Читать книгу Baby for the Tycoon - Emily McKay - Страница 13

Having lived his entire life in the northern half of California, Jonathon had weathered his share of earthquakes. He’d long ago gotten over whatever fear he might have had of them. But there were plenty of other act-of-God weather systems that scared the crap out of him. Tornadoes. Hurricanes. Tsunamis.

Anything that would swoop in and level an entire coastal plain deserved a healthy dose of respectful fear.

Clearly, Wendy’s family fell into that category.

About ten minutes after Wendy had disappeared to take a shower, her family had arrived on his doorstep in a tidal wave of hearty handshakes, welcoming slaps and tearful hugs. It was a bit overwhelming, given that he’d never met any of them and would have had no idea who they were if he hadn’t recognized her uncle, Big Hank, from the news clips he’d seen of the senator. And before Jonathon knew it, Wendy’s parents, Tim and Marion, had swept into the house, followed by Big Hank, carefully lending an arm to the infamous Mema.

Jonathon had barely recovered from the stinging clap on the arm from Big Hank, when he faced down Mema. After Wendy’s description, he’d half expected an old battleship of a woman. Instead, Mema was thin and stooped, fragile in appearance despite the strength of will that seemed to radiate from her.

A hush fell over the other members of the family as she shook his hand and appraised him. She had the wizened appearance of a woman who had lived hard and buried too many loved ones, but who was not yet ready to release her control over the rest of her clan.

She eyed him up and down. “Well, at least you’re real.”

“You doubted it?” he asked.

She sniffed indignantly. “I wouldn’t put it past Gwen to invent a husband just to defy me.” “I assure you, ma’am. I’m real.”

“As for what kind of father you’ll be for my great-granddaughter, that we’ll have to see about.” Then her steely gaze narrowed with sharp perception and raked over Jonathon a second time. Finally she gave a little nod. “I’ve never had much use for overly handsome men. But then, neither has my Gwen, so I suppose there must be more to you than good looks.”

He offered a wry smile. “I should hope so.”

It was almost thirty minutes later when Wendy came down. The guarded look on her face as she walked through the door told him she’d heard them before entering the kitchen.

She was greeted with hugs that lasted longer and more joyful tears than he would have expected, given the way she’d described the strained relationship she shared with her family. Throughout it all, she kept a careful eye on Peyton, who was currently being held by Wendy’s mother, as if Wendy expected that any moment the family might escape with the baby.

“What are y’all doing here?” she asked when she was finally able to get a word in edgewise.

He suppressed a smile. In five years, he’d never heard a hint of the Texas accent her family all sported. But three minutes in their company and she was slipping into y’alls.

“Oh, honey,” her mother cooed, her voice all sugary sweet. “Of course we would come for your wedding. If we’d had enough warning, we would have been here.” She shook her head, tears brimming in her eyes. “I can’t believe I missed the wedding of my only daughter.”

“I did tell you a week ago we were getting married. If you’d really wanted to come, you could have.”

“But Big Hank had the jet in D.C.,” her mother bemoaned, “and we had to wait until he could fit the trip into his schedule.”

Jonathon felt a pang of regret, but Wendy muttered, “I’m glad to know you found the idea of flying commercial more repugnant than the prospect of missing my wedding.”

Tim’s head snapped up. “Young lady, you’ll speak respectfully to your mother.”

“Or what?” Wendy asked, anger creeping into her voice. “You’ll cut off my allowance? The woman has missed almost every major event in my life since I was ten. And those that she showed up for, she criticized endlessly. I think she’ll live.”

“Gwen—” her mother started to protest.

Then Mema cleared her throat and both Wendy and her mother fell silent. Their heads swiveled to face her.

“In the wake of our Bitsy’s recent and tragic death, it is time for you to put aside your past differences.” She stared them both down. Mother and daughter both dropped their gazes. “Now, the flight from Texas was long and I’d like to clean up before resting a bit before lunch.” She turned to Jonathon. “I assume all the bedrooms are on the second floor?”

