Surprised by Family: a Contemporary Romance Duet (17 page)

He appreciated the question—as it clearly gave him a foothold, a claim in the situation. Until the girls were out of earshot, however, his ability to respond to Rick appropriately was limited. “He can come if he wants,” he said, pitching his voice to make it clear his interest in Rick’s doings was minimal. He glanced down at Charlotte. “What kind of pancakes are you going to get, Charlotte?”

The question successfully changed the flow of the conversation, and the girls’ happy babbling dominated the discussion as they walked down the block and got a table at the neighborhood diner.

Baron was starting to feel better—more in control of the situation—as they were shown their booth. Leila obviously didn't want Rick around, so between the two of them they could handle it.

But then the girls got into a little squabble over who would get to sit next to Rick.

It hurt.

However irrational and however trivial it should have been, the fact that the girls would rather sit next to their father—despite how unworthy the man was of their affection—than next to Baron really hurt.

For the last few months, Baron had been the man the girls had wanted to be around the most.

He gave a little jerk of surprise when he felt a hand on his knee. Glancing over, he saw that Leila was watching him with both tenderness and anxiety as she gently squeezed his knee.

Baron gave her a small smile—his chest unclenching a little at this sign of her affection, this sign that she knew what he was feeling, that she cared about him.

Then he turned back to Rick and saw the man was watching them closely.

“We missed you, Daddy,” Jane said, patting her father on the arm. “We wanted you to come visit us before when you were supposed to.”

“I know,” Rick said. “I wish I could have, but I couldn’t help it.”

Baron closed his eyes briefly, disguising his expression. He simply couldn’t imagine a man who had daughters as remarkable as Charlotte and Jane but didn’t move heaven and earth to spend as much time with them as he could.

Of course, this was the same man who’d cheated on Leila. On
Leila
.

The thought of Rick screwing some other woman when he’d had Leila as his wife, Leila in his bed, raised Baron’s ire to such an extent that he had to fight not to clench his fists.

“Mr. Baron?” The childish voice broke through his brooding reverie. “Are you mad?”

Baron released a long, slow breath. Everything in his nature was screaming at him to use this opportunity to grind Rick into dust beneath his heel, for everything he’d done to Leila and the girls. For all of the reasons Baron despised him.

But he looked into Jane’s wide eyes and saw anxiety there. He couldn’t do it. “I’m not mad,” he assured her, almost surprised when he sounded mostly convincing.

“You aren’t?” Jane asked, looking from Leila to Baron with obvious concern.

“No,” Baron said, just a little hoarsely. “I’m not mad. Did I look grumpy? It's probably just because I’m hungry.”

He sighed with relief when the pancakes came just at the moment, halting the flow of the conversation. Jane had to focus on cutting her stack into neat little squares, but she hadn't completely forgotten her worry. When she darted a quick assessing look up at his face, Baron smiled at her, his eyes as soft as he could make them.

Then he reached his fork across the table and said, “I think I need some of your pancakes.”

Jane squealed in objection and tried to parry his fork with her own. After a teasing scuffle, she acquiesced to give him a neat little square of pancake.

“You can have a bite of mine too,” Charlotte volunteered, offering him her own pancakes, which were haphazardly sliced and drowning in syrup.

Baron reached over and forked a piece of her pancakes off too, knowing she'd be hurt if he left her out. Then he tried to swallow the bite without gagging on the overabundance of syrup.

“So what have my cupcakes been up to lately?” Rick asked, in an obvious attempt to switch the attention back to himself. The other man's expression appeared genuinely fond as he looked down at the girls. He did seem to care for them—at least, when he was around them.

“Ooh!” Charlotte exclaimed. “We’ve been playing Therm-o-ply!”

Rick blinked. “What now?”

“Therm-o-po-ly,” Jane pronounced, speaking slowly as if her father was a little dense. “Mr. Baron taught us.”

“He did? And how do you play that?”

The girls spent the next several minutes explaining the rules of the game.

Then Charlotte, who’d just cut off a big piece of pancake and stuffed it into her mouth, exclaimed, “And Mr. Baron made us a castle!”

Rick blinked again. “He made a castle?”

