Some Like It Charming (A Temporary Engagement) (15 page)

He was enjoying the challenge, dammit.

She squinted her eyes at him. “Have you been talking to Cassandra?”

“I don’t need to. I’ve got eyes. And I don’t think that muumuu does what you want it to.”

“I want it to be comfortable.”

“I want to rip it off your body and throw it in the garbage.”

She jerked and he adjusted his hold on her hand. She said, “It makes me want to go to Hawaii.”

He cocked his head. “Where you will wear a bikini and high heels? Because I can take some time off.”

“I’m sensing a trend. Do you need to stock up on some late-night reading material?”

He looked at her out of the corner of his eye. “No.”

“‘Cause if you need to take care of something, you should do it.”

He grumbled under his breath and dragged her into a jewelry store.

It was quiet and cool inside, and a few well-dressed customers were already being helped.

Ethan bent his head in to Mackenzie and indicated a woman looking at earrings. He said softly, “She doesn’t seem to have a problem with large rings.”

Mackenzie murmured, “I notice she doesn’t have any pockets, either.”

He nodded. “I think we’ve figured out it’s a pocket problem, not a jewelry problem. We could skip this store and go buy you some new clothes instead.”

“Why don’t we just skip all the stores and call it a day?”

“Only if you slip back into that muumuu when we get home.”

She turned her head away from him and saw Ellen and Christine coming in the door. She yanked her hand out of Ethan’s. “What in the world?”

He looked up. “I invited Mother and Grandma.”

Mackenzie let out a low groan. “You have got to be kidding me.”

“They like shopping. And they know jewelry.”

“You don’t bring your mother along when you’re buying an engagement ring.”

“I didn’t do such a bang-up job of picking out your first ring. And I thought you were probably right that we would never come to an agreement. I needed reinforcements.”

“I think we could have handled it between the two of us.”

His mother ignored Mackenzie to kiss Ethan on the cheek. “I thought you already got her a ring.”

“She didn’t like it.”

His mother sniffed. “I thought it was lovely.”

Ethan said, “She thinks it’s too big,” and Ellen chuckled. She said, “You keep him guessing, girlie.”

Shards of ice shot out of his mother’s eyes and she wandered away, taking out her cell phone.

Mackenzie muttered, “Let’s get this over with.”

Thirty minutes later they were still arguing. Ellen had snorted at Mackenzie’s first choice, saying no O’Connor would buy a piece of wire for his bride. Christine had murmured, “Does it even matter?” while staring at Mackenzie with her icy eyes. Ethan kept pulling out rings too big, too expensive, too noticeable. Anything but what Mackenzie would be comfortable wearing.

He leaned in close. “Doesn’t it worry you that my mother is agreeing with every choice you make? I think you should take it as a sign.”

She’d take it as a sign that at least one other person wanted to get out of that store as bad as she did.

Christine smiled and waved when a tall, buxom red-head entered the store. The red-head kissed Christine’s cheek, leaned her boobs into Ethan’s face, and looked Mackenzie up and down.

The woman turned out to be a fashion consultant and she grabbed Mackenzie’s hands, turning her this way and that. The woman laughed and said, “A minimalist marrying into the O’Connor family?” She smiled at Christine. “Now I understand why you needed me to rush down here.”

Mackenzie glared at Ethan, then at Christine. And when the vixen/consultant brought over a selection of rings that no one objected to, Mackenzie glared at the rings. There was just something about having her ring chosen by a consultant chosen by Christine. A consultant who kept pressing herself against Ethan and giving him come-hither looks when she thought Mackenzie wasn’t looking. While they were shopping for an engagement ring.

Ethan’s grandma said, “You’re going to have to choose something. An engagement’s not–”

Mackenzie interrupted her. “I’ve heard the saying.” She pointed to the smallest of the lot. What did it matter, anyway. She was only going to be wearing it for a couple more weeks.

She wondered if they had return policy.

The consultant smiled and said, “Now. Clothes.”

Ethan quickly thanked her, eyeing Mackenzie’s mutinous expression, saying he was saving that pleasure for himself. The consultant giggled. Christine looked like she wanted to vomit. And Mackenzie couldn’t decide whether to laugh or vomit herself.

