His Bahamas Affair (The Albury Affairs)

by Christina OW

  “For what?”

  “For being a jerk that night. I didn’t mean to remind you of Pierre-”

  She pressed a finger to his lips, silencing him. “Forget about him. We are starting anew tonight, remember? This is our first night as a family and I don’t want to ruin it when I remember this day.”

  Reno shook his head. “You are too good to me.”

  She grinned up at him. “I’m the best thing that ever happened to you, Reno Albury, and don’t you ever forget it.”

  With one hand cupping the back of her head and his other arm wrapped around his waist he pulled her up to her tip toes and rubbed his lips lightly over hers. He loved the hitch in her breath and the way her pink lips parted in anticipation. He smiled against them then nibbled at her lower lip and whispered, “It’s going to make tomorrow’s surprise all the more worth it.”

  “Aha,” she purred using her hold on his shirt to lift herself higher to reach his lips.

  He chuckled, knowing she hadn’t heard a word he said. He gave into her, kissing her softly and keeping it tame. If he deepened it, allow her to take it where they both clearly wanted it to go all his plans will be ruined. Just a few left and they would indulge in their desire. Their coupling was going to be special and if he had to jump into the ocean and cool his libido to make sure of it.

  He pulled away and she made her displeasure clear making him laugh. “I’m going to check on Tyler. I’ll be right back.”

  She groaned, “Okay. Just come back soon.”

  He nodded, pressing a quick kiss on her lips and walked away. He went down to the state room where his son slept and slowly opened the door. He smiled at the sight Tyler made, sprawled out in the middle of the gigantic bed, the covers kicked to the foot of the bed as he slept diagonally. He moved slowly into the room and knelt on the bed to reach him, lifting Tyler in his arms. Tyler mumbled, wrapping his little hands around his neck tucking his head under Reno’s chin.

  Reno felt his heart expand in his chest. He loved the feel of his son’s little body in his arms. It made him feel protective like an emperor penguin guarding his young. To say he was in love with his kid to the point of giving his life for him was an understatement. And to think his stubbornness had held him back from this wonderful feeling. If it wasn’t for Loraine, he would still be holding on to his idiocy.

  “I’m sorry buddy for being such a—” he caught himself before he cursed, “I was such a dudu head and I promise to make it up to you.” He kissed Tyler’s temple. “We have a lot to thank your mommy for. I just hope she’ll love tomorrow’s surprise. I hope you do too.”

  Tyler sighed, turning his head and rubbing it on Reno’s shoulder before he settled into sleep again.

  “Okay, I guess I’ll put you down now before your mom comes in and scolds me for disturbing you.” He laid Tyler down, pulling the covers up around him. He sat down next to him and watched him for a while.

  Just remembering how excited he was steering the ship’s wheel made him smile.

  At first, Tyler had been quietly sitting on Reno’s arm as they pushed out of dock, round brown eyes watching the water ripple behind them like he was expecting it to jump a few feet higher, pull him out of Reno’s arms and drag him under to the belly of the ocean. But after a few minutes of playing pirates with Loraine he’d wanted a turn on the wheel, and there Reno and his son bonded over water vessels and the love for his yacht Cora’s Heart, named after his mother.

  They’d had a wonderful day being a family and an eventful night putting a reluctant, clearly heavy-eyed little boy to sleep. Loraine had accomplished that like a pro, tricking him into believing it was his decision to go to bed. She had a better handle on being a parent than he did. But he would learn soon.

  “Hey, don’t wake him!” Loraine’s rebuking tone as she whispered, made him chuckle.

  He placed one last kiss on Tyler’s head before he left the room, closing the door behind him. Reno wrapped his arms around Loraine’s waist and walked her backwards into the master suite. He lifted her onto the bed and followed her down, pulling her into his side as he lay on his back.

