Lotus Blossom (20 page)

Lotus smiled, her whole being magnetized by him.

He lifted her gently and placed her where he had been. Then he poured a little of the oil in his hands and turned back to her. He squeezed his eyes shut. “I may have to do this blindfolded. Looking at you lying there is dangerous.”

Lotus stretched, her body feeling relaxed and yet alert. “Massage me,” she said in a sultry voice.

“Lord, woman, take it easy on me,” Dash begged as he turned her over on her stomach. “Damn, this is worse. Now I have to look at your backside.” “Get going, masseur, or you won’t be paid.” Dash made long slow strokes on her velvet skin. “I think I’m being paid as I do this. Your skin is wonderful.”

“Thank you,” Lotus squeaked, the rough satin of his hands raising her pulse beats. “Oh, Dash, that feels so good.”

“Enough,” he grated, flipping her over, then lifting her up onto his lap. “You have blown me apart, Mrs. Colby. And I love you so much.”

“And I love you.” Lotus twined her arms around his neck, kissing his throat. “Lovemaking is so much fun,” she breathed when they fell together on the bed.

“Isn’t it?” Dash growled, scooping her body next to his, taking her breast in his mouth and sucking gently there. “You taste so good, my own. I do love the taste.”

“Dash,” she whimpered as she felt his tongue flick over her body. Her eyes felt glued shut. When his mouth touched her in the most intimate way, she heard a keening sound and knew it was her own response to him. “I love you.”

“I love you.” He slipped her under his body and entered her with a gentle violence that rocked them both.

Love took them away where only they could go. Ice and fire splintered around them as they soared, clinging one to the other. The climax was reached in a shower of comets. Then they settled to earth once more.

“I do like that more than tennis,” Lotus said and giggled into his neck, her hand running over his chest, now glistening with love dew.

“I even like it better than racquet ball,” Dash muttered, his mouth in her hair.

“No!”

“Yes.” He leaned back from her. “Darling, I was going to tell you something ...”

“Uh-huh.” Lotus tried to smother her yawn. “I want to nap.” She cuddled close to him, feeling warm and comforted. “Strange,” she whispered.

“What is?” Dash asked, distracted by her wriggling body.

“How I can feel so sexy, yet comfy with you. Weird.” And then she fell asleep.

                                                                                                                *        *        *

A tickling sensation disturbed Lotus and she tried to brush it away from her nose. “Rob . . . Todd, stop it. I’ll hide your baseball mitt. See if I don’t . . .” Lotus said sleepily, opened her eyes then closed them quickly. Sunlight was blinding! She squinted and saw Dash leaning over her.

“We should have been packed and out of here an hour ago,” he told her.

“I was tired. . . .” She stretched her, body, brushing his, feeling his body tent over hers at once. She smiled up at him. “I feel like the conquered and the conquering both at the same time. Crazy.”

“Yes.” He kissed her neck.

She chuckled and ducked free of him and rolled off the bed to her feet. “I should think you would have had enough of kanoodling for a while.”

“Never.” Dash watched her, his hands behind his head, his eyes touching every pore. “We should dress.”

“Me first.” Lotus turned to sprint for the bathroom, gasping when she was caught around the waist.

“You can’t get away from me, Mrs. Colby,” Dash whispered. “I will always be right at your heels.”

“Wonderful.” She turned in his arms. “Carry me.”

“I intended to.” Dash chuckled, lifting her into his arms.

For almost half an hour they cavorted like children in the bathroom, bumping into one another, laughing out loud when Lotus tried to shave Dash. Then they had to work at breakneck speed to get packed.

“Will your parents meet us at the airport?”

“No, but there will be a car for us,” Dash told her as he led her out to the Mercedes.

This time he drove. It surprised Lotus that he needed so few directions to get on the expressway.

“You have a good sense of direction,” Lotus told him, sitting as close to him as she could.

“Thank you.” Dash paused, then shot her a quick glance. “Darling, I’ve been trying to tell you something and not doing a very good job of it, but I want to make sure you understand before we reach Boston.”

When he stopped speaking, Lotus put her hand on his knee. “Well?” she prodded.

“My family is far from poor, love. They have been on the New York Stock Exchange for years. They have good-sized holdings in real estate. They do have fishing boats . . . fleets, in fact.”

