He lifted the bottle and sipped. The Bahamas brew wasn’t bad. Maybe he should check into ordering it for the club.
He couldn’t check into the customs regulations tonight, but there was one decision he could make. Should he stay on the island until Monday as planned and risk driving himself nuts with need for his bride or return home early to the safety and separation a ten-thousand-square-foot house would allow?
An early return meant a command performance at the family’s Sunday dinner—an event he’d prefer to postpone as long as possible. The Garrisons weren’t a warm, fuzzy bunch. Scaring Lauryn off so soon in the game wouldn’t be good.
They needed this honeymoon for a number of reasons.
One: appearances. A real newlywed couple would want solitude.
Two: he could hardly show up at dinner knowing nothing about the woman he’d married. If he did this charade would sink faster than lead.
Three: Lauryn jumped each time he touched her and, other than that wedding shocker, she still stiffened when he kissed her. That stung. Women didn’t flinch from him. They melted, begged and wrapped themselves around him like a spider web.
But not Lauryn Lowes. Garrison. Lauryn Garrison.
Why not? What flipped her switches? And why didn’t she desire him? Women wanted him. His bride shouldn’t be an exception.
Changing her mind on the sex issue wasn’t just about getting laid anymore. It was a matter of keeping the pretense. And pride. Staying in the Bahamas would give him time to diagnose and rectify the problem. He could hardly seduce her with work and family interrupting.
He needed a strategy.
The door opened behind him. Adam turned and almost choked on his beer. Lauryn stood framed in the doorway, a bedside lamp outlining her boxers-and-baggy-T-shirt-clad shape. A thin, worn T-shirt clearly outlined her full br**sts and erect n**ples in the pale moonlight.
He couldn’t stifle a groan.
She startled and jerked to a halt. Her eyes found him in the shadows and widened. “Oh. I’m sorry. I didn’t know you were out here.”
“Can’t sleep?”
“Um, no. You?”
“I’m used to being up nights.”
“Are you hungry? I could fix something.”
“Thanks, but you don’t have to cook for me. I didn’t marry you to get a maid or a chef.”
“The estate is fully staffed?”
“Yes. And they’ve been informed that we’re moving in.”
“Can you trust them not to leak our separate sleeping arrangements?”
The muscles in the back of his neck knotted. Another reason to talk Lauryn into bed. “Good question. Like you, they signed confidentiality agreements, and they’ve done well with the visiting celebrities thus far. But there are no guarantees.”
Her teeth gleamed in the moonlight as she bit her lip, reminding him of her taste and making him hunger for another sample. “Does the house have any suites with adjoining rooms?”
It took a second to pull his brain out of his pants. “The master suite has an attached sitting room.”
“There’s our solution. I’ll tell them I sleep alone because you snore.”
He snapped upright. “I don’t snore.”
She smiled, the first genuine smile she’d offered him since this thing began, and her eyes sparkled with mischief. The combo knocked the wind out of him and drained the blood from his brain. “I didn’t say you did. I said we’d tell them you did.”
“Why don’t we tell them you snore?”
She shook her head. “Be a gentleman, Adam.”
He’d never felt less like a gentleman in his life. He wanted to back her into that room, toss her on the bed and spend the rest of the night making her moan, beg and scream his name.
Jeezus, where did that come from?
She took a quick step backward.
Surely his wife wasn’t a mind reader? Or had his lust shown on his face? “Lauryn, you don’t have to leave. The deck is sturdy enough to hold both of us. We’ll think of something to tell the staff—but not that I snore.”
A man had his pride.
Her cautious gaze roamed over him and his recently awakened libido reacted as if her hands had done the exploring—a fact his swim trunks wouldn’t be able to hide much longer. He shifted his stance. “Want a beer?”
She shook her head. “No, thank you. Were you, um, going for a swim?”
“Thought about it. But I don’t know the area and forgot to ask Cassie if it was safe to swim off shore.”
“Shark bait wouldn’t fill the council seat.” The teasing lilt of her voice zapped him with another jolt of arousal. He hadn’t known she had a sense of humor.
“No, but it’d make you a rich widow.”
Her amusement vanished. “Don’t. Don’t joke about that.”
He shrugged off the concern in her voice. “So why can’t you sleep?”
Please say it’s because you’re horny.
She eased closer to the railing, but kept a couple of yards between them. His tongue nearly fell out of his mouth at the sight of her long legs beneath those short shorts. How had he missed those legs? Had his head been stuck in a hole these past seven months?
“I kept thinking about your family. Are you comfortable deceiving them?”
Not what he wanted to hear. But maybe she was working her way up to the right answer. A man could hope. “It’s necessary.”
She wanted more, but he wasn’t going to tell her about his quest for a larger role in Garrison, Inc. Telling her his family didn’t trust him with responsibility wouldn’t win her over.
