“Married? What? You’ll throw yourself on a funeral pyre? Gee, thanks. I feel so much better now.” Shaking her head, she added in an undertone, “Ten seconds and he’s back to treating me like an idiot again.”
“How am I treating you like an idiot?”
“Hah! Just look at you. Acting like—” her voice dropped to a poor imitation of a man’s “—poor, helpless Rose. I mistreated her badly. Better find a way to make it up to her.” She slumped over dramatically. “I know! I’ll just fall on my sword. That should take care of things.”
“What the hell—”
She straightened up and flashed him another look that promised all sorts of retribution. “I don’t need you sacrificing yourself for me, okay? It was sex. Great, earth-shaking and as it turns out, unprotected sex. I can deal. What I am not going to do is marry another man for all the wrong reasons. So come on out of the nineteenth century, Lucas.”
He’d listened to her, dumbfounded, while she went on her rant. Well, now it was his turn. “Maybe this isn’t about what you can deal with, Rose. Ever consider that?”
Turning his back on her, he scanned the floor for his jeans and grabbed them up. Shifting back to face her again as he pulled them on, he kept talking, irritated not just with himself, but also with the woman who only moments ago had had his engines roaring.
“Do you know who my father is?”
“What?” She scowled at him. “What does that have to do with—”
“Ben King, that’s who,” Lucas told her, shoving both hands through his hair with nearly enough heat to pull out every strand. “Ben King is to illegitimate sons what Johnny Appleseed was to trees. Do you get it now? Do you see why I’m taking responsibility for this?”
“No! What does your father have to do with anything that happens between us?”
He stomped to her side, noting that she held the duvet higher and closer to her chest. The image of her as a pagan goddess slammed into him again. Moonlight sifting over her, outlining her in silver until she didn’t even look real. She looked, actually, like every man’s dream woman. Rumpled and sexy and ready to be tossed onto the nearest bed.
Which is just what he wanted to do.
Instead, he grabbed her bare shoulders and felt the heat of her blast into his hands. “My father spread his sperm in such a wide swath, we haven’t even met all of our brothers yet,” he told her flatly. “I promised myself years ago that I would never do that. I would never create a child that wasn’t wanted. Planned for. Loved.”
Her features clouded up briefly, but her eyes had lost their fire when she said, “Okay, I can understand that, but Lucas, you did the right thing. You were thinking. I sure as heck wasn’t. Protection never occurred to me, I’m ashamed to say. You thought of it.”
“For all the good it did us. Doesn’t change anything,” he muttered and released her because if he held on to her any longer, he might not be able to let go at all. “If we made a child tonight, we’re getting married. I’m not having any kid of mine grow up like I did. With a part-time father and a mother who spent all of her time trying to find a man to stay with her.”
He’d never said that out loud before. Never let anyone catch a glimpse of the kind of childhood he’d had. Lucas had loved his parents, but he wasn’t born blind. His mom was a nice woman who hadn’t been strong enough to be a single mother. She had spent every waking moment looking for the love that Ben King hadn’t been able to give her.
He wouldn’t sentence any child of his to the kind of half life Lucas had known as a kid.
As if she sensed just how ragged he was feeling, Rose let her anger fade away. Her voice softened, too, as she said, “We’re not going to settle anything tonight, Lucas. And we’re probably going to war over nothing. I think I should just go.”
Her skin looked milky against the dark fabric she held so tightly and her hair was as pale as the moonlight. Her eyes were shadowed, though, and he hated to see it.
His seduction plan had worked too well. Not only had he gotten Rose into his bed, but he’d also been seduced. Losing himself in the feel of her. The taste of her. Even now, knowing what they might be facing, his body ached for her again. His brain was racing, but his body only needed.
Nothing about Rose Clancy was turning out to be easy.
“Maybe we should talk this out more.”
