Forgotten Father (17 page)

He lifted his mouth from hers then and bent to lick
one turgid nipple. Clinging to his broad shoulders, she shuddered
beneath the desire ripping through her.

Around them, the stark bathroom tiles echoed back
the harshness of their breathing, her soft whimpering moans.

Her hands fumbling, she dragged at his pants,
awkwardly loosening his belt while he lapped at her breasts and
rose to nip at a spot at the base of her neck.

Standing still in the middle of the bathroom, debris
from the hole in the wall filling the tub, they clutched at each
other, desperately lost in their passion.

Delanie conquered his belt buckle and tugged at his
trouser zipper, her fingers grazing through his briefs the hard
length of him with a shiver of anticipation. He went still as she
freed him.

With a thrill of feminine curiosity, she skated her
hand along his erection, blind passion driving her boldness. His
whole body jerked at the contact.

In a matter of seconds, he’d found the zipper on her
skirt and peeled the garment from her. Her panties followed. Before
she knew it, she found herself scooped up and deposited on the
broad old pedestal sink, the enameled surface a cold shock against
her skin.

But then he was there, pressing between her legs.
Hot and hard to her soft dampness, raging and eager for her.

He hesitated a moment, then gripped her hips and
thrust forward, entering her slick tightness in one smooth
movement. Pleasure scattered over her. Clutching his shoulders for
balance, she curled her legs around his waist and gave herself over
to the driving hot sensation between her legs.

This was Mitchell in her arms. Mitchell who saw her,
really saw her and who forgave her for things she hadn’t yet
forgiven herself.

Mitchell heard her gasping moans of pleasure. Nearly
blinded by his own passion, he made himself open his eyes to gaze
at her. Her shirt and bra hanging open to reveal her cherry-tipped
breasts, her head thrown back in complete abandon.

She clung to him, her strong legs locked at his
waist, her body hot and wet and welcoming.

Over and over, he thrust, lost to the haze of
sensation, the throbbing, overwhelming ecstasy of his body locked
with hers.

It was better than before. Better even than the
first time they’d made love and that time had been the best of his
life. He never wanted to stop, sensing himself closer and closer to
the brink. She felt so damn good, so gloriously, completely good in
his arms, enclosing him, drawing him into herself over and
over.

He felt then the beginnings of her climax, heard the
sudden catch of joy in her throat. With his own completion so
pressing, so imminent, he struggled to watch her but couldn’t.

Thrusting into her with full long strokes, he
pitched forward over the edge, cradling her in his arms.

******

“It’s getting late,” Delanie said, not moving from
her snuggled position in the quilt on the chaise lounge in front of
the fire.
Never had she felt more contentment, more at peace with the world,
than sitting here naked with Mitchell, wrapped together in a musty
old quilt in front of an inadequate fire. The old house was silent
around them. She knew she should go home, but she didn’t want to
leave just yet.

He’d scrounged the wood from the terrace behind the
big house. Only a few small pieces, all covered in snow, but he’d
found some old newspaper and matches and set it all ablaze in the
bedroom’s fireplace.

It was their golden moment together, basking in the
newness of this fragile coming together.

“So,” she said, tipping her head back against his
bare shoulder to look up into his face. “You must know this old
house really well.”

“Yes,” he agreed, slowly stroking her bare arm as
they sat cuddled together under the quilt.

“It’s a beautiful place,” she said, glancing over at
a ormolu clock on the mantel. “But I can’t see a small boy running
through this place with all these beautiful antiques. You must have
had to tiptoe a lot as a child.”

His face looked pensive in the firelight. “My
grandmother loved old things, but she never made me feel that being
here was like living in a museum. If something got broken, she just
said ‘Things can be replaced, but people can’t’.”

“She must have been wonderful,” Delanie murmured,
turning her head to press a kiss against his throat.

Mitchell’s arm tightened around her, his hand
lifting to fleetingly cup her bare breast. “Yes, she was wonderful.
After my mother left, I spent most of my holidays here with my
grandparents.”

