When the Earth Moves

by Roxanne St Claire

  She laughed softly again. "And what makes you think I'm a cowgirl? Because I wear a hat and boots? Everyone dresses like that where I live." She didn't, usually, but there was no reason to reveal why she'd worn the hat.

  "No, not the hat or boots," he said at the same time his hand moved slowly from the collar of her shirt, down the vee neck, pausing at the single fastened snap. "It was these rodeo buttons that gave it away."

  Lord above, she knew exactly what was coming next.

  Cam felt her whole body tighten in anticipation of his touch. He sucked in a breath, inhaling the warm, womanly fragrance of her in his bed.

  He lifted the snap, then let the material fall back on her skin without unfastening it. "Whoever called you a tomboy was blind and brainless."

  "She had a brain. She just didn't use it all the time."

  He didn't want to talk about Katie anymore. And he sure as- hell didn't want to talk or think about his mother tonight. Maybe Jo was right. Maybe he was looking for a consolation prize. And as sweet and sexy and fantastic as this woman felt in his arms, taking his comfort by having sex with her wasn't the right thing to do.

  He stilled his anxious fingers and laid his hand on her breastbone. Under his palm, her heart thudded just like his. Her blood raced, just like his. And he'd bet if he went exploring, he'd find her body was fully aroused, just like his.

  But she hadn't gotten on a plane and traveled three thousand miles to get laid. She'd taken a huge risk to "do the right thing." She never had to tell the courts or the McGraths about the existence of this baby.

  "Go to sleep, sweetheart," he said softly.

  "I can't."

  "Am I bothering you?"

  He could practically feel her smile. "That's one way of putting it."

  He moved his hand up to her throat and tucked his fingers in a safe place, along the line of her delicate jaw. He liked holding her like this. Even with the stupid blanket between them. He liked it. And this level of comfort, he'd earned. ' "Try to sleep, Jo."

  They hardly moved for the next few hours, as he drifted in and out of sleep and braced himself for the onslaught of old enemies that had been known to haunt him on bad nights. Images of a dark-haired woman with a gentle laugh, on her knees in a garden. But none came.

  But he did dream of a girl. A beautiful girl with long, auburn hair and her own distinct laugh, also on her knees, but in front of him. Her hands were demanding. Her mouth was accommodating. Her talents were indescribable.

  The powerful ache of an erection punched him awake with a start. And the first thing he saw was a mane of reddish hair splayed over the pillow and the sweet face of Jo Ellen in repose, the golden fingers of dawn slipping through the blinds to light her skin. Leaning up on an elbow, he studied her, unencumbered by the need to figure out what she was thinking, free to just feast his eyes on the "cowgirl mechanic."

  Long, thick eyelashes swept the tender skin under her eyes. Her nose was slightly upturned at the end to give her some attitude and, oh, that mouth. Wide and symmetrical, with a little pout to the lower lip. His ache deepened as he remembered the taste of that lip and what it had done to him in his dreams.

  The blanket had drifted down, revealing her cotton shirt, the single snap still fastened. But the fabric was pushed back enough for him to see the creamy underside of a small, delicate breast. The need to touch it made his hands hurt and his throat go dry.

  Why did this woman get to him? He was no monk, hard up for a quickie. He'd been with Amanda less than three weeks before, and he'd always been able to control his sexual urges as well as he controlled every other aspect of his life. But this woman. This Jo

  She stirred and he waited for those intriguing eyes to open. To give him tacit permission to touch her. To kiss her. To taste her.

  His pulse pumped spurts of blood through his body, making him harder and hotter with each passing second. She turned slightly toward him, revealing more of her breast through the opening of her shirt.

  He wanted to say something to wake her. Something clever, something cool. But there was nothing cool about the way he felt. Maybe he could just kiss her awake.

  He placed his fingers on the snap of her blouse.

  It clicked open with almost no effort. She didn't move. Slowly, reverently, unable to stop himself, he caressed the skin between her breasts.

  She shuddered with a ragged breath as he dipped his head and kissed her mouth. Want and need coiled his body into a knot, a low growl rambled in his chest. She shifted, offering him her breast, allowing his palm to cover the smooth, silky nipple. Her mouth opened, her tongue immediately seeking his.

