she didn't remain there for long.
Both Taffy and Ia found themselves hauled unceremoniously onto their feet by their arms as Daniel pulled them close to him, looking back and forth between them. "Well? Do you two have anything to say for yourselves about the condition I'm finding this house in after leaving you two alone in it for ten days? Or the fact that the two of you obviously drank yourselves into a stupor last night?"
"You're not supposed to be home!" Taffy would be made to regret that remark, but it was the first thing she thought of, and she was very hungover, if not still reasonably drunk.
"Yeah. Not 'til Friday!" Ia joined in.
"Well, believe me, this sorry scene has made me sincerely regret taking the chance to come home early and surprise my wife." He glared fiercely at, first, Taffy, then Ia.
He sounded angrier than Ia could ever remember hearing him, and it was sobering her up—sort of—quickly.
"We're sorry. We were just having fun."
Daniel asked in a clipped tone, "Just how much fun do you need to have, Patricia?"
Uh-oh! Daniel had never in her memory—except while making his vows to her on their wedding day—used Taffy's real name. They were really in for it. "All of this is making me wonder if I need to hire some kind of babysitter for the two of you, since you're apparently acting like young hoodlums when I'm gone." He sniffed the air then continued to chide them, "You're both still blitzed, and I smell cigarette smoke for some—"
Then his eyes fell on the pack of Newports and the lighter lying on the coffee table, reaching down to pick them up.
Ia had never heard him use such a disappointed, accusatory tone as his hand tightened around her arm. "And I want to know, right this minute, whose these are. And I hate to think I have to say this to either of you, but don't even think about lying to me." He looked from Taffy to Ia, and back again, but neither woman said anything.
Ia's stock with Taffy went up because she held her silence in the face of Daniel's fury, but she didn't want the younger woman to take the blame for something that was her fault.
"They're mine," she answered quietly, not looking at her husband, but rather at the floor.
Daniel sighed, throwing the cigarettes and lighter on the table and running his hand through his hair. He finally noticed, in the dead silence, the unmistakable, repetitious sound of his extremely expensive, precious stereo system indicating that it had reached the end of a record some time ago, but the arm hadn't retracted, and neither of the drunkards in the living room had noticed that fact.
They were loosed abruptly, and after he'd picked his way through the minefield of candy wrappers—some empty, some full—and stray cereal and pretzels from a bowl of Chex mix that had spilled all over the floor, Daniel literally growled when he looked down at the records that were strewn everywhere—some of them his—some half in their jackets and half out. That was not to mention the fact that someone had put their drink down on the nice wooden cabinet without a coaster, which was going to leave a water ring.
He carefully rescued the tonearm from one of his new favorite albums—Patsy Cline—picking up a Cheeto that had fallen onto it at the same time and just throwing it onto the carpet.
But he held onto his temper, clenching his teeth with the effort as he turned back toward the girls, who were both looking guiltily at the floor.
"I'm assuming the two of you know that you are both in a heap of trouble, and I'm sure you realize that by the time I get through with you, neither of you is going to want to sit down for a month or so. But I will deal with each of you in turn shortly."
Ia lifted her head enough to shoot Taffy a quizzical look. They were both surprised to hear that they were getting any kind of reprieve, and neither of them thought that was going to be a good thing for them in any way. Why hadn't he already sent them to their rooms? That worried both of them. And, as it turned out, with very good cause.
A bit belatedly, Daniel spotted the girls' robes on the floor, handing Ia hers and practically having to dress Taffy, or she would have ended up in a heap on the floor with the effort. "But before I do that," he began, rubbing the back of his neck agitatedly before he took each of the girls by their arms again to guide them, none too gently, toward the dining room. It was there, they both came to the horrifying realization that a stranger had witnessed everything that had just happened. "I have someone I want you to meet."
Granted, the man's back was turned to them, and he was politely standing at the end of the room—as far away from their humiliation as he could get without going outside—peering out the sliders at the deck and the back yard. He only turned back around when they approached him, but that didn't make either one of them feel better in the slightest. He'd heard the whole thing, the scolding as well as the—however oblique—reference to the fact that he was going to spank them. Not to mention the fact that he'd likely also seen them in nothing but their nightgowns and underwear.
Ia's face could not have gotten any redder, if Taffy's was anything to judge by.
"This is the man I've been working very closely with on the London deal, and to whom I've been bragging, every time I see him, about my wonderful wife whom I love to distraction, and who makes such a beautiful home for us, and my smart, independent sister, whom I also adore, and of whom I have always been so extremely proud."
"Oh, God," Ia groaned softly, covering her face. She heard the lovely words—rare praise from him indeed. But she couldn't feel anything but embarrassment and remorse.
Taffy had begun crying softly as soon as he'd mentioned how she'd kept a "beautiful" house.
But Daniel wasn't going to let either of them off the hook easily "Douglas Martin, meet my apparently delinquent wife, Taffy."
Since the older woman chose that moment to throw herself against her husband and dissolve into tears, obviously hoping that this was all just an alcohol-fueled nightmare, Mr. Martin didn't get a chance to shake hands with her. "A pleasure to meet you," he murmured quietly, averting his eyes.
Ia had no one to cling to, so she ended up standing there alone in all of her glorious mortification.
"And this naughty young lady is my sister, Anna Maria, who is more usually called Ia," Daniel intoned in a manner that left no doubt as to the fact that he was severely disappointed in her, too.
Dear Lord, he'd called her "naughty" in front of a man she didn't know!
Unlike Taffy, she couldn't just ignore the introduction, much as she might have wanted to at that moment, so Ia gamely put her hand out while keeping her eyes on the man's spotless dress shoes as she fought back tears.
Her head snapped up, though, when she found the fingers of her cold, nervous hand taken by a large, warm one. But he didn't shake it. Instead, he turned it very gently over and brought the back of it to his lips, lying effortlessly in an impossibly cultured and low, undeniably soothing British accent, "I'm charmed to meet you, Miss Baldwin."
She pulled her hand back more in surprise than anything, because not only had he done the unexpected in not shaking her hand, but when she'd finally forced herself to meet the man's bright, intelligent green eyes, they were smiling ever so slightly—if fleetingly—as if he had a long acquaintance with situations like this and was quite at ease with them. It was not an unkind or even an overt smile—she doubted that Daniel had seen it—but he was definitely letting her know that he was far from horrified by what he'd witnessed. Instead, he was thoroughly amused by the pickle in which she and Taffy found themselves.
Ia had no idea what to make of that, or him, or her reaction to him, which went beyond recognizing that he was keenly aware of her plight. When he touched her, when his warm, soft lips were gently, briefly pressed to her hand, she'd felt something she'd never experienced before—something strong and intoxicating and stark that made her heart beat faster and her breath catch more than slightly.
She dismissed those feelings as fanciful, of course, mere remnants of the alcohol in her system, concentrating instead on his annoyingly accurate intuition