As soon as Stewart got back into town, he called her at her office. He was told that she was having a physical and that she couldn’t be reached just then.
“She’s having a physical, not giving one?” he asked.
“Yes, I think that’s what she said. I expect her back around one.”
“I’ll call back,” he growled.
That damned doctor was examining her again? Her long, slim legs and smooth thighs were spread wide for him? He was furious and everyone in the conference room during his meeting was well aware of it as he snapped at each and every one of them.
He was still in the meeting when his assistant came in and handed him a note. He glanced down and immediately stood up. “We’ll do this later,” he said as he curtly dismissed them.
He picked up the phone and pressed a button. “Mallory?”
“Stewart, I heard you called.”
“Yes, and we need to talk,” he said brusquely.
“Yes,” she agreed, “and the sooner the better. Can I see you this afternoon?”
“I have meetings for the next two hours, how about I have Tony pick you up and take you to the penthouse?”
“Okay. Can he pick me up here? I have one more appointment.”
“A patient you’re going to see?” he asked tersely.
She turned the phone in her hand and stared at it, puzzled. What was wrong with him? “Yes.”
“Fine. I’ll have Tony pick you up at four. I’ll meet you at the hotel.”
“Are you okay? You sound angry.”
“I am. We’ll talk about it later.”
Geez, had he somehow found out about the baby? He couldn’t possibly think that this was her fault, could he?
She finished up her work and was waiting in the lobby when Tony pulled up.
“Hello, Miss Mallory,” he said as he opened the door for her. “Oh, beggin’ your pardon, Dr. Mallory.”
“Actually, it’s Dr. Greene, but I prefer Miss Mallory,” she said as she flashed him a brilliant smile. He beamed as he went around to the driver’s side and got in. Mr. Ravencross would be a fool, he thought, if he let this one get away. There was nothing phony or put on about her, she was drop-dead gorgeous and a vast improvement over the society gold diggers he’d seen Stewart entertaining lately.
The doorman rode the elevator to the penthouse with her and the housekeeper met her at the door. Apparently they had all been alerted to her arrival. The man didn’t forget a detail, no matter how small.
She was sitting on the sofa reading a magazine when he strode in. He was still angry, she could sense it, see it in the set of his jaw. Nonetheless, he pulled her up out of the deep cushions and into his arms, which went around her, pulling her close—holding her tight. “God, I’ve missed you,” he breathed into her hair.
His hands cradled her face and he lowered his mouth to hers and kissed her long and passionately. He was gentle as he kissed her, sought the textures of her mouth and took the kiss deep. He was kissing her senseless, expertly using his tongue to imprint her taste and she was feeling her response in her very core. Liquid pooled between her legs and fire raced through her veins.
Their lips parted and as they both caught their breath, he stared into her beautiful green eyes. He rubbed his thumb over her kiss-swollen lips. Then he released her and walked over to the window. “I hear you went to the doctor’s today.”
“Yes,” she stammered.
“Dr. Sorbing?” he spat the name out like a filthy word.
“Well, no actually. I saw someone else. A woman colleague from med school.”
Instantly the jealous rage fled, replaced by alarm. He turned quickly back to her. “Is something wrong? Are you sick?”
“Well, no, I’m not exactly sick. I’m pregnant.”
“What?” he asked with a raised voice, his eyebrows reaching for his hairline.
“I’m going to have a baby.”
His eyes narrowed as he looked at her. “Whose?”
“Yours, silly. I haven’t been with anyone else.”
Relief flooded his face, but also consternation. “How can that be? We always used a condom.”
“They aren’t foolproof, you know.”
“They always have been before.” He stomped into the bedroom and retrieved the box of condoms from his nightstand drawer. There were three left. He held them up to the light and that’s when he saw the tiny pin marks, four in each one.
“What the hell?” Then he put it all together. “Jillie. Jillie did this. I’d bet my last dollar.”
“Who’s Jillie?”
“My girlfriend before I met you. She’d been hinting pretty strongly about marriage, but I never thought she’d do this to get me to marry her.”
“Well, I guess her plan backfired on us,” Mallory said as she walked over to the large picture window and looked down on the bustling city.
“You couldn’t be that pregnant, we’ve barely known each other three weeks. What made you go to the doctor to be tested?”
“I missed my period and you can just about set the atomic clock by my cycle, so right away I knew something was wrong and I had a hunch what it might be. Virgins have a lousy track record for first time exposure; it’s some kind of divine justice, I think.”
“Well, that settles it. Now you’re marrying me. I will not have you marrying another man while you’re carrying my baby.”
“I am not going to force you to marry me. I know you don’t even want to get married.”
“Who said I didn’t want to get married?”
“I will not allow you to marry me just because I am with child. I can manage on my own.”
“What makes you think I don’t want to marry you?”
“If it weren’t for the baby, you wouldn’t be asking. And that’s not how a marriage should start.”
