Forgotten Father Read online

  “You can’t overset the will,” she concluded.

  “Not without a great amount of expenditure, which you must have known,” he concurred with a lazy smile. “What cannot be changed, must be dealt with.”

  “Endured?” She chuckled.

  “Dealt with,” Mitchell repeated, his gaze lingering on her face.

  Delanie looked back at him, amused. “And just how do you plan on ‘dealing with’ me?

  “There are,” he murmured after a moment, “many possibilities.”

  She felt the stroke of his glance on her bare shoulders as if he’d actually touched her. His molten smile and the edgy heated challenge in his eyes sent an answering flash of heat prickles through her body.

  Mitchell Riese was playing a new game, she thought. And this one felt deliciously dangerous.

  All through dinner, he’d sent out signals that he’d willingly act on the lush awareness between them. But with an edge that intrigued her. He still resented her, despite claiming otherwise. Anger that blazing hot didn’t just evaporate.

  “Yes,” she said, willing to follow the flirtation between them and see where it led. She knew how to play games, too. “There are many, many possibilities for dealing with me. Where shall we start?”

  “Perhaps,” he suggested, his tone dry, “we could try something new—some managerial cohesiveness?”

  Delanie opened her eyes wide. “I don’t know what you mean. I’ve been careful, in the two weeks since I got here, not to step on your toes.”

  She smiled at him.

  “And you’ve given that impression,” he said with a hint of grimness in his face. “Sweetness and light being mistreated by the big bad wolf.”

  A ripple of laughter escaped her. “Oh, no! Really?”

  “Really.” Mitchell regarded her from across the table, a faint smile on his lips. “But then the staff doesn’t know everything between us.”

  “I don’t suppose so. Are they hostile toward you?” she asked, amused. Of course, she’d known that the staff leaned in her direction. She wasn’t oblivious and Mitchell had a perfectionistic, no-nonsense style about him that only helped her popularity.

  He lifted his glass again before returning it to the snowy tablecloth. “The executive staff is careful around me. Yet I don’t believe I’ve been an ogre to anyone.”

  “But you have the possibility to be so,” she told him, lifting her brows in inquiry. “There’s an unspoken level of insistence on…total competence. Surely you know that?”

  He smiled, adjusting the cutlery remaining next to his plate.

  “A certain amount of decisiveness is needed in business.”

  “True,” she said with another smile. “I’ll mention that to the staff.”

  He looked at her, swift comprehension in his eyes. “When the chips are down, my sort of management tends to be comforting to people. They want to know someone is taking care of things.”

  “You’d been very good at that, I suppose,” Delanie said, watching him thoughtfully.

  “Thank you,” he responded with the hint of an unpleasant smile. “But the fact that we’re sitting here together belies that.”

  She considered him. Some quivering sixth sense told her he wasn’t as relaxed here alone with her as he’d like her to think. Still, she knew the urge to test the waters.

  She may not get everything she wanted on the first strike, but it didn’t hurt to shake things up and see the response.

  “Okay, let’s have a ‘managerial’ discussion,” she suggested suddenly, catching the hint of surprise in his eyes. “I want to renovate the villa.”

  “What?” His quick frown didn’t bode well for the project.

  “Renovate the villa,” she said slowly, enunciating the syllables.

  “There’s no point in that, as I said before,” Mitchell declared, his brows snapping together. “We don’t yet have full occupancy of the main building. It wouldn’t be cost effective to pour money into the villa.”

  “It could be, if we market it right,” she insisted. “Besides Donovan talked to me about it a number of times. He wanted it renovated.”

  Mitchell’s glance was sardonic. “And you have such devotion to Donovan’s wishes.”

  “Yes,” she said directly. “They do carry weight with me.”

  “Then I suppose,” he said casually, “at some point in time, we need to discuss the possibilities of renovating the old house. At least, we can look at money projections. Do you want dessert?”

