by Rachel Lee
But he owed it to her, if that was what she wanted.
There was a heart-stopping moment when she didn’t respond; then she reached out for him, pulling him to her. A sigh of relief had barely escaped him before warm skin met warm skin, setting off explosions of desire in every nerve ending.
Now! The word seemed to explode in his brain. He ought to take his time, ought to savor every moment, but he couldn’t. The need that was driving him was greater than any he had ever known. He found her breast with his mouth, sucking deeply on her already-erect nipple, feeling triumphant when she moaned and arched toward him.
He slid over her, pulling her knees up until she was completely open to him. Reaching down, he felt her delicate folds with his fingers, stroking them gently while he continued to tease her breast with his lips and tongue. She was wet and eager, arching toward his fingers with an unmistakable demand.
He was glad to oblige. He found her opening with his shaft and an instant later was buried inside her. Where he belonged.
For a few moments neither of them moved, as if the sensation was too exquisite. Then, propped on his elbows and knees, he began to move, slowly at first, then more rapidly, as she met him thrust for thrust.
He opened his eyes a little and looked at her, looked down at them joined together, then at her face. Her head was thrown back, her eyes closed, her lips parted and swollen, and soft, delicious little moans escaped her.
They were together in the most intimate way two people could be. Even as passion drove him on an ever-tightening upward spiral, he realized that he had never felt as complete as he did right now.
Then his last thoughts vanished in an explosion that seemed to rise from his very soul, and he heard his own cry echoed as Angela joined him in bliss.
The baby was crying. The sound roused Angela from a place so warm, languorous and deep that it seemed to come from a long way away.
She felt Rafe move, felt him lever himself off her until he sat beside her.
“I’m sorry,” he said. She felt him brush a kiss against her lips. “I’ll be right back.”
She didn’t move, didn’t open her eyes, listened to the sound of him padding across the bedroom floor and down the hallway.
His departure left her feeling raw. Embarrassed. Ashamed. Unwanted. Twisting around on the bed, she crawled under the covers and buried her face in the pillow, trying not to cry.
This was a serious mistake. She had done what she had promised herself never to do again. And instead of savoring the afterglow, she was achingly sad, empty, and angry at herself. And so very alone. More alone than she had been in her entire life.
He wouldn’t come back, she thought The baby was just a good excuse to do what he wanted to do—get away from her. Then she wondered why she was reacting so emotionally. She had known there could never be anything between them but sex, but she’d gone ahead and made love with him, anyway. What was she blaming him for? Her own stupidity?
“You okay?”
She nearly jumped out of her skin when she heard Rafe’s voice. Turning her head quickly, she saw that he was standing naked beside the bed, holding the baby and a bottle.
“Sorry I was gone so long,” he said, as if he could read the raw emotions she was feeling on her face. “Peanut was hungry.”
She managed a jerky nod and pressed her face into her pillow again. She heard the bedsprings creak and felt the mattress dip as he sat. A moment later he was beneath the covers with her, and the baby was tucked between their naked bodies. She looked, and found Rafe lying on his side, propped up on his elbow, feeding his son and looking at her.
This was too intimate, she thought, the baby between their naked bodies. Too intimate. This was a place visited only by married couples who shared a deep commitment. This was...this was something she had thought she would never know.
But she knew it now, and almost in spite of herself, she rolled onto her side and let herself feel the baby against her bare skin. He was wearing his playsuit, but that didn’t matter. He was a baby, and as if he were her very own, she was holding him against her breast.
A shaft of unanswerable longing ripped through her, leaving her bleeding in her very soul. But she couldn’t make herself move away. Couldn’t make herself destroy this perfect intimacy.
“I’m sorry,” Rafe said again.
“For what?”
“Leaving you like that It was bad timing. But one thing I’ve discovered is, babies are born with bad timing.”
