Slade Baron's Bride

“Yes,” she said. Just that one word, but it was enough.

He had no memory of leaving the lounge, or of flagging down a taxi. He could hardly recall the ride to the hotel, he only remembered stepping through the doors, his arm hard around her waist, and telling her that he had to leave her for a moment while he made a quick stop at the drugstore in the lobby.

“No,” she said, looking up at him. “It’s not necessary.”

He remembered, too, the first shot of pleasure he’d felt at those words, knowing there’d be no barrier of latex between them…and then the surprisingly harsh jolt of anger when he realized that she took care of her own birth control needs because she had sexual relationships apart from the one she was about to have with him.

It was more than anger he felt. It was the sharp bite of primitive male possessiveness. But by then they were in the room with the door closed on the rest of the world, and he stopped thinking and reached for her.

She panicked. “No!” Her voice quavered. “I’m sorry, Slade. I can’t do this.”

He framed her face in his hands. “Just kiss me,” he whispered. “Kiss me once, and I swear, if you want to leave, I won’t try to stop you.”

She didn’t move, she just looked up at him through wide, fear-filled eyes. He thought of something he’d stumbled upon years ago, back home at Espada. A stallion had broken loose from his stall and trapped a mare. He remembered the arch of the stallion’s neck, the wild, rolling eyes. And he remembered the mare’s terror, and how that terror had suddenly become something else, once the stallion came over her.

“Lara,” he whispered. Slowly, carefully, watching the wary apprehension in her eyes, he lowered his mouth to hers and kissed her. It was difficult, holding himself in check, but he did it, brushing his lips over hers until her mouth warmed and opened beneath his.

“Slade,” she sighed, and the sound of his name on her lips made him groan.

His arms swept around her and he gathered her close. She rose toward him, looped her arms around his neck, buried her hands in his hair.

“Please,” she said, “oh please, please, please…”

And then he was carrying her to the bed, undressing her, letting down that glorious hair and doing everything he’d wanted, everything she’d wanted, and more.

The storm became a blizzard. It raged across the mountains all that day and night. And they spent all those minutes and hours in bed.

It was like a dream. Lara, in his arms. Her scent, on his skin. The warmth of her, curled against him whenever they dropped into exhausted sleep. He told himself how lucky he was, that making love with this beautiful stranger while a winter storm raged outside would be an incredible memory in years to come.

Toward dawn, something—the moan of the wind, perhaps—awakened him. Lara was asleep in the curve of his arm. He watched her and thought about how, when the storm ended, they’d go their separate ways. She lived in Atlanta, and she was an auditor. That was all she’d told him about herself. He thought, too, of the way she’d made it clear he didn’t have to worry about condoms and the angry feeling because she had a life he knew nothing about ripped through him again.

He tried to imagine her leading that life, living in a house he’d never seen, laughing with friends he didn’t know. Dating men he didn’t want to think about. Lying in arms that weren’t his.

Something tightened around his heart. He woke her with kisses, and with the touch of his hand on her breast.

“Lara,” he whispered.

Her eyes opened and she smiled sleepily. “Slade? What is it?”

What, indeed? She lived in the South, he in the Northeast. What was he going to say? That he’d fly down to see her every weekend? He didn’t see any woman every weekend. Well, yeah, he’d been known to establish relationships that lasted a couple of months, but getting involved with a woman who lived in the same city wasn’t like getting involved with one who lived hundreds of miles away.

“Leave a toothbrush here,” she’d say, “and some clothes.” And then she’d expect him to show up on Fridays instead of Saturdays, and leave on Monday instead of Sunday, and who knew? Sooner or later, maybe she’d say, “You know, I’ve been thinking that I could move up to Boston…”

“Slade?” Lara curved her hand around his stubbled jaw. “What’s the matter?” She smiled. “You look like a little boy who just found out there really isn’t a Santa Claus.”

He forced a smile to his lips and said he’d been hearing snowplows for a while now, that the roads were probably clear. And that he’d been thinking how terrific this had been and how he hoped that someday, if they could work out the details, they might find the time to get together again.

