Chapter Ten
CHAPTER TEN
‘W ELL DONE ,’ C ARTER SAID , steering Grace, who was almost fizzing with silent anger, to the elevator.
It was close to midnight as they left the restaurant, having had a long dinner with Jonathon and his wife.
Somehow she had held her temper and made notes throughout the long meeting. Somehow she had not stood up and walked out as extremely intimate details had been discussed. Then, the audacity of having to sit through dinner!
No room full of candles was going to fix this, she thought, as they stepped into the suite.
‘DNA!’ She was as close to slapping another person as she had ever come as—now they were in private—she raised the points that had hurt the most. ‘I thought the NDA was bad enough, but...’ She looked at him in abject fury. ‘You laughed when he said you’d insist on a DNA test and I had to just sit there.’
‘I did not laugh,’ Carter corrected. ‘I smothered a smile.’ He took her by the arms. ‘Grace, he was just saying that if you are already pregnant...’
She finished for him. ‘You’d demand a DNA test.’
‘Did you want me to tell Jonathon that you were a virgin? That we both got carried away? Because I could have—and do you know what? He would have still insisted the DNA clause remained.’
‘In case I spend the next few weeks frantically trying to get pregnant so I can blame it on you because you’re such a big shot?’
‘Something like that,’ he said.
He moved away and punched out two headache tablets, adding another and swallowing them down with a drink that she was sure wasn’t the one recommended on the packet.
‘Then we had to sit through dinner afterwards...as if I hadn’t just been insulted.’
‘He’s just doing his job.’
She kicked off her shoes. ‘I am so not suited for this.’
Then she took off the horrible pale jacket, and the trousers, too, and decided she wasn’t suited to suits either.
‘I agree,’ Carter nodded, tearing off his tie as if it were choking him, and his jacket and shoes too, and then his socks. He lay back on the bed. ‘Believe it or not, it’s your unsuitability for this that makes marriage doable for me.’
‘I don’t get it.’
‘Grace, I take my dates to the theatre, so I don’t have to talk to them. I can’t imagine getting past time in the jungle with any of them, let alone them agreeing to a wedding there, without exclusive photos and a freaking string quartet and white chairs with bows, a few celebrity guests...’ He covered his eyes with the back of his arm and groaned. ‘At least you just want money and a peaceful life.’
Grace was almost terribly pleased he was deep in migraine land, so that he could not see her awkward swallow.
Even as she denied it, even as she ignored it and told all the thoughts to go away, as she sat on the bed and looked over to where he lay she knew the reason for the sudden clarity that had struck her when she’d agreed to this madness. How the impossible decision had been made so easily...
She was more than a bit crazy about him.
Fascinated by him, really.
Trust her to go and fall for the one man who actually was an island...well, at least most of the time. Because now he pulled down his forearm and gave her a half-grimace and a half-smile that almost felt like an apology.
‘Seriously, I know it was hell in there.’
‘I hated it,’ she admitted, still appalled at all that had been discussed, right down to those awful ‘discreet affair’ clauses. ‘All of it.’
There were so many things that had upset her today, Grace thought as she headed into the bathroom. Finally alone, she took the clips from her hair and then washed the make-up off her face.
She was too weary to take off her cami, let alone her colourless underwear, and she just stared in the mirror and didn’t know who she was any more.
By night she felt safe in the decision she was making. Making love with Carter, she felt giddy with desire, safe to take risks, to watch in the mirror as he took her as if seeing herself come to life.
Right now, she didn’t even know if she liked him.
But that question faded when she saw him dozing on the bed. He was why she was here—not that she was going to admit that. And she really was the luckiest—not for ever, of course, but for now. She felt lucky to be able to climb up onto the bed, to take a little of his don’t give a damn attitude and curl into him.
‘What are you doing?’ he asked, pulling away from her touch as she laid her head on his chest.
‘Checking there’s actually a heart in there.’ She felt his half-laugh. ‘I don’t like Jonathon. I don’t get why we had to sit down to dinner and make small talk with him and his wife...’
‘Because...’ he said. But, as was so often the case with Carter, he didn’t elaborate. He tried to peel her off him. ‘Get undressed and get some sleep.’
‘I don’t want to.’ She was too tired even to move, but after a day of having details discussed such as their having no love, no involvement afterwards, no expectations, she could not turn her mind off. ‘He seems very familiar with your private life.’
‘Of course he is. About ten years ago there was a lawsuit about twins. I think the woman was just hoping I’d pay up, but Jonathon shot that down very quickly. Look it up.’
‘I already have.’
‘Then you’ll know about the guy I supposedly dated?’
‘Yes.’
