Sunrise Key 3 - Otherwise Engaged

by Suzanne Brockmann

  Pres knew with sudden extreme clarity exactly what he had to do. He'd gotten Molly and Zander into this, it was up to him to get them out. "I'm going out first to run interference with the reporters," he told Molly. "You go to the church's kitchen door. Bring Zander right back out and into the limo." He keyed the intercom button. "Lenny, as soon as Molly gets out, back around and pull as close as you can to the kitchen door. Then wait for my signal, okay?"

  Molly nodded.

  Pres smiled, a hot, fierce smile not unlike the one he'd given her up on the roof during the thunderstorm. "Let's do it."

  In a flash, he was out of the limo, moving to intercept the news teams.

  Molly followed him out into the sweltering humidity of the Florida afternoon and hurried toward the far church door.

  "Mr. Seaholm! Mr. Seaholm!" Over her shoulder, Molly saw the crowd of reporters seem to swallow Pres up. She could see only the reddish-gold glint of his hair as it reflected the late-afternoon sun.

  The kitchen door was locked, but she could hear the bolt being thrown back. The door creaked open and Frankie Paresky pulled her inside, into the church kitchen, quickly locking the bolt behind her.

  "He's all right," Frankie told Molly, before she could even ask. "Zander was out on the playground with the other kids when the reporters first arrived. One of the older girls ran to get me, and I came screaming out of the kitchen. I think I scared Zander more than the reporters did!"

  "Mommy!" Zander ran toward her, and she caught him in both arms, picking him up and holding him tightly. He didn't object to being held like a baby. He just hugged her.

  "They were asking him questions they shouldn't've been asking a little boy." Frankie spoke in a low voice, her dark eyes blazing. She smiled suddenly. "I told them exactly where they should go and what they should do when they get there, and I'm afraid my language wasn't exactly biblical."

  Zander lifted his head. "She said they should—"

  Frankie slipped a hand over the boy's mouth. "Thanks, Zander, we won't repeat it."

  He wiggled free from Molly's arms. "Mom, did you know Frankie is a private eye like Sherlock Holmes?"

  "Exactly like Sherlock Holmes," Frankie added. "Except he's a guy, and I'm not. And he lives in England and I don't. And he lived a hundred years ago, and I live now. And he's a fictional character, and I'm not. ... At least I hope I'm not. . . ."

  Zander laughed.

  Molly hugged him, grateful that he was still able to smile, and knowing much of that was due to Frankie Paresky's upbeat, irreverent attitude. "Thank you so much."

  Frankie nodded. "Zander's a good kid. It was my pleasure."

  "We better get out of here. We'll see you on Sunday.

  "Sure you don't want to wait until that scum leaves?"

  "Pres's limo is right outside."

  "His limo?" Frankie's eyebrows went up. "Preston Seaholm's limo. Well, well. Are you sure there's no truth to all these rumors about a wedding?"

  Zander looked at her, and Molly made a face at him.

  "I've had maybe six conversations with the man," she told Frankie. "That's hardly enough to base an entire lifetime relationship on."

  "He's a nice guy," Frankie said. "Maybe a little flaky at times, but who isn't, right? You could do far worse than a billionaire, you know."

  "See you on Sunday," Molly repeated as she unlocked the bolt and opened the door.

  There was the limo, mere feet from the church. Molly quickly opened the door and pushed Zander in, climbing in after him.

  Her son was in total awe. "Whoa. What is this?"

  "Pres's limousine." She tried to say the words casually.

  "This is awesome! Pres is awesome!"

  "Please fasten your seat belts." A voice—it had to be Lenny's—came from a little speaker in the ceiling. "I'm waiting for Pres to give me some sort of signal. When he gives it, we're going to move fast, so hold on."

  Waiting for Pres. Pres was on a first-name basis with his limo driver. Why didn't that surprise her? He was on a first-name basis with everyone else in town—-including her ten-year-old son.

  Molly fastened her own seat belt as Zander strapped himself in. Leaning forward, she could see the reporters and cameras. She saw Pres break free of the crowd and start running toward them.

  "That looks like a signal to me," Lenny said, and he stepped on the gas.

  Molly leaned toward the door, pushing it open just as the limo screeched to a stop. Pres threw himself inside, and they were off again.

  Zander was all eyes, taking in Pres's designer suit and slicked-back hair.

  Pres flipped on the intercom. "Take us back to the resort, Len."

  Molly raised her voice. "Make that the Kirk Estate, Lenny. Zander and I want to go home."

  "Take the scenic route," Pres countered, then turned to face Molly, evenly meeting her gaze. "There's probably already a crowd of reporters waiting for you at home. I'd feel a lot better if you stayed in a suite at the resort—as my guest—until this dies down."

  Molly's heart was in her throat. Stay at the resort . . . She could just picture the two of them being shown into some elegant hotel suite. "Oh, that's really going to make things die down—me and Zander staying in some fancy suite, living under your roof?"

