Only Pleasure (Bound Hearts 10)

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 mothe

r 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.

All for Sunday brunch.

Kia remembered her years growing up when she hated dressing for dinner. Sometimes she'd longed to order pizza and watch television as she ate. Strictly forbidden in the Rutherford household.

It had been a good place to grow up, though. She had been sheltered and protected. She went to the right schools, and all her friends were from the right families, and the Rutherford princess had never known a moment's pain.

Until she married the reigning prince of her father's offices. And what a disaster that had been.

"You're looking beautiful, sweetheart. " Her mother turned her cheek up for a kiss. "Isn't she beautiful today, Timothy?"

Her father grunted in a no-response tone while sneaking Kia an amused wink.

"He's no help whatsoever," her mother fussed as they sat down.

"I was supposed to be helping?" Her father's lined face wrinkled into a pretend scowl.

Her mother shooed at him before turning back to Kia.

"I saw you leave the ball the other night with Chase Falladay. Are you two seeing each other now?"

That was her mother. She never put off to tomorrow what she could be nosy about today.

"Chase and I are just friends, Mom," she told her firmly, but it hurt. Oh how it hurt. Deep inside, in a place that had never known pain until Chase.

"Just friends?" Her father's voice rumbled in that fatherly, warning way. "I'm not so old I don't remember what that means. "

Kia leaned back in her chair as the maid placed coffee and water in front of her before her assistant came bearing food.

"Just simply friends, Daddy. " She gave him a firm look of her own. "Chase is a very nice gentleman. "

God was going to strike her dead for that one.

"Hmphf. " Her father grunted again and gave her a knowing look, though he dropped the subject.

"Well, that's too bad," her mother said. "We're not getting any younger, Kia. Grandbabies would be nice. "

"A husband would be nice first," her father growled. "The other fathers are carting their sons-in-law around like extra baggage. Where's mine?"