Claiming His Love-Child. Sandra Marton

The X-rated images, captured forever in his head.

      Marissa, whispering his name. Clinging to him. Moving beneath him, taking him deep, so deep, inside her…

      “Hell,” Cullen muttered. It was pretty sad when a grown man could turn himself on by thinking back to something that had happened two months ago.

      Exhaustion could explain it. He’d flown in Friday, straight from a week of twelve-hour days spent between his office and the courtroom. Combine that with jet lag, a Sicilian heat so oppressive you could almost feel it melting your bones, toss in worry about Fallon’s accident and the scars left on her lovely face, and he had every right to be a basket case.

      At least he wasn’t worried about Fallon anymore. His sister was so happy, so beautiful, so cherished by her new husband that it was a joy to see.

      As for all this stuff about a woman he hardly knew…There was no point in trying to figure it out. What he needed was a breather. A real one. A true break in routine. The case back home was done with; he had nothing urgent on his agenda. He could change his flight, go to Nantucket instead of Boston, provision his boat, take her out to sea for a few days. Or fly to his cabin in Vail. The Rockies were spectacular in the summer; he’d always meant to do some hiking but he hadn’t found the time. Well, he’d find it now, pick up some stuff and backpack.

      Or he could go to Madrid. Or London. He hadn’t been there in a while. He could go to Maui, or the Virgin Islands.

      He could go to Berkeley.

      Cullen blinked. Berkeley, California? His alma mater, the place where he’d taken his law degree? It was an okay place but it wasn’t exactly one of the world’s premier vacation spots.

      Yes, but Marissa Perez was there.

      Back to square one. Man, he definitely needed a change! Sure, she was in Berkeley. So what? He’d spent a couple of evenings with her. Okay. A weekend.

      And he’d spent one night, or most of it, with her in his bed.

      Maybe the best thing was to let the images come instead of fighting them. Lessen their impact by letting them wash over him, like a wave hitting the beach far below the tower.

      Simply put, Marissa Perez had been spectacular in the sack.

      He’d never had a better time in bed, and that was saying a lot. Only a foolish man lied to himself and Cullen had never been a fool. It was simple honesty to admit he was a man who had a knack for getting it on with the opposite sex. Truth was, that knack had brought him more than his fair share of women who were beautiful and exciting and bright and great between the sheets.

      For all of that, he’d never enjoyed sex with any of them as much as he had with Marissa.

      Cullen scowled and turned his back to the sea.

      Out of bed had been another story.

      Oh, the lady was beautiful. Exciting. And bright. But she was as prickly as the cactus plants that grew on the sides of these Sicilian roads, as sullen as Mount Etna looming over the sea. She made him uncomfortable, for God’s sake, and why would a man put up with a woman who did that?

      Hold a door open for her, she gave you a look that said she was perfectly capable of opening it herself. Start to pull out her chair at a restaurant, she grabbed it first. Try to talk to her about anything but the law and the topic you were going to present over Alumni Weekend and she took you straight back to it, reminded you, though politely, that she was here only because she’d been chosen to be your liaison during your couple of days on campus.

      Cullen’s mouth hardened.

      The lady had an attitude. She’d done her best to make it clear dealing with him was a chore she hadn’t wanted but despite or maybe because of it, there’d been an almost instantaneous flash of heat between them, right from the minute she picked him up at the airport. Then, on Saturday night, she’d been making some stiff little good-night speech in the car outside his hotel when all at once the rush of words had stopped, she’d looked at him and he’d reached for her…

      And changed things by taking her to bed.

      No more haughty intellectual talk about torts and precedents. No more stiff insistence on proving her independence. Not during that long, hot night together. She’d said other words, instead, gone pliant in his arms, uttered soft cries of pleasure as he touched her, tasted her, filled her…

      “Got to tell you, bro, a man looks like that, his thoughts are probably X-rated.”

      Cullen looked down. Sean was climbing the watchtower steps. He took a deep breath, forced those last images from his mind and smiled at his kid brother.

      “Pathetic,” he said lazily, “that all you can think of is sex.”

      “The point is, what were you thinking of, Cull? From the expression on your face, she must be amazing.”

      “She is,” Cullen said, deadpan. “I was admiring the volcano.”

      “Etna?” Sean nodded. “Quite a lady, all right, but I’m not buying it. Only a geologist would get that glint in his eye over a volcano.”

      “Vulcanologist, and is that why you came up here? To take notes on the volcano?”

      “I came to escape our sisters. Meg and Bree are back to sobbing into their handkerchiefs, and now Ma and Cassie have joined in.”

      “Well,” Cullen said, grinning, “what do you expect? They’re women.”

      “I’ll drink to that.”

      “So would I, but it would mean we’d have to go back to the terrace.”

      “No, it wouldn’t.”

      Sean winked and pulled a pair of sweating green bottles from his rear trouser pockets. Cullen clapped a hand to his heart.

      “No,” he said dramatically. “It can’t be!”

      “It can.”

      “Beer? Honest-to-God beer?”

      “Better. Ale. Irish ale. Here. Take yours before I change my mind and drink them both.”

      Cullen took the bottle Sean held out. “I take back everything I ever said about you. Well, maybe not everything, but a man who can find Irish ale at a Sicilian wedding can’t be all bad.”

      The brothers smiled at each other and took long, satisfying drinks of the cold ale. After a minute, Sean cleared his throat.

      “Anything on your mind? Anything you want to talk about, I mean? You’ve been kind of quiet.”

      Cullen looked at his brother. Yes, he thought. I want totalk about why in hell I should still be thinking about a woman I slept with one time, weeks and weeks ago…

      “You bet,” he said, with a quick smile. “Let’s talk about how you snagged this ale, and what it’ll take to get us two more bottles.”

      Sean laughed, as Cullen had hoped he would. The conversation turned to other things, like how weird it was to see Keir hovering over his pregnant wife.

      “Who’d have believed it?” Sean said. “Big brother, talking about babies…Is that what happens when a man marries? He turns into somebody else?”

      “If he marries, you mean. Hell, how’d we end up on such a depressing topic? Marriage. Children.” Cullen shuddered. “Let’s go see about the ale,” he said, and just that easily, Marissa Perez went back to being nothing more important than a memory.

      HOURS later, in a jet halfway over the Atlantic, Cullen looked at the flight attendant hovering over him in the darkened comfort of the first-class cabin.

      “No coffee for me, thanks,” he told her.

      “No supper? No dessert? Would you like something else, Mr. O’Connell?”

      Cullen shook his head. “I spent the