“I think we’ve already said plenty.” She glanced around the room looking for her clothes. She grabbed her panties and jeans and tugged them on, then seemed to realize that they had left their shirts downstairs.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” she muttered, crossing her arms over her breasts. “I don’t even have my shirt with me. What was I thinking?”
The problem was, Lucas thought, that neither of them had been thinking at all. This whole seduction thing had gotten way out of hand. He’d thought he was in charge. Totally on top of the situation. What a joke. Now he was caught in a web of his own making and he didn’t have a clue as to whether there was a way out or not—or hell, whether or not he even wanted a way out.
Which was so far out of orbit for him, he dismissed the thought the minute it rose up in his mind. This was not about forever. Hell, this wasn’t even temporary. This was just supposed to be a one-night seduction and then revenge. Plain and simple.
Only problem was, simple was off the table.
“You know what?” Rose was saying, shaking her head as if she couldn’t believe she was standing there half-dressed. “I just have to go. Now.”
Only minutes ago this woman had practically set his bed on fire. Now they were awkward with each other, neither of them sure of their next move. And for Lucas at least, that was a first.
“No point in hiding your breasts from me now, is there?” he asked, taking her elbow to escort her downstairs.
“In bed, it’s different. Just standing here…” She closed her eyes and huffed out a breath that could have been anger but was probably embarrassment.
He snatched up a T-shirt off a chair in his room and handed it to her. “Here.”
“Thanks,” she muttered, turning her back on him to pull his shirt over her head. The hem of the dark green shirt fell to the middle of her thighs and made her look smaller, more vulnerable somehow—and he didn’t think she’d like knowing that.
When she looked at him again, she refused to meet his gaze. Everything had changed now. They’d let each other in and exposed too many secrets and now they were both busily rebuilding personal barriers. Lucas steered her out of his room and down the hall, sensing the emotional distance between them as they walked in strained silence.
And all he could think was that Sean had been right. Revenge really did have a way of turning around to bite you in the ass.
Staring at the computer screen doing the books for her business wasn’t taking Rose’s mind off of Lucas King. She rubbed her gritty eyes, shook her head and tried to focus again, but even she could see it was useless.
Everything on the screen might as well have been in Greek. Numbers seemed to run together. Red and black. Clients and suppliers. Appointments and schedules. All of it was blurred into a distorted mess that seemed to taunt her feelings of ineptitude. That’s what she got for trying to work when she was so tired she could hardly see straight.
“But to be fair,” she said aloud in the stillness, “I suck at this end of the business even on a good day.”
Frowning, she kicked back in her chair, lifting her sneaker-clad feet to the corner of her desk. Her small home office was brutally organized. Not a paper out of place. There were file cabinets, a three-in-one copier/printer/fax machine and a top-of-the-line computer on a simple wood desk. She glanced at the framed poster of Ireland hanging on the wall and briefly wished she were there on that rocky coast, with the wind in her hair.
But that thought only lasted a moment as she sighed and glanced around the room. She had been so determined, when she started Home Cooking Taught at Home, to be the quintessential businesswoman. And for
a while, she had made a good job of it. Until last night. Rose was pretty sure quintessential didn’t mean sleeping with your clients—or rather not sleeping, but having amazing, soul-shaking, body-burning sex.
Her feet dropped to the floor as her stomach pitched.
“Oh, God.” She lowered her head to the desk until her forehead hit with a thunk. Rose sat up abruptly, reaching to rub her forehead.
She could be pregnant.
“No, don’t think that, and for heaven’s sake, don’t say it out loud,” she whispered, shaking her head. All she needed was to throw that challenge out to the universe. Pregnancy was not in her business plan. Or in her life plan for that matter. Sure, someday, she’d love to have children. Had always wanted them, in fact…but not yet. She knew there were women out there who managed to be single moms and work and have a life and pull it off beautifully.
But that’s not what she wanted.
Even with her miserable marriage in her background, Rose still wanted the fairy tale.
