Billionaire Bachelors: Ryan Read online

  He began to move, a slow steady retreat and advance, repeating the motion until she turned her face from the pillow and hissed, “Move!”

  He laughed then, deep in his throat. “Take it easy. What’s your rush?”

  Reaching back her hand, she smacked him smartly on the buttocks, and he laughed again, capturing her hand and crossing it over her chest so he could shackle her wrist with his other hand. Then he replaced his hand on her abdomen, sliding his middle finger relentlessly down to trace small circles on the throbbing nub of her desire. She could feel her climax approaching, roaring down upon her to crash over her head, drowning her in spiraling ripples of sensation as her inner muscles clenched around his engorged flesh. Behind her his steely body grew taut as his own release ripped through him. He pushed himself hard against her, emptying himself in shaking, groaning pulses as she shivered and quaked around him.

  Their bodies were slick with sweat as their heartbeats slowed, and after a moment Ryan reached down and tugged the tangled sheets into place without moving himself from her. He kissed her neck, but when she turned her face up to his, he merely nuzzled her temple and said, “Go to sleep, cupcake.”

  And as she snuggled into his arms and her eyelids drifted shut, she was disturbed. Though the distance he’d seemed to want between them earlier had vanished in the fire of their passion, she sensed something had shifted in his feelings for her.

  And she was fairly sure the shift wasn’t a good one.

  At twenty-four weeks, a third sonogram confirmed the twins’ continued health. In August her twenty-eight week check-up passed and by the beginning of September Jessie was nearly thirty-two weeks pregnant.

  “I go to the doctor again tomorrow,” she reminded Ryan the evening before her next appointment. Things had been good between them since the night of that weird “dinner that wasn’t,” although she often felt a little frustrated by his seeming determination to keep her at an emotional distance. Physically he was as passionate as he’d been since the first night they’d made love, but she sensed something…something she couldn’t put her finger on, although she was sure it wasn’t simply her imagination working overtime.

  “I know.” He smiled at her over the top of the Wall Street Journal he was reading. “I have it on my office calendar. I’ll come home in time to drive you.” He folded the paper and laid it down. “This weekend we need to get the nursery finished. I know things seem to be going really well, but if you deliver early, we have to be prepared.”

  “If I deliver too early,” she said seriously, “they won’t be coming home right away.”

  “Think positive.” He rose and came over to the chair where she’d been sitting, reading. Putting his hands beneath her elbows he carefully helped her to her feet, then drew her into his arms, but he didn’t seek out her lips as he once would have done. At the same time his big hands massaged her back, finding all the tender spots that were giving her trouble as she carried around more and more baby weight. According to the doctors, the twins were a healthy size. Good for them, not so good for her. She felt like a beached whale. It was hard to get from a sitting position to a standing one, impossible to put on her socks or tie her shoes. She was exhausted after climbing the stairs, although she rarely had to, since Ryan forbade it and carried her up and down.

  She relaxed in his embrace and let him take her weight. “Umm,” she said against his shoulder, “I’ll give you about three days to stop doing that.”

  Above her head, he chuckled. “I can see we’ve established a pattern for life here. I’m not going to get out of this after the babies are born, am I?”

  “Not a chance.” She rested her head on his shoulder, pleased that he was speaking of long-term issues. “I wish the next couple of weeks would hurry and pass. I’m tired of feeling fat and ugly. I’m tired of having my back hurt and my feet swell. I’m tired of feeling tired.”

  He was still rubbing her back with light, soothing strokes. “I know. Soon it will be over, and you’ll be your old self.”

  “Will that make you happy?” Since the night they’d first made love, he’d seemed utterly enthralled with her body, pregnant or not. But recently little things had bothered her. She tried to tell herself it was her imagination, but there was no denying the fact that outside their bed Ryan avoided the intimacies they’d been beginning to share.