  He smiled at that. "It's a really large roof. Besides, I don't live in the main resort building. I have a bungalow on the edge of the property. Although I'd like it if you'd allow me to join you for dinner. We could order room service—it would be very private."

  "Room service," Zander breathed. Pres glanced at the boy and smiled. "Mostly private," he added, meeting Molly's eyes.

  She knew what he was thinking. With Zander there, it wouldn't be as private as he'd like it to be. And there was no doubt in her mind that Pres wanted dinner to have one course more than what was on the menu.

  "Mom." Zander tugged on her arm. "Room service! Can we? Please? It would be like a real vacation."

  "I have around-the-clock security teams at the resort. It's private property. They'll make sure the reporters stay far away from you. And from Zander."

  Molly wasn't convinced. "And how long would we have to hide there, under your security teams' protection? A week? Two? Longer?" She shook her head, turning to include Zander. "No. If we run and hide, everyone's going to assume that we have something that needs to be hidden."

  But she did have something to hide. She had to keep hidden the fact that Pres's dinner invitation—and the unspoken invitation she could see in his eyes—had sparked a fire deep within her. God help her, she wanted to say yes.

  "I don't think it's going to take that long for things to return to normal," Pres told her. "Not with the statement I gave the press today."

  "I have work to do, today, right now," Molly insisted. Why did he have to look so incredibly good, sitting there across from her in his expensive hand-tailored suit? His smile softened the hard lines of his face and his eyes made promises that were much too tempting.

  "I have to clean all those bedrooms." She was reaching for an excuse now, and the look in his hazel eyes told her he knew it. But still she kept talking, hoping she'd hit on something that would ring true. "I want to get the place up and running by September, you know. That roofer—Emerson James—he's supposed to come by tomorrow morning. And I just . . . can't. Pres, I can't. I'm sorry. I hate the thought of being driven out of my home by a pack of ... idiots."

  Pres was watching her, his expression unreadable. But then he nodded. "You're right." He turned and nudged Zander's sneaker with the toe of one perfectly polished shoe. "She's right, you know. You should never let yourself get pushed around—especially not by idiots."

  Zander didn't look convinced.

  "You can stay at the resort as my guest some other time," he promised the boy. "But right now your mom wants to go home." He pressed the intercom button. "Kirk Estate, Lenny. On the double."

  SEVEN

  Bad things always came in threes. As the phone rang Pres braced himself for t
he third bad thing.

  The first had been Molly refusing to come and stay at the resort.

  Oh, he'd had that all planned out. They would order an elegant, gourmet room-service dinner and eat it on the living-room rug, spread out like a picnic. Then they'd rent a movie from the in-house video service, and around nine o'clock, they'd tuck a sleepy Zander into one of the king-size beds in the two-bedroom Presidential Suite. Then he and Molly would wander out onto the screened-in balcony and . . .

  Pres wanted to kiss her. Desperately. In fact, he was starting to obsess about it. The way her lips would feel. The way she would taste . . . God, it was driving him out of his mind.

  Forget about his craving for cigarettes. That was nothing compared with how much he wanted Molly.

  Instead, he'd driven her back to the Kirk Estate, made her promise to stay inside, told her a security team was already on the way, ready to keep unwanted visitors off her property throughout the night. And after the team had arrived, he'd left.

  Pres picked up the phone. "Seaholm."

  "Yeah, Pres. It's Mac. Sorry to disturb you, but we've got a problem." It was his security chief, calling from Molly's house with what had to be the third bad thing.

  The second bad thing had been a message waiting for Pres on his answering machine when he got home. Randy, the owner of the salvage company down in St. John had called. There had been another major storm in the Virgin Islands that morning, and the shipwreck had been covered back up with sand. The location was marked, but instead of a comparatively quick and easy excavation, the endeavor would now be costly, dangerous, and time-consuming.

  "Did something happen?" Pres asked Mac. "Are the Cassidys okay?"

  "Everyone's fine," Mac told him. "My problem is this place is too big to patrol with only three men. I know you want someone inside the house at all times, but that means I've only got two guys outside and ..." Pres could picture the big, burly former U.S. Navy SEAL shaking his head. "If someone really wants to, they're going to get past us."

  "How many more men do you need?"

  "At least two. But my staff is tapped out. Everyone's been working double shifts, handling this Fantasy Man thing. The fact is, Pres, I don't have anyone else left to call. And no way am I triple shifting. But I figured if anyone could pull a couple of guys out of his hat at eleven o'clock at night, it had to be you."

  Pres smiled. His third bad thing just might've been a good thing after all. "I'll have two men—fresh and ready to work—over at the Kirk Estate in ten minutes," he told Mac.

  He hung up, then lifted the phone again, pressing the speed dial for Dominic's home number.

  Molly looked up from the television news as the security guard checked his watch, stood up, and stretched.

  "Shift change," he told her, crossing toward the French doors that led to the back patio.

