For Her Son's Sake (4 page)

“Stop it,” he said.

“Stop what?”

“Getting more interesting. Could you please go back to being the all-business Emma—the woman I had never kissed and pretty much never thought of except for crushing you in the business arena.”

She looked over at him and tucked this new tidbit away to use later. She wasn’t ruthless...she honestly didn’t believe all’s fair in love and in war, because in those cases someone always got caught in the cross fire. But she did believe in using everything at her disposal to her advantage.

“You think I’m interesting.”

He closed the gap between them in two long strides and put his hands on her waist. His touch was light, but his body language was aggressive, and she had the feeling that she’d just pushed him too far. Another tidbit she should tuck away.

She felt perfectly safe with him like this. She knew that he’d never hurt her—she didn’t know why she was so certain but she was.

“I can’t help being myself,” she said, at last.

“You weren’t like this last week.”

“I was. You didn’t notice,” she said.

He pulled her toward him. “I’m pretty observant. I think I would have been aware that you were flirting with me.”

“You think so?” she asked, tipping her head to the side.

He nodded.

She lifted one finger up to caress the line of his jaw and felt a tiny scar there. Where had he gotten it? One little flaw in an otherwise perfect face.

“What do you want me to say?”

“That you can survive a no-holds-barred sexual affair that has a built-in end date.”

Shaken, she stared up into those pewter eyes of his, eyes that she knew she’d never look into again and think of as icy, because they burned with such a white-hot flame now. The rawness in his voice scared her. What he wanted...well, she wanted it, too, but she was done leaping into affairs. She was done with trusting that the future would sort itself out—it never really did. She swallowed hard.

He cursed under his breath.

“Why flirt then?” he asked.

“I can’t resist it. I know I should hold my tongue but I can’t.”

“I have a few ideas of what to do with your tongue,” he said. “Give me a kiss, Emma. One last kiss just for this moment and then I’ll let you go and you’ll stop flirting with me and that will be it.”

“One kiss? Wasn’t that what started this craziness?” she asked, licking her lips because just the thought of kissing him made everything feminine inside of her go on high alert.

Four

K
ell’s rational brain was no longer in charge. He had nothing left to lose. He wanted her, he couldn’t think when she was around and kissing her seemed like the most sensible thing in a world that had gone completely insane.

“Was it the kiss that started all this? I thought it was that time we worked together in the copy room more than ten years ago.”

Her breath caught. “I didn’t think you remembered that day.”

“I don’t really dwell on it that often but it’s always in the back in my mind. I think that one incident set all of this into motion.”

She kept running her finger along his jaw and it made it nearly impossible for him to think. But then holding her in his arms wasn’t really helping to keep him focused either. There was something about Emma and there always had been. She was smart, pretty, funny and unattainable. Still. Even though he’d conquered her, taken over her company and put her in a position where he should be holding all the cards, she pulled out this sexiness that he’d never really noticed before.

And once again he was at the disadvantage.

“You were so good-looking back then. And there wasn’t that edge to you that there is now.”

“What edge?”

“Like you always have your guard up. Even now when you are asking me for a kiss...there’s a dominance to you.”

“Dominance suits me,” he said. “Are you going to kiss me?”

“Not if you keep talking about it. We both know this is stupid,” she said.

“I no longer care,” he said. “I have your company, everyone on the board knows your plan to try to save your job. I am not going to make you promises of continued employment if you sleep with me. I’m just going to tell you that we both will sleep better if we do.”

She shook her head and he wondered if he’d miscalculated but he knew he hadn’t. He and Emma were similar. They always had been. They were the oldest of their families. The ones who’d been tasked with continuing the feud that their grandfathers had started. And they both were tired of carrying that mantle. Or at least he hoped she was.

Because he dreamed of kissing her mouth. Of tasting her one more time. He didn’t want to just walk away, and this time he wasn’t going to.

He still regretted letting her out of the elevator at Playtone-Infinity headquarters yesterday. It wasn’t in his nature to deny himself anything he wanted.

He lowered his head. Knowing this might be the last chance, he tried to take his time. He rubbed his lips over hers; she opened her mouth on a gasp and the sweetness of her breath brushed over him. He traced the seam of her lips with his tongue before pulling her closer and plunging his tongue deeper.

Slow,
his mind said.
Never,
his body replied. She was in his arms, and taking his time was the last thing he wanted to do. At war with himself he did the one thing he’d been wanting to do since he’d left her in the stairwell yesterday. He pulled her closer to him, forgot she was a Chandler and he a Montrose. He kissed her like she was just Emma, a girl he knew, unencumbered by their past.

