Hot & Bothered (26 page)

“No, you wait!” She returned the favor, her high heels bringing her as close as she'd ever gotten to his greater
height. “You and I, Rocket? We're adults, and we can hash things out—or not—and if a heart gets broken, we'll pick up the pieces like the supposedly mature people we are and deal with it. But damned if I'll let you jerk around Esme.”

“I have no intention of doing that! But if I stick around, then what? Let's say by some grace of God I manage not to knock the crap out of your brother. Can either of us ever trust me with Esme? With my family history? Everyone knows abusers were abused themselves as kids. And I'm sorry if you don't like it, but I'm not about to take a chance with that sweet little girl. It's better that I just leave.”

“Better for whom?”

“Everyone!”

“Then do it, by God. But if you do, don't plan on ever coming back.”

His gut turned to ice. “What?”

“Make up your bloody mind and do what you have to do. But you can't have it both ways, Rocket. You don't get to waltz out of Esme's life when you feel like it and then waltz back in again when it suits your mood.”

“I never said—”

“No, you've made a
career
out of never saying, haven't you? You don't talk about personal stuff, unless it's someone else's, and you certainly don't share your feelings. Well, fine then, I'll make this real easy and say it for you. Either you're Esme's father or you're out of her life.” She thrust her nose up under his. “She doesn't need the confusion, so decide, damn you, and live with the consequences.”

It was one thing, he discovered, to make the decision to walk away himself. It was something else again to be handed an ultimatum. Anger edged with an unfamiliar, humiliating panic he did his best to deny, washed over him. He slapped his hands down on the desktop next to her hips.

She abruptly sat back to keep their bodies from slamming together and blinked up at him, her elegant little jaw agape.

Taking advantage of her failure to close her knees from the militant, screw-you stance she'd assumed, he stepped between them. The voluminous skirt of her gown made way beneath the rough press of his thighs. He stared down at her. “You don't wanna be offering me ultimatums, darlin'.”

Her mouth snapped closed and her chin thrust up. “Or what? You'll try to convince me that you're a woman abuser, too?”

“No!” His brows met over his nose. “But that doesn't mean you can dismiss my fear of losing my temper and hurting one of the kids. It's a legitimate concern.”

“It's crazy, is what it is. You want to know what I think, John? I think you'd cut off your right hand before you'd ever harm a child. So what's the real story here? You act like Esme and I are important to you one minute, then push us away the next. Is that because you have feelings you don't know how to deal with? Are you clinging to this cockamamie I'm-turning-into-my-dad theory so you won't have to explore those feelings?” She gave his shoulder a soft slap. “Tell me what's going on!”

I think I'm falling in love with you.
The unexpected words whispering through his mind scared the crap out of him. No! That wasn't it at all. He was love-'em-and-leave-'em-Miglionni and
falling
in love wasn't in his makeup. Hadn't been six years ago—wasn't now. Sure, he cared about her and Esme. Enough to know that this was the best thing for them. World-class sex could only carry a relationship so far. Victoria could deny it all she wanted, but she was a lady, born and bred, and sooner or later his low-class physicality would disgust her.

Not to mention that his fear of hurting Jared was legit. Ignoring his pounding heart, he pushed back with his hands from the desk and started to straighten up, prepared to bestow a cool smile and a flip rejoinder that would put her in her place once and for all. Something to keep her from poking into places she had no business poking.

But Victoria grabbed him by his bow tie and held him in place. “Did I hit a nerve, John?” she whispered. “
Is
that what this is all about? Do you have some feelings for me, or for Esme, that you're too chicken-hearted to claim?”

Her words struck a little too close to the bone and in an instinctual bid to shut her up, he rocked his mouth over hers. He braced, waiting for her to shove him away. When instead her tongue rose up to return the thrust of his own, every bit of common sense he possessed dissipated like dew beneath the desert sun. His hands came up off the desk to grip her hips and he stepped in closer while jerking her to meet him halfway. They slapped together, hard thrusting sex to soft, accommodating cleft.

She sucked in a breath as her hands tore at the fly of his slacks and the next thing he knew, he was out of his pants and into her hands and he was wrestling yards of slithery gossamer fabric out of his way. He finally got the majority of it up above her waist and, thumbing aside the fragile scrap of lace that was her panties, he let her tug him into place. He sank into her and a low, heartfelt groan escaped him when her hot, wet, slick inner muscles pulled him deep and clamped tightly around him to hold him fast.

Oh, God, she felt so good—she felt like home—and he began to move, withdrawing and plunging, withdrawing and plunging, harder and faster as his hands slid beneath her butt to bring her closer. She crossed her
ankles at the small of his back, wrapped her arms around his neck and clung, returning kiss for feverish, fervent kiss.