  She was definitely awake. And definitely giving permission to proceed.

  He eased the blanket farther down, anxious to get rid of their covers, their clothes, of anything that came between them.

  A flash of reason interrupted his erotic thoughts. Plenty came between them. Life and history and families came between them, but when she lifted one long, bare leg out of the covers and wrapped it around his, all those reasonable thoughts evaporated.

  "I dreamed about you," he whispered against her lips. "I've been wanting you all night long."

  She responded by sliding her hand under his T-shirt, her hot, talented fingers grazing the skin of his stomach and his own hardened nipples.

  She nibbled the edge of his jaw, the heat of her mouth and her hands searing his skin. "I couldn't sleep," she whispered. "And I had my own X-rated thoughts."

  The idea almost did him in. and he ground his hips against her as though he could thrust himself where he wanted to be. Inside her. Deep, deep inside her. "Tell me."

  "No. You." Her voice was husky and sweet at the same time. "A good shrink always analyzes dreams."

  He smiled. "You were on your knees."

  That earned a quick laugh. "That's generally how I work."

  Her hand moved slowly down his chest, back down his belly, and: her fingers dipped into the waistband of the sleep pants he wore. He lifted his body to give her access, and when he did, their gazes met.

  He smiled at her sleepy, sexy, hungry expression. "You're beautiful, you know that?"

  She stunned him by shaking her head a little. "You're dying for sex. You'd say anything right now."

  "No." He lifted himself away from her, as though that controlled action could prove her wrong. "That's not true."

  "You're not dying for sex?"

  "I'm interested , yes."

  She responded with a soft sigh. A hint of resignation and excitement mixed her eyes. "Me, too." Her fingertip almost grazed the tip of him. Fire shot through his groin and he squeezed his eyes shut to keep from thrusting himself into her hand.

  "Good," he managed to say. "But are you trying to tell me you don't know you're beautiful?"

  She didn't respond, her fingers poised dangerously close to a switch he didn't want her to throw.

  Slowly he reached down and encircled her wrist, easing her hand away from him, then lowered himself on her. Still a dangerous place, with his erection slamming somewhere in the vicinity of her lower half, the blanket providing woefully little separation, but he had more control than when her hand was in his pants.

  "Listen to me, Jo Ellen."

  "You have my undivided attention," she said wryly with a soft rock of her hips.

  "I think you're a beautiful woman. All beautiful and all woman." He added a thrust of his own for emphasis.

  And pleasure. "And if you want to, only if you want to, I can give you mindless, senseless, endless satisfaction. But not because I'm dying for it." He bent closer and kissed her, nibbling on that fantastic lower lip before releasing her. "And not because I need comfort." He slid his hand up to that sweet breast again, grazing the nipple with his thumb. "And not because you need to thank me for some perceived good deed."

  Her eyes flashed as she jerked out from underneath him. "You had me right up until that last one."

  The loss of her stunned him almost as much as her sudden
turnabout. He searched her face for an explanation. Was she mad? Insulted? "What do you mean?"

  In one smooth move she was away from him, the covers safely pulled over her. "I'm not going to sleep with you to get you to sign that consent petition."

  "I know that," he insisted. "I just1 just want you to know my motives were" Good God, he sounded like a teenager begging for sex. Forget that .

  In an instant he was up and off the bed. "You're right. This" he made a gesture indicating the two of them "is loaded with too many issues."

  She shimmied up, holding the covers over her chest. "And you don't do issues, do you, Cameron?"

  "Do me a favor, Jo, and spare me the pop psychology and stick to fixing dented cars."

  As soon as he said it, he regretted it. The pretty flush of pleasure drained from her cheeks, leaving pale, pained alabaster skin in its wake.

  "Sorry," he said quickly, shaking his head as though he could erase the words. "I didn't mean that as harshly as it sounded."

  "No need to apologize." Her voice was as flat as the look in her eyes. "I was thinking the same thing last night."

  All her spark disappeared. Man, he sure doused that fire with record speed.