“I see.” But Lotus didn’t really understand. “If your family has so many businesses, why did you choose gambling?”

“I liked the challenge. When I was twenty-five I had the chance to pick up the Xanadu. It was broken down and in shambles. I borrowed money . . . not from my family. Using my own holdings as collateral, I started rebuilding the casino into what it is today. I begged, and bribed with huge salaries, the best entertainers, I stole the best dealers from other establishments. I brought an haute cuisine chef from Maxime’s in Paris. I did the same at Cicero’s.” Dash punched out the words, steering the car onto the access road of the airport. “You like walking the razor’s edge,” Lotus stated. “You could say that.” Words dropped between them like stones.

Lotus followed him from the car, and through the small private terminal to the waiting Lear jet. She paused before entering the plane. “Coldris Limited is the family company?”

“Yes.” Dash helped her into the copilot’s seat.

She didn’t know what to think! Or what to believe! It didn’t seem feasible that he would lie about his family, but then why didn’t he come out and tell her about them right away? What was wrong with the Colby family that Dash was hiding them? Is that why he married her before he introduced them to her? Was there insanity in the family? No, no one was ashamed of that today. Prison? Were his father and mother in prison and only out for a few days to meet their daughter-in-law? Her imagination ran out of control. She wanted to laugh out loud at her foolishness.

“Darling? Come out of the dream world for a minute, will you?” Dash felt his heart turn over when she gave him a weak smile, then sighed. “My family won’t be that hard to take.”

“I’ll stand by you,” Lotus breathed, caught between the sublime and the ridiculous.

“You will?” Dash looked surprised.

“Did you think I wouldn’t?” Lotus felt miffed.

“No. I didn’t think that.”

What was wrong with his family? Her imagination took her away again. She saw a gaggle of Colbys without a tooth in their heads, gumming a welcome to her. She saw Colbys with hot cars lining their driveways . . . She really was letting fantasy control her thinking!

Dash looked at her when her eyes closed. “What were you thinking of, my sweet, that had you frowning so?” Dash shook his head. She would be concocting a nightmare family. He watched her for a moment, then realized she was asleep. He felt his own eyes closing in minutes. He took her hand in his, then he was gone.

He woke as they circled Logan Airport. He looked over at a sleeping Lotus and decided to let her sleep until they taxied to the terminal. As they banked, the sight of the land and water sparkling beneath him gave him a feeling of welcome. Home! Boston had been home to him until he’d left after Harvard to seek his fortune in the world of business.

After landing and taxiing to the small terminal for private planes, he turned to her, shaking her gently. “Wake up, wife. We’re here.”

“We are?” Lotus woke, rubbing her eyes, smiling at him. “I have to comb my hair.”

“We’ll do all that in the car. Come along, love.” Lotus watched, bemused as Dash hurried her from the small terminal to the waiting Rolls Royce. “My goodness, look what your folks sent for us. I imagine it costs a great deal to lease one of these for a few hours.”

Dash ushered her into the car. “Hello, Timmons.” “How are you, sir? May I offer you my congratulations?”

“Thank you. This is Mrs. Colby. Darling, this is Timmons.”

“How can you be sure of getting the same driver every time? Does your family ask for him by name?” Lotus whispered from the side of her mouth.

“He works for us,” Dash said abruptly, noting the look of disbelief cross her face even as she nodded.
What in hell is she thinking now? She no doubt has my family selling state secrets to the Russians.

Dash shrugged, put his arms around her, and clasped her close to him.

Driving through the beautiful New England city that had its origins and fiber in the great struggle for independence, Lotus felt, once more, the spiritual tug she had had the first time she had visited Boston. “Boston, Boston . . ." she whispered, ". . . the land of the bean and the cod. Where the Cabots talk only to Lowells and the Lowells talk only to God.” She grinned at him. “Or something like that.”

“Close enough.” Dash murmured into her hair, feeling an alien nervousness as they approached the beautiful area known as Beacon Hill where his parents had a home. The roomy, six-bedroom row house dated back to the very early days of Boston, and it had been home to him while he was growing up.

As Timmons drove around Boston Common, Lotus craned her neck looking at the Bostonians strolling the lovely area that their ancestors had fought to keep. “It’s a trip through our history books, isn’t it?” she asked with awe in her voice. “There’s Park Church . . .” She pointed out the window. She leaned forward and tapped Timmons on the shoulder. “Thank you for bringing me through this section.”

