by Maren Smith
“No, thank you,” Jamie said primly. She held her breath, then hesitantly dipped in and those lovely, kissable lips of hers softly touched his own. Though he expected her to withdraw almost immediately, she surprised him by lingering. One kiss became two, then three, and his resolve to let her do all the work dissipated into thin air. She felt warm, smelled good, and the tips of her round breasts were stiff and hard and prodding his arm where she leaned against him. He simply could not help himself. He had to kiss her back.
The limo hit a slight bump in the road and Travis brought his hand up to cup her nape. He was only steadying her, he told himself. But when they hit another bump, Jamie obligingly bounced right into his lap. Travis caught her and, despite her no-touching rule, found himself clutching the curve of her bottom in his hand.
Note to self, Travis thought, double Ben’s Christmas bonus. He’d just earned it.
Jamie didn’t even notice. Lost in a kiss, for the second time that day she melted in his embrace. Her mouth softened above his, parting as she felt the flick of his tongue commanding entrance. Her own crept shyly out to meet his halfway, and he drank her throaty moan of pleasure.
His hand moved almost without his thinking. Drawing back, he delivered a firm but gentle swat right to the seat of those luscious jeans, and Jamie’s entire body convulsed in response. Her breath caught and her back arched. She unwittingly pressed those soft breasts with their easily-felt pebbled tips against his chest. A second swat had her moaning soft, submissive cries into his mouth; a sound that went straight to his groin.
And his heart, which startled him. How could that even be possible? According to his ex-wife, he wasn’t supposed to have one.
Travis drew back. He had to. One more minute of this and he wouldn’t be able to stop even if he wanted to.
Jamie stared at his mouth. Her blue eyes smoldered, her soft, full mouth was swollen and flushed. She looked absolutely dazed. “Was—was that loving and doting enough?”
His heart was thoroughly convinced.
“Jamie,” he murmured huskily. “This is going to be a long two years.”
Chapter 3
Dorsett Building rumor number one: Travis Dorsett was an intergalactic space alien. False. While she had yet to see his stomach, she had seen his ears and there was no elephant’s trunk sprouting from them.
Dorsett Building rumor number two: Travis Dorsett was not a chipper man. Also, false. Personally, Jamie was a firm believer in the capability of money buying happiness if one used some basic common sense. If that hunch was true, well then, Travis had to be about the happiest person she’d ever met. Just look at his house.
From the outside, it didn’t seem that ostentatious: a two-story home, tucked back off a private road, curtained by towering Washington pines and a landscaped yard in full, springtime bloom. Her own dinky apartment could have fit inside this house three times over. Per floor.
“Oh, wow,” she said as Ben opened the limo’s door for her and she climbed slowly out of the car.
From behind her, still on the backseat, Travis said, “Welcome to my home.”
While Jamie unbuckled Megan from her car seat, Ben popped the trunk, and he and Travis began to unload her luggage, the majority of which consisted of Megan’s things, hastily thrown into paper and plastic grocery bags. As Jamie lifted the wide-eyed baby to her shoulder, Travis caught her eyes and held up Megan’s well-patched cloth playpen.
“Tomorrow we’ll go shopping.”
She flushed. “It does what it’s supposed to. It’s fine.”
“Jamie,” he said. “No one is going to believe I love you or that I’m an affectionate father if this is what I provide for Megan.”
“It’s what I could afford.”
“But it’s not what I can afford.”
“Megan is my responsibility,” Jamie told him. “Not yours.”
“What kind of family man would I be if I didn’t contribute to the care of my wife’s infant daughter? My daughter in fact, when we finally,” a ghost of a smile graced his lips, “tie the knot.”
She frowned. “I don’t want you paying for my things. I’m a big girl; I’ll do it myself or I don’t need it.”
He put the playpen back in the trunk and frowned right back at her. He was infinitely better at it than she was. “I could give Megan the moon and it wouldn’t make a dent in my bank accounts.”
“Megan doesn’t need the moon.”