  Following his rapid change of subject, Delanie shook her head.

  “Good.” He dropped his napkin on his plate and glanced around for the waiter, who’d hovered assiduously throughout the meal, but was now nowhere in sight.

  Mitchell’s gaze returned to her for a long moment. “You look very beautiful tonight.”

  Startled by the abrupt compliment, she murmured her thanks.

  To her own wry amusement, she’d put a lot of effort into her appearance for this dinner with her enemy. The short topaz silk dress had an empire waist that cupped her breasts before falling to a spot above her knees. She’d hung her grandmother’s antique pendant around her neck, the stone echoing the color of her dress, dark against her pale breast.

  She couldn’t help a moment of satisfaction at his praise and the accompanying burn of interest in his eyes. But where was he going with all this? Mitchell hadn’t really resigned himself to sharing his birthright with her. She knew that much. Did he have another agenda behind the heat in his eyes?

  In her assessment, the lust was genuine, even if his supposed acceptance of her wasn’t. She felt the flicker of it in each glance, the hovering question, the tightness in the air when they were alone like this.

  He wanted her and she had to admit to the tingles he sent through her body, despite her awareness of his resentment. Tall and well-built with that sardonic smile adding the spice of challenge, he tweaked her feminine interest more than she liked.

  She couldn’t remember the last time a man brought this kind of breathlessness to her body.

  “Why do you dislike me?” she asked suddenly.

  Mitchell paused in the middle of removing his credit card from his wallet. A lazy smile hovered at the corner of his mouth. “Have I been acting like I dislike you?”

  “Not tonight,” she said, letting her skepticism glimmer on her face.

  “But before tonight, I did?”

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t you think,” he said, handing the card to the waiter who’d materialized next to him, “losing a million dollar property like this is reason enough for a little…chagrin?”

  “To most people,” she agreed.

  “But not to me,” he finished, still smiling. “I’ve got so much money that I shouldn’t care about a stray million or five? It shouldn’t matter how that loss is…arranged?”

  She shook her head, studying him. “I don’t know. I’m still figuring you out.”

  He reached out, lifting her hand and, to her shock, brought it to his lips.

  She saw his dark head dip briefly over her hand, felt the warmth of his breath, the press of his lips on her skin and drew in a quick hard breath. Desire flashed over her like lightening. Desire, intrigue and an alluring sense of the forbidden mingled together in an intoxicating mixture.

  “Some things you, of all people, should know about me. But let me assure you,” he said, lifting his gaze to hers. “I’ve got you figured out.”

  Delanie pondered this enigmatic, borderline offensive comment as they left the restaurant. She could only chalk it up to his lingering dislike of The Cedars split ownership. Did he assume she’d somehow angled for the bequest?

  In a short span of minutes, they left the restaurant and went into the darkness of the night. Situated as they were, away from the lights of the big city, the blackness held a warm, luxuriant sense to it, as if the night were holding its breath.

  Mitchell drove along the curving country roads, his hands confident on the
wheel. Inside the opulent interior of the sedan, classical music played faintly.

  Delanie steeled her nerves against the silence between them and tried, instead, to focus on the amusing thought that being here with him like this was like living out a luxury car ad.

  Only humor didn’t blunt the buzz in her veins, the rising sense of consciousness of the man. She sat next to him, hearing the hush of the tires on the pavement, reminding herself of the consequences of acting on very foolish sexual impulses.

  Who would know better than she?

  With her laughing child waiting at home for her, she wasn’t likely to suggest Mitchell Riese spend the night. She couldn’t afford to go there with him.

  Besides, what woman would want a lover who resented her?

  But she kept wondering what it would feel like if he took her in his arms. Drew her close against him.

  Would his kiss hold that same hint of rage she sometimes thought she saw in his eyes?

  The subtle scent of his cologne drifted to her as they drove, a familiar smell, some brand she’d smelled before, that wove its way into her senses like a thief with a key to her padlocked desires.