‘An attempt to bribe me. Look, Jonathon knows I don’t want a relationship, he knows that I’m straight, and that my family are useless. I don’t have to repeatedly tell him that I never want kids, and he knows without asking that I don’t have unprotected sex. So, yes, it’s probably a surprise to him that I’m suddenly engaged and forgot to be cautious.’ He gave her shoulder a squeeze. ‘Don’t take it all so personally.’
‘Oh, it feels personal. But why did we have dinner with them?’
‘Aren’t you supposed to be calling the care home? Wasn’t that meeting today? It’s almost four in London.’
‘You’re like one of those time zone walls at the stock exchange...’ Grace grumbled, half relieved he’d reminded her, but also certain he was trying to avoid the discussion. Still, if she wanted to catch the manager before she went home then now was the time to call.
Peeling herself from the reprieve of his arms, she sat up on the edge of the bed.
His arm had gone back across his head, and she was certain he was dozing—anyway, she doubted her mother’s care plan meeting was high on his list of priorities.
‘Maggie!’ She was relieved to reach the manager, especially when she heard it was all good news. ‘They’re reducing her medication?’ Grace blinked, thrilled to hear that her sedation was being cut back.
And not only that...
‘That’s so sweet of her,’ she said, when she heard that Violet had been bringing in a chocolate éclair each Sunday, just dropping it off at Reception so as not to upset her mother.
Oh, and she needed new lenses for her glasses... Grace chose not to ask about her hearing tests—not just yet. Anyway, there was something more that had been worrying her.
‘Is she still asking for me all the time?’
The response was one she hadn’t expected, and she wished—oh, how she wished—she’d taken the call in the lounge, or some other area of the opulent suite.
It was ridiculous to get good news and want to cry.
Carter knew damn well he’d changed the subject rather than answer her question, but behind his forearm he frowned at Grace’s long silence in response to whatever the answer to her last question had been.
‘Oh,’ she finally said. ‘That’s good... I guess.’
‘Everything okay?’ he checked when she’d ended the call.
‘Yes,’ she said, just a little too brightly.
Carter removed his arm and looked to where she sat, her back to him.
‘Are you sure?’ Carter checked.
‘Just leave it.’
‘Grace?’
‘She’s stopped asking for me. Apparently, she refers to me being at school, but...’ She swallowed. ‘It’s good news, I guess.’ Then her voice changed from falsely upbeat to hollow. ‘I didn’t expect it.’
For a moment the false wall she’d put up had nothing to support it, and he reached out, completely on instinct, to put a hand on her shoulder. But she brushed it off.
‘I don’t want to talk about it.’
‘You can.’
‘I don’t want to.’
‘Come here,’ he said again, and pulled her, tense and yet yielding, back into his arms. Only it wasn’t the same relaxed space as before. ‘She probably—’
‘Carter,’ she interrupted. ‘It hurts to talk about it.’
‘I know.’
‘So can we change the subject? Like you did when I asked why we had to have dinner with your lawyer?’
She lay there.
‘If I get my own, will you sit through a chummy dinner with them?’
‘No.’ He gave a soft laugh, realising now how odd it must have seemed. ‘Jonathon does a lot for me.’
‘You pay him to.’
‘Not just that.’
He loathed sharing anything personal, but he’d just asked for the same from her. More, he’d asked her to sit through dinner with two people who were not only clearly on his side, but actively suspicious of her.
‘I don’t expect you to get it, but they have both looked out for me. A lot.’
‘How?’
He swallowed before he told her something very few knew—and it had nothing to with the fact she’d signed the NDA.
That wasn’t even a thought in his head.
More, it felt right to reveal it.
‘I lived with them for a couple of months while it was decided where I’d end up. Jonathon wanted to be sure I had a say—well, of sorts. I wasn’t talking then.’
‘At all?’
‘Not much. I could hear, though.’ He gave her shoulder a squeeze, making another little joke, even if the topic wasn’t funny. But it seemed they had this new language they shared, because she looked up briefly and smiled.
‘What did you hear?’ Grace asked.
Her head went back to his chest, her eyes open as she listened. Usually she’d close her eyes to picture things. Only now she needed every detail—how one hand held her arm, and the other found her fingers and toyed with her ring as he spoke.
‘My uncle was prepared to have me,’ he said.
‘Benedict’s father?’
‘Yep,’ he said. ‘Well, he wanted to get his hands on my parents’ money. We’d be lying in a cheap motel now if he’d got his hands on it.’
Grace found that she was smiling, wishing she was in a motel with him for gorgeous, uncomplicated sex. Pull-up-the-car-and-get-a-room sex. And she found that she blinked in shock at her own thoughts, especially when they were discussing something so serious.