  "Could I take a shower now?" she asked.

  And wash the remnants of him off, she might as well have added. Swallowing a curse aimed only at himself, he nodded toward the bathroom. "Make yourself at home. I have a few calls to make, then we'll get going."

  He turned and walked down the hall without closing the bedroom door. In the living room, he saw the evidence of last night's hours of self-discovery. A pile of handwritten letters, Jo's open bag, her boots, her cowboy hat.

  He picked up the hat and ran his finger over the satin band inside, feeling the bumps of a monogram. He turned it over and read the gold letters embroidered on the inside.

  "Lady Katie."

  Dropping the hat on the sofa as if it had burned him, he went into his office to call Quinn.

  * * *

  Chapter Five

  "She was what ?"

  "When she left home, she was pregnant," Cam calmly repeated into the phone, imagining Quinn's dark eyes flashing with the same disbelief he'd felt the night before. He'd gotten most of the story out, after Quinn stopped joking long enough to take him seriously. He'd described Jo's auspicious arrival, the letters and the fact that their mother and sister had been killed in an earthquake.

  "That's why she left." But the story got more complicated, and Quinn wasn't going to like it any more than he did. "Evidently Dad didn't believe the baby could be his because he'd had a vasectomy after Colin was born."

  His brother was quiet for a moment, and through the phone Cam could hear the clanging of hammers and whine of buzzsaws, and pictured Quinn in the midst of the beachfront resort he was restoring with his wife.

  "This Jo character sounds like a real wacko, bro," Quinn said dismissively. "Better send her back to La-La Land. Hey, I know it's a few months from now, but we're looking at arrival dates for Colin's wedding. When are you going up to Newport?"

  Denial. He recognized it from a thousand miles away. "Listen to me. I read about twenty letters our mother wrote to Dad. Letters, evidently, he wouldn't even read. Quinn, she wasn't lying. That much I knew by one in the morning. Vasectomies aren't foolproof, but apparently her history worked against her and he made her leave."

  "Her history ? She was a tramp , Cam. She ran away from home at seventeen and ran away from Dad at thirty-something. Anyway, she's dead. And so's this alleged daughter." Quinn paused for a second, then his tone turned casual. "Nic wants to get to the wedding a few days early."

  "The daughter had a baby," Cam said quietly, refusing to let his brother derail this conversation. "We have a niece who survived an earthquake and she's alive and up for adoption."

  Quinn copped a dramatic voice. "Stay tuned for the next episode of Days of Our Lives ."

  He knew Quinn would joke. That's how he handled anything uncomfortable. Colin, on the other hand, rebelled against society. And Cam? Well, he just controlled everything he possibly couldincluding anything vaguely resembling an emotion.

  "This is serious, man. Dad must have threatened her that if she didn't have an abortion"

  He heard Quinn's sharp intake of breath and recognized the stab of pain that he'd felt the night before, but continued quickly with the story. "He swore he'd never love the child and would turn us against it, and againstMom." The word sounded foreign on his lips.

  "An abortion?" Quinn's voice had lost all humor. "Have you talked to him yet?"

  "No. I wanted to talk to you and Colin first and give Colin the option of having that discussion, since it should be done in person."

  "Jeez," Quinn said softly. "What a helluva mess."

  "No kidding. Jo really wants to adopt the baby." He glanced toward the empty hallway, expecting her to emerge from the guest bedroom any minute. "I have to sign some papers that say we won't ever try to seek custody. I'm going to"

  "Whoa, just a second, buddy boy. Sign? Are you out of your mind? She could be a total scam artist or a flake."

  Cam swiveled away from the door, catching the rays of morning sunlight streaking across the New York skyline. "She's not a flake," he said in a purposely soft voice. He closed his eyes to block the million-dollar view, instead visualizing Jo's face just before he'd kissed her. "She's not a scam artist, either. She's kind of" How could he describe the cowgirl mechanic? "She's extraordinary, actually."

  Quinn groaned softly. "Extraordinary in bed?"

  Cam hesitated a second too long.

  "You slept with, her?" Quinn nearly choked.