Ellen grabbed Christine in one hand and the consultant in the other. “Now that we’ve helped solve the ring emergency, we’ll leave these two lovebirds to shop alone.”

Mackenzie didn’t even argue with her. As soon as they left the store, Mackenzie dug a chocolate bar out of her purse.

Ethan eyed it, then her. “Thank you for not attacking the consultant. Or my mother.”

“I do have some tact. It’s just when you’re annoying me that I can’t seem to control it.”

He took her hand, looking at the ring. “Control is overrated, anyway. Are you going to wear this ring?”

She took her hand back, shoving it in and out of her pocket a few times. “It’s okay,” she said, and he laughed and laughed.

Mackenzie felt marginally better and put the chocolate back in her purse.

She said, “The consultant was pretty. Your type.” She didn’t know why she said that. Every woman was his type. “You could probably get her number from your mother. Take care of that problem you’re having.”

He glanced down at her lips.

“I am a one-woman man, Mackenzie. And right now, you’re my woman.”

She tried to feel offended by that but all she felt was a flop in her belly.

He grabbed her hand when they left the store and she said, “You can let go. I’m wearing a ring now.”

He shook his head. “Now I’m used to it. I don’t have to worry that I’m losing you in the crowd.”

They spent the day roaming. They ate, Ethan tried to get her inside a few clothing stores and failed, and they finally spent a couple of hours in a book store, comparing investing books.

She bought a few saying, “Now that I’m part of the idle rich,” and he snorted.

“And how much longer do you think you’re going to last having nothing to do?”

She held up a book. “I’ll have to invest my millions. That’s something to do.”

“Million. Singular. You’ll be surprised how quickly that goes.”

He took the bag of books in one hand and her hand in the other when they left the store.

He said, “Really. What are you going to do if you don’t go back to work?”

“When. And I don’t know. Move to some middling town.” She thought. “Or maybe travel.”

“And do what?”

“See the world?”

“Boring. You don’t want to see it, you want to conquer it.”

She couldn’t argue with that and she shrugged. She didn’t know what she was going to do when this was all over.

He said, “Don’t leave. You can move to the London office and I’ll stay away until it all blows over. Go see if you can win over a foreign market with your particular brand of ‘charm’.”

She could feel her blood start heating at the thought of a new challenge and she pushed it back down.

She said, “Doesn’t HGC have offices in Tokyo? Now there would be a real challenge.”

He groaned. “HGC! I forbid you to work for them. In any country.”

She laughed. “Good thing for you that I’m getting used to sleeping in.”

He muttered, “I should have forbid you from working for them in the pre-nup.”

“You’ve still got that half million to work with.”

“It would almost be worth it.”

She smiled at him and he shook his head. “I’m saving it for a real emergency. You’d work for HGC a week before you realized they were a bunch of sneaky, no-good thieves only out for themselves, and come crawling back to me.”

“You’re just pissed that Bob Givens got the cover of Forbes.”

He glowered at her and she patted his arm with her free hand. “Just remember you looked better on your cover. And probably sold more copies.”

“Did I? Look better?”

“Of course you did. And you actually said something instead of just hyping your company.”

He looked mollified, then said, “It’s because he went public.” He shook his head. “Now he’s focused on selling bits of his company instead of selling product.”

She shook her head. “It’s because he’s not making any money. He only has hype.”

“Revenue has tripled! What a fantastic year!”

“And he forgets to mention that costs have quintupled.”

He looked at her. “Would you buy stock in it?”

She shook her head, then paused. “I might trade it. HGC is flavor of the month right now. But when the buzz fades?” She shook her head. “I’ll be shorting it at the first hint of a turn-around.”

“Would you buy into O’Connor?”

She looked at him in surprise. “Are you thinking of going public?”

“Not while there is breath left in my body,” he said and she laughed.

“But if we did, would you buy it?”

She shrugged. “I’d have to see a few years of annual reports first.”

He smiled slightly and squeezed her hand. “Come on. Tell me you would.”

“The OC will be there to mop up HGC’s clients when they go bankrupt. So, probably I would buy stock.”

