Lone Star Lovers

by Jessica Lemmon

  “No laughing,” he warned.

  She didn’t laugh, and when the heels of her shoes sank into the soft earth, she kicked them off. Zach maneuvered them to a particularly soft patch of grass surrounded by bushes.

  He hoisted her dress over her head, tossed her bra aside and gently lowered her to the ground. He kissed her nipples, leaving them to pucker in the breeze while he unbuttoned his shirt and whipped it off his shoulders. Pants around his thighs, he didn’t bother taking them off, and she couldn’t think of a single reason he should.

  She peeled her thong down her legs, ready for him and grateful to avoid another delay.

  He slipped inside her, dropping his forehead to hers and letting out what might be a shudder. She tilted her hips and closed her eyes, head tossed back to appreciate the way she felt whenever he was inside her.

  Full.

  No.

  Whole.

  Her eyes flew open to meet his and he started moving again. Slowly, fluidly. Pumping in and out at a rhythm he set and she easily matched. Never had sex felt this intimate before Zach—before now. She reminded herself that her rounding belly and raging hormones were responsible for a plethora of emotions she hadn’t experienced before.

  Until he said, “You’ve never been more beautiful than you are now.”

  She pressed her fingertips to his mouth and he gave them a playful nip.

  “You’re saying that,” she breathed as she braced for another sensual slide, “because you have to.”

  “I’m saying that—” another harsh breath from him blew her hair from her forehead “—because it’s the truth.”

  She pushed on his chest. “On your back, cowboy.”

  His pause was momentary, but a second later he cupped her head and hip and, keeping them joined, shifted so that he was on his back instead.

  “Impressive move with your pants around your knees.” She smiled down at him.

  “Thank ya, ma’am.”

  She rolled her eyes as he tipped a pretend cowboy hat, but his good humor erased when she pushed his chest to leverage herself up, and sank down on him again.

  A hiss of air came from between his teeth, but he didn’t close his eyes. No, he kept them right on her as she moved. His hands covered her breasts, his hips rising to meet hers.

  And when her orgasm all but shattered her, Zach caught her against him, holding her hair from her face as he kissed her. He tilted his hips while she held on to the moving earth and then he came inside her.

  The only sounds in the garden were crickets humming, the distant bark of a dog and Zach’s father’s shout on the air.

  * * *

  “Seriously?” The Zen of Penelope’s orgasm washed away as her eyes went wide, her hands covering her breasts.

  He let out a laugh. She speared him with a murderous glare before looking over her shoulder. He’d driven them deep into the gardens at the side of the house, so all his old man had seen—or could currently see—was the black blob of Zach’s car.

  And he and Pen were safely hidden on one side of it.

  He sat up, keeping their connection as a tremor ran down his spine. Damn, he could have used a few more minutes to Zen out with her. Cradling her face, he gave her a swift kiss. Unfortunately, timing was of the essence before Rider called the cops.

  “Get dressed,” Zach told Pen. “I’ll handle this.”

  Not since he was sixteen had he been caught with his pants around his ankles, and he wasn’t starting today. He yanked them up, buckling his belt and pushing a hand through his hair.

  He snatched his shirt off the ground and turned to find Pen, grass in her hair, roll her tiny scrap of a pair of panties up those long, golden legs.

  He lifted her dress off the ground and handed it to her, noticing the grass stain a microsecond before she did. She merely shook her head and pulled it on, tugging it down and wadding the bra in her hand while Zach stepped into his shoes.

  He spared one last glance the second his dad turned on the floodlight, enough to see her grow a little more irked, and in the process, a whole lot more beautiful.

  Who knew that could happen?

  “Zach?” his dad bellowed.

  “It’s me!” he called back. “Don’t shoot!” He was only half kidding. From what he could see, Rider wasn’t carrying a shotgun, but one could never be too careful.

  So much for his parents never using this part of the house. He’d been sure this side was left to the staff or only opened up for parties.

