Filthy or not, he wasn’t the hug type. “I’ll settle for a handshake.”
She tugged off her glove and wiped her hand on the leg of her jeans before extending it to him. Her skin was hot and clammy, her grip firm. She turned to Reece and introduced herself. “Katherine Huntley, but everyone calls me Katy.”
He warily accepted her outstretched hand. He wasn’t used to being acknowledged, much less greeted so warmly. Adam recalled that the hired help had always been regarded as family on the Huntley ranch. “Reece Wilson, ma’am.”
“It’s a scorcher. Would you like to come inside with us?” she asked, gesturing to the house. “Have something cold to drink?”
“No, thank you, ma’am.”
“If you’re worried about your car,” she said with a grin, “I promise no one will steal it.”
Was she actually flirting with his driver? “He’s fine,” Adam said. “And we have a lot to discuss.”
Her smile dissolved and there was disapproval in her tone when she said, “Well, then, come on in.”
He followed her up the steps to the porch, where she kicked off her muddy boots before opening the door and gesturing him inside. A small vestibule opened up into the great room and to the left were the stairs leading to the second floor.
The furniture was still an eclectic mix of styles and eras. Careworn, but comfortable. The only modern addition he could see was the large, flat-screen television over the fireplace. Not much else had changed. Not that he’d been there so often he would notice small differences. He could count on two hands how many times they had visited in the seven years he and Becca were married. Not that he hadn’t wanted to, despite what Katy and her parents believed.
“My parents wanted to be here to greet you, but they were held up at a cattle auction in Bellevue,” Katy told him. “They should be back within the hour.”
He had hoped to get this business out of the way, so he could return to El Paso at a decent hour. Though it was Friday, he had a long workday ahead of him tomorrow.
“Would you like a cold drink?” she asked. “Iced tea or lemonade?”
“Whatever is easiest.”
Katy turned toward the door leading to the kitchen and hollered, “Elvie! You in there?”
Several seconds passed, then the door slid open several inches and a timid looking Hispanic girl who couldn’t have been a day over sixteen peered out. When she saw Adam standing there her eyes widened, then lowered shyly, and she said in a thick accent, “Sí, Ms. Katy.”
“Elvie, this is Mr. Blair. Could you please fetch him something cold to drink, and take something out to his driver, too?”
She nodded and slipped silently back into the kitchen.
Katy looked down at her filthy clothes. “I’m a mess. I hope you don’t mind, but I’m going to hop into a quick shower and get cleaned up.”
“By all means.” It wasn’t as if he was going anywhere. Until her parents returned he was more or less stuck there.
“I’ll just be a few minutes. Make yourself at home.”
She left him there and headed up the stairs. With nothing to do but wait, Adam walked over to the hearth, where frame after frame of family photos sat. Adam had very few photos of his own family, and only one of his mother.
In his father’s grief, he’d taken down all the pictures of Adam’s mother after her death and stored them with the other family antiques and keepsakes in the attic of his El Paso estate. A few years later, when Adam was away at school and his father traveling in Europe, faulty wiring started a fire and the entire main house burned to the ground. Taking whatever was left of his mother with it.
At the time it was just one more reason in an ever-growing list to hate his father. When Adam got the call that he’d died, he hadn’t talked to the old man in almost five years.
He leaned in to get a closer look at a photo of Becca that had been taken at her high school graduation. She looked so young. So full of promise. He’d met her only a few years later. Her college roommate was the daughter of a family friend and Becca had accompanied them to his home for a cocktail party. Though Adam had been a decade older, he’d found her completely irresistible, and it was obvious the attraction was mutual. Though it had been against his better judgment, he asked her out, and was genuinely surprised when she declined. Few women had ever rejected his advances.
She found him attractive, she said, but needed to focus all her energy on school. She had a plan, she’d told him, a future to build, and she wouldn’t stray from that. Which made him respect her even more.
But he wasn’t used to taking no for an answer, either, so he’d persisted, and finally she agreed to one date. But only as friends. He took her to dinner and the theater. She hadn’t even kissed him goodnight, but as he drove home, he knew that he would eventually marry her. She was everything he wanted in a wife.
They saw each other several times before she finally let him kiss her, and held out for an excruciating three months before she would sleep with him. He wouldn’t say that first time had been a disappointment, exactly. It had just taken a while to get everything working smoothly. Their sex life had never been what he would call smoking hot anyway. It was more…comfortable. Besides, their relationship had been based more on respect than sex. And he preferred it that way.
They were seeing each other almost six months before she admitted her humble background—not that it had made a difference to him—and it wasn’t until they became engaged a year later that she finally introduced him to her family.
After months of hearing complaints about her family, and how backward and primitive ranch life was, he’d half expected to meet the modern equivalent of the Beverly Hillbillies, but her parents were both educated, intelligent people. He never really understood why she resented them so. Her family seemed to adore her, yet she always made excuses why they shouldn’t visit, and the longer she stayed away, the more her resentment seemed to grow. He had tried to talk to her about it, tried to reason with her, but she would always change the subject.