Her fingers slid up his jaw to his neck and she held him lightly as he kissed her. The way she touched him sent chills down his spine and made him long for more than this one kiss could offer.

He’d never lost himself in an embrace like this before. He wanted to pretend that she wasn’t different. That he wasn’t different. But that was another lie.

He felt his erection stir and she shifted to rub her hips against him. He groaned and slipped his hand around to her back and tugged her blouse from the waistband until he could slide his hand under the fabric and touch her skin. He exposed just a few inches at the small of her back but it was more erotic than having some other woman totally naked.

Her skin was softer than he’d thought a woman’s could be. She shivered a little at his touch and curled one hand tighter around his neck as she rose on tiptoe and deepened their kiss. He shook with the intensity of his need for her. He was still being subtle but his gut called for him to go for it.

He pushed one hand under her blouse and let his palm move slowly up between her shoulder blades, urging her closer to his chest. Her hands moved down his shoulders and he drew her closer as he continued to kiss her.

The he lifted her off her feet and turned to set her on her desk. He thrust his thigh between her legs and maneuvered them apart until he could stand between them. He felt the bite of her fingernails in his shoulders and lifted his head.

Her skin was flushed, her eyes half-closed and her lips parted as each breath was a forceful exhalation. Her hand came between them hovering over his chest before falling to touch him just over his racing heart.

“What are we doing?”

He didn’t want to talk or think. Instead he traced the high line of her cheekbone and her long smooth neck with his fingertip before lowering his head to kiss her again.

She hesitated for a second before wrapping her arms around him and drawing him closer. Her tongue tangled with his before plunging deeper and deeper. He had never wanted a woman more.

Nothing seemed to matter but this moment in time and he wanted it to never end. Because he also knew that once it did, it wouldn’t come again.

* * *

Kell’s hands were moving with surety and purpose and she knew that if she was going to call this off she had to do it soon. But he felt good. His kiss tasted just right and in a world where everything had been wrong for so long she wanted to believe in this. But she knew she couldn’t.

She groaned and pulled away from him. Saw that fiery passion in his pewter eyes and called herself a fool. But she’d rather stop herself now than regret this later. Hadn’t she promised herself no more jumping and hoping the bridge would appear? Wasn’t this just the kind of situation she had been trying to avoid?

She leaned forward, resting her forehead on his chest, and heard him curse savagely under his breath. Apologies danced around in her mind but she couldn’t vocalize them just yet.

“I’m freaking out here,” she said into his chest.

He awkwardly patted her on the back but she could tell he was still turned on. His breath was quick and labored and his erection pressed against her thigh. Stopping was at once the hardest thing she’d ever done and the most sensible. This was Kell Montrose.

Something her body didn’t seem to give a care about.

“I shouldn’t have—hell, I still want to. I can’t say I regret a single moment of it,” he said. His voice had an edge that she’d previously only heard in the boardroom when someone pissed him off.

“You said one kiss,” she reminded him.

“I thought you wouldn’t be able to stop,” he admitted ruefully as he stepped away from her. He made no attempt to hide his hard-on as he put his hands on his hips and confronted her.

“Fear is the only thing stopping me, Kell,” she said, feeling small and alone again. “I bet that’s something you don’t let rule you, but for me it’s a constant.”

“I get afraid sometimes,” he admitted. “I can be cautious but I usually just go for it. I have nothing to lose here.”

“And I have everything. It’s not easy for me to call a halt to things but I’m not like I used to be.”

“In what way?” he asked, shoving his hands through that thick hair of his, leaving it disheveled.

Her fingers actually tingled with the need to reach out and smooth his hair. God, she was a mess. She needed distance from Kell instead of more meetings.

“I’m just so aware of the consequences associated with risk now. I’ve become very cautious.”

He nodded and walked around the desk to lean a hip on the front of it. “To your detriment. Your hesitancy left Infinity Games vulnerable to me and my takeover.”

She chewed her lower lip as the truth of what he said sank in. Helio’s death had changed her, taken her to the edge and left her a hollow shell of who she used to be. These last few months when she’d been scrapping with Kell had been good for her but she was still scared.

“That’s the difficulty. I can’t live the way I used to and you’ve shaken things up and made me realize that I have to change. But an affair with you isn’t sensible. It would complicate things.”

“Who said it has to be an affair? I’d be happy with a one-night stand,” he said, wriggling his eyebrows at her and giving her a cocky grin.

“You said that about a kiss and it wasn’t enough,” she said carefully.

“That’s right. I did,” he said, crossing over to one of the guest chairs and sitting down on it. He leaned forward, putting his elbows on his knees, and stared at the floor for a minute.

