To the Max (27 page)

She couldn’t hide the grimace. “You sure?”

He brushed her lips with his. “Positive, baby. Didn’t you feel how hard you made me come?”

Well, yeah. It had prolonged her own orgasm, the way he’d slammed into her, crazed, putting all his weight behind his thrusts.

“A bit messy,” she whispered.

His smirk was all male. “I’ll take messy anytime.”

Chapter Sixteen

“Ace, you ready? We need to get going,” Annie heard Max call from downstairs.

She made a few last touches to her updo and opened the door. Her grandmother didn’t believe in guests arriving fashionably late, and Annie didn’t need any more drama than what was going to be generated by her baby belly.

When she saw him, she almost tripped on her feet. Jesus Christ. She fought to get air in her lungs. He was so damn handsome; he was breathtaking, literally. He’d gotten fed up with the extensions and had cut off some of the length a few days ago, his hair reaching his shoulders now. The shaven sides had grown a bit, but he still had that roguish look, even with the formal wear. It was James’s wedding all over again. Better yet, because now she could touch and kiss him.

Her dad’s ex-wives were going to fall on him like a pack of hyenas.

Max stared at her as she walked down the stairs. “You look spectacular,” he said, reaching for her.

“You think so?”

He didn’t hesitate for a second. “Abso-fucking-lutely.”

Annie caught a glimpse of herself from the side in the mirror. “I don’t know. I look…pregnant.”

Max laughed. “You
are
pregnant, baby. Four and a half months pregnant.”

Yes, the cat had been out of the bag for weeks already.

“Maybe I should have gone with the other dress,” she mumbled.

That one had hidden her belly better, but it was from a maternity line. It had screamed “knocked up” so loudly, Christy and Holly hadn’t let her buy it. The gown she had on was a knee-length black drape that did not hide her pregnancy. Or diminish her bosom. And the only things it screamed were “designer” and “sexy.” The girls had said she was going to knock Max dead with it, and so far it seemed like they’d been right.

All her friends, and Christy especially, were ecstatic about Annie and Max’s relationship. Annie still fluctuated from panic to elation to panic again.

“I didn’t see the other dress you’re talking about, but I doubt you would have looked more beautiful than with this one. It’d be impossible,” he said, taking her hand and intertwining their fingers. “Besides, your family will find out eventually, right?”

Right. And better tonight with a full house.

“Remember when I told you that some occasions call for dressed sex?” he whispered in her ear.

She nodded.

“Well, this is one of those,” he said with a mischievous grin, caressing her legs, his calloused fingers scratching her thigh-highs on their way to the lace on top.

Annie’s stomach clenched at his touch. “Max, we’re late.”

“You’re too tense.”

Ha! And she was going to get tenser if he didn’t stop stroking her and they didn’t get out of there.

He laughed, probably reading her expression. “Let’s go, Ace. Before you have a meltdown. Rain check?”

“Rain check,” she answered as they walked to the car.

Annie couldn’t stop fidgeting. Max had to have noticed she was unusually quiet, but he didn’t say anything.

“Max, we need to talk,” she finally said. She should prepare him a bit, or he would run for the hills.

“About fucking time. What’s up?” She wasn’t sure how to start, and since she was silent, Max jumped the gun, his tone harsh. “You don’t want me there? You prefer to go alone?”

“No, no, it’s not that,” she hurried to assure him. “I’m a bit apprehensive, but not because of you. Because of them. This is going to be nothing like the family birthday parties you’re used to. Or any Bowen family event, for that matter. My father’s ex-wives will be there. They all live on the grounds, except for my mom and Miranda. She traded my dad for an even richer, older guy. She’s emancipated, so to speak. Not Rowena and Dee Dee, they each have a house on the estate.”

“You’re fucking with me.”

“Nope. They do have a weird, very dysfunctional relationship.” It was funny because her grandmother disliked Annie’s mother profusely, but she’d been the only wife who hadn’t bled her son dry. “My dad is a brilliant businessman, but when it comes to women, he’s a…moron.”

There really was not a nicer way to describe him. He had a very strong-willed mother who ruled his life, and he ended up choosing the same pattern in wives: highly manipulative. But where Annie’s grandmother looked out for the family’s interest, her dad’s wives didn’t. Before her parents divorced, Annie had had a nanny from Central America who always said that two boobs had more pulling power than two oxen. Her dad was living proof of that, only in his case, two boobs had more horsepower than a frigging Ferrari.