Almost in spite of herself, she smiled. Something about the child against her was making her feel at peace again, as if somehow this would all be right in the end. And right now, she didn’t want to think about any other possibility.
What she wanted to do was lie there and pretend she had a right to this. That this was her baby, her husband, her life. For just a little while, she wanted to live in a fool’s paradise.
“Yes,” she said, “they have bad timing. But they’re so absolutely perfect, anyway, aren’t they?”
He smiled back at her. “I kinda think this one is.”
Peanut finished his bottle, then wanted to play for a little while. They lay on either side of him, pushing back when his little feet shoved against their hands, letting him grab their fingers, listening to him coo his sheer delight in life.
“I hope he can always be this happy,” Angela remarked.
“He is a happy kid, isn’t he?”
“He certainly doesn’t cry as much as some babies I’ve seen.”
“No, he’s never done much of that. A little when he wants to be fed, or when he needs changing, but otherwise, he seems pretty content with life.”
“Don’t you wish you could be like that? I do.”
His smile deepened. “Maybe we’d be like that if we spent our waking hours lying on our backs and cooing, instead of doing all the other stuff we do.”
She had to chuckle. “Yeah, I guess. Earning a living and all that kind of stuff kind of takes the glow off, doesn’t it?”
“Sometimes.”
Peanut grabbed her finger and hung on to it, jerking it around in the air as he waved his arms. He was looking so intently at her that she finally bent and kissed him on his soft little forehead.
“You’d make a good mom, Angela. You know that.”
There was a husky note in Rafe’s voice that made her look at him. But before she could fully read his expression or ask what he meant, he rolled out of bed and picked up the sleepy baby.
“I’m putting him back to bed,” he said, and disappeared.
Too close, Angela though. They were getting too close, and he felt as unhappy about that as she did. Suddenly furious at him, at the whole damn universe, she jumped up from the bed, picked up his clothes, tossed them out into the hallway, and closed and locked her door.
Then, grabbing a piece of candy to suck on, she thought about just how rotten life really was.
When Rafe found his clothes in the hallway outside Angela’s closed door, he didn’t know whether to laugh or get mad. “Damn prickly pear,” he muttered, then felt a bubble of laughter rising from the pit of his stomach.
God, she was a case. But so was he. And he supposed she had even more reasons to be wary of him than he had to be of her. After all, she’d lost her fiance and her baby, and she’d listened to him talk about how he had treated Raquel. That closed door, and his clothing scattered in front of it, was about what he deserved.
Well, he thought, it wasn’t the first time in his life he’d been a jerk. He just hoped that he hadn’t made Angela pregnant, because the last thing on earth he ever wanted to do was put her through another loss like that.
Grabbing his clothes, he pulled them on. Despite the central heating, the house was drafty and cool, and getting draftier as the day outside grew colder. He went downstairs to make a pot of coffee.
He and Angela, he thought, kept getting close, then pulling away as fast they could. Earlier it had been his fault, when he hadn’t come back downsta
irs. In retrospect, that had been asinine, regardless of his reasons. Maybe he needed to stop being quite so skittish. But even if he did, he doubted it would make Angela less so.
Why bother, anyway? This relationship was scarcely born and bound to go nowhere. But he was still annoyed at himself for giving in to the urge to make love to her. Considering how upset she had been beforehand, by now she probably figured he had taken advantage of her tears.
And maybe he had. Maybe he really was the user that Raquel had called him. Maybe he took from people what he wanted, then moved along unscathed.
Maybe he was just about the most disgusting slug a person could be.
He was just pouring his cup of coffee when a hammering summoned him to the front door. He went to answer it and found a deputy standing there.
“I’m looking for Rafael Ortiz,” he said.
“That’s me.”
The deputy handed him a thick envelope. “Service of court papers, sir.” He nodded, turned and walked down the steps and back to his car.
Rafe stood in the open doorway, letting the icy wind blow around him, looking down at the envelope in his hand. The rage that filled him knew no bounds.