“Ah,” she said, after the barest hesitation, “yes, that sounds good.”

He wondered if he’d hurt her feelings but she lifted her mouth to his and kissed him. She touched him. She made him wild for her and he rolled her beneath him and took her again. When it was over, he lay holding her close. He thought of how much he wanted more of this, more of her. It didn’t have to be every weekend.

He smiled, brought her face to his, and gave her a slow, tender kiss.

“I don’t know your address,” he said softly, “or your phone number.”

And she smiled and stroked a lock of hair back from his eyes.

“I’ll write it all down,” she whispered, “in the morning.”

But when he awoke, in the morning, it was to sunshine, the sound of snowplows and cars and jet engines screaming overhead—and to an empty place in the bed.

Lara was gone. No note. No message. He didn’t even know her last name.

She’d run out on him while he slept, and he’d been furious. He’d tried telling himself she had no way of knowing he’d wanted more than the one night, but it didn’t take away the feeling that he’d been—well, that somehow, he’d been used.

What he did know was that what he’d felt making love to her, the sense that something special was happening, had been his imagination. Sex with a beautiful stranger, every man’s fantasy, was all it had been. And, as he’d flown home, he’d thought about how this wasn’t just going to be a great memory, it would be one hell of a story. I got snowed in in Denver, he’d say, and I ended up in bed with this incredibly hot babe for almost two days.

Except, he never told that story, not to his partners or even to his brothers. And now, all these months later, he was standing at the window in an airport terminal and wondering why he should still dream about the weekend and the woman because he did, dammit, he dreamed about her, about how it had been to make love to her, the stranger with the soft, sweet mouth and the deep blue eyes. He remembered how she’d felt, in his arms. The little sounds she’d made when he moved inside her, when she arched toward him, wrapped her legs around him…

“Ladies and gentlemen, we’re pleased to announce that we are now boarding all flights.”

Slade dropped back into reality, realized he was a long way from his gate and ran for his plane.

CHAPTER TWO

LARA sat in her office overlooking the Baltimore harbor and told herself the next couple of hours were going to be a piece of cake.

She was ready. More than ready, after two weeks of preparation. She’d gone through the proposal for the new headquarters building more times than she could count. And she’d found the flaws she needed to keep Slade Baron out of Baltimore, and out of her life.

Slade Baron. How perfectly the name suited the man. Lara puffed out a breath, reached for her coffee mug and brought it to her lips. No way he’d have gone through life with a name like Brown or Smith. “Baron,” with all the medieval entitlements it suggested, suited a man like that just fine.

The mug trembled in her hand. She whispered a short, sharp word and put it down before she ended up spilling coffee on her suit. The last thing she needed was to walk into that meeting feeling anything less than perfectly put together.

She’d be fine. Just fine. Of course she would. Lara stroked her hand lightly over the folder on her desk, pushed back her chair and walked to the window. She had a wonderful view from here, straight out over the harbor. A corner office, she thought, with a little smile. It had taken her six long years to work up to one but she’d done it. She had everything she’d ever wanted. A career. A title. A handsome little house in a pleasant neighborhood. And the joy of her life, the very heart of her life…

The intercom buzzed. She swung around and hit the On button.

“Yes, Nancy?”

“Mr. Dobbs’s secretary phoned, Ms. Stevens. Mr. Baron’s plane finally got in. He should be here soon.”

Lara felt her stomach lurch. She touched her fingertips to her forehead, which felt as if somebody with a jackhammer had been working away at it most of the morning.

“Thank you, Nancy. Let me know when the meeting begins, please.”

“Of course, Ms. Stevens.”

The panic was threatening to overwhelm her. Be calm, she told herself again. She’d done what she had to do, that night eighteen months ago in Denver. Heaven knew she didn’t regret it. Slade had been a means to an end, that was all. Just a means to…

His arms, hard around her. His mouth against hers. The feel of him deep within her, and the way he’d held her afterward, as if he cherished her…

Lara shuddered and wrapped her arms around herself. There was no point in thinking that way. She didn’t have to romanticize what she’d done. Slade had gotten what he’d wanted and so had she, and now she had to make sure it stayed like that.

