Buying His Bride (The Donovan Brothers Trilogy Book 1) (8 page)

Michael shook his head. “Don’t let them put you off, Sierra. I’m not that terrifying.”

She shot him a tart look. “I never thought you were. Don’t flatter yourself!”

At his brothers’ hoots of laughter, Michael relaxed into a genuine smile and shook his head.

Hurdle number two down.

“I can see if I let you talk any longer with my father and brothers, they’ll decimate me. Let me introduce you to some of our friends.”

For the next half hour Michael and Sierra circulated. The party was small by San Francisco society standards, a gathering of people the Donovans had known well over the years. Michael was proud of the way Sierra greeted the other guests. His instincts about her had been correct. She was the perfect choice for his contract bride.

After tonight, no one would question his choice of a wife, regardless of how quickly they progressed from meeting to marriage. Sierra was smart, beautiful, and even more poised than Michael anticipated based on their previous meetings. She was a potent combination of intelligence, good looks, and, had the guests only known it, professionalism. So potent in fact that Michael felt another surge of desire. He wanted this woman, and he didn’t need to hide it, given the roles they played.

“Thompson, excuse us a moment. I’d like to show Sierra the view before it gets much darker.” Michael intervened in a conversation she was having with a family friend and his wife. The older couple nodded, exchanging smiles with each other.

Before Sierra could react, Michael whisked her through a curtained set of French windows that led to a balcony overlooking the San Francisco bay. The cold, foggy night air was an immediate contrast to the lighted warmth of the room they had just left.

With no thought for the view and no preliminaries, Michael backed Sierra against the low columns of the balcony, brought her hips close, and lowered his mouth to hers in a kiss that instantly flamed out of control.

****

Sierra hadn’t thought it was possible to feel more turned on than after Michael’s outrageous whisper about stripping off her clothes.

But she was wrong.

Michael anchored her; his burgeoning erection nudged her belly. She moaned as his searching mouth opened hers. Before she could help herself, she snaked her arms up his chest and around his neck, pulling him closer as their tongues met and tangled in a passionate kiss.

With the part of her brain that could still think, she realized less than an hour had passed since she entered the Donovan home, and already she and Michael couldn’t keep their hands off each other. It didn’t bode well for the business side of their relationship.

The only side of their relationship, she reminded herself.

Then she stopped thinking altogether and gasped as Michael rocked his hips into hers and moved his hands to her hair. “God, you feel good,” he murmured in her ear, trailing a hot tongue down along her jawline. “You’re turning me into a teenage boy all over again.” He nipped and worried a tiny spot along her neck, and she moaned her pleasure.

“Please…” she gasped.

“Please what? Please more, or please stop?” Then he took her lips in another ravaging kiss that forbade an answer.

Dizzy with desire, Sarah grasped Michael’s shoulders to hold herself steady and returned kiss for feverish kiss. Heat pooled in her pelvis, the tiny panties beneath her tailored clothes dampening.

Michael’s hands moved to her waist to jerk up the hem of her sweater. A moment later, he cupped a breast through the gossamer-thin bra, homing in on a nipple that was already hard with arousal. She moaned again at his touch and covered his hand with one of her own to direct its caress.

Was it possible to reach orgasm from the mere pressure of his hips against hers, the touch of his hand on her breast alone? So quickly, so urgently? Because Sierra was poised on the verge of shattering. She felt shameless, needy. Wanted something only Michael could give.

She wrenched her mouth from his. “We can’t do this.”

“We’ve got to do this,” he groaned, covering it again with his own.

Michael maneuvered Sierra’s narrow, tailored skirt up her legs to her thighs, positioning the hardness of his crotch against her. His hand traveled lower to test her softness and encountered bare flesh between the tops of her thigh-high stockings and her panties.

“God, Sierra,” he muttered. “I have to touch you!”

She whimpered when Michael inserted two fingers underneath the elastic leg of her panties and tested her wet depths. She flung her head back and closed her eyes, concentrating on the feel of his fingers inside her, exploring and then teasing her sensitive nubbin with a finger wet with her own juices. She jerked her hips against the rhythmic thrust of his fingers, loving the sound of Michael’s labored breathing, and reached for the climax that lay just ahead…

“Hello, Michael.” The high, frosty tones of a female voice fell upon her ears like a splash of ice-cold water. “Having your way with another female, I see?”

