When Summer Comes (Whiskey Creek #3)(62)
Author: Brenda Novak

He imagined her lips parting beneath his as they had yesterday morning and felt his body tighten in response. Two years was a long time for a man to ignore his sexual appetites. He was learning just how relentless those appetites could be.

But he’d already screwed up with her once. He’d had her put on that lingerie, then pulled back almost the second he touched her. He’d rejected her when she was most vulnerable—when any woman would be most vulnerable—and he doubted she’d be willing to trust him again. She wouldn’t want to run into the same problem.

For that matter, neither did he.

If he went to her tonight, would he be able to follow through?

He’d make himself, he decided. But how would he feel after?

He had so many hormones coursing through him he could hardly think. His brain kept showing him tantalizing snippets of what it would be like to have Callie beneath him, to feel her hips rise to meet his. Part of him, the part that kept driving him to take her regardless of all else, didn’t seem to care that he was still in love with Behrukh, that he’d promised to always love her.

Where had his conviction gone? His remorse for what he’d caused by coaxing her to become his friend, his lover, his fiancée?

Ashamed that he could be so easily tempted away from what he knew to be a just and deserving punishment, he dropped his head in his hands. He’d meant everything he’d told Behrukh, hadn’t he?

Of course he had. Then why did those promises seem so impossible to keep?

Rifle, who’d stayed with him instead of Callie for a change, lifted his head and perked up his ears as if asking why he was so agitated.

“Hell if I know,” he told the dog. “I can’t have her. But I can’t stop wanting her, either.”

The dog yawned, clearly not impressed by the gravity of this human problem, and rested his snout on his paws.

“Thanks for your support, buddy.” Levi wished he still had a room out in the barn. Maybe, if he could put enough space between them, his heart would quit pumping like a piston and his erection would go away. But staying inside like this, cooped up with her—he was too close to the object of his desire.

He was fighting the inevitable.

Convinced he’d succumb eventually, he went into her bedroom and shut the door to keep Rifle out.

It was just a physical release, he told himself. It wasn’t as if he was really cheating on Behrukh because it wouldn’t mean anything.

20

Sophia heard the doorbell. She was reading in the library, but she could’ve been in the shower, or even blow-drying her hair, and she still wouldn’t have missed those deep gongs. The doorbell Skip had chosen was the best money could buy. Everything in her house fell into that category. Her husband insisted they had a reputation to uphold, a responsibility to provide Whiskey Creek with a couple anyone could look up to. Exhibiting their wealth convinced others of his success, which helped build his credibility and bring him new investors, which in turn brought him more success.

But she couldn’t imagine why he’d need any other investors. He was flying all over the world as it was, could hardly keep up with the number of projects he had. Not only that, but just about everyone who had any money in Whiskey Creek was already participating in one of his many joint venture partnerships. How much more could one man need—or manage?

Sophia was tired of the facade, tired of the pretense. Their relationship had deteriorated so quickly, she longed to walk out on it all. To admit she’d made a mistake when she married the high school senior voted Most Likely to Succeed in the class six years ahead of hers. He’d grown verbally abusive as soon as she’d conceived Alexa, and physically abusive after that, too full of his own power, but she’d never really loved him in the first place.

There were moments, moments like now, when she wanted to tell him so, wanted to watch the truth register on his pale, bespectacled face.

Except she could do nothing of the sort. If she did, she’d never see her daughter again. Skip would take Alexa away, even if it meant he had to steal her and go into hiding in some foreign country.

Skip was nothing if not vengeful.

Knocking followed the sound of the doorbell and still she didn’t move. She couldn’t. Skip had blackened her eye this morning before he left for Houston. With her eleven-year-old daughter at cheer camp he hadn’t needed to worry that she might overhear, hadn’t needed to worry that this time Alexa might not believe she’d run into another door. So he’d let himself get more carried away than usual. She’d have to stay inside the house for several days this time, probably for as long as Alexa would be gone.

Maybe that was the real reason he’d done what he’d done and not the fact that she’d argued with him, again, over having another child, something she definitely didn’t want to do. He liked knowing she’d be a prisoner inside their house while he had all the freedom he could desire.

Whoever was at her door wasn’t giving up. The gongs of the doorbell repeated themselves, sounding deep and hollow in the expansive house.

Resting her head against the supple leather of her chair, Sophia let the book she’d selected from her own shelves fall into her lap. “Go away,” she murmured. “I don’t know who you are or what you want, but it doesn’t matter.”

It was most likely a friend of Alexa’s. Few people came to the door for Sophia. Skip insisted that she appear at every community event and make a big deal of the contributions they made, but the person she had to be when she was with him didn’t attract friends. She’d thought the real her—the woman she was when he was out of town—had been making some inroads with Gail DeMarco’s circle. Sophia had wanted to belong to that group for years, had always felt that they had something special, and she envied their closeness.

But last Friday at the coffee shop showed her just how ineffective she’d been. They didn’t give a damn about her, either.

When the doorbell rang for the third time, she shoved the ice pack she’d set on the side table to the ground with an irritated curse. Why wouldn’t whoever it was just leave her in peace? It was getting too late for company, anyway.

She wished she had a housekeeper who could tell the person to go. Skip had once suggested hiring someone—no one in town had that kind of help, so it would make quite a statement—but she’d rejected the idea. If he took the housework away from her she’d have nothing to do, since he wouldn’t let her get a job.