Rock Me All Night (10 page)

“I want you, sweetheart. That's why I'm here in the middle of a business day, playing instead of working,” he said, caging her head in his hands, holding her head to his chest. He urged her higher, and she found his flat brown nipple with the tip of her tongue, lapping at him as she would a favorite snack. Last night she hadn't had the time to explore him as she'd wanted to. But today he seemed in no hurry. As though he didn't mind letting her have her way with him.

“Are you going to get into trouble with the boss?” she asked, scraping him with her teeth.

His breath hissed out in a long, low sound. She nibbled her way down his lean abdomen, toward his belt. She'd never felt this kind of freedom with a man. Freedom to explore and do what she wanted.

“I am the boss,” he said.

“Not from where I'm standing,” Ty said from the doorway.

“Oh, my God.” She was going to die of shame. What the hell had she been thinking? Ty was never going to let her live this down. “Make your brother go away.”

“Go away, Ty,” Jack said, but he kept his hands on her head, holding her close to his chest. She felt cherished and protected by him.

“I can't. I need her upstairs. And I'm paying for every minute you're late, Lauren.”

She tried to pull back from Jack, but he held her face tenderly in his hands still. He tipped her head back and lowered his. He kissed her slowly, thoroughly. As if they had all the time in the world and his brother wasn't watching them.

“Don't let Ty embarrass you about this,” he said softly. Then, leaning closer, he whispered right in her ear. “You make me wish we were the only ones in the world.”

His words warmed her heart and she hugged him close and then stepped away, knowing she had to get back to work and so did he.

“Can I have five more minutes, Ty?”

“Yes, but I'm waiting outside, and if I hear anything that doesn't sound like you getting ready to get back to work…well, I'm calling Mom, Jack, and telling her you have a girlfriend.”

“That's real mature,” Jack said.

“Ty, please?”

“Five minutes, Lauren.”

The door closed quietly and Lauren stared at Jack. She didn't know what to say. She'd never been in this kind of situation before.

His shirt was half-buttoned. He still had a hard-on. She was aroused, and the last thing she wanted to do was pose for a publicity photo.

He buttoned his shirt and then smiled at her.
“We're going to finish this tonight. Do you know where my office is?”

She shook her head. He pulled out a business card and handed it to her. “I'll be ready after six.”

She wasn't sure she could wait all day to see him again, she thought as he walked out the door. That scared her, because no man, even the one she'd planned to marry, had ever affected her so deeply.

L
auren had a lot of time to think after Jack left. Ty didn't say anything as they went upstairs for the photo shoot, but Lauren knew that she'd crossed a line. She was acting out of control. She needed to refocus herself and her energy.

This thing with Jack—she didn't understand it. He wasn't like any man she'd ever dated. A part of her warned that heartache was all that could come of it. He clearly had commitment issues.

He'd told her more than once that he didn't want to be her fairy-tale knight, yet she still tried to see him in that light.

Was she fooling herself? The same way she had
with every man since she'd started dating? She moved away from the group, into the corner, and sank down against the wall. Jack was making her crazy.

He made her feel alive in a way she never had before. She couldn't wait to see him when they were apart. Being together made time stop. She wanted to wallow in that feeling forever.

“You okay?”

Lauren glanced up to see Ray standing there watching her. Rodney, Didi and Ty were clustered around the photographer. Probably all giving him directions on what he was doing wrong.

“Yeah, fine. Just thinking.”

“Mind if I join you?” he asked.

“Please do.”

Ray sat down next to her. Rubbing the back of his head, he watched Didi with something more than friendly interest. “The show this morning was wild. Do you believe in finding Mr. Right?”

Lauren leaned her head against the wall. That was her problem—believing in things that might not exist. Wanting something that might be part of the modern Hollywood version of the fairy tales she'd been weaned on. Wanting what had been idolized and made into some sort of amalgam that could never really exist in the real world. She wanted that sitcom-perfect relationship that was funny, touching and easily managed in less than thirty minutes each week.

“Sometimes. You?”

He shrugged. “Not so much. I never really put much stock in love and all that.”

“Why not?” she asked, because he seemed very alone and not at all happy about it. Plus, she sometimes sensed something between him and Didi—something that said there was more to that relationship than met the eye.

“My career seemed more important,” he said.

She didn't think much about her career. She loved her job and liked talking to people. “Our business is hard on marriages. My mom is a television talk-show host, so I know how hard it can be when one spouse is in the spotlight like that.” Her dad had always said that he didn't mind his wife's success because he was successful himself. But then, her dad was a wise man who wasn't easily threatened by attacks of the ego.