She let her gaze wander out over the water. The day was muggy, the sky filled with clouds. The weather had been very different, when she’d met Slade. Lara closed her eyes. She didn’t want to remember that day…

That day in Denver.

The sky had been a dirty gray, and the snow as thick as feathers spilling from a torn pillow. Lara, trapped in the waiting area at the Denver airport, had felt impatient and irritable.

It was her thirtieth birthday, and this was one hell of a way to celebrate it.

Nothing had gone right for her that entire week, starting with not one but two baby showers for women she worked with, and ending with an ultrapolite kiss-off from Tom. Not that the relationship had gone beyond dinner and the theater but still, it wasn’t pleasant, getting an earnest speech about how she was a wonderful woman, an intelligent woman…

What he’d meant was that they weren’t getting anywhere. She didn’t make men think about white picket fences and wedding rings. Other men had given her the same message, and she thought about that while she waited for the snow to let up.

She knew Tom was right. She had nothing against men. Maybe she was a little cool, a little distant. She’d been told that by a couple of guys. Maybe she didn’t think sex was the mind-blowing experience other women did, but so what? She liked men well enough.

It was just that marriage was something else. In her heart, she knew she really didn’t want to be anybody’s wife. She was self-sufficient and independent, and she’d seen, firsthand, what a mess a man could make of a woman’s life. Her mother, and now her sister, could have been advertisements extolling the benefits of spinsterhood.

No, marriage wasn’t for her, but motherhood was. She’d known that ever since her teens, when she’d earned pocket money baby-sitting. Having babies was more than a biological need: it was a need of the heart. There was something indescribably wonderful about children. Their trust in you. Their innocence. The way they gave their love, unconditionally, and accepted yours in return.

Lara had all the love in the world to give, but her time was running out. She was thirty, and she figured she had about as much chance of having a child as an Eskimo had of getting conked on the head by a falling coconut. Thirty was far from middle-aged but there were times she felt as if she were the only woman in the world who didn’t have a baby in her arms or in her belly, and that most of the women who did were years her junior.

Like the two girls she worked with. Goodness knew she wished both of them well but watching their excitement at their baby showers, she’d felt an awful emptiness because she’d suddenly known she’d never share that special joy. She knew single women adopted babies all the time but, perhaps selfishly, Lara yearned for a child of her own. She knew about artificial insemination, too, but the thought of knowing little about the prospective father made her uneasy. She’d even considered asking someone like Tom, someone she liked and respected, to make her pregnant, but there’d been an item on the TV news about a man who’d agreed to just such an arrangement until he saw his son. All of a sudden, he’d changed his mind. Now, he was suing for joint custody.

“If I’d picked up a stranger in a bar,” the girl had said, her eyes red and teary, “some guy with looks and enough brains to carry on an intelligent conversation, I’d have my baby but I wouldn’t be in this mess.”

Lara sat thinking all these things on that fateful afternoon in Denver, while she waited for the snow to stop.

The public address system bleated out guarded encouragement from time to time, but you didn’t need a degree in meteorology to see that the storm was getting worse instead of better. After a while, she collected her computer and her carry-on, made her way to the first-class lounge, found a seat and settled in. Her mood was as foul as the weather. She took out her computer and turned it on. Solitaire was mindless; she could play it until her brain went numb.

Except that her computer wouldn’t start. The battery was dead. It was the final straw, and she glared at the damned thing, contemplated hurling it to the floor, then settled for telling it what she thought of it, under her breath.

She heard a soft, masculine chuckle, and then a man’s voice.

“Here you go, darling,” he said.

Lara looked up. A man was standing in front of her. He was tall, he was probably what some women would call handsome, and if he thought she was in the mood for some fun and games, he was about to have his smug little smile stuffed right up his nose.

She drew herself up and looked at him as coldly as she could.

“I beg your pardon?”

But not coldly enough, apparently. His smile broadened and he shot a pointed look at the person seated in the chair next to hers. Lara lifted her brows. Obviously he was accustomed to having things his way. Well, she thought as the wimp beside her gave up his seat, this bozo was in for a big surprise.

