Beachcombing in the Bahamas (Once Again #11)

Chapter 4

4

T he girls left Sunday morning, and the gatehouse felt empty again. Yvette had a great time while they were home, taking them to Golden Gate Park and then a show in the city. And now she missed them. San Francisco and San Luis Obispo weren’t that far apart, only a three-hour drive. They could have stayed longer and headed back in the afternoon, but Kacey wanted to see Darryl.

So Yvette spent her Sunday puttering around the house, doing laundry, some cleaning, some reading. Loving domestic thrillers, especially the British ones, she’d just snapped up the latest Ruth Ware. Mrs. French had parted with some leftover turkey, and she’d made herself a sandwich. She didn’t go up to the big house for dinner, hadn’t done so in fifteen years. Except for those obligatory holiday celebrations.

It wasn’t Trevor or Lorna, not even Brock. It was all Adeline.

But she didn’t need to think about that woman, and in the evening, she ran herself a bath, pouring in lavender bath salts, the scent and the steam filling the bathroom. She’d kept the old-fashioned pink and gray tile, the painted wainscoting, and the massive clawfoot tub. With hardwood floors and flocked wallpaper that hadn’t lost its flock, she’d always loved the house and never felt the need to remodel.

She lay in the hot, scented water, shaved her legs, rubbed sugar scrub all over, then read for a while. When the water grew lukewarm—after running hot into it several times—she finally climbed out, dried off, and smoothed her favorite lotion all over.

Another work week started tomorrow, and she crawled beneath the covers, naked. She always slept naked, which reduced the chances of a night sweat. Besides, she liked to feel the smooth sheets against her skin.

She dreamed of strong male hands caressing her, warm lips kissing her neck, and a hard body nestled against her back. She woke to pleasure rippling through her breasts, woke to the man who wasn’t a dream, the man whose lips and kisses were the fantasy.

“Christ, you smell good.” His breath whispered over her ear and sent a delicious shiver through her. “You taste even better.”

His voice filled her up as he pulled her leg over his, spreading her for his touch. Then he found her center, and she moaned. Even as his body throbbed along her spine, he murmured sweet dirty nothings in her ear as he brought her over the edge.

She couldn’t help the words spilling from her lips. “Oh God, Brock, please, I need you inside me. Don’t stop. Please don’t stop.”

And he was already there, plunging deep inside her. But instead of taking her hard the way she needed him, he rocked slowly, caressing that spot inside her until she thought she’d go mad with need.

“I had to wait all week for this.” He licked her earlobe. “I don’t want to rush it.”

“But you’re making me crazy.”

Brock Donnelly had been making her crazy for nine months. Maybe that was another reason she didn’t want to leave the gatehouse. And oh how she loved the way he made her crazy. She trembled around him, squirmed against him, trying to take him deeper. He stroked her nipple, shooting sparks down to the spot where their bodies joined.

“Oh God oh God oh God,” she chanted.

“I love how you feel around me,” he murmured. “Your body milking me. I thought about you all weekend. I almost paid you a visit last night.”

She knew she should tell him he could never come when the girls were here. But she couldn’t get the words out. Besides, he already knew. He was just teasing her, with his words, with his touch, with his body.

Then he trailed a hand down her stomach and put his fingers between her legs. His touch on the outside, his stroke on the inside, he swore in her ear. With his warm breath washing over her, her body clamped down on him. Then he gave her what she needed, pounding her hard, deep, and so high he touched the very heart of her.

Dirty words, her name, everything spilled from his lips. She loved how she could bring it out of him. Brock Donnelly, CEO, a man with an iron will and steely control, she loved when he lost it all for her.

He pulsed inside her, his heat filling her up, and she fell again, this time falling into the bliss with him.

He would never get enough of her, the silky blond hair he could wrap around his fist, her soulful blue eyes he could stare into, her hot, sexy body he could make love to for hours. She was warm against him and scented with her favorite fruity lotion. He could never smell a mango or a peach without thinking of her, but then he never stopped thinking about her anyway. But more than anything, he loved the scent of their sex surrounding them. Sometimes, when he couldn’t be with her, he lay on his bed, closed his eyes, and remembered their blended scents.