“Is that why you prefer the night shift?” Ray asked.

She'd never thought about it before. Just knew she liked being on the air at night. The callers were her kind of people. And she'd always felt more alive in the middle of the night. “I guess. More because I don't like a lot of attention. I got into radio because I like music and talking and…well, I wanted to be like my mom.”

“I wasn't that close to my parents. Didn't grow up in a loving family. But I can understand that.”

She processed what he said. It reminded her a little of Jack's family. She knew his mom had been involved but his dad had been more like…she hated to
think it, but she knew from the stories that Ty sometimes told that Diamond Dave had been a bully.

“What about you? Why'd you get into this business?” she asked.

“I got forced into it,” he said.

“Like a calling?” she asked, because Ray wasn't the kind of guy she imagined anyone forced to do anything.

“More like a boot to the butt.”

Lauren laughed. “I don't understand men.”

“What's to understand? Food, sex, sports—life is good.”

“If only it were that simple,” she said.

“We're ready for you two again,” Ty said.

Lauren pushed to her feet and walked back to the photo area. They took their pictures and everyone went back to their offices to take care of the mundane e-mails, calls and paperwork.

The phone rang when she'd finished answering an e-mail from her brother.

“WCPD, this is Lauren.”

“Hello, sweetheart.”

“You caught me on my way out the door. I might be a few minutes late.”

“Ty is a slave master.”

“He is not. I was answering some personal e-mails.”

“From who?”

“My brother.”

“Tell me about him,” Jack said.

“He's a big-shot lawyer in Chicago. He's got two kids—they're both hellions like he was. I feel sorry for my sister-in-law.”

“You're very familycentric.”

She thought about it for a moment. Her family meant everything to her, even when they drove her crazy. “I think that's why I keep looking for that happily ever after. I'm surrounded by examples of how good life can be with the right mate.”

Jack didn't respond.

“Jack? You still there?”

He cleared his throat. “Yeah, I'm here.”

“What's the matter?” she asked when he still didn't say anything.

“Don't expect too much from me, Lauren,” he said.

“I…you've already warned me, remember?”

“Yes, but I got the feeling that you forgot.”

She didn't know how to respond to that statement.

“I'll be at your office in twenty minutes,” she said, hanging up the phone.

It was true, she was starting to build a pretty little fantasy in her mind that featured her and Jack and a couple of cute little kids. But that wasn't entirely her fault. He kept doing the unexpected—like making her fall in love with him.

 

Jack looked out the window of his downtown office. He liked his little place in the sky. It was the top floor, the best of the best, and he liked it that way.
He'd had three messages from his dad in the last few days. Jack still put off calling the old man. Dave only called when he wanted to relive his glory days and talk about taking Jack and Ty back out on the road. The Diamond Daredevil's return.

Jack rubbed the back of his neck. Logically he knew that no matter how long or hard he tried to distance himself from his father, there was no escaping the man.

The intercom buzzed and Jack picked it up. It was an archaic system but one his receptionist liked to use. The twenty-year-old was into “retro,” or so she said.

“Jack, Lauren is here to pick you up.”

“Send her up, Moira.”

“Will do, boss man.”

Jack left his office and went down the hall to meet the elevator. Lauren emerged a few seconds later. She'd twisted her hair up, and tendrils curled around her face.

“You ready to go?”

“No, but I wanted to meet you.”

“Why?”

He'd missed her during the day, but he felt like a sap thinking it, so there was no way in hell he was saying that. He tugged her into his arms. Hugged her close and led her down the hall past the offices of the other executives.

“This is a nice office. Much larger than mine,” she said. She paced the room, stopping to look at the pictures and plaques on the wall.

“Thanks.” He went back to his desk to finish typing the e-mail he'd been working on. He tried not to notice she was here in the room, but he couldn't help it.

She'd paused in front of a picture of his family taken in 1976. Dave, Ty and Jack all wore American-flag jumpsuits, and his mom stood behind them wearing her red-white-and-blue minidress. That picture had been taken two days before his father's accident.

“I like this photo. You look so young and wild here,” she said, reaching out to trace her finger over his image.

Jack sent the e-mail and shut down his computer. He walked over to Lauren. He kept the picture to remind him that life was always full of the unexpected.

“I was wild and a little bit crazy. Kind of like the thing I did with the car that day we went to lunch, except worse,” he said. As an adult he'd tried to temper the wildness inside him, sensing that it could be his undoing, much the same as it had been his dad's. But there were times and people who made his control threadbare. Lauren was one of those people.

Around her he simply reacted instead of thinking. Logic flew out the window and lust rippled to life. He wanted to do crazy things that would impress her. Anything that showed her he was the best man in the world for her.

