Forbidden Pleasures (9 page)

Emily propped herself up on an elbow and looked down into his handsome face. “Devlin,” she said, “let’s get one thing straight right now. Unless you continue to instruct me in the arts of passion I will not be able to write that damned sexually explicit book Stratford wants of me. You see our problem, don’t you? And you’re my editor, aren’t you? You’re supposed to help me, right? It’s your job, isn’t it? I don’t intend to let my career go down the toilet because J. P. Woods can’t get over the fact that you wouldn’t service her seven years ago.”

“My God! You seduced me!” He started to laugh. “And here I thought it was the other way around, angel face, but you seduced me.”

“Yep,” Emily admitted, “and now that we have my virginity out of the way you are going to teach me everything I need to know to write an explicit and sexier novel. Hell, Devlin, your ass is as much on the line in this situation as mine is,” she told him.

He grinned up at her. He couldn’t help it. Here he had thought she was a prissy little miss, and that he was going to have a difficult time getting the results from her that Stratford wanted. Emily Shanski had sure as hell fooled him, and he had to admit he admired her for it. She was a survivor. “First off, woman, I need my breakfast to restore my strength,” he told her. “And then you have to tell me where I can get condoms. Drugstore? Shopping center? And you had better get a prescription for the morning-after pill from Dr. Sam. And some birth control pills. You’re not on the pill, are you, you bald-faced little liar.”

“Why would I be on the pill? I never had sex before.” She grinned back at him.

“I’d spank you except I suspect you like it,” he told her.

“So we’re going to be lovers, Devlin?” Emily asked softly.

“We are lovers, angel face. But we shouldn’t be, and you know it,” he said.

“You said you wanted to fuck me the moment you saw me,” she reminded him.

“Wanted to didn’t mean I would have,” he replied. “Oh, I know the reputation I carry around: Devlin, the Irish Casanova, but I’ve never before banged one of my writers, Emily. You know the old saw about mixing business and pleasure.”

“How about, ‘All work and no play makes Devlin much too serious’?” she teased.

“I’m sending you to the showers,” he responded.

“Only shower in the house is in your bathroom,” she said sweetly. “Come with me?”

He shook his head in wonder. “Jaysus! What have I unleashed?”

“Owww,” Emily said, getting up from the tangle of sheets on the bed. “Ohh, I hurt. You’re the expert. How soon will it go away?”

“See how you feel after your shower,” he suggested.

She nodded and went into the bathroom. He heard the water begin to run. What had he done? he asked himself once again. This was pure insanity. What if she fell in love with him? What a mess that would be. What if he fell in love with her? And then he admitted to himself that he was already in love with her. He hadn’t known her a week, and yet the first time he had seen her he had known on some deep level that Emily Shanski was the woman he’d been waiting for his whole life.

And he had lusted for her. God, he had lusted for her. Every time this week he had thought of her for more than a minute or two he found himself getting a hard-on. How could something so magical have happened to Michael Devlin, the lady-killer, the love-‘em-on-my-terms-and-then-leave-’em guy? He didn’t deserve a girl like Emily Shanski, and he had damned well better keep these sixteen-year-old’s feelings he had oozing out of his almost forty-year-old body to himself.

They would have a love affair that would be strictly business. Their private business. No one else had to know. He’d teach her enough to write the book the company wanted of her, and that would be that. When was the book due? End of December, he recalled. Well, they would have a wonderful summer and autumn together, Michael Devlin decided. And after that he’d tell Martin Stratford that he wanted to return to London. Random House wanted him back. They were even offering him his own new imprint, and a staff to implement it. Let J. P. Woods become CEO of Stratford. Aaron Fischer would see that Emily got a good new deal wherever she went.

She walked out of the bathroom with a towel wrapped about her. “Your turn,” she told him. And when he had showered again and come out to dress, she was already in her jeans and yellow tee, her panties and bra in her hand. “I’ll put these away and meet you down in the kitchen,” she said with a smile as she walked out the door of his bedroom.

“Okay,” he said, his naked body warming up as her eyes swept admiringly over him. Damn! He was getting another hard-on.
Get a grip, Devlin,
he told himself. First food, and then he was going to take her to bed for the rest of the day. He pulled his jeans back on, wincing slightly at the tightness in his crotch. He had gone down barefooted earlier, because that was how he behaved in his own house. She hadn’t objected, and so he went downstairs without his shoes again.

