Forgotten Father (16 page)

Delanie smacked a palm against her forehead. “I even
knew a cold front was coming through! But this is an old,
well-built house. They’re usually better insulated. Still! I should
have known better!”

He watched her pacing the small area tiled floor,
her green eyes filled with remorse and angry self-condemnation. Her
normally graceful body made a jerky turn as she continued to march
in front of him.

She was angry at herself. Not at the workers or even
at him. All this unaccustomed fury sparked by an over-developed
sense of responsibility? Who would have thought it? But something
about her reaction now reminded him of their conversation in the
conservatory.

Now she condemned herself for letting the pipes
freeze, a mistake anyone could have made. She held herself to a
high set of expectations. Required more of herself than others.
Like her feeling of responsibility for her father’s death despite
the fact that she was only eleven at the time.

Mitchell looked at her. She was as different from
him as night and day. Whole solar systems apart. But he knew this
battle of hers. Responsible adults accepted accountability for
their actions. Hell, responsibility was what kept society
functioning. People owning up to their actions, accepting
culpability.

It had been his own watchword for as long as he
remembered, driving his business conduct as well as his sense of
family. Why else would he have tried so hard to separate his
grandfather from a woman who seemed to be using him for what she
could get out of him? Yes, he’d loved the old man dearly, but he’d
also felt responsible to take care of his grandfather.

Mitchell understood living up to your
responsibilities, but this woman apparently carried the concept to
whole new heights because she expected a tremendous amount from
herself.

Could a woman who got this upset over a minor
slip-up really set out to bilk an old man of millions of
dollars?

Reaching out, Mitchell snared her hand, bringing her
to a halt in front of him, his knees spread open as he balanced on
the edge of the tub.

“What would you do if one of your employees had
turned down the heat instead of you?” he asked.

“Well,…not anything terrible, I suppose,” she said,
an arrested expression on her face. “But I’m the boss. I’m supposed
to know better.”

“You wouldn’t fire your employee? Make him pay
restitution? Sue him for damages?”

“No,…not if it was an innocent mistake on his
part.”

“But this was
your
mistake and that makes a
big difference.” He looked at her for a long moment. “Life must be
difficult when you see yourself as omnipotent.”

“What do you mean?” she asked, standing in front of
him, her hand still in his.

He smiled, an unaccustomed wash of tenderness
spreading over him. “I’ve watched you, the way you problem-solve.
The way you
finesse
situations and people.”

She stared down at him, mute emotion in her eyes. He
felt her vulnerability, felt the quivering tremble of each quickly
in-drawn breath.

“You’re very good at working things out. Are there
any difficulties you don’t think you should overcome? Any situation
you shouldn’t handle?” he asked softly.

Delanie felt the warmth of his hand where he clasped
hers, his question echoing in her mind. He sat before her, large
and reassuring, his gaze intently focused on her.

“What did you say?” she whispered, her awareness of
him fogging her already disjointed thinking.

His grip tightened and he tugged her down on the
tub’s edge next to him. “I asked if you’re supposed to handle
everything, all the time.”

She shook her head at the crazy thought. “I don’t
think I’m omnipotent, of course, but—“

“No,” he said, laughing softly. “You can’t turn
aside hurricanes, tornadoes or earthquakes, but everything else
comes under the heading of ‘do-able’?”

Delanie smiled in rueful humor. “You’re forgetting
tidal waves. I’m not responsible for those, either.”

“But all other difficulties can be overcome if you
work it right?” he quizzed, a warm light in his eyes.

Not Jenna’s father. There was a man out there who
deserved to know he had a child. I hadn’t worked that right,
she thought swiftly before banishing the disturbing thought to
concentrate on the fragile moment in front of her.

Mitchell sat next to her, his body relaxed, his hand
still holding hers.

“No, I don’t overcome…everything. Not even close,”
she said, aware the clean masculine smell of him, his broad
shoulder brushing hers. “But
this
, this was business and not
even all
my
business. I owed it to you to keep this
renovation cost-efficient.”

