The MacGregor Grooms (8 page)

She cleared her throat and sat up. “Well.” It was the best her muddled brain could think of as she reached for her sweater. Where in God’s name, she wondered, was her bra?

D.C. slitted his eyes open to study her. Her hair was tumbled, her skin rosily flushed. “What’re you
doing?”

“Getting dressed.”

“Why?”

The hell with the bra, she thought. She would not go crawling around the floor hunting for it. “I’ve never … I haven’t ever … This was just sex.”

“This was really great sex.”

She drew a breath, braced herself and looked at him. She’d known he’d be grinning at her. And there he was, a huge, fabulously built male with a disordered mop of rich hair, impossibly blue eyes and a smug grin.

Her treacherous system yearned. The fascinating idea of crawling onto him and nibbling away flashed brilliantly in her mind. “I don’t do things like this.” She snapped it out and yanked the sweater over her head.

Cocking a brow, he sat up. “Ever, or as a rule?”

“Ever. This was just … spontaneous combustion, so to speak. As you said, we’re single, unattached adults, so no harm done. But …” She started to turn to find her slacks, and his hands slipped slyly under the sweater. “I’m leaving.” But her voice had gone weak.

“Okay.” He scraped his teeth gently along her jawline, felt her tremble.

“We don’t understand each other. We can’t … This was a mistake.”

“And you don’t like to make mistakes, so we should try it again.” He drew the sweater over her head, gathered her closer. “Until we get it right.”

*   *   *

And just how, she asked herself, had she ended up in his bed? If you could call a mattress on the floor of a room stuffed with boxes a bed.

Stupefied, Layna stared up at the ceiling. She’d let it happen. She was responsible for her own actions—even for allowing herself to be seduced. She’d certainly been a willing participant and had no one to blame for the current situation but herself.

And what the hell
was
her current situation? She had no real experience with this kind of irresponsible, impromptu and reckless behavior. She was a sensible woman with a well-conceived, sensible life plan mapped out.

This kind of detour could only lead to sheer curves and sudden drops.

“I have to go.”

Beside her, D.C. groaned. “Baby, you’re killing me.” Every time she claimed she had to leave, he was compelled to convince her otherwise.

“No, I mean it.” She slapped a hand on his chest as he rolled on top of her. “This has to stop.”

“Let’s call it an intermission.” Cheerfully, he kissed the tip of her nose. “I’m starving. You want Chinese?”

“I said I have to go.”

“Okay, let’s have pasta. More energy.”

How could he make her want to tear out her hair and laugh at the same time? “You’re not listening to me.”

“Layna.” He sat up, rolled his shoulders. It crossed his mind that he hadn’t felt so relaxed and
content in weeks. “We both know by now we’re good in bed. And on the floor. And in the shower. If you leave now, we’re both going to wish you were right back here in an hour. So let’s just get something to eat.”

Because the sheets were on the floor, she grabbed a pillow and pressed it to her as she sat up. “This isn’t going to happen again.”

“Fettucini with red sauce okay with you?”

“Yes, that’s fine.”

“Good.” He picked up the phone, punched in some numbers, then gave the order to a local Italian place that delivered. “Be about a half hour,” he told her. “I’ve got a bottle of merlot downstairs.”

He got up, tugged on a pair of jeans and strolled out.

She sat where she was for a full minute. She’d let it happen again, she realized. With a sigh, she pushed back her hair. All right, she would do the sensible thing. She’d go down, have a civilized meal with him and discuss the status.

Then she would leave and never see him again.

“You live like a pig.” Layna sat in the kitchen, sipping merlot and sampling pasta.

D.C. merely grunted, broke a hunk of garlic bread in two and passed her half. “I keep thinking about getting a housekeeper, but I don’t like people around when I work.”

“You don’t need a housekeeper, you need heavy equipment. How long have you lived in this apartment?”

“Couple months.”

“You still have things in packing boxes.”

He jerked a shoulder. “I’ll get to them sooner or later.”

“But how can you think with all this mess? How can you work?”

He flashed that quick grin at her. “My sister says it’s because I was forced to accept order throughout a large chunk of my childhood. Somebody was always tidying things up in the White House.”