  "No, I didn't." He couldn't help but smile. "Not yet, anyway."

  Quinn snorted. "Think with the right body part, man. Maybe this woman's Aunt Christine was our mother. But you don't have any proof that her daughter was Dad's. Now this nutcase shows up and wants you to sign some papers. And next, you watch, she'll want money."

  "I saw pictures ofKatie. She could be Colin's twin sister," he countered. "Or even yours. And" the image in his mind shifted to his mother's slanted handwriting "I've seen the evidence. Trust me and my lawyer's gut, okay? This is the real deal."

  Quinn was a gut-driven man himself, confirmed by the soft curse he mumbled as a few seconds ticked by. "Have you talked to Colin?" he finally asked.

  "Not yet. You know how he gets." Worked up. "He's so happy right now. I just thought I'd tell you first."

  "Hey, I'm happy, too," Quinn countered. "Didn't stop you from screwing up my day."

  Cam laughed a little. "Listen, Jo is not a fruitcake. Not a wacko. I'm sure she'll be a great"

  "Wait, Cam. Wait a second." Quinn paused and sighed low and long. "Maybe this baby belongs in our family."

  The sudden turnabout, stated with such underlying conviction, stopped Cam cold. "Well, you could make that argument, yeah, but I don't want a kid and neither do you."

  "Well, I better want one."

  The implication was obvious. And astounding. "What?" It was Cam's turn for disbelief. "Is Nic pregnant?"

  "Either that or I make her throw up every morning," he said with a laugh. "Always a possibility."

  A mess of responses collided in Cam, and he seized the most comfortable one. "That's great news. Congratulations, bro."

  "Thanks. We're pretty excited. We were going to tell everyone at Colin's wedding. She's only a few weeks pregnant, so we'll be past the three-month mark then."

  "Is everything okay? Nic's feeling good?"

  "Oh, yeah. Just tired, hungry." He could almost hear Quinn beam with pride across the miles. "And flat-out gorgeous."

  Cam smiled into his phone. "That's great, man. Really. I won't mention it to Colin when I call him, if you want to pop the big surprise yourself."

  "You're definitely letting him in on this, too?"

  "I can't sign this agreement without talking to both of you and Dad, too. You'd have a right to adopt her, too, you know. Of course, you have your
hands full now, and Jo, she really loves this kid like family."

  " Like family isn't family." There was that serious tone again. It sounded out of character from Quinn. Must be the pregnancy hormones in the air down in Florida.

  "What are you getting at, Quinn?"

  "Maybe we owe this child a family, a name, a home."

  A cool chill blew over Cam. He'd had that same thought, late last night, reading those letters that told about a girl named Katie who must have had quite a personality. He'd felt a brotherly pride, but hadn't been able to articulate what Quinn just did.

  "She's in California, Quinn. Being raised by someone who loves her. We don't have any right"

  "We have every right to find out if she's really related to us and, if she is, what kind of home she'll be in."

  He heard a noise behind him and spun the chair around to see Jo standing in the doorway of his office, her arms crossed, wet strands of hair darkening the fabric of her shirt. How long had she been eavesdropping?

  "You gotta trust me, Quinn," he said, his gaze meeting hers as she entered the room and dropped into the single chair across from his desk.

  "I trust you. You're the smartest, coolest guy I know. After me."

  Cam resisted the urge to smile, knowing she wouldn't like that reaction. She knew damn well who he was talking to, and what it was about. "So shut up and let me do the right thing."

  "Just be sure you know what the right thing is, Cam," Quinn insisted. "Is this Jo character the best person to raise someone in our family? Will she be a good mother? Is her life stable? Does she do drugs? Is she legit?"

  Cam realized, with a bit of a shock, that he didn't know much at all about "this Jo character."

  "She's legit," he responded. "She owns a business." He studied the way she gnawed on that pretty lower lip, her sharp gaze trained on him. How had Quinn described Nicole? Flat-out gorgeous. Well, if that was an attribute for motherhood, Jo was overqualified.

  He winked at her, but she just arched an eyebrow and let every bit of body language show him she had no intention of leaving and no shame about listening.