“They are,” he said, not sure what she was getting at.

“Very well, then. I noticed an office just off the foyer. I’ll sleep there. I don’t do stairs well. Big Hank, please arrange for a bed to be delivered before evening. In the meantime, I’ll rest on the sofa there.”

Jonathon watched in amazement as a senior U.S. senator practically leaped to help his mother out of the kitchen. A moment later, Wendy’s father had been sent out to the limo to instruct the driver where to bring the bags, and her mother had retreated to the nursery “to get reacquainted with her great-niece.”

The second Jonathon and Wendy were all alone, she practically threw up her hands. “Why didn’t you come get me the second they arrived?”

“You were dressing. I told them they could wait until you came down.”

She tilted her head, studying him as if he were some foreign life form she’d never seen before. “You stood up to them?”

Ah. So that’s what had her so puzzled. “Yes. I stood up to them. Do people not normally do that?”

She gave a bemused chuckle. “No. People don’t normally do that.” Shaking her head, she started carrying coffee cups from the kitchen table to the sink. Almost under her breath, she said, “I once dated a guy whose parents were lifelong members of Greenpeace. He’d spent every summer since he was ten on boats protesting whaling in Japan. He’d marched on Washington forty-four times before he was twenty. He’d been a vegan since he was three. Within thirty minutes of meeting my family, he was eating barbeque and smoking cigars out on the back porch with Big Hank.” Shaking her head, she started rinsing out coffee cups and loading them into the dishwasher. “Within a week, he’d accepted a job working for my dad.”

Jonathon studied the tense lines of her back. Her tone had been sad, but resigned. “The guy sounds like an idiot.”

“No. He was very smart. The last I heard, Jed was VP of marketing for Morgan Oil. And Daddy would never promote anyone that high up who wasn’t brilliant.”

Jonathon gently turned her away from the sink and tipped her chin up to look at him. “That’s not the kind of idiot I mean.”

Her gaze met his, confusion in her eyes for a minute. Then her gaze cleared as she realized his meaning. Pink tinged her cheeks and pulled away from his touch. Tucking her hair back behind her ear she swallowed. “Thank you. For standing up to them, I mean. For everything.”

“You’re welcome.”

She gave a bitter laugh. “You say that now. But you don’t actually know what you’ve gotten yourself into.” She looked pointedly at the kitchen door through which her family had left not long before. “This nonsense with them sweeping down on us unannounced? Inviting themselves to stay here? Ordering a bed for Mema to sleep on? This is all just the beginning. It’ll only get worse.”

“Of course it will,” he stated as blandly as he could. “You think I didn’t know that the second I opened the door?”

“I… I don’t know. I guess… Most people don’t see them for what they are.”

“Try to have a little faith in me,” he chided.

“I’m just warning you. My dad and Uncle Hank will woo you with their good ol’ boy charm. And just when you think that you’re their buddy and they’re nothing more than simple roughnecks, they’ll use that keen intelligence of theirs to manipulate you. And if they can’t control you, they’ll try to squash you.”

“Consider me warned.” He nodded. “Coming here was obviously a power play. They think they have the upper hand because they’ve chosen the time and location of the showdown. They’re trying to establish themselves as the decision makers in the relationship. What about your mother? She seems harmless enough.”

“Um, no.” Wendy thought about it. Of all the family members, her relationship with her mother was the most complicated. There were times when she actually liked her mother. Of course, she loved all of them, but her mother she actually liked. But she’d never understood her. And her mother had her moments of being just as vicious as Uncle Hank. “In all those scuba-diving trips you take, you ever been in the water with a jellyfish?”

“Several times. They sting like hell.”

“Exactly. They look delicate and frail, but they have more than enough defenses. That’s my mother in a nutshell. She can play the victim, but she’s as smart as—” That’s when it hit her. “Oh, crap.”

“What?”

“The bedroom!” She leaped to her feet and dashed for the stairs.

Jonathon snagged her arm on the way past. “What?”

She whispered, just in case anyone was close enough to hear, “The guest bedroom. Where I slept last night.”

