A Merger by Marriage (9 page)

Seven

T
he ranch house was quiet and dark when JT let himself in at two in the morning. He’d cut his night short, unable to concentrate on business with thoughts of Violet bombarding him. He liked that she’d shown up at the barn today. Watching her overcome her anxiety about Milo had demonstrated that her interest had been genuine. Having her gaze follow his every move in the arena had been a pleasant distraction. He’d stepped up his game and showed off for her like a smitten teenage boy.

What he’d seen in her eyes made him want to throw her over his shoulder and carry her straight to his bedroom. Was she reconsidering the arrangement? He hoped so. But if she needed more convincing, he was ready for that as well.

Taking the stairs two at a time, JT headed down the hall to her bedroom. The door stood ajar, the room beyond dark. He let his eyes adjust and saw that the room was unoccupied. Reaching in, he flipped on the light. The room wasn’t just empty. It showed no sign that anyone was staying there.

If JT hadn’t seen Violet’s car in the garage, he would’ve assumed that she’d changed her mind and returned to Fontaine Chic. Perhaps she’d chosen a different room. There were four others she might prefer. But none showed signs of life. So where was she?

JT headed for the terrace outside the master suite. As soon as he stepped outside he heard the sound of splashing. She’d gone for a swim. He grabbed a set of swim trunks from a drawer and changed. It wasn’t until he entered the closet to hang up his suit that he realized which bedroom she’d decided to sleep in.

His.

What had once been the empty half of the enormous his-and-hers closet was now filled with black dresses, casual daytime wear and several pairs of jeans. The shoe racks overflowed with pumps and sandals. He returned to the bedroom and discovered half his drawers filled with lacy lingerie, knit tops and scarves. The countertop in his bathroom bore perfume bottles and creams.

Holy hell.

He marched down the stairs at a deliberate pace, formulating how to approach Violet about this new development. It was one thing to perpetuate the myth of their happy marriage by living together. But sharing his room—his bed—with her was taking the playacting way too far.

JT stalked through the living room and stepped onto the pool deck. Violet stroked through the water, naked limbs breaking the surface and plunging back in again. Damn, but she was beautiful. Her movements were lazy, content. The exact opposite of the riotous emotions surging through JT.

He was standing at the edge of the pool before he even realized he’d moved. “I found all your things in my room. What’s going on?”

“I got to thinking your dad might have spies in your employ. I don’t want to give him any ammunition against you.” She didn’t meet his gaze, which made him wonder what she had to hide.

“I think you’re giving him too much credit.”

“Come for a swim. We can talk about it later.”

He wanted to get it resolved right now. JT dove in and swam underwater toward her. With just the pool lights to see by, he didn’t realize that she was naked until he was close enough to touch her.

He came up coughing.

“Are you all right?” She set her hands on his shoulders and peered at him.

“I thought we had an understanding about your skinny-dipping.”

To his immense shock, she hooked her fingertips into the elastic waistband of his swim trunks and pulled it a couple inches away from his stomach. Her touch against his bare skin brought him to a swift and fierce arousal. He clenched his teeth to contain a groan.

“You should try it,” she murmured, her smile come-hither. A second later he felt the snap against his belly as she let go. In a flash she was gone. Water splashed against his cheeks and blinded him as she dove sideways, swimming beyond his grasp in seconds.

Sputtering, he shook his head to clear his eyes and took off after her with a growl. It wasn’t until he caught her at the edge of the pool and pinned her against the wall that he remembered she was naked. Her thighs tangled with his and she hooked one foot around his calf to anchor herself to him.

“Kiss me,” she demanded, sliding her palms up the side of his neck and latching onto his hair. “Soft, slow, hard, deep. I don’t care. Just make me lose myself.”

His lips captured hers in a relentless assault that definitively declared that this time there would be no backpedaling, no stopping, no mercy. She accepted every stroke of his tongue, every nip of his teeth and gave him back frenzied desire and impatience. Her nails bit into his skin, her moans heightened his already explosive hunger. She writhed against him, her hips moving rhythmically against his erection, driving him wild.

