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“I expect you to tell me what your needs are, Sirena. I’m not a mind reader. We’ll go to your room now so you can rest. Can you manage these stairs with me or shall I have a room prepared down here?”
“Upstairs is fine, but Lucy will need a feed before I lie down.” She deliberately kept her gaze on the baby and not on these beloved surroundings. Silly, naive fool that she was, she used to host fantasies about one day being mistress here. She loved everything about its eclectic style.
The lounge where she moved to nurse was one of her favorite rooms, with its Mediterranean colors, contemporary furniture and view to the English garden. Raoul had a lot of worldly influences in his life, from his Spanish mother’s ancestry of warmth and sensuality to his father’s Swiss precision. He had been educated in America, so he brought those modern, pop-culture elements into his world with contemporary art and futuristic electronics. All of his homes were classy, comfortable and convenient.
And all contained the one ingredient to which she was drawn inexorably: him.
He stood in profile to her, lean and pantherish, thumb sweeping across the screen of his mobile as he dealt with all the things she used to do for him. Her heart panged. She had loved working for him, loved the job that challenged her. Transcribing had put her through business school and kept her fed these last months, so she couldn’t knock it, but it didn’t take her off her steno chair, let alone around the world.
“Are you going in to the office this afternoon?” she asked, of two minds whether she wanted him to leave. Being on guard against him drained her, but another secret part of her drank up his nearness like a cactus in a rare rain.
“They’re asking the same. Things are in disarray. When you delivered, I had only starting to put things in place for an absence I thought would happen next month.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, feeling the habitual words leave her lips and thinking, Why are you apologizing? It’s not your fault!
“A warning that premature delivery was a possibility would have been helpful.”
The supercilious remark got her back up. “I didn’t need the extra stress of you hanging over me telling me what to do,” she said with acerbity. “I followed doctor’s orders and tried to go to term, which is all I could do. If you’re inconvenienced by the early birth, well, welcome to parenthood. I believe we’re both in for adjustments.”
“A little communication goes a long way, is what I’m saying. Keeping things to yourself is a theme that keeps getting you into trouble.” His deceptively silky tone rang with danger.
“Oh, and you gave me ample opportunity to communicate after informing me through the arrest charges that you knew money had gone missing?”
“Before that,” he snapped. His jaw was like iron, his gray eyes metallic and locked down, but he did darken a shade with something that might have been culpability. “You could have told me you were having financial troubles and we could have worked something out. Stealing from me was unacceptable.”
“I agree. That’s why I only borrowed.”
“So you’ve said,” he ground through his teeth. “But if you—”
Lucy made a little sputter. Sirena quickly sat her up, glancing at Raoul to finish his sentence, but he had stopped speaking to stare openly at her nude breast. She’d come to the demoralizing realization that there was no dignity in childbirth and there wasn’t much more afterward. You needed two hands on a newborn, leaving none for tucking yourself back into a bra that had more jibs and sails than a yacht.
“You burp her,” she ordered out of self-conscious embarrassment, screening herself with an elbow and quickly covering up once he’d taken the baby. It was an awkward moment on the heels of a deeper fight that promised her stay here would be a dark corner of hell.
When he helped her up the stairs a few minutes later, draped a coverlet over her and set a baby monitor on the nightstand, tears nearly overwhelmed her. A confusion of gratitude and relief with a hefty dose of frustration and fear of the unknown filled her. This wasn’t the way she’d expected her life would turn out and she didn’t know which way it would bend next. She couldn’t trust Raoul, but she had to, at least for an hour while her body recovered enough to take him on next round.
Struggling to keep her heavy eyelids open, she said, “I didn’t look to see which room you’re putting her in. I won’t know where to go if I hear her.”
With a sardonic quirk of his mouth, he said, “The monitor is so I can hear you. I have a cot in my office for Lucy.”
She really did want to cry then. He was the capable one and she would never measure up. She closed her eyes against the sting and clamped her trembling lips together, praying he couldn’t tell how vulnerable she was.
Sirena fell asleep like a blanket had been dropped over her.
Raoul frowned, wanting to set a hand alongside her face to check for temperature, but he didn’t want to disturb her. She needed the rest too badly.
Yet she insisted on wearing herself out by fighting him at every turn. What would she be like full strength? He kept seeing glimpses of the old Sirena in her sharp wit, but the hostility and challenges were new and disconcerting. How much of her real personality had she repressed while she had worked for him because he was the boss and she the employee?
