Sophie's Playboy (24 page)

and formal dinner parties so she could show off her children."

Her heart ached for all he'd missed. Rock music and swingsets were nothing compared to being loved and accepted by your parents. She cupped his cheek. "That's so sad." Parker turned his head to kiss her palm. "You didn't have a chance to be a kid."

"No, I did. I played baseball and went to school dances."

"Yet no Bon Jovi."

He gave her a wry smile. "Private school dances. We had to waltz." He laughed at her disgust. "It wasn't bad, Sophie.

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weren't there to give it to us. We lived it basically on our own." He bent and kissed her. "Now, can we please go to bed?"

She gazed at him for a moment, knowing he didn't need or want her pity, knowing she couldn't fix his past or even his present. All she could do was be his future, if he'd let her.

She stretched up to return his kiss. "As you wish."

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CHAPTER 14

As you wish
. Parker remembered hearing that somewhere.

He tapped his pen and struggled to remember the reference.

He barely heard a whisper of it in his head, but when he tried to grasp it, it disappeared.

Frustrated, he tossed the pen on the desk. He'd come to the office on a Saturday planning to catch up on all the busywork that piled up during the week. Betty had even come in for a couple of hours, though he'd told her not to, and was trying to help him stay focused and organized.

But all he could think about were Sophie's last words before words became unnecessary.

"Last of the letters to sign, boss." Betty carried in a sheaf of paper an inch and a half thick.

"How the hell did you finish those all so quickly?" She hadn't been at her desk longer than ten minutes. He grabbed his pen and started to sign.

"I'm efficient." She shrugged and pulled the signed letters off the pile as he finished each one. "They were revisions.

Quick."

As you wish
. The phrase rolled through his head again, like a neon announcement sign. He ground his teeth and scrawled the last two signatures.

"Betty, help me out. 'As you wish.' Why do I know that phrase?"

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"Ah.
The Princess Bride
." She picked up the last of the stack and his empty coffee mug. "I'm surprised. Not the kind of movie I'd expect you to be interested in."

Now
he remembered. "It's one of Mare's favorites." The hero in the story couldn't tell the princess he loved her, so he simply said, "As you wish" to her every order.

The idea that Sophie could be doing the same thing stunned him. He knew she felt it. He could see it in her eyes when she looked at him, hear it in her cries when they made love. It showed in the little things she did for him, like cooking his bacon extra crisp or letting him read the business section of the paper first. But she didn't say it, which made him feel she knew him better than anyone ever had in his life.

Was she pushing him toward the next step with that one gentle comment?

"Parker."

He realized he was staring blindly at Betty's elbow.

"What?"

"Is that all, or do you want me to watch you brood some more?"

"I don't brood." He picked up his pen again—might as well tie the thing to his hand with a bungee cord—and tried to look professional. "Yes, that's all. You should go home."

"Like I have anything better to do." She went out the door, still muttering, and closed it behind her.

Parker put thoughts of love aside as best he could. He still had a business to run, and Sophie would wait. He was confident of that.

His intercom buzzed. "Parker, Jason's on line one."

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Parker grinned as he picked up the phone. "Jason, buddy.

How the heck are you?"

"Getting married, guy. Where've you been? You're supposed to be my best man."

Parker searched his brain for the date of the wedding.

October. They still had a way to go.

"Don't you want me to be?"

Jason made a disgusted sound. "I haven't seen you or heard from you in weeks. Not since you started doing that stupid radio show and making it with Sophie the Shark. What do you think?"

Jason was right. Parker rarely went to the club anymore.

He'd golfed only twice all summer, and one of those times was with Sophie. The woman had already changed his life.

"I'm sorry, Jason. I guess I let ... things get in my way. I'll understand if you don't want me in the wedding party."

"Hell, yeah, I want you in the wedding party. Darlene would have a fit if I kicked you off of it. She's got everything planned to a petal and will kill me if I make changes now. So, ya wanna golf tomorrow?"

"Uh, well, I'm going to dinner with Sophie's family."

"Geez. Fine. Blow me off again." But Jason's tone was jolly instead of annoyed. They settled on an early tee time on Tuesday and hung up amiably.

Parker wished all his relationships were so easy to handle.

* * * *

He drove the Porsche to Brook Hollow on Sunday. He knew there were plenty of reasons for the Macgregors to find him 227

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wanting. Even knowing it was macho and immature, he wanted to demonstrate right off the bat that providing for their daughter wasn't one of them.

Sophie didn't comment on the car. She relaxed into the drive and gave him a running commentary on the people he was going to meet. It was a larger group than he'd expected.

"Dad is a plumber. He's big and blustery when he wants to be, and sometimes puts on this fake brogue. He's dependable as the sun and not very scary, though he might try to be."

"Why?"

She looked at him from the corner of her eye. "Well, I haven't brought a guy home since, well, since high school."

Geez
. "Well, let's not add any pressure, now."

"Sorry. Mom is a whirlwind and loves everyone. Last year she kind of went berserk. Like her life was suddenly much too routine and dull. Maybe an empty nest backlash or something. Anyway, she went on a vacation on her own, then started clearing out the house of all our stuff, turned our rooms into a fitness center, an entertainment suite, and a guest bedroom. Took up all kinds of crazy hobbies. I think she's finally settling down, though she hasn't found her center yet."

Parker wondered how much of Sophie's recent rebellion and transfer to the radio show was a residual effect of her mother's clean sweep. "Her center?"

"Whatever fulfills her. For nearly thirty years it was her family. Now we don't need her, at least not in the same way.

Anyway, she has too much energy and she'll force you to eat too much food."