  She placed her head on his shoulder, cuddling closer to him and he tightened his arms around her. He loved feeling her up against him as they lay down in bed. He could get used to this too. For forever. Coming home to Loraine after a long day at work and holding her like a Tyler did with his elephant Nosey, the name still cracked him up, when he went to bed because he couldn’t sleep otherwise. Or when he carried him everywhere because the stuffed animal gave him comfort and support. He wanted Loraine to be like that for him. For once in his life he didn’t want to take care of someone, but to be taken care of, to have some of the weight on his shoulders carried by someone else because she loved him enough to do that for him. Loraine would be the type of wife Georgia could only dream of being.

  How much longer to tomorrow morning? He looked at his watch. It was midnight so he had to endure eight hours of having this sexy siren next to him and doing nothing about it. But come the morning, all three of their lives would change.

  He was nervous; something that never happened to him. The only other times he’d been this nervous was when Georgia told him she was pregnant and when the resort was finally in the black. Both times he had been afraid something would go wrong and rob him of his stability.

  Georgia had robbed him of his family but she had given it back to him by abandoning Tyler. The deal with Melody gave him stability in ten folds of what he used to have so he had no reason to be afraid it would be taken from him. And lastly, Loraine. Yes, he was nervous but he was also confident. Nothing would separate them because they’d both fight against it. She’d probably put up a bigger fight than him and that was what made him so confident, happy and excited about his surprise. It was the best decision he’d ever made.

  He felt the soft skin of the back of her hand caress his cheek and he turned into the touch meeting her eyes.

  She smiled sweetly at him and said “I loved seeing you together like that. It makes me so happy and hopeful.”

  “Well, you are going to be happy for a very long time because I plan on tucking my son into bed every day of his life until he thinks it’s so not cool.” They shared a smile over that. “But why hopeful?”

  She pushed herself up on her elbow, her eyes glassy with tears. “Because I want to spend forever with you and seeing my two boys together gives me hope for a beautiful future.”

  He buried his hand in her hair and brought her down on his shoulder. “Ditto Crazy Lori.”

  He felt her sigh against his chest before she lifted her head, her lower lip trapped between her teeth. “Do you think I’ll be a good mom?”

  He pulled her to lie on top on him. “You are already a great mom. Why are you so worried?”

  Without responding, she lay her head back down on his chest, her hands fisting in his shirt. Reno rubbed her back, understanding her fear. Didn’t every parent go through a sense of self-doubt at least once in their child’s life time?

  “Tell me about your mother?” Loraine whispered. “What was Cora like?”

  Reno’s hands froze. He was taken off balance by the question. Truth of the matter was he really didn’t want to talk about his mother. “Has Riana told you about our mother?”

  She lifted her head and looked at her. “Yes, but I’m sure it wasn’t everything. The way she speaks of your mom is like she was Wonder Woman and you…you are Superman to her. Now I know you are human and I just want to know…”

  She left the sentence hanging and Reno knew what she was after. His chest felt like it was caving in when he thought about his mother let alone speak about her but Loraine needed this. She needed reassurance.

  “My mom was perfect in some ways but not in all ways. She loved us, sacrificed everything even her own comfort, to see us happy. You know, when we were finally able to afford a two room apartment, after ten years in a cardboard box apartment, she bought a sofa bed. She wanted Riana and I to e
ach have a room so that we could have our own space and she would sleep in the living room.” He played with Loraine’s chestnut curls as he spoke. It provided a decent distraction to the pain.

  “I took over the living room before she could and shared Riana’s closet. I was a man at fourteen, supporting my mother and raising my little sister with my first after school job washing dishes at a Mexican restaurant. I’d have to be home by seven with dinner because my mother had to go off to her second job cleaning offices at night for people who hired illegal immigrants because they were cheap labor after cleaning houses she could only dream of all morning. While other kids were out messing around I was taking care of my little sister and working to put food on the table while my mother took care of all our other expenses.”

