by L. A. Long
“I do, anything that can be taken from the box and put in the microwave, but I’ll let you teach me if you want.”
“Maybe,” she said and held out a small cube of ham for him to nip from her fingers. “But maybe I want you dependent on me for your very existence.”
Looking her in the eyes, he said, “I already am.”
He kissed her as the eggs bubbled in the pan.
“Wait,” she said breathlessly, “the eggs will burn.”
“Can’t have that.”
“No. Do you think you can keep your hands off me until the food is done?”
“I’ll go sit on the other side of the bar, put a barrier between us.”
“I think that’s a good idea.” She expertly flipped the egg creation, then poured some OJ and handed it to him, his fingers skimming hers.
“Are you purposely trying to incite me, MP?”
“Of course.”
She laughed and went to butter the toast. A moment later, she was sliding his food across the bar.
“You can sit next to me, lass. I promise to eat, especially now that its delicious smell is wafting into my face. You’ve incited my hunger.” He used her word against her and looked up, his eyebrows suggestively arched.
“You’re incorrigible.” She took the stool next to him.
“Do you miss your son when he’s away at college?” he asked, changing the subject.
“No. I enjoy seeing him when he comes home, or I go to see him in Washington. But it’s the natural order of things. In a way, his being at school has given me a freedom I never had.”
“Ever think of having more children?”
“My shelf life is getting dated. I’m not sure I could even conceive a child, but maybe. I never give absolutes.” She looked at him thoughtfully and asked, “Do you want children, Michael Patrick?”
“Maybe. There is something about helping to mold a new life.”
“I agree with you there, and if I had a child now, I think I’d be less stressed, not that being a parent would ever be stress-free. But I think it would be different at my advanced age.”
“I’m a few years older than you, lass.”
“There’s that, too. Even if I had another child, I’d be in my sixties when he or she graduated from high school.”
“They’d keep you young.”
She gave a small chuckle. “I think that’s a crock of shit.”
“Tell me how you really feel.”
“I don’t think children keep you young at any age. I think the mere fact that one becomes a parent ages you immediately.”
“But you’d think about having children?”
She cocked her head. “Why the sudden interest in whether or not I want more children?”
“I’d like to see you round and ripe with my child,” he said simply, looking directly in to her eyes.
She didn’t speak.
He watched her squirm.
“Nice shade of pink in your cheeks,” he commented.
“Stop.” She gave him a light-hearted fist to the shoulder.
“I’d like to practice in case the possibility ever arises.”
He pulled her from her stool and kissed her, then sat her on the counter top and stood intimately between her legs. He opened the button-down shirt she was wearing, happy to see there was not a stitch underneath.
“You’re beautiful, Lenore.”
He rolled her already hard nipples between his thumbs and forefingers. Then inserted his middle finger into her folds, finding her warm and welcoming. He pulled her to the edge of the counter and opened her wider as he lowered his mouth to her hot center.
She moaned, leaning back to brace herself on the granite and shamelessly spread her legs wider. His tongue found her clitoris swollen and in need of attention. His mouth went to work there, and a finger slid into her, stroking her G spot. Impatiently she rocked herself into his touch. The cold granite adding an interesting contrast to his hot mouth and her even hotter body. He felt her start to come, and he removed his finger and mouth. She almost whimpered, and then he was there, filling her. Pumping into her until they were both spent.
“Your specialty is dessert,” she said and nipped his ear lobe.
Chapter Eighteen
“I think Amanda would be unhappy that Cass was changing her book so much,” Lenore commented. She and MP were working in her office the following morning.
The couple in their story were working together to adapt Amanda’s book into a screenplay that Cass was to write and produce. Amanda would not let him adapt the book without her participation.
“I’m guessing you’re right about that, lass. So what is she going to do? Plead irreconcilable creative differences and walk away?”
“I’d be tempted if it wasn’t a book and according to you we need a HEA. I find Cass to be an irascible jackass with an ego that’s out of proportion to his abilities in and outside of the bedroom.”
“Do you now?”
“Yes.”
“I like the way you take on the plight of your character. But I should tell you that Casper is insecure and has a lot on his mind that he’s not shared with your Amanda.”
“I should tell you that Amanda’s about sick of his act.”
Their eyes locked, and then they both started to laugh.
“Should we do something about that? There’s a lot of sexual and emotional tension building here.”
“How do you propose we take care of it, Michael Patrick?”
“I think she should lose it, as you’d say, and start to stalk out of the office, high heels clashing against the hardwood floor—”
“And then?” Lenore licked her lips provocatively, never breaking eye contact.
“And then he goes after her, grabs her, spins her around, and tells her that walking out is not an option. Their eyes lock, and he pulls her to him, kisses her wildly, and backs her against the closed door…”
“Maybe we could see how that would…”
What she was going to say was lost when he closed the distance between them and kissed her ravenously.
“Then what happens?” she asked breathlessly.
“What would you want to happen, mo chuisle?”