‘What’s funny?’ he asked, and it dawned on her that he, too, was aware of even her tiniest movement.
‘Us in a motel.’
‘What about it?’
‘You were talking about your uncle...’ She nudged him, knowing he would happily stay off track and wanting to know more.
‘Jonathon threatened my uncle with an exposé, so he soon pulled out. Really, you can see where Benedict gets it from. Then there was my grandfather... He was eccentric, at best, and grieving.’
He fell silent for a moment, and she watched his finger hover over the stone of her ring.
‘As well as that, I didn’t want to go back to Borneo—it was a couple of years before I did. And it was Jonathon and his wife who stepped up.’
‘So they took you in?’
‘They did. And I think I could have stayed for longer. But then my aunt in New York decided she needed to be seen doing her part.’
He told her about his mother’s sister, and how she really wasn’t ‘mommy material’.
‘That lasted a couple of years before she shipped me off, back to boarding school in England. Jonathon’s always looked out for me and, as expensive as he is, he has never once taken advantage...’
‘Do I have to like them now?’
‘No, just understand where they’re coming from.’ He played with the edge of her cami. ‘Get undressed?’ he suggested.
‘I honestly can’t be bothered.’ She liked being sad in his arms.
‘Nor can I,’ he admitted. ‘I’m sorry you’re upset about your mum.’
‘Thank you.’
She knew he’d possibly shared with an agenda, but it was a nice agenda—to give a bit of himself, to know her some more.
‘I’ve been worried the whole time I’ve been away that she’ll think I’ve forgotten her. I never gave much thought to her forgetting me.’ She took a breath, but it shuddered. It was five staccato gasps just to get one breath in, and it was the closest to crying she’d come. ‘I don’t want to be forgotten...’
‘I know.’
There was something else that had upset her during the discussions today. ‘Why are you having a vasectomy?’ she asked.
‘I’ve been meaning to.’ She watched as his hand moved to his crotch, as if to protect it, but then moved away. ‘Though it didn’t seem urgent until the other night.’
She lay there, trying to tell herself it was ridiculous to be upset about something so sensible—something he clearly wanted. Or rather to think about babies he didn’t want, and certainly not with her.
He picked up her hand and looked at her ring and she knew he was about to change the subject again—but at least she understood why. It was too painful for him to recall.
‘Why the hell did you choose this one?’
‘Fireflies.’ Grace smiled and let him talk about nothing rather than desperate hurt. ‘When we were just a one-night stand...’
‘Seriously?’
‘Mmm...’ she said. ‘Then you had to go and propose, and bring in lawyers and stylists.’
‘I thought you wanted stylists?’
‘Not any more,’ Grace admitted. ‘I miss us.’
‘Do you?’
He looked down at her pale leg, lying over his. ‘I miss your coral toenails,’ he told her.
‘So do I.’ She liked the thud-thud of his heart and how neither of them moved. ‘I love coral... I love colour.’
Carter frowned, unsure how to respond. If he should respond!
‘So why all the...?’
‘They suggested I start with a neutral palette and then add my own signature.’
‘You already have your own signature.’
‘I don’t think so?’
‘Oh, you do,’ he assured her. ‘Well, you did.’
‘What is it?’
‘Sunset colours. Sunrise, maybe. I don’t know... But it’s not neutral...’ He actually gritted his jaw. ‘You’re more vibrant...a bit...’
Careful Carter , he thought.
‘Dishevelled...’
‘I was dishevelled when we met because I’d been travelling and was asleep. Then the jungle...’
‘I like your curls,’ he said. ‘And how your top falls off your shoulder. Always...’ he stuck with his chosen word ‘...dishevelled.’
‘Slatternly, as my mother would say.’
He liked her soft laugh.
‘Though not any more. Even my underwear is sensible.’
He frowned, pulling at her cami, stretching his hand around her back.
‘It’s a bandeau,’ she said. ‘No hooks.’
He pulled her up onto his stomach, took off her cami and looked at the little strip of material, and her dark nipples all squashed by the fabric.
‘Like a bank robber,’ he said, and they laughed. ‘I like these,’ he said of the glossy knickers. He could see the darkness of her triangle of hair and tried to unfocus his eyes. ‘You look naked.’
‘I thought you’d be more into velvet and lace.’
‘You so have the wrong impression of me,’ he said. ‘I am not really bothered by underwear...’ He was almost too tired to speak now, so his words were sort of a drawl. ‘More what’s under the underwear.’ Then he pushed her breasts together and changed his mind. ‘You have the best breasts...’
He moved down to her invisible knickers and dusted her thighs with his hands. And then he pulled her head down.
