by Lucy Monroe
"You date gorgeous, sophisticated women."
"And I've slept with a few of them when I needed physical release, but I'm no more interested in committing sexual suicide than the next guy."
For some totally baffling reason, that reassured her. It shouldn't matter. He wasn't permanently hers, but she was glad he wasn't a sexual glutton who had grown jaded on one meaningless experience after another.
She levered herself more firmly against him and groaned at the way it felt. "I suppose this means you were due for some tension release and I caught you at just the right time, then."
He kicked his shoes and trousers off and started walking toward the bathroom with her wrapped firmly around him. "It's not just sexual release."
He said it in such forbidding tones, she didn't dare ask what it was if it wasn't mere physical relief. Something deep in her heart rejoiced all the same at the implication she wasn't a faceless body for him to slake his indiscriminate lust on.
He didn't take a condom in the shower with them, but he showed her ways of finding fulfillment that didn't include his flesh buried in hers. It left her weak and sated in a way she'd never even dreamed existed.
They cuddled on the couch afterward, eating the room service dinner and drinking champagne.
Chapter Seven
They spent three days in Raleigh, but after the first one, Rand spent very little time in meetings. He invited Phoebe to accompany him to the one working dinner he had to attend and seemed to want her company as much as she wanted his.
Although they spent a great deal of their time together in bed, or on the floor, or up against a wall, Rand insisted on doing things with her besides making love. He said that being his woman did not mean spending twenty-four-seven in bed. Not that she would have minded. Making love with Rand was pure pleasure, but knowing he wanted more than sex with her gave her hope for a relationship beyond their one-week agreement.
On their last night in Raleigh, Rand took her to a small hole-in-the-corner restaurant located in a strip mall of all places. While the outside was unassuming, the interior was as elegant as any five-star restaurant she'd ever been to, and she quickly learned it was the restaurant for steak lovers in Raleigh. The waiter led them to a small table in the back room. She smiled as Rand pulled out her chair and helped her into her seat instead of allowing the waiter to do it.
"You're going to love the steak here, baby."
"And what would you do if it turned out I didn't care for steak at all?" she asked tongue-in-cheek.
He folded his tall form into the chair across from hers, his gray eyes full of humor and sexy lights. "Come on, honey. Not only do I know for a fact you love a good steak, I know you like it medium-well and prefer it topped with sautéed mushrooms when they're available."
"I guess you paid attention." For some reason, that really surprised her. It seemed like an intimate thing for someone to know about her, to care enough to notice.
"You'd be surprised at the things I pay attention to." His expression implied things that made her insides melt.
"I'm surprised you paid attention to that much."
"Why?" He looked genuinely puzzled. "We've spent enough time together over the last few years."
She laughed, though the sound was a little choked. "I'm not exactly the type of woman you notice, Rand."
His dark brows rose. "That's why we've had to buy so many condoms this week, because you're not the type of woman I notice."
Even after three days making love in every way she could imagine, and some she hadn't, she could still blush. And she did as her gaze skittered around the restaurant, trying to tell if anyone had heard him.
He laughed out loud, the masculine sound caressing her insides. "What's the matter, baby? Worried someone here is going to figure out we're sleeping together?"
She frowned at him. "No, but you don't need to announce it to the whole restaurant either."
His face moved into lines of mock solemnity, and it was at that moment that she realized just how frequently he had smiled and laughed over the last few days. Which in itself said something, because on a normal day, solemn described him best.
"I'll try to be more circumspect."
"Will you really?" she knew just what kind of circumspect he meant, and it wasn't anything like her usual unassuming, living in the background sort of circumspect.
He winked, looking roguish, confirming her suspicion.
Maybe a little of his own medicine would be just what the doctor ordered. She unobtrusively slipped her pump off her right foot, then lifted her stocking-clad foot to caress him under the cover of the long white tablecloth.
Just as her toes made contact with the familiar bulge in his pants, she said, "You do that very thing."
His body jerked, his gray eyes going dark with immediate desire, and his sex surged against her foot. "You little devil. You'll pay for that."
She rubbed her toes up and down his length, making sure her torso above the table did not move or in any way give away what she was doing under the table with her foot. "Will I?"
His eyes closed, and his head tilted back slightly.
She didn't say anything, but cuddled him with her foot, keeping up a light rubbing motion. They stayed that way for several seconds until his eyes slid open again. The look in them burned her from the inside out.
"I thought you were a shy little virgin."
She curled her toes forward and rejoiced in the feel of him jerking hard against her. "I was. Three days ago."
He shook his head, his jaw tight, his expression that of a man in pain. "I think you were a siren just waiting to be let out of her shell."
Did that mean he thought she would be this way with another man? She knew that she wouldn't be. If she had married Carter four years ago, she would never have discovered this side of herself. It would have been impossible because this wanton nature she'd never known she had was a direct result of being in close proximity to Rand.
Suddenly a warm hand closed over her foot, pressing her more firmly to him. She instinctively tried to pull back, but his grip was too tight.