“But she does need a playpen.”
Jamie looked at the pile of her things Ben was unobtrusively stacking on the cultivated sand and step-stone walkway. The playpen with its ratty cloth exterior was among the nicest. It had been bought used and was what she could afford, she told herself fiercely. There was no reason for her to be embarrassed for having done the best she could.
“Let’s compromise,” Travis suggested. “Tomorrow we’ll go shopping, and anything we buy for Megan will be deducted from your allotment as soon as we get divorced. Will that appease your pride?”
Megan kicked against her shoulder, cooing and gurgling around the pudgy fist she’d stuffed into her mouth and was avidly chewing on. Jamie patted her back absently. That would be almost like using her own money. And Megan really did need some new things. They both did.
“All right,” she finally agreed. “I can do that.”
Travis picked up the playpen and a plastic grocery bag full of toys and started up the walk to his front door. “Are you always going to make it this hard for me to be nice?”
“Getting me evicted is your idea of nice?”
He flashed her an amused look over his shoulder as he fished his house keys out of his pocket. “That was exceptional niceness on my part. Were I you, I wouldn’t expect such grand treatment on a regular basis.”
Then he opened the door.
Like Alice stepping through the looking glass, Jamie passed through Travis’s front door and found herself in a whole new world. One of neat, impeccable elegance. And forget three times; her apartment could have easily fit in here four times per floor. And dear God, it was all decorated in immaculate white. One bout of Megan’s infamous upset stomachs and the whole place would need re-carpeting.
Jamie stopped at the top of the sunken living room stairs, holding her daughter in a near death grip that quickly had the baby kicking and fussing in protest. There was an ancient looking Greek vase on a three-legged mahogany display table. The coffee and end tables were made of glass. She couldn’t even imagine herself sitting on the white leather couch that stretched the length of the marble fireplace. After two years, those white walls would have hand prints and crayon markings and heaven only knew what else on them. The tables would be scratched, if not broken; the carpet a patchwork of Play Dough. That vase would never survive the crawling phase, much less Megan’s toddlerhood, and that was only if Jamie didn’t accidentally knock it over herself.
Travis set Megan’s toys and playpen at the base of the white-carpeted staircase, resting a hand lightly on the carved oak banister. “Jamie? Are you all right?”
“Megan can’t live here,” she said, her voice wavering slightly. She was pretty sure she couldn’t, either.
His dark eyebrows arched in mild surprise, and his mouth turned up at the corners. “Why not? Not including the pool house, garage or Ben’s cottage, there is still over six thousand square feet of living space. That isn’t big enough for the three of us?”
Jamie turned, staring at him as though he’d suddenly sprouted a second head. “It’s not the size I’m worried about!”
“Ah. In that case, let me assure you the carpet is stain resistant,” he said. “The walls are washable, and there is nothing in here that can’t be replaced.”
Jamie looked again at the Greek vase. Oh dear, and there was another one on a short table tucked up against the wall by the stairs. She clutched Megan even tighter while Travis followed the direction of her wide-eyed stare.
“All right,” he conceded. “When she starts crawling, we’ll
do some baby-proofing and put up a few velvet ropes around the breakables. The place will look like a museum, but once we teach her which side of the ropes to play on…”
His second head must have turned purple and sprouted horns.
“I thought you said you didn’t joke,” she accused.
Travis raised an eyebrow questioningly. “You don’t think Megan will respect a velvet rope?”
“She’s six months old!”
“I’m not suggesting we cordon things off without first explaining to her—”
“Travis, she’s six months old!”
“Six months. Yes. I understand that. But we can reason with her—”
Jamie laughed, a quick barking sound of disbelief. “In twenty years, maybe, but not in two.”
“I wasn’t planning on committing for that long.” Travis clasped his hands behind his back and studied the infant gurgling at him. “I suppose for the next few years I could arrange to tour a few things through the Historical Treasury of the Arts.”
Jamie looked at the Grecian vase, then back at him. “Good idea. Much better than the first.”
