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“I’m sorrier about that than you can imagine.” He rolled on top of her and wedged her legs open with his thighs.
“What are you doing?”
“Reasserting my masculine supremacy.” He captured her wrists and held them over her head. “Sorry, Scoot, but it has to be done.”
He began to push inside her.
“I’m not using birth control!”
“Good try.” He nibbled at her breast. “But futile.”
She didn’t press the point. First, it was a lie. Second, she’d turned into a sex maniac. And third…
She forgot about the third and wrapped her legs around him.
Bram couldn’t believe it. A baby! Did she really think he’d go along with that harebrained idea. He’d always known he’d never get married, let alone have kids. Men like him weren’t cut out for anything involving self-sacrifice, cooperation, or high-mindedness. What small amounts of those qualities he could muster up had to go into his work. Georgie was the weirdest combination of common sense and wacko bullshit he’d ever known, and she was starting to drive him more than a little crazy.
He waited until after his meeting with Vortex the next afternoon before he called Caitlin with the news. “Brace yourself, sweetheart. Tree House has a green light at Vortex. Rory Keene took the deal.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“And here I thought you’d be happy for me.”
“You son of a bitch! That option only had two weeks left.”
“Fifteen days. And look at it this way. Now you can fall asleep at night knowing I won’t let anybody turn your mother’s book into a piece of crap. I’m sure that’ll be a huge comfort.”
“Go screw yourself.” She slammed down the phone.
He glanced toward the second floor. “Excellent idea.”
Between a sinus headache, a demoralizing meeting with her superiors at Starlight Management, and a speeding ticket on the way to Santa Monica, Laura was having the mother of bad days. She punched the doorbell of Paul York’s two-story Mediterranean town house, which was just four blocks from the Pier, although she couldn’t imagine him ever going there. The deep V-neck of her new sleeveless silk print Escada dress gave her some added ventilation, but she was still hot, and ringlets had begun to form along her hair-line. She began each day looking neat and orderly, but it didn’t take long before she started to unravel—a fleck of mascara under one eye, a bra strap slipping off the other shoulder. She’d scuff a shoe, tear a seam, and no matter how expensive the salon cut, her baby-fine hair always lost its shape as the day went on.
She heard Steely Dan playing inside the house, so she knew someone was home, but he wasn’t answering the bell, just as he hadn’t been answering his phone. She’d been trying to reach him since Georgie had fired her two weeks ago, the day the quarantine had been lifted.
She banged on the door, and when that didn’t work, banged on it again. The tabloids had gone into a frenzy searching out details of the quarantine, but the disclosure of Rory’s presence and the news that Vortex had taken on Tree House had cast doubt on the more hysterical accounts of screaming catfights and hedonistic orgies.
The lock finally clicked, and there he stood, glowering at her. “What the hell do you want?”
His normally immaculate steel gray hair had misplaced its part, he was barefoot, and he looked as though he hadn’t shaved in a week. Wrinkled shorts and a faded T-shirt had replaced his normal Hugo Boss. She’d never seen him like this, and something unwelcome stirred inside her.
She pushed hard on the door. “You look like Richard Gere’s corpse.” He automatically stepped back, and she slipped past him into the cool interior, which was dominated by bamboo floors, high ceilings, and bright skylights. “We need to talk.”
“No, we don’t.”
“Just a few minutes,” she said.
“Since we don’t have any more business together, there’s no point.”
“Stop being such a big baby.”
He stared at her, and she realized that even in his faded T-shirt and rumpled shorts he looked more together than she did in her Escada dress and strappy red Taryn Rose pumps. Again that inconvenient stirring…She gave him a grim smile. “I don’t have to kiss your ass anymore. It’s the only bright side of having my career ruined.”
“Yeah, well, sorry about that.” He walked away from her into his living room, a pleasantly decorated space, but without much personality. Comfortable furniture, beige carpet, and white plantation shutters. Apparently he hadn’t let any of the sophisticates he’d dated over the years put her mark on the place.
She located his sound system and turned off the music. “I’ll bet you haven’t talked to her once since this all fell apart.”
“You don’t know that.”