“Rafe?” Angela’s tentative voice came from behind him. “Rafe, what is it?”
He turned, slamming the door behind him. “That son of a bitch Manny. I’ve been served.”
“Nate told you this was coming.”
“I know.” He tossed the papers across the foyer. “But somehow, actually getting served made it real. That son of...I’m going to have his cojones for this.”
“They’d probably taste pretty good with some salt, pepper and catsup.”
The remark came at him sideways, and he gaped at her for a moment before a bark of laughter escaped him. “Yeah. Mustard, too. No, better yet, some really spicy salsa.” He swore, but he wasn’t quite as angry as he’d been a minute ago.
“Maybe you should read them,” she said, indicating the envelope. “Just in case. So you know what you need to do.”
“I know what I need to do. I need to get me the best lawyer I can find in this forsaken little burg and get the whole damn thing thrown out.”
Her eyes widened. “Can you do that?”
“Sure. I don’t live here. I’m just visiting.” But he wasn’t as sure as he sounded. Inside, the doubts were eating him alive. What he knew—all he knew—was that he couldn’t let Manuel Molina take his son from him, not if he had to kill him to prevent it.
“I...” Angela hesitated. “I, um, I’m sorry I threw your clothes out like that. I don’t know what came over me.”
“I do. That was the smart thing to do, lady. I’m poison for everybody I meet.”
Then, grabbing the envelope, he went to the kitchen, leaving her standing at the foot of the stairs, staring sadly after him.
Chapter 9
After a weekend of flurries, snow finally fell. When Rafe woke on Monday morning, two inches of it covered the ground. The sky still looked heavy and gray, and he wondered if there would be more snow before nightfall.
He had expected to be thrilled with the sight, but he hardly noticed it. His mind was focused on one thing and one thing only: dealing with Manny.
By nine-thirty he’d found a lawyer who would talk to him. Not that there were a whole lot to choose among. One said he was representing Manny, and the other said he never did family law. In a town this size, it was surprising that any lawyer wouldn’t do everything. Which left Constance Crandall, whose secretary promptly made an appointment for eleven.
And that kind of worried him, the quickness of that appointment. In Miami, he would probably have had to wait days to be seen. So this Crandall woman wasn’t all that busy. Which might not be a good thing.
But what else was he going to do?
When Angela returned from her morning run, her cheeks reddened from the cold, he swallowed his pride and asked her to watch the baby while he went to the attorney’s office.
“I can drive you,” she offered.
He shook his head. “It’s only a couple of blocks, and I don’t want to take Peanut out in this if I can avoid it.” He hated the way her face softened when he said that, as if he were doing something special. He wasn’t doing anything special, just being practical.
And how was he going to deal with all this crap when he got back to Miami? Where was he going to find someone who could baby-sit at the drop of a hat? Someone he trusted the way he trusted Angela?
But he couldn’t think about that now. Right now he had to think about keeping the baby so he could deal with all the problems the kid was going to create What was wrong with this picture?
Feeling crabby, he dressed as best as he could for the cold, then stepped into the freezer that Wyoming had become. He supposed it didn’t seem all that cold to the locals, but he felt as if his skin was going to freeze. His feet even got cold through the soles of his shoes as he walked over the dry, powdery snow And his pockets weren’t deep enough to keep his hands warm. Why would anyone want to live like this?
Constance Crandall’s office was in one of the big houses near Front Street. When he stepped inside, the warmth of the central heating made his cheeks burn. The secretary, a middleaged woman with a no-nonsense attitude, offered him coffee. He accepted it gratefully, needing to get warmth any way he could. When the coffee came in a ceramic mug instead of a foam cup, he wrapped his frigid fingers around it gratefully. Miami had never looked so good.
Ten minutes later he was ushered into the attomey’s office, a pleasantly appointed, large room with stacks of papers and books everywhere. What he liked most was the fireplace, where a fire was burning cheerfully, heating the room.
