The Mommy Proposal Read online

  He stepped out into the mall. When he came back twenty minutes later, Cole was finished. His hair was cut in traditional adolescent-boy layers. He looked preppy and well-groomed. Brooke seemed pleased.

  Landry was finished, too.

  “You don’t like it, do you?” he challenged, after Nate had paid the cashier.

  But Brooke’s son did. “You look like a punk rocker,” Cole observed admiringly.

  Which, Nate figured, Landry had done to tick him off.

  Aware that Landry was waiting for him to lose his cool, Nate glanced at the new cut. The hair on top of Landry’s head was short, spiky and stood straight up. The rest was thinned and layered, and fell almost to his shoulders. “Looks trendy,” Nate said, and left it at that.

  The teen scowled. “You can’t like it,” he insisted.

  Which meant, Nate thought, Landry didn’t like it.

  Nate shrugged. “Your hair, your choice.”

  The boy’s eyes narrowed. All rebellious teenager again, he pointed out, “You didn’t say that when you were making me get my hair cut.”

  “My bad,” Nate admitted, realizing too late he shouldn’t have forced the issue.

  Landry continued to glare at him. Finally, realizing Nate was sincere in his reversal, he scowled and said nothing more.

  Brooke glanced at Nate as the boys walked on ahead. The empathy in her eyes made him feel better. Although he still didn’t know what he was doing in terms of being the dad Landry seemed to want and need.

  The two teens paused in front of a popular clothing store known for its appeal to teenagers.

  As they stood there, Nate noticed the longing on Landry’s face. It had obviously been months since anyone had bought clothes for him, and Jessalyn would probably not have known to come here. “This okay with you?” Nate asked.

  Landry’s expression transformed. He looked at the cargo-shorts and T-shirt-clad model in the window with exaggerated disdain. “Sure,” he drawled sarcastically, “why not? If you’re going to torture me, why not torture me all the way?”

  “Enthusiasm,” Nate murmured, resisting the urge to clap an affectionate hand on the lad’s shoulder. “Just what I want to see.” Stuffing fingers in his pockets, he followed Landry inside. Brooke and Cole sauntered in after them. The boys headed straight for the racks of T-shirts.

  An hour later, they walked out with enough clothing to see Landry through the rest of the summer.

  Next stop was the shoe store, where Landry and Cole both got new athletic shoes and sandals.

  Hamburgers, shakes and fries followed. It was nine o’clock before they returned to Nate’s place.

  “We’re sleeping in the caretaker’s cottage tonight,” Brooke told Cole, when he got out of Nate’s Jaguar.

  “Then I want to sleep there, too,” Landry said.

  Brooke looked at a loss.

  Nate figured it was one battle best not fought that evening. Tabling his own disappointment, he said, “If it’s okay with you, it’s okay with me.” His primary concern was that Landry be safe.

  Brooke hesitated. It was clear she felt like a traitor to what Nate was trying to do, but also knew the dynamics of the situation. She turned and put a hand on each teen’s shoulder. “Then let’s go, guys.”

  FOR THE NEXT HOUR, Nate roamed the mansion, trying to envision how it would appear when Brooke was finished with the makeover.

  The more he looked around, the more it seemed he had given her an impossible task.

  The rooms were all too large. There were too many of them. Even without the contemporary black and white furnishings, it was too big and cold and sterile.

  No wonder Cole and Landry had eagerly gone off with Brooke to the now-cozy caretaker’s cottage.

  Given the choice, Nate would have preferred the smaller abode, too.

  And no wonder Landry preferred being with Brooke over him. Spending time with her probably reminded him of home.

  Ironically, Cole didn’t seem to mind spending time with him, Nate thought as he changed clothes and went down to the pool for a swim. In fact, Brooke’s son seemed eager to get acquainted with him. It was only his son-to-be, Nate thought as he swam lap after lap, who couldn’t have cared less if they developed a rapport.

