lovemaking that fateful day in his office, he’d stopped trying to seduce her. He talked to her only about Emma or hotel business, and avoided being alone with her at all costs. He hadn’t mentioned marriage again, and he seemed to have forgotten all about his requirement that she be his mistress.
While Colette, to her eternal consternation, found herself unable to think of anything else.
It was because he was too handsome, she thought dizzily. His black hair, gleaming with blue lights no matter the weather, begged to be smoothed back from his broad forehead. His hands and forearms, bronzed and muscular beneath rolled white cuffs, and his powerful legs encased in worn denim, created a heady combination of male virility that had her eyes darting to the unmistakable bulge between his thighs.
Heat scalded Colette’s cheeks as she dragged her attention back to his chin. How was she supposed to think clearly with him looking the way he did?
With him looking at her the way he did? She felt the weight of his stare on her face, the hungry gaze that seemed to track her movements whenever they happened to be in the same room. Knowing he wanted her, yet had no intention of acting on his desire, made her insides twist up in nervousness. In longing. In a wholly inappropriate, unwelcome desire to touch. To feel. To forget all the reasons things could never work between them and simply start anew.
She told herself she should be glad he hadn’t pushed for more, that he no longer touched her. That when he tired of playing at being a father and left, she’d be grateful that they hadn’t slept together. She would be.
Several hours later, after a swim and a movie, they retired to Stephen’s private dining room for dinner. The three of them sat at one corner of an impossibly long mahogany table and ate grilled steaks, seasoned new potatoes, and fresh green beans grown in his new estate gardens. Household staff appeared and disappeared soundlessly while Emma chatted about all the things she planned to do during her future sleepovers.
After they’d finished, and their plates had been cleared away, Colette collected the dessert she’d brought from home. “Do you want ice cream with your pastry?” she asked Stephen, her spoon poised over a fresh carton of vanilla bean. “Don’t I always?” he answered.
Colette scooped a hearty portion of both ice cream and fruit tart onto his plate and then leaned to assist Emma with the finishing touches. “That’s right,” she said, her hand curved around Emma’s. “You drizzle the strawberry sauce over the whole thing, first this way and then … that. Perfect!” She grinned at Emma and then lifted the dessert for Stephen’s inspection. “What do you think? It’s Emma’s first homemade fruit tart.”
“It looks delicious,” Stephen said.
“It’s my favorite,” Emma told him as she readied her drizzling spoon for the next serving. “Momma let me roll the dough all by myself.”
“Did she now?” His gaze snagged on Colette’s and a reminiscent smile eased its way across his face. “She taught me how to make my favorite dessert, too. Only mine was black and white mousse cake.”
Colette sucked in a breath, remembering the first time she’d tried to teach him that unique blend of almond, chocolate, cream and ganache. He’d watched her until she’d finished her explanation, his eyes tracking her like a lazy cat’s, and then demanded to lick the bowl. Except he’d spread the leftovers on her flesh before he’d done any licking at all. Her nipples tingled at the erotic memory of his mouth at her breast, tasting her. Consuming her.
“Maybe you can make that next time?” he asked.
Colette’s face heated and she immediately shifted her focus to the ice cream between her hands. “Sure,” she mumbled, grateful that Emma was in the room to corral her impulses.
Later, after Emma’s bath and a lengthy debate over which princess nightgown would go best with her new pink-canopied bed, she was finally ready for her first sleepover at Daddy’s. Colette lifted Emma up to her high mattress and helped her climb beneath the covers.
“Do you get to sleep over, too?” Emma asked.
Colette’s hands stalled and the heat of Stephen’s gaze upon her profile made her skin flush. “No, sweetheart,” she said, tugging the blankets high and tucking them beneath Emma’s arms. “Momma has her own bed at home, remember?”
“Maybe Daddy can give you one of his so you can have two beds like me!”
Rather than continue a discussion