Three Men and a Woman: Evangeline (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) (3 page)

“Just after I graduated—a very proud moment for both of us—Miss Victory had a stroke. I didn’t want to leave her, after all she’d done for me.”

And Evvie had loved the old woman, Briggs could see.

“So I took a job that I could do from home. There’s no reason, is there, that all editing couldn’t be done from home? I think it’s a bit pretentious of the big publishing companies to require their editors to work in house.”

Like his, she meant. It added some gravitas, he supposed, to have a big, imposing building staffed with industrious workers dedicated to the process of achieving literary glory. Still, she had a point.

“Maybe so.” But that topic didn’t interest him. “Miss Victory died a couple years ago.”

She nodded, and he could tell it had been a true loss. Her gaze left his for a long moment, and then she recovered herself. “She left me her home.”

There was still surprise in it, wonder, and gratitude. “It’s a sweet little Victorian with a wraparound porch. She came from vintners, and the house is the original farmhouse. We’re surrounded by vineyards and gorgeous views of mountains and the lake.”

“We?” He’d checked her ring finger in, like, the first nanosecond he’d seen her.

“Victory Farms. Miss Victory’s three nephews run it now. They each have wives and children and homes built on separate parcels of the property.”

There’d been no pause as she’d answered his inquiry, but she hadn’t made eye contact, either.

“Do you have a man, Evvie?”

Now the pause came. “No.”

He didn’t think she’d lie to him, but he was pretty sure she’d considered it. If the answer was no, why would she have thought about saying yes? To put him off?

She looked like she’d eaten all of her dinner that she was going to. Her hand rested on the table, and he put his over it.

“I’m so sorry, Evangeline, for that night.”

She left her hand passive under his, but looked up at him. “I wasn’t sorry. It meant a lot to me. So much.”

“I took your virginity, and I was careless about it.”

“I wanted it to be you.”

He shook his head, rejecting her forgiveness. “I didn’t protect you. Even worse, I never went back. I never checked to make sure you were okay.”

“It took a long time, probably, for all of us to be okay, didn’t it? We were all so hurt to lose Shep.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

She nodded, but wasn’t looking at him again. “I was okay, Briggs. Really, okay.”

He looked at her in inquiry and waited. He was a writer and
some
might call him sloppy, but he did know punctuation, and it mattered. Not the punctuation, but how she’d felt. When she didn’t meet his gaze, he had to nudge her. “I have to know if there was a comma in there. Do you mean really, truly, you were okay? Or that you were
very
okay?”

It took a moment for her to look at him. He was sure he was right that she wouldn’t lie to him, and so she considered her answer. But the corner of her mouth quirked up at his question.

“Really, truly, I was okay.” She smiled a little more. “Very okay. You didn’t have to worry or feel bad, then or now.”

“Will you spend the night with me?”

* * * *

Evangeline took her hand back from under his, now that it had tightened on her skin and felt hot instead of comforting. There was heat in his gaze, too. The green of those eyes, like an Ireland spring, smoldered into dark emerald now. She’d seen it earlier when he’d first taken her hand those moments in the parking lot. There was sexual interest, and he was a sexually confident man.

She’d steeled herself to see him. Of course she knew he would be there. Even if she hadn’t seen the program, every congratulatory word her colleagues had given her about the Benny had been tagged with the excited observation that she’d have a chance to see Briggs Henriksen, maybe even meet him. Though they hadn’t posited that she’d have a chance to sleep with him. Maybe some of the women had thought it. Or men, for that matter.

Briggs was quite the darling of the trade. He wasn’t the hermit some writers were, disdaining any involvement at all in the industry that made them wealthy and famous. He took part in events like the one today and interacted reasonably with his fans. She knew for a fact he was flying to Scotland in the morning, keynote speaker again at an international science fiction convention.

But he also didn’t cash in on his star status as he could, as some did. Whatever his personal life was, he kept it quiet.

Evangeline could keep up with his writing from a professional point of view. She knew each time he changed publishing houses—not often, and not in years now. She knew his agents and his editors and that he was professional and friendly in those relationships.

She could know all that without knowing personal details of his life. They weren’t splashed on the front of celebrity magazines or news shows. She didn’t have to know—and didn’t—if he dated actresses and super models with wild excess or if he was quietly and happily married and the father of a handful of children. She’d made it a small point not to know those things, but she hadn’t had to work hard to avoid it, either.

The fact was, she loved Briggs. She had, from the moment seven-year-old Shepherd Posse had pulled her up into a tree house at the edge of a cornfield in Cartersville, New York. She’d loved him through those years that she’d been part of their little club, innocently resting her head on his belly, as they lay nestled reading his first works. She’d loved him those years in middle school when, without really speaking to her, he used the force of his presence to protect her from the taunting and catty snipes of the bullies and mean girls.

She’d loved him through her years of high school, even that long senior year during which she’d never seen him. And she’d loved him on that sorrowful day they’d buried Shep, when he’d used her body to find—and give—solace.

Without touching or even seeing him, she’d loved him every day of the eight years since that night, up to and including this day. Now, when he was a startlingly handsome man, with those amazing green eyes, the blond hair of his Swedish ancestors, and a muscular build that topped out a bit over six feet. Not the boy she’d known, but fully a man, powerful and sexual.

“Maybe you don’t know.” He spoke quietly, drawing her gaze back to his face. It had wandered, apparently, as she’d considered his question. “I’m not married. I don’t have any kind of relationship in which expectations are involved. So—will you?”