  “Oh Reno…”

  Reno pulled his lips in a forced smile. “We tried to always have one of us be with Riana at night and after she came from school but as we grew older and everything got more expensive, she practically spent her teenage years alone. I would walk into the apartment, exhausted and find my mother crying on the sofa all because Riana cried herself to sleep. She blamed herself for everything and that would just piss me off even more because it wasn’t her fault. What pissed me off even more, she never held my father at fault; in fact she loved him till the day he died.”

  Loraine crossed her hands on his chest and used them to support her chin. “Reno, you need to understand he was ‘the one’ for her and that love only solidified when you and Riana were born. It must have hurt her to be separated from him. Most women would have been content with being his mistress but she left because she wanted the two of you to have respect for her and yourselves. Being a mistress isn’t exactly an example she wanted to set for her daughter and you, you would never have respected women otherwise.”

  Reno sighed knowing she was right…but. “I just wish she’d spent less time crying over the bastard.”

  “But that didn’t stop her from being your mother. I’m sure you guys had a great time at least once.”

  Reno nodded with a smile. “We always took Sunday off no matter what. We’d spend most of it sleeping because we were so exhausted from working all week and Riana would take care of us that day.” He laughed at the memory of Riana standing on a stool so she could reach the stove to cook. She would pamper them as they lazed on the couch in front of the TV the entire day because they couldn’t afford to go out.

  He never realized how hard she worked taking care of their little home. There was always something to eat the few minutes they spent at home before jetting out to work. Their laundry was always done and his sofa bed was always pulled out and ready for him to fall into at the end of each day. She kept them moving, the heart of a well-oiled engine and he’d never realized that until that moment.

  “Riana made our guilt lighter to bear and our lives easier. She never acted up, always kept her grades up and took a job the moment she could. I didn’t like it because I didn’t want her to go through what I did, balancing college and work but when she told me she wasn’t going to college, I knew I had to do something. I entered her art in a contest and she won the scholarship to NYU. Best day of all our lives.”

  Loraine kissed his chin. “And you were afraid you wouldn’t make a good father.”

  “Yeah, I know, I’m a fool. Tell me about your parents.”

  She hid her face then and went silent. Reno wished she wouldn’t do that, hide from him when she was uncomfortable, especially over something that wasn’t her fault.

  “Come on Loraine, they can’t be that bad.”

  “Have you ever watched one of those CSI episodes where the little rich girl gets arrested for murder and when they asked why she did it she says it was the only way to get her parents attention? Or one of those movies where she runs away because she was tired of every minute of her day being controlled and she ends up living in a trailer pregnant with an abusive druggie boyfriend?”

  “What?”

  “Don’t worry, I didn’t kill anyone nor did I end up pregnant in a trailer. But I did come close to the last bit.”

  She wasn’t making any sense. Reno sat up, lifting her into a sitting position between his legs. “What is it you are trying to tell me?”

  She tucked a loose curl behind her ear, keeping her eyes downcast like she was ashamed. “I remember my mom being obsessed with me when I was a little girl, and I was obsessed with her. I did everything she did and that drove my grandparents—my dad’s parents—crazy and later on my dad also became embarrassed by us. Soon, I was spending more time with my nanny than I was with my mother until one day the woman who I knew as my mom became someone else.”

  “What do you mean? What was your mom like?”

  She lifted her head and smiled so sweetly she looked like an excited six year old regaling him with stories of her imaginary adventures.

  “My mom was a bona fide hippie! Gypsy skirts, flowers in her hair, vegetarian because animals were her relatives and walking barefoot so that she could connect better with mother earth, stuff like that. Hell, I did yoga before I could walk! I was her little hippie and she was obsessed with me. I’ve never felt so loved in my life since.” She shrugged, her smile slipping. “My dad used to find it cute until his parents started excluding us from social events because they couldn’t stand the way I was being raised—like a savage.” She bowed her head, hiding her face for a moment before she looked up, a brave smile on her lips that didn’t reach her tearing eyes.