She arched an elegant brow. “Don’t you think you should be over that rebellious period by now?”

“Apparently not. You like things in their place, don’t you?”

“Things were always in place when I was growing up. It makes life simpler.”

“Simple isn’t always satisfying.”

“I think we can agree that we have little to no common ground. Which is why this … situation is a mistake.”

“Being lovers isn’t a situation, it’s a fact. And just because you like tidy and I don’t doesn’t have much to do with the fact that I want the bloody hell out of you.”

“We can’t possibly develop a relationship.”

“Baby, we
have
a relationship.”

“Sex isn’t a relationship.” Brows knitted, she wound more pasta around her fork.

“Seems to me we had something next door to a relationship going before we had sex.”

“No.” But it worried her because it was uncomfortably true. “I don’t want a relationship, not a serious one. I don’t like what they do to people.”

“Oh?” He might have cocked a brow casually, but his eyes had sharpened. Some underlayer here, he thought, that made her soft green eyes cool again. “Such as?”

“People don’t stick. And because they can’t, they deceive each other, or ignore the deceptions.”

She hesitated, then decided the circumstances called for simple honestly. “My family isn’t good at maintaining healthy relationships. My parents have an arrangement that suits them, but it’s not the kind of thing I’m looking for. The Drakes tend to be … selfish,” she decided, for lack of a better term. “Being with someone on a serious level requires a certain amount of compromise and unselfishness.”

“You had a rough childhood?” he murmured.

“No. No.” She let out a breath. It was boggy ground, trying to explain to someone else what you’d never fully understood yourself. “I had a very good childhood. I had a wonderful home, opportunities to
travel, advantages, access to an excellent education.”

D.C. shook his head. If anyone had asked him the same question, those items would have been bottom of the list. Even being raised in the fishbowl of world politics, he’d had love, warmth, attention and understanding from his family. “Did they love you? Your parents.”

“Of course.” But because she’d often asked herself the same question, she picked up her wine to wet her throat. “We’re not like you, your family. We don’t have that … openness of heart, or that ease with displaying affection. It’s a different way of being, that’s all. Very different,” she added, looking at him again. “I remember seeing pictures of your family, you with your sister, your parents, on the news. You could see the devotion. That’s admirable, D.C, it’s lovely. But it’s not where I come from.”

She would wonder later if the wine had loosened her tongue or if it had simply been the fact that he listened as well as he watched. “My parents’ marriage suits them. They lead their lives, together and separately. And they keep their affairs discreet. Drakes don’t court or tolerate scandal. I understand that, and I prefer avoiding entanglements.”

He wondered if she knew that her family made her sad, or if she actually believed that what she was saying, what she was feeling, was inevitable. “You didn’t avoid this one.”

“That’s exactly what I’m trying to do.” And she wasn’t doing a particularly good job of it, Layna admitted. Not when she was sitting in his ridiculously messy kitchen, wearing his ridiculously ragged robe. “It’s like the flowers,” she began.

“What flowers?”

“The pansies. My instinct was to plant them precisely. Just so.” She used her hands to demonstrate. “Because it was ordered, it was logical. Yours was to sweep them out, crowd them together, tangle them up. Maybe you were right—they look better your way, more creative. But I deal with things better if I have a specific plan.”

She was, he thought, so earnest just then. It made him want to snuggle her on his lap. “But you can change plans when you see the advantage of a different direction.”

“And I avoid changing them if I see as many disadvantages. My plan is to concentrate on my career without distractions. I like being single. I like being solo.”

“So do I. I also like being with you. I don’t have a clue why. You’re not my type.”

“Really?” Frost edged her voice. “And what would your type be?”

Amused, he watched her as he enjoyed his meal. “You’re cultured, sophisticated, controlled, opinionated, with tendencies toward snobbery and aloofness.” He continued to smile as her eyes flashed. “You could say my type’s the opposite.”

“You’re controlling, sloppy, arrogant, with tendencies toward irrational behavior and selfishness. You could say
my
type’s the opposite.”

“See, we cleared that up.” Unoffended, he topped off her wine. “But I still want you. I even like you, for some odd reason. And I damn well know I have to paint you.”