Emily was already scrambling eggs. “From the look in your eye,” she said mischievously, “we’re going to need our strength. A little protein can’t hurt.”

He walked up behind her, one arm going about her waist, the other hand reaching up to slip underneath her tee and cup a breast. “Eggs will be fine,” he told her, nipping at her earlobe. His thumb rubbed against her nipple.

“I’ve got sausages in the other pan,” she said, indicating with her head. Her breasts were getting tight, and she could suddenly feel a sticky wetness between her thighs. “Devlin, if you keep doing that we are going to end up on the kitchen table. Stop it! I’m going to burn everything if you don’t. I don’t want the whole town to know about us.”

He removed the hand, but continued holding her against him. “Why are”—he corrected himself—“were you a virgin at thirty-one?” he asked, curious.

“You know I was raised by my two grandmothers. That my parents grew up next door to each other. This is Gran’s house—Gran O’Malley. She was the last of her branch of the Dunhams, who were among the founders of Egret Pointe. She was Katy’s mother. This house and the one to its right were built by a Dunham for his twin daughters when they married in 1860. Gran descends from one of the twins, Mary Anne Dunham. Her sister, Elizabeth Maude, had the other house, but her line ended in 1954, when her twin spinster granddaughters died. That was when Grandpa Shanski bought the house. Katy and Joe were born in 1957 and 1956 respectively. Actually, they’re just six months apart, which was why they were in the same school grade together. My father was born on St. Joseph’s Day in March, and my mother in September on the Feast of St. Michael and All Angels,” Emily explained, spooning eggs onto a warm plate that had been in the oven, and then adding the sausages. “They grew up best friends. Sit down, Devlin, eat.

“Then in their senior year Joe led our local high school team to its first state football championship. He was that boy quarterback you see in those movies Hollywood made in the 1940s. Katy was the cute blue-eyed head cheerleader. Everyone knew Joe Shanski and Katy O’Malley. And everyone loved them. Even their peers. The whole town got drunk celebrating. Katy and Joe got a little drunker, and continued their celebration in the back of his car. In the morning both admitted it was a mistake. They decided they’d forget about it, and went back to their old best-friends routine. They were both a little embarrassed by the whole thing, Joe has said.” She filled her plate with eggs and sausages and sat down at the table with him.

“But then you came along,” Devlin said with a small smile.

“Yep,” Emily agreed. “That I did. When Katy realized, she told Joe, and then they told the grans. Grandpa Shanski was already gone, leaving Grandma a widow with two sons to raise. By this time it was March. Katy had a scholarship to Wellesley, and Joe had one to Princeton. They couldn’t have gone to such wonderful schools without those scholarships, and both had serious careers in mind. So Katy hid her condition in order to avoid getting kicked out of high school, and the grans sneaked them off to another town for a nice civil marriage ceremony so I’d be born on the proper side of the blanket. After their graduation Katy was supposed to go off to Europe on a grand tour before college. Actually she went into a nice church home for naughty girls until she had her baby. I was supposed to be put out for adoption to a good Catholic family, but once the grans saw me they agreed they couldn’t let me go, and took me themselves to raise.”

“Your parents divorced then?” he said.

“Actually the civil union was annulled on the grounds that Katy was under the age of consent when they had married. The fact that their parents had arranged the marriage in the first place was conveniently overlooked. And this allowed both Katy and Joe to be married in the church when they finally chose mates one day, which of course they did. Katy went to Yale Law after Wellesley, and eventually married Carter Phelps the Fourth. She has two kids, Phoebe and Carter the Fifth. Joe’s a doctor, a pediatrician, actually. He married a nice Irish girl named Mary Shannon, and they have three sons, Joe, Frank, and Sean.”

“You don’t call your parents Mom and Dad,” he noted.

