by Heidi Betts
She trailed off, her gaze skittering away from his, and Marc felt a stab of guilt somewhere around his solar plexus.
“I’m sorry. Mother had them thrown out after you left. I didn’t expect you to be back, so I didn’t think to keep any of them.”
The truth was, they’d been too painful a reminder of her. Of her desertion, of the divorce papers he’d signed willingly more out of anger than any real desire to be single again and of the happier times they’d had together before things had somehow gone terribly wrong.
He shouldn’t have let his mother dispose of them, he realized that now. It had been his place to deal with them, and he probably should have tracked Vanessa down to see if she wanted any of the items shipped to her before having them carted away. But at the time, he’d just wanted them gone and had been almost relieved when his mother had declared it was time to rid the house of any reminders of his ex-wife’s abandonment.
The only thing that had been left behind was that crystal decanter of perfume.
“You look beautiful,” he repeated, striding across the thickly carpeted floor to grasp her shoulders. “And we’re not here to impress anyone. Not even Mother,” he added with a grin.
When her mouth twitched with the beginnings of a smile and at least some of the anxiety seemed to drain away from her features, he leaned in and kissed her. He kept it light, even though that was far from what he really wanted.
Just the firm press of lips to lips instead of a ravaging of tongues. Just the brush of his fingertips over the warm skin of her bare shoulders instead of his hands delving inside her bodice and beneath the hem of her skirt.
He lingered for a few precious, breathless moments, then released her, stepping back before the full proof of his desire for her became obvious. Her freshly applied lipstick was smudged and he reached out to brush a spot with the edge of his thumb.
“Maybe we should skip dinner and go straight to dessert,” he suggested in a low, graveled voice.
“I don’t think your mother would like that very much.”
He was pleased to hear the same huskiness in her voice as in his own. It meant he wasn’t alone in the passion causing his pulse to hammer and hum.
“I don’t think I give a good damn,” he muttered with no small amount of feeling behind the words.
“As bad an idea as that probably is, I sincerely wish we could. Anything would be better than having to face your mother again.”
The corner of Marc’s mouth quirked down in a frown. Was she implying that staying in the room to make love with him would be only slightly less miserable than an evening spent in his family’s company? He wasn’t sure he liked being considered the lesser of two evils.
Before he had a chance to reply, however, a tapping sounded on the suite’s outer door.
“That will be the nanny,” he said, just managing to mask a sigh of disappointment.
“You hired a nanny?” Vanessa asked, sounding both surprised and disapproving.
“Not really,” he replied. “One of Mother’s maids is going to sit with him for a couple of hours. That’s all right, isn’t it?”
Her brows crossed. “I don’t know. Is she good with infants?”
“I don’t know,” he said, repeating her phrase. “Let’s go meet her and give her the third degree.”
Wrapping his hand around her elbow, he pulled her with him toward the bedroom door.
“I don’t want to give her the third degree,” Vanessa murmured softly as they crossed the sitting room where Danny was sleeping. “I just want to know that she’s qualified to sit with my child.”
“We’ll be right downstairs, so you can come up and check on her any time you like,” he assured her, keeping his voice equally low. “Tonight can be her test run. If you like her and she does a good job, she can stay with Danny whenever you need her while you’re here. If not, we’ll hire a real nanny. One you feel a hundred percent confident in.”
“You’re placating me, aren’t you?” she asked, an edge of annoyance entering her tone.
With his hand on the knob of the sitting room door, he turned to her and smiled. “Absolutely. While you’re here, whatever you need, whatever you want, I intend to see that you get it.”
Her eyes widened and he knew she was about to argue. So he bent down and captured her mouth, kissing her into warm and pliant submission.
When he pulled away, his own body was buzzing with warmth, but he was far from pliant. Quite stiff and unyielding would have been more accurate.
“Indulge me,” he said, brushing a stray copper curl behind her ear while the taste of her lingered on his lips and prodded him to kiss her again. “Please.”
Thirteen
As always, dinner with Marc’s family was exhausting. Delicious, but exhausting.
Marc’s mother was her usual haughty self, and though Vanessa had always liked Marc’s brother Adam and Adam’s wife, Clarissa, they were cut from the same basic cloth as Eleanor. Born with silver spoons in their mouths, they’d never known a moment of true want or need. And being raised as they had been, they were extremely refined, never a hair out of place, never a wrong word spoken.
The only reason Vanessa felt kindly toward them at all was that, despite their upbringings, Adam and Clarissa weren’t quite as cold and judgmental as her ex-mother-in-law. From the moment she’d married Marc, they’d treated her like a true member of the family and had seemed genuinely sorry when she and Marc had split up.
Even tonight, knowing the circumstances surrounding Vanessa’s return to Keller Manor and Eleanor’s obvious disdain for her, Marc’s brother and sister-in-law had treated her exactly the same as they had in the past. No sidelong glances or sharply pointed questions meant to put her on the spot or make her feel insecure, just friendly smiles and harmless banter.