She looked at him curiously, trying to imagine his
childhood without a mother. Her own father had been an emotionally
distant man, but he’d been there. He’d come home every night and
that meant everything to a child.

“Were you close to your father?” she asked after a
moment.

Still staring into the fire, Mitchell shrugged. “He
was a busy man, but he made sure I got what I needed. The right
schools, the right kind of care.”

Delanie wondered if Mitch knew how lonely that
sounded. How disconnected. She, at least, had had her mother’s
devoted love and she could no more imagine delegating Jenna’s
“care” to someone else than she could jump over the moon.

“Did your father marry again?”

Mitchell looked down at her, brushing a strand of
hair off her cheek. “No.”

“Why not?”

He shrugged again. “My father grew up in a fortunate
situation, financially. Privileged was the word they used then.
He’s always been aware of the contamination factor present when one
marital partner has a certain amount of worldly goods.”

“Money,” Delanie said, summing up what he seemed to
be having difficulty saying. “Your father thought every woman who
might want to marry him would be after his money?”

“Something like that.”

“How sad,” she mused. “He lived his life without
being able to really love.”

“He didn’t spend his life alone,” Mitchell said, his
voice dry. “Companionship was never a problem.”

She looked at him, wondering if he really thought
having a woman to decorate his arm and give him sex was enough.
“But didn’t he ever fall in love? Ever find a woman who he knew
would stick with him through thick and thin?”

Mitchell glanced down, his gaze suddenly shuttered.
“That’s a tall order for any man, to find a woman like that.”

She shook her head. “Not really. Relationships are
complicated, but if your father was convinced that they all just
wanted his money, how would he know it if a woman really loved him?
Maybe he created a self-fulfilling prophecy with his distrust.”

“To be absolutely fair,” Mitchell said slowly, “my
mother’s behavior gave him reason to believe she’d married him for
his money. That she valued the fortune over the man.”

“Your mother?”

“Yes,” he said, his tone just as easy as if they
were discussing the weather. “My mother sold me to him when they
divorced. For one million dollars, she signed over her parental
rights and disappeared from my life.”

“My God,” Delanie said, straightening to look up at
him in concern. “How awful. Are you sure that’s what really
happened? Divorce can be messy and confusing. Kids can get their
facts mixed up.”

“My facts are very accurate,” he told her with a
faint smile. “I’ve read the divorce papers.”

“And they said that? That she was selling you?”

“Of course not,” he said, a hint of annoyance in his
voice. “But the inference was clear. She was to receive the money,
above and beyond her settlement amount, and my father received full
parental rights.”

“She actually signed her parental rights away? You
never saw her again?”

“I saw her several times,” he admitted. “When I was
fifteen or sixteen, we sailed through the Aegean sea on her yacht.
I was curious about her.”

“That’s only natural.”

The quirk of his lips held no humor. “Yes. I needed
confirmation of the things my father had told me. He knew that and
let me go.”

“And was she really a money-grubbing, heartless
witch?”

“Not really heartless,” he said, looking at her in
surprise. “She was very pleasant. She introduced me to her current
lover and his children. She asked how my life was going. It was a
pleasant holiday, but it didn’t change my view of things.”

“How painful that must have been for you,” Delanie
said, leaning into his body to offer comfort.

Mitchell was silent.

“How casual and indifferent!” She pressed her head
against his chest. “You must have walked away feeling completely
unimportant to her.”

“I did,” he admitted, the words abrupt, as if he
were realizing the truth of his feelings for the first time.

“But surely you and your father must have known that
not all women are like that,” Delanie said insistently. “Most would
pay
a million dollars to keep their child, rather than the
other way around.”

Mitchell glanced down at her, a frown between his
brows. “Maybe so, but most women don’t have husbands with the kind
of resources like the men in our family. Money does…cloud
things.”

“It doesn’t have to,” she said absolutely, her
fingers absently sifting through the sprinkling of dark hair on his
chest. “But I can see how something like that could make it hard to
know who to trust.”

