“I didn’t think some of the guests would ever leave.”
“Leave? Some of the men retired to the blue room for cards and cigars. You’d think they were English gentleman of the eighteenth century the way they spoke.”
Blake loosened his tie and toed off his shoes. “What do you mean?”
“One guy, I think his name was Gilbert…”
“Gilabert,” he corrected, instantly picturing the man in his head. Old money, like his father, with his ways set in stone.
“Silly name for a grown man, but whatever, Gilabert waved off one of his ‘poker friends’ wives when she asked if she could join them for a game. ‘Oh, no, ladies aren’t allowed.’” Samantha had dipped her voice low and forced an English slant to her tongue.
“That sounds like him.”
“If he’d said that to me, I’d have sat at the man’s right hand side just to annoy him.”
Blake would like to see that. “Imagine that tenfold and you may be able to picture my father.”
Samantha stared, horrified. “I’m so sorry.”
“Me, too.”
Shaking her head, she stepped into the walk-in closet and Blake started to pull his shirt from his pants.
“We’re a mess, you and I,” Samantha said from the other room.
“Really? Why’s that?”
“Our dads did a number on us. Yours is reaching from the grave, still calling the shots, and mine had me questioning every man whoever walked into my life.”
Blake flung his shirt to the back of a chair before unzipping his pants. “You don’t seem to question me.”
“Oh, I did, in the beginning. Those first few days anyway. But you’ve grown on me.”
He smiled into the thought. “Really?”
“You’ve been nothing but honest from the beginning. I admire that.”
He hesitated. He should say something now, about the new, tiny problem the lawyer brought up. But Blake’s mouth went as dry as a desert.
“I was shocked when some of your colleagues told me how ruthless you are in business. I guess I’ve not seen that side of you.”
He was all that and more. Blake didn’t lose. His eye never left the goal until it was met. “Was someone badmouthing me?”
“Oh please, Blake. Like I would have allowed that. No, not badmouthing. Just informing me. It was strange, even the lawyer… what was his name?”
Blake’s heart slammed into his chest. “Mark Parker?”
“That’s it.”
He had to sit down. Good thing the bed was at his back.
“He said your father and you held the same merciless way of getting what you want. I had to laugh. I kept thinking of you sitting at the restaurant in Malibu telling me everyone had a price. Mark seemed like he wanted to add something, but I kept giggling. I think he got irritated with me before walking away.”
A long-winded sigh hissed from Blake’s lips. Mark kept his mouth shut. Thank God.
It wasn’t as if Blake would keep the new portion of the will from Samantha forever, just that he needed more time to find a loophole, something, so that he could keep his inheritance and Samantha.
Well, for a year anyway.
Less than twelve months.
Samantha cleared her throat from across the room where she stood leaning against the doorframe.
She’d slipped into a white lace teddy with barely-there panties that covered nearly nothing. Her hair that had been piled high all night fell to her shoulders in a beautiful auburn cloud.
In her hand was an empty condom box. “Please tell me you have more of these?” She waved the box in a circle.
“And here I expected you to be too tired tonight.” Him, too, for that matter. But his body sprung to life as she walked toward him, her hips swaying in time to the beat of his heart.
He had stripped to his boxers and Samantha’s gaze shifted low. “You’re not tired.”
She slid a hand up his chest. He sucked in the scent of her skin. Three hundred and sixty five days didn’t seem to be enough.
“Besides,” she whispered in her deep, sexy, bedroom voice. “We didn’t celebrate our real wedding night the way we should have. I think we need to make up for lost time.” She tapped the box against his chest. “But we need more of these. When I get back to the States I’ll see a doctor, but until then, we need to be careful.”
“My suitcase,” he told her. “I’ll get them.” He didn’t want to be tempted to take what she didn’t freely give, so he walked away, and found a half empty box of contraceptives.
When he returned to his bed, Samantha was already spread over the covers, one knee pulled up in offering. Blake forced thoughts of lawyers, tomorrow, and a year from that day far away while he made love to his wife.
Chapter Ten
After returning to the States, Sam immediately drove to Moonlight to visit Jordan. Guilt over enjoying her time in Europe with Gwen coupled with the excitement over her new life with Blake, knotted her stomach when she walked into Jordan’s room. Her sister’s strawberry blonde hair was tied back with a scrunchy, her pink cotton shirt sported a stain where some of her lunch missed the mark.
“Hey, hon,” Samantha said as she moved to a chair across from where Jordan stared out the window.
Jordan offered a half smile, all she could manage after the stroke. Her eyes lit up with recognition and she lifted her good arm, which Samantha grasped in a tight grip.