Her expression turned wary. “Maybe I’m as good an actor as you.”
“You can’t fake the arousal darkening your cheeks or widening your pupils.” He lowered his eyes to the stiff n**ples tenting her shirt. “You can’t fake that.”
She folded her arms and lifted her chin. “And your point is…?”
“You want me.”
“Me and a hundred other women. But part of being an adult is realizing you can’t have everything you want.”
He spread his arms. “You can have me. Any way you want me.”
She hesitated for a moment, catching her bottom lip with her teeth and then her mouth twisted in a wry grimace. “So I’ve heard.”
Not the invitation to share the only bed in the condo he’d been hoping for. “Is that what this is about? You’re waiting for the blood test results?”
“No. I’m adhering to our agreement.”
At some time during the miserable family dinner he’d forgotten about convincing his siblings he’d settled down, and he’d started looking for excuses to touch Lauryn, to make her breath catch, her skin flush. He’d actively sought opportunities to kiss her because kissing her filled him with an excitement and anticipation he hadn’t felt for anyone or anything in a very long time.
How many kisses had he stolen tonight? Four? No, five. After that last one by the car he’d been so hard he could barely fold himself into the Beemer to drive them home.
“Agreements can be amended.” He cupped her nape, savoring the warm silkiness of her skin against his palm. “Let me show you how good it could be between us, Lauryn.”
Her lids fluttered closed, and then she sucked a quick breath and popped them open again. “No.”
It wasn’t as if he’d never heard “no” before, but he’d never heard it from a woman who’d almost eaten him alive on three separate occasions. He could accept Lauryn’s refusal and walk away if she didn’t want him. But she did.
So why the mixed signals? Why make them both suffer?
He wanted to kiss her until she begged him to peel off her clothing, toss her onto his king-size bed and bury himself in her wet heat.
He’d bet she’d be as hot as her mouth.
No. Hotter. Wetter. He broke a sweat just thinking about it.
As if she’d read his mind her eyes widened, her lips parted on an unsteady inhalation and color washed her face and neck, warming the skin beneath his hand.
Oh yeah. She wanted him. He pulled her forward.
“Your family’s approval,” she blurted when he was an inch from her delectable mouth. Her palms spread on his chest and pushed. “That’s why you want to win the business council’s nomination. Isn’t it?”
Talk about a mood-killer. He straightened and released her. “That’s personal.”
“So you keep saying. But, Adam, the day I became your wife I became part of your personal life. If you don’t tell me what’s going on I can’t help.”
He wasn’t going to get laid tonight. Unless he changed her mind he’d be sleeping downstairs on the sofa.
Shoving a hand through his hair, he turned and walked toward the half wall and braced his arms on the ledge. He debated how much to reveal. But like she’d said, she was part of this now. “I want a bigger stake in Garrison, Inc.”
“Why? Isn’t Estate enough?”
“No. It’s not. My father kept me out of the Garrison offices when he was alive and now Parker’s doing the same. And I’m sick of having to prove myself only to be denied an equal share in the family business.”
She joined him by the rail. “But why does that matter? You’re successful without Parker’s approval.”
“I don’t want his approval.” His frustrated growl sent her eyebrows skyward. “I was groomed to take my place in the family business. I have the education and experience to take a more active role. I can’t help wondering if I was denied a place at Garrison, Inc. because I knew about my father’s affair with Cassie’s mother and had the balls to call him on it.”
“You think you’re being punished because you didn’t keep quiet and take one for the team?”
“Exactly. But I’ll never know. Will I?”
“You do realize you’re not being kept out because you lack business acumen, don’t you? I wasn’t lying when I told Parker you run a first-rate organization. I’ve worked in several places that weren’t, so I know what I’m talking about.”
Her support expanded something inside his chest.
She tilted her head and considered him in silence for several moments. “You’re a typical middle child, you know.”
“What does that mean?” And was it an insult?
“Middle children have to find their own niche, their own way to excel, to stand out from the crowd.”
“That’s…accurate. Parker and Stephen were always tight with each other and with our father. Brooke and Brittany had the girl thing going. I learned early on to entertain myself and go after what I wanted. Alone. If I wanted my parents’ attention I had to do something grander, wilder or louder than my siblings. In the process I earned a reckless reputation I can’t seem to live down even though I quit that juvenile behavior years ago.”
“And you think having a wife will help you shake the bad rep?”
“The right kind of wife, yes.”
She wrapped her arms around her middle and turned toward the two-story window wall opposite the loft. He followed her gaze. The lights of a cruise ship leaving the Port of Miami via Government Cut twinkled against the night sky. The ocean view had been a prime draw in his purchase of the condo. But the view couldn’t soothe him tonight.