He sucked the water from her neck, tasting chlorine and below that the sweetness of her skin. His breath caught as she threw her head back and offered him even more access. He wrapped his fingers around her delicate ribcage and lifted her until her perfect breasts bobbed above the water’s surface. She wrapped her thighs around his waist as he locked his mouth over one hard nipple. With her wet heat pressed tight to his abdomen, he sucked and nibbled first one breast, then the other until her breath came in short, tight pants.

Her lithe body trembled in his arms as he grazed his fingertips down her spine and splayed his hands over the firm planes of her butt. She’d been working her hips in an ever-increasing rhythm. What she wanted, she wasn’t getting and she unhooked her ankles from around his waist and let her feet drift to the pool bottom.

Once again he felt her tug on his trunks. This time she forced the fabric downward, freeing his erection. He hissed through his teeth as the pool water hit the sensitive head. The sound was followed a second later by his strangled moan as she closed her fingers around his hard length.

He slammed his mouth down over hers, plunging his tongue inward, all technique lost in the savage need to claim her. She matched his kiss with sweet ferocity, using her tongue and teeth to drive him wild.

“Give it all to me,” she murmured, stroking him in ever more tantalizing sweeps as he sucked on her neck.

She parted her thighs and placed the tip of him at her entrance. He nudged firmly against her hot wet core, and almost cried out at the agony of holding back, but remained perfectly still.

“Protection,” he garbled out the word, unsure how he was going let her go, walk all the way upstairs and fetch a condom from his nightstand.

“I’m on the pill.” She arched her back and rocked her hips forward, embedding him inside her before her words fully registered.

The tightness of her encased him and nothing JT had ever dreamed of matched the reality of Violet naked and in his arms. He put his hands on her hips and settled himself deeper still, hanging onto his control for dear life so he could make the moment into something they would both find satisfying.

“You are amazing,” he murmured as they rocked together in the pool, stirring the water as they kissed and caressed.

Time slowed. JT’s world narrowed to the rush of air through his lungs, the surge of heat in his groin and the warm silk of Violet’s skin caressing his.

“This is so much better than I imagined it would be,” she whispered, her breath tickling his ear.

“You thought about it?”

He wandered his hands over her back and down her thighs as his lips drifted along her shoulder. She’d locked the soles of her feet against his calves to anchor herself in the weightlessness of the water. It gave her the leverage to add a little twisting motion to the rhythmic movements of her hips. The power of that move was close to blowing a hole in his willpower. He ground his teeth against a groan.

“Night and day since you first started showing up at Baccarat.”

Her confession prompted him to offer one of his own. “Losing Rick to you was the best thing that ever happened to me.”

“You don’t say.” Her chest vibrated with a sexy laugh, making her breasts shift tantalizingly against him. Her tight nipples were searing points of heat that quickened his breath.

“Or it was,” he amended, unable to stave off the quickening of sensations any longer. “Until now.”

He moved more strongly into her and felt her close tightly around him, forming a tight sheath. The friction was almost too intense to handle. But if her body brought him acute pleasure, her dreamy smile was a balm for his spirit.

And then he felt her body tighten and her focus sharpen. Using all his willpower to hold off his own release, he watched her climb higher and higher. Her eyes flew open. Her sharp gasp was followed by a shudder. Only then did JT let himself go.

His orgasm came with such speed and intensity he wondered how he’d held it off as long as he had. The pool, Violet’s face, all vanished behind a wave of black. He was cast into the heavens. A thousand pinpoints of lights guided his flight. They rushed at him, through him. Each one left a mark, a permanent reminder of this perfect moment.

He came back to earth and realized that his chest hurt. The pain was caused by either his tortured lungs or the impossibly swift beat of his heart.

“Best sex ever,” Violet murmured, framing his face with her hands and smiling at him. Equally winded, she seemed less shaken by their turbulent lovemaking. “I knew it would be great with you, but wow.”

He couldn’t match her openness. What he felt for her was too immense, too raw.

“Yes.” It wasn’t eloquent, but it was heartfelt. “Wow.”

