The Tycoon's Bought Fiancée (19 page)

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Authors: Sandra Marton

BOOK: The Tycoon's Bought Fiancée
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She wanted to. Oh, she wanted to. He saw it in her eyes, the hope, the desire…
“Scarlett?” he said, and she went into his arms.

* * *

He undressed her slowly, baring her skin to his mouth and hands inch by silken inch. She was even more beautiful than he'd imagined, her breasts high and rounded, her waist slender, her hips almost as narrow as a boy's. She felt like silk, tasted like vanilla, smelled like some exotic flower. By the time she lay naked in his arms, he was breathing hard and fast.
“Scarlett.” He reached out, traced the tip of his finger down her throat, over the swell of her breast, down, down, down until it rested just above the soft curls that guarded her feminine self. “You are so beautiful, Scarlett. So perfect…” His hand moved, dipped between her thighs, and she gasped and caught hold of his wrist.
“David.” Her voice was thready. “I don't…Could we pull up the blankets?”
“Are you cold, love? I'll warm you.”
Love. He had called her “love.”
“No.” She shook her head, wondering why there should be a sudden dampness on her cheeks. “I'm not cold, David. I'm—it's the way you're looking at me. I feel—embarrassed.”
He smiled. “That's because you're undressed and I'm not. But we can fix that.”
He rose to his feet, his eyes never leaving hers, and stripped off his clothing. The body he revealed was beautiful and powerful. Even the frightening part, that most masculine part, was beautiful. He lay down beside her again, his hair loose, floating like a dark curtain around their faces as he took her in his arms.
“Better?” he whispered.
She nodded. His skin was hot, his body hard. She could feel his arousal against her belly and she waited for the excitement to ebb and the panic to start, but it didn't. Instead, she felt a throbbing heat begin to spread between her thighs.
“David,” she said unsteadily. “You're so beautiful.”
He laughed softly. “How can a man be beautiful, sweetheart?” Her breath caught as he bent and tongued her nipple. “This is beautiful,” he whispered. His head dipped lower; he kissed her belly. “And this.” He moved again, and she moaned as she felt the heat of his breath between her thighs. “And this,” he said, his voice gruff. “Open for me, Scarlett,” he said.
And she did.
She shattered at the first kiss, arching against his mouth. Surely she'd have flown into the sky, into the night, if his hands hadn't been curved around her hips, holding her against him. Just as she was falling back to earth, he rose above her and kissed her mouth. She tasted the miracle of their shared passion on his tongue.
“David,” she said in a whisper so filled with awe and joy that it was almost his undoing. “David, please…”
“Yes,” he said, and he entered her, trying to do it gently, slowly, wanting to pleasure her and not hurt her, wanting to give her everything, not just his body and his seed but his heart.
She cried out in wonder, moved against him, and he let go of everything, the taut control and the anger that had defined his life for so long. He sank into Stephanie's welcoming heat and let himself, at long last, find happiness.
She said she could cook.
“Red beans and rice,” she said, “hush puppies, fried catfish…” She looked over her shoulder at him and smiled. “Except I don't see any of those things in these cabinets, David.”
David smiled back. It was near dawn. They were in his kitchen, Stephanie was at the stove and he was straddling a chair, his chin resting on his folded arms. Hunger had driven them from the bed. Nothing else could have. He'd made love to her all night, and he still wanted her so badly he ached. But the ache was worthwhile, if it meant watching his future wife search the shelves. She was wearing the white shirt he'd discarded when they'd arrived home last night. Just the shirt. Nothing more.
“It doesn't cover very much, David,” she'd said, blushing as he buttoned her into it.
“It covers everything,” he'd said, lying through his teeth, because hell, he was not a saint, he was a man. Seeing the sweet curve of her breasts, the faint darkness at the juncture of her thighs; enjoying the length of her legs and the occasional glimpse of her backside as she reached for something on the top shelf, was more than he could possibly pass up.
By God, he was lucky! It amazed him, to have found this woman. She was everything a man could hope for. Beautiful. Bright. Capable. And sexy enough to steal his breath away, even though she didn't know it.
“I don't much like sex,” she'd said, but she'd been incredible in bed. Warm. Eager. Giving. Everything he had done to her, for her, she had wanted to do in return. She'd gone from restraint to recklessness, and it had driven him half out of his head. Even thinking about it made things happen to his anatomy.
That bastard, Willingham. He'd never deserved Stephanie. Whatever he'd done to her… No. He couldn't think about it. It was just a good thing the man was dead because if he wasn't—if he wasn't…
“Bacon and eggs?”
David blinked. Stephanie was looking at him inquiringly. She had a skillet in one hand and a package of bacon in the other, and he knew she wanted him to tell her what he wanted for breakfast, but God, all he really wanted to tell her was that he loved her, that he'd always loved her, that fate or kismet or whatever you wanted to call it had brought them together at that wedding…
“David?”
He took a deep breath. “Fine,” he said calmly. “Sounds great. I'll do the toast and coffee.”
And work on regaining his equilibrium, along with his sanity. This wasn't love, it was lust.
“Let me just get down this bowl,” Stephanie said, and reached high to the top shelf.
David kicked back his chair. “To hell with breakfast,” he said.
The skillet, and the bacon, fell from her hands. “Yes,” she said, and then she was in his arms again, where he knew she had always belonged.