  And that could spell trouble in the future, he realized, as he climbed from the pool, his workout ended.

  Just then the cottage door opened and Brooke crossed the lawn. Nate ran a towel over his face and hair, then draped it around his waist.

  Brooke had changed out of her business clothes into a figure-hugging T-shirt, running shorts and flip-flops. She’d swept her hair into a silky knot on the back of her head. She looked pretty and at ease in that mom-next-door way.

  “Landry and Cole asleep?” he asked.

  “Yes.” Her expression went from genial to concerned.

  “You don’t have to say it.” Nate grabbed the water bottle he’d brought out with him, and drank deeply. Aware they’d known each other only a few days, but were already talking with the candor of two people who had known each other for years, he sighed. “I know I blew it tonight.”

  Brooke’s eyes softened. “That’s not what I came over here to say.”

  Maybe not in those exact words… Disappointed in how he was handling the situation, Nate made no effort to hide his mounting frustration. He wasn’t just a CEO, capable of starting a company from scratch and building it into a resounding success, he also had a background in sales. Years of experience honing the winning pitch had schooled him on how to gain the confidence of those who barely knew him. Yet despite all that he was failing mightily with the one person who needed to believe in him most. Failing Landry in the same way Nate himself had been let down in his youth. “Then…what did you want to say?” he asked impatiently.

  Brooke perched on the edge of a round, wrought-iron patio table, gripping the edge. “You’re pushing him too hard.”

  As Nate moved closer, the shimmering blue from the swimming pool illuminated the otherwise dark night with a soothing glow. There was enough light for him to see the self-conscious color creeping into her fair cheeks. “All that stuff had to get done today.”

  Brooke inhaled, the action lifting, then lowering the soft curves of her breasts. A pulse worked in her throat as she kept her eyes meshed with his. “I’m not arguing that.”

  Nate couldn’t say why, he just knew it frustrated and embarrassed him to come up short in front of her. “Then what?” It wasn’t as if they could have let Landry continue to go around with his hair in his eyes, wearing clothes he’d long outgrown, when Nate had the power and the means to remedy both.

  “I disagree with your timing.” Brooke rose gracefully to her feet. “If you want this to work, you have to start looking at the situation from Landry’s point of view. Right now he has no say in anything. Grown-ups have decided where he’s going to live, and with whom. Two days ago he was residing in his great-grandmother’s neighborhood, where he spent all his free time fighting boredom and taking care of her.” Brooke looked Nate squarely in the eye. “Now he’s in an intellectually challenging summer camp and living here. That’s a huge change.”

  And a good one, Nate thought fiercely, still sure taking Landry in was the right thing to do. “He could be in foster care.”

  Brooke moved closer. “To him, it’s the same thing.” She propped her hands on her hips. “I know you’re used to just snapping your fingers and making things happen. All CEOs are. But Landry can’t just put on a happy face and make this situation work. He’s a kid. He needs time to process it, to understand what it is about you that made his mother decide you were the one to bring him up, once his great-grandmother could no longer do so.”

  “You want me to sing my own praises?” he asked disparagingly.

  Brooke leaned toward him. “I want you to pull back, not be so results oriented when it comes to Landry’s happiness and his attitude. Just give him space, Nate. Let him be….”

  In normal circumstances, Nat
e would agree with her. In this particular situation, it sounded like emotional desertion—an action Nate was well-acquainted with, too. “And just hope that he doesn’t feel even more abandoned in the process?”

  This time it was her turn to concede his point.

  “It’s a fine line,” Brooke said eventually.

  “You don’t know the half of it,” Nate agreed in a flat voice.

  “Then tell me,” she murmured, her warm tone wrapping him in tenderness.

  “My parents are both executives for major corporations.” Despite the fact that another wall had just come tumbling down, Nate tried not to make it sound any more important now than it had been then. “Career was everything to them when I was growing up, and it still is.”

  “You were alone a lot?”