And because she had wanted to lull him into not missing stolen money?
He scowled. That act didn’t fit with the woman who had pushed herself to work when she was sick. Or pushed herself through a difficult pregnancy to give the best start in life to a baby whose birth could have killed her.
The sight of Sirena unconscious and white, tubes and wires keeping her alive, would never leave him. For that act alone, he owed her consideration. A chance to recover, at least.
Her obvious love for their daughter played on him too. Her worry after each medical checkup. The way she looked to him for his interpretation and reassurance. A cynical part of him warned against being taken in again, but her connection to their baby was too real to be manufactured.
Then there was the sexual attraction that was as bad as ever, despite how pale and weak she was. He hadn’t been able to stop himself ogling her naked breast. Her ass was gorgeously round and begging to be fondled. Every time he got near enough to catch her scent, he wanted to pull her close and kiss the hell out of her plump, smart mouth.
He rubbed his face, more preoccupied than ever by a woman he never should have touched. Work was what he needed. Studying had been his escape from the struggle to understand his father’s suicide. From age twenty, once his stepfather’s perfidy came to light, he’d been immersed in recovering their finances. The urgency of that task had been a type of salvation from emotional angst as well.
Thankfully, despite having to drop out of university, he’d had a basic version of a software program more than halfway through development. Taking it to completion and selling it had staved off his sense of failure over not realizing what his stepfather had been doing. Piling up dollars and assets like points on a screen ever since had become enormously satisfying. It always reassured him to know he was creating not just a financial umbrella, but a giant, inflated mattress of protection for his family.
A family that now included a helpless infant. That gave him more motivation than ever.
And that baby’s mother?
He took his seat at his desk and angled the baby monitor, staring hard at it until he heard her whispery breath, wondering where Sirena would fit into his life long-term.
CHAPTER FIVE (#u317e74bc-9496-543a-aac4-020d03c88741)
IN SOME WAYS, living with Raoul was too easy. The subliminal communication they had developed working together laid the groundwork. She knew his moods, picked up the small cues that meant his call would be a long one and already knew his boundaries when it came to making a space for her within his. Plus, he was such a work hound she was able to sneak away to quiet corners until he took a breather and came looking for his daughter.
But being out of his sight didn’t mean he was out of her mind. Why, oh, why did she have to track him with internal radar, her entire being called by his dynamic presence? No matter how many times she told herself to get over him, knowing how close he was made her mind trail back to a rainy afternoon’s passionate coming together. So stupid! Daydreams like that made her a pushover for what had been an impersonal coupling on his part. It’s what had gotten her into this mess.
She should move back to her flat, but that circumstance was being influenced by other ones, putting a pleat in her brow.
“Was that the doctor?” he asked, startling her with a jolt of unexpected excitement because she had been certain he was in his office down the hall.
Trying to downplay the way she exploded with joyful awareness, she walked the cordless phone across the lounge to return it to its cradle.
“Indra. My neighbor.” Her skin tingled despite her internal willing of the heat to leave her cheeks. These encounters in lounges and dining rooms were unbearable.
“Did something happen? You’re frowning.”
Don’t study me, she wanted to cry. Never had she imagined she would long to go back to when she’d been one more piece of equipment in his high-tech office, but his aloof attitude had been a lot easier to deal with. Nowadays he watched her every move as though trying to read between her lines and catch her in a lie.
“Everything is fine,” she said with false nonchalance. “She was asking how long I’d be out of my flat. We always had an arrangement when I was traveling that if she had family staying, they could use my place. Her niece is arriving with her new husband and, not surprisingly, they would love the privacy.”
Awkward sexual awareness poured through her in an infuriating blush. She hadn’t been cleared for sex and Raoul had made it plain he wasn’t interested. Talking about intimacy shouldn’t cause her to simmer with responsiveness, but she became enormously conscious of his masculine silhouette—so wide across the shoulders and narrowing down to those powerful thighs. She desperately wished she could swallow back her reference to the intimate things that happened between a man and a woman.
While Raoul flicked a glance down the T-shirt and yoga pants that were snug on her still-plump body. “What did you tell her?” he asked, his voice so devoid of any hint as to his thoughts she only felt more ill at ease and anxious to disappear.
“That I wished I could help her, but I’ll need it sooner rather than later.” There. She’d drawn the line.
