Billionaire Bachelors: Stone Read online

  At his side, Faith stirred and he realized she was passing his mother a cocktail napkin so she could wipe her eyes. “It is difficult to accept that there’s so little we can do to combat it,” she said. “After my father died, my mother’s condition worsened rapidly.”

  After a few more moments of conversation, Eliza set down her drink and rose. “Call me a taxi, please, Stone. It’s time for me to be going.”

  He did so, then helped her on with her coat and they stood in the foyer for a few moments until the car rolled down the street and stopped in front of the house.

  As he closed the door behind her, he turned to Faith, still standing at his side in the foyer. “We did it! We convinced her.” He took her hands, squeezing lightly. “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.” She smiled slightly but he noticed her gaze didn’t reach any higher than his chin as she eased her hands free of his and turned. “It’s been a tiring day. Could you take me home now?”

  “Of course.” His elation floated away, leaving him feeling flat and depressed. And there was no reason for it, he told himself firmly. He’d accomplished what he’d intended. So what if he had a raging physical attraction to Faith? She wasn’t indifferent to him, either. He was certain of it after that smoking kiss before dinner, but she clearly wasn’t any more prepared to step over the line than he was.

  And he knew he should be glad for that. Because if she encouraged him, he was fairly certain he’d forget he’d ever drawn that line in the first place.

  Faith spent the following Monday packing most of her things and answering breathless questions from Gretchen about her upcoming marriage. The morning paper had carried a tantalizing mention of Stone’s impending nuptials and Gretchen had been quick to add up the details and come to the right conclusion.

  Stone picked her up just after two o’clock and they made the drive into rural Connecticut where her mother lived in a beautifully landscaped condominium. Her apartment was on the ground floor and was handicap-accessible. Faith had helped her find the place during one of her infrequent vacations from school. Only now did it occur to her that Stone had probably helped her mother sell their old house. And rather than using it to finance this purchase, she was willing to bet he’d used it to pay off her father’s debts and had spent his own money on her mother since then.

  The thought of him assuming the full financial burden of caring for her mother and her still pricked at her pride, but she was grateful, too. She was practical enough to recognize that she never could have provided her mother with a stable, comfortable home. God only knew what would have become of them if Stone hadn’t stepped in. What had her father been thinking?

  They probably would never know. Her throat tightened as she thought of the laughing man with hair as pale as her own who had tossed her into the air and tucked her into bed every night. Clearly he hadn’t been perfect, but she would always think of him with love.

  Thank God, she thought again, for Stone. He’d provided desperately needed tranquillity for her mother and also had given Faith the tools to make her own way in the world one day. And she was all the more determined to repay his kindness during the upcoming year. She’d be such an asset to him he would wonder what he’d done before he had a wife! A momentary flash of disquiet accompanied the thought. Already, it was as though she’d been with Stone for months rather than days. What would it be like to lose him after a year?

  Clarice, her mother’s day help, answered the door when Stone rang the bell. “Hello, honey,” the older woman greeted Faith. “She’s really looking forward to your visit.”

  Faith hugged her. Clarice was a godsend. Widowed at sixty, Clarice had little in the way of retirement savings and was forced to continue to work. Faith and her mother had tried three other aides before they found Clarice, and Faith knew a gem when she saw one. Clarice, in addition, appeared to genuinely enjoy Mrs. Harrell and swore the work was well within her capabilities. Fortunately Faith’s mother wasn’t a large woman, so it wasn’t terribly difficult for Clarice to assist her for tasks like getting in and out of the bath.

  Still, Faith worried. Her mother was steadily losing mobility and motor control and the day was coming when she would need more than occasional assistance and handicapped facilities in her home. But as she entered the condo with Stone behind her, she felt less burdened, less worried than she had in some time. For the next year, her mother would want for nothing. And as soon as Faith got her degree and a job with decent pay, she planned to find a place she could share with her mother that would meet both their needs.

  “Clarice,” she said, “this is Stone Lachlan, my fiancé.” She was proud that she didn’t stumble over the word—she’d practiced it in her head fully half of the trip.

  “Hello,” said Clarice, “Faith’s never brought—” Then the import of Faith’s words struck her. “Well, my lands! Come in, come in. Congratulations!” She pumped Stone’s hand, then hugged Faith. “Does your mother know?”

  Faith shook her head. “Not yet. Is she in the living room?”

  The older woman nodded. “By the window. She loves to look out at the birds. I put some feeders up to attract them and we’ve been seeing all kinds.”

  Faith felt another rush of gratitude. Clarice was indeed a gem. She wondered if there was any possibility of convincing her to come with her mother to live in New York. Deciding not to get ahead of herself, she let Clarice lead them into the living room.

  “Mama.” She went to the wheelchair by the window and knelt to embrace her mother, tears stinging her eyes.

  “Hello, my little love.” Her mother’s arms fumbled up to pat at her. Her speech was slow but still reasonably clear, although Faith had noticed some change over the past year. Then her mother said, “Stone!”

  “Hello, Mrs. Harrell.” He came forward and Faith was surprised when he knelt at her side and gave her mother his hand. “It’s nice to see you again.”

