Mrs. Garrison.
Before she could digest those words Adam cupped her face in his palms and covered her mouth with his. This wasn’t a tentative seal-the-deal peck. Adam kissed like a man assured of his welcome. His mouth branded hers, stamping her with ownership, and then his tongue separated her lips and swept the sensitive inside of her mouth as if he had every right to be there.
Tasting. Teasing. Tempting.
His kiss invited her to a party of sensual delights she had no doubt a man of his experience could provide. She hadn’t had a lover since Tommy, and he’d been a twenty-three-year-old selfish jerk. The men before Tommy had been just as clumsy, just as selfish.
Adam’s kiss promised satisfaction and she felt her control slipping. He overwhelmed her senses with his taste, his scent, his touch, and her hormones did a rain dance in hopes of ending the nine-year drought. The kiss felt so good, so right, that she lost herself in a hot rush of need, dug her toes in the shifting sand and pushed herself deeper into his embrace. Every inch of her body yearned to accept his invitation, to find out if lovemaking could actually be as good as it was in the romance novels she read.
She vaguely registered the birds screeching overhead, the waves crashing nearby, but it was Cassie’s laughter that jarred Lauryn back to reality.
What are you doing?
She ripped her mouth free.
Adam breathed harshly. Hunger blazed in his eyes as he held her gaze, and she realized her mistake. She’d done a lot of less than honorable things in her time, things that made her cringe with shame. But she’d never been a tease.
That kiss, laden with years of pent-up passion, had promised something she had no intention of delivering.
“Sober enough to come to the phone?”
Lauryn nearly choked on her champagne when she heard Adam’s question as she reentered the den after changing out of her wedding dress.
Okay, so maybe this was her second glass since Cassie and Brandon had left, and she’d had one two hours ago after dinner with her slice of wedding cake. Still, she should switch to coffee unless she wanted another wedding night like her first. One she couldn’t remember. Drowning her nerves and her doubts wasn’t working, anyway.
Adam’s discarded tux jacket draped the back of a nearby chair. He stood facing the darkness outside the glass doors with both elbows bent beside his head and his white dress shirt stretched taut across his broad shoulders. The table lamp reflected off his wedding band drawing her attention to the cell phone pressed to his left ear.
“I’ll wait while you get her, Lisette.”
Lauryn realized he wasn’t talking to her.
He turned. His gaze collided with hers and then slowly drifted over her navy knit polo top, past her khaki knee-length shorts to her legs, bare feet and back up again. He’d unfastened his tie and the top three buttons of his shirt, but he looked tense instead of relaxed.
Welcome to the club.
He angled the phone away from his mouth. “I’m calling my mother to tell her about the wedding. Need to call anyone?”
Guilt sank its teeth into her like a great white shark. “No. Thanks.”
“Do you have any family? I didn’t ask or give you the option of having someone at the ceremony.”
“There’s only my…mother. But she’s leaving in a few days for a fifteen-day South Pacific cruise. I didn’t want to bother her.”
Susan and Lauryn’s father had booked the cruise before he died. Rather than cancel the trip Susan had decided to go in his memory and had asked Lauryn to accompany her. But Lauryn wasn’t ready yet. Not ready to forgive the lie or to give up on her quest to learn about her birthmother.
“You’re not concerned she’ll hear about our marriage from another source? Brandon’s sending out a press release tomorrow.”
“She lives in Sacramento. I can’t see the newspapers out there carrying the story. Can you?”
“Probably not.”
“I’ll tell her when she gets back.” Or never. Lauryn had already disappointed Susan in a dozen different ways. Why do so again, especially now when their relationship was already strained?
His gaze raked her again. She bit her lip. Ever since that blasted wedding kiss he’d looked at her differently. Sexually. As if she’d slipped into something from Frederick’s of Hollywood instead of Lands’ End.
That wasn’t good.
He stiffened and turned back to the window. “Hello, Mother…I’m in the Bahamas. I called to tell you I got married this afternoon…to Lauryn Lowes, Estate’s accountant…. No, you’ve never met her….”
Lauryn cringed. Rather than eavesdrop she retreated to the kitchen to give Adam privacy. She poured out the rest of her champagne, washed the flute and then put on the tea kettle more for something to do than for the need for caffeine. Her conscience probably wouldn’t let her sleep tonight, anyway.
What would Adam’s family think of this hasty wedding? Of her? She wasn’t one of their affluent circle. At least, she hadn’t been able to prove her connection yet. Would she ever? And would being Adrianna Laurence’s illegitimate child be a detriment or an asset?
A sound made her turn. Adam stood on the threshold. “We need to make arrangements to move the stuff from your apartment into storage.”
A mental door slammed shut. An escape route sealed. “My lease doesn’t expire for months.”
“You can sublet. For appearances’ sake you need to vacate.”
“I’ll…I’ll check into subletting.” She knew wasting money on rent wasn’t wise, but giving up her apartment seemed so…final.