But inside he wasn't sure he was the best man for Lauren.

“Like what?” she asked. She tucked a strand of her dark hair behind her ear.

He shrugged off his thoughts of the present and tried to remember something tame that he could tell her about his childhood. Something that wouldn't make her look at him as if he was a little insane. But his father hadn't been like other dads, and impressing the old man had called for outrageous stunts. “Like riding my bike off the roof.”

“Oh, my God.” She reached over and grabbed his wrist. He felt a faint trembling in her fingers. “Did you break an arm or a leg? Duke did that one time when he was eight.”

He shook his head. “I've always known how to take a fall. So I was pretty loose when I came off the bike. I sprained my wrist, but that was all.”

She didn't let go of him but continued caressing the underside of his wrist. He tried—really tried—to keep his mind on what she was saying, but his body was reacting to her touch and her nearness.

“Did you get in trouble?” she asked.

He pulled away from her. He shouldn't have mentioned the past. Unlike Lauren and her warm family unit, his family had been different. Focused on other things—like winning, staying out of his dad's way and never showing a weakness.

“Oh, yes. I wrecked the bike, one of my dad's motocross ones. He was livid.” Jack could still see the anger in his father's face. It was the first time he'd seen that much emotion out of the old man that wasn't swaggering pride. At first, Jack had thought
his father was concerned about Jack's health. But that had quickly changed.

“Oh, Jack,” she said so softly he had to strain to hear her.

“Don't say it like that, Lauren. I was old enough to know better than to take my dad's stuff without permission.”

She nodded. “I can say it however I like. You were a kid trying to be like his dad. He should have patted you on the back and—”

“He should have told me I was crazy. Nobody should ride a bike off their roof.”

Wrapping her arm around his waist, she leaned her head against his chest. “You're right. But in your family it's kind of a tradition.”

He rubbed her back and struggled against the feelings that were swirling inside him. Lauren was the first one to ever take his side in this debate. And it had been going on for years. Even Ty sided with his dad.

But Lauren wasn't objective or impartial and she'd understood, without him having to say a word, what he'd wanted. He resented that she knew him so well. Was he so transparent?

 

Lauren wasn't sure what to do. Jack held her loosely in his arms, but she knew he felt anything but relaxed. There was a tension in him that surrounded her.

“How'd you like driving the Porsche?” he asked. He rubbed his jaw against the top of her head.

She forced herself not to hold him too tightly. His deep voice was soothing after the long day, and she knew she wanted to come home to him for the rest of her life. Sometimes he was so tender—it was almost as if he cherished her. And that was really what she'd been searching for.

“I was scared the entire time I'd wreck it,” she said carefully.

He pulled back, tipped her chin up. “Did you?”

He didn't look or sound worried, but she knew that car was one of his prized possessions. Even if she hadn't seen the way he babied it with his car cover. Ty's reaction when he'd realized Jack was letting her drive the car had been a dead giveaway. “What do you think?”

“That you're a firecracker and a half. But a safe driver.”

She was a rule follower, which was why it had always bothered her that she hadn't found a mate. She'd been doing everything a woman in the new century was supposed to do, but here she was, still alone.

“You're right, I am. I was tempted to take the interstate out of the city and find some nice deserted country road, but then I thought of you trapped here in the office all night.”

He gave her a quick squeeze before letting her go. He looked devastatingly handsome in his suit. But then, he had a gorgeous bod and looked good in anything—or nothing.

“Are you free this weekend?” he asked.

“Yes. Why?” Did he want to plan a trip? All of her doubts about Jack and that damned playboy reputation of his were slowly being laid to rest.

“Want to take the car on a road trip?” he asked. He moved around the office, turning off lights, shutting the shades and straightening the papers in his in-box.

She couldn't read his features and see what his reaction was. She moved closer, but when he looked up at her, she still couldn't read anything in his face.

“Do you want to think about it overnight?”

She didn't have to think about it. She wanted to spend all her weekends with Jack. But she was trying to find some sort of compromise between who she was and who she wanted Jack to see. “No, I don't need to think about it, Jack. I'd love to take a road trip this weekend.”

He nodded, but she noticed his shoulders relaxed. What kind of traveler was he? She was a talker. What if she annoyed him before they reached the city limits of Detroit?

“Good. We can drive down to Chicago, stay on Michigan Avenue. Eat and shop to our heart's content.”

Forgetting for a moment that he'd said “shop,” which was one of her favorite pastimes—ugh, not her hometown. Not the bastion of the Belchoir clan. “No. Not Chicago. I can't sneak into the city where my family is and not get caught.”