by Marton, Dana
“I’m proud of him. I’m pretty sure he’d be proud of me no matter what I decide. He was big on common sense. And nothing makes more sense than to marry the woman I love.”
Her heart thumped against her ribcage. His words made her dizzy. “I have to go to Hong Kong. I should be getting to the airport.”
“We’ll take the corporate jet.”
“You have to stay here.” She gestured vaguely. “You have to talk to your mother and your brother. Victoria.” She still didn’t know how she felt about his ex-wife. “Cesar is going to be big news. You have to be here to deal with the press, the board of directors, and the rest.”
“The one thing I learned in Venezuela is that Tyler can manage pretty well without me. My absence forced him to step up to the plate.”
“I don’t know how long I’ll need to stay in Hong Kong.”
“We’ll make further plans once we know. If I have to fly back, I’ll fly back. But right now, I intend to spend a couple of uninterrupted hours with you, even if I can only get them over the Atlantic.”
He had his determined face on. She was too emotionally exhausted to argue with him. “I need to go back to D.C., finish packing, grab my laptop.”
“I need to file flight plans.” He kissed her forehead. “We’ll take the jet down to the airport in D.C. I’ll meet you there in two hours?”
She nodded.
The rest—the ride back home, the packing—passed in a blur. She was on the Danning Enterprises corporate jet before she knew it, sitting on a comfortable white leather sofa across from Glenn, a bottle of red wine on the table between them.
“Do you like it?” he asked, his eyes serious, as if her response was important to him.
“Not that different from military transport,” she said bland-faced. But then she grinned. “It’s seriously over the top, you know that, right?”
He was silent. Worried that she wouldn’t approve?
“Of course I love it,” she said. “Good grief, I could live on this plane and I don’t even like flying.”
And then he smiled at her.
Which she ruined by saying, “I still don’t think I could ever get comfortable with your lifestyle. How do you end up with a private jet?”
He frowned. “One thing leads to another.”
She couldn’t help a small laugh. “Most people say things like that about doughnuts or Girl Scout cookies.”
“I’m not most people.” Now he sounded displeased.
“I noticed that.”
“We’re not that different.”
God, this was hopeless. He refused to acknowledge the gorge between them. Desperation mixed with exhaustion inside her. It had to be past midnight. She stifled a yawn.
He pushed to his feet, then sat down at the end of her couch and drew her into his arms. “Sleep. You need to work in the morning. I’ll wake you when we stop in Vienna to refuel.”
She hesitated only for a moment. Sleep was easier than trying to come up with ways to convince him that they didn’t have a future, especially when she so desperately wanted things to be different.
She put her feet up and curled up with her head on his thigh. She was not going to be the reason he gave up the political future he’d spent his life working for. They’d finish their talk in Vienna. Then they’d go their separate ways. The only sensible course of action. She told herself that a couple of times to push back against the misery that descended on her.
He reached down and brushed the hair out of her face, then left his arm draped around her. She fell asleep like that, enveloped in his comfort and his scent, his warmth surrounding her.
She slept all the way to Vienna, where they stopped for refueling.
“Want to go out into the city?” he asked, and she wondered if he’d slept at all. If he had, it couldn’t have been too comfortable.
“I’ve never been to Vienna,” she confessed. “How much longer to Hong Kong?”
“Eight hours.”
She glanced at her clothes, all wrinkled. “I should probably change if we’re going out in public.” She could brush her teeth in the bathroom, but what she really wanted was a shower.
He must have read her mind because he said, “While you were sleeping, I called ahead and got us a hotel room. In case you wanted to spend a few hours here. There’s something I’d like you to see.”
He was being all mysterious. She raised an eyebrow.
“It’s an engineering thing.”
“I don’t like it when people try to use my weaknesses against me.” But she was smiling. “Okay. Show me this Viennese engineering wonder.”
A quick phone call and a hired car, a gleaming black Mercedes-Benz, came for them to the airport. The chauffeur drove them to the Empress Hotel, a luxury hotel decorated in gold and white marble inside and out, the lobby all palm trees, mirrors, and crystal chandeliers.
The manager greeted Glenn by name, and the porter just about bowed as he escorted them up the elevator.
They went straight to the top, into the Empress Suite that stole her breath away. “Wow. Seriously?”
The suite occupied at least half of the top floor, had glass walls on three sides, the city of Vienna sprawling before them, the Danube River a blue ribbon through it. Palaces, churches, bridges. She could only gape at the beauty of the architecture.
“Glenn, this is . . .” She turned.
“Over the top? Like the jet?”
“Way over.”
He sighed dramatically, mischief glinting in his eyes. “Then you’re really not going to like what I want to show you next.”
Something more elaborate than this? She couldn’t imagine.
But he enfolded her hand in his and drew her to a different, smaller elevator door at the other end of the suite. The door opened at the push of the button. They went up one more level.