“How do you know I wouldn’t have asked you anyway?” he said as he put his hand in his jacket pocket and pulled out a tiny blue velvet box. He flipped it open and there on a bed of white velvet, slipped into the ring slot, was a beautiful, pear shaped diamond, sparkling in the late afternoon sun. It was the largest diamond Mallory had ever seen.
“I bought this in Seattle a week ago, our baby was known only to God then.”
Tears welled in her eyes as he lifted her chin and gently kissed her mouth. “Mallory Greene, will you do me the honor of becoming my wife and the mother of my two children?”
She sobbed her happiness as he placed the ring on her finger, then handed her his handkerchief to wipe at her streaming tears.
“I love you, Mallory. From the moment you snapped that glove on your hand and squeezed my balls, I think I knew that you were the woman for me.” He smiled down at her, “Now if you’d done that digital thing, I might not have fallen so hard or so quickly.”
She grinned up at him, “You never did have that or the colonoscopy done, did you?”
“No, my attorneys came through for me, Christmas is coming and they really wanted a nice bonus.”
“Jonathan said he’d do it for you at no charge when I told him that I couldn’t marry him because I was in love with you. He said he’d use a pyrotechnic device to illuminate the area.”
“Mmm, not a pleasant thought. But I’m glad you told him you couldn’t marry him.”
“What about Jillie? What if she’s pregnant, too?”
“I think if that were the case, I’d have heard from her by now, after all, you already know that you are and it’s been over a month since I was with her.”
“You can take the test when you’re only nine days along.”
“Then I feel it’s safe to assume that she’s not. But it wouldn’t matter, I’m marrying you. It’s
you that I love. You that I want to spend my life with. You that I want to carry off to St. John.”
“St. John? Really?”
“We leave exactly a month from now. So plan your wedding; however you want—big, small, elegant, simple. I don’t care as long as you can pull it off within a month. You’ve got a blank check; so don’t alarm your parents. I want you topless on the beach in front of our bungalow on the 26th. Got it?”
“Yes sir! Gosh, I’d better call my mother!”
“Not just yet, we have another matter to discuss first.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s a bedroom matter and we can’t talk with all these clothes on,” he said indicating his business suit and her hospital garb. He picked her up and carried her into the bedroom, “Now what did I do with that dental floss?” he said as he nuzzled her in the neck.
Garrett shut down his laptop and closed his eyes. What a beautiful love story. Sexy, poignant . . . touching on all the base emotions. And for the first time in his life it had him thinking seriously about his future. Children . . . dogs . . . maybe a cat . . . but definitely Laurel. He knew now that something would always be missing if he didn’t have her in his life. Since he’d found that flash drive and started reading her stories, nothing mattered to him as much as she did. Now that he’d met her he was as determined as Stewart Ravencross. Interesting that Mallory’s eyes were green like Laurel’s, and that Stewart’s were blue like his . . . hmmm.
Chapter Thirty-eight
Laurel woke and stretched luxuriously. Something was making her happy, deliriously so. When it kicked in that she had a date with Garrett, the impossibly handsome, funny, sexy man from the bike ride yesterday, she shivered from the delight that thought brought. She remembered their moment on the stairs inside Old Baldy when he’d caught her in his arms so effortlessly that she’d felt positively tiny, and then he’d held her in his arms as if he never wanted to let her go.
Their eyes had met and she’d thought he was going to kiss her. She couldn’t believe how much she had wanted him to. On one of their earlier rest stops he had offered her some lemon meringue Jelly Bellys. He carried a handful of them in a baggie in a tool bag attached to the handlebars of his bike. She had declined because she already had a Werther’s caramel halfway melted in her mouth. But when he’d held her close, tight to his chest, and bent his face to look at her she had smelled the tangy lemon and she had wanted to taste it on his tongue.
Idly, she remembered the chart on the back of the Jelly Belly containers she’d often seen at Costco and wondered what flavor you got if you combined a caramel jelly bean with a lemon one. Maybe tonight, if he kissed her, she’d know.
Another shiver passed through her, setting her shoulders high and making her tense. She needed to get hold of herself. She knew practically nothing about this man. Other than . . . she brought up her hands and counted out the things she knew: he liked beer, cheeseburgers, and cheesecake. Bought Jelly Bellys by flavor—lemon meringue running neck and neck for popcorn-flavored as his favorites—she remembered he referred to them as “any-flavor-beans,” instead of Jelly Bellys, so she knew he was into Harry Potter. He was strong—she could still see him lifting his bike with one big hand and deftly putting it in the slot on the rack as if it weighed next to nothing.
She had stared at his broad back during most of their lunch break, and it was nothing if not impressive and powerful looking. The memory of how his shirt tucked into his shorts and how his waist tapered in before his rounded butt met the bench caused her pulse to thrum. He came off as being self-assured, an über-confident male, yet comfortable in casual clothes, relaxed to the point of being able to straddle a picnic table bench while talking high finance with an insurance man well past his prime. She remembered his piercing ice blue eyes when he’d lifted his sunglasses and met hers, his sooty lashes and radiant smile, his straight white teeth . . . and his laughter as he’d watched her eating his cheesecake. He was sexy, smart, athletic and miraculously unattached. He was perfect.
