The Inconvenient Bride (15 page)

“No.”

She looked surprised. “No?” She said the word almost hopefully.

Slowly Dominic shook his head. “No. This is our honeymoon, remember. It's just for the two of us.”

The smile that lit her face then took his breath away. She stood up and drew a deep breath, then looked all around before her gaze came back to him. She held out her hands to him and went up on her toes to touch her lips to his.

“Thank you,” she said softly.

“My pleasure,” he replied.

And this time he meant it.

Late that night he realized as he was shutting out the light and preparing to go to bed with her, that he'd never once thought of Carin. He'd never remembered the last time he'd been here.

 

It was time.

All day she'd been waiting. No, actually longer. She'd been waiting since Dominic had suggested they have a honeymoon after all, since he'd decided to see her as more than a mere bed partner.

She didn't know if he loved her yet. But she thought there was a chance now that he might. They'd had a wonderful day on the beach, at dinner on the deck, then after, walking along the sand once more.

And now it was time.

Time to go to bed with Dominic again.

To make love with him for the first time.

There had been love in it before, subliminally, subconsciously—at least on her part. But it hadn't been like this. It hadn't happened with this need, with this depth, with this commitment.

She felt awkward as she prepared for bed now. There was none of the silly spontaneity of their earlier couplings. None of the frenzied need with which they'd wrestled each other down. He wasn't even in the room. He'd gone to shut out
the light in the living room while she changed into the soft white gown that Mariah had given her yesterday afternoon.

“I know this isn't a traditional honeymoon,” her sister had said. “But it means just as much—maybe more. You need to have a few trappings to make it special, besides Dominic.”

The gown was special. Almost virginal in its simplicity.

Sierra felt oddly virginal. And she supposed emotionally she was. She'd never made love like this before.

She settled on the bed and lay waiting, hoping, praying that Dominic would feel as committed as she did, would want things to work as badly as she did.

And then he was standing in the doorway, looking at her, his eyes hooded, his expression unreadable. He wore only a pair of boxer shorts, and she could see that his chest and legs were slightly reddened from the sun. His normally neat hair was salt-stiffened and tousled. He looked gorgeous—strong and muscled and one-hundred percent virile male. All Sierra's hormones went on alert.

The need for him was as great as it had ever been, the depth of feeling, the seriousness of loving this man forever was still there. But as Sierra smiled, she suddenly didn't feel awkward at all.

“No tie?” she teased.

And Dominic's brooding expression faded. A smile touched the corners of his beautiful mouth. “I didn't even bring one,” he said. “Damn it.”

Sierra held out her arms to him. “Don't worry. I think we can improvise.”

They improvised.

They kissed and stroked and touched and licked. Even though he'd showered earlier, she could still taste a slight saltiness on his skin as she nibbled his shoulder. And she gave a delicate shudder as he nibbled hers, then moved up her neck and along her jaw before covering her lips in a soul-searing kiss.

She drew him down over her and splayed her hands across the breadth of his back. His skin was warm to the touch and smooth. With her fingers she walked the ridge of his spine, then pressed her fists alongside it and felt his muscles bunch and flex.

Then he rose to kneel between her legs and part her soft flesh. His touch made her shiver with longing, and she reached for him. “Now, Dominic. Please.”

There was no teasing tonight. No wrestling. Only hunger and passion and the need to become one as fully and quickly as possible.

He nodded and slid inside her, filling her, making her whole. It was as if some part of her that had been missing was suddenly there, found, home. The wonder of it made Sierra's breath catch in her throat.

She shifted to take him more deeply within and heard him draw a quick breath. “Dominic?” she whispered. “Are you all right?”

“Am I all right?” His tone was incredulous. “I've never been better in my life.” And she heard a ragged little catch in his voice this time.

And then he began to move. Slowly, languorously, lazily almost. At first. But then there was a subtle change, an increase in tempo, a tension in his body. She could feel it just as she felt the change in her own. She locked her heels against the backs of his thighs as she rocked to meet him.

