“Should you be telling the new wife all this stuff?”
“It’s on a need-to-know basis.” He dipped down close and lowered his voice conspiratorially. “Dana is poison. She told Connor she wanted children, but he didn’t believe her.”
Despite her qualms, Victoria couldn’t resist probing for more information. It was unlikely to be forthcoming from Connor. “Why?”
“He thought her work meant too much for her to take time out for kids.”
Uh-oh. That went some way toward explaining his attitude in relation to Dylan with her. “How do you know all this?”
He sat back in his chair and selected a toothpick. “I watched … and they sniped at each other sometimes. And after they split up Connor came to London and I took him on a pub crawl.”
Victoria frowned.
“Think of it as therapy—it was the only way I could get him to talk.”
“You’re devious.”
“Very,” he said with immense satisfaction. “And you’d better remember that, because I’m counting on you to feather Connor’s nest and keep him happy.”
Victoria laughed at the outrageous comment. But the sound dried in her throat when a hand landed on her waist. “Be careful of my baby brother.”
Connor’s husky growl close to her right ear caused her to shiver with delight.
“He’s just been warning me of how dangerous he is.” She slanted a mirthful look up at Connor.
Resting his arms across the back of her chair, he leaned closer, his body warm and his male scent familiar. Shuddery sensations of awareness tingled over her nape as her new groom said, “Unfortunately, it’s all true.”
“Right.”
“See, I told you to be careful of me.” Brett looked as innocent as an angel. “Now I’m off to whisper some secrets to Dylan.”
“More like flirt with Anne,” Connor murmured as Brett took off down to the water. He slid into the chair that Brett’s desertion had freed.
The latent tension in Victoria wound a notch tighter. No longer laughing, she pivoted on her seat to face Connor. “Brett tells me you brought him up.”
“He exaggerates.”
“So how old was he when your parents died?”
“You mean he didn’t get around to telling you everything?” The humor vanished, and his eyes cooled, becoming remote.
“He ran out of time. But I deserve to know—I’m your wife, remember?”
“In name only.”
The terse retort came like a slap in the face and she looked down, determined he shouldn’t see how he had wounded her.
“Brett was fifteen.”
Victoria snatched up the olive branch. Driven by an overwhelming need to know more about him, she lifted her chin and asked, “And you were?”
“Twenty-two.”
“Twenty-two! That would have been a demanding time of your life.”
Connor didn’t say anything.
“It was good of you to look after him,” she persisted.
“Anyone would have done it.”
“No, they wouldn’t.” Her father had shown next to no responsibility for his wife and child. Yet Connor had single-handedly raised his brother. She studied his guarded features, admiring the purpose and determination in the rocklike jaw, the sweep of the wide cheekbones and the dark hair that the late August wind had ruffled, giving him a sexy, rumpled look. “And now you’re doing it again. For Dylan.”
He shrugged. “Michael was my friend—my best friend, as it turned out.”
Without the irony, she might never have asked, “Tell me about your business partner.”
“Brett talk about Paul, too?”
“No.”
“So what brought on this bout of curiosity?”
His gaze was unnerving. Victoria gave a careless shrug and reached for her sunglasses. “Perhaps I’m just trying to understand what would drive a man’s friend to behave like that.”
“You think I drove him to do it?”
“I didn’t say that!” She blew out a breath in frustration. “I think what he did to you was despicable.”
“And what do you think of Dana’s behavior?”
She met his gaze squarely. “I thought that was pretty shabby, too.”
He nodded slowly as though her answer had satisfied a question deep inside him. Then, pinning her with his intimidating gaze, he said, “I once heard you tell Suzy that you didn’t blame Dana one bit.”
Victoria slipped her sunglasses on, and frowned. “I said that? When?”
“The day that we first met. You called me a jerk.”
Her eyes went around behind the dark lenses. “You heard that?”
“So you remember.”
“Yes, I was furious with you for attacking Suzy.” And it would have knifed him when he was already down. “So that’s why you were so hostile to me at the wedding.”
