Embraced by Faulkner, Carolyn (books for 8th graders .TXT) 📕

The people at his downtown headquarters couldn’t believe their workaholic boss was taking so much time off, but Barrett did as much as he could from the house, which was pretty easy to do with telecommuting. He cleared his schedule as much as possible for the rest of the summer, and planned on spending it concentrating on one Ms. Meagan O’Reilly.

He began to take her on formal dates, into San Antonio for dinners and to the Monet exhibit she’d mentioned she was interested in seeing. Barrett tried to make sure he was there for family dinners, and realized in the course of this campaign to win her affection how much he’d missed being around his whole family at night. They’d all grown up and out, and he hated the silence of the house with just him and Mandy in it, so he’d filled his time with work. It was a big, beautiful house that should echo with the sound of laughing children, and it would shortly if he had anything to say about it.

Family dinners were an experience, and always had been.

None of the Costas were shy, and Meagan wasn’t the least intimidated by the boisterous teasing, insults, and arguments that

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erupted in the course of a meal. Information, ideas, and opinions were consumed as readily as all of the food, along with puns, plays on words, and lots of “in” jokes. Both of his brothers obviously liked Meg, Hayden a little too much perhaps. Barrett had had a long talk with him and explained that his intentions were honorable, and that Meg seemed at least somewhat interested.

Hayden, who had had a great chance with Meagan because she already truly liked him, realized that there was an undeniable spark between the bubbly redhead and his more staid, dark-haired brother. He bowed out gracefully, mostly because he’d never seen Barrett this interested in anyone or anything besides making money and keeping the family together. It was nice to see Barrett chasing a woman, instead of vice versa. He usually had to shoo them out of his bed. His tanned, muscular good looks and dominant, brooding manner drew women like a magnet, but Hayden knew that it had been a long time since his brother had been serious about a woman.

He was glad it was Meg.

The more Barrett monopolized her time, the less cooking Meg actually did. They ate in the city, or met for lunch if he actually had to go into the office, and more often than not, neither of them wanted dinner when they finally got home. Poor Mandy was going to starve, but it was all in the name of Barrett’s happiness and she was glad to make any sacrifice, as long as she was allowed to whine about it to annoy him.

As he was working a lot at home, some of their time together was spent in his office – him clacking away on the computer or making phone calls, and Meg curled up on the sofa with whatever book she was consuming at the moment. She’d discovered his cache of books on archeology and read through them one by one, and had taped all sorts of PBS, Discovery Channel and TLC specials on the subject that they watched curled up together with popcorn. Lately, after he’d taken her to his favorite used bookstore in town, she’d hit on a series of vampire

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Carolyn Faulkner

novels that she hated to put down, and, as he watched her from his chair instead of getting any work done, he knew that she was so engrossed in her book that a nuclear bomb could go off beside her and she’d never notice.

She was wearing a pink tank top that looked like it had seen better days, along with an old, soft pair of blue jeans. Her hair was long and loose, in deference to his tastes – he was forever running his hands through it, fascinated by its silky softness. Barrett could imagine it fanned out on the pillow beneath her head as he made love to her . . . He shifted in his chair. Well, it had been at least fifteen minutes since he’d groped her last, and that was fifteen minutes too long for him.

Meg screeched as he ripped the book out of her hands just as she was getting to a fantastic sex scene between the human heroine and the vampire. “Give that back, you snot!” She kept grabbing for the book but he easily held it an arm’s length away from her. Barrett finally threw the book across the floor and pressed her down onto the couch beneath him.

“Sex break,” he breathed into her mouth as he captured her lips with his. While his mouth was busy plundering hers, his hands were equally busy moving the hem of the tank top slowly up her torso until her pretty breasts were exposed. He had asked her not to wear a bra, as they were not going anywhere today, and he loved the idea of being able to touch them almost at will. Meg felt personally that she was a little too well-endowed to go braless, but he had had that eager puppy-dog look that said it would make him so happy, and it was a very small thing to do, so she complied. The touch of his sweet, wet mouth on her nipple still shocked her every time, and he basked in the moans each flick of his tongue wrung from her.

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Her hands and mouth were busy returning the favor, and it stroked her ego when she heard him catch his breath as she lightly