“The roof?” She wasn’t keen on roofs at the moment. She’d almost lost Glenn on a roof in Baltimore just hours ago. But when the doors opened, the sight that greeted her rendered her speechless.
A smile teased Glenn’s masculine lips as he drew her forward, into the glass-and-steel conservatory. The shape resembled the scaled-down version of a European cathedral, except the walls and ceiling were all glass.
In the middle, what looked like a natural pond—the size of an Olympic pool—reflected the rising sun. The incredible blue of the water played off the lush greens of the palm trees that edged the walls. A stone shower stood at one end next to a shelf filled with white bath towels. A wrought-iron table sat in the other corner with a couple of chairs, a fancy cappuccino machine on the shelf behind it.
“The pool house goes with the Empress Suite,” he said. “It’s ours. The regular hotel elevators don’t come this high.”
“I thought we were just going someplace to shower and change, have a light breakfast.”
“We did. We came here.”
“I don’t even want to know what you’re paying for this.”
His smile widened. “I get a discount. Don’t worry about it.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “Why do you get a discount?”
“Because I designed this.” A proud grin sat on his face. “One hundred percent energy neutral. Solar power runs the heating, cooling, pool pumps, everything. Recycled steel frame. Green building concepts. Before my father died, I was thinking about making these and starting my own business. Then I had to take on more responsibility at the company, so I sold the design. This is the prototype. The hotel bought it from me.”
She kept staring around. “It’s incredible.” Then a faint memory tugged in the back of her mind. “Wait a minute.” Excitement shot through her. “It’s the palm house!” Except way more elaborate.
When they’d been at MIT, they participated in a contest to design a palm house for the Boston Public Garden. Their design had be
en very similar to this, except Glenn seemed to have solved some problems that they didn’t have the right technology for back then.
“I named it the Miranda.” He watched for her reaction.
Her heart twirled in a pirouette inside her chest.
She moved forward, drank it all in, tried to remember the exact details of the blueprint and small-scale prototype they’d put together. They hadn’t won the contest, but they’d spent a ton of time together during the project and became lovers.
The palm trees were just like the plastic model ones she’d used, except much bigger and beautiful. The banana palms even had bananas growing on them.
“It reminds me of the rainforest in Venezuela.” The soft sounds of the water circulating in the pool sounded like the creeks they’d come across. “All it’s missing is our bamboo sleeping platform.”
He grinned and led her to a stand of trees at the far end. An antique fainting couch, made of bamboo and upholstered in a traditional print, stood in the middle, looking like it came from some British colony a hundred years ago. The perfect place for a nap.
“What do you think?”
She oohed at the sight of the lush greenery around her, then turned back to the pool, the city in the background. “It’s magnificent.”
He looked pretty magnificent himself, his wide shoulders emphasized by dappled sunlight, his brown hair tousled. He was his healthy self again, looked nothing like the gaunt fugitive she’d found in Santa Elena.
She wanted to throw herself into his arms. Instead, she turned from him to walk back toward the water.
He followed after her. “Stay here with me. Just for a day and a night.”
“I can’t.”
He stepped forward and turned her toward him. “Stay with me forever.”
“Don’t you ever give up?”
“Not on you. Not ever again.” His long fingers slid down her arms to take her hands. “Tell me that you have no feelings for me.”
She closed her eyes for a second. “My feelings don’t matter.”
“They matter to me. If you don’t think what we have is worth fighting for, if this is not what you want, I’ll let you walk away. I’ll hate it, but I’ll step back. But if you’re turning your back on what we could be from some sense of nobility, wanting to give me what you think I should have . . .” He pulled her against his chest and reached under her chin with a finger to tilt her face up to his. “That’s bullshit.”
The heat in his eyes fogged up her brain. She needed to make a logical, convincing argument here, but her thoughts wouldn’t line up. “I want you to be all that you can be.”
“I appreciate that. But we’re talking about the rest of our lives. It’s a little more complicated than an army recruiting slogan.”
“What do you want?” She turned the tables on him. Maybe if he spoke his plans for his future out loud, he would see, at last, how incompatible they were with her.
“I want you. Above all. I want to spend today in the city with you and tonight here under the stars. And then I want to spend the rest of our lives together, as many days and nights as our work will let us have. Unless you’re ready to retire with me right now and spend the rest of our lives in bed. I can hand the company off to my brother.”
Ha! Like he would ever give up the company.
Would he?
She wouldn’t want him to, she realized. The family company was part of who he was. She liked who he was. And she didn’t want to give up her work either.
“I like my new job.” Not that his idea didn’t sound incredibly tempting. But she couldn’t see herself as a kept woman. It wasn’t who she was.
“All right. You marry me and you can keep your job.” He brushed his warm lips against hers, then pulled back far enough so he could look into her eyes. “But you’re not allowed to fall in love with any other man that you go off to save. I want to be clear about that.”