  “You, also.” Naomi Harrell clung to his hand. “Did you drive Faith up?”

  He nodded. Then he looked at Faith, and she smiled at him, grateful to him for sensing that she wanted to be the one to tell her mother of their marriage.

  “Mama, I—we have some news. Stone and I are engaged to be married.”

  “Engaged?” Naomi slurred the second “g” and her eyes, magnified by the thick glasses she wore, went wide. “You’re getting married?”

  Stone looked at Faith again, still smiling, and for a moment, she was dizzied by the warm promise in his eyes, until she realized he was putting on a show for her mother’s sake. “We are,” he said. “This Friday, at eleven o’clock. We’d like you to be there, if you are able.”

  Naomi Harrell looked from one of them to the other. “I didn’t even know you were dating,” she said to Faith.

  The comment shouldn’t have caught her off guard but it did. “We, um, haven’t been going out long,” she said. Understatement of the year.

  Stone slipped one steely arm around her shoulders, pulling her against his side. “I swept her off her feet,” he told her mother, then turned again to smile down at her. “I was afraid if I waited until she was finished with school, the competition might edge me out.” He paused, looking back at her mother. “I wasn’t about to lose her.”

  Her mother nodded slowly, and Faith wasn’t surprised to see tears welling in her eyes. Naomi Harrell had known that kind of love for real. She accepted the idea that her daughter had found the same happiness more easily than Stone’s mother had. “I’m glad,” Naomi said. “Faith needs somebody.”

  Faith knew her mother only meant that she didn’t want Faith to be alone in the event anything happened to her. It was an upsetting thought. “That’s not all, Mama,” she said, anxious to get it all said and done. “Stone and I would like you to come and live with us after we’re married. Stone has an apartment on the main floor of his home that you could have. There’s plenty of room for you and Clarice, too, if she’d consider leaving this area.”

 
But Naomi was shaking her head. “New-ly-weds,” she said, enunciating carefully, “should have some time alone.”

  Stone chuckled. “Mrs. Harrell, my home is big enough for all of us. Your apartment can be completely self-contained. There’s even an entrance from the back. You don’t even have to see us if you don’t want to.”

  Naomi smiled. “I want to. But I don’t want to be in the way.”

  “Mama, I’d really, really love it if you’d come to live with me.” Faith took her mother’s hands. “I miss you.”

  “And besides,” Clarice piped up, “this way we’ll be right there when the grandbabies start arriving!”

  Oh my Lord. If there was any way she could put those words back in Clarice’s mouth…she felt herself begin to blush.

  At her side, Stone stirred, bringing his other hand up to rest over hers and her mother’s. “We aren’t ready to think about that yet,” he said. “I want Faith all to myself for a while. A long while.”

  “And besides,” she added, “I have to finish school and get established in my career.” Well, at least that wasn’t a lie.

  “Yes, I can’t seem to talk her out of this obsession with working.” Stone’s voice was easy and colored with humor, but she sensed a grain of truth beneath the light tone. She was sure it wasn’t her imagination. Thinking of the tension between him and his own mother, she wondered just how deeply he’d been scarred by his parents’ split when he was a child.

  She recalled the acid in his voice the night he’d suggested that his mother knew the way out—it had been a deliberate attempt to hurt. And judging from his mother’s slight flinch before she controlled her expression, the shot had hit its mark. She felt badly for Eliza Smythe even though she didn’t agree with the way she’d apparently put business before her young son more than two decades ago. Eliza’s face had shown a heartbreaking moment of envy when Stone had told her about Faith’s mother moving in with them. Again, she suspected he’d done it because he knew it would hurt. Or maybe he’d hoped it would, she thought with a sudden flash of insight. Children who had been rejected often continued to try to win their parent’s attention, even in negative ways.

  She sighed. She’d liked her new mother-in-law-to-be. Was it too much to hope that during her year with Stone she could contribute to mending the obvious rift between them?

  Her year with Stone. As they said farewell to her mother and Clarice, Faith was conscious of the large warm shape of him at her side, one big hand gently resting in the middle of her back. He smelled like the subtle, but expensive, cologne he always wore, and abruptly she was catapulted back to Saturday night, when he’d taken her in his arms. That scent had enveloped her as he’d pulled her to him and kissed her.

  He’d kissed her! She still thought it might have been a dream, except that she could recall his mother’s wry, amused expression far too well. No wonder she’d been amused. For Faith, the world had changed forever the moment he’d touched her. And when his firm, warm lips had come down on hers and his arms had brought her against every muscled inch of his hard body, she’d forgotten everything but the wonderfully strange sensations rushing through her. Her body had begun to heat beneath his hands. She’d wanted more, although she didn’t quite know what to do next to get it. But when she’d lifted her arms and circled his broad shoulders, the action had brushed her sensitive breasts against him and she’d wanted to move, to cuddle her body as close to his as she could get, to press herself against him even more. When he’d lifted his head, she’d simply hung in his arms as he’d spoken to his mother. God, the man was potent! She had been too embarrassed to face Eliza Smythe for a moment, then she’d simply told her the truth. She did forget everything when Stone kissed her.

