One Special Moment - Brenda Jackson [30]
“Yes,” he answered with quiet assurance. “It seems we’ve been forced into action.”
Colby frowned. “What are you talking about?”
Sterling took her hand in his once again. “Come on. I’ll explain things in the car. I’ve discovered that in some places even the garbage cans seem to have ears.”
They began walking and when they reached the car Colby turned to him. She stared up at him, confused. “That was the second time you’ve kissed me. You can’t go around doing that whenever you feel like it. It’s not proper.”
Sterling couldn’t help but grin at her choice of such an old-fashioned word. “It’s not proper, huh?”
“No, it’s not, and you can’t do it anymore.”
“I can’t?”
“No, you can’t.”
Out of the corner of Sterling’s eye he saw that the photographer had disappeared. Evidently the man had been pleased with the shots he’d taken of him and Colby kissing.
“I’ll try and remember that I can’t kiss you anytime I want to,” Sterling finally answered pleasantly, opening the car door for her. He closed it again after she had slipped inside, then went around to the other side and got in.
“Yeah, just like you’re supposed to try knocking before entering my room, and try changing my opinion of you,” she said as he turned the ignition and backed the car out of the parking space. “As far as I can see, you aren’t doing a very good job.”
“I said I would try, Colby. You shouldn’t expect miracles overnight,” he said, smiling. She sat stiffly with her arms folded. He could tell she was teed off. And as usual, whenever she was angry, she was more beautiful than ever. A broad shaft of sunlight shone through the car and seemed to concentrate its golden rays just on her. It highlighted her flawless smooth brown skin and made her hair appear shinier, more silky.
After they had driven for a while, Colby said, “All right, Sterling, I want an explanation of what happened back there.”
When the car came to a stop at a traffic light he turned to her. “It’s easy enough to explain. Evidently that photographer works for one of those tabloid magazines. It’s my guess our picture will make the front page in a few days. Who knows? It may be out as quickly as tomorrow.”
Colby’s eyes widened. “The one of us kissing? In a public place?”
Sterling shrugged. “It wasn’t all that public. There weren’t many people around.”
“But it was a park, for heaven’s sake.”
He lifted a brow. “You’ve never been kissed in a park before?”
“No.”
“That’s interesting.” For some reason that bit of information pleased him. “From here on out, we have to lay it on thick for the media.”
“Lay what on thick?”
“Our absorption with each other. We have to convince them we’re madly in love.”
“Why?”
Sterling met the confused darkness of Colby’s eyes. “My wanting to get married will raise a lot of questions, since I’ve gone on record on numerous occasions and said married life wasn’t for me. And since neither of us want to draw any unnecessary speculation—especially from the media—as to why we’re getting married, starting today we’ll give them performances worthy of the Oscars.”
Colby couldn’t help but think about the kiss they’d shared at the park. Did he mean there would be more public displays of them that way? She hoped not. She didn’t think her body could handle too much of kissing him. Already it melted each and every time he took her into his arms.
“Will that be absolutely necessary?” she felt compelled to ask.
“Yes. If it was just me I’d care less, but since we don’t want my son to grow up with the stigma of being a surrogate child, I don’t want to give—”
“Why did you just refer to the baby as ‘your son’? Do you have a problem with the possibility of having a daughter?”
Sterling smiled. “No, but that’s not a possibility. There hasn’t been a female born into the Hamilton family in over a hundred years.”
“Not a one?”
“No, not a single one. Right now there aren’t any women in the Hamilton family, period.”
“Didn’t you get females in your family when the Hamilton men married?”
“Not for long. There’s a high divorce rate among Hamilton men. It