Enraptured Page 12

  He answered almost immediately. “Ask your husband. He’s the one gunning to take over TruNews.”

  “But Aazim is the one romancing Elise,” I countered.

  There was a longer pause before he answered. “Since when?”

  “They had a romantic rendezvous in Vegas this weekend, while she had Jonathan.”

  Another pause. “I’ll look into it and let you know.”

  “Thanks, Alex,” I typed.

  “That’s a satisfied little smile,” I heard Drew slur as he walked into the room. “Good text?”

  I glanced up with a gasp. Though it was completely innocent, I felt like I was caught doing something I shouldn’t be. Drew read it on my face immediately. Before I could react, Drew crossed the room and grabbed my phone to look through the messages. His jaw clenched with anger and his eyes were hard as he looked back at me. “Alex is right. You should ask your husband whenever you have any questions. Especially when it’s about my business.”

  “This isn’t about your business, Drew. It’s about your ex-wife.”

  “And Alex is such an expert where she is concerned,” he sneered as he tossed my phone on the bed.

  “Oh my God!” I screamed in frustration as I jumped out of bed. “Would you get the hell over yourself already? I keep telling you. This isn’t about you. This isn’t about Alex. It’s about Jonathan.”

  “Funny,” he muttered. “Seems every time we need to get cozy with my baby brother, it always has to do with Jonathan. As if he cares.”

  “You’re damned right he does,” I snapped. “You don’t get it, do you? Everything you do affects Jonathan. Everything! Every decision you make, every mistake, it affects him. You think this war is just between you and Alex, but Jonathan feels every blow between you. He sees himself in both of you. Honor that and stop trying to teach him to hate himself!”

  “Where are you going?” he asked as I marched toward the door.

  “To the spare bedroom,” I said as I snatched my robe from the chair. “You reek of whiskey and it’s making me sick.”

  I slammed the door behind me. I was halfway down the hall before I spotted Jonathan peering out from behind his door, which was slightly ajar. Our eyes met and I sighed. “Nobody thinks I hear anything,” he had told me before. “But I do.”

  And the expression on his face indicated he had heard every word.

  I walked toward him but he closed the door softly before I could reach him.

  Chapter Eleven

  The week that followed that explosive fight was tense. Jonathan was quiet, Drew was sullen and I balanced all the stress in the house with a wicked spell of morning sickness. Dr. Rombach assured me that I was progressing along nicely. In fact I already started to see my belly take shape with a little firm bump, so it was clear that my repeated bouts of nausea hadn’t impeded the baby’s growth. I was due for my first sonogram the following week, so I gritted my teeth and muscled through as best I could.

  With everything that was going on, I decided to skip going to FEI that week. I practically had to force Jonathan to go, as he wanted to stay home with me. But I insisted that I had Cleo and Harrison, both of whom were nervous mother hens who fussed over me constantly.

  That morning as Drew dressed, I reminded him to play nicely with his brother. He glared at me and said nothing at all as he left our room. I curled up with his pillow and drifted back into a fitful sleep.

  My nightmares had been off the charts since I got pregnant, with repeated dreams of being left alone. I still lived in my huge mansion, but Drew and Jonathan were nowhere to be found. I could hear Alex calling from a distance, but I suffered in labor all alone in Drew’s empty study. Every single time I woke up from these horrible dreams I felt lonely and afraid. I chalked it up to my past history with Zach and all those disappointments rearing their ugly heads from the deep recesses of my memory.

  Jonathan was back by two in the afternoon, and he disappeared promptly into his bedroom to change. He finally joined me in the office, and wordlessly sat down to finish the studies I had prepared for him. “How was everything at the office?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “Okay,” he said quietly, obviously reluctant to expound on it more than that.

  The rest of the evening was even quieter. Drew sent me a text letting me know he’d be late and not to hold dinner, so Jonathan and I ate in relative silence. I tried to pry him out of his shell but he offered only short, one-word answers to any of my questions. After about ten minutes of pushing the food around on his plate, he asked to be excused. I nodded.