Then she suddenly ripped her mouth free and her head lolled back. A series of breathy moans stuttered from her throat, starting low and gaining in both volume and pitch.

John's lips drew back from his teeth at the feel of the hard, tight, contractions as she began coming around him. It was the nudge that pushed him over and his fingers sank into her butt as he plunged deep and held, groaning at the way her climax milked his own from his body.

They slumped simultaneously, their lax bodies propping each other up. For a moment John felt as if he were drifting in a pool of golden perfection and he closed his eyes to focus on the feeling. His arms tightened when Tori shifted against him, but she merely tipped her head to press a kiss on his shoulder, and the corners of his lips curved up.

Then he felt her stiffen, heard her whisper, “Oh, my God, what have we done?” and the golden moment popped. Reality returned with a crash and, flattening his palms on the desk, he straight-armed himself away from her.

“Now do you see what I've been saying?” he demanded. “Didn't take you long to regret it, did it?”

“We didn't use birth control, John!”

His heart slammed up against the wall of his chest and he jerked back, pulling out of her. Staring down to where they'd been joined he saw his seed begin to trickle out of her and whipped the faultlessly folded handkerchief from his breast pocket. He pressed it between her legs. “I'm sorry,” he said. “God, Tori, I'm sorry.”

The knob rattled on the door behind them and he broke off the rest of whatever he might have said. Watching Victoria carefully pull her panties back into place over the
folded handkerchief, he tucked himself back into his slacks and zipped up. Knuckles rapped on the door.

“Who's in there?” a male voice demanded. “Open up! This is the manager.”

“Give us a second!” John snapped without looking away from Victoria. “We had a little emergency here, and need a minute. We'll be out as soon as we get it straightened out.” Whenever the hell that might be. They needed to talk.

But Tori, who five minutes ago had been raking him over the coals for never talking about his feelings, rose to her feet from the desk and shook her floaty purply blue skirt back into place. She smoothed her upswept hair, then reached past him for the lock on the door.

He intercepted her hand. “Darlin'—”

“Don't.” She pulled her fingers free. “I can't talk about this right now. We had the excuse of a faulty condom in Pensacola, but we don't have a good excuse for this.”

“Doesn't mean we don't still need to decide—” What? He didn't know
what
the hell the next step was supposed to be.

As if reading his mind, she echoed, “What—how we handle it
this
time if I turn up pregnant again? Oh, God.” She stepped around him to reach for the lock again, but instead of turning it, she rested her forehead on the wooden panel of the door. “It's not like we just resolved anything, John. Maybe you had the right idea. Maybe it is time you went back to Denver.”

It was what he'd thought best for everyone ten minutes ago. So why didn't it make him feel any better to hear her agreeing now? Why did it instead seem to increase the sick feeling in the pit of his stomach? “That's what I was trying to tell you,” he said, but being right did nothing to
prevent his heart from feeling as if someone had used it to mop up the floor.

Well, screw that, he thought as he watched her turn the lock on the door. But he had to fist his hands to keep himself from running a finger down her nape where it was exposed by her upswept hair and he forced extra crispness into his voice to compensate. “I don't know about you,” he said briskly, “but I'm in no mood to go out there and make the big announcement that our engagement is off. How about we try to get through tonight without giving the Springs a new scandal to serve up with their morning Wheaties?”

She turned her head to look at him and for a moment she looked so defeated he wanted nothing more than to pull her into his arms. But even as he watched, her spine snapped erect and her chin raised. “Sure.” She shrugged her smooth shoulders. “I can if you can.”

“Hell, yeah,” he said. “Not a problem.” And with pride stiffening his own backbone, he reached past her to open the door.

I
DIOT, IDIOT
,
IDIOT!

Standing amidst the partygoers, Victoria smiled and chatted and pretended everything was fine. That
she
was fine. But one shallow scratch beneath the carefully erected surface was a virago who wanted to scream and kick and tear her hair out by the roots. A heartsick fool who wanted to curl up into a ball of misery and cry an ocean of tears.

How could she have been so
irresponsible?
Not only with her heart, which when it came to John Miglionni couldn't really be helped, but with her body, which certainly could have been. While she would never regret the decision to have Esme and refused to apologize for the circumstances of her daughter's birth, neither had she ever intended to bring another child into the world outside the sanctity of marriage. She'd be damn lucky, however, if rolling around on the desk with John this evening didn't result in a sibling for Es nine months down the line. Heaven knew they'd been fertile beyond belief when they had practiced birth control. What were the chances of avoiding another pregnancy in the wake of such blatant carelessness?

God.
What was it about Rocket, anyway, that made her abandon all sense of propriety? Somehow the fact that she
was madly in love with him didn't strike her as a sound enough excuse for losing all semblance of good sense. Yet deep in her heart she couldn't help but feel it was his fault her brain fried whenever he touched her.