“Then why didn’t you take the shares when I offered?”

“Because I have a personal issue with the owner. He keeps stealing my chocolate.”

He nodded at the doorman, then leaned down to murmur, “I’ll have to think of a way to make that up to you.”

He held on to her hand on the elevator ride up to the apartment.

And all the while he stroked her hand with his thumb. Up, down, on the inside of her palm. Again and again.

Her breathing picked up and her skin became extremely sensitive. She tried to pull her hand out of his and he pulled her out of the elevator and down the hallway. He shut the door and crowded her back up against it.

She said, “You can stop now.”

He leaned down and whispered in her ear, “I’m just getting back at you for the reading material crack.”

“It wasn’t a crack. It was legitimate concern.”

He nuzzled her neck. “That’s nice. How concerned are you?”

He scraped her neck with his teeth and her hands curled into fists. She shook her head but couldn’t get any breath past her lips.

He paused, his mouth hovering over hers. “I’m going to kiss you.”

Mackenzie thought about his mother inviting that red-headed vixen to pick out her engagement ring and murmured, “Okay.”

He moved his lips a smidgen closer. “Mm-hm. I was looking more for ‘God, yes’ or ‘what took you so long’.”

She found some spare air in her lungs and said, “Okay is all you’re going to get.”

He ran his hand down her hip. “Is that so?”

She nodded and he smiled. He laid his lips against hers and whispered, “Ethan. God. Yes.”

She looked at him out of lidded eyes and whispered back, “It’s never going to happen.”

She rose onto her tiptoes, wrapping her arms around his neck, and opened her mouth. He groaned and kissed her, his tongue coming out to play.

His hands slid up her shirt and he said, “Aren’t you tired of fighting it, yet?”

Oh, she was. Tired of her stomach flopping every time he got near. Tired of his cologne turning her panties into one big, wet puddle. Tired of being the only person trying to keep their relationship not a relationship.

But she said, “I live to fight.”

Ethan ran his tongue up her ear. “Don’t I know it. I’ve been imagining you fighting beneath me for weeks.”

Weeks? It felt like years since she’d moved in with him. She said, “Who says I’d be beneath you?”

He grabbed the back of her thighs, lifting her and pinning her against the door. “I remember. You like to be on top.”

She wrapped her legs around his waist, felt his hands cup her butt, felt her control slipping. She tilted her head back, stared holes into the ceiling, and tried to talk some sense into herself. He was Ethan Howell O’Connor. He was a celebrity playboy. He dated models and debutantes. He was too handsome, too charming.

He was a charming rat bastard. The kind of man she hated most in the world.

He was a charming rat bastard who was slowly grazing his stubble across her exposed neck, slowly kneading her butt with his magic fingers. Oh. . . so. . . slowly pushing himself against her, rhythmically banging her against the front door.

He wasn’t ever serious, always playing some game.

He hefted her higher, fitting himself even more snugly between her open thighs.

She thought he seemed pretty serious about this.

She might have bit his earlobe when he whispered her name. She might have whimpered when his fingers dipped down the back of her jeans.

He exhaled, letting her slide slowly down the door, still trapped against him, still feeling every last inch of him.

He took a step backwards, grabbing her hands and pulling her away from the door. He said, “Your bed or mine?”

His eyes bore into hers, his hands held hers, and his erection probed her stomach.

She mentally counted down the days. Four more weeks of this? Four more weeks of a near constant barrage of Ethan Howell O’Connor trying to get into her pants?

She wasn’t going to last.

Maybe if they got this out of the way, he would lose interest. Move on to the next game.

Plus, she really, really wanted to.

She said, “The hell with it. Mine.”

He smiled slowly and kissed her for one long moment. Then he bent, hoisted her fireman-style over his shoulder, and briskly walked toward her bedroom. “Excellent choice.”

He put her back on her feet in front of her bed and went to his knees, slowly unzipping her jeans and tugging them down.

She ran her hands through his hair. “Don’t I get any kind of foreplay here?”

“What the hell do you think I’ve been doing this last week? I’m foreplayed out.”

He looked at her exposed underwear, blinked, and sat back on his heels.