  I went to bed early myself. I picked up a book to take my mind off of things and wind down, but it failed on both levels. Finally I reached for my phone. This time I didn’t hesitate as I selected Alex from my contact list. “No one is talking. How did it go today?”

  Within a minute, he answered. “Tense. Without you there, he’s still pushing Mexico. But when I suggest letting Jonathan in on the research and planning, he shuts down.”

  “Great,” I answered with a scowl. “He hasn’t come home yet.”

  “Not surprised. He was drinking pretty heavy by five o’clock.”

  “A trait he gets from your father, I’m sure.”

  “Dear ol’ Dad. If he couldn’t control something, or someone, he drank to quell the rage. It often backfired.”

  I grimaced. “Let me guess. More beatings?”

  “You catch on quick. You must have been a quick study.”

  I didn’t know how to respond. I waited so long that he responded to me first.

  “How are you feeling? Any better?”

  I smiled. “Yeah. I think I just needed to rest.”

  There was a slight pause. “Back next week?”

  I pursed my lips. “Not sure. Things are weird. He found my last texts to you.”

  “That explains a lot.”

  “He knows about you coming to find me last week, too.”

  “Of course he does,” he wrote, before adding, “You should probably delete all these texts.”

  I shook my head. “That’s lying, Alex.”

  “So?” he wanted to know. “You think he’s going to tell you where he spent his evening?”

  My heart dropped. “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying cover your ass, Rachel. You’re a Fullerton now. That’s the name of the game.”

  I sighed. He sent one more text to wish me a good night and then my phone went silent. I scrolled through the messages and wondered how Drew would interpret them if he were to read them. It would just cause more trouble none of us needed, especially when I was trying to mend fences between them. And the last batch of innocent texts had sent Drew into a week-long bender.

  It took me long minutes before I finally deleted the messages. It was my first real deception as a married woman and I hated myself every time I touched the little trash can icon that erased any evidence of my conversation with Alex. I doubted my decision every second until Drew’s return, when he collapsed in a drunken stupor on his side of the bed without even undressing.

  If this is how he dealt with something as minor as a conversation between Alex and me, then it was best he wasn’t privy to them.

  Of course, the best thing would be not actually having them, but that ship had sailed. For better or worse, we were family. And deep down, underneath all the pain and the disappointment, I knew that Alex was still my friend.

  As I listened to Drew snore, something told me I was really, really going to need one.

  I was even more worried when Jonathan decided not to go into the office the next day at all. He worked quietly until his mother arrived, then left without so much as a goodbye.

  Drew was equally quiet when he returned home that evening. There was no spontaneous, impromptu trip. He didn’t even bother with dinner before he disappeared into his study, and he came to bed after I had gone to sleep.

  The next day he gone before I got up and stayed gone most of the day. Harrison informed me that he ha
d gone for a run at the beach and planned some extensive time catching up at the gym. We had a full gym at the house, so I could easily put it together that he was avoiding me entirely.

  By then, I was tired of his moping.

  I drove myself to the store to buy some things for dinner, and then gave Cleo and Harrison the night off. I prepared a full steak dinner for Drew, texting him an hour before dinner that he needed to come home.

  I was decidedly cryptic on purpose, which worked exactly as I hoped it would. He came home within twenty minutes, when I was just putting the steak on the stovetop grill. “What’s wrong?” he asked immediately as he entered the kitchen. “What did you need?”

  I turned to face him. “I need my husband,” I told him simply. “Go shower and change. Dinner will be done in ten minutes.”

  He stared at me for a few moments before he finally relented. He was wearing casual clothes and smelled of soap as he sat at the dining room table ten minutes later. I set the plate in front of him, while candles burned bright in the darkened room. I took my seat across from him, with a small potato and salad. I didn’t want to risk eating too much and aggravating my condition, especially when so much was riding on us having a perfect night.