“Your dad’s current wife doesn’t complain about the other two being around?”

“Barbara is accommodating. She doesn’t like it, but she keeps quiet.” Barbara was nicer. The nicest of all, as a matter of fact. And not younger than Annie, which got Barbara some brownie points. “Turn right here,” she said as they arrived in an upscale residential area.

“You have a very interesting family, Ace.”

He didn’t know the half of it. “Not sure if interesting is the right word.”

They stopped at the main gate. Max stared at it, then at the big house up the hill. He turned to her, his face carved in disbelief. “Jesus Christ, you said your family was comfortable. You never mentioned you were related to the Rockefellers!”

“No, not to the Rockefellers. My full last name is Vaughan Griffin. My mom went back to her maiden name after the divorce. Everyone kept calling me Griffin in Alden, so it stuck.”

Max’s eyes grew big when it dawned on him. “Vaughan as in the shipping and real estate…”

“Yep, that Vaughan.”

He was speechless for a couple of seconds, and then he seemed to reboot. “Holy shit. I never would have guessed. For as long as I’ve known you, you’ve lived a normal life in Alden. How did you manage to hide all this?”

She wasn’t hiding it, not actively, anyway. It just was not a part of her life. “My mom was the one who made sure we stayed grounded. When she divorced my dad and we came to Alden to run the candy shop, she left behind everything. Whatever ostentatious presents I got from my dad or my grandparents, she managed to swap them for more normal, affordable ones. While growing up, I was always surprised how my dad bought exactly what I wanted. It was only years later that I understood it was my mom choosing the gifts.” Whenever Annie wanted to go to summer camp with her friends and her dad had arranged for her to go to some superduper, expensive alpine retreat, her mom was the one who did the exchanging. “After I got my driver’s license, my dad got me a flashy car. Mom traded it for a cute, very old, pink convertible Beetle I had been talking about for years.”

“I remember that pink convertible.”

“The difference in price for all the presents, she put in the bank.” By the time Annie was twenty-one and that account was handed to her, she could have bought herself a small South American country with it.

“Your father never wondered where all his presents were?”

“Short memory. If he ain’t fucking it, he doesn’t care too much. Plus, his secretary ordered them anyway.”

“Wow.”

“My mother told me later on that she’d replaced all those megaexpensive presents because that was not our lifestyle. When I turned twenty-one, she said that if I wanted all those fancy things, she wasn’t going to interfere. By then, though, I’d realized I really didn’t need any of that.”

Her grandma had kept pressing her to join the family business, but she resisted. Her cousin Philip and the board of directors did a good enough job. And she wasn’t a businesswoman or a socialite. Philip managed in that world like he’d been bred for it, which he had. Annie, as a special favor to her grandmother, audited the Vaughans’ finances once a year, but that was it for her involvement.

Now that she was on the subject, and seeing as Max hadn’t run away—yet, she decided to let it all out. “I have a very big trust fund straight from my paternal grandparents that will be passed to my children. And there are several events I need to attend every year, but that’s about it,” she finished while Max parked the car and they walked hand in hand to the entrance.

“Ready?” Annie asked. When Max nodded, she rang the doorbell.

Her grandmother opened the door. Her father had service, but whenever her grandmother was there, she personally received the guests, never mind that she wasn’t the hostess. It was a way to stick it to whoever was the current wife.

“Patricia.”

Annie smiled. “Good evening, Grandma.”

Max’s eyebrows went up, surprise all written on his face.
Patricia?
he mouthed.

Annie turned to him and mouthed back,
I’ll explain later.

“Grandmother,” she corrected her. She looked at Annie, her gaze making it to her stomach, and for a second her left eye twitched. In a fraction of a second it was gone, though, and she was the regal, aristocratic, manners-above-anything-else Patricia Vaughan.

Tomorrow, first thing in the morning, Annie was going to get a call from Polly with a nonoptional invitation to have lunch with her grandmother.

Annie kissed her. “Grandma, this is Max Bowen.”

“Grandmother,” she corrected Annie again while giving him a once-over. By the arctic glare on her face, he wasn’t getting the stamp of approval either.

