She shook her head. “You don’t need to do anything. Of course, if you want to...”
Luke sighed with satisfaction. “I’ll be happy to do just that, darlin’—for the rest of my life.”
He settled over her, and she opened to him, cradling him between her thighs as he entered her slowly but inexorably. Then he was moving inside of her once more, and all her cares went the way of all bad dreams at the break of day.
31
Meg Baker sighed as she watched the setting sun slip below the horizon. So much for all my planning, she thought, feeling the now-familiar twinges of fear and uncertainty that had plagued her from the moment she’d stepped out of the safe confines of Manhattan’s posh Plaza Hotel the night before. She had purposely waited until after Daylight Savings Time to leave, just so she would be able to take a bus that would both depart after ten p.m. and arrive in Nashville before dark.
“The best laid plans of mice and men,” she whispered, paraphrasing Robert Burns’ famous line.
Meg stared out at the passing landscape, so flat here in northern Tennessee but also so incredibly green. She had never ridden on a bus before, nor—to her knowledge—had she ever driven on an Interstate, beyond what it took to get from various airports to their city centers. Hers had been a life of chauffeured limousines, first-class trains, and first-class planes. Now, after almost twenty-four hours of seeing how the other half traveled, she was exhausted. And frightened, she had to admit, but also determined to see this through.
As a world-class violin soloist, she knew she could get a job playing somewhere, if only she could manage to not be recognized, and she’d thought Nashville would be a good place to start. It was a city of music, but music so unlike what she normally played, that perhaps she could manage to stay under her father’s radar for the time it took her to establish herself in another place, another career.
Good luck with that, her inner voice said, making her stomach clench yet again.
That little voice was right, of course. If her father did not already have a private investigator on her trail, she would be surprised. Actually, it wouldn’t surprise her to see her father waiting for her at the bus terminal in Nashville, but she hoped not.
She had been careful. Her father always, without fail, disappeared into his suite at nine-thirty sharp on any night she wasn’t performing. He was rarely alone and always left orders not to be disturbed. Having lost her mother at a very early age, Meg had no illusions about what her father did with the beautiful women who seemed to always be available to him in whatever city they were visiting, and she had learned early to cherish these rare nights of knowing her father was otherwise occupied.