The corners of her eyes crinkled as her grin grew. “Am I still banned from skinny-dipping?”

Captivated by her happiness, he shook his head. “In fact, I plan to burn every bathing suit in the place.”

* * *

“You’re smiling a lot this morning,” Harper commented, eyeing Violet over a glass of orange juice.

It was Tuesday morning and the Fontaine sisters were meeting for their weekly breakfast, this morning in Scarlett’s office at Fontaine Richesse. Usually they met on Wednesdays, but Violet and JT were having their belated wedding reception at the ranch that evening and they all figured it would be a late night.

“Am I?” Violet sipped her green tea and tried to look nonchalant.

“Of course she’s smiling,” Scarlett put in. “She and JT have been shacked up for three days of postnuptial bliss.”

“I don’t think it can be called ‘shacked up’ if we’re married,” Violet corrected her.

Harper frowned in confusion. “You’re living together now?”

“If you’d pay attention to something other than your hotel once in a while,” Scarlett began, “you’d know that Preston showed up here and threatened to sue JT and Violet for fraud if their marriage wasn’t real.”

“He can’t possibly have a case,” Harper said.

Scarlett smirked. “Not anymore.”

“What I mean,” Harper continued, shooting Scarlett a look, “is there’s nothing in the corporate bylaws insisting the marriage must be real, just legal.”

“We were concerned that by taking us to court, he could prevent me from voting my shares at the upcoming shareholder meeting and remain CEO.”

A line formed between Harper’s brows. “I guess that’s possible. I just don’t know how likely.”

“We didn’t want to take the chance.”

“And because of that your relationship has become physical?”

Violet resisted looking Scarlett’s way for fear that her sister’s expression would make her laugh. Harper was a little too literal and that often kept her from finding the humor in a situation.

“Not exactly...”

“He’s crazy about her and vice versa,” Scarlett explained. “Unlike you and Ashton where you make each other crazy.”

“I have every right to be crazy,” Harper insisted. “The restaurant is behind schedule because he hasn’t been here to make decisions. And when he does make decisions, it puts us even more behind schedule because he wants to change things.”

Scarlett gave her sister a doubting look. “To say nothing of the fact that he’s gorgeous and sexy and your DVR is full of his television series.”

Harper’s scowl would have been more intimidating if she’d been able to meet Scarlett’s gaze. “It seems to me that you and Logan were in that drive-each-other-crazy place less than a month ago.”

Scarlett and her security-expert fiancé were so madly in love these days it was hard to remember just how much they used to antagonize each other

“That was then. Now we just drive each other crazy with passion.”

Harper’s response was a rude noise. Violet chuckled. She loved her sisters. To outsiders, it sometimes appeared as if the three of them didn’t get along, but in fact for three women who’d not known each other until their grandfather introduced them five years ago, they were as tight as siblings who’d grown up together. Maybe even tighter because there were no childhood battle scars.

“Putting aside all the
crazy
talk for a second,” Violet said, turning to Scarlett, “you said you had something important you wanted to discuss with me.”

After some meaningful eye contact with Harper, Scarlett went to her desk and brought back two files. She held one suspended in Violet’s direction and said, “I know I’ve told you a little about the files I inherited from Tiberius. This one is about Preston Rhodes.”

Curious, Violet accepted the file and quickly scanned it. The contents included old newspaper clippings about a flash flood drowning in the desert near Las Vegas as well as a grainy group photo of seven rough-looking young men. Below that was a piece of paper with a woman’s name and contact information on it. Charity Rimes.

“What am I looking at?” Violet asked.

“Grady and I think the man we know as Preston Rhodes is actually a local Las Vegas kid who was supposed to have drowned during a flash flood back in 1970.”

Violet glanced at Harper and saw in her sister’s expression the same skepticism she was feeling. “So, the newspaper report got it wrong? It wasn’t this George Barnes guy, but Preston Rhodes. How is that possible?”

“I think JT’s father—whose real name I think is George Barnes—switched identities with Preston Rhodes after Preston was killed in the flash flood.”

“That’s a pretty wild theory,” Harper interjected.