Balancing Act (14 page)

He beamed, his tension gone. “I will. I can’t wait to show Seth how well I can sail when I get back.”

The man in question showed up promptly at noon. As Tessa double-checked that the windows were locked, the Escalade eased up to the curb. Her bag was already sitting at the top of the steps, and Zach was pulling his trunk onto the porch.

“Seth!” Zach shouted.

After locking the door, she hovered in the dimness of the hall. What was she doing? This was her boss she was getting ready to join for the weekend. Seth was still dressed in the suit he’d worn to work that morning, a deep charcoal gray with a thin burgundy pinstripe. Knowing he would still be dressed for the office, she had worn a slim-fitting sundress and sandals rather than the hip-hugger shorts and t-shirt she would have donned had she been running Zach to camp and then coming back home. There was still time to back out. But as she watched the sun glint off his hair and the grin he shared with Zach, her nervousness decreased, and she stepped outside. Boss or not, this man liked her brother, and how cool was that?

He opened up the back of the Escalade before coming up the sidewalk.

“Tessa.” He nodded at her and glanced at Zach. “Hey, buddy, ready for camp?”

“Oh yeah!”

“Grab one end of your trunk, then. I’ll get the other and we can get it out to the car.” Once the trunk was loaded, Seth gave Zach instructions to get in and buckle his seatbelt while he grabbed Tessa’s bag with his free hand. Zach adjusted the belt as Seth came back to the passenger side to open the door for Tessa.

“You look beautiful,” he murmured for her ears alone as he held out his hand to help her in.

Tessa smiled at him. “You don’t look bad yourself.”

His gaze held hers for a moment. “Is your bag a sign that you haven’t changed your mind about the weekend?”

“I haven’t changed my mind, Seth.”

His lean face relaxed, and this time his smile was wide enough to show his dimples. His eyes twinkled, the faint creases at the corners adding character rather than age. Her heart beat a little heavier. Like this, he was hard to resist. And did she even want to?

“I’m glad.” His quiet murmur caressed her nerve endings. Had there been an edge of uncertainty in his look?

Before getting in this time, he took off his jacket and laid it on the back seat. They arrived at the school in plenty of time. It was a hub of activity, with parents pulled up willy-nilly in the parking lot. Interspersed with the Volvo station wagons and BMWs were a couple chauffeurs and even some embassy cars. Tessa hid a grimace. The downside to paying for a school like Chesterfield was Zach landing in a more elitist atmosphere, but if it helped overcome his learning differences, she would live with it.

A couple teenagers approached to help with his trunk while Tessa supplied emergency information to a camp counselor. Seth added his cellphone number as an emergency contact in case Tessa couldn’t be reached. She smiled her gratitude.

Seth held out his hand to Zach, who took it with an air of grave formality and gave it a firm handshake. When her little brother turned to her, Tessa smiled at him, mortified to find her vision was starting to cloud.

“Oh snap! You’re not gonna cry are you, Tess? That would be
sooo
embarrassing,” Zach informed her.

Tessa pulled herself together and tugged the hair at the back of his neck. “No. I’m not going to cry. I’ve been counting the days until I could ship you off, twerp. Give me a hug.”

She watched him get on the bus, and to her chagrin found her eyes were getting blurry again. She blinked several times to dispel the tears, smiled big, and waved.

When the bus pulled away, Seth held out his crisp white linen handkerchief. “Need this?”

“No,” Tessa said with a sigh. “I’m fine. I just hope he will be. These are the kids he’ll be going to school with after he gets back. It’s kind of a team-building trip, so I hope everything goes okay.”

Seth put his arm around her shoulders as they walked back to the SUV. “He’ll do fine.”

It seemed he was about to say something else when a man’s voice interrupted.

“Seth
Barrett
? I didn’t realize dropping kids off for summer camp was exactly your cup of tea.”

Seth turned, a polite but cool smile on his face. “Good afternoon, Trip. We were dropping Tessa’s brother off.”