  “Dinner was lovely,” she said, striving to anchor the moment to the mundane.

  “Yes,” he said, glancing at her briefly. “They do a good meal there.”

  “Yes.” Delanie stared ahead, the sensation of his gaze on her leaving a scorching heat in her lungs. She was adult enough to understand the existence of chemical attraction. How many women had cast aside their principles for a man who drew them simply on an elemental level?

  Scores.

  But she wasn’t one of them. Wasn’t planning on waking up naked tomorrow with Mitchell and having trite conversation before they slipped back into their ordinary roles, as if nothing had happened and the battle between them waged on. She couldn’t trivialize herself and her body that way. The possible consequences were too huge. No matter how hot the night, she couldn’t do it.

  Not without love.

  Within a few minutes, he’d pulled to a stop in front of her small rented cottage.

  “Nice place,” he said, putting the car into park and turning off the engine.

  “I like it,” she responded, searching for her small bag and scooping it up.

  He got out of the car and walked around as if to open her door, but she’d already lifted the handle. Still, when she stepped out of the vehicle, he cupped her elbow like a prom date from the fifties and walked her to the door.

  Her senses quivering, her mind in gear enough to still wonder at the supposed turnaround in his attitude, she let him escort her to the door.

  “Thank you for the lovely evening,” she said, turning to face him in the yellow light cast by the porch fixture.

  “My pleasure,” he said.

  “We don’t have to battle over The Cedars, you now. We can settle this peaceably. I’m glad you called,” she said, impulsively placing her hand on his arm.

  “Are you?” The light overhead cast harsh shadows across his features.

  “Yes,” she affirmed, conscious of the latent strength in the arm beneath her fingers. “We’re both sensible people. We don’t need to have a war over this inheritance.”

  “Sensible people,” he echoed, his face hard to read.

  “Yes.” She looked up at him as they stood on the island of her tiny wooden porch, the sounds of the night swelling around them.

  “So we’re putting the past behind us?” he asked, his voice odd.

  “Of course,” Delanie confirmed brightly, still trying to decipher the shadows in his eyes.

  “But not the good part,” he said. “We’re not putting that behind us?”

  Did he mean tonight’s dinner? “I…suppose not.”

  “Good,” he said, reaching out to draw her closer.

  Despite the fact that as an attractive single woman, she’d been kissed a few times before, she never saw it coming.

  In the whisper of a second, he brought her up against his body and lowered his mouth to hers. His lips parted over hers, his arms banded around her. Hot and wet, he kissed her, like a man who’d been at sea for a year, like a starved creature demanding sustenance.

  No tentative salute this, but a warrior-like taking of her mouth.

  Stepping forward so that her back pressed against the house, Mitchell kissed her with a sliding of lips, a tangling of tongues. Kissed her like he knew no halfway, nothing but lust and passion. Kissed her as if he had a right. Leap-frogging over dating etiquette--he claimed her.

  Delanie registered a surge of disorientation, as if the world turned upside down. His hands were broad against her back as he held her pinned between the wall of his chest and the house.

  She felt lightheaded, dizzy for a flash of a second, his nibbling, wooing, demanding mouth blotting out all thought, all reason.

  The low burn in her body leaped into forest fire strength and she clung to him with the joining of their mouths, the tangle of breath and hunger vibrating inside her.

  He tore his lips from hers, pressing a trail of damp kisses along her chin, to the curve of her neck.

  “Let’s go in,” he muttered, his body taut and hard against hers.

  Leaning against the wall, her senses disordered by his seductive assault, she barely registered his words.

  “What?” she murmured, passion-dazed.

  “Inside,” he muttered, a hand cupping and kneading her breast.

  “Oh, God!” Returning to herself with a sudden rush of icy reality, she pushed at him, wedging her arms between their bodies. “No, I can’t Mitchell. I’m sorry. No.”