“Can you?” he said, still in that musing tone.

“Of course. Particularly if you saw your dad
struggling with the divorce.”

She glanced up at him and saw him staring into the
dwindling fire.

No wonder he’d met her with such hostility that day
at the attorney’s office. She must have seemed like another
scheming woman, out for what she could get. A woman like his
mother.

Did Mitchell suspect every woman who was attracted
to him of just wanting his money? Didn’t he know how special he
was? What a loving, desirable man he was apart from his bank
account?

Yes, he could be annoyingly retentive about some
things and he had a problem opening up to people. But there was
something strong and reliable about Mitchell. Something threatening
to her equilibrium while, at the same time, making her feel
tremendously safe.

It hit her then as she looked up at him. She’d
fallen in love with Mitchell Riese. Throughout the skirmishes and
the conflict over The Cedars, she’d come to see the man behind the
toughness. Hadn’t he held her just now and decried her
hyper-responsibility in a way no one else had ever done. Most
people were happy to let her handle the crises, never thinking
about her feelings. Most people who knew her just expected her to
save the day. But not Mitchell.

She loved him.

Why else would she have had passionate wanton sex
with him? Since the birth of her daughter, she’d vowed to enter
into any future relationship with her eyes wide open. No more
tripping and stumbling into anything. No more forgotten
episodes.

No more men who came and went without a trace.

Once was enough.

Despite the fact that she felt compelled to take
birth control pills to prevent another surprise pregnancy, there’d
been no one in her life since she woke in the hospital, her memory
like a piece of aged Swiss cheese.

And here she was—eyes wide open—in love with
Mitchell the millionaire. A man who she’d have to convince that he
meant more to her than all the money in the world.

She hadn’t a clue how to begin. He was complicated
and basic, at the same time, and this magic between them was so
new. He’d been hurt before, wounded by life, as she had been, but
they had to grab this enchantment between them.

If she could convince him it was real.

All she could think to do at this moment was to
reach up and draw him down for her kiss. She’d love him into
believing.

******

The next day, Mitchell walked up the path to the
cottage with the white picket fence, conscious of a strange sense
of well-being.

The sex had been great. Beyond terrific.

Just the thought of her wild, hungry moans as he’d
driven into her, her red-gold head thrown back in ecstasy, made him
quicken.

He wanted to believe that was all he was in this
for, the sex. But when he woke with a smile on his face this
morning he’d decided not to examine his own motives too closely.
For once, he was going with the feelings, trusting that little-used
part of himself.

If she were really a golddigger would she have
insisted on paying for the repairs to the Villa?

He’d never known a woman like Delanie before. Maybe
this was insanity, but it felt too good to dispute. Maybe their
past was murky, yet he couldn’t shake the sense that she wasn’t at
all who he’d thought she was originally.

The morning sun cascaded over the little cottage
like a downpour of goodwill. It seemed perfect for her house to be
covered in sunlight. She was like sunlight with her glimmering hair
and her laughing eyes.

Clutching the bakery bag of bagels and the bouquet
of spring flowers he’d bought for her, he bounded up the steps.

They’d had no chance to make plans the night
before.

Delanie had jumped up and left in a hurry after
they’d made love again on the chaise lounge. Saying Connie was
waiting on her, she’d thrown on her clothes, kissed him and run
out.

He’d woke alone in his bed this morning and wanted
her. Not just to make love with, but to talk to, to eat breakfast
with. So he’d come here on an impulse and now just the anticipation
of seeing her had his blood jumping in his veins.

Mitchell knocked on the front door, whistling
softly.

The door opened immediately to reveal not Delanie,
but her assistant, Connie, dressed in a thick bathrobe, blinking at
him through heavy glasses.

“Good morning,” Mitchell offered, silently cursing
himself for the bouquet of flowers. It could only be uncomfortable
to be caught in the act of pursuing a romantic encounter by an
employee, even if the employee wasn’t technically his own.