Сьюзен Мейер – Hired: A Bride for the Boss: The Playboy Boss's Chosen Bride / The Corporate Marriage Campaign / The Boss's Urgent Proposal (страница 18)

Her arms and legs were suffused with a weird weakness. She couldn’t hold on. Jake slid an arm under her to keep her with him, keep the momentum going. It was awesome, fantastic, the constant chaotic roll to pinnacles of creamy pleasure. If this was just sex she didn’t care. She’d take this blissful ride with Jake wherever it went.

She couldn’t imagine anything more exciting, but there was. His body tension seemed to explode into a much faster pumping, and she knew his control had been stretched to the limit. Somehow the sense that he was losing it—in her—was wildly exhilarating, and when she felt the spasms of his release, a huge swell of satisfaction triggered a very primal possessiveness. Jake…hers…and her own inner muscles suddenly leapt into squeezing tightly, holding him there.

He carried her with him as he rolled onto his side, still maintaining their union with a gentle rocking, one of her legs lying between his, the other loosely hooked over his thigh. Breath whooshed out of his lungs and he scooped in more before moving his mouth over hers in sensual little kisses.

‘Tell me it was right for you,’ he murmured against her lips.

Right? The question rolled around her dazed mind. It didn’t matter any more whether it was right or not. ‘Yes,’ she said on a contented sigh. It was the truth, no problem at all for her to say it and if Jake wanted to hear it…right at this moment she wanted whatever Jake wanted.

He moved his head back onto the pillow and smiled at her, his dimples deepening, warm pleasure dancing in his eyes. ‘You see? You had to be with me, Merlina.’

‘Yes,’ she said, not even caring if this was only about winning for Jake.

‘Stay right here!’ He dropped a kiss on her forehead as he slowly disentangled himself. ‘Got to go to the bathroom. Where is it?’

‘First door along the hall.’

‘Be back in a minute.’

Getting rid of the condom. He’d kept his promise about protection. Even so, she would feel safer taking a contraceptive pill if they were to have an ongoing relationship.

The back view of Jake as he strode away was just as awesome as the rest of him—a perfectly proportioned male physique. Surely every woman he’d ever been with had wanted to hold on to him. She was no different. She could only hope she was different in Jake’s mind—a woman he wanted to hold on to.

He moved into the hall, out of sight. She heard the bathroom door being opened. A few moments later the sound of another door being opened made her wonder why he was checking out the guest bedroom.

‘Merlina?’

She jack-knifed up from the pillows, shock pumping through her heart.

That was not Jake’s voice calling out her name.

It was her father’s!

CHAPTER TEN

MERLINA bolted out of bed. She was stark naked. And so was Jake in the bathroom! Their clothes were on the living-room floor. Any second now her father would see them and…a string of loud Italian curses told her he had.

‘Merlina, get out here this minute!’ came the thunderous command.

‘Coming, Papa!’ she yelled back, frantically hoping Jake would hear and understand the warning to stay in the bathroom and let her handle her father.

Almost sick with panic, she raced to her clothes cupboard, grabbed her silk dressing-gown off its hanger and put it on as fast as she could. Her hairbrush was in one of the bags Jake had carried in so the best she could do was a finger-comb. It was impossible to make herself look respectable, anyway. Her father was probably still staring at the evidence that she wasn’t.

Why, oh, why hadn’t he rung the doorbell instead of appropriating the spare key and letting himself in? She would have had time to hide the discarded clothes, time to…but there was no time!

On the dubious principle that attack was the best form of defence, she fronted up to him in the living-room and asked, ‘What are you doing here, Papa?’

‘What am I doing here?’ he repeated incredulously. He threw his hands up in the air in his usual histrionic fashion. His thick, wavy, grey hair was tossed back. The black eyebrows rose, mocking the question. His hawkish nose sniffed the air in battle-readiness. His barrel chest was all puffed out and his teeth—very white against a face darkly weathered by working outside in the vineyard—gnashed before biting out the words again. ‘What am I doing here?’

He was starting to sound like a Greek chorus but Merlina knew this was venting in the Italian style, building up to the storm where hail stones would rain on her head.

‘You don’t usually drop in without warning,’ she slid in quickly.

