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“You have a lot to say about something that doesn’t concern you, Delia.” He set aside his half-eaten meal as well, and turned to face her.
“Doesn’t it?” She shifted toward him, their knees almost brushing. “I could give you an update on my plans for next year’s community garden or how to increase profits at the marina, but it’s hard to ignore the fact that you just turned your back on a family member who looks eerily like your missing brother.”
“It’s not eerie.” His tone softened. “It’s simple genetics. And I find you a whole lot tougher to ignore than my half brother.”
She opened her mouth to deliver a retort and found herself speechless. The air in the room changed—as if the molecules had swollen up with heat and weight, pressing down on her. Making her far too aware of scents, sounds and him.
“That’s good,” she said finally, recovering herself—barely. She needed to tackle his comment head-on, address whatever simmered between them before they both got burned. “Because I don’t want to be ignored. I would have hoped you’d listen to my opinion the way I once listened to yours when I was having some rough times.”
She hoped that it was safe to remind him of the start to their relationship. She’d felt a flare of attraction for him that day too, but she’d been too shredded by her former fiancé and too mistrusting of her own judgment to act on it. For his part, Jager had seemed oblivious to her eyes wandering over his muscled chest and lean hips covered by a sea-washed pair of swim trunks. He’d quietly assessed the situation despite her tearful outburst about her thwarted marriage, and he’d given her direction, plus a face-saving way out of her dilemma at the time.
She hadn’t been able to pay the taxes on the family’s land that year either. Her dad had been injured in a fishing accident three years ago and couldn’t earn half the living he used to selling fresh catch to local restaurants. But Jager had given her a job and the income had staved off foreclosure. Plus, Jager had given her a place to stay far away from her ex, and time to find herself.
Now, he looked at her with warmth in his blue eyes. A heat that might stem from something more than friendship.
“Maybe I liked to flatter myself that I was the one doling out all the advice in this relationship.” His self-deprecating smile slid past her defenses faster than any heated touch.
“I don’t think any of us exercise our best judgment when our world is flipped upside down.” She’d been a wreck when they’d met. Literally. She’d almost plowed right into him on a Jet Ski she’d taken from the dock near where she’d planned to say her vows.
“Is that what’s happening here?” he asked, shifting on the sofa cushions in a way that squared them up somehow. Put him fractionally closer. “The world is off-kilter today?”
The low rasp of his voice, a subtle intimacy of tone that she hadn’t heard from him before, brought heat raining down over her skin. Her gaze lowered to his mouth before she thought the better of it.
“That’s not what I meant.” She felt breathless. Her words were a light whisper of air, but she couldn’t draw a deep breath without inhaling the scent of him.
Without wanting him.
“It’s true though.” He skimmed a touch just below her chin, drawing her eyes up to his. “Something happened in the water today. Something changed between us.”
No, she wanted to protest. To call it out for a lie.
Yet he was right and they both knew it.
His touch lingered, the barest brush of his knuckles beneath her jaw. She wanted to dip her cheek toward his hand to increase the pressure, to really feel him.
Madness. Total madness to think it, let alone act on it.
“We can’t let that happen.” She needed to maintain the balance of power. Rebuild some guise of professionalism before it was too late. “This job is too important to me.”
Shakily, she shot to her feet. She stalked to the window on legs that felt like liquid, forcing herself to focus. To get this conversation back on track. Why hadn’t she simply spoken to him about the community garden?
“And your professional skills are valuable to me as well. But we can work around that.” Behind her, his voice was controlled. Far more level than she felt. “Besides, do you really believe ignoring it will make it go away, Delia?”
She felt him approach, his step quiet but certain. He stood beside her at the window, giving her personal space, yet not conceding her point. The soft glow of a nearby sconce cast his face in partial shadow.
“If we both make an effort, yes. Of course.” She nodded, hoping she sounded more sure of herself than she felt. “We’re both adults with professional agendas. We can keep those work goals front and center when we’re together.”
“Like we did today.” His gaze fixed on some point outside the window, but his eyebrows rose in question.
“Today was an aberration.” It had to be. “Emotions ran high. We were both scared for Emily.” She wanted it to be as simple as that. “Just an adrenaline moment.”
