That was another thing she didn’t like about Dane. He never stayed around to finish one of their arguments. Thanks to her parents she was a pro at it, but Dane would always walk away after giving some smart parting remark that only made her that much more angry. He didn’t know how to fight fair. He didn’t know how to fight at all. He’d come from a family too dignified for such nonsense.
Moving toward the kitchen to see if there was anything of hers in there, Sienna happened to glance out the window.
“Oh, my God,” she said, rushing over to the window. It was snowing already. No, it wasn’t just snowing... There was a full-scale blizzard going on outside. What happened to the seventy-two-hour warning?
She heard Dane when he came out of the bedroom. He looked beyond her and out the window, uttering one hell of a curse word before quickly walking to the door, slinging it open and stepping outside.
In just that short period of time, everything was beginning to turn white. The last time they’d had a sudden snowstorm such as this had been a few years ago. It had been so bad the media had nicknamed it the “Beast from the East.”
It seemed the Beast was back and it had turned downright spiteful. Not only was it acting ugly outside, it had placed Sienna in one hell of a predicament. She was stranded in a cabin in the Smoky Mountains with her soon-to-be ex. Things couldn’t get any more bizarre than that.
Chapter 4
Moments later, when Dane stepped back into the cabin, slamming the door behind him, Sienna could tell he was so mad he could barely breathe.
“What’s wrong, Dane? You being forced to cancel a date tonight?” she asked snidely. A part of her was still upset at the thought that he might have brought someone here a couple of weekends ago when they weren’t officially divorced yet. The mere fact they had been separated for six months didn’t count. She hadn’t gone out with anyone. Indulging in a relationship with another man hadn’t even crossed her mind.
He took a step toward her and she refused to back up. She was determined to maintain her ground and her composure, although the intense look in his eyes was causing crazy things to happen to her body, like it normally did whenever they were alone for any period of time. There may have been a number of things wrong with their marriage, but lack of sexual chemistry had never been one of them.
“Do you know what this means?” he asked, his voice shaking in anger.
She tilted her head to one side. “Other than I’m being forced to remain here with you for a couple of hours, no, I don’t know what it means.”
She saw his hands ball into fists at his sides and knew he was probably fighting the urge to strangle her. “We’re not talking about hours, Sienna. Try days. Haven’t you been listening to the weather reports?”
; She glared at him. “Haven’t you? I’m not here by myself.”
“Yes, but I thought I could come up here and in ten minutes max get what I came for, and leave before the bad weather kicked in.”
Sienna regretted that she hadn’t been listening to the weather reports, at least not in detail. She’d known that a snowstorm was headed toward the mountains within seventy-two hours, which was why she’d thought, like Dane, that she had time to rush and get in and out before the nasty weather hit. Anything other than that, she was clueless. And what was he saying about them being up here for days instead of hours? “Yes, I did listen to the weather reports, but evidently I missed something.”
He shook his head. “Evidently you missed a lot, if you think this storm is going to blow over in a couple of hours. According to forecasters, what you see isn’t the worst of it, and because of that unusual cold front hovering about in the east, it may last for days.”
She swallowed deeply. The thought of spending days alone in a cabin with Dane didn’t sit well with her. “How many days are we talking about?”
“Try three or four.”
She didn’t want to try any at all, and as she continued to gaze into his eyes she saw a look of worry replace the anger in their dark depths. Then she knew what had him upset.
“Do we have enough food and supplies up here to hold us for three or four days?” she asked, as she began to nervously gnaw on her lower lip. The magnitude of the situation they were in was slowly dawning on her, and when he didn’t answer immediately she knew they were in trouble.
Chapter 5
Dane saw the panic that suddenly lined Sienna’s face. He wished he could say he didn’t give a damn, but there was no way that he could. This woman would always matter to him whether she was married to him or not. From the moment he had walked into his father’s study that day and their gazes had connected, he had known then, as miraculous at it had seemed, and without a word spoken between them, that he was meant to love her. And for a while he had convinced her of that, but not anymore. Evidently, at some point during their marriage, she began believing otherwise.