“If you think that flatters me—”

“It wasn’t meant to flatter you. I could flatter you,” he said thoughtfully. “You’d have heard it all before, though, and I don’t like to waste my time. You’re a beautiful woman, and that restrained sexuality is compelling—it’s damn near brutal now that I know what’s under it. We’re both free, healthy adults with a basic attraction for each other. We’re acting on it. It doesn’t have to be any more or less than that, unless we want it to be.”

She said nothing for a moment. What he’d outlined was perfectly sensible. She couldn’t have said why it made her feel afraid, and a little sad. “And if we continue to act on it, we’d both have to recognize the limitations.”

“I don’t like the word
limitations.
” It irritated him to have her use it just then when she was sitting across from him in his kitchen, wearing the ancient and ratty robe his mother had given him for Christmas years ago. When the scent of the shower and the sex they’d shared was still haunting his senses.

“While we’re sleeping together, we don’t sleep with anyone else.”

Both of her eyebrows arched now at the edgy tone of his voice. “I wouldn’t call that a limitation, but common courtesy.”

“Call it whatever you like. Nobody puts his hands on you but me.”

“Just one damn minute.”

“And if The MacGregor pushes Henry the Banker at you, you just toss him right back.”

“I don’t know anyone named Henry.” Frustration began to surface again. “And I have no idea why you think your grandfather would push a banker on me. I don’t need a new banker.”

“It’s a husband he’d be pushing on you.”

She choked, grabbed her wine and drank hastily. “I beg your pardon?”

It gave him some dark satisfaction to see the baffled shock on her face. “I was going to explain it to you, before we got distracted. He’s taken to you.”

“Henry?”

“No, for God’s sake, you haven’t met Henry, have you? My grandfather.”

Layna set down her wine, lifted both hands. “I’m confused. Your grandfather is a happily married man in his nineties.”

D.C. narrowed his eyes. “You’re not being deliberately softheaded. Let’s try again. The MacGregor likes you—he thinks you’re a fine young woman, and that alone is enough for him to decide you need to have a fine young man beside you. You need to be married and having babies. It’s all the man thinks about, I tell you. He’s obsessed.”

“Well, he never mentioned anything of the sort to me. He did say something in passing about your grandmother fretting because you had yet to settle down and raise a family.”

“Hah!”

She jolted a little as D.C. slammed down his glass, then jabbed a finger at her.

“Hah!” he said again. “There you have it. My grandmother has nothing to do with it. It’s him. He uses that to guilt us into doing just what he wants us to do. And before you know it, you’re buying diapers. I’ve seen it happen before. He focuses in on one of us at a time, like a project. Then he drops the perfect match into our laps, pretends he had nothing to do with it. My cousins are dropping like flies into wedding bliss, but it’s not enough for him. As long as there’s one of us left unmarried, he’ll be at it. The man’s relentless.”

She waited for the tirade to pass. “All right, I won’t argue with you. You’d know him best. Though I really can’t see that he could maneuver intelligent adults into making a commitment like marriage. But be that as it may,” she continued as D.C. sputtered. “I have no intention of marrying anyone, ever. So it has nothing to do with me.”

“There’s where you’re wrong—and that’s just how he’ll get you.” D.C. picked up his fork, wagging it at her before he scooped up more pasta. “He’s taken an interest in you, Layna. It’s a relief to me, as he’s shifted his focus for a bit, but it’s only fair to warn you. He’ll be sly, just casually mention to you that he knows this bright young man. Then he’ll find a way to arrange for the two of you to meet.”

“And this would be Henry.”

“It would. So you just tell the old meddler you’re not interested in any Henrys.”

She couldn’t resist and smiled sweetly. “A banker, you say? I wonder if he’s tidy. Did your
grandfather mention what he looked like?”

“Oh, go ahead and joke. See if you’re still laughing when you’re talking to wedding coordinators.”

“I think I can handle a little attempt at matchmaking. And I’m flattered that your grandfather would be interested in my future.”

“And that’s another way he wraps you up in a bow,” D.C. muttered.

Layna considered for a moment, then pushed her plate aside, leaned forward. “So, this is the reason you went berserk, dragged me out of your parents’ home and carted me down the street? All because your grandfather said he was going to introduce me to a banker? That sounds suspiciously like jealousy to me.”