Elvie appeared in the kitchen doorway holding a glass of lemonade. Eyes wary, she stepped into the room and walked toward the sofa. He took a step in her direction to take the glass from her, and she reacted as if he’d raised a hand to strike her. She set the drink down on the coffee table with a loud clunk then scurried back across the room and through the kitchen door.
“Thank you,” he said to her retreating form. He hoped she was a better housekeeper than a conversationalist. He picked up the icy glass and raised it to his lips, but some of the lemonade had splashed over and it dripped onto the lapel of his suit jacket.
Damn it. There was nothing he hated more than stains on his clothes. He looked around for something to blot it up, so it didn’t leave a permanent mark. He moved toward the kitchen, to ask Elvie for a cloth or towel, but given her reaction to him, he might scare her half to death if he so much as stepped through the door. He opted for the second floor bathroom instead, which he vaguely recalled to be somewhere along the upstairs hallway.
He headed up the stairs and when he reached the top step a grayish-brown ball of fur appeared from nowhere and wrapped itself around his ankles, nearly tripping him. He caught the banister to keep from tumbling backward.
Timid housekeepers and homicidal cats. What could he possibly encounter next?
He gave the feline a gentle shove with the toe of his Italian-leather shoe, which he noticed was dotted with mud, and shooed it away. It meowed in protest and darted to one of the closed doors, using its weight to shove it open. Wondering if that could be the bathroom he was searching for, he crossed the hall and peered inside. But it wasn’t the bathroom. It was Katy’s room. She stood beside the bed, wearing nothing but a bath towel, her hair damp and hanging down her back.
Damn.
She didn’t seem to notice him there so he opened his mouth to say something, to warn her of his presence, but it was too late. Before he could utter a sound, she tugged the towel loose an
d dropped it to the wood floor.
And his jaw nearly went with it. He tried to look away, knew he should look away, but the message wasn’t making it to his brain.
Her breasts were high and plump, the kind made just for cupping, with small, pale pink nipples any man would love to get his lips around. Her hips were the perfect fullness for her height. In fact, she was perfectly proportioned. Becca had been rail thin and petite. Almost nymph-like. Katy was built like a woman.
Then his eyes slipped lower and he saw that she clearly was a natural blonde.
It had been a long time since he’d seen a woman naked, so the sudden caveman urge he was feeling to put his hands on her was understandable. But this was Katy. His wife’s baby sister.
The thing is, she was no baby.
A droplet of water leaked from her hair and rolled down the generous swell of her breast. He watched, mesmerized as it caught on the crest of her nipple, wondering if it felt even half as erotic as it looked.
Katy cleared her throat, and Adam realized that at some point during his gawking she had realized he was there. He lifted his eyes to hers and saw that she was watching him watch her.
Rather than berate him or try to cover herself—or both, since neither would be unexpected at this point—she just stood there wearing a look that asked what the heck he thought he was doing.
Why the hell wasn’t she covering herself? Was she an exhibitionist or something? Or maybe the more appropriate question was, why was he still looking?
She planted her hands on her hips, casual as can be, and asked. “Was there something you needed?”
He had to struggle to keep his eyes on hers, when they naturally wanted to stray back down to her breasts. “I was looking for the bathroom, then there was this cat, and it opened your door.”
“Right.”
“This was an accident.” A very unfortunate, wonderful accident.
“If that’s true, then I think at this point the gentlemanly thing to do would be to turn around. Don’t you?”
“Of course. Sorry.” He swiftly turned his back to her. What the hell was wrong with him? He never got flustered, but right now he was acting like a sex-starved adolescent. She must have thought he was either a pervert, or a complete moron. “I don’t know what I was thinking. I guess I wasn’t thinking. I was…surprised. I apologize.”
“Try two doors down on the right,” she said from behind him, closer now. So close he was sure that if he turned, he could reach out and touch her. He pictured himself doing just that. He imagined the weight of her breast in his palm, the taste of her lips as he pressed his mouth to hers.…
He nearly groaned, the sudden ache in his crotch was so intense. What the hell was the matter with him? “Two doors down?”
“The bathroom. You were looking for it, right?”
“Right,” he said, barely getting the word out without his voice cracking. He forced his feet forward.
Since Becca’s death he’d barely thought about sex, but now it would seem that his libido had lurched into overdrive.
“And, Adam?” she added.
He paused, but didn’t dare turn back around. “Yes?”
“For the record, if you wanted to see me naked, all you had to do was ask.”
Four
Oh, good Lord in heaven.
Katy closed her bedroom door and leaned against it, heart throbbing in her chest, legs as weak as a newborn calf’s. The sudden and unexpected heat at the apex of her thighs…heaven help her, she might actually self-combust. It was as unexpected as it was mortifying.
The way Adam had looked at her, the fire in his eyes…she couldn’t even recall the last time a man had looked at her that way. Hell, she wasn’t sure if anyone ever had.
She pinched her eyes shut and squeezed her legs together, willing it away, but that only made it worse. An adolescent crush was one thing, but this? It couldn’t be more wrong. Or inappropriate. He was her brother-in-law. Her sister’s husband. The father of the child she would eventually be carrying.
Not to mention that she didn’t even like him. He was overbearing and arrogant, and generally not a very nice person.