He met her stare with one equally as steady. “What has the doctor said?”
“Stay out of the pool for another week but short walks are fine. Sleep.” She gave him a dry look. “Apparently he’s unaware that babies are night creatures.”
He frowned. “Why didn’t you say? I can get up with Lucy.”
“What’s the point? You don’t have functioning breasts.” Again with the dirty talk. Now all she could think of was his naked, very masculine chest, layered with muscle and sprinkled with fine, springy hairs. Stop! She turned to hide her flaming face.
“I can change her and settle her back to sleep as well as you can,” he pointed out.
She tensed. He was proving himself to be the generous, involved parent she had known he would be, but after so many years without any sort of support, it was ingrained in her to do things by herself.
“I need to manage on my own,” she dismissed. “Soon I’ll have no choice. And you’re working. You need your sleep.”
“What do you call transcribing?” he asked with the irritated tone he’d taken the first time he’d found her at it. “You’re courting a setback, pushing yourself like that.” He spoke in the lofty way that made him a confident company president and a completely annoying adversary.
“I’m not overdoing it. My recovery is my priority. I know my freedom with Lucy hinges on it.” She flashed a meaningless smile. “Don’t worry. I won’t be underfoot any longer than necessary.”
That didn’t seem to reassure him. His frown deepened. Fortunately Lucy woke and Sirena had a reason to escape the intensity of his inscrutable presence.
Raoul’s perfectly functioning libido watched Sirena’s curvy behind zip from the room. He was highly attuned to the meaning behind sudden blushes and flustered disappearing acts. They were the kind of signals that provoked any man’s interest and he was already interested. Way too interested.
Back when he’d first hired Sirena, he’d seen the same little betrayals of attraction. It hadn’t meant anything to him, since women always reacted to him. He had money, worked out, dressed well and groomed daily. Sirena’s suppressed awareness had been routine.
He’d ignored it and his own sexual curiosity right up until That Day. Since then, she’d been spitting and hissing and so washed-out he’d felt like a lecher for any less than pure thoughts. Today, however, her nervously smoothing her hair and standing straighter while seeming ultraperturbed by her aroused senses was insanely seductive.
Emphasis on insane. So what if her body was recovered enough to feel a flash of chemistry? He couldn’t act on it. They were barely capable of civility. Sex would make an already complicated relationship completely unworkable.
It would be easier on his libido if she left, he acknowledged grudgingly. Her involuntary reaction had pulsed male arousal through him so strongly he was drawn taut, his erection thrusting against the confines of his pants, throbbing with imperative to hunt down the woman who had incited him and find relief in the wet depths that had welcomed him deliciously almost a year ago.
There was the problem. It had been a year, he dismissed, trying to forget the whole thing.
He remained edgy into the late hours, though, even after he had accounted for his long spell of abstinence with time spent at work and with lawyers. He’d been too busy to date. It wasn’t that he was so bewitched by one particular woman that only she would do.
Hell. He should visit the city and exercise his urges. Yes, that was the solution. He loathed the idea of Lucy moving out, so—
He paused in dousing his bedroom light, hearing Lucy start crying again. Sirena kept telling him the nights were hers, but this was silly. They shared parenting well enough through the daylight hours. She was being stubborn to prove a point that was totally lost on him.
By the time he moved down the darkened hall, Lucy was quiet again and Sirena was gently closing the nursery door. She jumped as his shadow joined hers on the wall, gasping as she swung around to confront him.
Clutching her heart, she scolded in a whisper, “You scared me to death!”
“I live here,” he drawled, not the least bit scared even though his heart began to pound. She stood eye level to his naked chest, her bewildered expression burnished gold by the night-light. She was braless under a sleeveless tank and a pair of loose shorts that looked like men’s boxers, her nipples sharply peaked against light cotton.
Damn. This was the wrong kind of night sharing, but he couldn’t stop the bombardment of erotic signals that plowed into his sexual receptors. Her hair was loose and wavy. She was lightly scented from the bubble bath she’d taken earlier. Her breath hitched behind invitingly parted lips while her hungry gaze swept across his pecs, stinging him like licks from a velvet whip.
He wore loose pajama pants that drew a relaxed line across his flat abdomen, but they began to tent—
She yanked her gaze to his, embarrassed and deeply apprehensive.
And, if he wasn’t mistaken, as dazed with repressed sexual need as he was.
