The Double Deal

by Catherine Mann

  As Royce turned away, Glenna sprung up from the green couch, wrapping her future sister-in-law in a tight hug. “I’m glad you’re here because I really need to get back to the baby. Let’s talk later. I’m going to head home and make sure there’s food and fresh beds for everyone.”

  “Glenna? Broderick? Where’s Marshall?” Naomi had only just registered that her middle brother wasn’t here, a fact that surprised her. Marshall worked with the landholdings. Much like Trystan did for the Mikkelsons. Except Naomi suspected people found Marshall easier to deal with than the gruffer Trystan.

  “Marshall is on his way. He was a few hours away doing a property survey and got held up by weather like you.”

  For the first time since she’d arrived, Jeannie unburied her face from her hands. Eyes tired from tears, dark circles attested to lack of sleep. The woman’s clear pain tore at her.

  The Mikkelson matriarch held out her hands to Naomi without standing. “Naomi, it’s good to see you. Your father has been asking. He was worried about you out there driving in this weather.”

  The PA system echoed softly with a call for a doctor.

  “I’m fine. Royce drove me.” Naomi leaned over to give Jeannie an awkward hug. They were still getting to know each other and now they were in the middle of such a huge crisis.

  Jeannie managed a half smile. “I have high hopes all will be well with your father.” She drew in a shaky smile. “Of course, we’ve put a delay on any plans for the wedding until we know about possible surgeries. We need to focus on him getting well.”

  Naomi searched the woman’s eyes, wondering at her motivations, wishing she knew her better. Was this delay something to be accepted at face value? Was Jeannie’s love real? Or was it a shallow thing, more financially motivated?

  Voicing those questions, however, would serve no purpose either way. So, Naomi just asked, “Can I visit my father?”

  She hated having to ask at all, but Jeannie was his fiancée. It seemed the right thing to do, especially if the woman truly did love Jack. And if she ended up as a part of their family. Everything was still so...surreal. The engagement. The accident.

  Her own attraction to Royce Miller.

  Jeannie tapped her own chest, right over her heart. “Of course you should go see him. He will be glad to see in person that you’re here safe and sound. You know how much he worries.”

  Naomi winced. “I do.”

  Jeannie gestured to a hospital room three doors away, past an orderly wheeling a patient down the hall on a stretcher. “Your father’s talking to his brother now. Conrad is doing his best to reassure Jack that the business isn’t going to implode.”

  Conrad had helped keep the company afloat when Jack had struggled with grief over losing his wife and child, but Conrad was more deeply invested in his own business these days. It was doubtful he could step in again. And there was also the concern of the Mikkelsons having to sign off on things... Definitely complicated. “I’ll do my best to calm his concerns.”

  In five steps, she’d managed to leave the waiting room filled with a family learning how to talk to each other. Entering her father’s room, she felt a strange sort of relief to see her uncle Conrad sitting next to her father. He looked at her with sympathetic eyes, although he had to be very upset, as well.

  A memory flashed through her mind of her uncle sitting with her during a chemo treatment, watching some teenage show with her that he surely had no interest in, but he’d been there to support her. Her whole family had come out in full force for her. Right now, she fully realized for the first time how much it sucked to be on either side of this kind of health crisis.

  Her uncle motioned for her to come closer, and Naomi made her way to where her father lay.

  Oh God. She knew, logically, that her always dashing father with his dark hair and bravado would look rough. But all the imagining in the world could not prepare a child to see their once superhero-like parent so horribly broken.

  A neck brace pushed her father’s graying hair up, seeming to highlight the massive deep blue-and-purple bruise on his forehead, his face swollen from the trauma.

  Jack Steele’s eyes flicked to her, and she took in the sight of the IV in his arm, the constant data rolling across a blood pressure monitor. A heart monitor too. And some other screens she couldn’t readily identify.

  “Hey, baby girl.” His voice still sounded strong, a small comfort. Uncle Conrad moved to the sofa in the room, giving them space.

  Naomi reached out her hand to touch his, feeling like she was in a nightmare. “Hi, Daddy. I didn’t mean to wake you.”

  “I’m not sleeping. All I do is lie in this bed, staring at the ceiling.” He’d never been a good patient.

  She tried to joke, looking around the room at the many flowers already taking residence around the recliner chair with the pillow and all the available counter space. “I could have sworn I heard you snoring.”

  “Nah, not a chance.”

  “Well,” she said, glancing at the neat handwriting on the board that charted her father’s progress and medication schedules, “the nurse has written there that you’re well past the time you can have a sleeping pill.”

  “I hate taking meds.” His gravelly voice sparked with irritation.

  She understood that feeling well after having had her body pumped full of poison for months. She empathized with the frustration of being out of control, of being trapped in a broken body.

  “You need to rest so you can heal. We want you as strong as possible for surgery.”

  “Uh-huh. If I’m in pain, I’ll let you know to call the nurse.” He looked at her with intense eyes, and though he couldn’t move much, Jack still had a way of commanding attention.

  “When have you ever admitted to pain?”

  He mock-scowled. “If you’re here to nag, you can go home. Call Delaney to babysit me.”