Sierra froze.

Michael’s tall frame hid most of her from the view of the interloper as he moved to shield her further.

In a few deft motions, he helped restore order to Sierra’s clothing, struggling a bit with her narrow skirt. Only then did he turn to face the speaker, anchoring Sierra to his side with a strong arm around her waist.

“Hello, Lydia. Need some air?”

Sierra admired his casual manner. She, on the other hand, was mortified to have been caught in such a compromising position and could not emulate Michael’s sang-froid.

Tall, elegant, and dressed in a black trouser suit that matched her ebony hair, a simple cream cashmere sweater beneath, the woman eyed her with overt hostility.

“It was getting a tad warm inside. But heavens, it looks as if things are scorching out here!” She smiled, but her eyes were cold.

“Lydia Foster, I’d like you to meet Sierra Callahan, my companion. I was showing her the view.” Michael’s forbidding expression dared contradiction.

“How do you do?” Sierra strove to match Michael’s equanimity. And failed.

Lydia eyed Michael. “Is that what we’re calling it these days?” She addressed her next remark to Sierra. “Oh, but please, you mustn’t mind me. I understand better than most what Michael is like with women. “

Sierra moved away from his side. Or tried to. His arm around her waist didn’t budge. He smiled down at her. “Lydia’s and my family go way back. We’ve been friends since childhood.” His tone was light but his expression was determined. “I wouldn’t want you to get the wrong idea.”

Somehow Sierra smiled. She was there to play a part. It was time to play it. It wasn’t time to indulge in a fantasy that Michael had taken her outside to the veranda to do anything other than create a convincing portrayal of a man who couldn’t wait to be alone with his date. They were two adults, and things had gotten a little out of hand. It didn’t mean anything.

She lifted her chin and looked into his eyes. “It wouldn’t occur to me to worry.” Turning to Lydia, she continued. “In fact, Ms. Foster, I’m sure you and Michael would like to catch up a bit on your own. I’m a bit chilly, so I’ll head inside now.” Disentangling her hand from Michael’s, she touched his cheek and pressed a quick kiss on his lips. “Don’t be long, or I’ll start to miss you.”

In the restroom, Sierra locked the door and sat, trembling, on the edge of a huge sunken bathtub. What the hell had happened out there? She’d been at the Donovan home for no longer than an hour and yet somehow ended up nearly having sex on the balcony where anyone could have interrupted them.

Where someone
had
interrupted!

It was embarrassing and humiliating, and not just because they’d been discovered. In public, no less. It was even worse than that. All Michael had to do was touch her, it seemed, and she went up in flames. This was only their third time together, and each time desire between them flared out of control.

Her self-imposed moratorium on men must be responsible. She’d gone without a man for too long.

But no. That wasn’t doing justice to Michael. He was nothing if not a master of seduction. The Donovan men were considered eligible bachelors and ladies’ men. Now Michael was using his skills with women to create the impression he wanted the two of them to make to his friends and father. Given their contract, she couldn’t fault him for that.

It was humiliating all the same to realize that what was a bit of pleasurable play-acting to him was pyrotechnically arousing to her.

Well, he hadn’t exactly been unaroused. Sierra shivered, recalling the press of his erection against her belly.

However, he’d recovered the moment Lydia had appeared on the veranda. Sierra, on the other hand, was still shaking from the force of her desire. She’d been moments from an orgasm before Lydia’s arrival on the scene. Simply from the oh-so-skillful touch of Michael’s hands.

In two short weeks, her world had been turned upside down. She had to get a grip on her response to him because they had a business deal and a straightforward one. Neither of them wanted anything more complicated. Convince the people around them they were the real deal as a couple. Physical contact was inevitable if they were to project a convincing image of a couple in love, but she couldn’t be reduced to a puddle every time Michael laid a finger on her.

Furthermore, romantic and sexual involvement with men had spelled only trouble in the past. She would not go down that path again.