He continued to stare blankly at her. Seriously? Mr. Genius couldn’t figure this out?

She lowered her voice to a hiss. “Last night. On our wedding night. I slept in the guest bedroom.” She resisted the urge to bop him on the forehead. “And now my mother is upstairs with Peyton. And if she sees the guest bedroom, she’ll realize we didn’t sleep together last night.”

This time, she didn’t wait around to see if his sluggish brain had started working at normal speed. Instead, she pulled her arm from his hand and made a break for the stairs. He was hot on her heels as she took the stairs two at a time.

She stopped at the top, breathing rapidly through her mouth and she looked around for her parents. A long gallery hall ran from the top of the stairs to the guest room at the end. They’d have to pass the nursery to get there.

Crap, crap and double crap.

This was going to be tricky. She crept down the hall, praying that Jonathon would walk as softly. Or head back downstairs if he couldn’t.

She tiptoed right up to the doorway and pressed herself against the wall, listening. She heard the faint, steady creak, creak of a rocking chair.

If her mom was sitting in the chair rocking Peyton, there was a good chance Wendy could sneak past to the guest bedroom, make the bed and sneak out with anyone being the wiser. Or more importantly, becoming suspicious.

Slinking past the door, she heard two things that would have stopped her in her tracks if she hadn’t been in such a desperate hurry. The first was Jonathon’s heavy footfall behind her. The next was her father’s voice from within the nursery.

She glanced through the open door, but saw no one. Maybe they’d make it. But when she heard the rocking chair still, she grabbed Jonathon’s hand and made a dash for it.

If her parents heard them and followed, she and Jonathon would never have time to actually make the bed. Certainly not neatly enough to put her father off the scent.

And this wasn’t the day to leave up to fate.

Pulling Jonathon into the room after her, turning him so his back was to the door, she flashed him a wry smile. “Sorry about this.”

“About what?”

She only had an instant to appreciate how charming he looked with that bemused expression on his face before she launched herself at him. They both tumbled backward onto the bed in a tangle of arms and legs. He might have gasped with surprise. She didn’t have a chance to notice, as she pressed her mouth to his and kissed him.

The second Jonathon felt Wendy’s mouth on his, he gave up trying to figure out what she was doing. She’d been babbling about the bedroom one minute and kissing him like a woman overwhelmed by desire the next. A smart man knew when to hold his questions for later.

Instead, he wrapped his hand around the back of her head and deepened the kiss. Her lips moved over his in sensual abandon, her tongue stroking against his in the kind of soul-deep kiss that made a man forget everything except the burning need to possess.

Desire pounded through him, heating his blood and tightening his groin. He fought against the desperate need to strip her naked and plow into her. A need that had been building within him for what seemed like years. Hell, probably had been years. As desperately as he wanted her, he didn’t want this. This frantic, rapid rush of sex without fulfillment.

He wanted more. He wanted all of her.

Rolling her over onto her back, he took control of the kiss. Her hand had started pulling his shirt out from his waistband. If her hot little hand so much as touched his bare chest, he’d lose the last shreds of his control. So he grabbed both her hands in his and pulled them over her head, pinning them there. She let out a low groan, arching her back off the bed.

Yes. This was what he wanted: her, on the brink. As desperate and needy as he felt.

He slowed the kiss down, exploring every sweet corner of her mouth. Loving her sleepy flavor, the faint hint of coffee. The smooth heat of her tongue against his. Her hips bucked against his as she ground the vee between her legs against the length of his erection. Even through the multiple layers of her clothes, he could feel the heat of her.

But it wasn’t enough. Merely kissing her would never be enough. Not when there was so much of her body left to explore. That silken shoulder that had been tempting him for so long. That tender swath of skin along her collarbone. The hollow at the base of her throat. The glimpse of her belly he sometimes saw when she rose up on her toes to get a fresh ream of printer paper.

His hand sought the hem of her shirt. He slipped his hand up to her rib cage, relishing how incredibly soft her skin was. He felt the edge of her bra and hesitated. He’d waited years to touch her naked skin. His hand damn near trembled at the prospect.

