The Tycoon's Socialite Bride (Entangled Indulgence) by Tracey Livesay Page B

she doesn’t fit as easily into the role as he would like. When Cissy died, I wished he’d turned to Pamela, instead of in on himself. He loves her, he really does. But I think his expectations of Pamela are tied up in honoring his memories of Cissy.”
    They stopped in front of a small velvet rope, staffed by a large man in a black suit.
    “You can let Mr. Pearson through.” She patted Marcus’s arm. “Senator Harrington’s study is at the end of this corridor. Good luck.”
    Once the henchman granted him access, he walked down the passageway, the din of multiple conversations and clinking silverware fading until all he could hear was his own breathing.
    Ahead of him a deep raised voice came from a wooden door with brass handles that stood ajar. “Are you pregnant?” the man asked.
    “No!” Pamela’s voice. “Why would you ask me that?”
    “What else would explain that tasteless display? Honestly, Pamela, what are you thinking?”
    Realizing he’d come to the right place, he inched the door open and slid into a room with floor-to-ceiling bookcases and warm wood furnishings that embodied all his youthful illusions of how the upper class lived. It even smelled the way he’d imagined, an affluent mixture of citrus, pipe smoke, and leather.
    He didn’t try to hide his presence, but the man was so focused on his daughter he didn’t notice Marcus standing in the doorway.
    “I was the last person to know, in my own home, that my daughter was engaged. People I barely know approached me, offering their congratulations. Do you know how that made me look?”
    Pamela didn’t respond. She stared out the window, her posture tense, giving him an unobstructed view of the lovely expanse of honeyed skin along her back.
    “That dress,” Warren Harrington said, as if he’d read Marcus’s mind. “You’ve never worn something so…so exposed. Your mother would never have worn a dress like that. Did he tell you to wear it?”
    “No, I didn’t.”
    Both Harringtons turned at the sound of his voice. Although Marcus had directed his comment to the man on his left, his gaze was glued to the woman at his right. He was struck, quite suddenly, by the resemblance between the two. A similarity around the nose and chin. An air of privilege that hovered over them.
    Senator Harrington’s eyes bulged. “You don’t belong back here. These are private quarters, for the family only.”
    How the man managed to look down his nose at him when Marcus still topped him by four inches, he didn’t know. Must be a trick entitled men learned in the womb. But Marcus hadn’t amassed his fortune by being easily intimidated.
    “I’m Marcus Pearson, sir. And soon, I will be family.”
    “If you think you can get to me through my daughter, then you are mistaken.”
    Harrington delivered the words with such antagonism Marcus was thrown off guard. The last time he’d been spoken to in that manner he’d been a boy, standing in the alley behind the Holcombe. His nostrils flared as if he could actually smell the rotten garbage baked by DC’s infamous humid heat.
    Pamela waved her arm at her father in an angry gesture of dismissal. “Not everything is about you. I can choose my own husband.”
    Marcus crossed the room to stand by her side, resting his hand on the small of her back. At the feel of her bare skin, his palm tingled and his fingers flexed involuntarily before settling firmly against her. She roused slightly, but didn’t move away.
    “This is not what I planned for you. He is not who I would have chosen.”
    “Why not? He’s smart, he’s successful, and he’s ambitious. What is it he lacks?”
    “I don’t know him. You’ve never mentioned his name, never introduced him to me, and now, you announce you’re getting married. Is my confusion totally inappropriate?”
    No, Marcus thought, it seemed very reasonable.
    “This isn’t about you not knowing him. You’re upset because you want to control every aspect of my life and I