Cradling her against him, he banded one arm beneath her breasts, burying his face in the thickness of her blond hair as he pressed her against him. “What my mother said about an apartment.” He let the words rest a moment against her warm skin.

“You know I want the girls to come back here on their breaks,” she said into the pause.

“I know. But even if you moved, they could always stay at your flat with you. We could get something with at least three bedrooms.”

“We?” she whispered.

He murmured against her ear, “I can stay with you on weeknights. We can go to work together in the morning.”

“The girls wouldn’t want to stay in the city.”

“You might be surprised if you asked them.” But he knew she would say no anyway.

“I told you, not until they’ve both graduated.” There was no heat in her voice, no anger. It was simply what she’d decided.

He knew it was partly to tweak his mother’s nose. The more Adeline wanted her out of the house, the more Yvette was determined to stay. But she couldn’t stay here forever. Something had to change.

“Then marry me,” he whispered the words.

She went stiff in his arms. It was not a new discussion. And he knew her answer would be the same as always. “It’ll never work, Brock. I’ve been Adeline’s daughter-in-law one too many times. I’m not doing it again.”

“It doesn’t have to be like the last time.”

“You should already know how a family can tear a love apart. Your mother tore up Pierce and I.”

Brock wasn’t so sure about that. He wasn’t sure how much Pierce had loved Yvette, but he sure as hell knew it wasn’t more than he’d loved his addictions. Yet he couldn’t say any of that to Yvette. “I’m not like my brother. I won’t let that happen.”

She didn’t even turn to look at him over her shoulder as she denied him what he wanted most. “I can’t do it, Brock. I won’t be your mother’s daughter-in-law ever again. What we have right now is perfect. I don’t need any more than this.”

And he thought, But I do .

He stroked his thumb across her abdomen. “All right. Then let’s just get a flat in the city and live together.”

A harsh laugh shot out of her. “Oh my God, that’s ten times worse. I’ll never hear the end of it from her.”

“She doesn’t even come into the city. You’ll never see her. You don’t even have to come home for the holidays.”

She rolled over then, put her hand to his cheek, the moonlight through the window lighting her pastel blue eyes. “Why can’t we just keep on doing it this way? You sneak out of the house, walk down the hill under cover of darkness, and make love to me for hours.”

“I love this.” Yet his heart ached on the nights he wasn’t with her. “But I want to go to bed with you at night and wake up with you in the morning. I want to take you to a show, wine you and dine you. I don’t want to pretend anymore.”

She smiled, seduction on her lips. “But isn’t it sexy as hell?”

He knew she was deflecting. But he took her face in his hands. “I love you. I want to be your husband. I want to get a freaking dog together.”

That made her laugh. “You don’t have time for a dog.”

“We do. I want a dog who comes to work with us and sleeps under your desk and everybody stops by to bring it a biscuit.”

“We’d have to be married to do that,” she said softly.

He wanted to shake her. She was deliberately misunderstanding him. And he changed tack. “What will you do when the girls graduate?”

She shrugged against him. “I don’t know. Jodi won’t graduate for almost three years. She’s only a sophomore.”

He thought of the next three years. He was nothing more than a secret to her. Three years would drive him nuts. He’d already waited too long.

He’d never allowed himself to think about her when she was married to Pierce. But then Pierce died. And things between him and Corrine had gone sour long before that. Then, after Ethan went to university, Corrine asked for a divorce, saying she wanted a man who was present in her bed. And she’d already found one. He didn’t blame her, because he hadn’t been present, not for a long time. Their marriage had ceased to be a marriage. And not because of Yvette.

But then he was free. And he could finally admit to the feelings he had about Yvette. Yet even after the divorce, even after Pierce’s death, there were complications. Too many of them. While he’d been like a teenage boy wondering how to tell the prettiest girl in his class how he felt about her, he couldn’t tell Yvette. Because he was CEO and she worked for him. Because she was his brother’s widow. And perhaps most of all, because she was the daughter-in-law Adeline hated, and he knew Yvette was never going there again.

But then there’d been that night. The night neither of them could take back. The night he hadn’t wanted to take back.

