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Agape and unable to actually close his mouth around the sour taste coating his tongue, Hendrix let Paul’s meaning filter through his brain for a good long while. At least until he felt like he could respond without punching Paul in the mouth.
“It takes two to tango. Sir.” Hendrix lifted his chin. “Roz and I are partners. I’m making all my own decisions and rest assured, one of them is to treat her like the amazing, wonderful woman that she is.”
He stopped short of telling Paul that he should take a lesson.
Figured the one time he’d had a few moments of approval from a man who could have been a father figure would end in the realization that Roz hadn’t had a relationship with her surviving parent the way Hendrix had. Hendrix’s mother loved him and while his exploits exasperated her, she never judged. Not the way this sanctimonious jerk had just judged Roz.
Roz was Paul’s daughter and he should be on her side. If anything, Hendrix had been expecting a talking-to about corrupting the Carpenter daughter with his evil ways, which would have been well-deserved and easy to pretend didn’t affect him. Instead, he felt like he needed to take a shower and then tuck Roz away where this man couldn’t touch her.
“Well, be that as it may, I for one am quite happy with the development. Marriage will be good for Roz and with any luck, she’ll stop the naked romps in hot tubs.”
“Sir, I mean this with all due respect, but I sincerely hope not.”
Hendrix whirled and left Paul standing by the fireplace with a bemused look on his face. Having an in with Carpenter Furniture wasn’t going to pave the way to belonging in the upper echelon of North Carolina businessmen then. But what would make Hendrix finally feel like he was legitimate?
He found Roz talking to Lora in his study and took only half a second to gauge Roz’s mood. Better. She didn’t seem fragile any longer. Good. He grabbed his fiancée’s hand, threw an apologetic glance at her friend and dragged Roz from the room.
“What are you doing?” she demanded once they hit the hall.
“You and I are going to go do something together. And we’ll be dressed.”
Then he’d have a memory of her that had nothing to do with sex. They both needed that.
“Darling, we are doing something together. Dressed.” And Roz’s sarcasm wasn’t even as thick as it should be. “We’re at our engagement party, remember?”
“Of course I do,” he grumbled. A lie. He’d forgotten that he couldn’t just leave and take Roz on an honest-to-God date.
Soon. It was an oversight that he’d beat himself up for later. He and Roz would—and should—go on lots of dates with each other while they weren’t having sex. Spend time together. Get to know each other. Then he could stop thinking about her naked forty-seven times a minute.
But one thing he couldn’t stop thinking about was the fact that he’d never have realized she was upset earlier if he’d been permitted to turn it into a sexual encounter. What else had he already missed because his interactions with his fiancée started and ended with how best to get into her panties? That question put a hollow feeling in his chest that stayed with him the rest of the night.
* * *
Roz took a long shower when she got home from the engagement party, hoping it would wash the evening from her brain. But nothing could dislodge the surprising things she’d learned about Hendrix in the course of a few hours. The man never did what she expected. But she’d already known that.
What she hadn’t known was how easily he’d figure out how to bend her to his will. She’d naively assumed that as long as they weren’t naked, she’d be good. Wrong. Somehow, he’d gotten her to agree to a date.
A date with Hendrix Harris. That was almost more unbelievable than the fact that she was marrying him. Yeah, their “date” was a public spectacle that he’d dreamed up as a way to push their agenda. Couldn’t get society used to the idea that they were a respectable couple if they hid at home. She got that.
But for the love of God... What were they going to talk about? She didn’t date. She had a lot of sex with men who knew their way around a woman’s body but conversation by candlelight in an intimate booth at a swanky restaurant wasn’t in her repertoire—by design. One she could handle; the other she could not. Intimacy born of conversation and dating led to feelings she had no intention of developing, so she avoided all of the above like the plague.
One surefire way to ensure a man never called you again? Sleep with him. Worked every time. Unless his name was Hendrix Harris, apparently. That guy she couldn’t figure out how to shake, mentally or physically.
At least the concept of going on a date with her fiancé had pushed the unpleasantness of the encounter with her father to the background. Actually, Hendrix had almost single-handedly done that with his comfort-slash-seduction scene in the kitchen, which she’d appreciated more than she’d ever let on.
The less the man guessed how much he affected her, the better.
The next morning, she rifled through her closet for something appropriate for a date with the man who’d blown through half the female population of Raleigh. All eyes would be on her and not for the normal reasons.
Nothing. How was it possible not to have a thing to wear in an entire eight-hundred-square-foot closet? She’d have to go shopping after she got some work done.
Donning a severe suit that she secretly called her Grown-up Outfit, she twisted her hair into a sleek up-do that made her feel professional and drove to Clown-Around to push some paperwork across her desk.
Her phone rang and she almost didn’t answer the call from an unfamiliar number. It was too early and she hadn’t had nearly enough coffee to endure more rejection from yet another hospital.
But she was the only one here. There was no one else to do the dirty work. She answered.
“Rosalind?” the female voice said. “This is Helene Harris. How are you?”
