The Best Of February 2016. Catherine Mann

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СКАЧАТЬ on his toes, while her hair had tickled under his jaw.

      She’d been cold when she’d come back after feeding Enrique so he’d pulled her into his front to warm her. He’d woken hotter than a stuffed pepper, not just from their combined body heat, but from desire.

      Need.

      What she’d said last night about his leaving after he’d made love to her in his office... He couldn’t believe things between them had been anything less than spectacular. He hated himself for damaging her self-esteem. Men had egos in bed, but women were sensitive and physically vulnerable. As a man who had always been up-front about his inability to commit, he’d nevertheless tried to ensure his lovers felt wanted and appreciated. It didn’t make sense that he would have discarded Sorcha so callously.

      This damned broken brain of his.

      “I’ll do it,” he muttered, brushing her aside as she closed her suitcase and tried to heft it off the bed.

      She flashed him a look and took the baby from him to put him in his carrier.

      Had he planned to return to her with news of calling off his marriage? Delaying it? He eyed her as if she somehow knew any better than he did what had been in his mind. But despite his reluctance to marry last year, he’d always been resigned to making his life with Diega. Calling things off because he’d discovered he had a son had been difficult enough. He couldn’t imagine he’d intended to break things off just because he’d had sex with Sorcha.

      Diega’s version, that he’d had his fill of Sorcha from one tumble in his office, didn’t ring true, either. How many times had he fantasized about making love to his PA? He’d been so peeved when he woke in the hospital “engaged,” and believed that he’d missed his chance with Sorcha altogether, he’d behaved like a passive-aggressive ass.

      He hadn’t wanted to admit last night how long he’d gone without sex. Not for any macho reasons, either. No, it just seemed too revelatory.

      What he hadn’t said was that Diega had made advances and he’d kissed her, but hadn’t wanted to bed her. He’d been punishing her in a very puerile way for being an obstacle between him and the woman he’d still wanted, even though Sorcha had disappeared from his life.

      “You don’t have to get that,” he told Sorcha as she picked up the envelope that had been slipped under the door in the night, thinking she shouldn’t be bending like that.

      “It’s fine,” she muttered, hair falling around her flushed face, but her expression was tight.

      The F word. He narrowed his eyes, but the bellman had arrived to collect their cases and they went downstairs.

      While he went to the exit, Sorcha crossed to the front desk.

      “What are you doing?” he asked.

      “Checking out.” She opened her handbag.

      “They have my credit card on file.” He held the door and jerked his head at where their car had been pulled up. He wanted her off her feet.

      Sorcha wavered briefly, glancing at the woman behind the desk as though confirming everything was in order.

      The woman gave Sorcha a brow raise and a smile that was more of a sneer. “Thank you for your patronage,” she said with snide sweetness. Her disparaging gaze flicked from Sorcha to the baby carrier and finally up to him.

      He met the woman’s cynical look and stared her down, waiting until he was behind the wheel and pulling away to ask, “What the hell was that?”

      * * *

      “What was what?” Sorcha was realizing rather belatedly that her entire life had been overturned not by one male, but two. She had had months to mentally prepare for Enrique, though. She’d watched her sister adapt to motherhood and had had an idea what she would be up against.

      Now she had Cesar dominating her life all over again and she wasn’t sure how to handle it.

      “At the desk,” he elaborated.

      “I thought you wanted me to pay. I always used to check us out. You paid for everything else on this trip. I thought I should pick up the room cost.”

      He glanced at her. “Are you serious?”

      She let out her frustration in a long breath. “I don’t know what you’re thinking! You’ve been glaring at me all morning, like I wasn’t moving fast enough. I feel like I’m back in my first week of work, when I couldn’t make a move without getting yelled at.”

      A beat of silence, then he asked, “When have I ever raised my voice at you?”

      “Okay, I’m afraid of hearing that tone. The one that suggests I’m the stupidest person who ever breathed. I don’t work for you anymore, you know. I work for him.” She thumbed to where Enrique’s seat was strapped in behind them.

      His hands massaged the wheel.

      “I didn’t realize that’s why you were running around like it was a fire drill. I was thinking about other things, not impatient with you. I know you don’t work for me. Believe me, I know. If you could come into the office and turn the new PA into half what you were, I might still have hair when I’m forty.”

      Sorcha looked at her nails, shaped and polished by her sister for her wedding, trying not to be smug that she was missed.

      She sighed. “I liked being your assistant. You were a bear sometimes, but I knew who I was. My role was clearly defined and I had independence away from you.” She lifted her gaze to the gloomy gray sky. “I realized this morning that everything is blurred now. All the decisions I make now have to be sifted through their effect on you and Enrique. Our relationship has to be reconfigured and I don’t know what that will look like. It’s bothering me.”

      “It is strange,” he agreed. “I keep thinking I’m supposed to avoid touching you, because you’re my employee. Then I remind myself you’re my wife, but you’re still off-limits. My libido is very confused, guapa.”

      “Being ninety percent libido, I can only assume you’re extremely confused.”

      “There’s the woman I thought twice about hiring,” he said drily. “Listen. Two things. You’re my wife. I will always pay and you will always expect me to.”

      “That’s not—”

      “Always. We’re not negotiating. Anything I’m not present to pay for will go on the cards waiting for you in Spain.”

      “And if I want to earn my own money and spend it?” she challenged. Her mother’s fatal error had been trusting her husband to leave her something. According to the prenup Sorcha had signed, Cesar had already arranged an income for her, but...

      “We’ll discuss your working when the time comes,” he said in a tone that promised he would object and win. “My mother is a busy woman, Sorcha. Don’t underestimate the demands of being a society wife. It is a job in itself.”

      She pursed her lips, agreeing that there wasn’t much use arguing this issue before its time, but she had always enjoyed working. On the other hand, his mother did seem to keep busy, always СКАЧАТЬ