Hot Westmoreland Nights / Scandalising the CEO: Hot Westmoreland Nights / Scandalizing the CEO

“I’m in Denver for now.”

“And when will you be coming home?”

She raised a brow. Home for her had always been Tampa, but for her father since becoming Senator Jamison Burton, he’d stayed in D.C. most of the time. “Not sure when I’ll be back in Tampa. Why? What’s going on?”

He paused and then said, “I intend to ask Stephanie to marry me tonight, and was hoping you would be here in case she said yes, so we can all celebrate.”

Chloe’s smile widened. Her father had been dating Circuit Court of Appeals judge Stephanie Wilcox. A fifty-something divorced mother of a son and a daughter in their twenties, her father and Stephanie had been dating for a few years and Chloe had wondered when he would consider asking the woman to share his life.

“That’s wonderful, Dad. Congratulations. I’m sorry I won’t be there to celebrate, but please make sure you let Stephanie know how happy I am for both of you.”

Ten minutes later she was still smiling when she slipped her phone back into her skirt pocket. Finally, her father was about to commit his life to something other than politics and she was happy about it. He had remained a widower and she had often wondered why, when he would be such a good catch for someone. But she’d heard over the years from both sets of grandparents how much he’d loved her mother and he hadn’t wanted to give his heart to another woman. It had taken Stephanie three years, but she had done what some would have thought as impossible.

“After all the work that went into feeding my men breakfast and lunch you have a reason to smile?”

Startled, Chloe inclined her head to glance across the room. She hadn’t heard the door open and now Ramsey was standing in the doorway and looking at her.

Refusing to be rattled, she reached for her glass of wine and took a sip, not sure how she would answer his question. There was no way she could share her father’s good news on the risk that he might ask questions she didn’t want to answer. All he would have to do is to go on the Internet and do a search on her father to discover she was his daughter and exactly what she did for a living.

“That’s not what the smile is for,” she decided to say. “I just received a call from a friend to say he was asking his girl to marry him tonight. And I’m happy for both of them.”

She watched as he crossed the room to sit in the chair across from the sofa. She tried not to stare and was surprised he was giving her the time of day when it was obvious he’d been avoiding her earlier, especially after their kiss.

“I guess getting married would make some folks happy,” he said.

She took another sip of her wine while holding his gaze, trying not to dwell on just how good he looked while he leaned back in the chair with muscled shoulders, hard jeans-clad thighs and long legs stretched to where his booted feet touched a portion of the coffee table. She wondered if he realized he was still wearing his Stetson. “Um. But I take it that you’re not one of them,” she replied.

“Nope, I wouldn’t be one of them. I intend to be a single man for the rest of my days.”

She considered his words. “So, you’re one of those men who have a problem with matrimony? Who thinks marriage isn’t a big deal?”

He lifted a brow. “And you’re one of those women who thinks that it is?”

“I asked you first.”

Yes, she had, Ramsey thought. His first inclination was to ignore the question. Move on to something else. And a part of him wondered what the hell he was doing here, sitting across from her at all. Especially because he’d taken great pains to make sure their paths didn’t cross after his brothers and cousin had left. He hadn’t liked the way Zane, Derringer and Jason’s thoughts had been going. He would like to think he had put their false assumptions to rest, but he knew them well enough to know that was too much to hope for.

“Take your time if you need to gather your thoughts,” Chloe said.

Ramsey kept his gaze trained on her. Unwavering. He couldn’t give her a forced smile even if he’d wanted to because staying single was a serious topic with him. And it wasn’t that he had a problem with matrimony per se, after the last fiasco of a wedding, he figured there was not a woman alive who would be able to get him back in a church for the sole purpose of getting hitched. No, he liked his single life just fine. He would think after dealing with the likes of an ex-boyfriend like Daren, so would she.

He continued to look at her, recalled her statement about gathering his thoughts and figured she would get along with his sisters easily because she seemed to have a smart mouth like them. That thought made his gaze shift to her lips.

He then swallowed, wishing he hadn’t gone there with her mouth, especially because he knew how it tasted. And then there had been her response to him. He could do bodily harm to his kinfolk for their untimely interruption.

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