‘Of course not.’ He brought her hand up to his mouth, pressing a kiss to her bent knuckles, his gaze meshed with hers. ‘You’re good at what you do and you’re not used to having a break this long from doing it. But we’ll be in Paris soon for your photo shoot, so hopefully that will make you feel more in touch with your work. And we can look at engaging a nanny if you—’
Harper pulled her hand out of his and frowned. ‘I don’t want a nanny.’
‘But you were the one who first suggested it.’
She lowered her gaze, her frown still visible on her forehead. ‘Like foster parents, nannies come and go. I don’t want that for Marli. I want her to experience stability and security. I don’t want her passed around like a parcel no one really wants.’
Jack knew Harper carried a lot of emotional scars from her childhood. Even the most normal and loving childhoods still left wounds that often took a lifetime to heal. How much harder must it have been for her, never having a father invested in her and losing her mother so young. It was amazing she had made such a success of her life to date. Many people did not.
‘But we’re going to have to do something because we both have big careers. What about asking my mother? I’m sure she’d be happy to help.’
Harper bounced off the sofa as if propelled by an ejector button. Her arms went around her middle, her expression stormy. ‘I don’t feel comfortable around your mother. She’s always on her best behaviour when you’re around, but she can be so annoying when you’re not. She hasn’t shut up about that stupid press release.’
Jack rose from the sofa and came over to her, placing his hands on her shoulders. ‘I dealt with the press release by officially announcing our engagement.’
Her gaze met his with a diamond-hard glitter. ‘But we’re not in love and that upsets your mother. She can’t bear the thought of her only son marrying someone he knocked up after a one-night stand.’
His hands fell away from her shoulders and he let out a jagged sigh. ‘My mother comes from a different generation, in some ways even older and more traditional than the one she was born into. The thought of sleeping with someone just for sex is foreign to her. My father was her only lover and she remained faithful to him for life.’
‘Did your father stay faithful to her?’
The question blindsided Jack for a moment. There was so much he didn’t know about his father due to how his illness had ravaged him over the years. And because he had been away at boarding school for a lot of that time, there hadn’t been too many father-son bonding sessions to be had, even had his father been into that sort of thing.
‘That’s something I can’t answer because I didn’t ask and he didn’t say,’ Jack said. ‘We didn’t have a particularly close relationship. If we had, he might have told me of the difficulties he was having keeping our finances in order.’
Harper’s expression softened into shades of compassion. ‘It must have been a terrible shock to find things weren’t as in order as you expected.’
Jack gave a grunt of agreement. ‘Yeah, it was. I had to do a business degree and Masters in record time to turn things around. It hit my mother hard too. She had to adjust to not only life without my father but also the lifestyle she was accustomed to. And, of course, she had no career to fall back on, having given up so much to look after him.’ His mouth twisted in a rueful grimace. ‘I think that’s why she can be so pedantic and controlling now. She doesn’t want to get caught out again.’
Harper stepped closer to him and placed a hand on his forearm. His skin tingled and tightened at her touch and a wave of smouldering heat flowed through his body. ‘I’ll try and be a little more accommodating towards her, for Marli’s sake, as well as yours.’ Her voice had a husky edge that sent a shiver along his nerve endings.
Jack placed his hands on her hips and held her just apart from his body. The desire to bring her flush against him was almost uncontrollable. Her gaze went to his mouth, stayed there for a beat or two, then she glanced up at him again.
‘Jack...?’ This time her voice was barely audible, a soft, breathless whisper that seemed to contain a beseeching plea.
He tilted up her chin to keep her gaze locked on his. ‘What else is troubling you?’
She gave a lopsided smile and lifted her hand to his face, gliding it down the length of his jaw. ‘You trouble me, more than I care to admit.’
‘In what way?’
‘This way,’ she said, and, stepping on tiptoe, planted a soft-as-a-puff-of-air kiss to his lips. But, for all its lightness, her kiss still sent a shockwave of fiery lust through him.
Jack brought her closer to his body, close enough to feel every sweet curve of her against his hardening flesh. He brought his mouth down to hers in a kiss that set off fireworks in his blood. She opened her lips to welcome the stroke and glide of his tongue and a hot shiver rolled down his spine. She tasted of milk and honey and something that was uniquely her. The taste he had craved for months like a drug he couldn’t resist. His tongue duelled with hers in an erotic game that made the hairs on his head lift away from his scalp. Her soft little moans of pleasure and encouragement thrilled him, excited him, fuelled him to kiss her deeper, harder, more insistently.
He raised his mouth from hers, his breathing already ragged. ‘Isn’t it too soon to be doing this?’
Her arms snaked around his neck, her full breasts crushed against his chest. ‘I had my postnatal check-up today. I’ve been given the go-ahead to do whatever I like.’
Jack framed her face in his hands, looking deeply into her eyes. ‘Are you sure this is what you want? It’s late, you’re lacking sleep. You might see it differently in the morning.’
She lifted her hand to his mouth, tracing its outline with a teasing stroke of her finger. ‘Itisalready morning. Don’t you want to see if what we experienced all those months ago was just a fluke or...something else?’
It had certainly been something else—something outside of Jack’s not inconsiderable wealth of experience. The sensual energy between them had thrown him into nine months of self-imposed celibacy. He hadn’t wanted to wipe out the memory of her touch with someone else’s. He couldn’t understand why she was the one woman to have such an effect on him. He had slept with plenty of beautiful women but none had left a lingering need in him to see them again and again and again. Harper had put a roadblock up, which he had to accede had only intensified his determination to have her in the end. He was used to women chasing him. It was a refreshing change to be the pursuer rather than the pursued.
Jack’s hands tightened on her hips, his need for her building to the point of pain. ‘Yes, I do, but I don’t think it was a fluke. You turn me on like no one else.’
But then a tiny squawking cry sounded from the bedroom. ‘Waa-waa-waa.’