The Baby Deal Read online

  There was just the sound of the calm sea lapping gently at the shore as Andrew took her near the water's edge and headed away from the bungalows beneath a sky spotted with stars paying homage to an almost full moon.

  They didn't talk. They just walked.

  Ordinarily a silence like that would have made Delia uncomfortable. But there, then, it didn't. Instead she was absorbed in details like the length of Andrew's legs, the confidence of his stride even on the wet sand, the warm strength of his hand around hers and how much she liked it. All of it. All of him.

  The bungalows were only dots far in the distance when they stopped. Shoes were kicked off and they sat on the dry portion of the beach—Andrew behind Delia, his arms wrapping her as if it were something they'd done a million times before.

  “Maybe if I just hang on tight and don't let go of you you'll stay,” he said, his mouth close to her ear, his voice intimate.

  “Can't stay,” she repeated, allowing her head to fall back to his shoulder.

  To accomplish that, her head was tilted to one side and Andrew pressed a kiss to her neck, sighing a resigned and disappointed-sounding sigh that bathed her skin in a hot gust of breath.

  “I guess we'd better make tonight last, then,” he said.

  Delia wasn't sure what he meant by that. But she knew what was going through her own mind. Although she didn't know why or where it had come from.

  What was going through her own mind were thoughts of indeed making tonight last.

  In this man's arms…

  She couldn't believe what she was thinking. What she was considering.

  A vacation fling?

  She didn't have flings, vacation or otherwise.

  Not that it was unheard of to her. She had a friend who loved telling stories of holiday romances. A friend who didn't consider vacations a success unless she met someone to flirt with, to have fun with, someone to send her home with memories that put secret smiles on her face….

  No strings. No attachments. No future. No further expectations. Nothing to answer for.

  That was what Delia's friend said was part of the allure. Just a fling at a time when she felt free. Free enough to indulge whatever whim struck her. As if her real self had been left at home while she was in some faraway place where whatever she said or did remained there when she returned to her everyday life….

  Never before, when Delia's friend had talked about it, had Delia done more than laugh at the very notion. But now?

  Now it seemed to be beckoning to her.

  Just a vacation fling …

  Throw caution to the wind, her friend's voice seemed to say in the breeze.

  Andrew was tugging on her earlobe with tender teeth, flicking the edge with the tip of his tongue and setting off more of that confetti tingling through her.

  He's a stranger, she reminded herself. And we're out here, on the beach, in the open…

  It wasn't something Delia McCray did. Ever.

  But tonight she really did have the sense that Delia McCray was back in Chicago, while she—whoever she was at that moment—was here. In paradise. With this broad-shouldered, suntanned, muscled man who was nibbling her jawline even as her nipples grew to taut little knots against his forearm and he pushed back on them to let her know he felt it, too.

  He uncrossed his legs from where they'd been at her derriere and stretched one on either side of her, coming up closer behind her. Close enough for her to know his thoughts were on the same course that hers were.

  He wanted her. There was unmistakable proof. And knowing it erupted a whole flood of desires in Delia that she didn't even know she was capable of. Overwhelming desires. Driving needs that demanded their due…

  She'd had too much to drink. She knew it. Sheknew it as well as she knew she wasn't completely in her right mind.

  But she wanted this man as much as he so obviously wanted her. She wanted this moment. This vacation fling.

  She tilted her head and turned it as far as she could to see Andrew out of the corner of her eye. Realizing all over again how handsome he was gilded in moon-glow.

  She smiled.

  And she flexed her hips firmly back into him.

  He smiled, too. An answering kind of smile that said he knew. He understood. A smile so sexy she could hardly stand it.

  Then one of his hands came to her breast, engulfing it, grasping it, making her nipple stand at attention in his palm so forcefully she thought that small kernel might actually burst right through the negligible containment of the spandex camisole just to have the unbridled feel of his skin against it.

  He craned forward enough to cover her mouth with his. His lips were parted. His tongue wasn't shy in the slightest. And in one motion he turned her toward him.

  Her sarong came untied and fell away but she didn't care. She was far more interested in reaching her arms around him, in giving herself over to him completely, in shedding any inhibitions that might have been lurking and allowing everything her body was crying out for to be answered.

  There.

  Right out in the open.

  On that Tahitian beach.

  Under the watchful eye of nothing but the moon.

  Chapter Two

  Monday morning. Bright and early. Or funds to your account are stopped. I'm not kidding.

  It was Monday morning. 8:00 a.m. And Andrew Hanson was where he'd been ordered to be. Ordered via e-mail by his older brother Jack. Complete with the threat that if he didn't show up at the Chicago offices of Hanson Media Group, he would be financially cut off from all future support by family funds.

  So there he was. Only hours off a plane from Tahiti. Barely showered. Unshaven. Dressed in jeans and a T-shirt. And wishing for eight hours sleep. Wishing even more to be back on the beach he'd been on for the last three months. Or on any other beach for that matter.