  “You just want her here because she’s a pushover.”

  His laugh wheezed a bit and he stifled a wince. “You’re your father’s child, for sure.”

  “That I am. So, no underreporting pain. I’m watching your blood pressure. Your secret is out. It’s the quiet indicator of your discomfort.”

  “Duly noted. But enough of that serious talk.” His fingers moved on the bed, causing a rustle on the blinding-white sheets. “It’s been a long time since we had a campout.”

  “Once you’re better, perhaps we can institute family campouts again.” She hoped. God, how she hoped.

  “Sounds like a good idea.”

  “Mom loved those times away from everything.” Her throat closed with emotion over memories of her mother. Mary had been more like Delaney, soft but with a quiet determination under it all as she’d balanced a larger-than-life husband and six children. “Looking back, I realize you both took us on those trips to give us a sense of normalcy, to teach us to be more than trust fund babies.”

  “And it worked,” he said proudly. “You all turned out damn good. Your mother would be so pleased.”

  “Thank you, Daddy, it means a lot to hear you say that.” She squeezed his hand. “We’ll be camping by this summer. I’m certain of it.”

  “Jeannie’s top-notch at fishing. Maybe we can plan that for after the wedding. I wish we didn’t have to delay the ceremony...”

  Glancing back at the door, Naomi thought of what now constituted family. And the new addition to the family that she’d yet to tell anyone about except Royce. “We’ll need a caravan if we’re including both sides of the family for that camping trip.”

  She couldn’t help but wonder if he really would be able to take those trips again. Would he play with her child the way she’d dreamed? Her throat clogged with emotion and restrained tears.

  “It would be a nice chance for all of you to get to know each other better, like at the little bachelorette party you girls had at
the house for Jeannie. Thank you for that.”

  She felt a hint guilty for the frustration she’d felt over arranging that party, the shock of her father’s engagement to their business enemy still so fresh.

  She nodded, looking at her father. In a choked voice, she continued, “I only want you to be happy.”

  “You have to know there’s nothing I want more than for your mother and sister not to have been on that plane. But I can’t change the past. Your mother loved us. I’ve never doubted that for a moment. She would want us to be happy.”

  “Change is difficult. And quite frankly, you couldn’t have come up with a bigger way to upset the applecart.” She winced the instant the words fell out of her mouth. She shouldn’t be bringing that up right now. Grief must be getting the best of her even though she was supposed to be calming her father.

  “Truth. But let’s not talk about the accident. I can’t believe I let a horse get the better of me. Not his fault. Want to make sure everyone knows that. Now let’s talk about something else before my blood pressure has people overreacting,” he said with a hint of teasing in his bloodshot eyes.

  “Sorry about that.” She kept herself positioned to lean over his bed, to stay in his line of sight. “Back to happy talk.”

  “Tell me about Royce Miller.” Ever the businessman, even immobilized in a hospital bed.

  She should have known he’d already heard about her impulsive trip.

  An image of snuggling on Royce’s bed watching the aurora borealis filled her mind’s eyes. With her dad’s blood pressure already on the rise, there was no way Naomi would be sharing details of her relationship with the sexy scientist.

  Eight

  The visit to the hospital had taken everything out of Delaney.

  Seeing her indomitable father laid low terrified her. She’d lost her mother. Her sister. Then there’d been Naomi’s cancer scare. Delaney couldn’t deal with the idea of losing her father.

  But what kind of woman was she to use that fear to justify being with Birch now?

  She’d broken speed limits to get here. Broken faith with her family every time she hid her relationship with him. Seeing her sister working so hard to bring Royce Miller into the company made Delaney feel all the more like a traitor to her beliefs by having an affair with Birch.

  Still, she needed this. Needed him.

  She snapped the band of his boxers. “You should get rid of those.”

  Birch trailed his fingers to the front clasp of her bra and with a deft flick, the cups parted. Air swept over her breasts, her nipples pulling tight and tingling. Every nerve hummed to life, her senses on overload, breaths full of patchouli, her gaze drowning in the whiskey hues of his eyes, luxuriating in the muscular planes of his chest. How could one body store so much heat in winter?

  And she wanted more.

  She tugged at his boxers, but it was tough to pull them off while she was sitting. In a smooth move, he locked his arms around her and lifted, her feet dangling just off the floor as she kissed him. Or he kissed her. She wasn’t sure, but somehow their underwear landed on the plush wool rug.

  Delaney slid a condom from the pack they’d set on the desk earlier when they’d had frenzied sex in front of the fireplace in his home office. She rolled the condom down the length of him, slowly. His eyebrows lifted at how very much she took her time. Angling forward, he captured her mouth, catching the moan.

  Biting her bottom lip, she raised up on her knees, her breasts rubbing against his chest. His pupils widened with desire just as his eyes narrowed. A shiver of awareness rippled down her spine. She slid over him again, taking him inside her, slowly, fully.

  His fingers dug into her bare hips, guiding her as he thrust, again and again as she met his rhythm, his pace. The crackles in the fireplace echoing the snaps of electricity traveling through her. Her neck arched and he covered her pulse with his mouth, hair sliding along her spine as she savored the way he knew just where...just how...to touch her.