  He placed the napkin in his lap. “To what do I owe this honor?”

  “Does a wife need a reason?” I asked. “You’ve obviously had a rough week. I wanted to do something nice for you. Is that allowed?”

  “More than allowed,” he murmured. “It’s encouraged.”

  “Then eat your steak,” I commanded with a smile.

  I saw the hint of his smirk below the surface. “Yes, ma’am.” He savored the first bite. “Very nice,” he said.

  I shrugged. “It’s a Texan thing. You learn how to make a steak or you get kicked out of the state.”

  He chuckled. “You do your home state proud.” He reached for a crystal goblet of water. “No wine?”

  I hesitated. “I didn’t know which one you would prefer.”

  “Cabernet is always a superb choice,” he said as he scooted back and headed to the wine closet. He held up his selection triumphantly as he returned to the table. “I should take you to France,” he decided. “I spent a summer there during my first year of college, working in a vineyard as a tasting attendant. It was one of the best experiences of my young adulthood. I learned more there than I did in a stuffy classroom.”

  “It’s always good to get hands-on experience,” I commented as I drank from my goblet.

  “I’ll drink to that,” he commented with a tip of his glass. He dug into his baked potato next. I had completed it with sour cream, butter and chives, with some cracked black pepper. He smiled as he ate. “Simple and perfect. Like you.”

  I knew better than to talk to him about anything at the office, lest I invoke Alex’s name and send Drew’s mood back into the crapper. We ate silently until he had cleared his plate. I hopped up and brought him a slice of devil’s food cake, decadently iced with a fudge frosting. “Are you trying to fatten the lamb for slaughter?” he pondered before he dug into his dessert.

  “Like that could ever happen,” I teased. “How many miles did you run today?”

  He laughed. “Ten. It should have been more but I took off a few weeks while we traveled.” He watched me spoon a bite of chocolate cake into my mouth. “Maybe that’s something we can do together after the baby is born.”

  I set my fork down on the plate. “Maybe,” I mumbled.

  Once again he cleaned his plate and I took our dishes back into the kitchen to wash them and place them in the dishwasher. When I turned, Drew was there, leaning on the door frame. “What’s next in Rachel’s Magical Kingdom of Surprises?”

  I took his hand and led him outside. I cued a playlist of seductive music from the outdoor stereo as we approached the pool. He watched as I easily slipped out of each article of clothing, kicking everything free so that I could step down into the shallow end of our heated pool. He said nothing as he followed my lead. He joined me at the wall near the stairs. “I think you’re supposed to wait an hour before swimming.”

  “We’re not swimming,” I told him as I wrapped my arms around him. He moaned in his throat as I kissed him confidently, probing his mouth with my tongue as I sat him on the steps beside him.

  “And just what are we doing, Mrs. Fullerton?” he wanted to know as he brushed my hair from my shoulders and onto my back.

  “Making love, Mr. Fullerton,” I replied as I kissed him again.

  His hand slipped down the curve of my back to rest on my hip. “Is that all?” he asked in a voice so soft it made my toes curl.

  “What more do you want?” I asked.

  His eyes were cloudy with passion as he stared into mine. “I want to fuck you, Rachel,” he said.

  I gasped out loud as his growing erection jumped against me. “How is that different?” I wanted to know.

  He reached forward to tug at my bottom lip with his teeth. “One is romantic,” he explained between kisses. “One is raw. One is a statement of love, the other is pure need. And I need you, Rachel. More than I’ve ever needed anyone. I hunger for you more than anyone ever could. And all I want is for you to give yourself to me completely.”

  “I’ve done that,” I assured.

  He shook his head. “Then give up that last little thread of control. Let me fuck you. Let me brand you in a way no man will ever satisfy you again.”

  “Drew,” I began but he covered my mouth in his demanding kiss. It was raw how he devoured my lips as his hands liberally explored my body.

  “Beg me to fuck you, Rachel. Give me your need and your hunger.”