His
fault for not being smart enough to love her back.

A woman wearing enough jewelry to subsidize a small nation finally wound up the anecdote she'd been relating and Victoria smiled and murmured a perfunctory response. For some reason the woman looked shocked, but before she could summon the energy to discover why, John offered the woman their excuses and gave Victoria's elbow a light tug. She drifted away in response to his guiding hand.

He bent his head to hers as he steered them toward the bar. “‘Lovely' probably wasn't the best response to being told her pet poodle had died,” he murmured.

“Um-hmm,” she agreed vaguely. For just a moment the fog lifted from her brain and his face came into focus. His dark eyes were hooded, his eyebrows drawn together over the Roman thrust of his nose as he stared down at her, and she noticed he didn't appear any happier than she.

Her heart squeezed. As much as she'd love to assign all blame for this mess to him, in good conscience she couldn't. He hadn't asked her to fall in love with him and she'd certainly contributed her fair share to tonight's debacle. Perhaps even more so than him, if one went strictly by the facts, since she'd been the first to put her hands where they didn't belong. And she hadn't even had the grace to regret it—not until the realization of their failure to use a condom had exploded into her consciousness.

“Maybe trying to stick out the evening isn't such a hot idea after all,” John said quietly.

She nodded. The chance to escape and the opportunity
for privacy to deal with her tumultuous feelings was suddenly too attractive to pass up. “Yes. Let's go—”

“Ms. Hamilton,” a soft feminine voice interrupted them. “Hello.”

She blinked and turned to the young woman who'd brushed soft fingers across her forearm to get her attention. “Please,” she responded automatically while her brain tried to process where she'd seen the sandy-haired woman and her stocky escort. “Call me Victoria.” Then the facts clicked into place. “How are you, Mrs. Sanders? Are you enjoying the dance?”

“I'm fine and please, do call me Terri. The party is lovely.”

“Yes, it is, isn't it? Have you met my fiancé?” Without awaiting an answer she turned to Rocket. “John, this is Terri Sanders and her husband, George. Terri was my father's administrative assistant. Terri, George, please meet John Miglionni.”

“How do you do?” John shook hands with the couple. “If we were already introduced at Ford's memorial please forgive me,” he said with an easy smile. “Between that and tonight's dance, I've met so many people my head is beginning to swim. So I'm officially declaring a break. Please. Won't you join us at our table? Allow me to buy you a drink.”

An automatic protest rose in Victoria's throat. But she swallowed it. There was something about his white-toothed, megawatt smile as he poured on the charisma that served to pull her scattered thoughts together and she abruptly realized that Terri Sanders might well have information about her father. She had to get a grip on her wandering mind. A memory scratched for attention as John smoothly ushered everyone to the linen-draped table
and she gave him a curious look. “Did you say something about a poodle?”

A faint smile crooked his lips. “Yeah. We'll talk about it later.”

She managed to hold up her end of a superficial conversation while John collected drinks from the bar, but it wasn't until he'd returned and was emptying the tray onto the table that a substantive thought struck her. She reached out to touch Terri's hand. “I'm sorry,” she said. “I never even thought to ask if you were laid off when my father died. I know there's a new CEO in place, I'm afraid I've been so caught up with my own concerns that I failed to follow through on the ramifications of Father's death for his other employees. You must think me terribly rude.”

“Of course I don't,” the other woman insisted. “And as it happens, very few jobs were lost. Your father ran a tight ship and he believed in delegating, so the infrastructure was in place to continue without him. I stayed on to tie up as many loose ends as I could and I actually had the opportunity to keep my position with the new CEO, but I accepted another offer from Soundhill Investments instead. They're a corporation your father often dealt with, so they were familiar with my work.”

“She's the best,” George added, smiling at his wife with pride.

“I have him trained to say that.”

John and Tori laughed and he leaned forward, flashing an attentive, charming smile at the young woman. “It sounds as if Soundhill's gain is definitely our loss. When do you start?”

“Three weeks from Monday. After a vacation to Ireland that George and I have had planned forever.”

Victoria sat back and listened as John questioned Terri
so skillfully that neither the young woman nor her husband appeared to have the slightest clue she was being interrogated. He drew from her the names of the current CEO and several others in the company who appeared to have benefitted from Ford's death. It was clear from Terri's responses that she had been a valuable employee and John played to that, as well, making much of her contribution and lamenting the fact that the company had let her services slip away without making more of an effort to retain them.

Victoria leaned toward the other woman. “John's right,” she agreed softly. “My father was extremely lucky to have you. Doubly so, considering how difficult he could be to deal with most of the time. I doubt anyone would say he was an easy man, so working for him couldn't have been all roses.”

“That's a fact,” George Sanders said. “You, however, are a nicer person altogether.” He draped his arm along the back of his wife's chair and strummed his fingertips up and down her upper arm. “Tell them about the bonuses, honey.”