That alone had helped to assuage some of Vanessa’s raw and rampaging nerves when she’d first walked into the opulent dining room. Of course, Eleanor had already been seated at the head of the table like a queen holding court—and her expression alone had made Vanessa feel like a bug under a microscope.
To Vanessa’s relief, her former mother-in-law had played fair through the soup and salad courses, keeping conversation light and impersonal. There were a couple of sticky moments while they enjoyed their entrees, but by the time dessert was being served, Eleanor dropped her semi-polite facade and began taking potshots at Vanessa as often as she thought she could get away with it. Some of them were direct, others more passive-aggressively delivered.
But this time, Marc actually stuck up for her—something he’d never done before, not with his mother. Possibly because in the past, Eleanor’s attacks had been much more subtle, and often reserved for moments when the two of them were alone so that no one else would witness her true hatred for her son’s wife.
Marc had grown up under Eleanor’s frosty disposition, so he was used to her testy personality and jagged barbs. Even though her mother-in-law’s malicious treatment had cut her to the quick, Vanessa truly believed that much of what Marc witnessed had gone straight over his head. He was like someone raised in the city, who wouldn’t be bothered by the sounds of round-the-clock street traffic the way someone would who’d been raised in the quietness of the country.
But tonight, Marc hadn’t let his mother’s not-so-subtle assaults slide by. He’d caught and responded to every one, always in Vanessa’s defense. And once dessert was finished, when Eleanor seemed to be working herself toward a full-blown attack, he’d announced that it had been a long day, wished his family good-night, and taken Vanessa’s hand to lead her out of the dining room.
She was almost giddy with relief and unaccustomed empowerment…and was still clutching his hand like a life preserver as they jogged upstairs side by side. She felt like she had when they’d first been dating, before the realities of being Mrs. Marcus Keller had settled around her and robbed her of her happiness.
Reaching the door to his suite, they were both smiling, and she w
as slightly out of breath. He put a finger to his lips, signaling for her to be quiet before he opened the door.
The fact that he had to remind her to be silent made her realize how close to giggling she was. Giggling. Like a twelve-year-old.
Biting back the strangled sound, she kept hold of Marc’s hand and followed him into the darkened sitting room. The maid-slash-nanny they’d left with Danny was sitting across the room from the crib, reading a magazine beneath the muted yellow glare of a single low-lit lamp. When she saw them, she closed the magazine and quickly rose to her feet.
“How was he?” Marc whispered.
“Just fine,” the young woman answered with a small smile. “He slept the entire time.”
Good news for a babysitter. Not such good news for parents who were looking forward to a full night’s sleep.
“That means he’ll be up in the middle of the night,” Vanessa whispered to no one in particular. And then to Marc, she said, “Prepare yourself for finally experiencing the true rigors of fatherhood.”
He flashed her a grin, his green eyes sparking with a blaze of heat that had nothing to do with parental exhilaration. “I’m looking forward to it.”
After slipping the young maid a couple of folded-up bills that Vanessa was sure Eleanor would disapprove of, he saw her out, then joined Vanessa at the side of Danny’s crib. His hand came up to rest on the small of her back, and she had to swallow a lump of emotion at the picture they must have made. Mother and father standing at the edge of their infant son’s crib, watching him sleep.
This was what she’d always imagined motherhood and family would be like. It’s what she’d wanted when she’d married Marc and they’d first started trying to get pregnant.
Funny how life never quite turned out the way you planned.
But this was nice, too. Maybe not ideal, maybe not the epitome of her adolescent dreams, but it still warmed her and made her heart swell inside her chest.
“I hope he’s not coming down with something,” she murmured, putting the back of her hand to Danny’s tiny forehead. He didn’t feel feverish, but one could never tell. “He doesn’t usually sleep this long.”
“He’s had a busy day,” Marc offered just as softly. “You’d be tired, too, if this were your first big trip since being born.”
She chuckled, then had to cover her mouth to keep from waking the baby. With a grin of his own, Marc grabbed her arm and tugged her toward the bedroom door.
Once they were safely inside, he twirled her around and pushed her up against the hard, flat panel, covering her mouth with his own. His arms on either side of her head boxed her in, his body pressing her flat and sending a flare of heat everywhere he touched.
For long minutes, he kissed her, their breaths mingling, his tongue thrusting, parrying, drawing her into his passionate duel. She lost her breath, her vision, her sanity, her entire world shrinking to the single pinprick of reality that was Marc’s solid embrace.
When he lightened his hold enough to let her gasp for air, she blinked like a newborn foal and let her head fall back against the door while he continued to nibble at her loose, tingling lips.
“This isn’t what I had in mind when you said we’d be sharing your rooms,” she managed—barely—after filling her lungs with a gasp of much-needed oxygen.
“Funny. It’s exactly what I pictured.” He murmured the words against her skin, moving to suckle the lobe of her ear around her small hoop earring.
Somehow she didn’t doubt that. But letting his mother think they were sharing a room and actually sharing a room—a bed—were two completely different things.