She smiled. Her heart was so full of him, she didn’t think there could be room for anyone else. “You’re not the boss of me,” she said, just so he wouldn’t get a fat head.
“Oh, yeah?”
“I’m an independent woman. I don’t need a man to complete me.”
“How about to pull you out of the water?”
She was in the pool before she could ask what water. She plunged under, all the way to the bottom, pushed away, barely able to believe that he’d shove her in.
She broke the surface, shook water out of her face, and glared at him.
“I’d help you out, but on second thought, I’m pretty sure you’d pull me in.”
He was right about that.
She swam toward the steps and walked out of the water, plotting how to get back at him, glaring all the way.
Hands in his pockets, a glint in his eyes, he didn’t look as if he felt threatened. “Is there a wet T-shirt contest somewhere?”
“Very funny.”
“Not really. It’s more on the sexy side.” He moved toward her. His voice dipped. “Very sexy.”
She stood where she was by the pool and waited until he reached her.
“You should take your clothes off and let them dry.”
“Ever the helpful one.”
“I do what I can.” He reached for the bottom of her T-shirt.
She caught him by the wrists, flipped him sideways in a move she’d learned in hand-to-hand combat training, and tossed him into the water. And then, as he splashed, grinning, she jumped in after him. Oh, what the hell.
“Payback sucks, doesn’t it?” She tried to push him under.
He put her arms around her, plastering her against his wide chest. “Maybe I’m exactly where I want to be.” He flashed an evil grin.
And before she had time to think about whether he’d planned the whole thing, he was already peeling off her T-shirt. And her pants. And her bra, and her panties.
His own clothes were gone just as fast as hers. Then they were pressed together skin to skin. “I’m not letting you walk out of my life again without a fight,” he murmured against her lips.
“This could be the beginning of a terrible mistake,” she warned.
“Engineers don’t make mistakes. On our way to resounding success, we identify methods that don’t work.”
He reached down to wrap her legs around his waist. “I don’t know about you, but from where I’m standing, this method is working pretty well.”
She laced her arms around his neck. His steel-hard erection was pressed against her, but not inside her.
“D.C. is just an hour’s drive from Baltimore,” he said, his voice strained. “It’s not a bad commute. I could drive to work from your place.”
She stilled. “You’d be willing to move to my one-bedroom apartment?”
He turned serious. “I’d be willing to do pretty much anything for you.”
Her heart smiled. “I’m not going to be home a lot with this job.”
“How about we’ll start with being together when you’re home, and go from there?”
“My job wouldn’t bother you?”
“The truth? I’d rather that you quit work and live with me. In between meetings, I could run home and make mad love to you.”
“Sure. And I could just cook and clean for you while I was waiting.”
His eyes lit up with approval.
She snorted and placed a hand on his forehead. “I think you might have come home with some kind of jungle fever. I’ve never known you to be this delusional.”
Since she was using her legs and arms to anchor herself to him, he could let go to rub his fingers across her nipples, roll them as they swelled into hard peaks. “I think you boggle my mind.”
He sure boggled hers. Her breath caught as arousal flushed her body with heat.
She could never forget the family she’d ha
d. They’d been front and center of her broken heart all this time and that was where they’d remain. But somehow in the past two weeks, her heart had healed up around them, and that was Glenn’s doing.
He didn’t take Matthew’s place. He added something extra to her life, something wonderful that tasted like love and smelled like hope. Something she’d desperately needed even if she’d been too busy to admit it.
He dipped his head to hers and took her lips in a rough kiss, possessive, urgent. Then, before she could recover, he grabbed her behind and strode out of the water holding her, snatching up his pants that floated on top of the water.
He carried her straight to the large divan in the circle of palm trees and lay her down, pulling back, worshipping her body with his gaze, his eyes dark with need. He reached into his pants pocket, came up with a foil square.
She was ridiculously grateful for his forethought. But she teased him anyway. “Aren’t you just prepared for everything?”
“I happen to be an engineer.”
He sheathed his erection before he joined her on the divan.
Only the sound of their breathing and the water lapping the side of the pool broke the silence. Sunlight filtered through the palms. They could have been the first two people in paradise.
“When is the plane leaving?” she asked, not that she wanted to think about anything else but him right now.
“Whenever we get back to it.”
Okay, she could begin to see why living this way would be convenient.
He rubbed his lips against hers, nibbled the bottom lip, licked the corners first, then the seam, then he swept inside and she forgot all about schedules. His long fingers dragged across her abdomen, up to her breasts, caressing, outlining. He rolled her nipple, and need swirled through her. Then he pinched, applying gentle pressure at first, then increasing it, tugging, even as his tongue made love to her mouth. She grew damp between her legs.
She was ready for him. Now. She arched her hips. He moved his mouth from her lips to her free nipple.
She moaned. The tugging and the suckling together were too much. An electric charge ran straight from her nipples to her clitoris. “Please.”
He lifted his head and flashed a devilish grin. “I like it when you’re so subdued.”