  “Then my dad started being ashamed of us and my mom just withdrew into herself. I tried making her do the things we used to but she would smile sadly shaking her head and my dad would yell at me for making her that way. A few weeks later, a blue eyed woman with her blonde hair held in a bun at the back of her head wearing a dark skirt suit walked into my home with my gloating grandmother and I knew my mother was gone. It felt like they took her from me and the mom I knew, was gone.”

  “Oh Lori…” The pain in her voice made Reno’s throat sting. He knew Loraine had gone through a lot of pain in her life, but he never expected this. For her to feel like she lost her mother that way, that must truly hurt. That kind of pain was strangling.

  She quickly swiped her tears away before they slid further down her cheeks. “With the main source of rebellion taken care of, it was easy to conform me into their snobbish ways. After all that, the loving parents I spent the first seven years of my lives with became just like my grandparents, tolerant of each other. It felt like my mom was punishing him for turning her into a high society wife by being just like his mother and he had no idea how to bring her back. The woman my father fell in love with was gone and I felt like that was justice because he stole her from me first.”

  Reno fought the urge to pull her into his arms. But in a snap of a finger she’d gone from sad to angry. Why try to change a person from who they are after marrying them knowing those same qualities were the reason for loving them in the first place? It was a recipe for disaster! He would never try to change Loraine because then she’d stop being the crazy Lori he loved.

  “Before the makeover from the devil.” That earned him a smile and it made him glad, “What did she look like?”

  She pointed to herself. “When I was a teenager I kept my hair long to the waist and in curls in honor of the mother I used to know. My dad used to look at me with the saddest eyes and say, ‘You look just like your mother the first time I saw her, the most radiant smile on her face that lit up her violet eyes and she looked like a magical creature sent to bewitch me. I knew she was my wife, the mother of my children’.”

  Then I would say, ‘Then why did you change her into the ice queen’ and he would shake his head, tears in his eyes and say ‘Don’t ever let anyone change you’. The last time he told me that, my mom walked in snorted and mumbled under her breath and told me, ‘Wait ‘till your cotillion and see if he says the same thing’.”

  Reno hated to ask but he did. “Was she right?”

 
Loraine smiled sadly, letting her tears flow freely. “Right on the money. My grandmother came and decided she’d prepare me for my big coming out. She wanted to cut my hair and turn me into a blonde Barbie doll and I said no. My dad threatened to keep me from my school dance if I didn’t comply with everything she wanted me to do and he ended up in the guestroom the same night.”

  Reno stroked her hair, loving the natural color even more after her story. “Let me guess, my Crazy Lori took a stand and rebelled.”

  She laughed through the tears. “You bet your ass I did! Jeb, my bodyguard right from when I was a toddler, told me if I didn’t start taking control of my life at sixteen I was going to end up sad and destroyed like my mother. So I became their worst nightmare without the drugs and the drinking.” She ducked, cuddling against his chest her head under his chin. “But I made the worst mistake of my life.”

  He wrapped his arms around her hugging her tight against him sensing she needed to be held. “What did you do, Lori?”

  “I went to Paris against my parents’ wishes and dated a man who ended up being my violent psycho stalker.”

  Chapter Ten

  Loraine felt him stiffen around her and she knew he was beyond shocked. She just hoped he wouldn’t judge her; it was the reason she had never told her parents. She didn’t want to take the risk of being judged, especially by her grandparents. They would only blame it on her mother like they did everything else.

  “What did you say?” he whispered, a noticeable strain in his voice.

  “We met in the hotel lobby and started going out. It was great and I thought I was in love, my own romance novel come true. But I wouldn’t go to bed with him. I was still a virgin and I needed to be sure because that was one decision that shouldn’t be taken lightly.” She shrugged. “I guess he got tired of waiting and you know the rest. That night he was a complete stranger to me, not the guy my young heart went pitter patter over.”