“Max, this is Patricia Vaughan.”

“A pleasure, ma’am,” he said.

She opened her mouth, but at that moment Barbara came to the rescue. “Annie, how good to have you. Come take a drink before dinner,” she urged, leading them inside. Then she noticed Annie’s belly, because she opened her eyes and stuttered a bit. “Oh, wow. You are… Oh, congratulations. Wow.”

“Thanks,” she said. “This is Max Bowen. Max, this is Barbara, my father’s wife.”

Annie wasn’t sure what had Barbara more surprised: her baby belly or Max. After several seconds of blinking in disbelief, she regained her composure and walked them to the others.

Annie greeted her dad with a kiss. In spite of everything, she had a soft spot for him. Even for her grandmother. “Happy birthday, Dad.”

“Thank you, darling. Who is this young man with you? And more importantly, does he like Scotch?”

“Max Bowen, sir,” Max introduced himself, holding out his hand. “And, yes, Scotch is fine.”

“That’s a man after my taste,” Annie’s father said, shaking Max’s hand.

Annie smiled at Philip and introduced him too. She looked at Max. He hadn’t been expecting to be thrown into this situation, but damn if he wasn’t doing his best with it. He fit in flawlessly, as he did everywhere he went.

No one else mentioned the pregnancy. Not even in passing. Annie wasn’t sure her dad had noticed, and Rowena and Dee Dee didn’t have eyes for anyone other than Max.

Soon they moved to the dining room to eat. They had barely tasted the first course when it started.

“So, Mr. Bowen, you and my granddaughter are…what, exactly?”

Annie choked on the piece of bread she was eating.  “We’re getting to know each—”

“We’re together,” Max interrupted with a smile, his eyes on Annie, daring her to minimize their relationship.

“And what is that you do for a living?”

Annie stopped breathing. If he said he enhanced boobs and asses for porn magazines, they were going to end up having to do CPR on her grandmother on their way to the emergency room.

“I’m a graphic designer, and at the moment I’m also working as a stuntman in movies.”

Annie’s grandmother patted her lips with her napkin and discreetly cleared her throat. “A what?”

Yep, stuntman was a step higher than boob enhancer but just a tiny one. They were so in for it.

Barbara, again, came to the rescue. “Oh really? That’s so interesting, isn’t it, darling?” she asked, reaching for her husband’s hand and squeezing it.

Annie took a sip of water, relieved Barbara had derailed her grandmother again. Her dad’s fifth wife was almost six years older than Annie. For once her father had gone for brains over boobs. Not that Barbara hadn’t had any work done on herself, because she clearly had, but she was able to hold an intelligent conversation and did seem to care for her husband, which was more than Annie’s previous stepmothers had.

Having dinner at her dad’s was always awkward. Nothing like eating with your stuck-up grandmother, your flighty father, and your three stepmothers to put a damper on your mood, but Max managed to make it less uncomfortable.

“Patricia,” her grandmother addressed her. “I spoke with Sebastian the other day. He said he’s been seeing quite a lot of you lately.”

Annie nodded. “He brought his dad’s accounting to the firm, and I’m auditing him.”

And so it went. Business. Business. Business. The Vaughans’ mantra.

After dinner and before the men moved to the library for drinks and cigars, she excused herself and went to the patio to breathe some much-needed fresh air. It was cold outside but much colder inside.

Suddenly, she felt someone behind her. Strong arms bracketed her body while Max’s trimmed beard tickled her ear. “Patricia? Your name is Patricia?”

Chuckling, she turned around. “Patricia is the family name. My grandmother is named Patricia. Her mother too. I think they can trace those damn Patricias to the Mayflower. My mom committed the ultimate sin and named me Ann Marie after her own mother, who died not long before I was born. My grandmother has never forgiven her, nor has she called me anything but Patricia.”

“I prefer Ace.”

“Me too.”

They were quiet for a second. “So, Ace, who’s Sebastian, and what’s this thing about you seeing quite a lot of him? How much is quite a lot? And which part of him are you seeing?”

“Well, mostly from the waist down. You know, quickies in the office.” Max stilled, and she rolled her eyes. “The only thing I’m interested in seeing are his accounts for signs of creative banking. Remember I told you about Franke Enterprises? Sebastian Franke is the current Franke running it. That’s all.”