“Beg pardon, ma’am?” Timmons blinked at her over his shoulder, before quickly facing front again.

“She likes the drive,” Dash said abruptly as they wended their way through a hilly section leading to Beacon hill.

“Yes, sir.” Timmons’s smile was fleeting as he turned into the narrow historical section.

Silence filled the car as they pulled up in front of the brick-fronted home with the black wrought-iron fence in front, brass knockers on the black doors matching the shutters.

Dash opened his door and stepped out, reaching in to help her alight as Timmons opened the trunk and removed the luggage.

Clearing her throat twice, Lotus tried to speak. 3efore the words emerged, the front door opened, disgorging three tall, slim women with ash blond hair, one of whom carried a baby. “Your sisters?” Dash nodded, watching her color fade a trifle. He kissed her once hard on the mouth.

“Really, Dash, can’t you save it for the bedroom?” One slender blonde ambled down the steps toward him, her amused drawl having a slightly less deep timber than Dash’s. She put her arms around her brother and kissed him on the cheek.

“Ann. How are you?” Dash’s twisted smile touched his sister, then he reached out and pulled Lotus to his side. “This is my wife, Lotus Sinclair Colby. Darling, this is one of my older sisters . . .” “How like you to mention that,” his sister interrupted dryly.

“. . . Ann,” Dash finished, even as another sister took hold of him and kissed him. “And this is Jennifer . . .”

“If you say the oldest one of all, I shall hit you,” the perfectly coiffed and gowned woman at his side said before she turned to Lotus, who had just shaken Ann’s hand and been kissed on the cheek by her. “I’m Jennifer, my dear. Welcome to the family.”

“And I’m the baby, Laura, the youngest of this wolf pack,” the slender girl holding the baby told Lotus. “But I don’t think any of us are as young as you.” She held up her baby to Dash to be kissed, then she kissed him herself. “Meet the youngest so far of the dan. This is Henrietta, called Hank by her father, who is a boor.”

“Laura, what a hideous name. Why did you saddle her with it?” Dash took the baby and cuddled her.

Lotus felt her heart beat out of rhythm as she watched him with the infant.

“James’s grandmother was Henrietta, and since she’s the first girl in his family in umpteen years, I gave in,” Laura said comfortably, smiling at Lotus as she took her arm. “We always knew that if John Dasher ever married again, she’d be a looker, but none of us expected a beauty. You are very lovely, Lotus. Good heavens, you’re blushing. You can’t have been around Dash very long or you would be past that.”

“True,” his sister, Ann, said as she walked on the other side of Lotus as they went in the front door.

Jennifer turned around to look at Timmons. “Put their things in the Rose Suite, please, Timmy.” She smiled at the older man, then hefted one of the smaller cases.

“Leave it, Jen,” Dash ordered. “I’ll be back for it as soon as I take Hank into the house.”

“Lord . . .” Laura moaned. “He’s going to call her that too.”

A tall, dark-haired man bounded out the door. “Dasher, you dog, that’s my baby you’re carrying. Be careful. What do you think of her?”

“I’m amazed she can be so beautiful with such an ugly father,” Dash chuckled, shaking hands, before Hank’s father took the cases from Timmons and followed him into the foyer.

“You mustn’t mind the way they talk to one another,” Laura confided. “They were roomies at Harvard ...”

“He really did go there.” Lotus pushed the words through plastic lips.

Laura looked surprised. “All the men in our family have gone to Harvard. Of course, none of them have had the record that John Dasher accrued, captain of both the crewing and the football teams,” Laura announced proudly. “He was such a hunk. I had many girl friends when he was at Harvard and I was at Boston College, and all of them wanted to meet my brother. Even before he went there, Ann and Jen had friends who were interested in him. They were all at his feet. He had such an ego about women.”

Laura squeezed Lotus’s arm as they walked into a high ceilinged, wainscoted room with a marble fireplace. “Now you’ve brought him to his knees and we’re delighted.” She giggled at Lotus’s agape face. “He was always so bored when we would parade our friends for him. Took it for granted that they’d all throw roses in his path.” She gave a grunt of satisfaction as she urged Lotus toward the older couple in the center of a group of children. “It’s wonderful to know he’s on his knees for a change.”