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Sophie adjusted her seatbelt so that it fell precisely between her breasts. Parker found his attention wandering as he admired the way it pressed her dress against her. He glanced from the road to her chest again. Her nipples had hardened. He looked up and saw her watching him.

"You'd better not do stuff like that in my parent's house."

His face burned and he realized he was flushing. "Sorry."

Damn it. He was already acting like a teenager and they were only halfway to Brook Hollow.

"Don't be sorry." Sophie's voice was husky. She laid her hand on his thigh. "Do you want to pull over and, um, relieve some tension before we get there?"

His hands tightened and jerked the wheel. "Jesus, Sophie, I'm having a hard enough time here." Her hand dipped between his thighs. "Cut it out. This is not the impression I want to make on your family."

She giggled. "The pup tent impression?"

"Yeah. The 'I-obviously-can't-keep-my-hands-to-myself-but-I'll-try-to-fool-you-about-my-intentions' impression."

Sophie finally moved her hand away, and Parker forced himself to keep his eyes on the road and the speedometer at fifty-five. A speeding ticket would be the icing on the cake of his humiliation this afternoon.

"So finish telling me about your family."

"Okay. Jake and Kira you met, and you know what they went through to get together. You'll meet the baby, though I doubt you'll be able to hold him. Too many doting grandparents.

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"Speaking of grandparents, Jake's mom and dad are coming to dinner tonight, too. They were like a second set of parents to us, since they're my parents' best friends."

Great. Two sets of judgmental parents. "What are their names?" he asked resignedly.

"Fran and Luke. They lived in France for a while. Luke was teaching music there. They moved back almost two years ago. But you'll have something to talk about with them."

Which implied he wouldn't otherwise. That eased his misgivings by nothing.

"You met Brianna at the station. She's an elementary school teacher and does some bookkeeping during the summer. She's got some restless thing going on, too." Sophie shook her head. "I don't know what got into all of us. Kira changed her life, Mom changed hers, I adjusted mine. Now all of a sudden Brianna thinks she needs adventure."

"I could make some suggestions."

Sophie glared at him. "Nothing dangerous."

"With the proper precautions, skydiving and bungee jumping are perfectly safe." Sophie punched him in the shoulder and he laughed. "Relax. She'll think of those things on her own if they'll work for her."

"That's what I'm afraid of. You don't need to push her along." She sighed. "I'm afraid she'll get reckless and get involved with some loser. She's jealous of Kira and of—me."

Her voice caught on the last word.

"Jealous of you, because you have me?"

"Hm-m." The noise she made neither agreed nor disagreed.

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You do have me
. The words made it to his tongue, but he bit them back. Saying it would make parting later hurt that much more. If they parted. He would be convinced it wasn't going to happen if he didn't have this family thing hanging over his head.

Relax
, he told himself.
Wait to see how it goes before you
condemn yourself to ex-dom
.

He followed Sophie's directions and parked in front of a modest suburban house. A golden retriever romped on the front lawn with Brianna and Jake. A laughing Kira watched from the side, as did an older man and woman standing on the porch with their arms around each other. It was a Norman Rockwell scene.

Nothing could have been more symbolic.

* * * *

Sophie was acutely aware of Parker hovering behind her, nervous tension like a force field around him. She'd led him to the porch first. Get the worst over with, she figured, though what he thought was the worst was likely to be the easiest overall. Her parents weren't a tough sell.

She should have told Parker that. He looked six shades paler than his usual color.

"Mom, Dad, this is Parker Cornwall. Parker, Elyse and Duncan Macgregor. You can call them Mom and Dad." She cursed her flippant tongue when he paled even more.

"I think I'll stick to Mr. and Mrs. Macgregor for now." He shook her father's hand, then held out a Longaberger basket full of household smellies, as her mother called the candles, 231

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oils, and sachets. "I brought you a little something. I hope you don't mind that it's not wine or flowers."

"Oh, no, this is lovely, Parker." She stepped forward and would have kissed him if she wasn't a foot shorter than he was. Instead she squeezed his upper arm. "So thoughtful of you. Call me Elyse, please." As she turned away, she fluttered her fingers in front of her and mouthed "hot" to her daughter.

Sophie winced. She didn't need her mother rating her dates.

"Let's all go sit out back," Elyse suggested. "Kids, we're going to the back deck," she called. Kira waved her acknowledgement and said something to Jake before turning to follow them.

Sophie kept her hand in Parker's as they walked through the house and out the back door. She tried to view the way-too-familiar house through his eyes, but stopped when she noted curling wallpaper, ceiling stains, and scuff marks on the hall's hardwood floor from their relentless ins-and-outs over the years. She hadn't been inside his father's mansion on the Fourth of July, but she would bet dollars to donuts there were no scuff marks.

She didn't want Parker to find her family beneath him.

Of course, if she was really worried about that, he wouldn't be here. So she relaxed and prayed he wouldn't think her whole family was crazy and he wanted no part of them.

"Lemonade?" her mother offered on their way through the kitchen. "I made it this morning, so it's nice and cold."

A chorus of "yeahs" was punctuated by a simple, "yes, please." Elyse beamed at Parker. "
Some
one was raised with 232

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manners. Obviously none of my kids were." She chuckled and enlisted his help with the tray. "Thank you, dear."

Sophie went ahead to the deck and tried hard not to worry about Parker being alone with her mother. She really didn't know what was going on in there, because she hadn't been exaggerating when she said she hadn't brought a guy home since high school. Even then, it was always someone she'd grown up with and her parents knew him or knew about him.

This was completely different.

"Calm down," Kira said, pulling Sophie's hand away from her mouth. "Biting your nails isn't going to help Parker get through the interrogation."

"You really think she's interrogating him?"