Her heart fluttered oddly as he turned toward her again, taking her measure. Seeing right through her.
“So what about this moment, right now?” he asked. “Adrenaline?”
She licked her suddenly-dry lips. Willed herself to come up with a logical explanation for the way the air simmered all around them. The way her skin sensed his every movement.
Any answer she might have given was a moot point, however, since Jager chose that moment to lower his lips to hers.
* * *
Jager couldn’t walk away from her tonight. Not after the hellish year he’d had. He needed this. Needed her.
Her lips were softer than any woman’s he’d ever tasted. She kissed with a tentative hunger—gentle and curious, questing and cautious at the same time. She swayed near him for a moment, her slender body as pliable as it had been in the water today, moving where he guided her. So he slid his hands around her waist, dipping them beneath the lightweight cotton sweater to rest on the indent just above her hips.
She felt as good as she tasted. Something buzzed loudly in his brain—a warning, maybe, telling him to take it slower. But he couldn’t do a damned thing to stop it.
Instead, he gripped the fabric of her dress in his hands, a tactic to keep from gripping her too hard. He tugged the knit material toward him, drawing her more fully against him.
Yes.
Her breasts were as delectable as he remembered from in the water today. High. Firm. Perfect. And Delia seemed to lose herself in the contact as much as he. She looped her arms around his neck, pressing her whole body to his in a way that made flames leap inside him. Heat licked over his skin, singeing him. Making him realize how cold he’d been inside for months.
Delia’s kiss burned all that away. Torched everything else but this incredible connection. The warning buzz in his brain short-circuited and finally shut the hell up.
Letting go of her dress, he splayed his fingers on the curve of her ass, drawing her hips fully to his. The soft moan in her throat sounded like approval, but he was so hungry for her he didn’t trust what he heard.
“Delia.” He broke the kiss and angled back to see her better, trying to blink through the fog of desire. “I want you. Here. Now.”
“Yes. Yes.” She said it over and over, a whispered chant as if to hurry him along, her hands restlessly trolling his chest, slipping beneath his shirt. “Definitely now. If you lock the doors,” she suggested right before she lowered a kiss to his shoulder, “I can get the blinds.”
“I’m not letting you go for even a second.” He walked her backward toward the door, kissing her most of the way until he needed to focus on the bolt. Even then, he kept one palm on her lower back, at the base of her dress’s zipper.
“And the blinds?” she reminded him, her hair starting to fall from the topknot she was wearing. “The switch on your desk is closest.”
“Right. Of course. Lady, you do mess with my brain.” His brain—and other parts of him.
Jager moved with her in that direction, but he used his free hand to sift through her silky hair, pulling out pins and one jeweled comb, letting them fall to the dark bamboo floor. He’d been wanting to do this forever, he realized. Ever since he’d held her that first day when she wore that wet wedding gown and cried her eyes out against his bare chest.
She reached to find the switch, lowering the blinds electronically, shutting the room off from the well-lit grounds. Now just a few low lamps illuminated his office, casting appealing shadows on her creamy pale skin. With her tousled hair falling over one eye and the shadows slanting over her, she looked decidedly wanton. Altogether appealing.
He wanted her so much his teeth ached. He tugged the zipper down on her dress, peeling the cotton knit away from her body, sliding it right off her shoulders to pool at narrow hips. One quick shimmy and she kicked free of the dress; now she was clad only in ice-blue satin panties and a matching strapless bra. She was even more beautiful than he’d imagined, and he’d had some dreams where he’d thoroughly fantasized about her over the past two years.
Before he could contemplate how best to savor her, she slid a finger between her breasts and loosened the tiny clasp of her bra, baring herself. He froze for an instant to take in the sight of her—then his body unleashed into motion. His arms were already moving as he hauled off his shirt so he could feel her against him.
Kissing her, he cupped her breasts in his hands, teased one taut peak and then the other. Licking, nipping, drawing her deep into his mouth. He backed her into the desk and then lifted her, settling her there. She wrapped her legs around his waist, hooking her ankles and keeping him close.