This prompting led to several more minutes of enthusiastic descriptions of the castle, the drawbridge, the moat, the fire-breathing sea monster, the horses, the flags, and the turret.

“And one time he came with us to see the dinosaurs,” Charlotte added, licking syrup off her fingers.

“Use your napkin, sweetie,” Leila said softly.  She’d been mostly quiet as the girls spoke, but she’d scooted a little closer to Baron so her thigh was now pressed against his.

“And he got us the castle book, don’t forget,” Jane chimed in, leaning over her father’s chest to see her sister.

“And he saved me from the tree!” Charlotte cried, her voice lifting in decibels dramatically as she remember this fundamental piece of information.

“Yeah, he rescued Charlotte from the tree!”

Rick met Baron’s eyes over the table, an obvious challenge in his expression, although his voice was still light. “It seems like Mr. Baron has been spending a lot of time with you.”

“Of course, he has,” Leila put in, her brow lowering.

“Not all the time like we want. Sometimes he goes out with Mommy by herself. Sometimes he has to work,” Jane said, frowning as her sober explanation made her think about past disappointments. “And so he can’t come over to see us or Mommy. But Mommy says we’re not supposed to complain or tell him we’re sad when he can’t come, so he doesn't feel bad.”

Baron, whose tension had been easing as the conversation progressed and the girls’ affection for him was so obviously displayed, parted his lips at this last bit and barely managed to keep from asking for verification of what Jane had just said.

Just a little thing. A thoughtless comment by a six-year-old girl.

But he couldn’t remember the last time someone had been sad because he wasn’t around.

***

Baron had been worried that, after the unexpected morning, he wouldn’t be able to focus on work for the rest of the day. But he actually got a lot accomplished, and for once he didn’t finish the day with a headache. He had to reschedule a meeting to leave as early as he’d planned, but he pretended to not to hear MaryAnn’s murmured comments about that.

He stopped to pick up dinner at a local bistro for him and Leila, her favorite salad with grilled chicken, pecans, dried cranberries, and balsamic strawberries.

Rick was spending the afternoon with the girls, and they were due back by seven-thirty. So, after they ate dinner, Baron worked on his laptop while Leila lounged on the couch and read.

At least, she was supposed to be reading, but as it got closer and closer to seven-thirty, Baron noticed her getting restless—watching the clock and glancing toward the window. At forty minutes after seven, when Rick and the girls still hadn’t arrived, Baron saw that Leila was staring at her book blankly. She hadn’t turned the page in ten minutes, and her face had paled a little.

“It’s just a power play,” Baron said quietly. “He’s pushing the limit on purpose. They’ll be here soon.”

Her expression twisted. “Are you sure?”

“Yes. He didn’t like that you didn’t drop everything to suit his agenda or offer to let him stay for Thanksgiving. This is just a gesture toward his independence. If he even thought about taking the girls...” He trailed off, not wanting his sudden surge of violence to worry Leila.

She knew what he’d been going to say anyway. “You’d hunt him down and destroy him. I know that. I don’t like to think of myself as a violent person, but I’d probably want you to...” This time she trailed off. Then she pulled herself together with a shake of her head.

“He wouldn’t take the girls, Leila. You know that, right?”

He despised Rick—the man was selfish and thoughtless—but Baron’s well-honed instincts about men like Rick made him certain that the other man wouldn’t try something so cruel and so incredibly stupid.

“Yeah,” Leila said with a hitch in her throat. “I do. He’s an ass, but he’s not
that
kind of an ass.” She looked a little sheepish. “I was just overreacting.”

“Perfectly natural.”

With a teasing lift of her mouth, she complained, “Well, you don’t have to look so calm and superior. You occasionally overreact yourself, you know.”

Baron chuckled. “Me? Never.”

Leila laughed with him for a moment, but then her eyes strayed back to the window. “So you really think it’s just a power play?”

Absurdly, Baron felt a little boost to his pride over the fact Leila was looking to him for advice about this. She always seemed to know what she was doing as a mother—and Baron obviously had no parenting skill or experience at all—so it was nice that he could help her feel better about this at least. “Yes. That’s what it is. I know men like Rick. He’ll probably show up about twenty minutes late—not late enough to be a real problem but also not when he was told to arrive.”