He finished his beer and faced her. “We have a problem.”
One golden eyebrow lifted, and so did the lush fullness of her br**sts when she reached up to capture her wind-tossed hair in her hands.
“You flinch every time I touch you. My family, particularly my sisters, will pick up on that immediately.”
She snatched an audible breath. “I’ll work on it.”
“We could practice.”
A wary, caged light entered her eyes. “Practice?”
“You have a better idea?”
Her low chuckle danced over his skin like dusting fingertips. “You’re beginning to sound like a corny character in a bad novel.”
“Corny? Corny? Me?” No one had ever accused him of that. Loner, risk-taker, ambitious, emotionally unavailable? Sure. His brothers, five and six years older than him, had always dumped Adam in the same category as their younger sisters or ignored him completely. But nobody had ever called him corny.
He didn’t like it. Especially not from Lauryn.
“Adam, this isn’t junior high or high school where you make out just to see how far you can go before getting caught.”
“You made out in junior high?”
She gave him a get-real stare.
Right. She wasn’t the type. She was too…what was the word he needed? Prim? Proper? Straightlaced? And that was why she was the perfect bride for him. The council and his family had to believe he’d mended his partying ways.
“I don’t do casual sex.”
He moved closer, close enough to feel her body heat and catch her scent. “What’s casual about sleeping with your husband?”
Her throat moved as she swallowed and awareness tightened her face. Sexual tension crackled in the air around them. “L-let me rephrase that. I don’t do meaningless sex. And you agreed. To the no-sex clause.”
“Then what do you suggest?” He lifted a hand to smooth her hair, but she flinched out of reach.
“Can’t we just be…friends?”
“Friends.” The last thing any guy wants to hear from a woman.
He’d never survive four days in paradise with his reluctant bride without losing his mind. And the thought of two years of celibacy made his package shrivel.
He had to come up with a plan. A plan to seduce his wife.
Lauryn wasn’t ready for this. Not yet.
Who was she kidding? She’d never be ready to try and convince the people who knew Adam best that she was head over heels in love with him. But she’d try. That was their deal.
She clung tightly to Adam’s hand as they approached the Garrisons’ Bal Harbor estate on Sunday night and hoped she didn’t blow it.
She would have preferred staying in the Bahamas and tiptoeing around the growing sexual tension between her and Adam to meeting his family en masse, but this morning he’d suddenly insisted on coming home early to organize the move and have Sunday dinner with his family. They’d spent most of the day apart in their respective homes packing boxes for the movers to pick up tomorrow. But that brief reprieve was over and now the spotlight was on her and she had a touch of stage fright.
Knowing she’d be sleeping in Adam’s condo tonight didn’t help her anxiety level, but the house wasn’t ready. Specifically, the sofa bed for the sitting room wouldn’t be delivered until tomorrow morning. Since she’d refused to let Adam share her bed and he’d refused to sleep in another room for one night, the condo had been their only option.
Lauryn was so nervous she was almost nauseous. She searched her mind for a distraction. “Mrs. Suarez said something about your brothers getting married recently?”
Adam didn’t slow his pace as he crossed the brick driveway. “Parker married Anna, his executive assistant, in August. Stephen married Megan in September, and they have a three-year-old daughter who probably won’t be here tonight. My sister Brittany is engaged to Emilio Jefferies, one of Garrison, Inc.’s rivals. If he’s here, you can expect Parker to be on his worst behavior. Brooke is still single.”
“How will I tell the twins apart?”
“Brooke is a people-pleaser. Count on Mother to be yanking her chain. Brittany is more laid-back.”
“And your brothers?”
“Parker’s the oldest and he’s a control freak. Stephen’s okay.”
Control freak? Was there tension between Adam and his brother? “Will Cassie and Brandon be here?”
“Not likely.”
“That’s too bad.” Lauryn could have used a friendly face.
“Trust me, it’s better to keep Mother and Cassie apart.”
Cassie would be a reminder of Mr. Garrison’s infidelity. That wouldn’t be easy for any woman to take. “I guess so. I wasn’t thinking.”
The setting sun cast a mellow light over the creamy stucco walls and terracotta tile roof of an imposing Spanish-style house. If Lauryn weren’t meeting her in-laws she’d probably find the place attractive in a grandiose we-have-loads-of-money way.
And then it hit her and she almost tripped. She’d married a millionaire. Sure, she’d known Adam came from the same affluent community her mother had, but Lauryn had never made the connection that she had married money and soon she’d be living like this. Probably because the money aspect wasn’t what mattered. She wanted those diaries. She had no interest in being showered with diamonds and no desire to be a pampered, kept woman. No matter what Adam wanted.
When this was over she’d go back to life as usual, albeit with an extremely nice nest egg.