Awaken To Pleasure

That explained why she was out so late, as she organized her life around Nick’s needs. He’d only met her brother twice, once during a barbeque for employees’ families and again when he’d unexpectedly needed Taylor to come into work on a Saturday and she hadn’t been able to find a sitter. However, Taylor’s daily reports—glowing updates more like a mother would give of her firstborn, than a sister of her brother—had made him feel like he knew the boy intimately.

“You’re still temping with the same agency?”

“Yes.”

“I’ve asked for you when I needed a temp.” Each time, the hapless replacement had had to bear the brunt of his unreasonable temper at her absence.

“Oh.” She turned a little toward him. “I didn’t know.” A pause. “I don’t work in the film industry anymore.”

“Why not film?” Had she been avoiding him, he thought with a flare of anger that was rooted in possessiveness that he’d never consciously acknowledged. Until now.

“It’s not the kind of environment I want to be in.”

Stopping at a red light, he faced her. “Environment?”

She shrugged, her cheeks a little pink. “Excess, glamour, money, money, money.”

He’d always known that she’d fight against coming into his world. “What about art?”

“What about it?” she scoffed.

He smiled and accelerated with care when the light turned green. “Poor Taylor. Disillusioned so young.”

“Don’t patronize me.” The order was sharp.

She’d been the only one of his secretaries who’d given him backchat. He’d offered her a permanent position after her contract ended, but she’d been adamant in her desire to leave. He’d wanted her more than he’d craved anything in his life, but honor had forced him to let her go, before he stole both her youth and her innocence. Yet, he’d kept waiting for her to walk back through the door. The memory made his voice curt. “Sorry.”

“No, you’re not.”

He shrugged. “What can I say? For a kid, you’re very cynical.” At thirty-two, he was only eight years her senior, but in his heart, he was decades too old.

Taylor’s temper started to simmer. Why did Jackson always treat her like a child? “I’m not a kid!” Her feelings around him were definitely those of an adult.

His big body tended to do things to her insides that scared her, because she had no idea what to do to feed those wild, hot feelings. With her history, she could never, ever allow herself to love a man, but the minute she’d met Jackson Santorini, she’d learned that she couldn’t stop herself from lusting after this particular male.

A deep chuckle heated both her cheeks and her temper. “Next to me, you’re a baby.”

“Crap.” She was so furious that she could barely get the single word out.

“Crap?” He was laughing at her again, in that superior masculine way of his that made her want to scream.

“Age makes no difference to the person you become once you’re an adult.” She needed him to accept her as a woman, though she shied away from the implications of that need.

“Of course it does.” His response was infuriatingly calm. “More experience, more life lived.”

“More years doesn’t necessarily mean more experience!”

His sardonic look dared her to prove it.

She did, goaded beyond endurance. “I’m bringing up a child. Can you say the same?”

“No.” His response was so cold that the inside of the car suddenly felt like a freezer.

It was clear that she’d offended him deeply with her careless words. Not for the first time, she wondered if his childless marriage had been his choice. “I’m sorry,” she said quietly, “I shouldn’t have said that.”

“It’s true.” An emotionless response.

She bit her lip, debating whether to continue. “Yes. But so soon after Bonnie’s death…I shouldn’t have said it. I wasn’t thinking.”

It was her own emotional anguish over the possibility of losing custody of Nick to her stepfather, Lance, that had made her so reckless. Even tonight’s desperate attempt to forget her fears for a few hours had ended in a nightmare. Except for being picked up by Jackson, her day had been sheer hell. And now, she’d made him angry. Somehow, that was the worst feeling of all.

“It’s been twelve months since Bonnie overdosed.” Jackson knew his voice was hard, but so had been surviving the losses a year ago. “You know our marriage was finished long before then. Hell, the whole world knew.”

They’d been married, but not to each other. He’d had his work and for a brief glittering moment of pure happiness, Taylor’s smile. Bonnie had had drugs. They hadn’t even slept together for over two years, except for that one fateful time four months before her death.

She’d been so lovely that day, a shimmering memory of the girl he’d wed, before news of her father’s death had stolen her joy. He’d long since learned that that girl had been a mirage, but when she’d turned to him for comfort, he hadn’t been able to deny her. Not when grief had ripped apart the mask of sophistication that had become her face.

And they’d created a child.

Whom Bonnie had murdered when she’d taken her life with a cocktail of drugs. If she hadn’t, he might have been a parent, too, able to refute Taylor’s claim. He could still feel the knives that had sliced through his soul when the autopsy had revealed her to be pregnant. Further tests had proven that the child had been his flesh and blood.

But, even that incredible grief hadn’t compared to his rage at discovering that Bonnie had known of the tiny life growing inside of her. She’d known that his child was in her womb when she’d taken her final lover, and she’d known that his child was in her womb when she’d ingested the fatal drug cocktail.

At that moment of understanding, hate had spread through his body like a virus, decimating his ability to feel tender emotions.

Two

“She could be nice sometimes,” Taylor said, betraying the soft heart behind that tough exterior.

“When she wasn’t drugged to the gills.” He knew too much about the kind of pain “nice” Bonnie could inflict.

“I wonder why she did all those things.”

He knew she was talking about the drugs and that final affair, unearthed by the press and gleefully announced to the world. What would she say if he told her that Bonnie’s famous lover had been the last in a string of men?

He’d stopped touching Bonnie as soon as he’d discovered the infidelities. His love for her had died long before. After a lonely, barren childhood, her joyful charm had drawn him, only to teach him an even deeper sense of isolation. They hadn’t shared a bed again, except for that day four months before her death. After hours spent at work in Taylor’s company, aching for things he had no right to demand, his defenses had been at an all-time low. Seeing Bonnie smile after weeks of depression, he’d desperately wanted to believe that they could salvage their marriage.

As the forgotten child of an impulsive celebrity union, he’d promised himself that he would not repeat the cycle of divorce and remarriage that characterized his parents, and which had already spread to his three younger half siblings. Even the youngest, Valetta, had a broken marriage under her belt.

Driven by that promise, he’d kept trying to glue together his and Bonnie’s shattered relationship. He’d even let Taylor go without a single touch, stifling the hungry need her presence always aroused.

But even his most precious vows had a breaking point—he hated Bonnie for teaching him that lesson. The final straw had come the day she’d flaunted her faithlessness, meeting her newest lover in a place haunted by the paparazzi. That humiliating betrayal had forever severed any remaining loyalty he’d had toward the girl he’d married, and he’d immediately filed for divorce.

He still remembered her reaction.

“Oh please,” she’d mocked, cocktail in hand. It had been barely 10:00 a.m. “As if you’ve been faithful.”

The tragedy was, he had. The only infidelity he could be accused of was of the mind. In his bleakest moments, he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about Taylor, but he would’ve never touched her while a wedding band encircled his finger. Never. She deserved better than that.