He drove down one last time, then stopped dead, quivering violently, shattering in her arms. Lost. Found. Shattered.

And, Sierra hoped desperately as her own body splintered, made whole.

 

Singing in the rain.

That's what they did the next morning. She actually got him down to the beach in the middle of a downpour—
“We're going swimming anyway! Who cares at what point we get wet?”—and danced along the sand.

He didn't dance. But he felt like it. His heart danced. And his soul. And every other part of him but his feet.

And even they did a couple of quick shuffles when he was sure no one—except maybe Sierra—was looking.

“You're a wonderful dancer,” she protested when he wouldn't. “You danced on the
Sloop John B.
” That's what she was calling the yacht now.

“But there was music then,” he argued.

“There's music now. In my heart.” She grabbed him and pressed his head against her breasts. “Can't you hear it?”

He heard enough music of his own. He kissed the tip of her breast and then grabbed her up into his arms and ran with her into the ocean, then sank down, submerging them both.

They came up sputtering and laughing. And then they teased and tickled and wrestled and played. And when the rain stopped they came out and lay on the damp sand, breathless and hungry for each other.

“I could make love to you right here,” he muttered.

“If we didn't have an audience.” Sierra nodded her head in the direction of a couple of little girls down the beach perhaps quarter of a mile away.

“They'd never know.”

“They won't know,” Sierra said, hopping to her feet and pulling him up with her. “Because we're going back up to the house to do it. I'm not sharing you, even voyeuristically, with anyone.”

That was fine with him. Dominic had no desire to be shared. They went back to the house and made love in the shower, then in the bed, and barely managed to be dressed and respectable when Estelle arrived to clean.

“You sleepyheads,” she admonished gently.

“Oh,” Sierra said brightly, “Dominic's been up for hours.” And then she giggled, and he felt his face flush.

He pulled her into his arms and hugged her hard. “I'll take this hussy out of your way,” he promised Estelle. “Come on. We'll go back down on the beach.”

They didn't swim this time. They sat on the sand and dug tunnels and made sand castles because that was what he and his brothers had done here years ago and it seemed right that he do it with Sierra. She was family now.

“We can do this with our kids,” he said.

She looked up from digging a tunnel and her eyes were wide. “Kids?” she said in barely more than a whisper.

“You want kids, don't you? I figured you did. You're good with kids. Frankie. Stephen and Lizzie.”

“I'd love to have kids.” She looked like he'd given her the moon. “I wasn't sure you…” Her voice died out and she shrugged a little awkwardly.

“I want kids,” he said firmly. “I would always want them. No matter what. I couldn't believe Rhys turning his back on Mariah when she was carrying his child.”

“I remember you didn't fight too hard to keep his whereabouts secret,” she said with a mischievous grin.

Dominic remembered that day, too, remembered being astonished when this purple-haired virago had invaded his office and threatened his manhood unless he surrendered his brother's address.

“I wouldn't have given it to you,” he said, “despite the turn-on, if I hadn't thought you were right. A man has a responsibility to his child. And to its mother.”

Their gazes met across the castle. Then they were kneeling right in the middle of it, kissing with a desperation that might have led them to be a public spectacle if Sierra hadn't pulled back suddenly.

Dominic groaned, needing her now.

“I wonder if Estelle has finished in the house,” Sierra said raggedly.

He hauled her to her feet. “She's done, whether she's finished or not.”

 

They walked into the small harborside village that afternoon because Sierra insisted. “I know honeymooners are supposed to spend every minute in bed. But I do want to see where I've been.”

“In bed,” Dominic said, grinning. “Why does it matter where you've been?”

“It does,” Sierra insisted. “We'll have a good time. We can pick up some groceries, and stop and tell Estelle we'll cook for ourselves tonight.”

“And then she won't come back and…” Dominic could already see possibilities in that.

“And I'd like to find something to take home to remember this by. A souvenir.”

“You might already have a souvenir,” he said with a grin and a glance at her midriff.

