Sam smiled. It was a smile Gwenyth found very unnerving and far too calculating. “Then I’ll just take your bags up there now, Cupcake. See you upstairs.” He nodded to the elder Jones’s before taking his leave. “Willy. Verlene.” He turned to Harry and grinned. “See you tomorrow, Bro.”
Harry returned his smile. “Goodnight, Sam.”
After Sam disappeared up the winding front staircase, Harry turned to Gwenyth and affectionately ruffled her hair. “I’ll see you at UT tomorrow evening. Try to stay out of trouble until then, hm?”
Gwenyth stood up on tiptoe and kissed Harry’s jaw. “I’ll try.”
Willy sensed that all was once again as it should be in his lair so he turned his attention to more pressing matters. He cocked a silvery brow and regarded his wife. “You ready forAlien Playboys, puddin?”
Verlene chuckled. She reached up and twined her arms around the neck of the man she’d been in love with for over fifty years. “If it means spending time with my favorite hunk, then lead on.”
Willy leaned down and kissed the tip of his wife’s elegant nose. He then crooked his neck toward his grandchildren and gave them a look that meant business. “If y’all hear screams coming out of our bedroom”—he waggled his eyebrows belligerently— “don’t call the police.”
“I think I’m going to be sick,” Harry muttered.
Gwenyth laughed. She shook her head at her grandfather’s audacity, but couldn’t stop the grin from forming on her lips any more than her prudish brother could. “Goodnight everyone.”
* * * * *
Gregory’s smoldering gaze burned hotly as he peered down at his quarry. He would have her. He would bide his time no more.
Lucy gulped. She could see Gregory’s erection clearly outlined through his fashionably tailored jeans. She realized with all certainty that her time was running out. Gregory would listen to no more of her arguments. He would accept nothing less than her total surrender.
Gwenyth bit on her lower lip as she read from Candy’s latest published novel,The English Duke and the American Convenience Store Clerk. Finally, after two hundred and some odd pages, the hero and the heroine were preparing to get down and do the dirty deed. Gwenyth’s belly clenched in anticipation.
“What do you want from me, Gregory?” Lucy closed her eyes against the pain of her confused emotions, clenching the pricing gun in her hand as if it were her only lifeline to sanity. She turned her back on him and continued working. There was a big sale at the Pit-n-Git convenience store tomorrow and Lucy needed to concentrate all her energies on preparing for it. Otherwise, she would be overlooked for the big promotion yet again and Billy John Davis would become the next Assistant Night Manager instead of her.
Gregory removed the pricing gun from Lucy’s grasp and spun her around to face him. His nostrils flared at the very scent of her. She smelled of beer and gasoline, of two-for-one cigarette packs and day old bread. Gregory had never wanted a woman more. “I want everything, Lucy. Everything.” He gazed into her eyes and pleaded for their future together. “I want to make love to you every night for the rest of my life. I want to put my babies inside of your belly and watch them grow. I want to make you my Duchess.”
Lucy gasped at the hunger his words caused. She clutched her throat and whimpered. She loved him, but how could she turn her back on Pit-n-Git? How could she let Billy John Davis win? “Gregory, you know how important my career is to me. I’ve worked so long and hard to get where I am now. If I run off to England with you, what will become of me? What would I do there?” she pleaded.
Gregory gripped her shoulders and pulled her body against his. “I burn for you, Lucy, don’t you see that? Do you not realize that I would build a thousand Pit-n-Gits in Dorchester if only you will marry me?” He ground his erection against Lucy’s belly until she whimpered with need. “Marry me, Lucy. Say you will!”
Lucy closed her eyes and moaned. She knew her will was dissolving. Still, she tried one last time to stop the inevitable. “I…I…I can’t, Gregory.”
Gregory raised a lordly brow. His smile was that of a hunter closing in on its prey. He realized Lucy was caving. It was time to stop playing the gentleman and seduce her like the notorious rake that he was. "I see you are in need of a little persuasion, my dear…”
A knock at the door snapped Gwenyth’s head up to attention. “Damn,” she muttered, “I was just getting to the good part. Yes?” she called out absently, “come in.”
The door opened a moment later and Sam’s imposing figure stalked inside of the room. He closed the door quietly behind him and twisted the lock ominously. Gwenyth braved a glance in his direction when she heard the click of the lock—then gulped in dismay.
Good grief.As if she hadn’t been primed enough for lovemaking by Candy’s book, now here Sam was, looming over her bed wearing nothing but a towel and a hell of a sexy scowl. The man could give Lord Gregory a run for his money any day. “H-hi.” She closed Candy’s book and clutched it to her breast. When it dawned on her that Lucy had done the same thing with her pricing gun while in Gregory’s unnerving presence, she knew she was a goner. “What are you doing in here?” she asked more breathlessly than she’d meant to.
Sam said nothing, making Gwenyth’s tension that much worse. He gently removed the book from her grasp, eyed the title for an exaggerated second, then set it aside. Turning back to face Gwenyth, he cocked an arrogant brow at her. “Every damn day since I’ve been here, I’ve found myself in need of a shower after leavin’ your presence, Cupcake. Well not tonight, damn it. You’re here, I’m here, and I’m takin’ what’s mine.” He crossed his arms over his chest and glowered down at her. “You got something to say about that, baby?”
Gwenyth’s throat felt unbearably tight. Her eyes raked over Sam’s impressively muscled form—over his hard torso, his washboard belly, and the black line of hair that trailed from his navel and disappeared into the towel. Between the book and reality, she was as primed as primed could get. “I, uh…that is to say, uh…”
“Spit it out, Cupcake.”
Gwenyth’s head shot up. She realized that Sam was giving her an out. She could take it. She could tell him to get out of her bedroom and he would. But she also realized that he’d laid his ego on the line tonight. Sam knew from the very way she’d been avoiding him for the past three days that she wanted him as passionately as he wanted her. But how many refusals for attention could a man take? Perhaps he’d walk away and never look back. That thought was depressing in the extreme.
On the other hand, Sam was a gentleman. If Gwenyth asked for time to sort out her feelings, he’d give it to her. She didn’t want him to think she flat out had no interest in pursuing whatever it was that was burgeoning between them, but neither did she think she was anywhere near ready to be intimate with him. She decided to be honest. “I’ve wanted this since I was old enough to fantasize, Sam…”
He sighed. “But?”
Gwenyth blew out a breath. “But I…” She shrugged her shoulders as she sat up on her knees. “I just need some time to figure out my feelings. Can you give me that, Sam?”
“Sure, Cupcake.” He smiled disarmingly and a little too sweetly. Gwenyth sensed that he hadn’t given up. “You can think about anything you want for as long as you want”—his smile turned feral—“so long as I’m buried ten inches deep inside of you while you’re doin’ it.” A muscle in his jaw ticked as the towel around his hips was thrown to the floor.
