by Paige North
I wink at her and leave her with Chef, only to hear a ruckus going on at the front of the house.
Once I get to the grand marble foyer, I find Jason and Jake dressed in board shorts and T-shirts. They’re carrying their surfboards and wetsuits through the house, trailed by little twelve-year-old Jasmine, who’s also got her surf gear.
“Wait up!” she says as they head for the door.
“Excuse me?” I say. “Where’s everyone off to?”
Jason, a supercool sophomore, rolls his eyes. “We’ve got lots of time before Owen gets back. We were going to let you know that we’re off for a surf sesh.”
“Jeez,” Jasmine says. “You’re too awesome to say session like everybody else in the world?”
Jake stands by his older brother, not as tall yet, but getting there. “I don’t know what you’re doin’ here, Jazzie, but you won’t be having any kind of sesh with us. Get lost.”
As Jazzie starts to protest, Nat, who came down here from New York to help run the household as well as some of our business interests, scurries in. She’s traded in her strict bun for a looser ponytail and her dark dress for a brighter, lighter one. But she’s still got the cleaning cloth in hand.
“Now what are you kids doing?” she asks mildly. “You’re getting sand in here.”
Jason says, “We already rinsed things off outside, Nat. We always do.”
Jazzie speaks up. “I told them we should go around the side of the house instead. Sand gets everywhere.”
It looks as if Nat is about to say something about dirt and debris, but she merely stuffs her cloth back into a pocket. Things have sure changed during this year, but there are still some old habits that take a while to fade. Nat’s working on the ones she developed in Owen’s ultra-clean New York mansion.
Sometimes messes are okay.
Jake gives her a cheesy smile. “Ready to drive us to the beach, Nat? You said you would!”
She looks to me, and as I survey the kids’ please-oh-please-say-yes expressions, I think again of Mom and Dad, who’d love to see how incredibly happy we are now. There’s still such deep sadness from the loss of our parents, but they would’ve been so proud to see us moving forward in life and making the most of every day.
Just as I’m about to tell the kids that Nat can take them to the beach as long as it’s a short surf sesh, I hear the front door ease open behind me.
A thrill dances up my spine, and even before the kids squeal in delight, I know Owen is back.
And he’s early, which means he couldn’t bear to stay away.
In the moment before my brothers and sister put down their surf gear and clamor over to him, I turn around to see the man I love.
My husband.
He’s still impressive in a navy designer suit, still tall and imposing and dark in so many ways, but his gaze is aglow as it meets mine. A low vibration warms my belly during that one, hot, fleeting second.
Then the kids smack into him. Jazzie hops into his arms, and even though she’d be too big for most other men to handle with such ease, Owen lifts her as if she’s a feather.
“Owen, you can go surfing with us now!” Jason yells.
“Yeah,” Jake echoes, “come on! Let’s get in some board time!”
Jazzie merely hugs him tight, and my heart melts.
“How about tomorrow?” Owen asks, laughing at their puppy-doglike enthusiasm. “I only just stepped off the jet.”
As they try to talk him into going now, Nat comes up beside me. We exchange a subtle yet joyous smile that says it all: Who knew that Owen would someday come out from behind his walls to be this kind of a father figure to anyone, much less a bunch of noisy, sloppy kids? Who knew that he’d be this relaxed, confident, loving, and kind—a man who conquered his demons?
I knew, because even during our darkest times, I could see flashes of the good-hearted man beneath all those icy barricades he put up around himself. I could see glimpses past everything he built to protect himself from the chaos of his past and the world around him.
Even his parents, who’ve made such strides in their treatment back in their New York home, would agree.
Nat, as efficient as always, moves forward to greet Owen and then cajole the kids into leaving.
“How about a compromise?” she asks as she opens the door. “Today you can have a short surf sesh amongst yourselves, tomorrow a longer one with Owen.”
The boys grumble a little about how Owen shouldn’t ever turn down some good waves as they grab their gear and leave. After Owen puts Jazzie down, she gives him one last hug before scrambling to get her stuff and follow her big brothers and Nat out the door.
That leaves Owen and me, finally alone. My heartbeat seems too loud, bouncing off the marble and right back at me with breath-stealing thuds. From the hot look in eyes, he’s feeling it, too.
Then I run to him, and he swoops me into his arms, burying his face in my hair.
“God,” he says. “I couldn’t stay away from you another hour. I had to get back home, give you a surprise.”
Home.
Ours.
“They say absence makes the heart grow fonder,” I murmur against his cheek, where stubble is beginning to scratch. “But I don’t know how my heart could get any fonder of you.”
With a growl, he draws me into a kiss, and I go liquid in his arms. I feel a sense of forever in the way his lips caress mine, in the way he holds me, promising that he’s always going to come back to me.
When the door suddenly opens and Jazzie scoots back inside, laughing as she sees us and running to grab the wetsuit that she left behind, Owen continues to hold me.
“Bye, you lovey-dovey birds!” she says, a sweet little storm coming and going and slamming the door behind her.