  As he went out another man came inside. He was dressed in similar black jeans and black T-shirt, and he wore a black baseball cap on his head. Molly barely glanced up at him. "There's coffee in the kitchen. Help yourself."

  "I will, thanks."

  The familiar voice got her full attention. It was Pres. It was Pres?

  Molly turned off the TV and followed him into the kitchen. "What are you doing here?"

  "My security chief was low on manpower tonight." He tossed his cap onto the counter, then poured himself a mug of coffee. "Dom and I came over to help out."

  Molly didn't want to be glad to see him. But, dammit, every time he showed up, her heart beat with a new, powerful, exciting rhythm. He knew it too. He knew it, and he was purposely making this as hard as possible for her. Molly tried to get mad, but she couldn't even do that. Not after what she'd just seen on the television.

  "I saw you on the news," she said. "Today at the church—you told those reporters the truth."

  He'd made a statement, admitted that he'd invented his engagement in order to get out of being Fantasy Man's Most Eligible Bachelor of the Year. He'd told the world that Molly Cassidy was not his mysterious fiancee, because he had no fiancee.

  "I want you and Zander to be left alone." Pres took a sip of his coffee, watching her evenly over the top of his coffee mug. Lord, he looked incredibly good in black.

  "But you made the story up in the first place so that you'd be left alone."

  He shrugged. "My priorities have changed."

  Meaning her and Zander's privacy was now more important to Pres than his own. Molly crossed her arms and leaned back against the counter, hoping he wouldn't notice that she wasn't as cool and calm as she was pretending to be. "That's very sweet, but ... I don't think anyone believed you."

  He froze, his mug poised at his lips. "Why not?"

  "A photographer was up on the roof of Millie's Market," Molly said. "After we came out into the alley . . . There's a picture. . . ."

  After they'd come out into that alley, he'd held her loosely in his arms and gazed down into her eyes and . . .

  He was looking at her exactly that same way right now, with volcanic heat making his eyes a blistering swirl of green and yellow and brown.

  "I didn't kiss you," Pres said.

  "I know. But in the picture . . . They showed it on the news." Molly swallowed. "It looked like . . ."

  "I wanted to kiss you."

  Molly's eyes were wide. She looked about as old as Zander. "Yeah." She nervously moistened her lips and tried to smile. "That's sure what it looked like in that picture."

  "No." Pres put down his coffee mug. "That's not what it looked like—that's what it was. I wanted to kiss you." He gave her a half smile. "I still do. Want to kiss you."

  Molly stared at him, and Pres stared back at her, wondering what she was going to say, how she was going to respond.

  She turned away from him suddenly, reaching for a mug and pouring herself some coffee. She wasn't going to say anything. Pres was disappointed. She'd been so honest about nearly everything else up to this point.

  But then she turned back to him. "I know," she said, breaking the silence. "I want to kiss you too."

  She took her coffee and walked out of the room.

  "Whoa." Pres nearly tripped over his own feet in his haste to follow her. "Hold on a minute! Molly! Wait a sec. . . . You can't just say that you want to kiss me and then walk away."

  She turned to face him. "I don't want to kiss you."

  "But you just said . . ."

  "I want to and I don't want to. Can you see now that might be something of a problem for me?"

  "Can't we maybe give it a trial run and see? If you still feel undecided afterward—"

  Molly's cheeks were flushed and her eyes were hot. "Do you honestly think that either one of us will still have all our clothes on after you start kissing me? Because I don't. I know damn well that one kiss will lead to two, and two will lead to ... Lord! Before either of us knows it, we'll be up in my bedroom, making love."

  "Um," Pres said.

  "And don't pretend that's not exactly what you want," she blazed. "I know because I want it too. And I don't want it!" Her coffee sloshed over the top of the mug and burned her fingers. "Shoot! Shoot!" She put her fingers in her mouth trying to cool them.

  Pres took her mug and set it down on the coffee table, then gently touched her burned hand, tugging her back toward the kitchen. "Maybe we should run this under cold water." He laughed. "Hell, maybe we should run me under cold water as well—"

  Molly yanked her hand away from him. "Stop being so damned nice!"

  "Actually, I wasn't being nice. Actually, I was just trying to get close enough to do this."

  Pres kissed her.

  She tasted hot and sweet, like coffee, and she made a faint sound in the back of her throat as he deepened the kiss. Her lips were as soft as he'd imagined—softer.

  He was just about to pull back when she reached for him, putting her arms around his neck, pulling him closer, startling him with her intensity as she returned his kisses. She was an inferno. She was incredible. Pres would
have laughed aloud if he hadn't been otherwise engaged.

  Her breasts were deliriously soft against his chest, her stomach tight against his growing arousal. Her hair felt like silk beneath his fingers. Her tongue met his in an onslaught of passion so fierce, he was nearly knocked over.

  He could feel her hands move up, up and underneath the edge of his T-shirt, her fingers cool against his bare skin.

  She was right. If he had anything to say about it—and he hoped to God that he did—they were going to make love, right here, right now.