“Excellent. Then catastrophe has been averted.” Opening the coat closet near the front door, Travis stashed the eyesore playpen inside. He motioned Ben to bring in the rest of her things and the already pitiful looking stack of grocery bags piled at the bottom of the stairs grew wider. “Come with me. I’ll give you the grand tour.”
Half-heartedly wondering how she might keep Megan small and immobile for the next two years, Jamie followed Travis through the formal living and dining rooms, into a kitchen built to feed a small army, a pantry that contained not one box of hamburger helper, and more bathrooms than she cared to think about scrubbing.
His den was like his office, comfortably furnished in blue, but with a smaller, polished oak desk and a grey, L-shaped cloth couch near the fireplace. In the adjacent library, books of all kinds overflowed the bookshelves. There was a hunter green sofa and two matching overstuffed chairs situated by a window that overlooked a floral garden. The center piece was a magnificent stone fountain. A gentle waterfall trickled down a simple, chest-high rock structure, dotted with moss and ferns, into a medium-sized pond. As Jamie pulled back the curtain to get a better look, a flash of orange touched the surface of the pond, and then quickly disappeared beneath the lily pad surface again.
“Koi?” she asked. But when she glanced back at Travis, she was startled to find that, instead of in the doorway where she’d left him, he was standing right behind her, playing with one of Megan’s tiny hands and studying the fountain over her shoulder. In that instant as she felt the warm heat of his breath against the back of her neck, every nerve ending in her body came suddenly, achingly to life. She didn’t know what aftershave he was wearing, but it instantly replaced Old Spice as her favorite.
“Mm,” he hummed, his voice a soft, low-pitched baritone. Rumbling almost. The vibrations of which trembled through her. “There’s nine, I believe.”
Nine? Nine, what? She couldn’t remember what she’d asked!
He leaned slightly closer, tipping his head as he looked off to the left and the hard length of his chest pressed against her back, sending her blood speeding through her veins and igniting a slow, languid heat in her belly.
“Look,” he murmured. “Through those trees. Can you see the deer?”
She couldn’t even see the koi anymore, and the pond was barely ten feet from the window. But Jamie nodded anyway.
Travis pressed a little closer, but instead of watching the deer, now he was watching her. The look in those smoldering, amber eyes was enough to catch her breath in her throat. If ever she was going to step away, this was the time to do it. Come on, she begged her leaden limbs. Move, feet, move!
Softly, he asked, “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” But her trembling voice gave her away. And Jamie groaned when that damned knowing smile of his curled the corners of his sensual mouth—a mouth so close to her own, if only she tipped just a little bit forward, they could be practicing that loving and doting part all over again. Her bottom began to tingle where he’d swatted her in the car and the sensation spread, trickling down into other areas as well. Unable to help herself, the tip of her tongue darted out to moisten her lips.
“Mm,” he hummed again. “Are you sure you want to adhere to this no touching rule?”
Not trusting herself to speak, Jamie nodded instead.
“I think you want me.”
She shook her head, emphatically.
“You desire me,” he murmured, his lips so close to hers that it was all she could do to keep from leaning into them.
“No,” she whispered.
“You like me then.” His arms came around her as he braced his hands against the window pane. “Now don’t deny that, Jamie, my dear. Your eyes betray you.”
“They don’t.” But it was a feeble protest, and she knew it. What was worse, he knew it, too.
“You’re trembling,” he pointed out. “That’s what happens when you begin to like someone. As he draws close to you, you feel the heat of his body, the beating of his heart in time with your own. Then the flames of desire take hold within you, and you begin to tremble because you… want.” He made the word sound like an erotic sin. “Tell me, sweetheart, my soon-to-be wife: do you want me?”
She shook her head. Her mouth moved to say, “No,” but the denial had no sound behind it.
“Liar.” Travis chuckled, a low, rumbling sound from deep down in his chest that just made her want to lean against him and feel the vibrations of it shiver all through her.