  That depended on the definition of alone. Nate finished the last of his water in a single draught. “I always had a nanny. And when I got older, a housekeeper.” What he hadn’t had were parents who cared as much as he needed them to, then or now.

  God help him if he left Landry feeling the same way….

  Brooke seemed to intuit all he wasn’t saying. Her glance became even more empathetic. She edged close enough that he could inhale the faint citrus fragrance of her skin. “Are your parents still around?”

  Nate nodded. “My mother is in China, my dad works in Brussels. Global economy and all that. We get together once a year, usually around Christmas.”

  “That sounds…”

  Cold. It was. Nate turned and looked Brooke in the eye. “I want something different for Landry and me.”

  This time she smiled. “It’ll come.” She reached out and squeezed his hand reassuringly. “You’re only just starting to get to know each other right now.”

  Nate absorbed the heat of her skin pressed against his. Fighting the urge to ditch propriety and take her into his arms, he pointed out, “He’s already bonding with you.”

  Brooke shrugged her slender shoulders. “I’m a mom. He lost a mom. He never really had a dad.”

  And maybe I don’t know how to be one. Nate sighed. Her candor allowed him to say the unspeakable in return. “And maybe Landry doesn’t want a dad.”

  “Maybe not,” she said with the wisdom of a woman who had spent years parenting effectively. “But he needs one. He needs you, Nate.”

  BROOKE HADN’T MEANT THAT to come out that way. Hadn’t meant for this conversation to get so personal, so fast. Yet that was what seemed to happen every time she was alone with Nate. They’d find themselves talking about things that were far too intimate for two people who had just met.

  “Anyway—” she forced herself to regroup and step away from Nate “—like I said before, that isn’t why I came over here.”

  “So what did you need?” Nate asked curiously.

  Talk about a loaded question.

  She pushed away the idea of kissing Nate. Just because she had noticed how sexy he looked standing there, with his dark hair rumpled, water still beading on his powerful shoulders, and a beach towel wrapped around his waist, was no reason to be thinking this way.

  Brooke swallowed and made herself stay focused on the task, even as she failed to slow her racing pulse. “I came over to borrow a pillow and blanket—I’m low on bedcovers. I didn’t anticipate Landry spending the night in the cottage with Cole and me. The boys are occupying both beds…so I’m going to have to sleep on the sofa.”

  His eyes gleamed in the shadows. “You couldn’t have put one of them on the sofa?”

  Not without showing favoritism of some kind and causing a problem that way. “It’s fine, Nate,” Brooke replied. “I can rough it for a night or two.”

  He shook his head in silent approval. “You’re one of a kind, you know.”

  “Thank you…. I think.”

  He pivoted and started for the mansion. “Not many women would step up the way you have the past few days.”

  Brooke fell into step beside him. She had to struggle to keep pace as he swiftly led the way into the house. “You may be underestimating the female species.”

  Nate paused at the base of the back staircase. “I don’t think so.”

  She tilted her head, not sure what he meant. Only knowing that the words sounded soft and seductive.

  So alluring, in fact, that it wasn’t as much of a surprise as she would have expected when Nate flattened a hand against her spine, guided her close.

  Brooke had plenty of time to pull away.

  The surprise was she didn’t want to.

  She yearned to experience the touch of Nate’s lips on hers.

  And when it happened, his kiss was everything she had expected—tender and evocative, possessive and masculine. She moaned softly as he threaded his hands through her hair, tangling his tongue with hers. With their mouths fused together, she reveled in the taste of him and the tantalizing fragrance of his aftershave. He was so warm, so solid, so strong. He wanted her so much. She could feel it in the way he pressed against her, urging her to curve her body all the way into his. Brooke hadn’t ever felt seduced like this. Or had such a strong yearning to be touched, held, loved. Which was why she had to come up for air. Take a moment. Regain some common sense!

  She splayed her hands across his chest. “Nate…”

  He lifted his head slightly. He had a dazed, besotted look in his eyes that mirrored the unwanted emotions she harbored deep inside.

