put his entire future happiness on the line, he wouldn‘t exactly have his mind on his brother and the happiness he’d found.
Jake would wait until after the wedding. He stared at the brown envelope lying on his desk and tapped it with his index finger.
“But look out, Aurora, because the week after the wedding, I’m coming to find you.”
He opened his desk drawer and tossed the envelope inside..
JENNA PARKED HER car on Nicholas Street around the corner from the hotel, then put a token in the parking meter. She pulled her collar up against the mild rain and raced for the light, avoiding the larger puddles. When the red hand switched to a green walking man, she crossed the busy road and walked west on Daly to the front of the Westerly Inn. As she approached the entrance a doorman opened the door for her and she stepped inside out of the rain. She shook her head, then fluffed up her hair, only slightly damp from the drizzle outside.
She crossed the grand lobby through the throng of guests on her way to the catering manager’s office, her mood almost as gray as the weather. The wedding was in two days and she hadn’t seen Ryan in three weeks. He should have been back from Paris three days ago, in plenty of time to help with all the last-minute details, but he’d been delayed and now wasn’t due back until tomorrow.
Luckily, she ‘d finished her consulting contract for Health and Welfare early, so her days were free to handle what needed doing. She wouldn’t start her next contract, developing a training course for a local software firm’s new application tools, until after the honeymoon.
It was a great job. The firm, Quixote, knew her work since they had used her services several times before, and had agreed that she could work off-site, which meant at home. They didn’t need the course for at least six months and she knew it would only take about two months to develop, so that would give her the chance to take it slow and take time off if she needed to. That definitely would keep the stress level down as she and Ryan adapted to living together and prepared for a new baby.
The clicking of her heels on the marble floor stopped as she turned off the lobby into the carpeted hallway at the left of the reception desk. As she approached the chestnut-stained oak door with the word CATERING on it in gold letters, a large, burly man with a dark mustache and curly hair turned into the hallway ahead of her. She recognized him as the catering manager, Mr. Deluse.
“Ah, Miss Kerry. Perfect timing.” He shook her hand. “So nice to see you again.” He glanced past her. “Is Mr. Leigh meeting you here?”
“No, I’m afraid not. He’s in Paris.”
His bushy eyebrows bobbed upward.
“And he did not take you with him?”
“Don’t I wish, but with our wedding only four days away...” She shrugged.
“Yes, of course.” He gestured her toward one of the two burgundy leather chairs facing his desk and she sat down. “So many details. But it is too bad, yes?”
Yes, it was. She would have loved to go. Not even to see Paris. Just to be with Ryan again. He’d left two weeks ago, but he ‘d been gone longer than that.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, with the pregnancy her body had been undergoing disconcerting changes. At first, she noticed that her nipples had become extremely sensitive. The mere brush of fabric across them made her horny as hell. One day at work, her breast had brushed against the edge of a binder as she’d reached for something on the top shelf of her bookcase. That had set off an intense tingling in her nipples and her hand had slipped under her jacket and caressed one hard nub as she’d imagined going down on Ryan as he lay sprawled across her desk right there in the office. Her face had flushed hotly when her coworker Sal had walked into the office and teased her about daydreaming. Luckily, Jenna had been facing away from the