Beyond the Consequences (Book 5 of the Consequences Series)(51)

“If you’re not going to swim, sit with me.” She patted the cushion beside her.

“You’re going to get me wet.”

“That’s my plan.”

Shaking his head, he sat. He didn’t give a damn about his clothes as he wrapped his arm around his wife and pulled her close. “Now, answer me. How are you feeling?”

“I’m feeling great!” Her eyes opened wide and sparkled. “I really am. I keep expecting the morning sickness to hit me, and it still may, but so far, I feel good.”

“Is that normal?” he asked, obviously concerned. “Aren’t you supposed to be sick?”

Claire shrugged. “I don’t think there’s any right or wrong answer. I was with Nichol, for a while. Some people are sick a lot more than I was. Poor Julia, she’s still sick—she’s into her second trimester, and she still can’t keep food down.”

“Yes, Brent told me. He said she’s even been to the hospital a couple of times.”

Claire scrunched her nose. “I feel awful for her, but I don’t want that. The only thing I notice is that I’m more emotional. I was reading a new book to Nichol about a bunny that lost his mitten. Even though I’d just bought it, she told me how much she liked the story. She said it was a story Aunt Em used to read. I started crying. I don’t think she knew, but after I left her room I cried for about five minutes for no reason. It’s the hormones.”

Tony gently rubbed a circle on Claire’s back as she leaned into him. The scent of chlorine emanated from her hair, as the cool wetness penetrated his shirt. “Hush, don’t cry now. It’s probably good that she can talk about it as if it’s not a big deal.”

Claire nodded.

He wasn’t always the most perceptive, but it didn’t take long for him to realize she was crying. Hugging her tightly, he lifted her chin again and wiped her tears with his thumb. “You didn’t think the pool water was enough for my shirt—you thought it needed tears too?”

Claire grinned and shook her head.

“I love you, Mrs. Rawlings. I love that you’re so emotionally bound to a bunny with no mittens that it makes you cry.”

“Mr. Bunny had mittens,” she corrected. “He’d just lost one.”

Tony watched as the gleam returned to her gaze. “How about we take this pool party upstairs to our suite?”

“We don’t have a pool upstairs.”

Tony stood and reached for her hand. “No, my dear, but we have a shower and a large tub. The advantage of those is the no-bathing-suit rule.”

“Oh?”

“Haven’t I ever mentioned that?”

Her lips quirked into a knowing grin. “No, Mr. Rawlings. I’ve heard many of your rules, and I don’t recall that one.”

“Have you ever worn a bathing suit in the tub?”

Claire shook her head.

“Have you ever worn a bathing suit in the shower?” he asked as they began to walk toward the house.

“No, I can’t say that I have.”

“Then it sounds as though you’ve been doing a good job following my rule.”

Claire reached up on her tiptoes and kissed his cheek. “I know a few other things I’m good at doing.”

He threaded his fingers through hers. “I think I may have an idea, but we’d better get upstairs and check out each one.”

“Oh, we will. There’s no stopping mid-list. That’s my new rule,” Claire added with a grin.





Love is friendship that has caught fire. It is quiet understanding, mutual confidence, sharing, and forgiving. It is loyalty through good and bad times. It settles for less than perfection and makes allowances for human weakness.

—Ann Landers




IN MANY WAYS the Rawlings estate was like a small town: the people were close and not much went unnoticed. Though none of the staff except Shannon was required to live on the grounds, Phil had no desire to live anywhere else. His sentiments were shared by most of the other employees. At the old estate, each person had housing in the main house, now each person had his or her own apartment and all of the apartments were located in the same building. Needless to say, with the closeness of their working and living, private lives weren’t very private.

The clock read after eleven when Phil heard the knock on his apartment door. With a grin, he threw on a pair of sweat pants and went to answer it. As he reached for the handle, he fully expected to find Taylor on the other side. Though they didn’t always spend the night at each other’s place, it did happen. In a modest attempt to keep their relationship under the radar, they would often wait until later at night to visit one another.

Phil and Taylor’s relationship had been building since she first started working for the Rawlings family. At first Phil wondered if he was the only one who had feelings beyond that of security professional and coworker. He fought those thoughts as long as he could. Then as time passed, things became more personal. The first sign wasn’t truly sexual: it was a kinship. Phil could talk to Taylor, really talk about things that he’d never uttered to anyone else. It started the day he told her about his family and continued to grow. The night he confessed his failure to protect Claire from Patrick Chester was the night he knew that Taylor was more than a friend.