“Do you have...protection?” she asked, her breath a warm huff of air against his shoulder.
Hell, yes. He might not have been with anyone in months, but he always kept a supply of condoms here. Pulling away, he opened the middle desk drawer. Thumbed past the last file. Emerged with a packet.
Their eyes met over the condom before she plucked it from his fingers and kissed him. No hesitation. No reservations.
He tunneled his hands through her hair, tilting her head back to taste his way along her jaw and behind one ear. She shivered sweetly against him, deliciously responsive. She smelled sweet there, like vanilla. He lingered, inhaling her, relishing the way her breath caught.
Too soon, her touch along his belt, the backs of her knuckles grazing his erection through his fly, called his attention from her delicate neck. Later, he would return to her neck, he promised himself. He wanted to linger over every part of her, but right now, the need was too fierce to ignore. While he unfastened the belt and carefully freed himself from the zipper, Delia was already tearing open the condom packet, her fingers unsteady as she rolled it into place. Her palm stroking over him there sent a fire roaring inside. He touched her through the blue satin panties she still wore, and he found the hidden dampness just inside and teased a throaty moan from her, stilling her questing hands long enough to let him catch his breath.
He wanted her ready for him. Really ready. Sinking a finger inside her, he felt the deep shudders of her release and kissed her moans quiet as she rode out the storm of sensation.
Damn, but she was beautiful. Her cheeks were flushed and eyes dazed, her hair a golden banner in the low lamplight.
When she was still again, he eased inside her slowly, gripping her thighs with his hands to guide himself home. She wound her arms around him again, nipping his lower lip before drawing it between hers. She arched against him, her breasts flattening to his chest. He knew he wouldn’t last long this time. The day had stolen his restraint long before he started peeling her clothes off.
So he let himself just feel the slick heat of her body around his, her warm vanilla scent making his mouth water for a fuller taste. He cupped one breast and feasted on the taut nipple, finding a rhythm that pleased them both and riding it to...
Heaven.
His release crashed through him, trampling his body like a rogue wave until he could only hold on to Delia. He buried his face in her hair, the shudders moving up his back again and again. Her nails bit pleasantly into his shoulders and he welcomed the sweet hurt to bring him back to earth. Back to reality.
A reality that felt...off, somehow.
Straightening with Delia still in his arms, his body tensed.
“What is it?” The sultry note in her voice told him she hadn’t realized what happened yet.
His satiated body was only beginning to get the message too, but his brain had already figured out what was wrong.
“It broke.”
Three (#uf095e410-46c2-5087-a55c-818ac898b0f8)
Delia’s brain didn’t compute.
Her limbs still tingled pleasantly from the first orgasm a man had ever given her. Her whole body hummed with sensual fulfillment. And yet...panic was just starting to flood through her nervous system, rattling her from the inside out.
“What do you mean, it broke?” She knew what he meant, of course. But she didn’t understand how it had happened. How she could have let herself be so carried away by the man and the moment. Even if the man in question was Jager McNeill.
“I don’t suppose you’re on the pill?” he asked, instead of answering her question, as he gently extricated himself from her arms and legs.
“No.” She shook her head while reality slowly chilled the residual heat right out of her veins.
“You should stand up,” he urged her, lifting her off the desk and settling her on her feet. “Do you mind if I carry you into the shower?”
His matter-of-fact response to a potential grenade in both their lives only rattled her further, making the possible consequences feel all the more real. And frightening.
“I’ll walk there,” she assured him, wondering what the rest of his staff—her coworkers, for crying out loud—were going to think of her walk of shame through his house into the nearest bathroom.
She would headline local gossip for weeks. Or, quite possibly, nine months.
Oh, God. What had she done?
“We could try emergency contraception,” Jager suggested carefully. “If you’re amenable to taking the medication.”
Would that work? She’d never had a need to investigate the option. “I can call my doctor.”
Jager was putting a blanket around her. The throw from the back of the couch, she realized. Gratefully, she sank into the gray cashmere, veiling her tender body from the cool calculation she now saw in her lover’s eyes. He’d pulled on his pants and shrugged into his long-sleeved black shirt. Only his dark hair, disheveled from her fingers, gave away the less guarded man who’d made passionate love to her just moments ago.