At least she knew that he wasn’t lying about seeing her being an accident. Her bedroom door didn’t latch correctly and her cat, Sylvester, was always letting himself in. If she had known Adam was going to be wandering around upstairs she would have been more careful. And maybe making that crack about Adam only having to ask wasn’t her smartest move, but she refused to let him know how rattled she was.
Not that she was ashamed of the way she looked. As bodies went, hers wasn’t half-bad. She just never planned on Adam ever seeing it. Not outside of the delivery room anyway.
She just hoped he never took her up on her offer.
Of course he wouldn’t! He was no more interested in her than she was in him. Not only were they ex in-laws, but they were polar opposites. They didn’t share a single thing in common as far as she could tell. Except maybe sexual attraction. But that was fleeting, and superficial. Like her on-again off-again relationship with Willy Jenkins used to be. He was a pretty good kisser, and fun under the covers, but he wasn’t known for his stimulating conversation. As her best friend Missy would say, he was nice to visit, but she wouldn’t want to live there.
Not that Katy would be “visiting” Adam. She would have to be pretty hard up to sleep with a man she had no affection for. She couldn’t imagine ever being that desperate.
She heard a vehicle out front and peered through the curtains to see her parents’ truck pull up in front of the barn. Well, shoot! Now she had to go out there and act like nothing happened. Which technically it hadn’t.
She yanked on clean jeans and a T-shirt and pulled her damp hair back in a ponytail. As she tugged on her cowboy boots she heard the side kitchen door slam, then the muffled sound of voices from the great room below. She had talked Adam into this visit, so it didn’t seem fair making him face her parents alone. And at the same time, she was dreading this. She didn’t like to play the role of the mediator. That had always been her mother’s thing.
In the week since she had talked Adam into letting her be the surrogate, Katy had been working on convincing her parents that she was doing the right thing, and that they were going to have to trust Adam. She just hoped that seeing him face-to-face didn’t bring back a flood of the old resentment.
At first, when they learned that Becca was engaged, besides being stunned that she’d never mentioned a steady man in her life, her parents had been truly excited about having a son-in-law. But from the minute they met Adam it was obvious he came from a different world. And as hard as they tried to be accepting, to welcome him to the family, it seemed he always held something back. Her parents interpreted it as Adam thinking he was better than them, even though he had always been gracious enough not to condescend, or treat them with anything but respect.
At first Katy had given him the benefit of the doubt. She wanted to believe that he was as amazing as her sister described. But when he and Becca visited less and less, and Katy realized just how hard Becca had to work to keep him happy, she’d had to face the truth. Adam was an arrogant, controlling and critical husband.
But Katy wasn’t doing this for him. She was doing it for Becca, and her parents, and most of all the baby. Which made what just happened between them seem wholly insignificant. It was a fluke, that’s all. One that would never happen again.
She headed down the stairs to the great room. Her parents sat stiffly on the sofa and Adam looked just as uncomfortable on the love seat opposite them. When she entered the room everyone turned, looking relieved to see her.
“Sorry to keep you waiting,” she told Adam, and his expression gave away no hint of their earlier…confrontation. Although he might have snuck a quick look at her breasts.
“Your parents and I have had a chance to get reacquainted,” he said, and from the vibe in the room, Katy could guess it hadn’t exactly gone well.
So a
s not to be antagonistic and give anyone the impression she was taking sides, she sat by neither her parents nor Adam, but instead on the hearth between them.
The contrast was staggering. Adam looked cool and confident in his suit, like he was ready to negotiate a million-dollar deal, while her parents looked like…well, like they always had. Her father had gotten a little paunchy over the past few years, and his salt-and-pepper hair was thinning at his temples, but he still looked pretty good for a man of sixty-two. And as far as Katy was concerned, her mother, fifty-nine on her next birthday, was as beautiful as she’d been at sixteen. She was still tall, slender and graceful with the face of an angel. She wore her gray-streaked, pale blond hair in loose waves that hung to just above her waist, or at times pulled back in a braid.
She was a perpetually happy person, always preferring to see the glass not only as half full, but the ideal temperature, as well. But now creases of concern bracketed her eyes.
“I was just telling Adam how surprised we were when we heard of his plans,” her father said, and his tone clearly said he didn’t like it much.
Katy’s mom rested a hand on his knee then told Adam, “But we’re hoping you can convince us that you’ve thought this through, and taken our family into consideration.”
Katy bit her lip, praying that Adam’s first reaction wasn’t to get defensive. What had he told Katy that day in the coffee shop? That he wasn’t seeking anyone’s approval or permission? But he had to expect this, didn’t he? He had to know her parents would be wary. That was the whole point of his visit. To set their minds at ease.
Or maybe he didn’t see it that way. Maybe he truly didn’t give a damn what they thought.
“As I told Katy, I have no intention of keeping the child from you,” he assured them, in a tone that showed no hint of impatience, and Katy went limp with relief. “You’ll be his or her only grandparents. In fact, I think that spending time on the ranch will be an enriching experience.”
The Tycoon's Charm: The Tycoon's Paternity AgendaHonor-Bound Groom Page 3