  It was a common response for him. Especially whenever anything on the home front got complicated or unpleasant or became a drag. And things in Chicago at that moment were complicated, unpleasant and a drag. The death of his father had caused all of that at once three months ago, and so as soon as the funeral was over Andrew had done what he had done frequently in the past—he'd hightailed it out of town to wherever seemed like the best escape, Tahiti, this time. Tahiti, where he'd fully intended to stay for a long, long while.

  A long, long while that wouldn't have ended, except that after ignoring numerous e-mails from his older brother and their uncle David—their late father's much younger brother—Jack had forced Andrew to come back to Chicago.

  To help with the recent disasters that had befallen Hanson Media Group, the family business.

  A woman Andrew assumed to be a receptionist or a secretary had shown him to the conference room, informing him that Jack and David would be with him soon. But he had no idea how soon soon was and he really needed some sleep, so he plopped down on one of the chairs at the large table and used a second chair for his feet. Then he let his head fall to the back of the chair he was sitting in and closed his eyes.

  But despite the fact that he was tired and jet-lagged and could usually doze off anywhere without any problem, he didn't doze off now.

  He just couldn't stop thinking, What the hell do Jack and David think I can do…?

  Hanson Media Group was in trouble. That much Andrew knew. Apparently his father, George—who had run the media conglomerate—had not been as savvy a businessman as he'd led everyone to believe. As savvy a businessman as George's and David's own father, who had built Hanson Media Group from the ground up.

  But rather than exposing his failings to his family, George had kept two sets of books—one that made him look good and another that told the truth. The truth being that he'd run Hanson Media Group-the source of the wealth that had always supported all the Hanson family—into the ground. To the verge of bankruptcy.

  Jack had temporarily stepped in after George's death and discovered the second set of books. Now he and David were in the process of giving it
their all to turn things around. But compounding matters, one of Jack's attempts had led to the Internet portion of Hanson Media Group inadvertently being linked to a pornography site that had stirred further trouble for the company with morality groups.

  Jack's and David's e-mails had kept Andrew up-to-date on these matters, so Andrew was well aware of the dire situation. He just didn't have any idea why his brother and his uncle thought it was so crucial that he be here in the middle of it, too.

  The sound of his brother's voice coming from just outside the conference room alerted Andrew to Jack's imminent arrival. It caused Andrew to open his eyes but not to sit up or even to take his feet off the other chair.

  Within moments the door opened and in strode Jack and David, both in business clothes and looking far more professional than Andrew did.

  Andrew saw the other men take note of his casual attire but neither of them said anything.

  “Finally,” was what Jack did say, clearly in reference to Andrew's belated attendance, his impatience with Andrew ringing in his voice.

  “Hi, guys,” Andrew greeted in return.

  Jack shook his head in disgust and sat across the conference table from him.

  David offered a tight smile. “Good to see you, Andrew. We're glad you're here.”

  “Good to see you, too, big D. I'm just not sure why I am here,” Andrew responded, cutting to the chase in hopes that this meeting could be quick and he could get back to his apartment for some sleep.

  Jack had gone to business school, and to law school as well. Before George's death Jack had been a practicing attorney with ambitions of becoming a judge. Now it struck Andrew that his brother was sitting as stiff-backed as if he were already on the bench.

  Jack had brought in several files and now he set them on the table and slid them across to Andrew with a force that sent them sailing to the edge.

  Andrew didn't raise so much as a finger to intercept them and if they hadn't stopped on their own they would have ended up on the floor.

  “You're here to go to work,” Jack announced unceremoniously then.

  It wasn't like Jack to make jokes but that struck Andrew as funny. “Work?” he repeated.

  “Work,” his older brother confirmed.

  David, who had always stood up for his nephews, took a more friendly tone as he sat at the head of the table where Andrew could see him without so much as turning his head.

  “We need your help, Andrew. The porn scandal caused more problems. That computer hacker who fixed it so that people—even kids—who were surfing our Web pages could inadvertently be switched to a pornographic site nearly did us in. We're still trying to recover, to convince people that it was the hacker who did it, that Hanson Media Group has absolutely no affiliation with pornography in any way, shape or form. But we've lost advertisers and that means we've lost revenue we couldn't afford to lose. So we had to lay off a lot of people just to continue making payroll once we realized what financial shape Hanson Media Group is in. We're down manpower—”

  “And if you want money from the company you're going to have to earn it,” Jack cut in, finishing what David was saying and sounding every bit the big brother who was put out with his younger sibling.

  “What can I possibly do?” Andrew asked. “I don't have a clue about what goes on here.”

  “No, you just cash the checks,” Jack said, brusquely.

  “We're trying to get hold of Evan, too,” David added as if to let Andrew know he wasn't the only errant Hanson being asked to pitch in. “But Evan is being even worse than you were about answering our calls and e-mails,” David concluded with a tone that showed his irritation.

  Evan was the middle brother—five years Jack's junior, two years older than Andrew. Evan was more like Andrew in his freewheeling ways and lifestyle than he was the nose-to-the-grindstone, judicious Jack, or their straight-arrow uncle. But Andrew was a little surprised that he'd caved before Evan had.

