Harlequin Superromance January 2014 - Bundle 1 of 2: Everywhere She GoesA Promise for the BabyThat Summer at the Shore

by Janice Kay Johnson

  She smiled slyly at him, reached behind her back and the sound of a zipper being loosed resonated through the apartment. Her dress inched down her body, revealing her delicate collarbones with the thin strap of black against her skin, then the lacy cups of the bra covering her enlarged breasts, and finally, with a rustle, the dress was off completely.

  Vivian stood in front of him in her matching underwear and heels, the dress pooled at her feet. “Let’s see if you can hit the bull’s-eye,” she said, before turning and walking away from him.

  Karl tripped over her clothes as he tried to follow her, taking off his shoes, coat and tie at the same time, not worried about the pile of clothes on the floor and only caring enough about his dignity not to fall on his ass as he stumbled. Her skin was warm when he caught up to her at the edge of his bed and wrapped his hands around her waist. She twisted in his arms, fumbling to unbutton his shirt as they fell together onto the bed, limbs intertwined.

  Vivian opened her mouth, but before she could say anything Karl pressed his lips against hers and opened her mouth a little wider, her tongue meeting his as he cocked his head for better access. Her lips were soft. Her mouth was warm. Her teeth were sharp enough to keep him aware of every last cell in his body as he ran his tongue along the inside of her mouth.

  God, she felt good under him. All the windows in his apartment could bust open, letting the cool April night air in, and he’d still be on fire with her hands pulling at his shirt and her nails skimming along the sides of his body.

  He groped for her panties, shoving down and pulling them off over her hips, desperate to end the torture that had started on the elevator ride. When she kicked out with one leg and her panties came free, he was too intent on his newfound access to care that she’d nearly kneed him in the crotch.

  “I’m sorry,” she mumbled before taking his nipple between her teeth and biting down gently.

  He tiptoed his fingers through her curly hair until he got to her moist folds, then slid a finger inside her. “Let’s both be glad my aim improves when your clothes come off.”

  He lifted up on his elbow, watching his now-damp finger trail over her belly. Vivian lifted a leg over his hip, pulling him toward her in invitation and, unable to wait any longer, his pants and shirt still hanging off his limbs, Karl grabbed hold of his cock and pushed into her. She pulsed around him, and he tried to think of cardboard boxes, damp wool and his constitutional law professor from law school—anything to take his mind off the mind-blowing feeling of the woman wrapping her legs around him before he ejaculated with the finesse of a sixteen-year-old in the shower.

  Luckily, he wasn’t the only one struggling to last longer than two minutes; the elevator ride had nearly done them both in. Karl had only pulled out of her once when her breath started to catch and her nails dug into his shoulders. She bucked against him, tightening her thighs around his legs. She stilled, her eyes pressed tightly shut. For a moment he was worried she had stopped breathing, but she called out his name as her body shuddered.

  When she opened her eyes, gave him a wicked smile and said, “Bull’s-eye,” Karl’s balls tightened painfully and he released into her with a groan.

  * * *

  KARL BECAME CONSCIOUS when the bed shifted. He opened his eyes to find Vivian sliding out of the bed, the moonlight gleaming off her bare shoulder. As she leaned over to pick something—her underwear—off the floor, he could make out the cascading ridge of her spine. He loved seeing her naked, adored her breasts, but this was his favorite view of her. It was like sneaking into one of Renoir’s paintings of bathers, intimate, vulnerable and inviting, the muscles of a woman’s back soft and smooth. Then her underwear skimmed over her butt, and she reached down for something else.

  “Where are you going?” She wasn’t headed to the bathroom.

  “I have to be at Healthy Food early tomorrow. It will be easier if I drive home tonight.”

  Her words grated against his skin. “Your home should be here.”

  Slight and short, with only her pregnancy breasts and her barely there belly to give any heft to her figure, she still managed to look formidable in just her underwear, her arms behind her back as she hooked her bra together. “Remember how after the last time I was naked in your bed, you said, ‘this can’t change anything’?”

  Fuck. “Yes.” And, at the time, nothing had changed. Now, three weeks later, having seen Vivian every night at Healthy Food, at family dinner and after having plenty of conversation but no sex, everything had changed. This wasn’t about a one-night stand gone wrong. This was about his life. Their lives. Their life together.

  She raised an eyebrow at him, but he didn’t say anything else. He was going to make her say the words.

  Her black-silk-covered breasts rose and fell with her sigh. “This doesn’t change anything.”

  “So we’re married and you’re pregnant with my child, but you’re still going to be living with my mom and we’ll just be what—fuck buddies?”

  He could tell he’d hurt her when she blinked rapidly several times, but she was hurting him by leaving.

  “Would you prefer I found another fuck buddy?” And she walked away, the coward.

  Karl scrambled out of bed, tripping over his pants as he shoved his boxers on and followed his wife. For the second time that night she was walking away and he was going to fall on his ass. Except time was working in reverse. When he stumbled into the living room, Vivian was at the entry, zipping up her dress. Her coat would follow and...