“Not me—Amanda. I think she might slap him.”
MP moved back a bit.
Lenore laughed, “I’m not going to slap you. I give you my word.”
He moved in closer again, “Good, because I heard the wallop you gave Maxwell.”
She’d forgotten about that. Didn’t want it in her mind now, so she asked, “What would Cass do after she slapped him?”
“He wouldn’t let it get that far. He’d intercept her hand mid strike. Then I think he’d restrain her by either pulling her wrists to her side or over her head and continuing on with what he started. He’s too aroused at this point to stop unless Amanda tells him to and means it.”
“You mean he won’t take her by force?”
“No.”
“Hmm, maybe you should restrain me, and I’ll try and put myself into Amanda’s character, and we’ll see how it goes.”
He gently took her wrists and held them above her head and eased her back on the overstuffed couch, each plundering the other’s mouth.
“I want you,” she managed.
“Yes,” he said almost unintelligibly.
He let her arms go and started to undress her and she him, frantic desperate movements.
The doorbell rang.
“Ignore it,” she pleaded. “I’m not expecting anyone. It’s probably the UPS man or something.”
He didn’t need to be told twice and continued on his mission.
Seconds later, the bell rang again, followed by pounding.
“Jesus, I’ll get rid of whoever it is,” he said.
She let out a sigh as the weight of him left her.
He was buttoning his shirt as he left the office and padded down the stairs. When he looked through the sidelight, he saw it was the guy who met Lenor
e at her attorney’s office. He uttered an oath and opened the door.
“Can I help you?” MP asked.
The man took in MP, and then smirked.
“Sorry if I’m interrupting something. I’m Gerald Morris. I’m looking for Lenore.”
“Ms. Held is unavailable at the moment. If you’d care to leave a message or card, I’ll make sure she gets it,” Michael Patrick said.
“I’m pretty sure she’s here, and what I have to say is important and time-sensitive.”
“As I said—”
“It’s okay, Michael Patrick, I’ll talk to him. We’ll never have any peace otherwise,” Lenore said from the top of the spiral stairway, neatly put together. But it was plainly obvious she’d been recently ravished.
She came down the stairs, and MP stood waiting for her, placing a possessive hand on her back.
“Michael Patrick, this is Gerald Morris,” she said by way of introduction.
The two men shook hands, and Lenore ushered Morris into the entryway. When the door was closed, she rounded on him. “I told you to call my attorney. I have never invited either you or your boss to my home, yet both of you think you can show up here. What would Maxwell have to say if I showed up on his doorstep?”
“I should have called first,” Morris said, eyes sliding between Lenore and MP.
“You should have called my attorney as you were instructed.”
“I wanted to see you again and tell you what Byron had to say.”
“I don’t want to see you or your boss. You can call my attorney.”
“All right, I will, but can I talk to you for a moment… alone?” Morris asked, looking pointedly at MP.
She let out a big sigh and turned to MP. “Will you give us a few minutes?”
He nodded and went into the kitchen.
She motioned for Morris to follow her into a small den off the entry.
He moved to close the doors behind them.
“No, leave them open.”
He looked at her oddly but left the doors as they were.
“Talk, you wanted to talk. Obviously you stayed somewhere local last night, but I don’t know why, and I understand even less why you’d be here when Philadelphia is an hour closer to D.C.”
“I had other business in the area last night and thought I’d take a chance and drive out to see you today. I wanted to invite you to lunch with me.”
Lenore laughed.
“I see I’ve disrupted your day.”
“You have, as a matter of fact. What is it you wanted to tell me?” she asked with an edge.
“Byron has agreed to your terms. So—”
“You can call my attorney and arrange some possible dates. I will talk to Nate and see if he even wants the meeting and testing or if he wants to tell his father to go to hell. At this point, that would be my preference, selfish as that may sound to you.”
“Byron’s desperate. If he had other options, he’d use them but he doesn’t.”
“Isn’t he worried his long-ago dalliance could become public? What if Corrine found out?”
“I can’t say,” Morris said, looking at his hands.
“Right; for all I know, you two could be screwing each other simple. As I recall, you and Byron have a taste for the same women.”
He chuckled. “Not the same innocent girl that you were twenty years ago.”
“No. Maxwell saw to that in more ways than one, didn’t he?” she retorted, but acid was churning in her stomach. Maybe she could make herself throw up on him. She’d had a character do that once, all over a suitor’s expensive riding habit.
Morris reached forward and brushed a stray strand of hair away from Lenore’s face. When his finger touched her skin, she jumped as if she’d been burned.
“Don’t touch me,” she hissed through clenched teeth.
“Would you have married me, Lenore, if I had left Maxwell behind all those years ago?”
“I honestly don’t know, Gerald. The fact that you told me you wouldn’t, didn’t make the offer worth my contemplation. I think you should go now.”
He looked at her a moment. “I’ll call your attorney and make arrangements.”
“Do not ever show up here again, Gerald, either you or your boss. I’ll get a restraining order. Is that clear?”