  He didn't say that, though. Instead, still without reaching for the manila folders or claiming them in any way, Andrew cast his brother a dismissive gaze to let Jack know he wasn't taking any guff from him, and then focused on his uncle once more as David said, “We want you to sell advertising. We're hurting badly on that front and—”

  “And it mainly involves wining and dining clients and potential clients so we figured that wasn't too far removed from your good-time-Charlie talents,” Jack said, completing David's thought for the second time.

  “I may know about wining and dining, but advertising? Like I said, not a clue,” Andrew insisted, still half wondering if they were joking.

  But when his uncle clasped his hands together, laid them on the table and leaned forward, Andrew knew that wasn't the case.

  “Look, Andy,” David said earnestly. “We need you. There just isn't a choice anymore. We're short-staffed and the only money Hanson Media Group can afford to let out of here has to go to people producing for the company.”

  “In other words,” Jack added, “there are no more free lunches. You can work for Hanson Media Group or you can get a job somewhere else, but one way or another you're going to have to earn a living.”

  Andrew might not have finished college but he wasn't stupid. He knew he didn't have anything to offer when it came to the job market. But he still wasn't sure his brother and his uncle weren't overestimating his abilities.

  “It's not that I'm not sympathetic,” he said. “Or that I'm not willing to reduce my living expenses or whatever. But I'm not a high-pressure salesman.”

  “You'll learn,” David assured as if he had every confidence in him. “Jack and I will walk you through things until you get the hang of it all. But you're personable. Likable. You make friends easily. You wow the women without even trying. You can talk to anyone and put them at ease, make them comfortable and open to your ideas, your suggestions. Those things go a long way in sales. That's why we know you can do this.”

  “I'm glad you think so,” Andrew said under his breath.

  “You really can do this,” Jack said then, curbing some of the attitude he'd been displaying since coming into the conference room. “It'll be right up your alley. You'll just have to put some effort into it.”

  “Effort meaning wear a suit and show up here every day—nine to five? Go to meetings? Do paperwork? Call clients? That sort of thing?”

  “Your office is right down the hall,” David said as if he were thrilled and relieved that Andrew was on board, when Andrew didn't actually feel as if he'd agreed to be on board yet.

  “And it won't always be just nine to five,” Jack amended. “For instance, tonight you and I are having dinner with a company called Meals Like Mom's.”

  David picked up the ball and ran with it from there. “Last month Meals Like Mom's made the list of topten up-and-coming businesses in the Chicago area. It's an innovative concept that's taking off. Healthy, nutritious, preservative-free meals can be purchased at reasonable costs either from a few specialty shops or delivered right to people's houses. Busy, working parents can put a dinner on the table for their whole family that looks and tastes like they've spent the day cooking. Or single people or couples can treat themselves to a well-balanced, great-tasting meal without any hassle. Or Meals Like Mom's will send in a hundred or more boxed lunches—we did it on the larger scale at the last board meeting. All with the guarantee that the food will taste like someone has prepared it especially for them, like their Mom would make.”

  “Okay,” Andrew said, only half paying attention.

  His uncle continued. “My eyes and ears in the advertising world tell me that Meals Like Mom's has just hired one of the biggest local agencies to do commercials, radio spots and print ads for them. That's all going to have to go somewhere and it might as well be to Hanson Media Group. They could be a huge account for us and they could also bring with them the kind of clean image we need to be connected with right now.”

  “All the information we have on the Meals Like Mom's
organization is in one of those files,” Jack said. “You'll need to read it, become familiar with it. The other file will show you the deal we're offering and how it compares—favorably—with other local media outlets. That's something you'll want to use as a selling point. The third file will fill you in on what you're to say should the subject of the porn scandal come up—that could well be a sore spot for a company with Mom in the title. The meeting is at six. The restaurant's name and address are on a Post-it in one of the files. I'll meet you there at five forty-five. Suit and tie. Clean shaven. And get your hair trimmed. You look like someone who's been laying on a beach for months.”

  Without waiting for a reply, Jack stood and walked to the conference room door.

  But he paused there to glance back at Andrew. “Welcome to the real world. Time to grow up, little brother.”

  And out he went, leaving Andrew alone with David.

  But if Andrew had any hope of his uncle softening the blow he'd just been dealt, it didn't come.

  David stood, too. “Read through the files, commit everything to memory and then go out and get yourself fixed up and dress for tonight. This is important.”

  Andrew didn't respond. He just stared at his uncle.

  David passed by him on his way to the door, patted his shoulder and said, “I know you're up to this, Andy. I have faith in you.”

  Andrew merely raised his chin in acknowledgement of that, not wanting to say his uncle's faith might be unwarranted.

  Then David said, “Let me see if your office is ready for you and I'll show you to it, introduce you around.”

  And out he went, too, leaving Andrew once again alone in the conference room.

  Which was probably a good thing since the expletive he muttered wouldn't have been well-received had anyone been there to hear it.