“Is that what you would do?” Her eyes were soft and fond.

“Maybe. In another situation—if I felt like someone was trying to undercut me. But I wouldn’t do it with the girls, and I certainly wouldn’t do it to you.”

Leila put down her book and walked over to squeeze into the big chair in which Baron was sitting. Since there wasn’t enough room for both of them, she ended up mostly on his lap.

Baron had to put down his laptop, but that was hardly a sacrifice.

She wrapped her arms around his neck. “I know you wouldn’t,” she murmured. “You really are the sweetest man in the world—did you know that?”

Baron couldn’t help but respond to her obvious affection, but his dignity necessitated his clearing his throat. “Uh, maybe we can find a more appropriate word for me than ‘sweet’.”

She laughed huskily against his neck. “Oh. What about adorable?”

“Try again.”

“Endearing?”

“Leila, really.”

“Lovable?” She gave him a sloppy kiss on the jaw.

“That’s a little better,” he replied with an exaggerated sigh. “But it still sounds like something one would call a kitten.”

“Hmm.” She was shifting in his lap, and her soft curves were doing wonderful, torturous things to his body. “How about this? You’re the most handsome, powerful, brilliant, thoughtful, masculine, sexy, and incredible man in the world.”

Baron captured her mouth and kissed her hungrily. Then he murmured against her lips, “I can live with that.”

Their interlude didn’t last any longer because familiar, childish laughter could be heard from outside the front door.

Baron looked at the clock. 7:50 exactly.

Leila poked him hard in the ribs. “Don’t gloat.”

A week later, Leila was straddling Baron’s lap in the back of his fancy chauffeured car, rubbing herself against his obvious arousal as he mouthed her breast through her silk blouse.

It had begun very innocently as a short lunch date, since it was one of the few times Baron had a free moment in his schedule all week. Then he’d expressed appreciation for her new suit, with its fitted jacket and sexy pencil skirt. He’d also liked the pearls and the very high heels she wore.

But it wasn’t until she told him that she was also wearing old-fashioned thigh-high stockings that things started to spiral out of control.

Leila was really turned on, and the fact that it was just after one-thirty on a Wednesday afternoon in a moving car in the middle of downtown Boston made her even hotter.

Baron was flushed and hard, slouched down in the seat with his jacket pushed off his shoulders and a glazed look in his eyes. She loved to see him like that—was still amazed that she had the ability to get such a powerful man into such a state.

Even after so many weeks, the sexual aspect of their relationship felt new to her. And unfamiliar. And exciting.

She arched back on Baron’s lap, letting her head tilt backward as she tried to catch her breath. Her hair had been secured in the chignon she felt worked most appropriately with her outfit, but Baron had pushed his fingers through it, pulling the clips out and causing the waves to fall down her back.

“Leila,” he asked thickly, his fingers tightening in the flesh of her bottom. “What do you want to do?”

She gasped out a laugh and leaned forward again, sliding her lips wetly toward his ear. “What do you think?”

“Thank God,” he groaned in absolute relief, causing her to giggle again.

Their course decided on, Leila helped him undo his pants and free his erection. Then she positioned herself above him, moved aside her panties, and carefully sheathed him with her body.

They both moaned on the penetration.

She leaned her head down to kiss him as they rocked together, pleasure and emotion rising inside her together. She loved how he felt—not just inside her but against her, beside her,
with
her.

She couldn’t believe she was making love to Baron James in the back of a car, hidden from the world and the driver by nothing more than some tinted windows.

She couldn’t believe he wanted to be part of her life.

“Damn, Leila,” he muttered, when she tore out of the kiss and started to ride him. “You’re beautiful. Incredible.”

Her cheeks flushed with pleasure and effort as she clung to his shoulders. She tried to keep her motion slow and rhythmic, but the urgency of her desire was too strong. She rode him harder, chasing the building pleasure—as intoxicated by the way he responded to her as she was by the way he made her body feel.

Soon, all she was conscious of was the heat and urgency of their coupling. His hot, hungry eyes, never leaving her face and her half-clothed form. His strong, clutching hands, gripping her body like she would slip away.  Her own intensifying gasps and grunts, too loud and helpless but impossible to silence as the sensations and need swallowed her up. His loosened tie. His glistening skin. The pencil skirt hiked up in an undignified bunch around her waist. The burn of her thighs and the dampness of her back.