She checked her appearance in the mirror, then groaned. While she and Michael had succeeded in readjusting her clothing on the veranda, her neat chignon was a mess. Bed hair, he’d called it in the car that first night. That’s certainly what it looked like now.

As she repaired the damage, there was a knock at the door. “Sierra?” It was Michael’s deep voice

“Just a second. I’m almost done.”

“Open the door. We have to talk.”

Sierra swung the door open and stared at him, tucking a last curl into the neat coil at the nape of her neck. “What about?”

“Lydia.” He surveyed her from head to toe, then observed, deadpan, “I think I like the way you looked ten minutes ago better.”

“Well, your friend certainly didn’t seem to care for the way I looked…or for me. What was up with her, anyway?”

Michael leaned against the doorjamb and shrugged. “As I said, she and her family have known mine for many years. She probably just feels protective.”

Sierra looked at him. “Protective? I can’t think of anyone who comes across as needing less protection than you!”

His eyes narrowed. “So your explanation would be what?”

“She seems jealous.” Sierra’s tone was flat. “As I suppose any former girlfriend might be when she discovers a man she’s still interested in has taken up with someone new. Not that we have. But she doesn’t know that.”

Michael laughed. “Nonsense! I told you on the veranda that Lydia and I are just friends. Oh, she might have had a crush on me when she was younger, but I never returned her feelings, and she got over hers.”

Sierra thought of the animosity in the older woman’s eyes and raised a skeptical brow. “Did she? It didn’t feel that way to me.”

He shook his head. “You’re imagining things. I’ve been with plenty of women since those days, and Lydia’s never had a problem with it.”

Plenty of women
.
Well, of course he had.

“Or she did and you never realized it.”

Michael’s gaze intensified. “Or…she does now because she realizes there’s something different in our relationship from all the others.”

For a heart-stopping moment, Sierra thought she saw a flicker of something she couldn’t quite name in Michael’s eyes.

Then realization dawned.

“Well, she’d be right about that part, anyway. I’m the first woman to whom you’ll become engaged as part of a business contract.”

“Actually, you’re the first woman to whom I’ll become engaged, period. Contract or no contract.”

“Am I supposed to feel honored?” Sierra’s tone was sharp.

He straightened. “Not at all. Just an observation. But now that we’re on the subject, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about. We need to announce our engagement. Tonight.”

“Tonight?”

Her heart rate soared.

He had to be joking. They’d met exactly one week ago. Who would buy that?

And how on earth could she explain it to Jen? Her mother? They might always be encouraging her to give men another shot, and they’d liked Michael, but surely they’d find an overnight engagement alarming.

As for Brian’s reaction, she shuddered at the mere thought.

“We weren’t getting engaged for several more weeks at least. A month or two, even.” she hissed. “People have to get used to seeing us together first!”

Michael frowned. “Are you rethinking your commitment to our contract?” His expression and tone were remote.

Sierra felt frustrated. And insulted. “No, of course not. I have no desire to go back on our agreement. But who’s going to believe we’re so wild about each other after such a short time that we’re racing off to the altar?”

“Lydia, that’s who. She’s a family friend, but I wouldn’t put it past her to gossip. After what she saw on the veranda, she’ll believe it. And I’d rather she and everyone else believe I was on the verge of making love to my fiancée than making a tawdry play for my cheap date for the evening.”

A tawdry play…cheap date.

Sierra winced. Stung, she retorted, “If you hadn’t wanted to risk creating such an impression, you shouldn’t have taken me out on the balcony in the first place. That was your idea, not mine!”

Michael uttered a soft oath and shook his head. “I apologize for my behavior and for putting us in that compromising position. We can fix that…and we need to do so now. Tonight.”

Which is how, half an hour later, Sierra found herself standing on the hearth of the large sitting room with Michael’s arm firmly around her once again, holding a glass of champagne a server had offered from a tray. The guests had been given similar flutes, and Michael had just called for quiet.

“Father, Rafe, Gabe, and cherished friends.” Michael addressed the room with authority. “This seems as good a time as any to share some good news.” He raised his glass. “As you know, we Donovans have had a run of bad luck with Father’s recent illness. Fortunately, he’s recovering more quickly than we anticipated.”