“I never thought of them like that,” Emily said. “My mother and I never saw each other at all except at Christmas, when she came home because my Grandmother O‘Malley insisted she do so. I don’t think she ever even thought of me except when she had no other choice. Please don’t misunderstand, though. Katy’s a nice lady, and a good mother to my half brother and sister, but for her I was a mistake to be forgotten. Of course, when she married Carter the Fourth she had to tell him about her little slip from grace before the engagement was announced. They both knew Carter the Fourth would be going into politics. I was displayed most prominently at their society wedding with Gran O’Malley. Carter the Fourth had wanted me to be a flower girl, but Katy drew the line at that.” Emily chuckled. “I was referred to as her child from a brief high school union that had been annulled. I like Carter and his kids. My half sister is actually quite a fan of mine. Katy is quite astounded by my career and by my success. Now and again you’ll see a media piece referring to me as Senator Phelps of Virginia’s stepdaughter. But not often. I prefer to be my own woman.”

“I’ve discovered that,” he said, reaching for another of her sweet rolls and buttering it lavishly. She was a senator’s stepdaughter? Could he be deported for making wild love to a senator’s virgin stepdaughter? “What about your father?”

“Oh, Joe’s a good guy. I saw more of him as a kid than I did of Katy, but medical school takes up a lot of time. He always remembered my birthday, though. When he married Mary Shannon she wanted me with them, but the grans put their collective feet down. So she went and had three sons of her own. Joey and Frank are in high school now, and Sean’s in middle school. I always get invited for the holidays, of course. Mary Shannon is a grand, bighearted Irish girl, and while Gran Shanski was a bit put off by her enthusiasm, she appreciated her loving nature. But you can understand why I never called them Mom and Dad. They gave me life, to be sure, but they weren’t my parents at all.” She stood up. “Are you through, Devlin? You’re going to get sick if you eat another sweet roll,” Emily told him, reaching for his plate. “You’ve had four already.”

“We have work to do, Emily Shanski,” he told her with a grin. “But first I need to get to a pharmacy for some condoms. Want to tell me where?”

She did, and then added, “Try not to attract too much attention to yourself, Devlin. I mean between the fact that you’re a striking man, and that Healy.” She sighed. “You don’t want anyone at Stratford to know we’re having a love affair. And I don’t want anyone in Egret Pointe to know. It’s a small town, Devlin.”

“I grew up in one,” he said as he headed out the back door for his car with a wave. He knew just what he wanted: the thinnest rubber on the market, lubricated. He hoped the store she was sending him to would have them. And she had to get on the pill. He didn’t want to wear those damned rubbers any longer than he had to. He wanted nothing coming between him and Emily Shanski’s wet, hot cunt. He backed slowly out of her driveway and headed down Founder’s Way just as Rina Seligmann was turning her Lexus onto the little street. They waved at each other.

Where was he going? Rina wondered as she pulled up in front of Emily’s house. She called out as she entered the front door, “Emily, it’s Rina.”

“I’m upstairs making the bed,” Emily called down. “Be right with you.”

“No, I’ll come up and help you,” Rina said, hurrying up the stairs. “Why are you changing the sheets in the guest room? This isn’t the Grande Hotel, sweetie, and I’m sure Mr. Gorgeous has slept on the same bedsheets a couple of nights in a row.” Then something caught Rina’s eye. “Oh, my God,” she said dramatically. “You screwed him! Was he wearing a condom? I’ll tell Sam to give you a prescription. No, I’ll have him give you a couple of months of samples. You don’t want everyone in town knowing you’re screwing your editor. I never asked before, but it was your first time, wasn’t it?”

Emily was almost beet red in the face with Rina’s blunt questions. “If it was my first time, Rina,” she said, “how would I know if he was good?”

“You’d know,” Rina replied. “It’s instinct.”

“Then he’s good.”

“Why now? And why him?” Rina wondered. “Oh, the sexy book.” She started putting fresh pillow slips on the pillows.

“Hey, he’s my editor, and he’s supposed to help me,” Emily responded with a little grin. “And his career is just as much on the line as mine. He’s not married, and he’s not involved with anyone else, so why not him?”

“Well,” Rina said, “he looks like a great first-timer. Why didn’t you use the Channel?”

“It seems their reality and this reality have to be in sync for it to work,” Emily explained. She sighed. “And my new hero looks just like Devlin. Go figure.”

Rina nodded. “Then you wanted him right from the get-go,” she said as they tucked in the sheet and fluffed the down coverlet.