  I lost myself in his eyes. Finally I whispered, “Fuck me, Drew.”

  He growled as he captured another kiss. He shoved himself inside me until I cried out. He wore a triumphant grin as he began to stroke. “Look at me,” he commanded, and I complied.

  I watched every emotion race across his face as he fucked me every bit as much as he promised he would. It was raw, driven by primal need. He cried out as he raced toward that orgasm he had denied himself all week throughout his pity party of one.

  I felt sensual and powerful as I rode him, watching how each twitch of my muscles made him react. His facial gestures mirrored mine with every gaping gasp and passionate grimace and snarl. I tipped my head back as he caught one of my hard nipples in his mouth. He was tender, knowing how sensitive they had become thanks to the pregnancy. In all honestly, he was restrained as he thrust up into me. But I knew he had lost control when he screamed out as he came, and I was so turned on I quickly followed suit.

  He cuddled me close in his arms as we slowly descended from the heavens. “Oh, Rachel,” he whispered. “My Rachel.”

  And just like flipping a switch, my thoughtful and attentive husband returned. He escorted me from the pool, gently dried me off and then carried me upstairs to make up for our lost week. By the time Jonathan came home, our relationship had finally stabilized.

  The sensitive boy picked up on it immediately. He didn’t say anything about his weekend with his mother, but slowly I saw him come around the psychological walls he had built to keep himself safe from more embattled parents.

  Later, when I said as much to Drew while we lay together in our bed, he nodded. “The last thing he needs is more fighting,” he agreed.

  I sighed with relief that he thought so, too. “His birthday is coming up,” I reminded. “Maybe we could do something with the whole family again. To show him there is no bad blood.”

  Drew nodded absently. “Actually, I was thinking of something a bit more extreme.” He looked me in the eye. “I want you to adopt Jonathan.”

  My eyes widened in surprise. “What?”

  “It’s what he wants,” Drew reasoned. “More than that, it’s what he needs. Stepparent adoption is fairly common, actually. We simply need both biological parents to agree.”

  I burst out laughing. “Like that’s ever going to happen, Drew. Be seriou
s.”

  He shrugged. “Think about it. She signs some paperwork, you take over Mommy duty and she can fly to Dubai with her rich new boyfriend.”

  “She’s never going to go for that, Drew.”

  He smiled. “I’ll make her an offer she can’t refuse.”

  He reached for another kiss and I didn’t deny him. But even as he pushed me back onto the bed and made love to me gently and thoroughly, I knew that there was one thing I could never do, no matter how much Drew wanted it.

  I could never take a child from his mother. No one understood that pain like I did, and I would be damned if I inflicted it on anyone else. There would be other ways to secure our family bond.

  I just had to think of them.

  Chapter Twelve

  True to his word, Drew took off that next Monday to join me for our first ultrasound. I was thirteen weeks pregnant, now into my second trimester, and we were both excited to learn what we could about our little bundle of joy.

  I dressed in the gown and lay on the table, with Drew at my side holding my hand in his. The technician squirted the cold gel onto my stomach before she placed the wand against my skin to pick up an image on the computer screen. Finally we could see the little gray blob she assured us was our baby. As she picked up a strong, quick heartbeat, I couldn’t help but burst into tears. I never thought I’d ever get pregnant again, and yet here I was, listening to definitive proof that a child of mine lived and thrived within me. Drew squeezed my hand as he smiled down at me. I squeezed back.

  The tech didn’t answer many questions while she was taking her measurements and saving the image. “Dr. Rombach will discuss your results with you,” she said with a smile.

  The ambiguity of her answer struck me immediately. “Is everything okay?” I asked.

  She wiped the gel from my tummy. “Let me go get the doctor,” she said before she excused herself.

  I panicked as I looked up at Drew. “Something’s wrong.”

  He shook his head as he bent to kiss me softly. “Did you hear that heartbeat? Everything is fine.”