‘How can I warn you when you do not answer your telephone?’ His dark eyes flashed furious accusation as he wildly gesticulated to punctuate every point he made. ‘Not on Saturday. Not on Sunday. Not today. And when we ring your workplace we are told you are not employed there any more. Told by a stranger. No news of this from our daughter.’

‘I would have got around to telling you,’ she excused, shrugging off the necessity for instant communication about everything—her family’s favourite pastime. ‘Why were you calling me? Is something wrong at home?’

‘And look where this precious independence of yours has got you!’ he lashed out with a sweeping gesture of disgust at the clothes on the floor.

Merlina unclenched her jaw, took a deep breath and persisted with her question. ‘What’s happened? What’s brought you here? Is Mamma okay?’

‘No, your mother is not okay,’ he retorted fiercely. ‘She is worried sick about you. All day she is saying, something bad has happened to Merlina. I feel it here.’ He slammed his hand over his heart, play-acting her mother’s distress. ‘I cannot bear it, Angelo, she says. You must fly to Sydney, find her. And what do I find? What do I find?’ His arms flew up in outrage again. ‘My daughter—’ his eyes raked down her red silk dressing-gown ‘—a scarlet woman!’

Merlina couldn’t help rolling her eyes. He’d have her painted as a prostitute next. Banned from his household forever. The modern world and her father had no meeting ground. The big problem was…she didn’t want to lose her family. Somehow she had to fight this, but how?

‘You’ve got that wrong, Mr Rossi,’ came the calm statement from behind her.

Jake!

She spun around.

He was coming down the hall, a white bath-towel tucked around his waist, but the rest of him still flagrantly naked. Didn’t he realise that his appearance would enflame her father’s rage? Her heart pitter-pattered in a frenzy of fear over what might happen next.

‘So! You’ve come out of hiding,’ her father jeered contemptuously, drawing himself up to match Jake’s height and look down his Roman nose at him.

‘I wasn’t hiding,’ Jake corrected him. ‘I’d gone to the bathroom and I couldn’t help overhearing what was going on out here. Seemed to me I should step in.’ He curved his arm around her shoulders in a protective hug. ‘I won’t have Merlina abused, Mr Rossi.’

Her father glared at him. ‘It is you who has abused my daughter, stripping her of her virtue.’

‘Papa, please—’

Her plea for some temperance was cut off, her attempt only serving to bring her father’s wrath down on her again. ‘Who is this man? Did I not teach you to save your virginity for your husband?’

‘My name is Jake Devila…’

‘Devila?’ Enlightenment struck. ‘Is that not the name of your employer, Merlina?’

‘I don’t work for him any more, Papa.’

‘What? He sacked you from your job because you let him seduce you into going to bed with him?’

‘No, Papa…’

He ignored her denial, attacking Jake again. ‘You are a man without honour. Using your position of power over my daughter to turn her mind.’

‘He didn’t,’ Merlina cried. She’d simply given her mind a rest and followed her heart for once.

Her father’s finger went up in victorious argument. ‘He forced you to have your hair cut. And Sylvana told us he insisted you wear immodest clothes to work.’

‘There were good reasons for that,’ Merlina almost shouted in her urgent need to be heard. Sylvana’s big mouth should have been zippered at birth!

‘No. Your father is right,’ Jake chimed in. ‘I was flexing my power.’

Merlina closed her eyes in despair. What was Jake playing at now? He had no idea what her father was like and he was ruining any chance of smoothing over the situation. If, indeed, there was any chance.

‘At that point in time, I didn’t appreciate that Merlina was perfect the way she was,’ he ran on in a quietly diplomatic tone. ‘I wanted to fit her into an image that suited my business. I’m sorry that you found my influence so offensive. It wasn’t meant to be.’

‘You’re sorry?’ her father squawked. ‘Does that give me back the daughter you have ruined for any good husband?’

The arm around her shoulders tightened its hug as Jake picked up her left hand and startled her by holding it out for her father to see the ring that Byron had put on her third finger and which was still there, sparkling its solitaire diamond brilliance. She’d forgotten about it. Byron had dropped right out of her mind. And for Jake to bring up her engagement to his grandfather now seemed utter madness.

‘I was hoping you would accept me as her husband, Mr Rossi.’