  His father strolled into the yard. Zach approached while he finished buttoning his white collared shirt.

  “What in Sam hell are you doing?” Rider asked, his voice filled with mirth. “Trying to give me another heart attack? Because if your mother knew you were out here having sex in the petunias, she’d make sure I had one.”

  Rider turned to look over his shoulder but only briefly. They both knew Eleanor was in her bath by now with the TV on and a magazine in hand.

  “I don’t think those were petunias,” Zach said in response.

  “You two have your own place and you’re carrying on like teenagers.” His father sent a look over to the car where Pen sat in the front seat, elbow on the window, one hand hiding her face. “She knows I know that’s her, right?”

  “Yeah. She does.” His own gaze lingered there a moment before he bid his dad adieu. “I’ll pay to repair the lawn.”

  “You know I don’t give a shit about that.” Rider chuckled. “Get your girl home. Continue what you started indoors.”

  Zach’s back straightened on his walk to the car, his swagger taking over. He was proud that this woman was with him. And that she’d offered to do dastardly things outside with him. Pen embodied the motto “work hard, play hard.” He liked that a hell of a lot.

  Zach reached the car and Rider called out, “’Night, Penny!” His loud boom of a guffaw heard as clear as day.

  When Zach sank into his leather seat, Pen watched him for a solid thirty seconds. Fine by him. It gave him a moment to rebutton his shirt since he’d done it wrong on the walk over to his dad. He adjusted his seat belt and started the car, aware of her watching him the entire time.

  “What?”

  “Now your mom definitely hates me.”

  “She has no idea. Dad won’t tell her.” He reversed the car and drove through the grass.

  Pen went stone silent.

  Zach grasped her chin and turned her to face him, his car idling at the gate of his parents’ gargantuan home. “I would never let her hate you. Give her time.”

  Pen’s blue eyes softened with worry.

  “I mean it. Give her a little time and she’ll love you as much as my dad does.”

  He pulled out of the driveway and onto the street, the words he’d said wending around his brain. He’d meant them. Everyone loved Penelope—her clients, his siblings, his dad.

  Do you? came the unplanned thought.

  But that kind of love was different—he’d learned long ago that loving with his full heart wasn’t rewarded. He wouldn’t make that mistake again.

  He drove home, arm leaning on his open window and the summer air blowing his hair.

  Some thoughts were best left unexplored.

  Fifteen

  “Have your assistant return everything but this.” Pen held up a tiny pair of shoes. “I can’t part with these even though they’re hysterically overpriced. The rest of it I can shop for online.” She stood over the boutique baby clothes spread on Zach’s king-size bed, her hands on her hips. There was a line in the center of her brows communicating her worry.

  “Why?” He slid out of his suit jacket and hung it in his closet.

  “Because a growing baby doesn’t need extravagant—” she gestured to the stacks of gender-neutral clothing “—everything.”

  She’d set u
p the visit to the baby boutique for Saturday afternoon, and then they did something he’d never pictured himself doing. They shopped for their future son or daughter.

  He’d purchased the clothing, shoes and toys that he and Pen carried out in the boutique’s signature shiny bags, but he didn’t stop there. He’d also snapped several pictures of furniture with his iPhone and sent them to his interior designer. Like right now, Pen had loved it but protested the inflated price tag.

  “No one needs extravagant everything,” Zach commented, unbuttoning his shirt. Pen paused, a yellow stuffed elephant rattle in her hand, and watched. He liked the way she looked at him—like he was her next meal. “Come take your clothes off.”

  “There’s an invitation,” she said with a laugh.

  She tossed the elephant aside and came to him in the closet. Her eyes were sleepy despite it being hours before bedtime. After a shopping excursion and a late lunch, she looked beat. Not that it hindered her beauty at all.

  Holding herself steady on the closet’s interior wall, she slipped off one high-heeled shoe and then the other.