  Now he shrugged. “I’ll be happy for your sake, but I think you’re absolutely beautiful the way you are.” Putting a hand beneath her chin, he tilted her face up so that he could look deep into her eyes. “You’ve always been beautiful to me, Jess. There hasn’t been a day since you were about thirteen that you didn’t take my breath away.”

  She felt as if her heart were going to stop at the sincere tone of his declaration. Was he telling her he loved her? Or merely that she’d turned him on for years? “Why didn’t you ever say anything,” she asked cautiously, “back in high school?”

  He made a rough sound of derision and let her go, stepping a pace away. “You were with the football player,” he said quietly. “What chance would I have had?”

  “I…I don’t know,” she said honestly. Happiness warred with a growing touch of…annoyance? No, not strong enough. Anger? Too strong. Hurt was perhaps the best word for what she was feeling. “Do you—”

  “Ryan?” Finn came to the door of the den, and they both turned toward him. “Excuse me. I have some things you need to go through from when I cleaned closets yesterday. There’s some stuff you might want.”

  “All right,” Ryan said. He looked back at her, and his eyes were wary. “Do you want to look through it with me?”

  She nodded, aware that an important moment had just been lost, equally aware that there might never be another one unless she exposed her soul and took a chance that there was more between them than affection, attraction and history.

  They followed Finn to the big eat-in kitchen where he had several boxes stacked near the door. “I’m going to the store,” Finn said. “Just leave anything you don’t want, and I’ll take care of it.”

  A moment later, they were alone in the kitchen.

  “I wonder what’s in these?” Ryan said. His voice was so normal that she wondered if it bothered him at all that they hadn’t finished exploring what he’d started. He ripped the tape on the top one and opened the flaps, peering into the box. “College stuff,” he said. “Textbooks.” He lifted it to one side and moved to the next box in the stack.

  Jessie moved closer as he opened it. Then his face lit up. ‘What is it?” she asked.

  He grinned at her. “Baby stuff!” he said.

  “Baby stuff?” Why on earth would they have had baby things stored in a closet? She didn’t remember putting anything away anywhere but the nursery.

  “When we first started talking about having a family, Wendy did the nesting thing,” he said. “Look through here and see if you’d like to keep anything.” He lifted out a gorgeous white baby afghan crocheted in an intricate shell pattern, and there was such a tender expression on his face that she mentally cringed. “I remember when she made this. Won’t Olivia or Elena look nice all bundled up in this?”

  “Umm.” She made a noncommittal sound, trying desperately to keep the hurt and humiliation from showing. “I, ah, just remembered something I have to tell Penny. I’ll use the phone in the study.”

  He looked at her then, eyebrows raised. “You can use the one in here.”

  “No, I, ah, that’s okay.” She turned and fled, as fast as it was possible for a two-ton tank to flee. When she got to the study, she ducked inside and closed the door, leaning heavily against it.

  Hot tears streaked down her cheeks like trails of fire. She took one trembling breath, then another. That he could so casually rave about Wendy only moments after she thought they’d been on the verge of a momentous discussion told her more clearly than any words what her role in Ryan’s life was. And it wasn’t that of a dearly loved wife.

  She was still brooding the nex
t day at the store when she got a telephone call from her landlord, wanting to know if she intended to lease her condo again. If she didn’t, he continued, the woman to whom she’d sublet it wanted to stay there with a lease of her own.

  Pleading business, she put him off to give herself time to think about it. Her first impulse had been to tell him she did want to renew the lease. She didn’t need to, now that she was married and living with Ryan, but…when she confronted the little voice in her head that urged her to keep her lease, she realized why she was hesitating about letting it go.

  As long as Ryan still held Wendy in his heart, their future together would always be uncertain. True, they would share children, which she was more and more certain he regarded as something that would bond them for life. The question was, could she share him with a memory? She was far less certain of that.