  “You can’t just leave.”

  “A month and a half ago you couldn’t get me out of this apartment fast enough.” She was tying that goddamned ribbon that had started this nonsense in the elevator. Irrational though it may be, he couldn’t escape the feeling that once that ribbon was tied, she was lost to him.

  “But a lot has changed since then.” He winced at the whine in his voice. Years of practice at being unemotional and suddenly all his pent-up feelings were coming out over this one woman and the stupid, sexy knobs of her spine that smelled like jasmine. “We have different responsibilities to each other.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like...like...like...” He couldn’t bring himself to say the words she wanted to hear. The words that would convince her to climb back into his bed and stay there until morning.

  The still-untied ribbon swayed with her movements as she put her hands on her hips. “Do you still judge me for nearly cheating Middle Kingdom and getting fired?”

  “I understand better what drove you to it.” The lessons he’d learned at his father’s knees lingered at the back of his mind. How did those ghosts get enough strength to prevent him from telling the woman he loved what she wanted to hear?

  He couldn’t see the reaction on her face as he said the words because she was looking down, tugging on the ends of the ribbon to tighten the knot. When the bow looked as pristine as it had before the wedding ceremony had even started, she raised her gaze to his. Any emotion she felt had been worked into that knot. “But you still judge me for it, and so I am a fool for having come over here tonight.”

  “When you were sitting on that couch, all you wanted was a place to live and health insurance. I’m offering you that—and more. What else do you want from me?” He asked the question knowing what the answer was, hoping it had changed and knowing it shouldn’t.

  The apartment was silent as Vivian slipped her arms into her coat and buttoned up against the early spring night. Finally, when she was entirely bound up and so far from him that she might as well have been at his mother’s house already, Vivian answered, “When I was sitting on your couch I was one step away from being homeless and pregnant. My situation has changed and I now know that I’m worth more—that I deserve more than just a place to live and health insurance. That’s not good enough for me.”

  Then she walked out
his door before he had a chance to tell her that she was worth everything to him.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  VIVIAN CAME HOME from work on Monday, exhausted from a busy day, and checked her email. Among the “buy now” spam from stores, a couple of “hey, you” emails from friends and a note from her aunt Kitty, was a message from her father.

  After their last conversation, he’d gone to ground and she’d assumed she wasn’t going to hear from him until he needed money—and he knew she had some to provide. He was either desperate for whatever spare pennies she might have, or...

  Or Vivian wasn’t sure what else. As a child, she’d idolized her father and looked forward to all of their games. Then she’d realized what he was and had never really been able to go back to that wide-eyed adoration. But, sadly, neither had she been able to pull herself away from him entirely.

  She contemplated the complete break she could make from him now, while hidden away in Chicago. Then, as all the other times she had contemplated ending their relationship, she thought about how much fun they’d had decorating their house for Christmas one year with playing cards on string. The mouse hovered over the delete button, then moved to the subject line and she clicked.

  Her father had written the usual nonsense about how this job would be different, how he would be able to retire/pay her back/buy an island, blah, blah, blah. Not until the last paragraph of the novel did Vivian’s heart nearly leap out of her throat. “And I have some new business partners in Chicago. Since you’re not really working, maybe you’ll want in on this next venture.”

  Her father had been studying up while AWOL from her life. Business partners. Venture. She’d almost believed he was legitimate, except that she knew he scraped a living by making people believe his lies.

  And he was coming to Chicago.

  It had always been a guarantee her father would find her. She wasn’t really trying to hide from him, only she didn’t want to have to listen to his pleas for money before she’d built up her energy stores again to tell him no. Over and over and over. She wanted to feel on firmer ground before he started knocking her about emotionally.

  Nearly two months in Chicago and she was still skirting the same quicksand that had made her flee Las Vegas. Sure, she now had a job and Susan wouldn’t kick her out of the house while there was a grandchild in the mix, but the stable base she’d come to Chicago for was still having its foundation dug.

  Some of this was her fault. Despite saying no to her dad’s pleas for money and ignoring his phone calls most of the time, she had given in enough that he believed she would give in completely, eventually. Because she always had. But now she was responsible for more than just her own well-being. She couldn’t let her father bleed her dry because then he’d bleed Jelly Bean dry, too.

  Karl could protect her from her father. She could call Karl up, apologize for walking out on him, appeal to his sense of responsibility toward their child and move back into his apartment. She wouldn’t have to give up her job at Healthy Food if she moved back in with Karl. But she’d be right where she had been a month ago, relying on her husband for security rather than for love and companionship. She’d been trapped in that apartment then, and keeping a part-time job at her mother-in-law’s restaurant wouldn’t make her free this time.

  “Hell,” she said to no one but herself as she logged out of her email. “Being free now is all in my mind.”

  She was living in her mother-in-law’s house and working in her mother-in-law’s restaurant. The only difference between her current situation and the one she insisted she was too good for was that she couldn’t sleep in Karl’s warm bed with his expansive view of the city whenever she wanted to.

