Just that afternoon, he’d visited Quinton McCain. Quinn ran McCain Security, the firm that handled all the security for Messina Diamonds. He also happened to be one of Dex’s best friends.
As head of his own very successful company, digging up dirt wasn’t exactly the kind of thing Quinn normally did, but when Dex had explained the situation, Quinn hadn’t blinked an eye. He’d merely whipped out his BlackBerry, jotted down what little Dex knew about Lucy and promised to find whatever dirt there was. Dex had the nagging suspicion Quinn wouldn’t find much.
If conning money out of Dex had been her plan all along, why had Lucy waited so long to execute it? Why not come to him when she was pregnant? Why struggle through raising an infant alone for five months? And why had she left Isabella on his doorstep at all?
He kept coming back to that question. He simply couldn’t reconcile the woman he knew with that one action. The longer he knew her, the more absurd it seemed that she’d done it at all.
Shaking his head, he crossed to the fridge, pulled out a cold Shiner and twisted off the cap. He sipped it as he crossed the patio to the guesthouse.
He needed something to clear his head, so he changed into his swim trunks and headed for the pool to swim laps.
As he stood poised on the diving board, he couldn’t help wondering if Lucy was right. Maybe Isabella did deserve more.
But she was wrong about at least one thing. This wasn’t some fleeting flash of desire. She may not have enough experience to know better, but he did. The chemistry between them was off the charts. Merely avoiding each other for the next two weeks wouldn’t make it go away. At some point, they were going to have to deal with it.
Laps in a cold pool wouldn’t work forever.
From the window of her room, Lucy watched Dex dive into the pool. As his lean, muscled body cut effortlessly through the water, she tried to tell herself she’d made the right choice. She’d made the only choice.Her first concern had to be Isabella’s welfare. Her own wants and needs were irrelevant.
Oh, but she had wanted. His kiss had sparked a fire in her she hadn’t imagined she could feel. His touch had made her tremble. Even now, her br**sts felt overly sensitive. Her blood seemed to pound, throbbing between her legs.
Frustrated, she spun away from the window and crossed to sit in the armchair beside Isabella’s car seat. She crossed her legs, pressed them together, but that did little to ease the ache.
Damn him.
Damn him for making her want what she couldn’t have. For making her miss what she’d resisted for so long.
He was right of course. It had been years—forever, it seemed—since she’d been with a man. So many of her previous relationships had been mediocre at best. And she wasn’t Jewel, jumping carelessly from one man to the next, mindless of the risks such behavior incurred. She could never be so cavalier with her body or her emotions.
And now, apparently, she was paying the price in sexual frustration. Maybe if she had a fling every couple of months, she wouldn’t now be in the position of desiring the one man she shouldn’t want.
Lucy was avoiding him.He’d come home earlier and earlier each night, yet every time Mavis had handed him his warmed-over food and told him Lucy had already eaten and was up in her room, “Trying to put Isabella down.”
By day four, the phrase set his teeth on edge, probably because it evoked images of lame racehorses being shot out behind the stables.
Why Lucy’s obvious avoidance of him bothered him so, he couldn’t say. But he hadn’t felt this ignored since childhood, and that sure as hell wasn’t an experience he wanted to revisit.
He told himself he should just be glad she was making this fatherhood thing so easy on him. So far, other than that first day he’d had Isabella all by himself, he’d done almost nothing to take care of her. He should be rejoicing. Instead, he was just plain irritated.
Which was why he left work at two on Friday, to force his way through the already chocked downtown traffic, to make it home by three in the afternoon. Unless Lucy was going to have Mavis smuggle her food up to her room, then damn it, she was going to eat her meal with him.
He bypassed the guesthouse altogether and headed straight for the main house, determined to catch Lucy in person. He stopped a few feet into the living room to stare at the scene before him.
The living room furniture had been shoved aside. Lucy had covered the floor with several fluffy cream-colored blankets, all of which bore suspicious brown splotchy stains. Mavis—who before today Dex had never once seen crack a smile—sat cross-legged on the floor, jostling a giggling Isabella on her knee while dangling a chain of plastic links before her grasping hands. Lucy lay on the floor beside them, her head propped up on one of the sofa’s pillows, her bare feet resting on the edge of one of his brother’s priceless Eames leather chairs. Mozart’s “Eine Kleine Nachtmusik” played softly in the background. Over the music, Lucy was reading aloud from a paperback, the cover of which she’d folded back, so that she held it in one hand.