  Covertly she studied him from beneath her lashes. Stone’s big hands looked comfortable and confident on the wheel of the Lexus and she shivered as she remembered the way they’d slid restlessly over her body as he’d kissed her. Would he do it again?

  She wanted him to. Badly. In fact, she wanted far more than his kisses. She was almost twenty-one years old and she’d never even had a serious boyfriend. Soon she would have a husband. She studied his chiseled profile, the jut of his chin, the solid jaw, the way his hair curled just the smallest bit around his ears. She’d been half in love with him practically her whole life and being with him constantly over the past few days had only shown her how much more she could feel.

  Quickly she turned her head and looked out the window before he could catch her staring at him like a lovesick fool. He didn’t love her, only needed her for the most practical of reasons. But still…her heart was young and optimistic, unbruised and whole. He might not love her, but he certainly seemed to desire her. Wasn’t that a start? Maybe, in time, if they got close…physically, he’d begin to need her the way she was realizing she needed him. It was too new to analyze. But she knew, with a not entirely pleasant certainty, that if she couldn’t change his mind about making this a longer than one-year marriage, she wouldn’t be able to leave him behind easily.

  Not easily at all. In fact, she wasn’t sure she could ever forget him. What man would ever measure up to Stone in her estimation?

  She was afraid she knew the answer to that.

  Four

  Back in Manhattan, he headed home.

  “Where are you going?” Faith asked.

  He glanced across at her. She’d been very quiet the whole ride, apparently lost in her own thoughts. “Home.”

  “My home or your home?”

  “Our home.” He put a slight emphasis on the pronoun.

  “It won’t be our home until Friday,” she said, using the same emphasis. “And I need to go to my apartment in any case. I still have things to pack.”

  “I can send someone to finish the job. We have things to do.”

  “I’d rather you didn’t,” she said mildly.

  “It’s no problem. And it will save you—”

  “No, thank you.” She shook her head, her blond hair flying and her tone was definite enough to warn him that he was traveling a narrow path here. “No. I would like to pack myself. There’s not that much.”

  “Can I at least send someone to pick everything up and move it for you?”

  She smiled, and a small dimple appeared in her soft cheek, enchanting him. “That would be nice. They could come Friday afternoon.”

  “Friday afternoon? Why not tomorrow? Surely you don’t have that much stuff to move.”

  The smile had disappeared. “I’m not planning on moving in until after the ceremony on Friday.”

  “That’s silly,” he said sharply, acknowledging more disappointment than he ought to be feeling. There was an unaccustomed tightness in his chest. “I want you there as soon as possible. Why wait until Friday?”

  “Because my mother would expect it,” she said heatedly.

  “Your mother would—oh.” Belatedly he realized what she meant. He almost laughed aloud, to think that someone would still be so concerned with observing the proprieties. Then he saw that she was dead serious. He sighed in frustration, bringing one hand up to roughly massage his chest. “All right. But I still think it’s silly.” Especially given the fact that nothing will be changing after you do move in.

  “Fortunately,” she said in a honeyed tone, “I don’t particularly care what you think.”

  “Yes, you’ve already made that plain,” he said, recalling the way he’d found out she quit school after the fact.

  Then she homed in on the rest of his original statement. “What things do we have to do?”

  “Wedding dress,” he said briefly, glancing at her again to gauge her reaction. “And wedding plans.” Faith wasn’t quite as pliable as her quiet nature suggested, a fact he seemed to be learning the hard way.

  Her eyes went wide and then her fair elegant brows drew together. “Absolutely not. I’m not wearing a real wedding dress. I have an ivory silk suit, fairly dressy, that ought to do.”

  “I have a woman meeting us
at the house at one with a large selection.” He took a deep breath, fighting the urge to bark out orders. Faith wasn’t one of his employees and if he shouted at her, she was liable to bolt. “If you don’t want a big, fluffy wedding dress, that’s fine. But our mothers—not to mention the press—are going to expect you to look something like a bride.”

  “It’s really none of the press’s business.”

  “I know. But when you have as much money as I do, you wield a certain amount of influence. And influence leads to attention, even though I don’t seek it out.” A quick glance at her expression told him she hadn’t bought it yet. “Like it or not, we’re going to be of interest to the public. Think of yourself as…sort of a princess of a minor kingdom. Royalty interests everyone. And since there’s no royalty in America, the wealthy get pestered.”

  She sighed. “It’s that important to you?”

  He hesitated. There was an odd note in her voice, though he couldn’t decipher it. “Yes,” he said finally. “It’s that important to me. This has to look real. If anyone should suspect it isn’t…” He looked over at her while he waited at a light, but she had linked her hands in her lap and was studying them. He was sure she was going to object again, or perhaps even refuse to marry him. He took a deep breath, deliberately expanding his lungs to full capacity, but still he had that taut, binding sensation gripping him.

  Then she said, “All right. I’ll come to your home and see these dresses.”

  His whole body relaxed and the air whooshed from his lungs with an audible sound.