But was this really what he wanted? A quick grope in the guest bedroom when her family was just down the hall?

No, he wanted her naked. Laid out before him like a feast. He wanted hours. Days.

He wanted—

Jonathon’s head jerked up as he pulled back from Wendy and sent her a piercing look.

Her family was just down the hall. What the hell had she been—

A sound came from the doorway. A man clearing his voice.

Jonathon whipped his head around and saw Wendy’s parents standing in the doorway. Her mom, a perfect, older version of Wendy, stood with her hands propped on her hips, but the teasing smile on her lips softened any reproach in her gaze. Wendy’s father, on the other hand, looked ready to throttle him.

With good reason.

The man had just caught him groping his daughter like a desperate teenager.

Wendy’s dad growled—actually growled—with displeasure and took a step toward him. Wendy’s mother grabbed her husband by the arm. Though the petite woman couldn’t possibly have had the strength to stop the man in his tracks, her touch still gave him pause.

“Wendy, your father and I will be waiting for you in the hall. Why don’t you come out in a minute when you’ve had a chance to get yourselves… under control.”

A moment later the guest bedroom door closed.

Jonathon rolled off Wendy, planted his feet firmly on the ground and dropped his head into his waiting hands.

What a mess.

Wendy’s parents—waiting in the hall with her dad looking as if he wanted to chew his ass out—were the least of his worries. Whatever criticism they’d deliver he’d take.

None of it would come even close to the talking to he was going to give himself. He’d completely lost control. For several moments there, he’d forgotten where they were. Forgotten that she wasn’t really his to take whenever he wanted. Forgotten that this was merely a sham.

Worse still, she hadn’t. Clearly, she’d manipulated the situation—manipulated him—all so that her family wouldn’t notice the fact that she’d obviously slept in the guest room. And it hadn’t even occurred to him that that’s what she had been doing.

He drew in several deep breaths, but barely felt calmer. The scent of her was heavy in the air, and with every breath she only seemed to fill more of the room, rather than less. That faint pepperminty smell that was uniquely her. His very hands seemed steeped in her.

He sat fully up, looking over his shoulder. She’d scrambled back into the corner of the bed, pressed against the headboard. She looked almost afraid of him. He didn’t blame her. His control felt too shaky just now to offer her any reassurances.

She bit down on her lip as she tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. It was a ridiculous effort, fixing that one strand of hair when the rest were still so mussed.

“I—” she started to say, then cleared her throat. “Boy, that was close.”

Not trusting himself to say anything just yet, he merely raised one eyebrow. Apparently she had no idea just how close that had been. Just how lucky she was that her parents had walked in, since he’d been about three minutes away from taking her right there.

“I—I’m sorry,” she stammered. “I couldn’t think of any other way to distract them from the bed.”

He pushed himself to his feet. “I doubt your parents noticed the bed.”

She scrambled up onto her knees. “No. I mean, that was the idea, right?”

He gave a tight little nod, hating her a little bit in that moment. Or at least hating that she was still thinking coherently when he’d lost the ability. “Yeah,” he said as blandly as he could manage. “Apparently it was.”

“I—” She climbed off the bed, coming to stand right beside him. “I’m sorry.”

He was struck suddenly by how petite she was. Standing flat-footed beside him, the top of her head barely reached his chin. And yet, she never seemed small. She had more than enough personality to fill a woman half a foot taller. And more than enough strength of will to stand up to him.

He hadn’t been able to face her father without embarrassing himself a few minutes ago, but her endless stream of excuses certainly killed the mood. She hadn’t been as affected by the kiss as he had. Fine. But she could damn well stop harping on it.

“Stop apologizing,” he ordered. “We all make mistakes. I’m just not used to making such stupid ones.”

She opened her mouth as if to say something, but snapped it shut again when he brusquely smoothed down her hair. Then, since he couldn’t seem to keep his hands off her, he pressed one quick kiss to her forehead. “Let’s go face your parents.”