Terri bit her lip and glancing from John to her and back again. Finally she took a deep breath, softly exhaled, and straightened her shoulders. “I'm not sure if you're aware of this, but several years ago, for all intents and purposes, Ford moved the company headquarters to the Cayman Islands. Right after that he made a private agreement with the board to get his bonuses in bearer bonds.”

Victoria blinked. “Yes?”

John apparently saw some significance, however, for after a moment's silence, he sucked in a breath, sat a little straighter, and pinned the AA in his sights. “Because a Cayman-registered business doesn't require that the bonds be reported to the IRS?”

“Yes. I made copies of the transactions and it would be a great relief to turn them over to you. While I know it's none of my business, those bonds are virtually the same thing as cash and since Ford's death I've never once heard them mentioned. I don't like the thought of them just floating around out there.” She shot them an apologetic grimace. “I realize I should probably have reported this to the police myself, but I hesitated to make Ford's private finances public.”

“I respect your loyalty.” John was quiet for a moment, then said, “When do you leave for your trip to Ireland?”

“Well, that's the thing. Our flight leaves tomorrow afternoon.”

“Where are the copies now?”

She hesitated, then blew out a breath and admitted, “I took them home with me when I left.”

John's expression remained nonjudgmental. “Then why don't we follow you on our way home and gather whatever you want to give us? That way you can leave for your vacation with all the loose ends tied up.”

“You wouldn't mind?”

John raised his eyebrows at Victoria, who smiled at the young woman. “Not at all,” she said. “Just say the word when you're ready to go.”

“Well, if you truly mean that, we were actually about to leave when I spotted you and thought I should say hello. We still have a great deal of packing to do.”

“Excellent.” She rose to her feet with alacrity. Maybe this night would finally end after all.

As soon as she and John climbed into his car, her sense of well-being vanished. The atmosphere between them grew tenser by the minute as they followed the Sanders to their home.

John turned to look at her at the first red light. “Tori, listen—”

The last thing she could bear was a rehash of their problems. They'd already said everything that needed to be said and it had netted them nothing but pain. “It was good of Terri to inform us of Father's bonds, wasn't it?” she said coolly, her eyes on the car in front of them.

“You think that was from the goodness of her heart?” He laughed shortly. “Sanders strikes me as bright enough to know when to cover her ass.”

She turned in her seat to look at him directly. “What do you mean?”

“I have a feeling she's not as sure about the legality of those bonds as she claims and wants it on record that she did her best to inform someone in a position of authority—in this case you—should the situation ever come back to bite her on the butt.”

She stared at him openmouthed. “My God. Nothing cynical about you, is there?”

“I prefer to call it realistic. She had the opportunity to tell the police herself—but what do you imagine it would've done to her job search if it had been all over the news that she'd spilled her former employer's private business?” He shrugged and fell silent, following the Sanders' car to an attractive middle-income neighborhood several miles from the club. A moment later he pulled into a driveway off a tree-lined street behind the other couple.

They followed Terri and George into a neat little brick house and down the hallway to a home office, where Terri opened the drawer of an oak filing cabinet. She extracted a slim file.

Turning, she handed it to Victoria and then smiled
brilliantly. “I feel free for the first time in a long while. Now I truly can enjoy our vacation.”

They exchanged a few pleasantries, then Victoria and John climbed into his car and drove away. The instant they turned the corner out of sight of the young couple's house, however, he pulled over to the curb, killed the engine, and turned on the overhead light. Victoria leaned over the console so they could both examine the copies of her father's bearer bonds inside the folder she'd flipped opened.

“Holy shit,” he breathed a moment later and sat back in his seat. “Six-point-five million a year for the past five years. That's pretty good compensation.” He looked at her. “Were any of the actual bonds accounted for when you went through your father's things?”

She'd been slow about a lot of things tonight, but she, too, had figured out that they should have been with her father's effects or at least listed on the asset sheet the lawyer had given her. “No.”

He swore softly, turned off the overhead light and twisted around once more to gaze at her across the console. “You know what this means, don't you?”

“That absolutely anyone could have killed my father and walked away with a fortune in bearer bonds?”

“Yeah.” His dark eyes gleamed enigmatically in the dim, diffused light that filtered through the windshield from a standard on the other side of the lot. “And that I'm not going anywhere until we know for damn sure it wasn't anyone living in your house.”

 

J
OHN FELT AS IF A HUGE
boulder had been lifted off his chest and he didn't even try to pretend otherwise. Despite his insistence that it was time to leave, he'd felt lousy ever since the words had left his mouth. The feeling had only
grown stronger in the face of Victoria's refusal to talk to him—or even look him in the eye if she had the least opportunity to do otherwise.