“Partly.”
She’d thought he’d taken an unreasonable dislike to her, and that had hurt. To learn that her own behavior had been a major part of the problem made her want to groan in dismay. “I’d found out while I was away on a grueling weeklong audit that Suzy was getting married. I was concerned about Suzy.” She paused, then decided he deserved the whole truth. “I was dog tired and your in-your-face arrogance was more than I could stomach.” Of course she’d bristled in return and the whole sorry situation had snowballed.
“And the other part of your hostility? Where did that come from,” she asked, curious now.
“It’s complicated.”
He was a complicated man. She decided to humor him, make him laugh. She shifted her chair back a little. “Come on, how complicated can it be? You’re a male, men are supposed to be easy.”
“I am definitely easy,” he deadpanned.
Victoria rolled her eyes. “You’re not getting out of this conversation by relying on sexual innuendo.”
“I wanted to see you blush so deliciously again.”
“I don’t blush.” She felt the rush of color even as he quirked a dark brow at her.
“That was so much easier than I thought,” he murmured, his eyes full of lazy humor.
“Oh, stop it!” She didn’t know where to look. He was altogether overwhelming in this mood. “Tell me the other reason you disliked me.”
“You reminded me of Dana.”
Her breath caught. Ouch. All relaxation and lazy desire fled. “I would never do what she did to you.”
She turned as Brett and Anne came up the grassy back toward them, Dylan happily squealing in Brett’s arms. “Don’t confuse me with Dana, Connor—I’m nothing like her.”
“Sure,” said Connor from behind her.
But he sounded far from convinced.
Silence fell over the house.
Victoria had discarded the pale-ivory suit she’d worn for the wedding, and showered. Anne had long since left for home, and Brett had taken off to meet the old friends he was staying with. Victoria set the empty baby bottle on a table beside her, Dylan having been lulled to sleep by Connor’s reading. She looked over the baby’s sleeping head to where Connor lay sprawled on the dark-blue carpet at the foot of the rocker, his head propped up on his elbow … watching her.
She shifted, and the nursing chair rocked in a gentle motion.
“Is the baby getting heavy?”
“A little,” Victoria prevaricated, taking the easy excuse he offered for her sudden restlessness.
Connor pushed himself to his feet in one lithe movement. “I’ll put him to bed.” His eyes sought hers. “Then we can go downstairs and share a toast to our marriage.”
Butterflies fluttered in her stomach at the thought of being alone with Connor. “Oh, he’s fine—”
But it was too late. Connor had already swept Dylan up.
For an instant the emptiness in her arms roused an ache of separation and she felt a flare of anxiety that she might never hold Dylan again.
She shook off the foolish fancy.
There would be lots of time to spend with her baby. She would be here for every day of his life—she could watch him grow, reach out to the world, become a real, rounded person.
Marriage to Connor had ensured that.
And, in spite of their differences in the past, both of them were committed to making this unlikely marriage work.
It had to.
Not only for Dylan, but for them, too.
Pulling her dressing gown more tightly around her, Victoria crossed the room to the oak crib where Connor stood, his broad shoulders accentuated by the white dress shirt, his h*ps lean in dark pants. She leaned forward as he tucked Dylan in.
“He’s getting big. Must be devouring rubber bands.” Maternal pride filled her as she studied the length of the oblivious baby. “He’s going to be tall one day.”
Connor pulled up the patchwork Peter Rabbit quilt. “He’s still just a baby. So many hopes and dreams tied up in one little person.”
The words moved her. “You feel that way, too?”
He turned his head, and in the dim glow of the nursery lamp part of his face remained in shadow. “I love him.”
She hadn’t imagined Connor capable of love. He’d always seemed too remote, too self-sufficient. Yet clearly he loved Brett, and now he was telling her that he loved Dylan, too. The tender expression he wore as he glanced down at Dylan made Victoria feel all soft and molten inside.
