He followed the flagstone path to the front door and rang the bell. As he waited for Joey to answer, he realized he couldn’t possibly compete with this kind of wealth. Even reminding himself that Joey wasn’t pretentious couldn’t completely dispel the stab of inadequacy suddenly plaguing him.
The door swung open and his reservations evaporated at the sight of her. She still wore the same skirt she’d worn to the office, but had lost the matching jacket. Those wicked, fantasy-inspiring red heels had been replaced by a pair of thick, fuzzy blue socks.
She grabbed hold of his jacket and hauled him inside. “What took you so long?” she said and used her foot to nudge the door shut. She flung her arms around his neck and drew him down for a hot, openmouthed kiss.
His arms automatically went around her and he pulled her close, loving the feel of her against him. Too many clothes, he thought, anxious to have her naked and beneath him.
Something rubbed against his leg, then wound itself around his feet. And meowed. No, not a quite meow, he thought, more like a very loud yowl. He ended the kiss and looked down at his feet. “What the…?”
A golden cat with black leopardlike spots was yowling and winding itself back and forth around his calves.
Joey laughed. “Meet Molly.” She stooped to pick up the feline and cuddled her to her chest. Molly purred louder than a semi truck.
“She’s in a mood tonight,” Joey said, “because she could see her reflection in the bottom of her food bowl by the time I got home. That’s a no-no in Molly’s world.”
He reached out to pet the cat, who purred louder, if that were possible, and rubbed her head against his hand, in search of more affection. “At least she’s friendly. My buddy’s mom used to have a cat who’d run to the door and growl like a dog if anyone knocked on their door.”
Joey turned and walked into the living room. Definitely a woman’s domain, but not overdone, he thought, taking in the overstuffed furnishings and simple lace curtains over the leaded glass windows.
“That would be the watchdog gene,” she explained and set Molly on the arm of the chair in the corner. “Molly has the grooming gene, which means don’t be surprised if you wake up and she’s trying to do your hair.”
“Anything else I need to know?”
“She retrieves.” Joey reached into a small bin beside the sofa and pulled out a bright pink twisty thing, then tossed it across the room near the fireplace. Molly zipped off the chair and bounded across the room for the toy, then promptly trotted over to him and dropped the toy at his feet.
Dubious, he bent and tossed the toy for the cat, who to his surprise, ran after it again and brought it back to him.
“Be careful,” Joey warned. “Or she’ll keep you doing that all night.”
“How do you get her to stop?” He threw the toy again and Molly bounded after it.
“Food is always a welcome distraction.”
Molly dropped the toy at his feet. He looked over at Joey, now curled up on the end of the sofa. “What now?”
“Come here, Molly,” she called to the cat, but the feline wasn’t interested. Not when she had a willing participant.
He scooped up the cat and the toy and carried them both to Joey. “Here,” he said and sat down beside her. “You be the bad guy. She likes me.”
Joey took the cat from him and cuddled her to her chest again. “She likes you and is just trying to make a good impression,” she said as she pet the cat affectionately.
He slipped his arm around Joey and pulled her, and her cat, closer. She set Molly on the floor, sans the toy, then shifted and curled her body into his. He let out a contented sigh and just sat and held Joey next to him. How many more nights like this one could they have, he wondered? A few weeks? A year? Two?
A lifetime wouldn’t be enough, he realized.
“How was your girls’ night out?” he asked, needing to seriously derail the direction his thoughts had taken. He wasn’t a lifetime kind of guy, or so he’d been told. Or had he just been involved with the wrong women? Unlike the last woman he’d been relatively serious about, Joey understood the demands of his job. But would that turn out be more of a liability than an asset?
She rested her head on his shoulder. “Strange,” she said. “I officially joined Martinis and Bikinis tonight.”
“You drink martinis wearing a bikini?”
She laughed and the sound chased away the last of the cold night that had been clinging to him. “No,” she said, then explained about the women’s social club she and her sisters had joined, run by her half-sister Lindsay.