He had never expected a kiss like this when they’d walked through the door. Certainly, he had not expected for all the tension that had built through the day to be erased by deep and real conversation. Nor, as he’d led her angrily from the restaurant, had he envisaged this slow intimate kiss. Their mouths were too tired to talk, their bodies almost too tired to move, but somehow he was in deep discovery, because his hands were peeling down the knickers she loathed.
‘I hate them too,’ he said, for they refused to tear.
There was something so inherently pleasurable watching her sensual nature emerge. ‘I was worried they’d get rid of this,’ he told her as he stroked her triangle of hair through the flimsy fabric.
‘They suggested it...’ She blushed so deeply the colour speckled her neck. ‘I refused.’
‘Good.’
‘Get what you want, Grace...’
‘I want this.’
Perhaps he heard the urgent note, because Carter tried again to tear at the fabric, but they were better designed than that, and Grace didn’t want to get off his sexy hot body.
He lifted her bottom, brought her towards him and raised his head, and she held the bedhead as he tore the fabric with his teeth.
It was the sexiest thing she’d ever felt...his head on her stomach, his hand on her bottom and the tearing of her knickers.
‘There,’ he said.
It was a very slow start, because he’d managed only to rip the fabric to the edge of her thigh, then it was back up again for another nibble from his teeth.
He slid them down one thigh and didn’t go back down. He slipped a little lower and tasted her. It was something she had never thought she could enjoy. In truth, as she closed her eyes, she was too tense to know if she actually did.
‘Grace...’ He probed and he licked and he relished, and she felt herself pressing down a little for more of the bliss. ‘Give me a little climax...’
‘I can’t—’
Famous last words, because he pulled her down onto him till she was gripping the bedhead and fighting not to cry out, such bliss he delivered with his mouth.
‘That’s it...’ he said, stroking her bottom with his hand as he stroked her with his tongue. She gave him a little, a flicker of orgasm, but he knew as she lifted from him, that she held back a lot.
He sat her down on his thighs, felt her hand close around him, and not shyly, just so blissfully.
They were both panting, both turning the other on, but with more than just touch—they were crossing into each other’s thoughts. ‘Why did you smile when I said motel?’ he asked and her flushed face darkened, yet she stroked him still.
‘The thought of...’ she shook her head.
‘Go on?’ he invited, deeply curious to hear more.
‘The thought of wanting another so much that you simply have to stop the car...’ she gave a half nervous laugh. ‘Or meet in your lunch break...’
Carter had never wanted anyone in that way.
Yet he wanted her in that way now.
He reached for a condom and saw her eyes briefly close in frustration as he tore the wrapper.
If she had been anyone else it would have alerted him. He’d just been lectured by his lawyer, after all, to be very careful in the coming weeks. Instead it made him reckless. Their wants matched...this desire could not be contained.
‘In a moment,’ he said, and she nodded in weak relief.
And then it was Grace who knelt up and held his thick, unsheathed base, and together they watched her lower herself down onto him.
‘God...’ she moaned. Because he made her crave.
And she looked at him, half dressed, resting up on his forearms, as fascinated as she, she rested her hands on his chest and moved.
It was a dangerous, dangerous game and they both knew it, but they were in this together, this folie à deux , this shared madness, and she felt for the first time in her life completely free.
And also looked after, because he nodded and said, ‘I won’t come,’
He gave her his word, and with it she had permission to move again.
He stroked her breasts, pinched them, and he stroked her stomach, then round to her bottom. He didn’t guide her, just inflamed her. He stroked her thighs and then, when she bit her lip, he thrust up into her, and she could not believe his control. How he could lie there and thrust and observe.
‘Carter...’
She was holding the bedhead and moaning loudly, and then he started to pull her down hard, again and again, and Grace could hear herself shout. She was suddenly frantic, deeply orgasming and trying to lift off of him, yet he held her firm. Pulsing and making sounds she never had before. Then, when he could hold back no more, he took her by the hips and lifted her, and she watched him spill onto her. Breathless, she watched as his palm cupped her where she ached with the void he’d left.
He pulled her head down and they kissed as if it were their first time...wet, deep kisses. And in between he told her off...warned her not to play that game again...
‘I won’t.’
She could barely breathe. Her sex felt heavy and her stomach was still tight, as if unfulfilled. Yet she had never been more satisfied.
Carter wasn’t faring so well. He rarely made mistakes, and certainly not the same one twice. Okay, he hadn’t come inside her, but he was taking risks he never had before.
He wanted Grace more than he’d thought he was capable of.
But she deserved someone who could love her—completely.
He knew he was incapable of that.
Knew he had to pull back.