“‘This little explanation with Mr. Knightly gave Emma considerable pleasure.’” A bowl of red grapes sat by her other hand, and she paused to pop a handful in her mouth before continuing. “‘It was one of the agreeable recollections of the ball.’”
At that moment, Mavis looked up. For a second, she stared at him incomprehensibly, as if she didn’t recognize him or couldn’t imagine why he’d shown up to disrupt their idyllic afternoon.
“Miss Lucy.” Mavis cleared her throat and sent a pointed look in his direction.
“‘She was extremely glad…’” Lucy trailed off as she turned her head to glance in his direction. “Oh.” She swung her feet off the chair and sprang up from her reclined position, knocking over the bowl of grapes in the progress. “Oh. Dex. What are you doing here?”
“I live here.”
“But it’s a Friday.” She didn’t meet his gaze, but hustled to pluck up the grapes, which were rolling haphazardly around the hills and wrinkles of the blanket. “In the middle of the afternoon. Shouldn’t you be at work?”
“One of the benefits of being a VP,” he said tersely.
Why did it bother him, how relaxed and calm she’d been just a moment ago and how nervous and tense she now seemed?
“Oh.” She dropped a few more of the meandering grapes back into the bowl. “Yes. I suppose.”
She stood and as she did so, he heard a faint pop and at the same time an expression of surprise crossed her face. “Oh.” This time she muttered it with a cringe. She lifted her foot to reveal a squashed grape on the ball of her foot and a bright, oblong stain on the blanket. She sighed. “Well, I suppose we wouldn’t have been able to get the formula stains out, anyway.”
Mavis stood as well, clucking sympathetically. “Never you worry. It’s just a comforter.” She waved a hand dismissively. “I’ll have it replaced and Mr. Derek will never know the difference.”
Mavis shot him an angry glare as if daring him to whip out his cell phone and tattle on them that very instant. Then she handed Isabella over to Lucy and dusted her hands off on the dish towel she had hanging from the waistband of her khaki pants. Then she pulled the dish towel out and handed it to Lucy as well, who used it to wipe off her foot.
“Well, dinner won’t be cooking itself, now will it?” she muttered as she huffed off in the direction of the kitchen, shooting him one last rebellious look.
“So.” He shoved his hands into his pockets. “This is how you’ve been spending your days.”
Lucy shifted Isabella into her other arm, without meeting his gaze. “Yes. I suppose it is.” She passed the dish towel from one hand to the other as if unsure where to put it.
“Seems fun.”
She bristled visibly and her eyes shot up to his. “This isn’t just a vacation for me, if that’s what you’re implying.”
“It wasn’t.”
“I rarely get to spend whole days with Isabella like this, but when I do, I make the most of our time.”
“I didn’t—”
“Listening to music, particularly classical music, has been shown in countless studies to increase a child’s cognitive math and reasoning skills. And reading aloud to children, even babies, helps them develop a love of literature.”
“I’m sure she’s really enjoying—” he glanced down at the paperback Lucy had discarded when he’d entered “—Emma, is it?”
Lucy’s already stiff spine straightened even more. “You think this is just a big joke?”
“Not at all.”
She stomped off the blanket and bent down to pick it up. “I’ll have you know, I take this very seriously.”
Mozart continued to lilt in the background, a discordant backdrop to her harsh tone.
“Obviously.”
Still holding Isabella, she struggled to bunch up the king-sized comforter. “Well, I’m sure you have more important things to do than belittle my work with Isabella. So we’ll just get out of your way so you can have the living room all to yourself.”
With that, she spun on her heel—as much as she could—and stalked—or rather tried to—from the room, the blanket trailing behind her like a train.
“Lucy, wait.” The words left his mouth before he could stop himself.
She stopped but didn’t turn around.
What was he doing? Why wasn’t he just letting her go?
This was exactly the kind of emotional entanglement he’d spent his whole life avoiding. He’d never wanted a kid. Certainly not with a woman like Lucy. Not with someone he couldn’t trust. So why didn’t he just let her walk away? Why couldn’t he let her walk away?
He didn’t know. But he did know this—he’d come home early because he wanted—no, needed—to spend time with Isabella. Not just Isabella.
“I didn’t come home early to belittle you.”