  “That’s been a long time coming,” he told her gruffly. And then he kissed her again.

  Chapter Five

  Brooke had never been one to spend a lot of time kissing. But as Nate pulled her flush against him once again, and delved into the kiss with breathtaking dedication, she began to see what she had been missing. She was light-headed with pleasure as his lips touched one corner of her mouth, then the other, teasingly warm, temptingly reassuring. Her body went soft with pleasure. She wrapped her arms around his neck and tilted her hips into the hardness of his. He made a sound low in his throat and continued kissing her ardently, one hand in her hair, the other coming around to cup her breast.

  Engulfed in his touch, in his smell, Brooke felt the possibilities of a liaison with Nate and longed for more. So what if the guy had a string of ex-girlfriends ten miles long? It had been years since she had been wanted like this, or felt like a woman with needs. Years since she had acknowledged the aching void deep inside her.

  With his thorough, provocative kisses, Nate brought it all back. The feel of her heart slamming hard against her ribs. The blossoming heat that started in her breasts and spread outward in deep, pulsing waves. The throb of awareness between her thighs, the boneless feeling in her knees. She knew she should play it cool, but when he pursued her like this it was impossible to mask her response. One stroke of his tongue or brush of his fingertips, and she was trembling all over.

  There was something primitive and satisfying about being held against him and savored this way. She could feel his hardness, his need, and knew that whatever normalcy she had been holding on to in his presence was completely gone. There was no point pretending they didn’t desire each other, or that his kisses were anything but spectacular. She could only imagine how magnificent his lovemaking would be…if they took this to the next level.

  As if hit by the same erogenous thoughts, Nate drew back. Still holding her tightly, he looked down at her. “I could do this all night,” he murmured.

  “So could I.” If you weren’t a client. If I were childless. Unfortunately, she reminded herself with what little self-discipline remained, she was neither.

  With effort, she forced herself to be sensible. “But we both have responsibilities.”

  For which he apparently cared not a whit, as he continued to stare at her with lust in his eyes.

  So she forced herself to say, “Sons to parent.” Emotional baggage still to be dealt with. “And we can’t afford to be distracted.”

  Finally, she got through to him.

  Brought back to reality, Nate inhaled
sharply and buried his face against her throat. “And I thought I was the one given to weighing risk,” he murmured.

  Brooke shifted so that he had to look at her, trying not to think about how good he made her feel. She wasn’t sure she followed what he was saying. “In financial terms…in your work?”

  “In every way.” Their gazes locked and the corner of his mouth curved upward. “And this,” he said, kissing her ever so briefly again, before letting her go, “is a risk worth taking.”

  BROOKE WAS HALFWAY BACK across the lawn, the borrowed pillow and blanket in her arms, when she saw an ancient Volkswagen pull into Nate’s driveway. Her first thought, when she saw a lithe female figure emerge, was that the man who had just kissed her had a visitor.

  Her second realization occurred when the woman turned and looked straight at her.

  Brooke’s heart sank as she recognized the petite auburn-haired grad student with a body that would have given Eva Longoria a run for her money.

  “Professor Rylander said I’d find you here,” Iris Lomax told Brooke as she neared.

  Deciding this conversation should not happen out in public near the caretaker’s cottage, Brooke clasped the bedding close to her chest and turned to face her late husband’s mistress. “You shouldn’t be here,” she told Iris. “Especially this late.” It was nearly midnight.

  “I just got off work. I wait tables to supplement my assistantship. And it couldn’t wait.” Iris reached into the canvas carryall she had slung over her shoulder. She withdrew an advance copy of Seamus’s last book of poetry. “I know you’re angry with me for being with your husband, but I can’t believe you would stoop this low.”

  The deep anger in her voice took Brooke aback. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  Iris advanced. “Where do you get off passing off my poems as Seamus’s?”

  For a second, Brooke was sure she hadn’t heard right. “What are you talking about?”