Mitchell chuckled and addressed Alex’s friends. “My son. I taught him everything I know about manners, but you’d still think he was raised by savages.”
His friends laughed, a few of them uneasily when they glanced at Alex and noticed his rigid features and tense posture. Alex had been raised by his mother and her parents in a warm, loving home in Minnesota. His grandfather was part Dakota Indian, and had passed on his love of the land and the outdoors to his grandson. His father’s underhanded dig was both a jab at his upbringing and a subtle racial slur, as well.
“I suppose that means she’s in your league, then.” Alex grated out, still without turning around…his eyes still glued to the woman with the gleaming dark hair and the alabaster skin at the bar. Something about the sight of her acted like a balm to his simmering anger toward his father. He was afraid if he turned around and saw Mitchell’s smug face, he’d haul back and clobber it.
For a few seconds of silence, he wondered if Mitchell had heard him in the noisy bar or had already left.
“Even if she was, she’s not my type.” Mitchell said pensively, and Alex sensed his father had joined him in eyeing the stunning brunette. A couple of Alex’s friends made sounds of disbelief. “I’m serious,” his father assured them. “I like them petite…feminine.”
Alex snorted loudly. He couldn’t recall ever having seen a more feminine creature in his life than the woman at the bar. His father covered Alex’s rudeness with his typical glib charm.
“We’ll leave it to my He-Man son here to tame an Amazon, eh?” His friends laughed like yapping puppies at his father’s joke. Alex said nothing when his father clapped him on the back and walked away.
Resentment burned him from the inside out.
His father had balls, acting like the down and dirty argument they’d had the night before had never occurred. It had started typically enough with Mitchell’s digs at Alex’s career, but had quickly escalated to Alex accusing Mitchell of possessing a half-assed parental attitude for the things that really counted.
Like being there for his kid, for instance.
Mitchell’s idea of being a dad involved sending Alex expensive, unwanted gifts on his birthday and Christmas and preaching about becoming a success.
The whole argument had exploded when Alex had ripped into his father—not for the first time—for continually flirting with and leading on his mother, only to ignore her for years at a time. It was a cycle Alex had become far too familiar with during his childhood.
As Alex sat there in that noisy bar, he was in the early stages of starting to accept that Mitchell Carradine was as much a father now as he ever would be to him.
A half-hour later, an attorney friend had joined them at McAllister’s. He’d noticed where Alex’s stare had been directed and gave him some unwelcome—but not necessarily surprising—information.
“Her name’s Angeline Kastakis. She’s a new associate at your father’s firm. Maybe he could introduce you?”
But the memory of his father’s low, insulting tone still burned inside Alex’s chest, and he’d decided he wouldn’t pursue Angeline Kastakis.
Alex preferred to stay out of his father’s line of sight. He already regretted his decision to work in the Loop, near his father’s firm. The last thing he wanted was to date a woman who worked in Mitchell’s office.
No matter how incredible that woman was.
He refused even to acknowledge the niggling voice that whispered deep inside of his brain, the one that hissed at him as he watched Angeline put on her coat and walk out of the bar.
She’s way out of your league, son.
Now here it was, four years later, and that same woman was here in his house, even more appealing to him than she had been that evening at McAllister’s. It had felt like he’d swallowed liquid lead when he realized who she was out there in his garage.
Damn Mitchell. Damn her for being taken in by his father. It had irritated him more than it should have, the idea that she found slick Mitch attractive.
“Why wouldn’t she?” Alex muttered irritably before he stuck his fa
ce into the cool water. Every other female who met his dad had fallen for him…including his mother. The knowledge that his mom would probably return to Mitchell Carradine if he twitched his forefinger—despite everything she knew about him—angered Alex so much that, out of habit, he pushed the incendiary thought from his mind.
But the image of Angeline standing there in the firelight just minutes ago, her big, dark eyes on his chest, her pink lips slightly parted, the lush curves of her body calling out to him to touch…to possess…
That image couldn’t be banned from his brain so easily.
Her full breasts looked so firm and inviting beneath the soft ivory sweater she wore—everything about Angeline was soft and feminine. And then her nipples had tightened beneath his stare…
His cock jerked in arousal and he uttered a curse. Without thinking, he fisted and stroked it, trying to quiet his ravenous hunger for his father’s girlfriend. His hand on his cock only made the fantasy more graphic—lifting Angeline’s soft sweater, baring her generous breasts to his gaze and to his seeking lips. He was large, but she’d fill his hands with ripe, firm, warm flesh.
He just knew she would.
The realization struck him that he was pumping his fully erect cock fast and furiously as he imagined the satiny sensation of Angeline’s breasts sliding against his lips. He growled in irritation and twisted the shower handle to its most frigid setting. He shoved back the shower curtain a minute later, shivering with cold, but his cock tamed.