“It didn’t sound like she was settling,” he managed gruffly, recalling why he was here. “I was coming to take over so you could go back to bed.” Bed. It was all he could think about. They’d used a sofa that other time and for less than an hour. He wanted more. Hours. Days.
Raoul’s voice made the hairs stand up all over her body. His scent was charged and aggressive, as though he hadn’t quite made it to bed yet, while she was sleepy and befuddled. She became screamingly aware that her hair was everywhere and her thin tank and loose shorts weren’t exactly sexy lingerie. That was probably a good thing, but she secretly wished she looked attractive.
Idiot.
“She’s sleeping now,” she mumbled and sidestepped at the same time he did, almost coming up against him as he loomed before her.
It was the foyer in Oxshott again. Her startled gaze came up in time to see his focus drop to her mouth. Her heart soared and her mind blanked, just like last time.
Not again, she thought, but couldn’t move, paralyzed by attraction and wonder.
His hand came up and hesitated. The bare skin of her shoulder waited, nerve endings reaching out in anticipation. Raoul started to bend his head.
Don’t let it happen, she warned herself with anxious intensity, but her self-preservation instincts were flash-firing so rapidly she couldn’t figure out if she should retreat the wrong way down the hall, barrel through him or exit into Lucy’s room.
His big hand cradled the side of her face, tilting her mouth up to his as his mouth crashed down on hers on an aggrieved groan.
Don’t— Oh, do...
Everything about him was strong and the way his mouth covered hers, so confident and hungry, overcame her willpower. The shape of his lips fit hers perfectly. When the tip of his tongue parted her lips, she shuddered in renewal. Oh, please. She melted into him. She couldn’t help it. She knew how good it could be between them. Her body remembered the virile feel of his muscles gathering, the fullness of him inside her...
His forearm angled across her back with proprietary strength, tugging her into a soft collision that made her release a throaty cry that he swallowed. Their nightclothes were no shield. She felt everything. The hot roughness of his chest, the flat muscles of his waist under confused hands that didn’t know where to land and the fierce shape of his supremely eager erection.
Her hands splayed on his smooth waist while her thoughts receded behind a kiss that began to consume her. Sweet, deep arousal, a sensation she hadn’t felt in months, twined through her, coiling deliciously. It felt so good to be held. The way his breath hissed and he plundered her mouth as though he was slaking a lifetime of need caught her as nothing else could, making her strain to match his voracious desire.
As his hands slid over her shape, she wriggled and pressed into his touch, reveling in the way he shifted her into the hard plane of the door so he could sandwich her with his weight. When his hot hand rode up her bare thigh under the leg of her shorts and found no underpants, he groaned and nipped a line down her neck while his flat hand shaped the globe of her bottom, squeezed gently, massaged and claimed.
She arched her breasts into his chest and her hands went to where his rampant stiffness was nearly piercing a hole through the light silk of his pants.
“Yes, touch me,” he said raggedly and bared himself, wrapping his hand over hers with a crushing grip. His mouth came back to catch her cry of surprise while his own hand went up the front of her thigh, fingertips unerringly finding her plump, aching center and drawing a line into the wet slickness. The circling touch of his fingertip against the tight knot of nerves struck bolts of need into her core, driving her to push against his touch, squeeze him tight, kiss him with complete abandon.
He bared her breast and bent his head. She thought, I’m nursing.
The reality of what they were doing crashed into her. She shoved him back a step, dislodging his touch, making him stagger and lift his head.
There were so many reasons to be aghast. Her appalled fear must have shown on her face. His glazed eyes met hers and he drew in a breath of shock.
Maybe he was equally horrified to see whom he’d accidentally fallen into kissing.
Just the nearest woman. The one who was handy.
Hurt knifed into her abdomen, twisting painfully. Freshly humiliated, Sirena elbowed past him and fled to her room.
* * *
She slept late. That beastly man had sneaked into her room after she fell asleep and stolen the baby monitor. He was at the breakfast table when he should have been in his office. Why he wasn’t going into the city to work escaped her. It had been nearly a month since he’d had a full day there.
“Lucy?” she prompted, looking past him.
“I gave her a bottle, but she didn’t take much. She’s down, but probably not for long.”
At least that gave her an excuse to avoid him while she disappeared to pump the ache out of her swollen breasts. He was still at the table when she returned. He wore his I’ve-got-all-day-so-don’t-bother-stalling face.