She turned back to the mahogany variety box of Island Rose Tea, a Bahamian specialty, and dithered over her selection. Maybe the Cat Island Chamomile would calm her.
Fat chance.
Ever conscious of Adam watching and waiting only a few yards away, she found a mug in the cabinet and sugar on the counter and then pulled the creamer from the refrigerator.
When she could stall no longer she faced him. He’d propped a shoulder against the doorjamb. His hair looked a little more disheveled than usual, making her fingers itch to smooth it.
Ridiculous. No touching except when required by an audience.
“What did you tell your mother?” she asked. “About us, I mean. When Cassie asked today I didn’t know what to say. We need to be to be on the same page.”
“Agreed.” His unwavering gaze made her fidgety. “What did you tell Cassie?”
She’d been caught off guard because she and Adam hadn’t concocted a cover story. Reluctantly, Lauryn had admitted she’d developed a crush on Adam after meeting him at the initial interview. But she wasn’t telling him that. “That we met at work and tried to keep our involvement quiet because fraternization is against Estate policy.”
“That’s good. I’ll use that.”
“But what did you tell your mother?”
“Just what you overheard. That I married Estate’s accountant today. Mother wasn’t sober enough to process more. You’ll soon discover she has a drinking problem. If you want to have a coherent conversation with her then you have to do it before noon.”
She heard suppressed anger—or was it frustration?—and maybe a hint of concern in his voice. “What about your brothers and sisters? Besides Cassie, you have two of each, right?”
“Right. My brothers, Parker and Stephen, are older, my sisters, Brooke and Brittany, the twins, are younger. I’ll e-mail them.”
“I don’t have any siblings, but I can’t imagine delivering such big news via an impersonal e-mail. Don’t you want to call them?”
“We’re not that close.”
Sympathy welled within her—sympathy she couldn’t afford to feel for him if she wanted to keep her distance. At least he had a family. Maybe it wasn’t a perfect one, but he had them, and if he wasn’t close to them that was his fault. “But—”
The tea kettle shrieked, making her nearly jump out of her skin.
Adam pushed off the jamb, turned off the stove and removed the kettle from the burner. “Lauryn, it would seem odd if I preferred to spend my wedding night talking on the phone with my family instead of alone with my bride.”
The insinuation of what most newly married couples would be doing on their first night as husband and wife wound through her, tensing her muscles, shortening her breath, quickening her pulse.
She was attracted to Adam. Despite his alleged womanizing ways. Despite the fact that he was using her. Despite the temporary nature of this relationship. She’d believed it would be easy to ignore the chemistry for two years.
Wrong.
Forget the tea. She needed distance and solitude not a hot drink. And she needed to get her head together and her hormones under control. “Is it safe to walk on the beach here at night?”
“Probably not alone.”
“Oh.” Another escape route sealed and another bout of claustrophobia encroached. “Never mind then.”
“Grab a jacket.”
“But—”
“Lauryn. Grab a jacket. We’ll walk.” The words were an order, but also a warning. One she didn’t dare ignore.
Not if she wanted to get through this night without doing something she’d regret.
Like consummating her marriage of convenience.
Six
Adam couldn’t sleep.
No surprise.
He braced his forearms on the porch railing spanning the rear of the cottage and stared blindly into the night. The steady crash of the waves failed to soothe him, and the brisk sea breeze did nothing to cool his overheated skin. The woman sleeping on the other side of the closed glass doors behind him took a lot of the credit—or blame—for that.
Lauryn’s kiss after the “I dos” had zapped him like an electric eel and then she’d turned off that sexual current like a circuit breaker.
How did she do it? Because he sure as hell hadn’t been able to. His body still hummed.
Why now? Why her? Why did his hibernating libido have to jolt awake for a woman who wanted nothing to do with him?
It wasn’t until after she had retired to her bedroom for the night that he’d realized he hadn’t learned anything new about her during the long walk on the beach or the Scrabble game afterward except that she had a bigger vocabulary than he did and a competitive streak to rival his.
His wife played her cards close to her chest.
His wife.
Married. Him.
His mouth dried. He reached for his Kalik beer. The sparkle of moonlight on his wedding ring stopped him short of the bottle. He flexed his fingers, noting he didn’t feel as trapped or freaked out as he’d expected.
Did he have it in him to be faithful to one woman even temporarily? God knows he’d never found a woman he wanted exclusively or one who’d seemed capable of fidelity to him. The women who came and went at Estate changed men as often as they changed clothes.
Two years with only Lauryn. One hundred four weeks. Seven hundred thirty days. And nights.
And no guarantee he’d get between her sheets.
Was infidelity encoded in DNA? If he ever fell in love, would he betray the woman the way his father had his mother? Nah, because he wasn’t falling. He’d seen too many relationships turn acrimonious to ever want to go there. And knowing his father’s secret and not being able to tell had been its own kind of hell.