And the full, delicious friction where they were joined.

She cried out, too loudly, as she came, her body shuddering and her spine arching back.

Baron stifled a rough exclamation as she tightened around him, and he jerked his head to the side with a twisted expression of effort.

She kept moving over him as she came down, expecting him to climax too. He didn’t. He reached up to grab her head and pull her down into another kiss. She whimpered against his mouth as the ripples of pleasure from her orgasm lingered.

Then he shifted his hand back to her bottom and started to guide her motion again, still hard inside her.

She tried to articulate the word “ambitious” so she could tease him a little, but it was a futile effort. All that came out was another moan of pleasure as the sensations started to build once more.

After she rode him eagerly for another minute, he moved his hand to rub her intimately, relying on her to keep her balance over him.

She cried out again at the intensified sensations from his massage, and her motion grew choppy and urgent. She came again after a moment. And the spirals of pleasure didn’t die away. She bounced clumsily as her body was bombarded with wave after wave of pleasure, and she was almost hoarse when Baron finally clutched her hips and started bucking up into her body, his control unleashed at last.

The fog of pleasure had cleared enough for her to watch as Baron’s face transformed with his release and to hear his guttural, unrestrained exclamation of pleasure.

He always came really hard, but the moment afterwards was even better. When he’d cling to her as if he needed her, his body completely relaxed and his arms holding her like she was precious.

Today, as she flopped hot, sweaty and exhausted on top of him, he gripped her just as tightly as ever.

Finally, she pulled off him and over into the seat beside him. Her body ached. Her beautiful suit was horribly wrinkled. Her top was damp on one breast from Baron’s mouth and damp on the back from her perspiration. And she was raw and too wet between the legs.

But still—it had been wonderful. She grinned at Baron foolishly and tried to straighten up her clothes.

He zipped himself up and chuckled at her expression. “You look a little worse for wear.”

“Well, so do you.” He did. And she couldn’t help but feel ridiculously proud that she had made him look so rumpled and hot and relaxed.

“I just have office hours this afternoon,” she added. “No one ever comes by. So I guess the wrinkled suit won’t matter.”

“It’s not that bad.” As the car pulled up outside James Hall on campus, he smiled at her fondly. “We’ll have to have lunch again this way soon.”

Leila laughed and leaned over to kiss him goodbye. “We’ll see about that. I know you’re busy this evening and all day tomorrow, but I’ll see you Friday to take the girls to the movies, right.”

“Right. I’ll call you tonight.”

She crawled out of the car, buttoning her jacket to hide the damp blouse and smoothing out some of the wrinkles in the skirt.

Then, feeling half-embarrassed and half-pleased with herself, she went up to her office, managing to avoid anyone she knew.

She got to her office and dropped her bag into the loveseat, walking over to the mirror to examine her appearance. Her hair was a mess. Her cheeks were bright red. Her lips looked a little swollen. And her clothes were very, very wrinkled.

It wouldn’t be too hard for someone to figure out what she’d just been doing. She decided to close her office door and pretend to not be there.

“I trust I’m not intruding,” a vaguely familiar voice came from the doorway of her office.

Leila gasped and whirled around, one of her hands flutteringly foolishly to her chest, like some innocent heroine in a Gothic novel.

Steven James stepped into her office, as slick and smug as ever, his dark eyes scarily observant.

“What are you doing here?” she demanded.

“Just paying a visit,” he explained, with a leisurely disinterest that belied whatever agenda had brought him here.

“What do you want?” She was amazed her voice was as steady and unbroken as it was, since her pulse raced and her breathing was rushed and painful.

For some reason, she was terrified by Steven’s presence here now.

“I believe I just explained,” he murmured, with a patience that was obviously put on. “I wanted to pay you a visit.”

“Stop tiptoeing around.
Why
are you paying me a visit?”

“I’ve never been one to tiptoe.” His eyes scanned her, from her tangled hair to her high-heeled pumps. “I’m glad to see you had a nice
lunch
with my brother.”

Leila’s cheeks burned, as there was no way to hide from him what she’d just been doing with Baron.