"I'm tormenting myself with this." His voice, low and gravelly, sounded as though he meant it.
The waiter arrived, and she lost the opportunity to answer. Rand ordered for both of them, and she was glad because she didn't think her brain would have worked well enough to conjure up a dinner selection.
After pouring them each a glass of wine from a bottle he left on the table, their server left.
Rand's hand squeezed on her foot in a convulsive movement, and he looked like he was in pain.
She chewed on her lower lip. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to hurt you."
His thumb caressed her arch, and she felt it straight to the core of her.
"This is one kind of pain I can live with."
She didn't reply. Couldn't reply. He was doing something to her foot that made pleasure arc through her insides and caused her nipples to tighten painfully.
"Do we have to eat?" Her voice broke on the last word as she had to swallow down a moan of delight.
He nodded, his head moving slowly while his eyes spoke a message to her that she could not mistake. "I want you to have plenty of energy later."
"Then you'd better let go of my foot," she choked out, feeling closer to orgasm than any woman should in the middle of a packed to capacity restaurant. "I don't think I can handle this kind of pleasure in public."
His hand moved in another mysterious way. "Are you sure?"
She couldn't stifle the moan this time, and even as the pleasure grew, her cheeks heated with embarrassment. "Yes."
His hand stilled. After a soothing caress, he let go.
A full minute passed before she had the wherewithal to move her foot. She slipped her shoe back on, her foot still tingling from his touch. "I guess I'm not up to your speed."
He winked and shifted imperceptibly in his seat. "Don't you believe it, baby. I've never come sitting at a table in a restaurant, but one more st
roke from that sexy little foot of yours and I would have."
She tried to control her racing heart, but she loved knowing she affected him so strongly. The knowledge increased the intense desire shaking her insides. "Talk about something else," she pleaded.
"What would you like to talk about?"
Their future, but she wasn't about to bring that subject up. She wasn't ready to have her hopes dashed. "Why did you stay in New Hope after your mom died?" she asked with real curiosity.
It had to have been harder on him, and it wasn't as if he and his father had been close. "Susan."
"Oh." She should have realized that.
He'd been dating Susan at the time, and they had been married within six months of his mother's death. Phoebe looked down at her fingers against the white tablecloth, seeing nothing interesting in her basic manicure, but not wanting to see the look of sadness she knew would be in his eyes. She could handle the fact that he had been married and that his wife had died.
What hurt Phoebe was the knowledge he'd buried his heart with the other woman.
He sighed, and she looked up at the sound. "That's not all of it."
"It's not?"
"It's my hometown. I started my business there because I wanted to prove to all the people who had looked down at my mother for being a mistress and not a wife that I was every bit as good as they were."
"You succeeded."
"Did I?"
"How can you ask that? Your company is the biggest employer in New Hope."
"That doesn't stop your aunt from thinking you could do a lot better than me in the marriage stakes or Carter's mother from pretending I don't exist."
Just the thought of marriage with Rand was enough to stop Phoebe's breath in her throat.
Rand watched with interest as Phoebe averted her eyes, her cheeks a delicate pink. She fiddled with her spoon, turning it over and over on the tablecloth. "Mrs. Sloane has her own way of dealing with the past, and Aunt Emmaline has some pretty old-fashioned ideas."
"Is that what you call it?"
Those pretty hazel eyes met his, their depths soft with understanding. "What difference does it make? Aunt Emmaline and her friends aren't the great arbiters of New Hope's social conscience."
"Don't tell them that. It'll break their hearts."
Instead of laughing, or at least smiling, as he expected her to at his facetious comment, she gazed at him with a too serious expression. "I think you're an amazing man."
It was happening again, that warm feeling in the region of his heart. It had been occurring with more and more frequency each day he spent with Phoebe as his woman. He didn't like it because that kind of warmth was always followed by the coldness of loss.
"Thanks, honey, but I finally reached a point where I realized it didn't matter what anyone else thought. I'm the man I want to be."
"Are you?"
She'd just said she thought he was amazing; what was she getting at? "What are you asking?"
She swallowed, as though she was nervous, but one thing he'd come to know about his Phoebe was that she was no coward. "There was a time when you wanted to be a husband and father as well as a fabulously successful businessman."
Remembered pain colored his voice with anger. "Some dreams die." Literally.
Pain that had to equal his own reflected in the beautiful depths of her eyes briefly before she smiled in a way that reminded him of a mannequin in a store window. "Yes, they do."
Damn it. He knew he shouldn't have had this week with her, but he'd been unable to deny an ache that had grown steadily worse the longer he knew her. Now she was hurting, and it was all his fault. He couldn't be what she needed, a wedding and happily-ever-after kind of man.
He'd gone that route, and it had only led to more pain and disillusionment.
"You want to know something so ridiculous, it's almost unbelievable?" he asked, needing to get that look off her face but for some reason unable to completely drop the subject.
"Sure." She was making a valiant effort to look unaffected by his reminder they didn't have a future, and he wanted to curse until the air turned blue.
"My father wanted me to get married and have children. To settle down."
