Rose Is Back With Thorns

chapter fifty

He slid the document across the table and smiled at the woman before him. "We got that from Daniel's doctor. I can assure you that we'll win this case. No judge in his right mind would let a junkie have full custody of an eleven year-old."

Smiling, she fidgeted with her fingers. "I know you're the best attorney out there and I really want to be optimistic. I can't let him have our son, Warren."

"And he won't. At least not full custody." Warren responded reassuringly.

The woman nodded frantically before leaning in on the table. "But," she begun worriedly. "Daniel has more money than he knows what to do with. Should we be worried about it? I mean, this man can hire nannies and nurses and Jason will attend Ivy league schools, his needs will be met_"

He interrupted her. "And so will they be, with you. Celine, you run not just one but two companies. Singlehandedly, you've made it without Daniel boosting you. You are a wonderful mother and that's all the judge wants to know. It's what we're going to prove to him." He relaxed into his seat and sipped gingerly from his champagne flute. Grinning at his companion, he complimented. "Besides, Jason has preferences which the judge will put to consideration. And last I checked it was his cool mom over his insouciant father."

That lifted the frown on the woman's face, a dazzling smile bursting on her face. Excitedly, she placed her hand atop Warren's and squeezed it in gratitude. "You don't how happy it makes me feel to know my little man loves me."

A response was on the tip of his lips but it didn't make it out as his lips moulded against a full, velvety, familiar pair, so fervent he couldn't resist. Just as his lips began manoeuvring in synchronization with the ardent pair, the kiss broke.

Shocked and dazed, his gaze locked with the playful and yet deathly one. A smile that was far from one of amusement curved on those lascivious lips before the awfully familiar kisser beamed meaningfully. "Hello, darling."

After what seemed like an entire lifetime, his blood began to flow again removing him from his trance. "Rose," he breathed out. As if possessed by some spirit of confusion that needed to be forced out, he shook his head briskly. "Rose," was it really her or he'd missed her so much he'd began hallucinating?

But it was her. The extensive, conspiratorial smirk told him so and the light, circular motions her finger made on his thigh beneath the table. "Yes, my love." The tip of her pink tongue swiped slowly across the roof of her upper lip, her droopy eyes zeroing on his...seductively. "Surprised to see me?"

"What...What are you_"

A girlish giggle erupted from her smirking lips and her attention came from him to Celine. "I love this look on him, don't you? So perplexed!" That sensuous look on her face as she averted her gaze from Celine to him made his mouth dry, needful of her delicious mouth to devour and quench his thirst. How the woman managed to look like a lusty vixen and still have that hard, stern look on her face was questionable.

Her shapely brows furrowed. "Have you been misbehaving? Chasing everything," she sized up Celine before snarling at him. "...in a skirt." Leaning closer so she could whisper into his ears and lick the lobe of it discreetly, she whispered. "Being a bad boy?"

Lord, he'd thought about her every passing second of his life since she walked out on him two weeks ago. Her scent hovered in every corner of his bedroom, constantly reminding him of his lonely, broken heart, causing him to seek refuge in one of his guestrooms. With the aid of a good drink, he'd go to bed drowning his sorrow after a long day of working relentlessly afraid any minute he stopped, she'd be there waiting to torment his thoughts and his haunted house.

But the she-devil wouldn't even let him close his heavy, sleep-deprived eyes for a seconds nap without ambushing his dreams. Dreams so vivid and graphical he'd wake up smiling, reaching out to the left side of the bed where he'd have dreamt she lay after a bout of passionate lovemaking. But she wouldn't be there. And the brutal reality would come with a force, flooding his battered mind.