“I was going to sleep on the chaise in the other room. Or slip into one of the guest rooms when nobody was looking. This…”
She moaned as his tongue darted out to lick a line of electricity from her collarbone to the hollow behind her ear. The sensation shot through her like a shock wave, turning her knees to jelly.
“Not smart. Not smart at all,” she wheezed, unsure of whether the words were actually coming out of her mouth or simply echoing through her rapidly liquefying brain.
Shifting to wrap his arms around her and lift her against his body—one hand at her back, the other cradling her bottom—he turned and strode directly to the bed.
“I think it’s positively brilliant,” he replied, and then dropped her to the mattress like a sack of potatoes.
She certainly didn’t feel like a sack of potatoes, though. Not when he followed her down, covering her from chest to ankle with his hot, heavy bulk.
This time, when he kissed her, she didn’t think to protest where all of this might be leading. Maybe because she knew where it was leading. They both did.
Or maybe because his mouth on hers, his hands on her body, drove every other rational thought straight out of her head.
With deft fingers, he untied the knot of her dress’s bodice behind her neck, lowering the gauzy yellow material to reveal her braless breasts. He cupped them together, kneading, brushing the tight nipples with his thumbs until she moaned and wiggled beneath him.
He returned her moan with one of his own, then let his hands slide around her waist to the rear zipper. She rose slightly and waited for the gentle snick-snick-snick-snick to stop, for him to tug the full skirt past her hips and thighs. Lifting himself up, he pulled the dress completely off, then divested her of her strappy sandals, as well.
She lay there in only a pair of thin, silken panties. They weren’t the sexiest thing she’d ever worn, but she thanked heaven she was past the “granny panty” phase of pregnancy and new motherhood.
Judging by Marc’s expression, he approved. For long minutes, he stayed propped on one strong arm staring down at her with eyes that had gone dark and primal. A shiver stole over her at that look, at the way it made her feel.
Not helpless or vulnerable by any means. Instead, she felt powerful. That she could incite that level of heat and lust in him continued to amaze her.
It had been that way in the beginning, and for most of their marriage, but she wouldn’t have expected such intense desire to still be there after all they’d been through. That it was felt a bit like a miracle, even though she had no idea how the passion they shared in the bedroom could possibly translate to their future everyday lives.
His fingers delving beneath the elastic waist of her underwear dragged her up from the quagmire of her inner thoughts, and she was more than willing to grab hold of the life rope he offered.
She let him snake the panties down her legs, laying her bare, and then wrapped her arms around his neck to pull him down for a deep, soulful kiss. With a groan, Marc ground the bulge of his still-trapped erection against her hip.
Shifting beneath him, she welcomed him into the cradle of her thighs, crossing her legs behind his waist. He groaned again—or maybe it was a growl—and pressed even closer.
There was something between them, Marc thought. Something compelling and meaningful and not to be taken for granted. And he realized suddenly that that’s exactly what he’d done—he’d taken his relationship with Vanessa for granted.
He’d married her, and brought her home, and simply assumed she would always be there. How could she not be happy in a house roughly the size of Buckingham Palace on an estate that boasted a tennis court, movie theater, two swimming pools—one indoors, one out—a riding stable, gardens, walking paths, a pond…everything anyone could ever want. Add to that the fact that he had more money than Midas and Croesus combined and he’d thought there was nothing he couldn’t offer her, no reason any woman would ever walk away from him.
He’d never been one to delve too deeply into his or anyone else’s feelings, but these past few weeks had him thinking differently. Feeling things he’d never felt before and wondering things he’d never thought to wonder about.
Maybe money wasn’t everything. Maybe situating Vanessa in his family’s mansion and giving her carte blanche with his primary bank account hadn’t been enough for her.
He wasn’t sure what to think of that, since he was rich and intended to stay that way.
What he did know was that some sort of bond obviously still existed between them.
It wasn’t just the sex—although that alone was outstanding enough to give him pause. But whatever it was, still buzzing and humming whenever they were together, it warranted a few hours of serious consideration.
Was there a chance they could reconcile? Try again, start over, build something better and stronger than they’d had before?
But even if they could, should they?
It was too much to contemplate rationally at the moment, given that his mind was currently preoccupied with more immediate and infinitely more enjoyable pursuits. But he did need to think about it. Decide if what he thought he was feeling was real.
Because what he thought he was feeling was love. Love. Longing. Devotion. And a desire to once again make things with Vanessa permanent.
He groaned as her tongue swirled inside his mouth and her ankles tightened at the small of his back. The heat of her naked body burned through his clothes and suddenly he wanted them gone.
With her still clinging to him like plastic wrap, he reached between them to tug at the buttons of his shirt, his belt, the front of his slacks. She shifted when necessary, giving him the space to shrug out of his clothes with jerky movements, but never actually letting go.
Once he was as naked as she, he edged her higher on the bed, careful not to bump her into the headboard while he held her to him with one arm and rearranged the overstuffed pillows with the other. He propped a couple under her rear, lifting her so that she looked down on him and the short strands of her copper hair fell around his face, as well as her own.