“Of course, they were called Grimm fairy tales for a reason,” she told herself with a sigh. Oh, yeah, she was in great shape. Her mind wandering down long, twisting paths that went exactly nowhere and made her feel absolutely no better.
Trying to work was pointless, she finally admitted. No way was she going to be able to concentrate. Her gaze shifted to the noticeably silent phone on the corner of her desk. She had half expected Lucas to call and didn’t know what she would say to him if he did. But the fact that he hadn’t was beginning to really tick her off.
What had happened at his house after she left last night? Did he crawl right back into bed and sleep like a baby? No worries? No thoughts about her or them or what might be happening inside her body right at this minute? Was he really that cold? Was he so unemotional he couldn’t even be bothered to call and say, “Hey, you okay? How’s the baby?”
“He’s right. Women aren’t logical,” she mused, pushing out of her chair to walk into the kitchen. “But how are we supposed to be logical when dealing with men?”
Her own kitchen was much smaller than the one at Lucas’s house. But it was cozy and familiar and on this foggy, gray morning, it felt like sunshine with its white and yellow walls.
She filled the teakettle at the sink, set it on the stove and turned the fire on underneath it. While she waited for the water to boil, Rose leaned back against the counter, folded her arms over her chest and wondered what she was supposed to do now.
“Excellent timing,” she murmured. “Why didn’t you do some thinking last night when it might have helped? Because,” she added ruefully, “you were too busy feeling to want to do anything rational.”
Oh, terrific. Not only was her world sort of crumbling down around her, but now she was also talking to herself. That couldn’t be a good sign.
Plus she was exhausted. She had been up all night. Every time she had closed her eyes, she saw Lucas. Heard his voice. Felt his hands on her body.
If she had managed to fall asleep, no doubt her dreams would have been in 3D with surround sound. So instead, she’d spent the last several hours cleaning her house until it was shining and then watching infomercials on television. Now her eyes felt like two marbles left out in the sun too long and fatigue dragged at every muscle.
Steam pushed out the spout of the teakettle, making an ear-piercing noise that shattered her thoughts and got her moving again. She took the kettle off the flame, poured the boiling water into her waiting teacup and idly stood there while the lone decaf tea bag brewed. She’d had so much coffee during the night her stomach needed a caffeine break. Besides, tea was soothing and damn it, she needed to be soothed.
Or, at the very least, she told herself silently, commiserated with. Gripping the mug, she walked to the phone on the counter, picked up the receiver and hit number three on the speed dial. She sipped at her tea while the phone rang, then winced when Delilah’s slurred voice demanded, “Who is crazy enough to be calling me at this hideous hour?”
“Sorry,” Rose said quickly. “Really, sorry, Dee. I didn’t even look at the time.”
She did now, though, and cringed. Five o’clock in the morning. “Look, I’ll talk to you later, okay? Go back to sleep.”
“Sure,” Dee said with a groan. “That’s gonna happen. What’s going on?”
“Have you got an hour or two?” Rose asked on a sigh. Before Dee could answer, though, she shook her head and said, “It’s nothing that won’t wait. We’ll talk later. I can’t do this on the phone, anyway. I’m really sorry.”
“Rose!”
But she hung up, feeling as though she was batting a thousand. Sex with a client, followed by a big fight and ooh, maybe pregnant. And then finally, she’d awoken her best friend. Maybe she could find a puppy to kick and make everything perfect.
“Okay, that’s it. You need to get out of this house for a while.” She grabbed her bright pink sweatshirt off the back of a chair, picked her keys off a hook by the door and, carrying her tea with her, headed for the front door.
She stepped out into the damp, cold mist of the fog and a few steps from the house, she was lost in it.
Eight
Lucas was grateful to have somewhere else to focus his mind. He’d been up for hours, thinking over what had happened with Rose, and he needed a damn break before his brain exploded.
“You sure you want to do this now?”
Lucas turned off the engine and glanced at Sean. “Why wouldn’t I?”