After we laugh again, I cup his face in my hands. I can feel his heart beating against me, but I think my own pulse is going faster.
“Talk about a mess,” I say. “Jazzie’s a hot one.”
“Sometimes I think we’ve got four hot messes to varying degrees.”
My throat tightens as I see the affection in his gaze, not just for me, but for all of us.
I swallow, because I have something else to tell him. Something I’ve been waiting to share until he got home.
“How would you feel,” I whisper, “if we had five hot little messes in this house?”
For a moment, it’s as if he has no idea what I’m talking about. Then his gaze becomes tender, surprised.
He lets me slip down the front of his hard body, but I never look away from him. Not even when he runs his hand to my belly, which is still flat, even though there’s a wonderful gift inside.
“Are you saying…?” he asks.
I nod, then finally find the words. “We’re having a baby.”
The old Owen would’ve backed away, putting up his barriers at the thought of bringing something so messy into this dark, threatening world. But he only rubs my belly so very gently, then brings me into another kiss.
One that keeps healing, just as we both have been healed.
One that promises a wonderful, open future ahead for all of us.
THE END
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And now, continue reading this ebook to find the excerpt from the New York Times bestselling For His Pleasure series, by Kelly Favor.
Excerpt: For His Pleasure by Kelly Favor
For His Pleasure, Book One
Monday came too soon for Nicole Masters.
The most important day of her life, and she felt ill prepared.
Nicole hadn’t slept the night before. Instead, she’d spent hours laying out different outfits, going through possible interview questions. Her stomach churning, she’d taken six or eight Tums, read article after article about
Jameson International on the Internet, and of course, she’d also researched Red Jameson, the high profile CEO and founder of the advertising agency. At only age thirty-two, the man was already a legend in the advertising world and a heartthrob in the rest of the world.
While playing around online, she’d even run across a web forum seemingly devoted to discussing Red’s every relationship, both real and imagined. The forum participants gossiped endlessly about celebrity women he’d been spotted with, and then discussed (in great detail) what they would do if they had five minutes alone with him.
Red Jameson had been featured on the cover of both Forbes and Rolling Stone. He was just that cool.
Finally, around five-thirty a.m., when the darkness was starting to give way to a gray and foggy morning, Nicole began drifting to sleep.
Her alarm woke her just half an hour later. She groaned and sat up, feeling like she’d spent the previous night drinking tequila. Or maybe bashing herself in the head with a hammer.
Either way, she had to pull herself together. She ran to the bathroom and started the lengthy process of getting ready for the day. Shaving her legs in the bath, washing and conditioning her hair. As she rinsed the soap out of her eyes, images of Red Jameson flashed in her mind. He was staring at her and his expression was one of disapproval. He shook his head.
No. You can’t have the internship, Nicole. You aren’t ready for the real world. Maybe you should have gone to grad school instead.
When she opened her eyes, her heart was pounding. Think positive thoughts, she admonished herself.
This interview is going to go wonderfully. I deserve this internship. I’ve got all the skills they require and that’s why I’ve made it this far.
Nicole nodded, heartened by her own propaganda, and applied moisturizer to her skin. Her skin was smooth, silky, and pale. It was one of her attributes that seemed to get the most comments from men and women alike. She rarely had a blemish on her face, or any kind of acne.
Other than her nearly perfect skin, Nicole had always considered herself rather average. She wasn’t too tall or too short. She wasn’t too skinny or too fat. She had breasts but not the kind that men tended to stare at like salivating dogs. She liked to run two or three times a week, so she had some muscle tone, but wasn’t ripped like some of the girls around town.
Her hair was brown and she usually wore it back in a simple ponytail.
Today Nicole needed to be sophisticated, though. Jameson International was a cutting-edge ad agency, and she couldn’t come in like some hick with hay in her teeth.
So she was dressing up way beyond anything she felt comfortable in.
She’d even gone into credit card debt yesterday at Prada, buying a full ensemble: high heels, skirt, blouse, purse. The entire thing had come to just under two thousand dollars. She’d spread it across two cards.
TWO THOUSAND DOLLARS.
More than she’d spent on clothes all of last year.
But this wasn’t for just any old internship. Nicole had beaten the odds just getting this interview, and now she needed to knock it out of the park. She needed to look global, she needed to look rich and worldly or she didn’t stand a chance.
Out the door and on the train, she tried to stay calm. Focused on a little breathing meditation she’d learned from a hippie ex-boyfriend. He’d taught her to meditate and he’d also tried to convince her to give him a rim job, which Nicole had politely declined.
They’d ended soon after that.
A short walk from the train to midtown and she was suddenly there. The large glass building that stretched almost to the sky. Jameson International. It looked like a block of onyx.
Nicole’s breath caught in her chest.
She shook in her heels for a moment.
And then she went inside.
The main entrance was huge, with immense marble floors and a fountain. Men and women in suits with perfect hair were filing through the doors and waiting for elevators. At the large security desk in the center of the room, three black men were checking in guests.
Nicole approached them with a smile. None of them smiled back.
“Name please?” One bald man asked. He glared at her like she might be a potential terrorist.