  She could always look for a job that wasn’t dependent on the Mileks, but she liked working at Healthy Food. She liked seeing the same old Poles come in for their buffet dinner every night at five-thirty, and she liked the rotation of cops that came in throughout the day for a meal when they had a free moment. Stability and vibrancy danced together, amongst new immigrant and third-generation Americans alike.

  She wanted to be a part of Archer Heights—that odd woman with Asian features and a Polish last name defying everyone’s sense of what should be—and have a marriage with Karl based on love and trust rather than dependency and suspicion. She wanted to have her kolaczki and eat them, too.

  Turning the monitor of the computer off, Vivian giggled at her own joke. Maybe she could embrace what made her different from the neighborhood and use it to pull off what she had in mind. Maybe the idea wasn’t that crazy, after all.

  * * *

  TILLY CAME OUT from Babka’s kitchen, sweaty and energized. The sweaty Karl understood. After he noticed the twinkle in her eyes and she opened her mouth, he understood the energized bit, as well. “I heard you did the Electric Slide at Phil’s wedding.”

  He’d known someone would tell his sisters, but he’d hoped they were mature enough to ignore the gossip.

  “And that you bumped into Mrs. Biadała twice because you didn’t know the steps.”

  He’d been wrong. Baby sisters grow taller. They find life partners and they become successful owners of popular restaurants. They even get a dish on the cover of Bon Appétit. But they stay baby sisters, confident that their role in life is to keep their older brother humble even though he’d outgrown being able to give them a noogie.

  “Maybe Dan and I will get married just so I can see you do the Electric Slide in person, instead of having to hear about it.”

  “I didn’t dance at Renia’s wedding. What makes you think I would dance at yours?”

  Even the bartender was barely able to contain her amusement as she reached around Tilly to hand him his glass of wine. He’d come to Babka for dinner because he didn’t want to be alone in his apartment anymore, didn’t want to go to Healthy Food and see Vivian and had mistakenly thought family would help his mood. Instead, Tilly’s entire restaurant seemed to be determined to make him regret doing the Electric Slide.

  Then the image of Vivian’s smile and her swirling hair as she pranced about and clapped flashed in his head, and he knew he would never regret doing anything that made Vivian smile so brightly.

  “Ah, but Renia didn’t know you would dance. I know, and knowledge is power.” She tapped her skull and he rolled his eyes. “The best part about that story was hearing how you nearly caveman-dragged Vivian off the dance floor and into the parking lot. I do so love it when your feathers get ruffled.”

  “Get out of the way of my wine and get back to work. I can’t believe how intrusive the service is here.”

  His sister laughed. “That’s what you get for walking in the door just before closing.” Then she waggled her eyebrows at him and said, “Have you told Vivian that you love her yet?”

  Karl might have needed many things to go differently during his last exchange with Vivian, but he didn’t need to relive their conversation with Tilly. That’s not good enough for me.

  He wasn’t good enough for her? His apartment wasn’t good enough for her? She’d prefaced the pronoun with a reference to a roof over her head, but that didn’t make sense. He wasn’t just offering her a place to live. He was offering her himself.

  That’s not good enough for me.

  “It’s really none of your business.” No matter how much Vivian’s words thrashed about in his head, he wasn’t going to share the conversation with his baby sister.

  She smiled, not worried about his sour mood. “You’ve never let your family near your business before. One taste and we can’t get enough.”

  His fights with Jessica had sent him to his office, not to a family member for company. You think it’s enough that we’re married and you come home every night. Everyone look at Karl Pawel Milek, such a dedicated husband. But I want to be more than a duty. And he’d tried. For their marriage’s sake, h
e’d tried. He had bought her flowers, chocolates and jewelry. He had asked what her favorite flowers were because apparently it wasn’t roses. Good husbands bring home flowers, so you’re bringing home flowers. It’s like you’re a robot husband.

  Tilly—his whole family—would’ve been fascinated by those fights.

  “If Vivian wasn’t living with Mom right now,” he informed his sister, “I wouldn’t let you near this business, either.”

  His sister raised her dark eyebrows nearly up to her ridiculous turquoise hair. “When is she moving back in with you?”

  Karl sipped his wine, but the alcohol didn’t make the track of this conversation any easier to bear.

  “You think you can out-silence me, and you’re probably right. But I’ve got something to say and you need to hear it.”

  “Advice from my baby sister?”

  “Your baby sister has figured out how to be in a happy relationship—something you never seemed to manage.”

  Karl put down his glass of wine and looked at his sister. He might as well listen to what Tilly had to say. Vivian wasn’t coming to live with him; a lecture from his baby sister couldn’t hurt his pride any worse.

  “The interesting thing about watching you trying to woo Vivian—”

  “She’s my wife. I don’t have to woo her.”

  Tilly ignored him. “Is learning that your pontifications about justice and stopping corruption and all that is a bunch of B.S.”

  “What do you know?” Anger built in his body until he had no choice but to stand before fury ejected him clean out of his bar stool. “You were eight when Dad died.”

  “Sit down, Karl,” she said in a no-nonsense voice he hadn’t even known she possessed.