  “Ah, so much better.”

  He’d lectured her nonstop about the damn shoes. It hadn’t done any good.

  “Just so we’re clear,” he said, shrugging off his shirt and tossing it into a hamper, “our child is entitled to have as many extravagant things as we see fit.”

  Her eyes roamed over his bare chest and he sucked in a breath to expand it farther. She smiled and gave him a playful shove.

  “That’s what I’d like to avoid. An entitled child.” She turned and lifted her hair and he pulled down the delicate zipper holding her dress closed. “I want our son or daughter to be loved and know that ‘stuff’ doesn’t matter.”

  Zach ran his fingers down her exposed back, pausing at her bra strap. “This, too?”

  She eyed him over her shoulder, a spark of want in her eyes mingling with the fatigue. As tempting as it was to seduce her, he’d digress.

  “I’m going to work at home for a bit. Why not grab a nap?”

  She slipped out of her dress, revealing smooth skin and a softly rounding belly. His chest flooded with possessiveness.

  She covered her stomach and her brows bent.

  He moved her hand and gave her a smile. “I like watching the changes in your body.”

  She cocked her head as if to challenge him. “You mean my growing girth?”

  “You’re making a human being. That takes up some real estate.” It was a miracle in every sense of the word. “It’s okay to take a break.”

  “I’ll relax, but I want to keep my eye on the internet for our inevitable online debut.”

  The photographer had shown up like Pen arranged, snapping pictures of them inside the store through the windows as well as from across the street when they left the baby boutique.

  “Right. The blogger.”

  “Not just any blogger.” She hung her white dress and pulled on a pair of stretchy pale-pink pants.

  He wanted to dispute the long white shirt covering her, until he realized he could see the shape of her nipples and the swell of her heavy breasts outlined by the thin fabric.

  “The Dallas Duchess,” Pen stated with a gesture that sent her breasts jiggling.

  He pulled on a T-shirt and jeans and slipped into a pair of tennis shoes. “And she’s important, I gather.”

  “Mmm-hmm. She keeps an eye on the Dallas movers and shakers. She’ll have our photo up by this afternoon or tomorrow morning. I made sure of it.”

  That rogue twinkle in Pen’s eye lit whenever she talked about her work. Whether she was digging a pair of canoodling actors out of a steaming pile of drama or arranging Zach’s internet debut. He couldn’t resist capturing some of that fire for himself. Not while she stood this close to him.

  He wrapped an arm around her back and lowered his lips to hers, pressing her breasts to his chest as he made out with her long and slow. She tracked her fingers along his abs, and his belly clenched. He let out a low growl as she dropped from her toes and smiled up at him. He wanted her. Badly.

  “You don’t have to work right away, do you?” she asked with the quirk of one eyebrow.

  “Hell, no,” he answered, and then hoisted her in his arms and carried her the short distance to the bed.

  * * *

  She and Zach had played their roles while shopping earlier today. They’d kissed and hugged and smiled. She’d coached him this morning en route to the store, and he’d grumbled about the preparation, arguing that he wasn’t that good of an actor.

  Yet this afternoon, there he was, heat in his eyes and firmness in his kiss. But that wasn’t all acting, now, was it? He’d been looking at her with heated eyes and owning her with his kisses since they’d re-met. And their going to bed together when they returned home was definitely par for course.

  Mercy. She wondered how much of the sex she could blame on the hormones.

  She finished packing the baby clothes and toys into the shopping bags for returning later. She was serious about not wanting an entitled child.

  What she hadn’t told him was that she’d also started thinking about the massive income gap between hers and Zach’s annual earnings. Obviously, that’d always been a factor, but today especially, as she thought about providing for her son or daughter, she realized that half the child’s time would be spent at Zach’s house where everything would be provided in abundance. The other half? Spent with her where she’d earn a decent living, yes, and her child would never do without the necessities, but a two hundred dollar jumper wouldn’t be hanging in the closet.