She was reminded again of how human he was beneath the corporate robot image that she’d had of him. He wasn’t an automaton. He was a guy trying to figure out life the same way she was. They’d both been screwed by their family legacy, the feud that could be put down to greed on one side and bitterness on the other. There had been no winners, even in their generation. Not unless you counted her sisters and his cousins.

“If I thought there was even half a chance we could be intimate and still work together, I think I’d go for it,” she said, but that was a lie. She knew it as soon as the words left her mouth. Kell made her feel again. And if she’d learned one thing from losing Helio, it was that she didn’t want to be that emotionally dependent on anyone again. Sammy and her sisters were the very limit of whom she could care about. Her sisters’ new babies were already making her feel uncomfortable because she worried about them. Like Hannah’s fever last week that had been so high for so long. Luckily they’d finally gotten it lower after a few hours in the hospital.

She’d been on the edge then. Worrying for her sister Jessi and for little Hannah...it had served to remind her of how fragile life was.

Fragile. Dammit, it was. Should she really give up a chance to be in Kell’s arms because it might not end well when she knew that no one was guaranteed a tomorrow?

There was a knock on the door, then it opened and Jessi walked in. “Sorry. I didn’t know you were in a meeting.”

“Come on in,” Kell said. “We have a task for you.”

Emma bit the inside of her cheek to keep from smiling as Jessi hesitated to come any further.

“What kind of task?”

“Focus group. That’s right up your alley, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” she said. “Why’d you say it so ominously? You like messing with me, don’t you,” Jessi said. She wore her dark hair in a bob that was longer in the front than in the back and had a thick fall of bangs that covered one eye.

“We want you to do it with a group of three-year-olds,” Kell said. “Emma will give you the details later.”

“What?”

“I will talk to you about it later,” Emma said. “Can you give us a few more minutes?”

“What?”

“Go,” Emma said.

Jessi left the office muttering under her breath.

Emma saw the hint of a smile on Kell’s face and it made something melt inside of her. “Let’s talk business, but then tonight...do you want to come to dinner at my place?”

“What?”

“Now you sound like Jessi.”

“Okay. I’ll come to dinner,” he said.

* * *

Kell showed up early to dinner at Emma’s house not because he was anxious. Of course he wasn’t anxious. He was a man who had everything, so dinner at the posh beachfront Malibu mansion should be routine for him and he knew it.

He’d tried telling himself that what he felt for her was simply sexual but this entire situation was beginning to make him feel as if he was losing his marbles. He knew better than to believe this was something he couldn’t live without. He’d learned a long time ago that life—his life—was meant to be lived solo.

But when he found someone he wanted to spend part of his journey with, he went for it. He’d seen how bitter Grandfather Thomas had become throughout his life, not just because of the soured business deal with the Chandlers, but also because his obsession with getting back at Gregory Chandler had cost him his wife and then his son. The old man had believed that a Chandler had stolen everything.

As Kell sat in front of Emma’s house he wondered how much of his attraction to her was lust and how much could be attributed to something so much simpler. Something that looked like revenge for the old man. And he knew that having dinner with her was dumb. This entire crazy lust thing was even stupider. He wasn’t a fool.

Why then was he suddenly acting like one?

It would be easy to say that seeing his cousins pair up with Emma’s sisters was at the root of it. And he’d be lying if he denied that it was hard to always be the single guy at their get-togethers. But he could easily avoid them.

And then become his bitter, lonely old grandfather. Something he had never wanted to become. When had everything gotten so complicated?

He’d had it all a few short months ago but revenge had proven more complicated than just getting back at his enemy.

It brought with it emotions that Kell hadn’t counted on.

He got out of his Porsche 911 and walked to the front door. He’d brought a small gift for Sammy and nothing for Emma. Which was part of his fooling himself that this wasn’t a date but more a research excursion to find out what kids wanted from games.

But that was a lie, too.

God, he was really getting into self-delusion these days.

But he wasn’t. Lust wasn’t something new to him. He’d been wanting what the Chandlers had for as long as he could remember. So it wasn’t a huge surprise that he wanted Emma. In fact, given the perverse way his mind worked, it was to be expected.

He knocked on the front door and heard the sound of wheels on a tile floor. Then the door opened.

“Hiya,” Sammy said. The toddler didn’t look a lot like Emma, instead Kell saw a strong resemblance to Helio Cerventes, the Formula 1 driver who’d been his father.

“Hiya. Can I come in?”

“You sure can,” Emma said, coming up behind her son. She wore a pair of cream-colored leggings and a long sweater in a soft pink color that ended at the middle of thighs. She had a pair of dinosaur slippers on her feet.

He arched one eyebrow at her and she shrugged. “Sammy gave them to me for Christmas.”