Tessa had already sized the man up. Medium brown close-cut hair, hazel eyes and a tan that showed he didn’t spend all his time in an office. The fact he was already dressed in tennis whites also indicated leisure was more his style. A lot of women might find him handsome, but her keen eyes caught the beginning of the paunch and an overall lack of the muscular hardness that was so much a part of Seth. She’d met a hundred of his type before. As he started to size her up, Tessa felt Seth’s body tense.

“Allow me to introduce you. Trip, this is Tessa Edwards. Tessa, this is Trenton Thompson the Third, better known as Trip. His family’s also from Loudoun.” There was a tone in Seth’s voice as he mentioned family that could almost have been laughter.

Trip’s eyes widened. “The Edwards of Mont Clair?”

Tessa decided right then and there she was going to kill Seth, or at the very least get even. She smiled. “Yes, though I’m afraid I don’t keep in close touch with them. I assume you’re the Thompsons who bought Medfield Park?”

If possible the man’s eyes widened even more, and it was all Tessa could do to keep from laughing. Seth had done this on purpose, knowing the man was a social climber who would be as impressed if he trotted out Tessa’s bloodlines as though she were a prize Thoroughbred up for sale.

“My parents bought it, although Bitsy and I live there now.”

“It was a real pleasure to meet you, Trip.” Tessa smiled at him, drawing on all her charm, and saw him swallow. She snuggled closer to Seth’s lean frame. “Seth and I were on our way out…to lunch.”

She inserted enough pause to make Trip Thompson think they were going to do quite a bit of eating, just not food. She batted her lashes at him and he swallowed once more.

“Oh. Well. Nice to meet you.” Trip turned tail and hurried back to his hulking, black Mercedes. Tessa pursed her lips, trying hard to keep from laughing out loud.

“You are an evil young woman,” Seth rumbled with soft laughter.

“Me? You were the one who started pulling out the Edwards’s pedigree like you were showing off a prize mare.”

“I couldn’t help it,” Seth said as they turned to walk back to his car. “He’s such a schmuck! How about some lunch before we leave town?”

Tessa nodded. “Only if you don’t take me anywhere we can run into more of the Trip Thompsons of the world. It’s bad enough Zach will go to school with all their little clones.”

Seth drove to a deli not far from Tessa’s home. It was a place she’d been to a time or two, but didn’t figure Seth would know. Her surprise must have shown on her face.

“I don’t live that far from here, Tessa, so I do know the area pretty well.”

While she settled for a salad, Seth ordered a sandwich with everything but the kitchen sink on it. As he squashed one half of it together, getting ready to bite into it, her amazement must have shown.

“What?” He looked at her salad and then back at his sandwich. “Look. You’re what–five-two, five-three?”

Tessa nodded.

“I’m six-five and probably at least double your weight. I need food, not rabbit nibbles.”

Tessa laughed. Seth raised both brows at her and took a big bite out of his sandwich. He demolished his lunch and was already loosening his tie before Tessa had even half-finished. She was glad to see he didn’t start fidgeting like a lot of men but was content to people-watch while she finished eating.

“Where is your beach house?” Tessa asked once they were on the road and Seth was headed east.

“Crosswick Island. It will take us a couple hours to get there.” He glanced over at her. “If you don’t want to travel that far, we can always stay at the bay house.”

Tessa laughed. “No. The beach is fine. Just how many houses do you have?”

“Only two. The Crosswick Island house and my townhouse. The bay house is an old family home. The Crosswick house is one I bought several years ago. It’s my escape.”

“From your family?” Tessa asked, already having an excellent idea what his answer would be.

“Yes. Since Anna left…” Seth didn’t finish what he was going to say, but there was a brooding quality to his expression as he drove.

“Zach is the only family I really have anymore,” Tessa said. “But I can understand the need to get away every once in a while.”

Seth glanced at her before returning his gaze to the highway. “What about all those Loudoun Edwards? Don’t you get some support from them?”