  And then there was her other fear, one far more real than the ghost of his ex-wife. Ryan’s face on the day they’d seen the nurse who resembled Wendy had burned a permanent scar in her heart. What if he found another woman like Wendy someday? Wendy had been as different from Jessie as day was from night. If he’d been drawn to a woman like Wendy once, might not there be a chance he’d be drawn to another one someday? His convictions about marriage and family might be sorely tested if he ever fell in love again. And if that happened, where did that leave her?

  High and dry. Alone. As she’d been most of her life.

  And because her innate caution urged her not to do anything rash, she called her landlord back and arranged a time to sign the new contract right before her appointment at the bank to sign the loan papers.

  As she made her way into the bank after meeting her landlord, she was conscious of a ridiculous sense of…relief? Not exactly the correct word. But she knew she’d been right to keep her lease in place, if only because having the condo made her feel more secure, as if she still held the reins of her future.

  “Mrs. Shaughnessy! Thank you for coming.” Mr. Brockhiser, her loan officer, walked across the lobby as he extended a hand.

  “It’s my pleasure, believe me.” She smiled at the man as they shook. “I was delighted to get your call. Enlarging my gallery is something to which I’m totally committed.”

  Brockhiser showed her into his office, then took a seat behind his desk. His eyes twinkled as he shuffled papers. “That’s good, but you’re certainly going to have your hands full once those babies arrive, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, but I—” She stopped. “How did you know I’m having more than one baby?”

  “Ryan told me.” The banker winked at her. “Understand you two were childhood sweethearts. My wife’s dying to meet you.”

  “Um, we grew up together, yes.” She cleared her throat. “I didn’t realize you knew Ryan.”

  Brockhiser folded his hands atop the stack of papers. “Oh, we go way back. I knew him before he was a big success. That man has the magic touch. When he said he’d back anything you chose to do, I figured I’d go back to the loan committee with your request. You should have told me you were married to Ryan—I’d have been able to make you the loan right off the bat.”

  Jessie froze as the room seemed to recede, leaving her in an airless vacuum of shock. So that’s why I got the loan. Ryan guaranteed it.

  The moment was engraved in her mind with stark clarity—the banker’s beaming face, the sunlight slanting across the office, the rough, tweedy fabric of the chair in which she sat. Carefully, trying to keep her voice level, she said, “Could you excuse me for a moment, Mr. Brockhiser?” She was out of the chair before he could assist her, waddling across the lobby and around the corner to the ladies’ room she’d located in the bank on an earlier visit.

  Behind her the banker’s concerned voice asked, “Are you ill, Mrs. Shaughnessy?” But she didn’t stop.

  God was merciful and the ladies’ room was empty. Pausing for a bare second to lock the door behind her, she sank onto the settee in the lounge area, taking deep breaths to suppress the heaving sobs that strove to burst forth.

  God, she couldn’t believe it. He knew, he knew she’d wanted to do this without his assistance. How could he have gone behind her back like that? A few tears leaked out, and as she blotted them she told herself they were tears of anger.

  But deep in her heart she knew better. Ryan had given her hope for a future she’d never dared to believe in before.

  She hadn’t let herself dream of love, of a lifelong marriage, because she knew it would destroy her if she let down all the carefully built walls of bitter experience. She hadn’t seen that kind of love in her own life, and she was afraid—no, terrified—to even allow herself to think for one single second that it might exist. But Ryan had slowly excavated beneath the foundations of that fear, and even though she knew she could never be everything he longed for in a wife, she’d begun to hope that she could give him enough to last them a lifetime. She’d offered him children, her unspoken devotion, a warm happy marriage based on friendship and passion—and he’d thrown it back in her face.

  He knew how she felt about accepting money from him, knew how important it was to her to be independent. And he’d ignored her feelings completely. If he loved her he’d have taken her feelings into consideration.

  And that was the bottom line. She’d been kidding herself, deluding herself into imagining that they could build a life together. But they couldn’t. Not together.

  Because Ryan wasn’t interested in together.

  Ryan slammed down the phone in a rare display of temper.