“It’s all about feeling empowered by accepting dares that challenge yourself. I drew my first dare tonight,” she said and explained some of the more daring adventures the women of the club had completed.
“You don’t have to dance naked in the Common do you?”
“No. My dare won’t even get my half-naked body on the front page of the local tattler like it did poor Brookie.”
He remembered hearing about something in the paper recently, a scandal about David Carerra and an unnamed Boston socialite. He looked down at Joey. “Sox Sex Scandal? That was your sister?”
Joey nodded and laughed. “It really wasn’t her fault. She didn’t realize that pasties required paste to stay in place.”
“What do you have to do?” he asked. He didn’t care if it was chauvinistic. He was damn certain he didn’t want Joey parading around Boston in the nude.
“Nothing quite so scandalous,” she said, but there was an edge to her voice that still concerned him.
“Can you talk about it, or are you sworn to secrecy?”
She tipped her head back to look at him. The hint of a frown marred her forehead. “I suppose I could,” she said slowly. “I only swore to uphold my promise to embrace my destiny, or some such thing.”
“So?”
“The time for revealing secrets has come,” Joey said as if she were reciting from memory. “Open your heart to the ones closest to it.”
“Do you have a secret you want to tell me?”
Her blue eyes darkened ever so slightly. She reached up and cupped his cheek in her small, warm palm. “Are you the one closest to my heart, Sebastian?” she whispered.
He hadn’t meant for things between them to become serious, at least not this soon. Hell, they’d only known each other a week. How ridiculous was that? But, he thought, when something was right, it was right, and he didn’t think anything could be more right than how he felt about Joey. He’d be a fool not to recognize what was directly in front of him.
Turning his face, he kissed her palm. “Would you like me to be?” he asked her.
Emotion filled her gaze as she looked at him. “I think I would. Very much.”
Chapter 13
Sebastian wasn’t close to her heart, he was in it, Joey thought as she shifted slightly on the bed to accommodate his body next to hers. In fact, she’d swear he’d moved right in and took up residence, right there in her heart acting as if he owned the place, where she’d least expected to find him. Love had been the last thing she’d been looking for, but heaven help her, she didn’t think she had enough strength to evict him.
It wasn’t an actual declaration of love, she reminded herself as he dipped his head and kissed her. Just dangerously close enough to make her feel open and exposed.
A part of her wanted to take the words back, yet she instinctively knew Sebastian would never intentionally hurt her. With him, she felt something she’d never experienced before with the opposite sex. She felt safe. Safe in the knowledge that with him, her heart would be a tender commodity, a gift to be treasured.
There’d be time for revealing secrets later. Right now she wanted to experience the delightful sensations coursing through her as Sebastian trailed little biting kisses down her throat and along her jaw while he gently kneaded her breast in his hand. With his thumb, he teased her nipples into tight buds. She arched her back, and wound her arms around his neck, urging
him to take her breast into the heat of his mouth.
Joey sighed as spirals of pleasure rippled over her skin when he nipped at her lip, then soothed the spot with his tongue before taking her mouth in another hot, deep kiss. She’d never get enough of this man. And maybe, she thought, that wasn’t such a bad deal, after all.
She tasted him, loved him with her mouth as the sensual fire between them sparked, ignited and burned hot. Without breaking the kiss, he pulled her beneath him and she welcomed him between her legs, rolling her hips up to meet his. The ridge of his arousal wedged intimately against her heated center, sending intoxicating spirals of heat over her skin.
His mouth left hers to suckle her breast. He teased and laved her nipple until she moaned from the intense desire building up inside her. What was left of her defenses shattered. She’d never dreamed she could want a man as much as she wanted Sebastian in this very moment. He held more than her breast in his hand…he held her heart.
Was Sebastian what fate had in mind for her? Did she have enough faith to believe in the emotions crowding her heart?