He looked into her eyes. “You’re an only child?”
“Yes.”
“And what are typical onlies like?”
Lauryn shifted, glanced away. “Onlies can go one of two ways. Conformist or rebel.”
“Which were you?”
Her cautious gaze found his again. “Which do you think?”
He considered her conventional clothing, her restrained hair and body language and her solitary life. “Conformist. Which is a good thing since a woman with a wild reputation is the last thing I need.”
And yet the urge to make her wild in bed had him aroused to the verge of wanting to say to hell with his no-sex promise. He turned abruptly, crossed the loft and yanked back the comforter. “Let’s hit the sack.”
She remained by the railing. “I told you I’m not sharing your bed.”
“Lauryn, there’s only one bed. Since we’re moving to the estate tomorrow, I didn’t convert the study into a bedroom.”
“If I were willing to share then we’d be staying at the Sunset Island estate tonight. I’ll take the sofa. Do you have a spare pillow?”
“What’s the matter? Don’t trust yourself not to jump me?”
Another long stretch of silence filled the air before she averted her gaze. “Maybe.”
Her honesty hit him like a sucker punch.
But he wasn’t sure he could control himself if she was in bed beside him, either. As badly as he craved her body, he wasn’t taking her until she was wet, willing and begging.
Until then, he could survive a few sleepless nights. “Take the bed.”
Lauryn’s pulse raced and her palms dampened. Standing at the top of the stairs of the Sunset estate, she weighed her choices.
Three hallways radiated off the balcony encircling the foyer like the points of the mariner’s compass inlaid in the foyer floor below. Left? Right? Dead ahead? Which hall led to her birthmother’s bedroom?
Downstairs Adam closed the front door behind the departing movers. He’d insisted on emptying her apartment, and the crew had stored most of her furniture and belongings in an empty staff apartment above one of the garages. They’d left her and Adam’s suitcases in the foyer.
She heard Adam’s tread on the stairs and turned to watch him ascend. Worn jeans and a white T-shirt fit him like a second skin, outlining a body worthy of a pin-up calendar. His biceps bulged under the weight of her overstuffed luggage.
Sexy. Her mouth dried. But just sex isn’t enough anymore. Remember? No more meaningless affairs. You promised.
But promises couldn’t prevent the fine hairs on her body from rising like antennae whenever he was near. She’d never been so aware—so constantly, completely aware—of anyone before. And the more she found out about him, the worse her fascination became.
“Found the master suite yet?” he asked as he reached her side.
“Um, no.” Her feet had refused to carry her beyond the landing. Now that she was where she’d longed to be for the better part of a year, she was afraid she’d discover this was nothing but a wild-goose chase and the diaries weren’t here.
But what if they were? She didn’t doubt the outcome—whichever it might be—would change her life. And maybe not for the better.
He tilted his head. “This way.”
She followed Adam down the wide center hall toward the back of the house. Her gaze dropped from his broad shoulders to his butt doing a fine job of filling out his jeans.
Control yourself, for pity’s sake.
“Our room is over the sunroom downstairs. It’s the newest part of the house, added about fifteen years ago.”
Before her mother died.
He went through a pair of double doors. A twenty-foot hall led her past a walk-in closet as large as her apartment living room with drawers built into a center island. Adam paused long enough to set her luggage down inside the door and then continued down the hall. Next they passed a bathroom that looked like something out of Architectural Digest. White marble floors. A round glass shower stall. A decadent, oversize sunken tub. Enough black marble counter space to fill a kitchen. Opposite the bathroom, an open third door revealed a comfortable-looking sitting room and the new sofa bed. Is that where she’d sleep?
She followed Adam into the sun-filled, semicircular bedroom decorated in beachy colors of sand, pearl, apricot and periwinkle. A massive raised platform bed sat against the interior wall. Its carved scallop-shaped headboard had been painted to resemble the opalescent inside of a shell. The curved exterior walls were all windows like the sunroom downstairs and shared the same view of the pool, dock and tennis courts. A chaise, love seat and small bistro table with a pair of chairs offered perfect places to share coffee or curl up and read a book.
“It’s beautiful, and the view is amazing, but there’s not much privacy, is there? Anyone looking out the back windows of the house can see what we’re doing in here.”
“One button closes the curtains.” Adam flipped a switch and a nearly silent motor closed the drapes, darkening the room completely and sealing them in shadowy seclusion. Before her eyes could adjust he hit the switch again and the curtains reopened.
The suite was much smaller than the beach house and much more intimate than his condo. Could she share this space and not give in to the sexual urges rising within her like a tidal surge?