"What's so strange about that? Most parents want that for their children."
"Even fathers who never bother marrying your mother? Give me a break." His dad had lived a life worthy of the front page of a supermarket tabloid. The idea of him wanting Rand to "settle down" was almost obscene.
"I never understood why he stayed married to Carter's mom. They lived separate lives for as long as I can remember, and he never ended his relationship with your mom."
Rand used to wonder the same thing. He'd even asked his father about it once, not that it had gotten him anywhere. His father had not believed he owed his eldest son any explanations, and his mother had cried when he asked her, so he'd given up.
"Oh, they broke it off once. When Hoyt and Carter's mom got engaged. My mom was pregnant with me at the time, but a poor girl from a broken home wasn't Hoyt's idea of marriage material."
"Your dad ended it even after your mom got pregnant?"
The waiter brought their meals, and Rand waited to answer until the other man was gone. "Yes. He accused her of getting pregnant to try to trap him."
"What happened?"
"Mom named him as father on my birth certificate. New Hope is a small town. News got around, and Hoyt's wife found out about it. By this time she was pregnant, too. The only decent thing my dad ever did for me or my mom was not to deny his paternity. I don't know what happened between him and Carter's mother, but she moved into her own bedroom, and my father renewed his relationship with my mother."
"Why didn't they just get a divorce?"
"I can't speak for Carter's mother, but Hoyt liked the prestige and facade of respectability that marriage to the daughter of one of the founding families of New Hope gave him."
Phoebe reached across the table, and soft, warm fingers curled around his wrist. "I'm sorry."
He rubbed her fingers with his own and let the pleasure that gave him settle his insides. "That was only part of it. I read my grandfather's will after my father died, and Grandfather stipulated that all his assets would go directly to Carter if my father divorced his wife and married my mother."
There had been no family acceptance from the old man toward Rand ever. The bastard son had had no place in the Sloane family, and his grandfather had made sure that would not change.
Phoebe's eyes had filled with sympathetic tears, and Rand felt like a dog. He didn't want to make her unhappy.
"What a horrible thing to do. That's just plain wicked."
"I guess Carter thinks so, too," he found himself telling her when he'd had no intention of sharing his brother's nutty scheme with anyone. "He's got some crazy idea about giving me half of Sloane Electronics."
Phoebe's eyes grew wide. "So that's why he came home."
Rand didn't know. His brother made no bones about wanting the lithium on Luna Island for Sloane Electronics, but then he wanted to give half of the company to Rand. Or so he said.
"When did Carter tell you that?"
"He called." Actually, he'd called multiple times, but Rand hadn't picked up the subsequent calls on his cell.
"I'm glad."
"I don't trust people named Sloane."
Phoebe's eyes filled with understanding, going warm with compassion. "That's hardly a surprise after the way both your grandfather and dad behaved."
"The old man made damn sure Hoyt never married my mom."
"And Hoyt did nothing about it."
"That's for sure."
"That kind of pressure wouldn't have worked on a man like you. You would have told your grandfather to take a flying leap and built your own company."
Which was essentially what he had done.
"But your dad stayed in a marriage he didn't want for the sake of money and appearances. It's pretty obvious he never loved Carter's mother
. A man doesn't have affairs when he loves his wife."
Rand tended to agree, no matter what current psychobabble stated. "He didn't love my mother either."
"No. He would have married her otherwise."
"Mom thought he did. She felt bad for him and accepted a shadowy place in his life until the day she died."
"You refused to stay in the shadows," Phoebe said perceptively, her grip on his wrist tightening momentarily.
"That's right. I gave him a choice, publicly acknowledge me or be publicly denied by me."
"He chose to acknowledge you."
And to this day, Rand didn't know if that was because he was afraid of the scandal Rand might have caused or because he'd wanted a real bond with his oldest son. But all he said was, "Yes."
"You aren't responsible for the choices of your father."
"I finally figured that out." About the time he married Susan, but then he'd lost her, and he'd come to accept that love had too high a price to pay.
His mother had paid dearly for her love of Hoyt Sloane. Rand had paid for that love throughout his childhood, too. Susan and their baby's death had been the final blow to a heart that turned to stone from the battering.
That night in bed, Phoebe curled into Rand's sleeping body and ached for the boy who had been denied so much and the man who had lost so much. She loved him with an unstoppable love, but after their discussion in the restaurant, she realized how little hope she had of him ever risking his heart on love again. It hurt, but she couldn't blame him. All he knew was the losing side of love, something she understood all too well. He wouldn't give her a lifetime, but she had three more days with him, and she would make the best of that time.
For now, she had him, and she was going to revel in that, not ruin what time she had left as his woman, grieving for what would not be.
If he did dismiss her from his life, she would have memories to warm her lonely bed.
Phoebe listened to the third message from Carter Sloane on her answering machine. They'd arrived back in New Hope in the early morning hours. Before going to his office, Rand had dropped her at her apartment so she could check on things. He expected her to be back at his place when he got home from the office, but it was not even late morning yet, and she had the whole day ahead of her without him.