She was a fool for falling in love with him. Even though she’d known from the minute she’d met him such a phenomenon was possible, she hadn’t really expected it to happen to her. How was it possible that with so little effort, Sebastian had managed to strip her down to her most basic self, to that place where she exposed her heart and soul to him?
He shifted, the weight of his body sliding down the length of hers. Using his tongue, he created a fire that continued to burn hot, one she never wanted extinguished. She wanted him to fan those flames until they were both scorched by the power of not only their lovemaking, but also their emotions. Until there was no turning back, for either of them.
She wanted earth-shattering, and he delivered, using his hands and mouth to bring her to an orgasm so powerful she wept. Beneath him, she lay vulnerable, almost defenseless emotionally. Tonight, with Sebastian, the only secret she held was the three little words that felt too new to be spoken aloud.
Before her racing heart could calm, he moved over her, entering her with one deep, hard thrust. She welcomed him and the pure pleasure of their joining. She held him close and kissed him, tasting herself on his tongue. Her movements equaled his, until he cupped her bottom in his hands and lifted her, burying himself inside her.
Their lovemaking became wild. Desire pulled at her desperately, her body demanding fulfillment. With her legs wrapped tightly around his waist, she pulled him deeper inside. Her body practically vibrated from the force of their passion as their bodies met and parted with increasing urgency. Each thrust of Sebastian’s body pushed her closer to the edge until she slipped over the side where her world shattered into a million tiny pinpoints of vibrant light and exquisite sensation. A heartbeat later, he followed her into sweet oblivion.
Together they lay, breast to chest, both of them breathing hard as their hearts beat heavily in perfect rhythm. With his face buried in the crook of her neck, he kissed her throat. Their bodies still intimately joined, he rose up on his elbows and looked down at her. The tenderness in his dark gaze made her heart ache.
Gently, he brushed the moist tendrils of hair from her face. “This has gone somewhere we never planned,” he said, his voice rough.
“I know,” she whispered, then pulled him down for a long, slow kiss. The words could come later.
* * *
She’d been summoned. Sebastian hadn’t been gone ten minutes this morning when her phone had rung. It’d been Louise, the Winfield’s longtime housekeeper, with a message. If she would be so kind as to please stop in and see her grandmother before going into the city today.
As if she didn’t have enough on her mind, now she had to endure one of Grandmother’s lectures about the proper deportment of Winfield girls. If she heard the word shameful just once, she’d…she frowned at herself in the full-length mirror. She’d what? Spit in Granny’s eye?
“Yeah, right.” She gave the hem of her cream-colored mock-neck sweater a tug, then eyed her skirt, another longish wool plaid, this one in the colors of autumn, in deference to the snowy day. She looked more like a coed than a lawyer. Oh, well. She didn’t have time to change.
Molly lay curled on the chaise. She lifted her head long enough to meow at Joey, as if to say, “Sure you will.”
“Why not?” she said to the cat as she dropped down on the chaise to pull on a pair of chocolate-brown boots. “I have enough trailer trash in the family tree. I could pull it off if I really wanted to, you know.”
Molly yawned and went back to napping, obviously not interested.
Joey left the chaise and crossed the bedroom to her dresser. She opened her jewelry box and fished out the heart-shaped gold locket her mother had given her when she’d graduated from high school, along with her favorite pair of gold earrings, a cute little dangly, twisted pair of three small hoops, subtle enough to wear to the office. After slipping into a dark brown wool blazer, she checked that Molly had plenty of fresh food and water, then left the carriage house.
It took her a few more minutes than she’d anticipated to reach the main house. She’d left her car out last night for Sebastian’s benefit, and had had to sweep the snow off before driving the short distance.
Joey found her grandmother alone in the dining room, seated at one end of the ridiculously long table. She approached and bent to dutifully kiss her grandmother’s cheek. “Good morning, Grandmother.”
“Good morning, dear,” Evelyn Winfield said pleasantly. “Would you like some breakfast?”