“I don’t know,” his brother said, taking a sip of his extra-large latte. “You look like you want to punch somebody, is all. And since I don’t want it to be me and since if you punch Warren we could get sued, I just thought you might want to wait a while. Cool down from whatever’s got your jets firing so hot.”
“Well, you thought wrong,” Lucas muttered.
“Okay, then,” Sean said with a shrug. “Let’s start the show.”
They were at Long Beach harbor, not far from Terminal Island. Mostly, this area was filled with naval vessels and the cargo ships that sailed in and out of the harbor every day. The air was cold and smelled like fish and diesel oil.
It was almost six in the morning and people were already moving at the King Construction yard. The security guard at the gate had opened it for them the minute he recognized Lucas’s SUV. Now the car was parked beside the warehouse-size building that stored the company’s tools and machinery. Men and women— King Construction didn’t discriminate against women on a work crew—moved around the building and surrounding yard, talking, laughing, getting their gear for whatever projects they were on.
Every morning, the working crews would come here, to the warehouse, to get what they needed for the jobs that started precisely at eight. A lot of construction firms didn’t store their equipment in one central location. But the Kings figured it was easier to protect their investment in the tools this way and it gave all of their workers a chance to get to know each other. Friendships on a job site made the work go better.
And, Lucas told himself, this way he had known exactly where he could find Warren. Sure, he could have fired the man over the phone but that was damned impersonal. The least he owed someone who worked for him was a face-to-face when that job was ending.
“Hey, Sean!” someone called out. “Come on over here and settle a bet for me!”
Sean glanced at Lucas. “You handle this on your own?”
Rolling his eyes, Lucas snapped, “Yes, Mom. I think I can handle it.”
“Without hitting him?”
“Go away, Sean.”
“Right.” Still, he gave Lucas another worried glance before moving off to where three of their crew were holding a loud debate over football.
Lucas shook his head, amused as he heard Sean jump right into the argument with an easy camaraderie. As good as he was with the tech stuff, Sean also was the most easygoing guy Lucas had ever known.
He put thoughts of his brother aside as he walked into the cavernous ware
house. Heavy thuds and clanks sounded and seemed to echo as the different crews loaded up what they would need for the day. The steel walls reverberated with the roar of one of the diesel engines and men shouted to each other to be heard over the noise.
It was a good sound, though. Lucas had always enjoyed being on a job site. Most of the time now, he worked on the phone from the office, but every once in a while, it was good to get back to the basics. Check in with their crews. And just as Rafe had only a few months ago, actually work a job. Though Rafe had done it because he had lost a bet, Lucas enjoyed working a job occasionally just to keep his hand in.
The tension in his shoulders eased a little as he let his surroundings soak in. Whatever else was going on in his life, here at King Construction, he knew exactly what he was doing.
He nodded at the people he passed, stopped to answer a question, then asked one of his own, “Julio, have you seen Warren around this morning?”
“Yeah.” Julio Vega, about thirty-five with a thick black mustache and sharp brown eyes, lifted one arm and pointed toward the back of the warehouse, where the loaders and cement mixers were housed. “He’s back there.”
“Thanks.” Lucas found his quarry easily enough then, but by the look on Warren’s face when he saw Lucas, he was guessing this wasn’t going to go well.
“Boss,” the man said, with a brisk nod and a clenching of his jaw.
“Warren, we need to talk.”
“If this is about the WeDig problem—”
“It is,” Lucas told him, slapping one hand to the cold, metal side of the cement mixer. “You know, you were lucky that the only thing the men hit was a water pipe. It could have been a gas line. The whole damn neighborhood could have gone up in an explosion and fire.”
Warren was in his forties, balding, with a full red beard. His face flushed, but it wasn’t embarrassment coloring his features, it was anger. “Could have doesn’t count. It wasn’t the gas line, Lucas. Yeah, there was a damn flood, but we got the pumps in, most of the water’s gone and we’ll have the damage to the redwood deck repaired by end of the week.”
Ready for King's Seduction Page 9