“I was surprised,” Steven continued. “I’ll admit I was surprised when I discovered he was dating you. I remember you as a child, of course, and I couldn’t imagine what he would see in the silly little girl I recall your being.”

The words were an insult—in almost every way. Leila shouldn’t have been surprised, but it had been a while since she’d been insulted so directly, right to her face. She just stared at the man, feeling disoriented and like this wasn’t really happening to her.

Something changed in Steven’s expression as his eyes crawled over her body again. “But you’ve changed,” he said, his voice slightly husky. "You don't look like a little girl anymore."

She’d seen that expression in Baron’s eyes, and she’d heard that note in Baron’s voice. And, with Baron, it aroused her, made her feel gorgeous and sexy.

With Steven, it just made her feel dirty.

“Say whatever you came here to say and get out of here,” Leila gritted out.

HE took a few steps closer to her. Leila had to fight not to step back. “I never understood why you had such an embarrassing crush on my brother. I was closer to your age.”

“I never even liked you.” She sucked in a breath and then regretted it, since the motion brought Steven’s attention to her breasts.

“You never considered it because you were always blinded by my brother. But it might be worth considering.” He smiled again and reached up to cup her face with his cool hand.

Leila stared at him, shocked beyond even reacting.

“Don’t pretend you’re not tempted,” Steven said.

Then he leaned down to kiss her, his lips sliding against hers, his tongue darting out.

The stunned fog in Leila’s brain took just a moment to clear. Then she realized exactly what was happening.

She tore herself away from him. Then pushed him away from her with a hard shove. “Bastard,” she hissed. “Don’t you ever touch me!”

Steven looked briefly surprised—although surely he couldn’t be so sure of himself that he couldn’t imagine she might have reacted that way. Then he laughed, as scary and disturbing a sound as she’d ever heard.

“Get out!” Leila rasped, holding on to as much dignity as she could. “Get out. Right now.”

Steven kept laughing but—to her infinite relief—he made his way toward the door. “We’ll be seeing each other soon. I’ll make sure of it.”

Before she could respond to this appropriately, he gave her an exaggerated nod, a mockery of civility. “It was, as always... a pleasure.”

He left before she could scream and throw something at him.

She ran over and slammed the door shut. Then she locked it. Then she rubbed her mouth violently with the back of her hand and tried to spit away the lingering feel of his kiss.

She leaned against the closed door, shuddering, gasping, and trying to think what to do.

Her first instinct was to call Baron. But telling him what his brother just did would enrage him. It would further stoke the fires between him and Steven. And that was a conflict that could end up hurting—even crushing—Baron.

Leila didn’t want to do that, but she couldn’t lie to him either.

So she closed her eyes and tried to decide what, and how, to tell Baron.

All his life, Steven had wanted anything that belonged to Baron. He’d taken it whenever he could, simply because it was Baron’s.

Maybe that was all this was about.

She certainly couldn’t think of anything else Steven had hoped to accomplish today.

***

“Can you read it again, please, Mommy?” Jane asked, adjusting in her bed and peering at the final page of the dog-in-the-castle book.

“No, sweetie. Just once tonight. You both need to get to sleep now.”

Charlotte let out a dramatic sigh, but she crawled out of Jane's bed, where they'd been reading the book with Leila, and into her bed without complaining. “Why do you have to see Mr. Baron right now, Mommy?” she asked, pulling the covers up to her chin.

Leila leaned over to kiss Jane. Then she leaned over to kiss Charlotte too. “I told you already. I need to talk to Mr. Baron, and sometimes it’s better to talk in person than on the phone.”

Leila hadn’t yet told Baron about his brother coming to her office that afternoon. It felt too awkward to explain over the phone. Baron seemed to have recognized that something was wrong because he offered to come over to her place that night, after his dinner meeting, but Leila had told him not too.

She didn’t want to have that particular conversation with the girls in the house. That much was true.

But she was also postponing the conversation for as long as possible. That much was cowardly.

So, over an early supper with the girls, she’d come to the reluctant decision that she should go over to Baron’s place that evening to talk. She’d been too nervous to call and too unsure of how to explain the visit, so she figured she’d just show up. His dinner meeting would be over by nine.