She drew in a distracted breath, suddenly conscious
of her hand pressed palm-to-palm with his, their fingers somehow
having entertwined. “I know I can’t overcome everything.”

“But you think you should try,” he concluded, his
gaze scanning her face intently. “Because, most of the time, you
manage to overcome things.”

“Well, yes,” she answered slowly, her heart slowing
to a heavy, sensual rhythm. “Not everything can be…fixed. But most
situations can be, if you look for a way to make it work for
everyone.”

“You handled that health inspector like a pro,”
Mitchell said, his thumb moving slowly to and fro along the back of
hers. “He never knew what hit him.”

“He was being unreasonable,” she said, aware of the
air around them growing warmer and her body tightening with a
thrumming awareness. “I just helped him…to see he could do…what we
needed him to do.”

“And the wedding came off without a hitch,” Mitchell
concluded. “But having this ‘power’ to manage situations, these
apparently limitless possibilities, makes you expect a lot of
yourself.”

She looked at him, startled by the thought of seeing
herself as having limitless possibilities. “I don’t think I’m
invincible or all-powerful.”

The words came out hesitant as she grappled to
understand what he was trying to say to her.

“Don’t you?”

Delanie shook her head. “I am all too human. I make
mistakes…sometimes big ones that effect other people.”

Poor beautiful Jenna with no father to love her.

“And then you give yourself hell for it,” he said.
“You should have remembered about leaving the heat on for the
pipes. Now I’m out more money for the renovation,—“

“I’m
paying for this,” she said
stubbornly.

“—
you should have driven your
father to the hospital when you were a child even though you’d
never handled a car. Your father died because you didn’t find a way
to save him.”

She turned her head to look at him. Their gazes
caught and tangled. Delanie heard the thundering of her own heart
in her ears.

“Limitless possibilities,” he murmured, so close she
could feel the waft of his breath on her cheek, “leads to limitless
responsibility.”

“I’m not…limitless,” she said, still trying to
fathom what she saw in his eyes.

“No,” he agreed with a faint mocking smile. “Not
super-human. Just very beautifully…human.”

Delanie looked at him, her suddenly-fuzzy brain
noting the way his short dark hair curled slightly at his ear, her
eyes drawn to trace the firm line of his jaw. He sat next to her on
the edge of the old-fashioned tub, her hand clasped in his, their
bodies brushing.

All she could think was how comforted she felt, how
the tight knot of frustration and self-recrimination in her chest
eased as they talked. This was Mitchell, the annoying, demanding,
perfectionistic tightwad telling her that it wasn’t so bad. That
she shouldn’t be so hard on herself.

Mitchell, for whom money was god.

“Thank you,” she said, the whisper seeming to echo
faintly in the small tiled room.

His gaze fastened on hers and the smile faded from
his face. Tension, fine and taut, grew between them. Delanie’s
breath tripped on her thundering heart. The heat in his eyes so
exactly called to the sweep of incandescence growing in her.

Leaning forward on impulse, she kissed him, her
mouth touching his. The merest brush of lips, the faintest stroke.
Not hesitant or pleading. Just contact, a kind of physical
underscoring of her appreciation for his tenderness.

That’s all she’d intended.

But there, so close, the warmth of his lips still
lingering on hers, she drew in a breath, a pale, shuddering draught
of oxygen—and captured the wild scent of him on her tongue.

In that gossamer moment, that time-disoriented,
fragile space, wanting and longing raged over her. She looked at
him with desolate eyes. How long had she met life alone? Struck out
seeking adventure on her own, faced work and life and love without
any hand holding hers?

Here, in the midst of her self-disgust, Mitchell
took her personal definition of burdensome duty and questioned it.
Challenged her near-sacred memories, called into question her
tightly-held belief about her father’s death.

Why had she told him about that?

He told her she was nuts…and she loved him for it.
Wanted him with an instantaneously blazing need. In that one raging
moment, she had to have more.

Her hand still locked in his, she leaned closer,
layering her lips more firmly against his.

He went still. She felt the rock hard immobility of
his muscles, the sudden, startling immovability, but she didn’t
care.