Evangeline sighed. Well, so. That easy reason to refuse him—a wife, a woman with rights to him—was denied her.

Though she noted he wasn’t claiming to be a monk. That would have been a hard sell, anyway.

It turned out that steeling herself to see him hadn’t really prepared her to deal with this particular offer. She’d intended to just avoid him. She thought she’d handled that mishap in the parking lot—when he’d quietly said her name and she couldn’t reasonably pretend she hadn’t heard or seen him—pretty successfully. She’d given him her hand, exchanged a few words, and escaped relatively intact.

But then her boss had come to her, excitedly relaying that Briggs had requested her company for dinner. Knowing Briggs, knowing herself, she’d made an attempt to have Dennis join them. It was an effort to avoid just this situation—a failed one. If Dennis had hopes that Briggs could be seduced away, he had the sense to know that his own presence would only hamper the process.

And the truth was, she wasn’t really unhappy to be sitting alone with Briggs, sharing a meal in this lovely, romantic setting.

No more than she was unhappy, if she were really,
truly
honest with herself, to be faced with his question.

She would never say no to him.
Almost
, there was nothing he could ask that she wouldn’t grant if she could.

Would she refuse the opportunity to share his bed for a night? To learn something more about the physical act of loving than she’d gleaned during their brief encounter on that grief-filled night?

She’d made the arrangements she needed to once she’d gotten committed to this dinner, once she knew she wouldn’t be driving home that night. But she hadn’t gone any further. She hadn’t reserved a room for herself. As though she’d already given her consent, this was exactly what she expected to happen. What she wanted to happen.

Of course she would spend the night with him. She loved him.

“Yes.”

* * * *

Briggs stifled the urge to stand up and crow while beating his fists against his chest, but it was a near thing.

Evvie had left him hanging for just a bit too long, waiting for that answer he wanted more desperately than he cared to admit.

It had taken some effort to absorb, to connect this sexy, bewitching woman with the sweet little Evvie girl he’d known. Looking back, he had to be a little uncomfortable with it. Evvie’s adoration of him and his buddies had been a touch pitiable. Oh, they’d relished it at the time, just a bit superior. It had felt good to play the hero. Probably only Shep had had a truly pure heart about it.

She’d been a needy, abandoned, and unloved little girl. She’d have done anything they asked. He realized they should have taken more care.

She’d given herself to him once, without even the small nicety of him asking.

Today, she’d shown some mettle. She’d walked away from him, essentially dismissing him in the parking lot. He was pretty sure she wouldn’t be here with him now if he hadn’t schemed in a somewhat undignified way to make it happen.

And he hadn’t been the least bit sure she’d agree to his fairly blunt proposition—one he realized now was totally lacking in romance and finesse.

It would be perfectly reasonable for her to brush him off. He deserved it, and she deserved better. He’d come close to withdrawing the question, or softening it, at least. He might have just asked her to come to his room, to share the second bottle of champagne he had on ice there, to finish celebrating her award sitting with him on his terrace under the stars.

Her answer had come just in time to save him humbling himself.

Even so, he forced himself to stillness. He watched her silently until she read his intent.

“Do you think I couldn’t say no to you, if I wanted to? I could.”

He could
almost
believe her. He was pretty sure that poor, needy Evvie girl was still in there. But then she capped it.

“I want to be with you. I want you to make love to me.”

He stood, not careful about where his chair ended up behind him, or even if it was still standing. He didn’t care about the bill for their dinner. He presumed the staff would figure out to put it on his room account.

He put out his hand and, when she placed hers ever so trustingly in it, he pulled her with him.

The lodge was built along a rocky bluff with views of the Hudson. The upscale suites had private terraces or balconies and separate entrances. His was at the far, upper end. So he took her outside, following the lushly landscaped path up several half flights of natural stone steps. As soon as he had her inside, he closed the door and pushed her up against it.

Suddenly, he wanted,
needed
in a way he never had before.

“Evvie,” he whispered, his lips already brushing hers, his hands at the single button of that sweet little jacket. “Evvie girl. I need—”

To be inside her, to be buried deep.

“Yes.”

“Now, I mean.” His voice was rough, harsh. He had her jacket open, and he ran his fingers under the lace of her bra to swipe at one already pebbled nipple. But just that fast his hands were sliding up under her skirt, brushing her clit on their way to finding the elastic of her panties. “Now.”

“Yes,” she said again, emphatically, like she understood what he meant and consented to it, even though he didn’t, couldn’t, fathom that she did.

No matter. He tugged her panties down, knocking off at least one of those red high-heels in his urgency. “I have a condom,” he offered, determined to be not quite the idiot he’d been eight years earlier. He’d better find it, like
now,
because he already had his dick in his hand, hard and eager to find heaven.

“You don’t need it.”

“Wha—” He wasn’t all the way sure what she’d said—she’d been talking around his tongue.

“It’s okay. The timing’s—”

Good
, he hoped she’d been about to say.
Not right
. He hoped it a lot, because he was inside her now, thrust deeply, buried balls-deep, just like he wanted.

It took them both aback, that sudden, abrupt incursion. He paused, shuddering at the sweet bliss of it, the profound sense of coming home. He growled in ecstatic pleasure.

He thought she was okay. Certainly, she was wet for him, her hot pussy a tight, tight fit but still slickly giving way. And she shuddered, too, letting out a satisfied moan. She had her arms wrapped tightly around his neck, and her mouth opened readily for him when he thrust his tongue in again.

She sucked on him, more enthusiasm than skill, and he lifted her up so she could circle her legs around him.