Pursued by the Playboy (11 page)

The resemblance was there, in the dark blue color of the eyes, the shape of the jaw.  Mother and daughter were of similar height, just reaching Marc’s shoulder, and at first glance shared the same slender build, though as Marc watched Margaret’s stiff movements he realized she had none of the supple grace he had gotten used to in her daughter.  It was as if she had been left out in the sun too long, her body sucked dry by the heat, leaving behind a desiccated husk, the parchment
-like
skin stretching like shrink-wrap over ropey tendons and sharply angled bones.  Missing too were Kate’s barely repressed energy and the lively sparkle of intelligence that animated her eyes and face whenever she got started on a topic she felt passionate about. 

“So how long have you and my daughter been seeing each other?”

Marc
hedged.  “What did Kate tell you?”

“Not a damned thing, which is why I’m asking you.”  She gathered cups, saucers, spoons, a plate of sliced lemon, and a sugar bowl filled with pink packets of sugar substitute.  Waving off his offer of help, she transferred everything to the table, and poured them both cups of fragrant brew from a teapot trimmed in delicate pink and yellow roses with gold banding.   “Not Kate’s usual style, is it?” she said, intercepting his look.  “Don’t worry, it isn’t hers.  Kate wouldn’t be caught dead using Royal Doulton.  Too frou-frou for her.  Can’t put it through a dishwasher.”

“She’s practical,” Marc agreed mildly.

Margaret stirred a packet of saccharine into her tea.   “I knew your father, long time ago.”

Her change of subject took Marc by surprise.  “Really?”

“Well, maybe ‘knew’ is an exaggeration.  I remember meeting him at my debut ball.  I was seventeen and easily impressed.  He must have been in his early thirties—beautiful, charming, sophisticated.  You have the look of him.”  She studied him over her cup.  “How is he now?”

“Fine, thank you.”

She laughed, a harsh bark quickly stifled.  “Oh, you needn’t look so alarmed.  I have no interest in rekindling old acquaintances.  My days of being a homewrecker are over.”

Marc, unsure of how to respond, remained quiet.

“So how did you and Kate meet?”

Back on safer ground, Marc said, “We were introduced.”  Okay, he had introduced himself, but that was splitting hairs.  “At the Ovarian Cancer Research Foundation gala last month.”

“Ah.”  Margaret took another sip.  “We missed it, Kate’s father and I.  She invited us, but….We were having some problems.”

Marc made a noncommittal noise.

“How
did it go
?”  she said.

“Kate gave a beautiful acceptance speech.  You must be very proud of your daughter.  It’s amazing how much she’s achieved, so young.”

Margaret studied him without comment. 

“So,” Marc broke the silence.  “You were about to tell me where Kate went.”

“Actually, no.”  Margaret stood up.  “If my daughter didn’t share that information with you herself, I’m not sure I should either.”

Marc got to his feet as well, unable to quell his disappointment.  “Just one more thing, and I’ll be on my way
,” he said.
 
Might as well go for broke. 
“
Is there something going on between Kate and Jake Stein?”

Margaret’s carefully plucked eyebrows rose.  “Feeling threatened, are you?”  She smiled in a way that was anything but reassuring.  “As you may have gathered, I’m not privy to my daughter’s private life.  After all, I didn’t know about you until you showed up here tonight.”

###

By
Thursday
, Kate felt sufficiently back in control to face her graduate
students
with the semblance of calm.  She had submitted her grant proposal
the
previous
day, and rescheduled the usual Wednesday afternoon meeting for
Thursday
morning
.  Last night she had actually had the first relatively restful night of sleep since her mother had appeared at her door.   Or at least she hadn’t spent hours tossing and turning in her lonely bed, staring at the ceiling and wondering when the hollow feeling in her chest would finally pass.

Even Marc’s unannounced appearance in her office that afternoon failed—at least initially—to shake her composure. 

“You haven’t returned any of my messages,” he said.