His mouth. Oh, his mouth against hers. He tasted of
everything, of sex and longing, of permanence and hope. Of blinding
erotic possibilities.

CHAPTER EIGHT

For the longest moment, he held still, not kissing
her back but letting her kiss him. In a sensory haze, fueled by an
inexplicable sense of connection, Delanie kissed him, her lips
sliding over his, her heart pounding in her chest.

She felt his hand tighten on hers, sensed the
answering passion held restrained in his body. Blindly pressing her
mouth to his, lost in the sampling, savoring of him, she angled her
face to his and reveled in how perfectly right kissing him
felt.

Time shifted—long or short, she couldn’t tell, so
lost in the taking of Mitchell’s mouth. Seconds, maybe minutes
later, she felt the quiver of response through him, as if his own
hunger had slipped its leash.

His hand dragging suddenly free of hers, he
bracketed her shoulders, his fingers tight there as the kiss
progressed into a mating of mouths. No longer resisting, he took
her mouth with complete dedication, kissing and nibbling, one kiss
sliding into the next. His tongue met hers, not delicately, but
with mastery, as if he wanted to devour her, to consume her until
she merged with his soul.

Delanie felt the wash of his hunger, as if a wave
had broken free in him. Reveling in the biting pressure of his
hands on her upper arms, she opened her mouth wide to him, her
breath drawn in gasping sobs, her body shuddering beneath the
onslaught of the needs he evoked in her.

Lifting her hands to his face, she held him there,
her fingers splayed across his firm jaw. The thundering of her
heart echoed in her ears, drumming out every awareness but of him.
His taste, his smell, the faintly scratchy texture of his five
o’clock shadow beneath her fingers. He left her senses enchanted,
her whole being awash in a conviction of completion.

Here was what she needed. Who she needed.

The crabby, too-uptight, bossy man who resented her.
He was the one who made her laugh, made her furious, made her
defiant,…made her want no one but him.

He questioned her right to rage at herself. He
comforted her loneliness. Not a perfect man, by any means, but so
perfectly right for her.

Loosening his grip on her shoulders, he slid his
arms around her, drawing her tight against him, her head tilted
against his shoulder as he ravaged her mouth. Her arms wreathed
around him, clinging, she kissed him back, consumed, lost to the
world.

So tightly pressed against him, she felt the
pounding of his heart, in echo to her own. His heart and hers, in
the same desperate rhythm.

Slipping her hand down from his shoulder, she found
the thunder of his heartbeat. Her hand pressed against his hard
chest, the heat of him emanating through his shirt….

Delanie, locked in Mitchell’s arms, his mouth hot on
hers, felt the jerk and tug of dizziness, a flash of disorientation
like the sun being covered by a black cloud.

Lost in his arms, she fought it, fought to stay with
the blessed heat of him. Fought to anchor herself in this
blindingly passionate, alive moment. Now was not the time to chase
the wisps of her erratic memory. They never led anywhere.

And she wanted, needed this moment so badly.

His mouth ravaging hers, Mitchell slid his hand
round, brushing aside her vest to cup her breast through her shirt.
The heat in her body spiked to fever-pitch and she arched into his
touch, her mouth wide beneath his, her nipples tight and begging
for his touch. She felt the tingle of need, the aching in her lower
body.

His hands were large and deft, cupping and kneading
her through her shirt. She longed to be bare to his touch, to feel
his hands against her skin, his mouth on her.

Still perched on the tub’s rolled edge next to him,
she brushed her hand down his shirt, wanting him naked to her
touch. Needing him naked.

In a rapid movement, he rose to his feet, taking her
with him. His mouth still on hers, he loosened the buttons of her
shirt, his hands rough and impatient. Standing there kissing him,
her shirt opened to the cool air, she moaned when he flicked open
her front-clasp bra and took her breasts in his hands.

Kneading and cupping, he tugged gently at her peaked
nipples as he nipped at the corner of her mouth. Delanie ached for
him. Ached to draw him into her, to feel him buried to the
hilt.