  He straightened, disbelief and passion making his features harsh. “No?”

  “Please, no. No.” She drew a shaken breath. “No.”

  ******

  Two weeks later, Mitchell walked through the door leading into the resort offices.

  “Good morning, Mr. Riese,” the secretary offered brightly. “Did you have a good trip from New York?”

  “Yes, thank you.” He frowned down at the contracts in his hands. “Where’s your fax machine?”

  “Oh, let me do that—“ she started, breaking off when the phone on her desk rang. “Hello? Yes, I have that information. Can you hold?”

  Mitchell scanned the document in his hands, mentally rephrasing the clause in the middle of the page.

  “I can fax that for you now,” the woman behind the desk offered as she replaced the telephone receiver in its cradle.

  He glanced at the phone, noting the blinking light. “You’ve got someone waiting. If you’ll point me in the direction of the machine, I can handle it myself.”

  A hesitant smile hovered on her face. “Of course,…if you’re sure.”

  “I’m sure,” he said, his tone dry. How long would it take these people to accept a business-like relationship rather than the overly-chummy management style Delanie Carlyle preferred?

  And why the hell did he care? He ran a dozen companies and had never before even thought about his popularity with his staff. There was nothing wrong in striving for perfection. It wasn’t often achieved, but the striving built character.

  “Okay, if you don’t mind doing it yourself,” the woman chirped nervously. “The fax is right here on the counter. You just put the page in, punch in the fax number and push the start button.”

  “Thank you.”

  The secretary’s smile grew brighter. “You’re welcome.”

  Mitchell slipped the clip off the contract and fed the first sheet into the machine. Behind him, the secretary—he didn’t know her name—answered her caller’s question, her voice cheerful.

  “Yes, that was the thirteenth…”

  The woman’s voice drifted into the background as he fed page after page into the fax machine.

  In the past four weeks, he hadn’t made much obvious headway in unseating Delanie Carlyle from her ownership position, but he was a patient man. He’d find a way to get The Cedars back without paying her a ce
nt. Some endeavors took time to come to fruition.

  After that first staff meeting, he’d realized he needed a plan of action. With this in mind, he’d asked her to dinner alone. She played her manipulations and deceit with a warm smile. It wasn’t his style, but he’d smoothed down his anger, determined to best her at her own game.

  Still, Delanie’s rebuff after their kiss on her porch rankled. Why the hell the woman persisted in acting as if they’d never been lovers before, he couldn’t imagine. He knew he hadn’t slipped and revealed his hand. She had no reason to suspect he was still bent on wresting The Cedars away from her. So why had she pulled back?

  Why had she caught fire in his arms that night only to deny him—and herself—some much needed release? It didn’t make any sense. It wasn’t like the woman didn’t like sex.

  Her virginal attack of modesty after their scorching kiss had left him both furious and frustrated. It wasn’t bad enough that she was trying to steal half of The Cedars, she apparently also wanted to steal his sanity as well.

  Mitchell fed in another page of the contract and punched the start button on the fax.

  To hell with her.

  He could manage his lust better than the average man and it didn’t hurt that he knew she wanted him as badly as he did her. Just the thought of her breathless moans when he’d traced his mouth along the column of her neck made him hard.

  Yet, she’d never mentioned their night together, never referred to the steamy sexual satisfaction that he still had dreams about a year and a half later.

  At the thought, Mitchell thumped the start button on the fax again.

  Enough was enough. Somehow, he’d make her acknowledge their very personal confrontation, either before or after they’d repeated the pleasurable experience.

  Then he’d get rid of her, somehow shake her loose from The Cedars for good. Sex was one thing, business another. The two didn’t have to interfere.

  Behind him, the office door opened. Mitchell turned to see the newcomer, recognizing Connie, Delanie’s assistant.

  The quiet, dark-haired woman shut the door behind her and, sending him a brief, polite smile, spoke to the secretary behind the desk.