Constance Crandall was a young woman with a mane of dark brown hair and bright green eyes that looked at him from behind thick lenses. Her youth unsettled him.
“How long have you been in this business?” he asked bluntly.
“A year.” She didn’t seem to take the question amiss. “I passed the bar a year ago.”
“You feel up to this case?”
“I concentrated on family law in school, and I’ve handled six custody cases in the past year.”
Six didn’t sound like a whole lot. On the other hand, what else could he do? He passed her the papers he’d received. “This guy is my kid’s uncle. He wants to take the baby away from me.”
“The law tends to uphold the rights of the parents over the rights of other relatives, Mr. Ortiz.”
“Hmm.”
She read through the papers more quickly than he had. He didn’t know if that was good or bad. But maybe she knew what was important and what wasn’t.
She looked at him. “He lives in Miami. What about you?”
“I live in Miami, too.”
“Well, Wyoming doesn’t have jurisdiction, then. Jurisdiction in these matters is decided by the child’s home. But that will just move the problem to Miami. How do you feel about that?”
“Six of one, half dozen of another,” he admitted reluctantly. “I guess I’d just like to get this mess out of my hair.”
“Let’s talk about it, then. Maybe we can figure out a way to deal with it right now. Is there any way you could reasonably say that this is the child’s home, rather than Miami?”
Rafe hesitated. “Would it be to my advantage to do this here?”
“Any more advantageous than doing it in Miami? That depends. It’ll get done faster—our dockets aren’t as full, I’d imagine. And folks around here tend to be pretty strong on parental rights. But if you could give me some reason why a local judge or jury would instinctively want to favor you over the plaintiff, we might be getting somewhere. Do you have relatives here?”
When he hesitated yet again, she said, “Remember, anything you tell me is covered by attorney-client privilege. I can’t tell anyone else.”
“Nate Tate is my half-brother,” he said. “That’s why I came here to visit. I thought he could take the baby...until I get my job sorted out
.” Which was shading it a little, but what the hell. He couldn’t face what he had originally intended to do without having a guilt attack bigger than Wyoming.
That was when she started to smile. “Nate Tate? Oh, you couldn’t have said anything better, Mr. Ortiz. Yes. It would definitely be to your advantage to pursue this here. Now tell me everything you know about Manuel Molina.”
When Rafe got back to the house, he found Angela sitting in the living room playing with the baby. Peanut was fixated on Angela’s face. She was whistling softly. And every time she whistled a note, Peanut puckered up and imitated her, making a little whistle.
“Did you see that?” Angela asked, laughing. “He’s such a smart boy, aren’t you, Peanut?”
Peanut made a gurgle that sounded almost like a chuckle.
For a minute Rafe forgot all his concerns, watching with pride and delight as his son whistled again and again in response to Angela.
He also noted how happy Angela looked, how absorbed she was in the baby, and he felt a warm tug in the vicinity of his heart. He also felt strangely envious, wishing she would look at him that way.
Finally, she did. Holding Peanut in one arm, she looked up at him. “How did it go?”
“Pretty good, I guess. It’s cold out there. If you want to come to the kitchen with me, I’ll tell you all about it while I make some coffee.” Constance Crandall had warned him not to discuss his case with anyone, because they wouldn’t be covered by attorney-client privilege, but he somehow felt his secrets would be safe with Angela. He’d never felt that way about anyone before.
In the kitchen, she and Peanut sat at the table while he made the coffee.
“Basically,” he said, when he finished and sat across from her, “I told the lawyer all about Manny and Nate.”
Angela caught her breath. “Even the part about leaving Peanut with Nate?”
“Even that part, although I shaded it a little, saying I was only thinking about leaving him with Nate until I got my job sorted out. Which is true enough now, because I couldn’t possibly leave the kid with anyone any longer than it takes me to get my life organized.”