  She shoved thoughts of the future aside and focused on the task in front of her. An email from the Dallas Duchess herself. The duchess confirmed that the blog would go live tomorrow.

  So that was that.

  Penelope and Zach would be making their announcement publicly soon after, confirming that yes, they were expecting. Being that Zach was both CEO of Ferguson Oil and the mayor’s brother, the story was news to anyone looking for gossip. The Fergusons weren’t royal family status, but neither were they ignored. Their staggering good looks paired with their billionaire incomes made the two brothers and sister popular in this city.

  “Way to pick a baby daddy,” Pen joked aloud. But she didn’t feel an ounce of regret for going to bed with Zach—or moving in with him. Like Cinderella, her fairy tale would soon come to an end.

  She glanced around the living room—masculine browns and earth tones like his apartment with a touch of hominess in shades of blue—and admitted she liked nesting here, even if it wasn’t permanent. There would be time to ready her apartment—to acquire an apartment. In the meantime, she would be treated like a queen.

  She scraped her bottom lip with her teeth as she turned over the shallow thoughts. Pen wasn’t accustomed to being dependent on anyone but herself. Her mother had raised her to be her own godmother, not the princess flailing about wearing only one glass slipper.

  Once upon a time Pen had been involved with a client who had offered to “take care of everything” and look how that’d ended up. She’d vowed never to let her guard down again—yet here she was, breaking her rules for Zach.

  Had she traded her pluck for comfort? Was she shallow? Or, was Zach different? Was what they had something she’d never truly experienced—the beginning of a trusting relationship that might lead to that elusive beast: love?

  Surely not.

  Pen had looked forward to the day she’d moved away from home. She’d excelled at running her own life. So well, in fact, she’d begun advising others how to run theirs and charging them for it.

  Right now she was simply being practical. Her affinity for Zach—the doting as well as the sex—was temporary. Soon, she’d have a child to raise. A baby to nurse. And still have her business to run. She wouldn’t have time for frivolous relations
hips any more than she’d have time for a mani-pedi on a Sunday afternoon.

  They were sacrifices she was willing to make. And with Zach in the picture, it wasn’t as if she’d be doing it alone. She’d have help. Albeit not living under this same roof, because that was impractical. But they’d have shared custody...

  The sentence trailed to a muted end and her head spun.

  Zach would share custody, wouldn’t he? He wouldn’t try and take her child from her? Of course he wouldn’t. Unless...he dated someone else in the future. Maybe things would get serious and the woman would want to play a bigger role in their child’s life.

  Pen’s eyebrows snapped together. She didn’t want their child raised by another woman. And what if that other woman ended up like Yvonne, with no scruples and a money-grubbing attitude? Zach hadn’t only dated Yvonne, he’d married her.

  “Whoa. You okay?” Zach stepped into the living room, casual attire doing nothing to dash the air of power surrounding him. Power and money. “You look...not okay.”

  She could imagine. If her face revealed any of her thoughts about a future custody battle, she must resemble a gladiator readying for a fight. Pen launched into a conversation without any preempting whatsoever.

  “I wanted to talk to you about custody of our baby.” The words were as thick as wet sand, but she got them out.

  He frowned as he came deeper into the living room and sat next to her on the couch. She set aside her phone.

  “We’ll share it. Obviously,” she stated.

  “When the time comes.” His eyelids narrowed. “Your home is here, Pen. I’m in no hurry to have you gone.”

  “But eventually, I’ll leave.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not.”

  “Zach.” He’d been saying that a lot and she’d gone along, but what happened when her carriage turned into a pumpkin? “Eventually. I’ll leave. I hope you won’t fight me for full custody of our child.”

  “I’m not going to fight you for anything involving our child.” He tipped his head toward the bags of clothing she’d set by the front door. “Except you keeping the purchases we made at the boutique.”