Baby for the Billionaire(70)
“You mean when they fought, you weren’t worried that they were on the verge of divorce.” Her hand shifted, rubbing his arm in a soothing motion. He doubted she was even conscious of her actions. “They were never nasty toward each other.”
“Exactly. They were—” he reflected on it for a moment “—casual. As though the way they interacted—the laughter, the tears, the squabbling, the open affection—was a normal, everyday occurrence.”
“It probably was.” She tilted her head to one side, sending a swath of curls tumbling across her shoulder. “How often did you get to visit after that?”
“I didn’t. My disobedience that summer earned me a trip to military school. I didn’t see Joanne again until I turned eighteen and my father no longer had any say in where I went or who I saw. Unfortunately, my mother and her husband managed to drive themselves off an icy mountainside a few months beforehand.”
“Oh, Jack! How awful.” He caught the betraying glitter of tears and felt something shift inside him, something deep and powerful. Something he wanted to protect himself from because it came from a wellspring of emotions he preferred to deny. “What happened to Joanne? Did she move back to Charleston to live with you and your father?”
“No. She was in college by then and flat out refused to have anything to do with our father.”
“Or you?” she dared to ask.
He refused to acknowledge the hit. For years he’d believed just that, until Joanne had finally set him straight. But by then he’d found a way to insulate himself from the sort of emotional pain that came from sentiment and familial attachment.
“We managed to revive our relationship, despite my father.” His mouth twisted. “Hell, Jo even found it in her heart to forgive him, not that he ever believed he required forgiveness. Ironically, Dad helped her find the lawyer who handled Isabella’s adoption.” Jack stood then, careful not to wake his niece, while putting an unmistakable period to the conversation. Annalise’s hand fell away, leaving behind coldness where once there was warmth. “Time I put our little one to bed. I’ll be back in a minute.”
He took his time settling his niece, needing those handful of minutes to rebuild his barriers. He’d told Annalise far more than he’d shared with any other woman, opening parts of himself that he’d sealed away for almost two full decades. He didn’t ordinarily let people in, didn’t dare. That sort of closeness often became messy, risked creating emotions like the ones that had sent his parents’ relationship spiraling into vicious arguments and acts of revenge.
He’d made up his mind at a very young age to avoid marriage at all costs. Even when he’d witnessed firsthand his mother’s loving relationship with her second husband, he still hadn’t trusted that their marriage was anything other than pure dumb luck. The union he contemplated with Annalise wouldn’t involve an emotional commitment. When they married it would be carefully scripted with neat, tidy, legal boundaries that specified every aspect of their wedded “bliss” right down to the date of their future divorce. As for any potential romantic entanglements …
That would be determined by contract, as well. He had no objection if she chose to share his bed. But she would enter the affair with her eyes wide open and all the cards on the table. He wouldn’t trick her with claims of affection. Theirs would be a mating of body and intellect. A sensible blending rather than an emotional one.
Satisfied that he’d fully regained his self-control, he turned and found Annalise watching him from the doorway. And that was when he realized he had no self-control when it came to this woman.
None whatsoever.
Five
Jack had no memory of closing the door to Isabella’s room. No memory of striding toward Annalise. No memory of backing her against the wall. But from the instant his mouth found hers, it was like a recorder flicked on, burning every tantalizing moment into the pathways of his brain.
He was overwhelmed by the distinctive fragrance of her skin and driven insane by the low, soft moan that reverberated in her throat. The heat of her hands and lips and flesh burned like wildfire, sweeping straight through to the frozen core of him and melting away walls of ice that he’d believed too tall and thick to ever be breached.
“I’ve tried, Annalise,” he said between quick, biting kisses. “I’ve tried to keep my hands off you. How many times have I promised I would? And yet …”