She looked up from her desk.  Drank in the sight of his tall powerful frame in scrubs.  Behind him, the door to the lab clicked shut, shaking her out of her bemusement.  “Sorry.  It’s been a rough week.”

“Look, if you’re involved with someone else…”

“What?”  Her eyes flew to his.

He slowly advanced toward her, each movement tightening the thin fabric of his draw-string scrub pants over the flexing muscles underneath.  “Jake answered your cell.”

She forced herself to relax.  She had to give him credit.  For a playboy with a seemingly unending capacity for juggling women, he certainly had the righteous tone down cold.  “I’ve been busy, Marc.  Besides, I don’t need to account to you or anyone.”

“Are you sleeping with him?”

That shook her equilibrium for a moment, before she managed to reign in her temper. “What are you talking about?”

“I don’t share,” he growled, rounding the edge of the desk and hemming her in.

“Oh, please.”  She pushed her chair back as far as the wall allowed and rose.  “I’ve seen photos of you with the bimbo flavor of the week just the other day.”

He stared at her.  This close, she could see the heat in his smoky gray eyes, the faint laugh lines fanning out from their corners.  She breathed in his scent—woodsy, spicy, with the hint of hospital antiseptic from his morning surgeries.  It was all she could do to restrain herself from reaching up and brushing a hand across the faint stubble of his afternoon beard. 

She backed away from him, scooting around the opposite edge of her desk until the entire expanse of its battered wooden surface separated them.  “Don’t try to deny it,” she continued, though he had made no move to do so.   “It was in the Sunday paper.  A glam shot of you at some gala, rubbing elbows with heads of state.  They didn’t get your good side.”    Resentfully, she acknowledged to herself that from the perspective of any camera—or any woman—every side of him looked good.

He had the gall to laugh.  “You’re talking about Tuesday, last week?  The
Mann
Center
thing?”

At her terse nod, he grinned.  “That was Emma.  My sister, Emma.  You would have known that if you had come with me to the kids’ party on Sunday.”

For a moment, Kate felt almost giddy with relief.  The tightness in her chest loosened, and she felt as if she could breathe freely for the first time in days. 

Marc, apparently oblivious to the emotions flooding through her, continued.  “Her husband was out of town on business, and she had tickets to the concert that she didn’t want to miss, along with a babysitter for the night.”  He moved carefully around his side of the desk, edging closer to her, like a hunter stalking spooked prey.  “Sounds like the paper got the rest of it wrong, too.  There were no current heads of state in attendance as far as I know.  And the closest we got to the former Secretary of State was several hundred feet, or however far our seats were from the stage.”

He stopped directly in front of her.  She could feel the heat radiating from him.  She backed up a step, bumped into the desk.  He smiled and leaned forward, arms boxing her in, hands resting on the desk surface on either side of her.  “Your turn, Kate, to answer the question.”

She had to clear her throat twice before any sound emerged.  “What question?”

“Are you sleeping with him?”

Resentment mixed with desire bubbled up in her, made her voice sharp.  “I told you before.  Jake is a friend.  I needed a place to stay for a while.”  She paused, then added more softly, “We’re not sleeping together.”

She felt his tension ease.   His leg bumped hers as he moved even closer.  He stroked a finger up her arm and she shivered.  “Why did you need a place to stay?”

Her jaw clenched.  “You know that my mother is camping out at my place.”

His head dipped as he breathed her in.  “Yes.  I met her.”

“What?”

“Last night.  I stopped by your place.”    His lips grazed the pulse hammering at the base of her neck.  

“What did she say?”

“Not much.”  He licked his way up her neck, drew softly on the sensitive skin beneath her ear.  “Apparently you don’t share much of your personal life with her.”

Kate dropped her head back slightly to allow better access.  “Anything I tell her gets twisted anyway, so why bother?”

He traced a light path across her exposed collarbone.  Her nipples peaked, and he circled one nub with his fingers through the thin cotton of her shirt.  “So what made you leave?”