She thought of the stupid ritual she and the girls had performed the other night, and tilted her head as if to wonder. Then she threw the covers off and reached for the phone. She needed to know if this was how it had happened for them.
Roman answered for Tessa and, as usual, had her dampening her panties with a simple, “Well Laurel, darlin’ how are ya doin’ ma luv?”
“Uh, fine Roman. Just fine. Tessa home?”
“Ah yes, in the shower washin’ off the best part of me. Can I have her call ya back?”
Her knees just about buckled. How the hell did Tessa manage to keep from falling on her face in front of this man? “Yes. Yes, that would be great. Just great.”
“Have ya seen him yet?”
“Seen who?”
“Your man. The one Tessa says will be coming for you. As I came for her . . . now she comes for me.” He chuckled at his play on words.
“Uh, that’s what I was calling about actually. I met someone. And I have a date tonight.”
“Well then, I’m sure she’ll want to hear all about it. Do you want some advice from the likes of an old lecher like me?”
“Uh . . . suuure.”
“Leave the panties at home. You won’t believe how ready you’ll be by the end of the evenin’. Ah, here’s my darlin’ wife now. She’s givin’ me the look.”
Laurel heard some low whispering; more like snarling actually, and then Tessa came on the line. “Ignore him. Apparently he’s ready for round two. These Europeans have a thing about mornings, and I can assure you, Sunday mornings are never about church. So what’s this I hear, you have a date?”
Laurel told her about the bike ride and how she’d fallen into Garrett’s arms, eaten all of his cheesecake, and then agreed to have an Asian salad with him tonight.
“Tomo’s at Ocean Isle is nice, so is Osaka Japanese Steakhouse at Shallotte Crossing, but if he’s really interested in you he’ll take you to P.F. Chang’s or someplace like Loyal Thai, maybe even north to Wilmington to Indo-Chine so he can spend more time with you. Tell me everything you know about him, starting with his looks. He’s got them, right?”
“Oh does he ever . . .”
Half an hour later she was finally off the phone, confidence boosted by Tessa’s encouraging words. She knew the phone lines would burn up for the next hour as Viv and Cat were brought up to speed. But she didn’t have time for any more chitchat. She had to figure out what she was going to wear and she had to go for a walk on the beach. She needed to touch base with The Kindred Spirit, and work off some of this jittery anxiety. Gosh, she hadn’t had a date
in . . . how long had it been? Four years? Five?
Sure, she’d had boyfriends in college, two were even serious. And then after graduation she’d been in a relationship for eight months. She’d just begun seeing an attorney in Georgetown two weeks before her parents died but what might have bloomed fizzled as she spiraled down into a depression no man would have been able to deal with, nonetheless one who hadn’t even worked her into the sack yet.
Oh, she liked sex. Liked it very much in fact, as her stories attested. But she wasn’t easy with her favors. Things had to go in stages. Getting to know him. Getting to like him. Getting to trust him. All that had to happen before the getting-under-the-sheets part. So, she wouldn’t be heeding Roman’s advice, it would be a full-on panties night. That part of her wardrobe she was certain about.
Chapter Thirty-nine
Garrett woke with a muzzy head from staying up so late reading. But he shook it off and went for a long run on the beach. He followed that up with a bowl of pasta tossed with a simple, quick primavera sauce—sans garlic but loaded with fresh vegetables. He had to be a powerhouse tonight. Although during his run, which gave him time to plan things out, he reasoned that it might be better
to just tease her senseless tonight.
He made a few connections via email with old friends, went into Shallotte to do a little shopping at both The Home Depot and Office Depot. Then he dressed for his date with Laurel. He selected a pair of black slacks that he paired with a crisp white Oxford shirt, and matched his braided leather belt to his cordovan loafers. As he slapped on some aftershave, he noted his hair curling at his nape and getting a bit unruly, and made a mental note to get to Cindy at Totally Chic next week.
He opted for the ‘vette for two reasons: he really loved putting it through its paces on the long, winding exit ramps off 31, and he thought it might be a good time to hint at his affluence. Women liked men with money. Expensive cars conveyed that admirably. Plus, she’d already seen the Edge.
He never held a woman’s bias for moneyed-men against a woman, as he understood the laws of human nature better than most. The rules of engagement, i.e. dating, were simple: men chased women who they divined had all the essentials for mating and producing superior offspring, women tried to attach themselves to men who could protect and provide for said offspring. Tonight he would confirm that she was beautiful with nice tits for nursing should it ever come to that, and she would see that he was big and
strong . . . and loaded.
He was ready to pull into her driveway at seven, ready to show her that he could defend her, honor her, afford her, and bed her better than any man competing for her. If men like Mountain Man were posturing and preening for her, this would be a slam-dunk.
Chapter Forty
Flash Drive Page 28