The Inconvenient Bride - By Anne McAllister Page 0,45
to caring again.
But it was hard not to care about a helpless child.
He rubbed a knuckle against Stephen’s soft cheek, then glanced up self-consciously, and felt even more so when he saw Sierra watching him.
She smiled at him. It was a warm smile. Gentle. Intimate. The same soft, satisfied look she had after he’d made love to her. As if they were sharing something special. Just the two of them.
Dominic tried to harden his heart against it. He didn’t want this. He didn’t!
So what the hell was he doing here?
He didn’t have an answer to that.
She’d thought she was in love with Dominic before.
It was nothing compared to her love for him now. Every day that she spent with him—even when he was ostensibly trying to avoid her—she found more things about him to admire, to cherish, to love.
And, of course, she still wanted to go to bed with him.
She didn’t dare.
Because the more she saw, the more she wanted. She wasn’t settling for being a wife in bed only. She wanted the whole enchilada.
It was funny how things had changed.
Her first impression of him had been that he was rich, arrogant and, because he worked on the fifty-third floor, looked down on the rest of the world. She’d been determined to bring him down a peg. He’d been surprised, then intrigued, by her attitude toward him.
“Do most people bow and scrape?” she’d asked him once.
“The men touch their forelocks, the women curtsy,” he’d replied, never cracking a smile.
She hadn’t thought he was kidding at first. Then she’d realized he was playing to her prejudices, having her on.
The metaphorical gloves came off. They sparred with each other first verbally, then, in Kansas after the wedding, sexually.
The battle lines were drawn.
Sierra had met her match.
She loved that. She loved his determination, his fierceness, his dedication to his work. She loved his dry sense of humor, his sharp wit. She loved his way with Stephen and Lizzie, tentative, gentle and unquestionably loving.
She loved him.
She hated that he didn’t want to love her, that he thought her only value was in his bed.
She was determined he would learn otherwise. And she actually thought he might be.
He’d come with her to baby-sit, hadn’t he?
And though he often came home late and disappeared to work in his study in the evening, some nights he brought home dinner so she wouldn’t have to cook. And always he helped clean up after.
“My mother said boys should do their share,” he told her.
“Three cheers for your mother,” Sierra replied. “I wish I’d known her.”
He told her about his mother and father, about what life had been like for the three Wolfe brothers growing up on Long Island as boys. As the oldest, Dominic had always been the leader, the responsible one, the one most like his father, and destined to follow in Douglas’s footsteps from the moment he was born.
His mother had provided some necessary balance. But after her death, his father had held sway. And what was good for the business, had been good for Dominic.
But he never complained. He thrived on it just as his father had.
It made her try to explain her need to keep working to him. He still didn’t see the need for her to do it, but he actually seemed to listen when she tried to explain.
“I like making people look good. I like making them feel good about themselves. I like pleasing them. And I like working with hair. It’s alive. Responsive.”
He raised an eyebrow, but he didn’t contradict her.
“I like the people I work with, too. Even the bitchy cranky ones like Ballou.”
“Pardon my skepticism,” he said dryly.
“Well, I like almost everyone,” Sierra qualified with a grin.
And she saw Finn and Izzy, Gib and Chloe, and the others she worked with as often as she ever did.
But she didn’t see Pam and Frankie much. She called and talked to them on the phone a couple of times a week, and Frankie always asked when she was coming down to watch Star Trek with them.
And finally, because she missed them, she said, “Tomorrow. I’ll come tomorrow night.”
She told Dominic the next morning that she was going to visit Pam and Frankie and watch Star Trek.
“Why don’t you invite them to watch it here?”
She must have gaped, because he scowled and shrugged dismissively. “It won’t bother me. I’ll just be in my office working. Besides, I bet Frankie would rather watch on a big screen.”
Frankie was thrilled. He was practically bouncing off