While Emma retreated into her bedroom, Nathan called the movers and gave them new instructions.
For two days, he’d spent a good chunk of his time imagining the changes she would make in his life. His decision to marry her might have been born out of necessity, but lately he found himself thinking less about business and more about pleasure.
Unfortunately, standing in the way of those days and nights of unbridled passion was her stubbornness and this ridiculous wager with her father that she couldn’t hope to win.
There was no way she could put the money back in her account by Valentine’s Day, but that wouldn’t stop her from trying. And he had his own deadline to worry about. He’d convinced his brothers to give him until the middle of February to secure the deal with Montgomery Oil. He couldn’t do that without marrying Emma. The best way to do that was to make sure she had no way to win her wager. And the best way to do that would be to keep her too busy to work.
His groin stirred at the notion of all the things he would do to her once he moved her under his roof. She’d been without a decent bathroom for quite a while. Wait until she set eyes on the whirlpool tub in his master bathroom. It was made for long, romantic soaks. With candles burning, he’d even let her put bubble bath in the water. Hell, he’d do whatever it took to encourage her to join him.
He was still grinning ten minutes later when she crossed the living room toward him, her hips swaying in that natural motion that drove him crazy.
She’d donned a narrow, caramel-colored skirt with a wide ruffle that kissed her knees and a blouse of cream lace that revealed flirtatious hints of her creamy skin. Her brown hair had been twisted into a loose knot atop her head. She carried a brown velvet jacket that matched the color of her eyes.
“Where to?” she asked, fastening intricately woven earrings of gold wire studded with green freshwater pearls to her earlobes. They tapped against her neck, drawing Nathan’s attention to the tender, sensitive skin.
“It’s a surprise,” he answered.
She didn’t press him for details as he took her keys and inserted them in the dead-bolt lock. She didn’t utter a word until they were in his car, heading away from downtown. Then, she took hold of the conversational reins and steered them toward a safe topic.
“How do you like working with your brothers?”
“That question might take me all night to answer,” he retorted.
“We don’t have all night,” she reminded him. “So you’d better get started now.”
“We could have all night.”
As her gaze played hide-and-seek with his from beneath her long bangs, he tightened his grip on the steering wheel to resist the urge to brush the sable locks away from her eyes. He had the crazy idea that if he looked deep enough, he would find that they wanted the same things, only she was too afraid to admit it.
“How long have you worked at Case Consolidated Holdings?” she asked, avoiding being pulled into flirting with him.
For the moment Nathan gave up trying to provoke her into a sexy repartee. He knew two ways to convince her that marriage between them made sense: to get to know her better and to get her back into bed. Since the latter was out of the question at the moment, he decided to focus on something that held equal appeal, making a connection.
“Six months.”
“What did you do before that?”
So it was to be the third degree. Nathan split his attention between the road and the sexy lady sitting beside him. “I was in New York.”
“That answers where you were, not what you were doing.”
“I was making money in the stock market and attending auctions.”
“Is that where you learned so much about art?”
“I had some good teachers. One woman I met loved the galleries and supported quite a few new artists. She had an eye for gifted young talent.”
Emma hummed knowingly. “And were you one of the talented young men she had an eye for?”
“Are you asking if we were lovers?” he asked, amused by her perception of him as an innocent youth being corrupted by an older, more experienced woman. “No. She wasn’t my type. I like curvy brunettes, remember?”
“And she wasn’t either of those things?”
“No, Madeline had the look of a half-starved jungle cat. And she could be equally dangerous. Lucky for me she took a shine to my Texas accent and deep pockets. We were great friends. She had a ball trying to polish all my rough edges.”
“I can’t picture you in New York.”
She squinted at him as if trying to put him in different clothes. He’d prefer if she’d just strip him out of the ones he cur