* * *

He broke the news to Jack over lunch on Monday.
“You're nuts,” Jack said flatly.
“Maybe,” David said, smiling.
Jack lifted his martini. “Wonderful. I tell the groom he's crazy and the groom says, ‘Maybe.'”
“I'm also happy.”
“Even better. My ol' granpappy used to say—he used to say…” Jack gulped half his martini. “Who knows what the old so-and-so used to say? What I say is that you're loco. The lady gets a bank account. What do you get?”
“A wife. Ask Mary. She'll tell you it's an equitable trade.”
“Did you check her out? Did you check out the sick brother?”
“No.” David said tightly. “I told you, this all happened very suddenly.”
“Think about the lady's past, David. She married for money once before. Now, she's doing it again. For all you know, the
brother
could be a gambling habit. He could be drugs.”
“She's not on drugs, Jack. And she's not a gambler.”
“Well, then, he could be a lover with expensive tastes.”
“Watch what you say,” David said coldly. “This time next week, Stephanie will be my wife.”
Jack refused to back down. “Look, phone Dan Nolan. Let him do a little research. I'm surprised you haven't already done it.”
David's eyes narrowed. Stephanie, supporting a lover? He'd never even thought…
He rose quickly, slapped a few bills on the table. “I've got a meeting,” he said when Jack started to protest, “and I'm running late.”
“What kind of groom says ‘maybe' when you tell him he's crazy?” Jack Russell demanded of his wife, late that night.
Mary patted her husband's hand. “The kind who's not ready to admit he's in love.”
Jack snorted. “Don't be ridiculous. He's infatuated.”
“He's in love,” Mary said. “All we can do now is hope he doesn't get hurt.”

* * *

That evening, before she left the office, Stephanie phoned Rest Haven. Paul's nurse took the call. Paul didn't want to speak to her. He was depressed. Stephanie almost laughed. Paul was always depressed, but she understood. This was worse than usual. It was not a good sign.
“Call me, if anything happens,” she said. Then she hung up the phone and stared blindly at the wall.
Paul had been doing so well. Was he going to have a relapse? It didn't matter. She still had to tell David more about him. Soon, David would be her husband. He'd be paying for Paul's care. And she wanted no secrets between her and the man she—the man she…
“Ready?”
She looked up. David was standing in the doorway. His smile had an edge that unnerved her.
“David? What is it? Is something wrong?”
David hesitated. Yes, he wanted to say, something
was
wrong. He'd spent the afternoon pacing his office and finally, half an hour ago, he'd put in a call to Dan Nolan, asked him to check on Stephanie and find out what he could about her brother. If she had a brother. If Jack hadn't put his finger on the truth…
Enough!
“No,” he said. “It's just been a long day. Let's go home.”

* * *

An uneasy silence lay between them through dinner and on into the evening. Finally, David put aside the papers he'd been trying to read and looked at Stephanie.
“Scarlett?”
She looked up from her book. There was a strained look on her face.
“Yes?”
David thought of the call he'd made to Dan Nolan. He regretted it, now. He had questions, yes, but he should have asked them of Stephanie. This was supposed to be an honest relationship.
“What, David?”
Ask her, he told himself. Tell her you need to know more about her brother, that you want to meet him…
“Nothing,” he said after a minute. “Just…” He took her hand. “It's late,” he said. “Let's go up.”
He undressed her slowly in the darkness of the bedroom, loving the sounds she made as he touched her, the scent of desire that rose from her skin. His concerns fell away from him as they went into each other's arms. This was right. She was right. This could work…
The phone rang.
“David? The telephone…”
“Let it ring,” he said, but he sighed, kissed her gently, turned on the bedside lamp and lifted the receiver.
Stephanie sat up against the pillows, the blanket to her chin. David was turned away from her, the blanket at his waist. His naked shoulders and back were pale gold in the faint gleam of the light. The call couldn't be for her, yet she knew it was. Paul, she thought, it's Paul.
David turned and looked at her. He held out the telephone.
“It's a man,” he said. His face was expressionless. “He won't give his name. He wants to talk to you.”
Stephanie took the phone. “Hello?”
It
was
Paul. His voice was calm, controlled. He said the nurse had given him Stephanie's new phone number.
“Where are you?” Stephanie said.
He told her. He'd slipped out of Rest Haven. He was in a motel.
Stephanie nodded. Rest Haven was a care facility, not a prison.
“I need you, Sis,” Paul said.
She looked at David. There was still no expression on his face.
“I'll come in the morning,” she said. “Meanwhile, you should—”
“I need you now.”
She looked at David again. Then she reached for the pad and pencil on the nightstand.
“Tell me where you are,” she said, and wrote it down. She licked her dry lips. “I'll come.” The phone went dead, and she handed it to David, who hung it up.
“David? I—I have to go to my brother.”
David's eyes were as flat and dull as the sea before a storm. “At this hour?”
“Yes.”
“Why? What's the problem?”
“He's ill. Look, I know you have questions, but I can't explain now.” She started to rise, remembered she was naked under the blanket, and knew she couldn't endure the feel of his cool gaze on her skin. “Could you—would you turn around, please?”
David's jaw clenched. “Such modesty, Scarlett,” he said with a hard smile, but he turned his back and she rose quickly and began pulling on her clothes.
She heard a noise behind her. David had flung back the blanket. He was dressing.
“What are you doing?”

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