Only Pleasure(46)

Chase's look grew yet darker.

"There's no relationship," he snapped again. "It wasn't love, it wasn't commitment, it was pleasure. That was all. Simple. Clean. Period."

Yeah, that was what he felt pouring from Chase, pure damned mad and messed-up male emotions. Simple. Clean. Period.

"Eh, count yourself lucky." Cameron shrugged and grinned again. "I guess I just got all the monogamy genes in the family. Damn. I'm a lucky bastard."

"You're definitely a bastard," he heard Chase mutter as he turned back to his computer.

Cameron had to keep his chuckle to himself. He cleared his throat, covered his mouth with his hand as he bent over the files on his desk and let a smile pull at his lips.

Man, Chase was a goner.

Maybe he should feel sorry for his brother, after all, falling in love wasn't an easy thing to do. There were all those messed-up emotions, sensations you just didn't know what the hell to do with, and the fact that a man knew, balls deep and in his gut, that he was never going to feel as much pleasure as he did with that one woman.

Chase was fighting that now. All the possessive, instinctual emotions that assailed a man when he finally touched that one woman who fascinated him were coming off Chase in waves.

Whatever the hell his brother had done, whatever he was denying, it wasn't sitting well with him. And despite his apparent fascination with e-mail, his mind wasn't really on it.

"Did we manage to get the report in on John Haggard's application?" Cam asked his brother several minutes later.

"No."

Cameron almost laughed. Bullshit. He'd seen it on Chase's desk that morning and just hadn't picked it up.

"He's going to be anxious to get his application through," Cam stated. "He's had his deposit in for a year now while we put him through the wringer. Do you think we could rush it?"

"I'm on it."

Cameron craned his neck, checked to see what Chase was so absorbed in, then shook his head pitifully.

Those damned cell phone pictures Courtney had taken of Kia going through the lingerie.

Yeah, Chase had it pretty damned bad.

He rose to his feet and moved to his brother's desk, almost grinning again as Chase minimized the screen.

"What the hell do you want?" Chase asked.

Cameron reached down to the desk slowly and grinned knowingly. "The Haggard file." He picked it up, then chuckled as his brother scowled. "She'll be at the Edgewood ball next week, I bet. Maybe you should come with us."

Chase lifted his lip in a snarl and Cameron had to snicker. Poor Chase. A goner, for sure.





Chapter 11





Two days later Kia entered her parents' three-story mansion, strolling into a marble foyer that was nearly the size of her apartment. Sunday brunch with her parents was not to be missed. If she missed it, her mother would pout at her, but her father would make a habit of dropping by her apartment, spur of the moment, for weeks, just to check on her. It was as bad as missing holiday dinners. Something else Kia didn't dare attempt.

They worried about her, she knew, and no amount of arguing against it would ever change the fact that, in their eyes, she was still their baby.

Her parents were older when they had her. Her father was already in his late thirties, her mother nearly thirty-five herself. Now, twenty-seven years later, they still wanted to treat her like the twenty-one-year-old who had left their home on her husband's arm.

Brunch on Sundays and holidays was a big thing for her mother. The one day when her husband and child were both at the table with her. Cecilia Rutherford insisted they dress up for the event. Kia wore sedate pearls at her ears and neck. A plain gold wristwatch, black wool slacks, and a gray sweater complemented the leather jacket her father had gotten her last Christmas.

Kia was dreading this particular brunch. She knew her parents. They were constantly trying to fix her up with someone, always worried about her unmarried state and her lack of babies. As though all she needed to be happy was a husband and a couple of children.

"There you are, dear." Her mother, Celia, refused to go gray. Even at sixty-two her hair was still the same champagne blond it had been when she married, with a little help from her beautician.

Her father on the other hand, Timothy Rutherford, had aged like fine whiskey. He wasn't overly tall, just right at five feet eleven inches, against his wife's five-foot-four frame.

Unfortunately, Kia had inherited that small delicate body. She would have much preferred to be tall, slender, and svelte.

"Hi, Daddy." She reached up and kissed his cheek as he rose from the round glass table in the now heated sun room.

He was dressed in Sunday casual. Sharply creased dress slacks and a white dress shirt. Her mother wore her pearls as well, and a silk dress.