The heat of his gaze made Sierra warm all over. And the thought that he, too, wanted a child thrilled her to bits.

If he would only say, “I love you.”

She stopped herself even as she thought it. She knew of other men who couldn't say the words. Her own father, according to her mother, had barely managed to get them past his lips half a dozen times in his life.

Which was six more than Dominic had, she thought. But then she slipped her hand in his and leaned up to kiss him.

And he kissed her back with such fervor that she wondered how she could ever doubt.

 

He would never have told her it at all if she hadn't asked.

They'd gone out fishing that afternoon with Maurice's brother, Victor, and Victor had said, “Ain't seen you in years an' years. Not since your weddin' what wasn't.” And then he'd clamped his mouth shut and seconds later when he opened it again, everything he'd said had to do with fishing.

But that night when they were in bed, lights out, hunger
sated, sleepy and warm in each other's arms, Sierra asked, “Will you tell me about it?”

He knew she wouldn't press. It wasn't so much of a question as an invitation, and though he would never have guessed he would take her up on it, now that she was asking, he did.

“It was the year after my mother died,” he told her and felt the familiar lump lodge in his throat. “I was twenty-four. Finished with my M.B.A. I'd been working for Wolfe's since high school in one capacity or another, being groomed to take over, my dad directing every move. And that year I'd moved out of the subsidiary offices to New York. I was his right-hand man—and loving every minute of it. And he was missing my mother. We both were. Rhys had Sarah and Nathan had his photography and was gone a lot. But the two of us were sort of…lost, I guess. Him for sure, and I just wanted to be like him. And then he said, ‘You ought to get married.'”

He rolled onto his back, folded his arms under his head and stared at the ceiling fan that moved lazily in the moonlit room. “Just like that. And I agreed.”

He remembered it so well, how sure he'd been that his dad was right, that it was time to get married, even when he didn't even have a woman in mind.

“A few days later he told me that one of the men he did business with had this gorgeous daughter. ‘You ought to see her,' he said. Then, ‘You ought to marry her.' He was joking then, but I guess the seed was planted.” He sighed, remembering how foolish he'd been, thinking it was going to be that easy.

“So I got introduced. And she was very pretty.”

“How pretty?” Sierra asked in a small voice. She was lying against him, one leg over his, her head nestled in the curve of his shoulder. Her words stirred the hair on his chest. Her apprehensiveness stirred his heart.

“Pretty enough,” he said because he had to be honest.
But she'd never made his heart kick over. She'd never made his pulse race. She'd been lovely in a grave, gentle way. Nowhere near as vibrant as Sierra. “Not like you,” he said. “She was a student, a senior in college. An art major. At some Midwestern school. I can't even remember which. Doesn't matter. She was in New York for the summer, doing something at one of the museums, an internship or something. And we started dating.”

It had been so pleasant. So simple to sweep her off her feet, to take her nice places, to invite her out to the family home on Long Island, to take her sailing. She'd been enchanted, had loved it all. And her fresh-faced innocence and enthusiasm had charmed him, too.

When his father had approved, had said the words that made Carin the perfect mate—“You know, she reminds me of your mother”—it had been the easiest thing in the world to propose.

He hadn't been surprised when she'd accepted. “And then we decided to get married.”

Sierra raised her head briefly. “Just like that?”

“We had spent more time together than you and I did,” Dominic reminded her.

She lay her head back down and he felt her nod. Her fingers played lightly across his chest. “Go on.”

“She loved to go sailing, so I thought coming down here would be a great idea. We could get married here, I told her. And she thought that sounded wonderful. She didn't have a mother to plan a big wedding back in Wisconsin. Her mother and father had split years before and Carin had stayed with her father. So we just decided that Bahamas was it. I had work to do, so she came down early. One of us had to be in residence three weeks to qualify for the marriage license. So she came and stayed in the house. Then the week of the wedding everybody else came. Except me. I was putting together a deal and I didn't get here until the night before.”