That had been nine months ago. And he’d been sneaking into her bed ever since.

He had no idea how to change Yvette’s mind, but he couldn’t bulldoze her. Even Adeline couldn’t bulldoze her now, not the way she had when Yvette was young and a new mother. He could issue an ultimatum, tell her she had to marry him or they were done. But you never issued an ultimatum unless you were willing to lose. And he wasn’t willing to risk her leaving him. He couldn’t live without her. But he wasn’t so sure she’d say the same about him.

Because of Adeline. Adeline, who’d driven that wedge into Pierce and Yvette’s marriage. Adeline, who’d made Pierce the man he was. Adeline, who’d blamed his drinking, his gambling, and his adultery on Yvette, as if Pierce hadn’t made his own choices. She’d even blamed the accident on Yvette, when Pierce had clearly been on his way home from carousing, drunk as a skunk, and wrapped his car around a tree only a mile from the gatehouse.

Brock was stuck between the proverbial rock and a hard place, the rock being his mother and, as soft as she was against him, Yvette being the hard place.

He didn’t know how much longer they could go on this way.

Something had to break.

On Monday morning, Yvette sat in the back seat of the car facing her two bosses. She drove to work every weekday in the big car with Brock and Trevor. It was her job to go over the day’s schedule with each of them. “You’ve both got the meeting at ten with the executive staff. Then there’s all the prep for the presentation for Avanti Cruise Lines next week.”

Although Donnelly Shipping had its own cruise line, their principal business was still shipbuilding, something they’d been doing for the last two hundred years. They built the biggest, fastest, safest, and most beautiful cruise liners sailing the oceans today. And Brock had no problem selling ships to his cruising competitors. Avanti Cruise Lines was looking to commission sister ships, something that would rival the Disney Wish in size and the Queen Mary in elegance. There would be massive profits if Avanti chose Donnelly Shipping.

“You’ve prepared all the slides?” Brock asked.

“They’re done.” Brock had given her manufacturing estimates, engineering schematics, marketing brochures, and Trevor’s budgets, which she’d assembled into a neat package. “I’ve also typed up notes for you.” Not that Brock needed notes. He carried everything in his head.

“I’ll do the budget and cost projections for them,” Trevor said. The numbers were his game as CFO. While Trevor was a handsome man with the Donnelly looks, Brock would always be a bit more, more handsome, more powerful, just more .

“Great,” Brock said. He never tried to upstage his brother, though, since Brock was CEO, that meant Trevor worked for him. But they’d always worked well together.

Not like Pierce.

These days, she tried to think of Pierce as little as possible. When she was at the office, she concentrated on business. When the girls were home, she gave them all her attention. And when she made love to Brock, there was only the two of them.

She could close her eyes now and feel his touch on her skin, his taste on her tongue. But she didn’t think about that. She didn’t think about how handsome he was in his tailored suit, how perfectly toned his body was beneath the jacket, how beautiful and knowing his blue eyes were, how lush his hair felt when she ran her fingers through it. Or how his deep voice could send tingles racing through her body.

And she didn’t think about last night’s proposal. It hadn’t been the first proposal he’d made. It wasn’t the first proposal she turned down.

As the two brothers discussed the strategy for the Avanti proposal, Yvette thought of Brock’s mother. If Adeline knew about her affair with Brock, the woman would make her life miserable. Just as she had when Yvette was married to Pierce. If she married Brock, it would be the same thing all over again. She couldn’t do it.

It wasn’t a question of love. Because she loved Brock, and she felt no guilt about the fact that he was her dead husband’s brother. He was a good man, a formidable man. And therefore, he thought he could protect her from Adeline. But someone as relentless as her former mother-in-law eventually wore down all the soft, beautiful edges of love and turned it into sharp angles that sliced you in two.

She wouldn’t let that happen with Brock. She loved what they had. The illicit nature of it was sexy. That she couldn’t have him all the time made her hunger for him grow that much greater.

And she did hunger for him, even now, as he sat across from her.