Not that it was love, she reminded herself sharply.
“I’m sure I can find a pharmacy with the over-the-counter variety.” Jager was all efficiency. “I’ll get you settled and make a trip to the store.”
“Thank you.” She would still want to talk to her doctor. Double-check the side effects given her medical history. But she wasn’t sure how much to disclose about that right now with her thoughts churning.
“The guest room is closest,” he told her, tucking her under one strong arm as he opened the double doors of his office and steered her into the hallway.
Of course she knew the guest room was closest. She’d been in this house every day for two years. Would she lose her job now if she was carrying his child? Or even if she wasn’t? Only pride kept her from blurting out how much she needed this job.
When they arrived in the downstairs guest suite, Jager locked the door behind him and she scurried toward the bathroom.
“Delia.” His voice halted her just before she shut the door behind her.
Peeking out through a crack—not that it mattered since he’d already seen her very naked—she waited to see what he wanted. And wished she saw some hint of warmth in his eyes to reassure her.
“I believe emergency contraception has a high rate of effectiveness. But based on where you are in your cycle, how strong of a chance would there be that this would have—” He hesitated, and she wondered if this was rattling him more than he let on. But he blinked, and any hint of uncertainty vanished. “Resulted in pregnancy?”
“Based solely on my cycle?” She had no idea if she was a fertile woman. But if so? “We would want to come up with a contingency plan when I get out of the shower.”
* * *
Delia felt marginally calmer when she emerged from the bathroom in a pair of navy cotton shorts and a tee with McNeill Meadows printed on one pocket—promotional items given away to school groups who visited the community garden. She’d found a stack of clean items still in the packaging in the back of the guest bathroom’s linen closet. Indulging herself, she’d helped herself to two tees to make up for the fact that her bra still lay on the floor of Jager’s office.
She used a hand towel to dry her hair a bit more as she padded across the thick Persian carpet toward the king-size bed with its pristine white duvet. This bedroom overlooked the gardens, its deep balcony almost as large as the room itself. The sliding glass pocket doors were open now, and she followed the floral-scented breeze to where Jager sat on a padded chaise longue, looking out at the lit paths of the rock garden. The table nearby was set for two, a hurricane lamp glowing between the place settings of all white dishes. New serving platters undoubtedly held an entirely new meal. Sandwiches, maybe. Or fruit and cheese. Not even the McNeills’ talented chef could turn out five-star cuisine on an hourly basis.
The travertine tiles were cold on her bare feet as she padded outside to join Jager. He turned when she’d almost reached him, then stood.
“Would you be more comfortable in your own clothes?” he asked. “I brought them from the office and put your things in the closet.”
She winced to think of her wrinkled dress neatly hung in one of the gargantuan closets. “No, thank you. I’ve always liked these McNeill Meadows tees. I chose them last year for when school groups visit. At long last, I’ll have my own.”
“You wear it well.” His blue gaze slid over her and she felt it as keenly as any touch. “I had some food brought up in case you’re hungry. I wasn’t much of a host the first time around.”
Her stomach rumbled an answer at the same time she nodded. Needing to stay cool and levelheaded, she focused on slow, calming breaths. She draped the damp hand towel over one of the stone railings surrounding the balcony, then let him lead her to the table. The outdoor carpet was warm against her bare toes. He held out a chair for her and she sank into the wide seat. Once he tucked her chair in, he opened the platters, offering her each so she could help herself to a selection of fruits, cheeses and warm baguettes. Jager poured them both glasses of sparkling water over ice and lemons, then sat in the seat beside her. The hurricane lamp sent gold light flickering over the table while night birds called in the trees just off the balcony.
To a bystander, it would look like the perfect romantic setting. She guessed romance couldn’t be further from either of their minds.
“Based on your comment going into the shower earlier, I thought it would be wise to discuss a plan for the future. Just in case.” He slid a paper bag across the table. “Although I was able to obtain the contraception option we discussed.”
She eyed the bag dubiously, but took it after a moment. “I’d like to check with my own doctor in the morning, but if he gives me the okay, I’ll take it then.”