It was getting increasingly difficult to follow the thread of the conversation.  “I can tolerate her.  In small doses and at a distance.  I needed a break.”

His palm cupped her breast more fully, kneading it.  “You could have come to me.”

“We don’t have that kind of…”  Her breath hitched.  He took a final step that brought them flush against each other.  Heat pooled in her pelvis.  She tried again, “It didn’t occur to me.”

“I’m offering.”

She tried to hang on to her scattered thoughts.  “I wouldn’t want to impose.”

“No imposition.”  He cupped her hip with his free hand, long fingers fanning across her bottom.  “I’m asking.  Come home with me.”

Her voice was thready.  “I’m fine where I am, thank you.”

“Which is where, exactly?”

For a moment, it escaped her.  She had to force herself to concentrate.  “Horsham.”

“Good Lord, that’s what—an hour commute?”  He lifted his head to look at her.

She moved her hips restlessly against him.  “Give or take.  I catch the train in.  Walk from Market East, or take the Blue Line.”

He grunted, unimpressed.  “My place is two miles away.  We could drive in together.”  He lifted her onto the desk and stepped between her legs.  His erection brushed against the juncture of her thighs, unmistakable even through the layers of clothing between them.  “Think
of all the fun we’d have
.”

She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and brought his head back down to hers.  Their mouths met, lips parting, tongues tangling, breaths mingling.   She had sufficient presence of mind to pull back briefly.  “Door?”

“Locked.”  He took her mouth again.   His hands stroked up her legs, over her thighs, thumbs dragging along the inner seam of her lightweight cotton capris.   Moisture welled at her core and she shifted impatiently.  His thumb found the sensitive nub and circled slowly, pressing hard through layers of cotton.  With his free hand he popped the button at her waistband and drew the zipper down.

All of her defenses tumbled at the overwhelming onslaught of desire.  Whatever anger or resentment she had harbored over his apparent infidelity—as unwarranted as those feelings may have been
—melted
away.  Likewise eliminated under his skillful touch was all sense of time and place.  It didn’t matter that they were in her office, that it was the middle of a workday, that just beyond the door her graduate students were continuing to set up and run experiments and note down the results. 

All that mattered was what was happening inside this room, right now, this second, with this man who was slowly driving her insane.  She tangled her fingers in his hair, breaking their embrace for a moment, just long enough to drag in a breath of air, and then reclaimed his mouth, adjusting the angle for better access.   One hand drifted down, across the flexing muscles of his back, pulling at the fabric of his shirt until it was free of his pants.  Bare skin met hers, radiating heat.  She hooked a finger under his waistband and traced a path around to the front. 
Taut s
tomach muscles rippled beneath her touch.

Before she could pull open the drawstring on his scrubs, he caught her wrist.  “Condom?”

It took a few moments for the word to register, though her brain was still too drugged with desire to grasp the question.  “What?”

“I didn’t bring anything,” he said.

By this time she had managed to shake off his hold and slip her hand beneath his scrubs and boxer shorts.  His erection pulsed against her palm.  She ran her fingers along its rigid length, thumb circling the tip, catching a bead of moisture and rubbing it into the silky smooth skin that seemed to swell even more in her grasp.   He groaned.   Encouraged, she stroked him more firmly, until he caught her wrist again and gasped, “Wait.”

He pulled her hand away, up to his lips, kissing and then sucking each fingertip into the warm wet cavern of mouth.  She felt an answering spurt of moisture between her legs, as if each lap of his tongue on her fingers was transmitted directly to her groin.   She was so focused on the sensations he was drawing from her with his mouth that she barely noticed what he was doing with his other hand.   Her bra clasp came undone, the shirt and bra pushed up out of the way.  His palm settled on her breast, kneading, plucking at the nipple.  And then his mouth joined in, sucking the peak, nipping gently with his teeth, soothing the area with his tongue.