The mention of them brought up bad memories. Tessa didn’t answer for so long Seth glanced at her again.

“I haven’t seen them since I was twelve.”

“Did they toss you out the family door when your mother remarried?”

“No.”

When Tessa didn’t say anything else, Seth reached over and took her hand where it was clenched in a fist on the console between them. She relaxed her fingers and let her hand rest in the curve of Seth’s big palm.

“I sense a whole lot more to this story than what you want to talk about, but that’s okay. This isn’t some true confessions weekend. If you want to tell me…fine. If not, that’s fine too. I want us to relax and have some fun, okay?”

His gaze was still on the road, but she saw the tension in the line of his jaw. She studied his profile and swallowed hard. The fact that he was nervous warmed her and made him seem more human.

“Okay.”

“And Tessa?” His fingers shifted on the steering wheel.

“Yes?”

“Let’s go ahead and get the sex thing out in the open.” Now she couldn’t mistake the tightness in his voice.

She jumped, she was so startled by what he said.

“Seth…” she began, feeling awkward again and wondering if she had somehow made her attraction to him obvious, embarrassing them both.

He glanced at her, his smile a little lop-sided. “I don’t want you to do anything that doesn’t feel right for you. I am not some hormone-crazed adolescent, but I won’t deny I want to make love to you.”

Thank you, God.
He felt the same way–well, except for the hormone-crazed adolescent part because she did feel just about like that. Tessa laughed a little shakily. If they were going to get things out on the table, then she had a confession of her own. “Then I must be, the hormone-crazed part, because I’ve done almost nothing but think about making love to you.”

A tremor shivered through his hand. He fidgeted in the seat. “Jesus, Tessa. You pick some time to make that announcement.”

“Well, you said you wanted to get the whole issue of sex out in the open,” she responded logically.

“Well it is now,” he groaned. “Since I now
look
like a hormone-crazed adolescent.”

Tessa’s eyes dropped to his lap. She saw the way his dress slacks were tented and glanced back up at his face. She sucked in a shaky breath and wondered if he’d laugh if she fanned herself.

“Exactly!” He chuckled ruefully. He squeezed her hand and released it, putting both his on the steering wheel. He cleared his throat. “I-I want you to know, this isn’t something I do…taking women to my beach house for the weekend.”

“Seth? I’m not sure…well, what I’m doing.”

He took a deep, breath and blew it out. “Don’t worry about it, Tessa. I’m a big boy.”

It was on the tip of her tongue to agree with him on that score, but she decided to keep her mouth shut for a change. He was a very big boy. Instead, she watched the scenery as they headed to Crosswick and tried to calm the jittery, aching heat suffusing her. She and Zach went to the beach farther north on the Delaware shore where they could camp, but that also meant beaches and beach communities that could get a little rowdy.

As Seth used a remote control to open the gated drive nestled between windswept pines, Tessa took in the house. It was tall, but not as large as she’d feared.

Seth pulled the Escalade into the carport underneath and said, “I had the cleaning service come open the house yesterday and stock the fridge for us, so if you’d like to change into your swimming suit, we can go right out on the beach.”

Tessa nodded and smiled. “That sounds great. I can’t think of anything I’d rather do.”

Seth led the way, carrying their bags with him up the steps and into the large, airy combination kitchen and great room. Tessa’s eyes widened as she stepped around him. The house was as informal as his office was the epitome of corporate elegance. Overstuffed, overlarge furniture and tile floors with scattered throw rugs. Several photographs of the ocean and sailing ships decorated the walls. It was a masculine atmosphere without being overpowering.

“This is wonderful, Seth,” Tessa breathed in genuine pleasure. “I can’t imagine a better place to relax.”

He grinned, those dimples of his once more making an appearance. She looked around again. Perhaps this house was a truer reflection of the real Seth, not the chrome and glass version he reserved for Barrett Newspapers.