Pregnant by Morning(46)

Renewed guilt gnawed on his insides.

Real estate was in his blood, and he’d missed the negotiations, the deals, the art of reading a potential seller. But the restlessness was more than lack of a job; it was a lack of setting goals and working to achieve them. Feeling successful and knowing his effort would be rewarded tangibly.

He wanted to be dependable, responsible Matthew Wheeler again, not a grieving, guilt-ridden widower.

Maybe he could check in, casually, without throwing his weight around. That might work. He was still a partner, regardless of whether he’d been acting like one, and there was no time like the present to start making amends.

Evangeline had played the piano. Maybe he could take a step out of the valley, too.

A baby step. The top of the mountain would grow closer with each one.

Before he thought better of it, he fished out his phone and sent Lucas a text message.

The response came instantly. You’re alive?

Matthew flinched. Yeah, he deserved that. He shot back: Still have a pulse last time I checked. What’s going on with WFP? 1st Q looks like a train wreck.





What do you care?





I care. I’ll send flowers to soothe your bruised feelings later. 1st Q?





Lucas’s answer took almost five minutes, during which Matthew sweated through some very unpleasant possibilities, like Lucas had fallen off the responsibility wagon or something had happened to their father.





Richards Group opened shop in Dallas.





Matthew swore. That had never crossed his mind.

Saul Richards owned the Houston real-estate market and the Wheelers owned North Texas. It was understood that Richards stayed on his turf and the Wheelers stayed on theirs. The shift wasn’t a mystery—Richards had scented Wheeler blood with Matthew out of the picture.

Matthew shouldn’t be out of the picture. Lucas had been handling it. Now he needed help. Wheeler Family Partners had been in business for over a century, and Matthew refused to be the one who let it fail.

It was time to go home.

The thought didn’t fill him with dread like he’d expected. His life in Dallas had been inescapably intertwined with Amber, with the expectations of creating a family and upholding traditions. But she was gone and as he’d flippantly, but accurately, told Lucas, he still had a pulse. Lucas had married a wife who helped him succeed, and they were happily working on the continuation of the Wheeler line.

There was no pressure for Matthew to fill his old role until he was ready.

The healing had happened so gradually, he hadn’t realized it.

Evangeline called his name, and he glanced up to see her waltzing across the patio from the stairs. Sunlight beamed across her face, and she smiled. It slid down his throat with a jagged edge and sliced something in his gut.

God Almighty, she was almost ethereal. But sexy. Strong. Luminous.

Fingers numb, he dropped his phone to the concrete and pulled her into his lap to kiss her thoroughly. She smelled like sleep and Evangeline and everything good in the world. She’d helped him heal. Brightened up his house. His soul.

As the familiar lightning-fast rush of heat filled him, it suddenly occurred to him that if he went home, he’d have to end things with Evangeline.

Then he had the most dangerous thought—what if she came home with him?

No. He couldn’t fathom issuing such an invitation. An invitation for what? To hide away in some lover’s nest while he stormed the gates of Saul Richards’s blockade on the Dallas real-estate market? She would grow bored with Dallas in about five minutes. She’d grow bored with Matthew Wheeler in four.

He could imagine going home for the first time in a long time. But he could not imagine Evangeline there, fitting into Amber’s role as the woman behind the Wheeler. Mostly because bright, glittery Evangeline could never blend into the background the way Amber had, quietly providing support and encouragement, organizing get-togethers and charity events with his mother. The women in his world were beige.

Evangeline shifted in his lap, straddling him, her tongue finding creative ways to tease him. Yeah, she was as far from beige as Venice was from Dallas, and he forgot about everything but the warm breeze on his face and the hot woman in his arms.

She drew back, breathing heavily, with a businesslike glint in her eye. “I came to talk. Stop distracting me.”

Talk. That sounded bad.

He scooted her back an inch, off his blazing erection, in deference to the directive. “Hey, I’m not the one looking all sexy and disheveled and climbing all over you.”

“Can’t help myself,” she murmured and sighed, thrusting her chest into his. “You’re so tempting.”

She wasn’t wearing a bra and talking was pretty much the last thing he wanted to do.