It hadn’t started when she was married to Pierce. It hadn’t started while he was married to Corrine. And the man Pierce had become wasn’t his brother’s fault. At times, she thought it was Adeline’s fault. At other times, she thought Pierce had been born that way, lost from the very beginning.

But she’d never thought of Brock as anything more than a brother. Or her boss.

At least that was what she’d always told herself. It was what she believed.

But then Pierce was gone. And after that, Corrine was gone. Then somehow, something had changed. She couldn’t say exactly when or why or even how. But something was there that hadn’t been there before. Or if it had been, she’d buried it so deep it hadn’t even been real. She never would have done anything about it, would never even have admitted it. If it hadn’t been for that night.

God. That night in Chicago.

They’d just closed a big deal Brock had worked on for two years. He’d been wired. They both were. Too wired to sleep even though was eleven o’clock at night.

“Let’s walk along the waterfront for a bit,” he’d said.

They’d strolled the lovely promenade. Though the evening was cool, she’d thought the walk would warm her up. Brock enumerated all the things they needed to do now they’d secured the project. As his executive assistant, she often went on trips with him. She arranged venues, set up the AV, arranged the dinners or lunches. She did whatever Brock needed. That was her job. And that night, he needed to walk.

He’d laughed. “Here we are supposed to be taking a relaxing walk, and I’m reeling off orders at you.”

She smiled back. “That’s fine, just as long as you don’t expect me to remember it all tomorrow morning.”

He looked down at her then, just as she shivered. “I’m an idiot. It’s freezing out here.”

She laughed that off. “Not exactly freezing.”

But shrugging out of his jacket, he draped it over her shoulders. Holding the lapels together across her throat, his body already warming her, he stood like that for a long moment. A moment that stretched and changed. And heated. Had she looked into his eyes? Had her gaze dropped to his mouth? Had he read her thoughts and seen how badly she wanted his lips on hers?

Then he kissed her, a gentle kiss at first. The voice in her head, whispering what a bad idea this was, never made it past her throat. She parted her lips, letting him in, taking the kiss from gentle to all-consuming in little more than a breath. He didn’t touch her, didn’t wrap her up in his arms. And yet she lost herself in the scent of him, the taste of him, the heat of him.

When he set her back on her feet, his forehead against hers, his breath whispered across her lips, lips that still tasted of him. “Christ, you can’t know how badly I’ve wanted to do that for so long.”

Maybe if he hadn’t spoken, she could have gone on in a daze, let him do anything he wanted and everything she wanted.

But she knew what was good for her. And this wasn’t.

Soft but sure, she said, “We can’t do this.”

“Why not?” His voice held no harshness, but a flame burned in his eyes.

“I’m your brother’s wife.”

“You’re my brother’s widow.”

“You’re my boss.”

“You’re part of the family. Not my employee.”

She didn’t say the one thing that meant the most. She didn’t say Adeline’s name.

He would have found a reason for that not to matter either. So she stepped back, once, twice, and said, “We can’t do this. We aren’t doing this.”

He didn’t reach for her, yet she felt his touch on her. And she made her voice a force in the night. “We’re going to forget that ever happened. And I’m going back to the hotel now.”

Of course he wouldn’t let her go alone. He wasn’t the kind of man who could let a woman walk alone in a city they didn’t know well. She heard his footsteps a few paces behind her, matching hers.

Back at the hotel, he stepped into the elevator with her, she on one side, he on the other. She felt his eyes drilling into her as she removed his jacket and handed it to him. They didn’t have connecting rooms, but they were next to each other. And he followed her down the interior hallway, the carpet plush beneath her feet. Her door was first, and she used her keycard.

She was about to say good night, when he said, “I can’t forget.” She looked at him, her heart beating hard. Then he whispered, “I don’t want to forget.”

And when he reached for her, she was lost forever.

Now, nine months later, she’d never stop. She loved him. She wondered if she’d ever loved Pierce at all because it had never been the way she felt about Brock.

If only they weren’t who they were. If only he wasn’t Brock Donnelly running Donnelly Shipping. If only Adeline wasn’t his mother. If only they could run away together.

As she sat across from him now, she knew Brock for the fighter he was. She knew he thought he could turn her around to his way of thinking.

But he was wrong.