Connor doesn’t talk much about himself, Brett had said earlier. Well, she’d just have to learn how to draw him out, Victoria decided. The man she’d just glimpsed would be worth finding.
Downstairs the overhead lights in the living room blazed, illuminating the sculpted lines of the wide deck outside and reflecting off the glistening surface of the swimming pool under the night sky beyond.
“What about a glass of champagne?” Connor offered, and Victoria nodded.
He pushed some buttons in a wall panel and the brightness in the room dimmed, immediately transforming the mood from stark sophistication to shadowed intimacy. Victoria came to a dead standstill in the middle of an exquisite kelim and cast him a wary glance.
The invitation had been for a toast, she’d thought—not a seduction.
He extracted a bottle of champagne from a fridge concealed in a mahogany wall unit and two long-stemmed glasses from a cubbyhole above, and came toward Victoria where she stood dithering. Giving her a glass, he took her free hand.
Immediately, conflicting sensations rushed through Victoria. Trepidation. Nerves. And something far too close to desire for her comfort. But instead of fighting to free her hand she let him lead her to the black leather couch, her heartbeat loud in her ears.
“I prefer to sit on the deck outside at night, but it’s a little fresh out there tonight.” Connor increased her confusion by sinking down beside her instead of choosing the matching couch on the other side of the Murano-glass coffee table. After he’d filled both glasses, he said, “We’re paying the price for those open blue skies earlier.”
Determined to keep the conversation neutral, she said, “I’m not surprised you spend a lot of time on the deck—the view of the bay is simply stunning.”
It had been one of the first things about the house to capture her attention—right then she’d seen what Connor had meant. With its hardwood floors, big spaces, wide lawns and sparkling pool, this was the ideal place for a boy to grow up.
“And we were fortunate with the glorious weather today,” she added when he made no move to touch her. Get a grip, she told herself. They had a deal. She relaxed enough to take a sip of her bubbly wine.
“To my bride.”
Victoria couldn’t read his expression. The subtle tension notched upward. She decided to take the toast at face value and raised her glass in return. “My groom.”
He scooted closer and clinked his glass to hers. A sharp ting rang out. They sipped … and over the rims of the glasses their eyes held.
A bolt of electricity sizzled between them.
Victoria tore her gaze from his.
His hand came up and wrenched the black bow tie from his throat, peeled open the top button of his shirt. Victoria’s breath caught as her attention honed in on the ripple of a pulse under the swarthy skin. She didn’t dare raise her eyes lest she meet his and be scorched by more shudders of desire.
He shifted beside her. Aware of every inch of his long body, of the coiling muscle of his thighs under his dark, formal pants, Victoria stayed absolutely immobile. He leaned closer, and her breath dried up.
God.
“I should—”
“I think I should—”
They both stopped. Victoria gave an awkward laugh, and fluttered a quick sideways glance at him. “I was going to say I should go to bed … it’s been a long day.”
“And I was going to say I should kiss my bride,” said Connor with wry humor.
“Oh.”
She knew he’d seen her alarm because one side of his mouth kicked up.
“I still think I should.” He leaned nearer and, when she did nothing, he pressed his lips to hers.
For a long moment there was no sound.
Then he lifted his head. “Not so scary, was it?”
“I wasn’t scared,” she objected, all too conscious of the hard-edged features and his unblinking silver-gray gaze.
His hand reached out and his fingertips traced her brow bone. “Then why the wide eyes?”
Okay, so maybe she had been scared. Not of him, but of responding too enthusiastically to anything he might try, taking the kiss far beyond the kind of intimacy he intended. Like she did every time he kissed her.
Connor had a knack of making her want … more.
“We agreed no sex. You took me by surprise,” she sputtered.
He laughed. “A kiss is a long way from sex.”
Now he thought she was prissy. Damn. But she wasn’t going to let him roll her over. “It’s a darn good start along the road. Our bargain was that I marry you to give Dylan a stable home. No sex involved.”