For a reason that he resolved to get to the bottom of, Erin was anxious to take a stab at being the bad girl she pretended to be. Fortunately, that gave him the perfect opportunity to take their relationship to the next level of intimacy and show her that he could be more than a casual sex toy. Not that he wasn’t interested in being her sex toy, mind you.
A small grin tugged at his mouth as he conjured up the numerous ways to help her play the bad-girl act. Oh yeah, things around the lab were going to get very interesting. Because he planned on heating things up.
First thing tomorrow morning.
Starting in the elevator.
Night had closed around them as Erin sat at her mother and father’s dining room table with the rest of her family. Her younger married sister, Terry, as her mother so frequently pointed out, and Terry’s husband, Kenneth, fussed with their three-year-old daughter, Sarah. Her other sister, Kayla, the youngest of the three girls, hadn’t been able to make it to dinner. Her husband was on call at the hospital, and Kayla had been up all night nursing her new newborn.
Erin swallowed her last bite of mashed potatoes and secretly thanked the Lord that she’d made it through another Sunday dinner without her mother bringing up her single status. It was rather refreshing to eat a meal in peace without visualizing herself stabbing something, or someone, with her fork. Thank God her father didn’t pressure her too.
She caught her mother’s glance. Oh no. Perhaps she’d jumped the gun. A familiar matchmaking gleam danced in her dark eyes and sent alarm bells skittering down Erin’s spine.
The sound of Luke, her one-year-old nephew, waking from his nap in the other room gave her reprieve. His high-pitched cries were like music to Erin’s ears.
Erin wiped her mouth and tossed her napkin onto the table. “I’ll get him.”
Excusing herself, she rushed across her mother’s Persian rug, stepped into the living room, and walked over to the marble fireplace to scoop Luke out of his toy-filled playpen. “Hey Luke,” she cooed, brushing his damp hair from his forehead.
As she snuggled his squirming body against her chest and inhaled his wonderful baby scent, her heart lodged somewhere in her throat. She fought down the unwelcome tug of emotions and set the rambunctious one-year-old down. The sound of dishes clanking in the other room, combined with the delicious aroma of apple pie coming from the oven, obviously held more appeal then being cuddled by his aunt. With supersonic speed, he disappeared into the kitchen. Erin grinned. The kid knew only one gear. Full throttle.
Before Erin could say her good-byes to her family and escape back to her condo to prepare her notes for tomorrow morning’s experiment, her mother rounded the corner. Smoothing her short blond hair behind her ears, Anna lowered herself into her favorite French Provincial wingback chair, and neatly crossed her legs at the ankles.
Without preamble, her mother jumped right to the point. “I went Christmas shopping today, Erin.”
Erin drew in air, and then plunked herself onto the matching sofa. Her stomach plummeted. She knew exactly where this conversation was headed. The same place it headed every time the family got together. She pressed her body deeper into the cushions, hoping the sofa would open up and swallow her whole.
She rubbed her temple, attempting to ward off an impending headache. “That’s nice, Mom.”
Anna’s dark eyes widened in delight as she leaned forward in her seat. “Guess who I met at the mall.”
“Santa?”
Pursing her lips, clearly disappointed in Erin’s smart-assed comment, her mother continued, “Richard Wallis.”
Erin groaned. Cripes. The sight of him taped to the flagpole in high school with nothing on but his undershorts still plagued her memories.
“He’s still single, you know.”
Erin arched a brow. “Really, what a shocker. I would have thought women would be tripping over themselves to sink their claws into a thirty-year-old guy who sells watches out of his trunk and still lives with his mother.”
Damn, Anna was really scraping the bottom of the barrel this time. The poor woman was getting desperate to marry off her ancient, twenty-eight-year-old spinster daughter. She’d obviously given up hope Erin would snag herself a rich doctor, like her youngest sister had. Now it looked as if anything with a penis would do.
Erin resisted the urge to roll her eyes heavenward. Like it was a freaking crime not to be married with kids by your thirtieth birthday.
Likely her mother had grown tired of fielding questions from the old windbags at her country club as to why her eldest daughter had yet to get married. It was simply scandalous.
Maybe Erin should just tell her mother she was a lesbian. That would really shake up the nosy old bats on card night.
Couldn’t her mother understand that she had her career, which was all she needed? And couldn’t she just be proud of Erin for working hard and earning the lead position for the latest project? And if this project turned out to be a success, she’d become head of her wing. Erin really didn’t need anything more than that.
Which left her wondering why her heart turned over every time she held her sweet little nephew in her arms.
“He no longer does that, Erin. Richard now sells video games at the mall, and he makes a pretty decent living. I hear he holds some King Kong record.”
Erin cringed inwardly. “It’s Donkey Kong,” she corrected. “I played it when I was a teen.”
How freaking delightful. Her mother was setting her up with a guy who still played kid games. The last thing she needed in her life was another man who