“I am the answer to your prayers, Sugar,” her unwanted visitor said. He had a drawl of some kind. Not Southern; she knew Southern drawls. Western, maybe. That would explain the lean, rangy look to him, and those ridiculous cowboy boots.

“I am not named ‘Sugar,’” she said coldly. “You’re out of your league, cowboy. If those boots of yours are made for walking, you’d better let them walk.”

He grinned. It was, she had to admit, a nice grin on a nice face. Definitely handsome, if you liked men who looked as if they’d just ridden down from the hills, despite what had to be a hand-tailored suit and a Burberry raincoat. Not that any of that changed the fact that she wasn’t interested.

“Ah,” he said, “I see. You think this is just an old-fashioned pickup.”

Lara gave a wide-eyed stare. “My goodness,” she said sweetly, “isn’t it?”

The stranger sighed, as if she’d wounded him deeply. Then he opened his computer case and took out a battery. She saw, right away, it was the duplicate of hers.

“It’s painful to be misjudged, Sugar,” he said. “You need a battery for your computer and I just happen to have an extra. Now, does that sound like a pickup line to you?”

Of course it did. Lara started to tell him he was wasting his time. But his eyes were twinkling, and what was the harm in admitting she saw the humor in the situation? A few minutes of conversation might make the interminable delay seem less onerous.

“Yes,” she said, and smiled, to show she wasn’t really offended.

“Well, you’re right. But you have to admit, it’s creative.”

She laughed, and he laughed, and that was the way it all began.

“Hi,” he said, and held out his hand. “I’m Slade.”

She hesitated, then took his hand. “I’m Lara.”

A tiny electric jolt passed between them.

“Static electricity,” she said quickly, and pulled back her hand.

“Or something.” He smiled again. “I couldn’t help but overhear your, uh, your conversation. The one you were having with yourself. I didn’t actually hear what you called your dead battery, but I have a pretty good imagination.”

She laughed. “I’m afraid I wasn’t being very polite.”

“I’m serious about giving you that extra battery.”

“Thanks, but I can do without it.”

“Well, I’ll lend it to you, then. So you can check your e-mail, or whatever.”

“I did that, just before the stupid thing died. Actually it’s the ‘whatever’ part that I was going for.” She smiled. “I was going to play solitaire.”

His brows lifted. They were dark brows, winged a little at the ends, and went nicely with his black, silky-looking hair. “Computer solitaire. The wonder of the age,” he said with a dead-serious expression. “One card or three?”

“One, of course. Timed, with Vegas rules…”

“The deck with the palm trees?”

Lara laughed. “Uh-huh. I like that little face that appears, the one that grins when you least expect it.”

“Ah, the wonders of the chip,” the stranger said, and they fell into easy conversation—except she really wasn’t quite sure what either of them was saying.

She thought about that electrical jolt she’d felt when she’d put her hand in his. It hadn’t been static electricity at all; it had been a tingling sense of sexual awareness. She’d never felt it before but that didn’t mean she was incapable of recognizing it.

And why not? This man, this stranger named Slade, was, to put it simply, gorgeous.

Tall, dark and handsome. Three little words but, when applied to him, spectacular. Coal-black hair. Smoky-gray eyes shaded by thick, black lashes. A blade of a nose set above a firm mouth and a square, dimpled chin. And even inside that custom-tailored suit, Lara could tell he had the kind of body the guys at her health club sweated for but never quite managed to achieve. He had a nice sense of humor, too, and he was intelligent…

And, just like that, the voice of the girl in the TV interview zipped through her head.

If I’d picked up a stranger in a bar, some guy with good looks and enough brains to carry on an intelligent conversation…

Lara knew she was blushing but she couldn’t help it. A stranger in a bar? My God, what was wrong with her? Here he was, this hunky stranger, looking for a way to pass the time while the snow kept them trapped in the airport, and here she was, thinking that he’d be the right man to father her baby.