  The rasp of his late day beard was a delicious abrasion against her tender flesh. His ragged breaths heated over her skin, her gasps accelerating along with his. They were always in sync that way. Maybe some of that had to do with the hidden nature of their affair. It added an edge to their time together.

  Or perhaps they were both afraid it couldn’t survive the harsh light of their differences, leaving them frenzied to take all they could before this connection imploded. Every time she pondered the thought it just made her more determined to stop thinking. She wanted to feel, to savor, for as long as they could because being with him was...

  Incredible.

  Just the memory of their other times together was enough to send her orgasm unraveling inside her in wave after wave of bliss. Birch thrust his hands into her hair and kissed her, taking her cries of release into his mouth, his own low growls of completion mingling with hers.

  Sagging against his chest while her galloping heart slowed to a trot, she breathed in the scent of him. Of them. Perspiration and sex and a musky blend unique to the two of them.

  Birch swept aside her hair and stroked her back, the calluses on his fingers a sweet, sandpapery abrasion. “When are we going to stop sneaking around?”

  She kept her face buried in his neck, avoiding his gaze. “Aren’t you having fun?”

  “You know the answer to that.” He dropped a kiss on top of her head.

  “Then let’s just keep things the way they are.”

  The disappointment on his face stung her with guilt. But she flinched away from saying anything. Confrontation was not her strength. A weakness in a family full of pushy extroverts. Passive aggression was more her speed.

  And she intended to keep this sexy pocket of happiness all to herself for just a little longer.

  * * *

  Royce’s boots thudded on the hospital tile as he made his way to Naomi, careful to avoid the wettest spots on the recently mopped floor. For the past few hours, he’d parked himself in the waiting room amid the Steeles and the Mikkelsons. The tension had left him uncomfortable, but not as uncomfortable as the two merging families had seemed with each other.

  He’d left and made a trip to the store, waiting to return until late enough that the hospital would have quieted, the families would have left.

  A time when Naomi would be alone and perhaps need him.

  All that time sitting had left him restless. Ironic, perhaps, because he’d grown accustomed to long stretches in front of a computer or whiteboard doing research and solving equations. The fundamental difference between those scenarios and this one was that he had felt productive in those instances. Like he was doing something.

  He’d never suffered idleness well.

  His hand closed tighter around the bag of food he’d brought, all too aware that stress had kept Naomi from taking care of herself.

  As he balanced the juice and snacks in his hand, he made his way to her. He knuckle-rapped the door. From the other side, he heard the sounds of footsteps padding against the tile in a hurried fashion.

  The door swung open. Damn.

  Even rumpled and weary, Naomi looked beautiful. Her dark hair fell in a ponytail wave over one shoulder. She wore a hoodie with tights, a casual outfit that still hinted at her curves. Adjusting her weight from one socked foot to another, her eyes danced with something that looked like grateful relief. Seeing she was happy to have him there...that gripped him. He didn’t want to think about what his reaction to her might mean.

  She looked around, poking her head outside the door frame. “How did you get past the nurse’s station?”

  “No worries on that. I’m here. I’ve been in the waiting room actually. I wanted to be sure you had snacks if you’re not sleeping—and you weren’t.” Peering into the room to the sofa with the still perfectly folded blanket. No signs of rest.

  “I can sleep to
morrow. I’m afraid to take my eyes off him.”

  “That’s understandable.” He held up his offering—cheese, crackers, juice and two slices of pizza. “I thought you might be hungry. Sorry, but the pickings are thin this time of night.”

  “It looks amazing, actually.” She nodded toward the two simple straight chairs—wood with worn maroon cushions—left over from earlier visitors. She sat down in one, patting the seat of the other, inviting him to join her. He did, satisfied to accept a stolen moment with her.

  She took the food and dug in with clear appreciation.

  “You know you can call me or text me if you need anything.”

  She chuckled softly, swiping a cracker crumb from the corner of her mouth. “Do you realize I don’t even have your phone number?”

  That fact had escaped him. “Well, hell. We need to rectify that.”

  He fished his cell phone from his pocket, sheepishly handed it over to her. Naomi’s face lit up as she entered her contact information and slid it back to him, chewing on the corner of her lip. He sent her a message—just a smile. Her cell vibrated in her pocket. Connection official.

  “Thanks.” She gave him a shaky smile back, then glanced toward her father again, worry furrowing her brow. “The surgery seems eons away, every second so scary even beyond concerns of a stroke from his high blood pressure. What if he sneezes? And jerks and paralyzes himself?”

  “There’s nothing you could do about that one. That imagination of yours is working overtime.”

  “Part of my job, imagining all the possibilities so I can plan accordingly. You should understand that with your work too. It’s not like we can shut down our imaginations after hours.”

  “True enough.” He lifted her feet, started rubbing them through her socks.

  She moaned softly, some of the tension easing from her face. “That feels amazing. Thank you.” She popped another cracker into her mouth. “You’re incredibly thoughtful.”

  “Is it working?”

  She tipped her head to the side, her dark ponytail swishing. “What are you trying to accomplish?”