“Very.” Morris left and closed the door quietly behind him.
As MP was leaving the kitchen to join her, she was making her way to him.
“Mo chuisle, are you all right?”
“I’m pissed. Why after all these years are the bottom dwellers rearing their ugly heads?”
“Morris have a thing for you, too?”
“Why do you ask?”
“He looked at me like he wanted to do me bodily harm.”
She gave a weak laugh. “I don’t know if he did or not. He tried to warn me about Maxwell before I got involved with him and then asked me to marry him when Maxwell treated me like a street corner whore.”
“He did?” MP asked surprised.
“Yes, I don’t know why. At the time his proposal, if you can call it that, surprised me. Now I don’t know if he was trying to clean up one of Byron’s messes, if he was being chivalrous, or if he wanted to put one over on Maxwell.”
“You mean, like I have your woman and your kid, too?”
“Yes, or maybe he did care for me on some level. I don’t know. But I asked him if I agreed to marry him whether he’d leave Maxwell’s staff, and he said no. So there was nothing to consider.”
“Another fool.”
“I’d like to think so.”
Chapter Nineteen
The following Wednesday, Lenore and MP were in the kitchen breakfast nook, enjoying crepes with fresh berries. The early morning light cast a warm glow on the table.
“You’re spoiling me, a chuisle. I like it.”
“I seem to like spoiling you too. Makes me feel good.”
“You make me feel good.”
“Ditto.”
Her home phone started ringing.
“It’s Nikko,” she said looking at caller ID.
“Probably checking in to see if we got any.”
“Hello, Nikko,” Lenore said with a smile in her voice.
“Hi, Lenore, is MP there by chance? I tried his hotel and he’s not answering the phone or his cell.”
“Yeah, hold on. MP, Nik is looking for you.”
A puzzled expression crossed his face.
Lenore shrugged and handed him the phone. She motioned that she was going to the office. He shook his head and pointed to her seat. Instead of sitting, she poured them each more coffee.
“Have you heard from anyone on the other side of the pond this morning, or afternoon there, now?” Nikko asked.
“No, why?”
“There’s a news article in a London gossip rag, The Sentinel, do you know it?”
“Hard not to,” MP replied with disgust.
“There’s a piece you need to read. We need to get on it and do damage control.”
“Nik what is it about?”
“I don’t want to talk about it, given where you are and who you’re with. It’s your private business.”
“We’re beyond that,” he said, looking at Lenore.
“All right, LaSandra is mentioned, too, but only as an afterthought or maybe not, I don’t know.”
“Give me a hint.”
“It has to do with a child that was yours, then your sister’s and brother-in-law’s, then your brother-in-law split, and your sister and son/nephew died in an auto accident. I’m guessing this is the child you went into debt to care for.”
“Jesus H. Christ where did that come from? It’s true.”
“I’m sorry, so very sorry, MP, and I’m sure what’s been reported is not the way it happened,” Nik said.
“Jesus.”
“MP, take a few minutes and read the article, tell Lenore, and then the three of us can have a conference call.”
“All right, thank
s for the heads-up.”
“We need to get out in front of this. If we have to, we’ll get legal involved. I have media contacts in London, and the quicker we squash this, the better,” Nikko said adamantly.
“I hear you, lass. We’ll be in touch.”
“What is it?” Lenore asked. “I can tell by your face it’s something horrendous.”
“Horrendous is too strong a word. I’ve known horrendous, and I’m pretty sure while it’s awful, it’s not horrendous. Nikko shot me an e-mail link to The Sentinel.”
“The British rag that puts any of New York’s to shame.”
“Yes, there’s an article in there about me and according to Nik, you’re mentioned or LaSandra is.”
“Terrific.”
As they ascended the stairs to her office, the warm glow disappeared, she was feeling chilled to the bone, and the hair on the back of her neck was standing up. While she had no clue what the article was about, she thought she knew who could have been behind it. A shiver ran through her.
“Sweetheart, are you cold?” MP asked.
“An American endearment, is that good or bad?” She was trying to make light of the situation.
“Any endearment I call you is good, honey.”
“Okay, handsome.”
A laugh escaped from deep in his throat as he bent over to ignite the gas fireplace. Then turning, he took her hands, and they sat on the couch in front of the fire.
“I want to tell you everything about my nephew and sister before we read the article. I’m sure the article will portray me as some kind of a monster and—”
“You’re anything but a monster. I’ve known monsters in my time and some of the scariest have been dressed in pinstriped suits and Armani ties.”
“Thank you for your vote of confidence.”
She shook her head, eyes glistening. “Don’t thank me.”
He gave her a wink and a weak smile. “I guess we’re both guilty of thanking one another for our natural tendencies.”
“Don’t let anyone know my secret.”
“You have my word.” He crossed his heart and kissed her lightly.
“Okay, here is the story of my nephew. You already know the ending so—”
“No, wait before you start; I think I know who could have planted or instigated an inflammatory, ugly article.”