Not that there was anything wrong in thinking about it, because she’d never do such a thing. Of course not. Have sex with a stranger? Not her. But she knew how easy it would be. An exchange of business cards, the suggestion that he look her up if he came to Atlanta or even something more specific, say, a deliberate plan to meet somewhere for a weekend…

Lara let her thoughts drift. No, it wouldn’t be difficult at all. He was interested in her, that was obvious. And he had a way about him that suggested he’d be good in bed, that he’d know how to bring a woman pleasure. Not that pleasure mattered, in a situation like this. It was all hypothetical, and you didn’t need to enjoy sex just to get pregnant. Still, he’d know all the right moves.

She knew she was blushing again but she couldn’t help it. Such wacky thoughts to be having, especially for a woman who had a sexual past uninteresting and unvaried enough to almost be embarrassing. But as long as she was indulging herself in this fantasy, there was no harm in imagining that he’d be good in bed. After all, she’d only have the one chance at getting pregnant. Weren’t there statistics that showed orgasm increased those chances?

Something must have shown in her face because suddenly, in the middle of a sentence, he stopped talking and just stared at her. She was on the verge of grabbing her stuff and fleeing when he asked her if she wanted some coffee.

What she wanted was to stop thinking these insane thoughts.

Tell him no, she told herself, and then get up and walk away…

“Yes,” she said, “I’d love some.”

He rose from his chair. She did, too. They walked to the rear of the lounge, poured some coffee, sat down on a small sofa in a corner and she tried, really tried, to concentrate on what he was saying and to stop thinking nonsense, like how it might feel if he kissed her.

Thoughts like that had never occupied her mind before.

They did, now.

And when he refilled her cup and his hand brushed hers, she felt as if she’d been shot through with a low-voltage electrical charge. A stranger in a bar, she thought again, and she forced a little laugh.

“Whoops,” she said. “One of us needs to be grounded before we go up in flames.”

She knew, instantly, it was the wrong thing to say. It sounded like a come-on and she hadn’t meant it like that…had she?

It was obvious what Slade thought. His eyes darkened, and a little muscle knotted just beside his mouth.

“Going up in flames might be fun,” he said in a voice that sent shivers up her spine.

She felt a tremor go through her, and she began chattering inanely about something else. Anything, to lessen the growing tension. He could handle this; he was that type of man, the kind who probably left swooning women behind him wherever he went. But she couldn’t. She felt as if she were letting her sanity slip away.

Silence built between them.

“You’re beautiful,” he said softly.

So are you, she thought, and blushed. “Thank you.”

“What does your hair look like, when it’s loose?”

The intimacy of the question stunned her. “What?”

“Your hair. Is it long? Does it fall over your shoulders, and your breasts?” He took the cup from her and put it on the table beside him. “This isn’t just another pickup line,” he said softly. “You know it’s not.”

She looked into his eyes and what she saw was her undoing. No man had ever looked at her this way, had ever made her feel this way. Desirable. Sexy. Seductive. She knew what he was thinking, that he was imagining what it would be like to undress her, take down her hair, kiss her and stroke her and make her sob out his name…

An announcement blared over the loudspeaker. Thank God, Lara thought, and focused her attention on the disembodied voice.

All flights were grounded until further notice. The airline would try to make arrangements for overnight accommodations for passengers who wanted them.

Lara cleared her throat. “Well,” she said, and gave a forced laugh, “well, that’s that.”

Slade nodded, and she was sure he understood what she meant. “Yes.” He smiled politely. “Are you going to wait it out here?”

“Uh-huh. How about you?”

“Yes,” he said, and then, so quickly that she wasn’t sure it had happened, his eyes went from smoky-gray to deepest charcoal. “The hell with this,” he said. “Come with me.”

Lara didn’t pretend not to understand. “No,” she whispered, “I can’t.”

“Are you married?” She shook her head. “Engaged?” She shook her head again. Slade moved closer, until she could feel the warmth of his breath on her face. “Neither am I. We won’t be hurting anyone.” He reached out and took her hand. She let him do it, though she knew it was a mistake. “Come to bed with me, Lara.”

There it was, out in the open. What he’d been thinking, what she’d been thinking. And here was her chance. But she wouldn’t take it. Sleep with a strange man, deliberately try to get herself pregnant without his knowledge…