She couldn’t do this. She just couldn’t. Not for two years. Not if she wanted to keep her sanity.
“I never knew it could be so arousing to seduce a woman holding her child,” Travis said. “Are you sure you don’t want me to touch you? I would love to make you feel good.”
“Positive.” She hated how shaky she sounded. Sounded? Her knees were all but knocking together!
“Are you a more modern-thinking woman, perhaps?” Travis flashed a wolfish smile. “You may seduce me instead, if you like. You’ll find I’m very flexible and open to new ideas.” He leaned slowly down, bringing his mouth to mere inches from her own. “It’s easy, sweetheart. Just lean into me, press those bewitching lips to mine, and I’m all yours.”
Jamie moaned, and Megan became her sudden, saving grace. The baby began to fuss, kicking her legs and whining, a sound Jamie recognized as the prelude to an angry fit unless a dry diaper was very quick in coming. It was all the excuse she needed to help break away from Travis’s overwhelming magnetism. She stepped sideways, away from the allure of his cologne, the warm touch of his chest, and that seductive, beguiling mouth.
“I’d like to go to my room now,” she said shakily.
Travis closed his eyes briefly, then bowed his head and shook it ruefully. With a gentle touch of his finger, he tickled the baby beneath her chin, winning a gurgled laugh and a huge grin from the infant. “Megan, darling, we need to work on your timing.”
“That’s one of the dangers of trying to seduce a woman with a child,” Jamie told him, fighting hard to pull herself together again. “Babies don’t like to wait.”
He sighed, though his smile faded only slightly. “Your room’s upstairs. This way.”
By the time they returned to the front room, Ben had already unloaded the car and left. They were now completely alone together. Jamie felt a trill of panic at the thought, but instead of immediately pouncing on her and continuing where they’d left off in the library, Travis started picking through her luggage.
“What do you need first?” he asked, opening several of the paper bags stacked in front of the stairs. “Baby clothes… Baby clothes… Jamie clothes… Diapers…”
“That one.”
He selected the diapers, Megan’s well used baby bag, and a variety of other sacks. “All the bedrooms are upstairs.”
Jamie followed him up the car
peted stairs to the second floor. Four guest rooms separated Travis’s master suite at the left end of the hall from Jamie’s slightly smaller one to the far right.
Travis paused at the door just before her room and opened it. “Will this perhaps do for Megan?”
It was decorated in soft lavender with a huge king-sized bed, a walnut dresser with a large square vanity mirror on top, and an adjoined bathroom that was egg-shell white with lavender carpeting. A few lavender tiles were thrown sporadically among a sea of white ones surrounding the shower and sink.
“I realize we’ll have to redecorate,” Travis told her. “Put in a baby bed and whatever else Megan is likely to need. Since it’s my house, I’ll pay for the renovations.” He held up his hand as Jamie opened her mouth to object. “Who’s to say I won’t have children of my own someday? I’ll need a nursery then anyway.”
Jamie hesitated for only a moment, then gave in with a nod. “All right. But nothing extravagant.”
“I promise. No crystal baby rattles or silk nappies.”
“No diamond diaper pins,” she added. “Or Chardonnay flavored pacifiers.”
“Very well, but I must insist on at least one caviar teething nook. Osetra. Not Beluga. No reason to go overboard.”
Though she glared at him with irritated eyes, genuine amusement tugged at her mouth as she edged past him and went to the bed.
“What about you?” he asked as she lay Megan on the burgundy goose-down comforter. The baby sank deep into the plush bedding, almost disappearing from sight. “Do you plan to ever marry again? After this—us—I mean, is over.”
Jamie shook her head. “Never. Hand me the diaper bag, please.”
“Not all men leave, you know.” Travis handed her one of the sacks he carried. “I know many colleagues who absolutely adore their children. I don’t think any of them would ever dream of abandoning them, or their wives for that matter.”
“Those are some lucky kids then.”
“Jamie,” he admonished gently, then repeated, “not all men leave.”