  Where was she? He’d called the gallery three times that morning, and Penny had told him each time that Jessie was out of the building and she didn’t know where she was or when she’d return.

  He’d initially called simply to invite her to have lunch with him, but when he’d realized she was out of touch, his anxiety level had rapidly grown to mammoth proportions. What was she thinking? A woman in her condition, especially with the added risk of carrying twins, should never just wander off without telling anybody where she was going.

  Three weeks had passed since the day she’d walked out of the kitchen with that odd look on her face, and though he knew the moment had been a defining one in their relationship, he still hadn’t figured out exactly what in hell it had defined.

  She’d slept in her own room that night, pleading an upset stomach, and he hadn’t had any opportunity to talk to her. The next day she’d gone for her thirty-two-week checkup, and as if the doctor were in cahoots with Jess, he’d prohibited any sexual activities until after the babies were born. She hadn’t come back to his bed since. And though he’d attempted to tease her into it, she’d merely replied seriously that she wasn’t sleeping well because of her bulk and the babies’ movements and that she’d keep him awake. And the few times Ryan had tried to bring up that day in subtle ways, she’d managed to avoid talking about it—or even looking him straight in the eye, for that matter.

  What the hell had gone wrong? Could she be upset by those baby things he’d discovered? Could she possibly be bothered by the reminders of his life with Wendy? He could hardly imagine Jess minding that. She’d loved Wendy, too. And besides, he was sure it was painfully evident that he’d never had feelings for Wendy like the all-consuming emotions that Jess roused in him. No, any suspicion that she might be jealous was only a product of his own desperate imagination.

  Still, he’d tactfully put everything back in the box and set it in the closet of the nursery—only to find a few days later that Jessie had unpacked the box. The white afghan Wendy had made was draped over the back of a rocking chair, the small sweater set with its matching hat hung in the closet. So obviously he’d been off base.

  His office phone rang and he realized it was his private line. Snatching up the receiver, he barked, “Yes?”

  “Ryan?”

  It wasn’t Jessie, and his whole body sagged in disappointment. “Speaking.”

  “It’s Mort Brockhiser. I think your wife might be ill.
”

  It took him a moment to put the pieces together. Finally he asked, “She’s at the bank?”

  “Not anymore.” The lender’s voice conveyed his concern. “She came in to sign her loan papers, but a minute after we sat down she bolted for the ladies’ room. I waited but she never came back and one of the tellers just told me he saw her leaving the bank a moment ago.”

  Dear Lord, let her be all right. Aloud, he said, “Thanks for calling, Mort. I’d better go home.”

  He called the house from his car phone but she wasn’t there yet and her cell phone shifted him to voice mail so she must have it turned off at the moment. Finn promised to call him the moment she showed up. She wasn’t at the shop, either, and Penny still hadn’t heard from her, though she also promised to call him, concern clear in her voice.

  But by the time he pulled into the garage, his car phone still hadn’t rung. Finn met him at the door. The manservant was practically wringing his hands with worry. “Where could she be?” he asked.

  “I don’t know.” He punched in the admissions department at the hospital where they’d done preadmission work, but she hadn’t been admitted. Nor had the doctor’s office heard from her.

  Panic was an ever-present companion beating wildly at the edges of his mind but he grimly refused to allow it a toehold. Without a clear idea of where he intended to go, he decided to head back downtown. If she’d been at the bank, she could be sitting in any number of little cafés or coffee shops in the area. Though why she wouldn’t call if she were ill or—his all-consuming worry—in labor was a mystery.

  The phone in his car rang, and he pounced on it. “Hello?”

  “Ryan, she’s home.” It was Finn.

  “Thank God.” A relief so intense he felt like sliding right down onto the rubber floor mat flooded through him. “Is she all right?”

  “I…I don’t know. She went straight up to her room and asked not to be disturbed.”

  He was already making an illegal U-turn and heading back to Brookline. “I’ll be there in ten minutes.”