Joey took in the plate of dry whole wheat toast, the small bowl of fresh citrus and cup of weak tea in front of her grandmother. A sesame bagel and a vanilla latte from her favorite coffee house across the street from the office were more her speed this morning. She desperately needed the extra caffeine, considering she hadn’t had more than three or four hours sleep.
“No, thank you,” she said, then pulled out a chair and sat at the table. “You wanted to see me?”
“You know there is a family dinner scheduled for this coming Sunday,” her grandmother said.
“Yes, ma’am.”
She cast those blue eyes at Joey, the same shade Joey saw when she looked at herself every morning in the mirror, the same that had belonged to her father. For the first time, she was struck by how old her grandmother suddenly appeared.
“This business with Brooke,” Evelyn said. “It’s gone on long enough, don’t you agree?”
By “long enough,” Joey assumed she meant the fact that Brooke hadn’t made an appearance at a family dinner since the night she drove off on the back of David’s motorcycle. “Have you spoken to her?” Joey asked, even though she knew Brooke and their grandmother hadn’t spoken in almost two months.
Evelyn cast her gaze downward, but not before Joey caught a glimpse of anguish in her grandmother’s eyes. “I know you girls are close. I was hoping you would speak to her on our behalf.” Meaning her and the Admiral.
Joey reached across the table and gently settled her hand over her grandmother’s. Evelyn appeared startled by the contact, but that didn’t deter Joey. “I think it’d be best if you spoke with her yourself, Grandmother.”
The look Evelyn gave her was as sharp as cut crystal. “I shouldn’t have to invite her.” Her chilled tone matched the expression in her eyes. “She knows
she’s welcome here. She’s a Winfield.”
“Yes,” Joey said. “She is. But I still think you should be the one to call her.”
Evelyn snatched her hand away. “Very well,” she said, then dismissed the subject by picking up her teacup and taking a quiet sip.
Joey stood and walked to the sideboard. She opened the drawer, withdrew a pad and pen and carefully wrote down a telephone number. “While you’re at it—” she set the paper on the gleaming surface for her grandmother to see “—you should call and invite Lindsay, too.”
Her grandmother appeared startled by the suggestion. “But,
she’s not a Winfield.”
“No, she isn’t. But she is our mother’s daughter.”
“I don’t see why…” Evelyn started, then promptly closed her mouth.
“She’s our sister, Grandmother,” Joey said firmly. “That should be enough.”
As Joey expected, her grandmother remained stubbornly silent on the subject. When Evelyn picked up a slice of toast and carefully smoothed a minuscule amount of butter on one corner, Joey decided the conversation had come to an end.
Better get out while the going is good, she thought, anxious to escape before her luck changed. She’d fully expected a stern lecture from her grandmother this morning for having a man staying the night. It didn’t matter that she was a grown woman. Those were just details when it came to the proper behavior of a Winfield girl.
“I need to get to the office,” she said, then turned to leave. She’d been inches from a clean getaway when her grandmother’s voice stopped her.
“Josephine…?”
Joey cringed. Damn. She’d been so close. She pasted a smile on her face and looked over her shoulder. “Yes, Grandmother?” she asked, hopefully conveying just the right level of innocence.
“I’ll expect to see your young man at dinner Sunday.” Evelyn’s tone and expression were stern. “Is that understood?”
Joey let out a sigh. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Very well.”
Yes, Joey thought, very well indeed. For whom she hadn’t yet decided. Certainly not her, or Sebastian.
Poor guy, she thought as she slipped out through the kitchen to the back door. She wondered how he’d hold up under what would be nothing less than an interrogation—Winfield style, of course.
* * *
“You’re kidding, right?” “Nope. Family dinner. Sunday night. Be there or be square, mister.” Joey kept her voice low enough so they wouldn’t be overheard. She probably should have waited until they’d left the office to dump this on him, but it was after hours. The support staff had cleared out over an hour ago and only a small handful of attorneys remained in the office. But still, she probably should’ve waited. Wasn’t she the one always preaching about keeping their private life private?
My Guilty Pleasure Page 13