Her voice came out so low that she needed to start over. Nicole cleared her throat. “I’m Nicole Masters? Here for an interview at eight-thirty?”
The man nodded and turned to his computer. He typed quickly. Nodded. “Sign in please.” He tapped a clipboard next to her on the desk and she quickly wrote her name and the time and date.
“Look over here please,” he said, and when she looked at him, there was a sudden flash in her eyes.
“Just a moment.” Seconds later he’d printed out a picture of her and made a laminated badge, which he handed to her. “Please wear this at all times while you’re in the building, Ms. Masters.”
She glanced at the badge. In the picture, she looked like a cross-eyed Japanese woman. “I wish you’d at least told me to smile,” she joked.
He reacted as if she’d never spoken. “Take the elevators on your left up to the fifteenth floor. You’ll be meeting with Glen Goldman.”
“Thanks,” she whispered.
Her stomach was churning, anxious. She dug in her purse and grabbed a couple of Tums, chewed them as she crammed into the elevator with the perfect employees of Jameson International.
She disembarked on the fifteenth floor as instructed, into a wide hallway with black marble floors. To the right was a closed oak door. To the left was a set of glass double doors, and behind them, a waiting room of sorts.
She walked through the doors.
There was a striking, tall blond woman behind an immaculate desk. She wore a Bluetooth headset and sat in front of a computer. “Can I help you?”
She told her she was here to interview with Glen Goldman.
“Absolutely.” The blond woman smiled in the most perfunctory way possible. “Please take a seat, he’ll be with you momentarily.”
Nicole took a seat in one of the black leather waiting chairs. It felt gorgeous and sleek and glossy, like something out of a four-star hotel room. There was a glass table nearby, with magazines carefully fanned out across it.
They were advertising industry magazines. Two of them had Red Jameson on the cover. On one, he was holding a golden CLIO statue. In another, he was holding a cigar in each hand and grinning. Beneath his picture it said, How One Man Can Have Too Much of Everything and Still Not Enough.
It was hard for her to tell if Red was smolderingly sexy because he was good looking and photogenic, or if it was because Nicole happened to know how smart and innovative and powerful he was. Maybe it was all of the above. His looks were interesting. He was supposedly of Irish and German descent, but he looked more Italian or Persian. His skin was dark, almost coffee colored. His eyes were hooded. His hair was slightly curly, black and wiry. His nose was long and a little hooked at the end, and he possessed a strong, chiseled jaw, surprisingly thick neck and broad shoulders.
In his slick gray and black suits he sometimes looked more like an athlete dressed up as a businessman, rather than someone who belonged in neckties and wingtips.
“Miss Masters?”
The blonde receptionist’s voice startled Nicole out of her reverie. She realized she had just been staring at the magazine with Red’s picture on it.
She stood up too quickly and nearly lost her balance.
The blonde smiled as if embarrassed for her. “I’ll bring you to your interview with Mr. Goldman now.”
***
The interviews turned out to be surprisingly pleasant, if exhausting.
Glen Goldman was older, thin and balding. He reminded Nicole of her Uncle Regis, who used to always pretend to find quarters in her ear when she was little. Glen asked her about college, he seemed genuinely happy for her that she was so excited about advertising.
“It’s a young persons game now,” he said, blinking. “If you don’t
mind working sixty or seventy hours a week minimum, you’ll be fine.”
“I can’t wait to work,” she said, truthfully. “I’ve always enjoyed hard work.”
Blinking ferociously, he nodded and smiled. “I like your attitude.
After Glen, a middle aged severe woman named Remi Danvers came in. Remi was an art director at the agency. She had short brown hair, enormous golden earrings and an even more enormous golden necklace. Her white button down shirt was unbuttoned far enough to reveal her nonexistent cleavage. Remi fired off questions about Nicole’s resume, almost as if trying to catch her in a lie.
After fielding twenty or thirty rapid-fire questions about her previous work experience, Nicole had waited for Remi to move on to some other topic. But the woman didn’t do any such thing. She simply smiled briskly, stood up and left the room.
Next, the creative director entered. His name was Edward Lane and he was stocky, grinning, with a thin red beard. He had a phone at his side that constantly buzzed as he studiously ignored it. Nicole tried to talk without being distracted by the incessant buzzing sound.
Edward was also friendly, although his blue eyes were watchful and perceptive. At one point he asked her how she handled conflict, and she said that she typically avoided it.
“You won’t be able to avoid it here,” he said softly. His eyes watched her intently.
She took a breath. “I look forward to learning, and if conflict is part of that, I welcome the challenge.”
“You may find yourself under a great deal of mental and emotional pressure. The strain can be enormous. Working for Red is never easy.”
She swallowed. “You mean Mr. Jameson?”
He nodded. “He’s also very egalitarian and likes to meet everyone. That’s why he interviews all prospective employees.”
Nicole gulped audibly. “He interviews everyone?”
“Yes, if we think the candidate is appropriate Jameson International material. In fact, there’s a good chance you’ll be meeting him very soon,” he grinned.