Mary's Child

by Ramin, Terese

  He let himself feel her weight, but shut off the restive stirrings of anticipating what tonight might mean to tomorrow. Even so, the stirrings refused to be ignored entirely.

  What did he do about her, about this? He sure hadn’t intended... Had hoped, but hadn’t prepared—

  The thought stuck, slammed him full force with the sensation of the viscous stickiness seeping around the area of their joining. Damn. He really hadn’t prepared. And although he was certain both he and Hallie were healthy, he was also pretty damned sure she wouldn’t be taking anything to prevent pregnancy while she was still nursing Maura.

  Now what? He wanted her—how he wanted her!—but he wasn’t in a position at the moment to commit to anything or anyone besides Maura beyond this momentary act. Even when the object of his desire was his oldest, his best, his most well-loved friend. He couldn’t begin to imagine what she’d expect from him now that they’d made love.

  His arm tightened convulsively, unconsciously around Hallie. Here he’d just found her again and already he’d probably gone and—literally—screwed things up. If sex didn’t change everything, it sure changed your thoughts.

  His jaw clenched, muscles ticked, straining to find the right way to undo or redo what he hoped he hadn’t just done wrong.

  So many devils on his back and too many druthers driving them. Always thin, the fine line between regret and remorse frayed and began to unravel. A big, macho guy like him, and all it took was one tiny little girl, the woman who’d borne her, and a little—well, okay, more than a little—unprotected lovemaking to bring him to his knees, make him question a lifetime of contradictory beliefs, both sides of which urged him to do what was right to avenge the past, protect the future.

  What was he going to do?

  He turned his head slightly, looking over the sofa arm beside his head. By rights, he had enough to keep him awake trying to sort through it all that he should never be able to sleep again.

  But Hallie’s weight was warm and solid, as comforting here in sleep as she’d been their first time together, trying to soothe his bruised I-am-a-great-lover-even-though-I’venever-done-it-before machismo. And even when she was part of what was wrong, it seemed she never failed to make things right—especially now, when she still came to him, loved him, trusted him enough to fall asleep on top of him.

  His eyelids flickered shut, open; he offered up The Serenity Prayer and relaxed on a sigh. Amazing woman, his incredible friend Hallie.

  Again his eyelids fluttered briefly. Outside he could see the morning lightening, the snow drifting gently passed the windows...

  Then he saw nothing but his dreams because he, too, was asleep.

  Chapter 10

  Morning came—dull gray light above the bright white ground.

  Hallie woke to the scratchy sound of Maura’s cry coming through the baby monitor, and the sensation of the earth trying to erupt as quietly as possible both within and beneath her body.

  Disoriented, she blinked and raised her head. Still half under her, Joe shrugged and offered up an apologetic smile.

  “Sorry. I didn’t want to wake you.”

  “Wake me?” She blinked again. Boy, she felt wonderful, but thoroughly and completely bean-brained this morning. Maura through the baby monitor and Joe in her bed didn’t make sense. “Why would you wake me? Why—Ooohh.”

  He moved slightly and her memory returned, trounced disorientation and raised distraction. No wonder she felt so incredibly relaxed. Heat rose in her cheeks when she looked at him, flashed through her breasts and belly when she felt his morning arousal slide reluctantly from the channel between her thighs; her embarrassment and horniness wrapped in a single package.

  “I—you—we...slept like that?” she asked carefully.

  “Mmm.”

  “It’s possible?”

  He thwarted a grin. “Apparently.”

  “It...it wasn’t...uncomfortable for you?”

  “Not till you started wiggling around.” The grin turned unruly and escaped the bonds he put on it. Frankness was an interesting commodity when you could afford it. First with Hallie, and second, after last night and its possible unforeseen ramifications, he figured he really couldn’t afford anything less. “Then I wanted to dump you on your back and wake you in the best way I could think of.”

  Deliberately or accidentally, she missed the point entirely.

  “I wiggled and made you...” Mortification stained her neck. She slid away from him and pulled her pajama top closed. “I can’t believe...I didn’t realize... Jeez, I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be.”

  “I tried to warn you. It’s been a long time and I—I’ve sort of forgotten the etiquette of sex and I’m pretty—”

  She didn’t hear him—and she was having one of her dense mornings. They happened occasionally to mothers—and to uncertain lovers who hadn’t been together for a long time. “—out of practice and—”

  “Hallie.” He shut her up with tongue and lips and with a hand that glided over her breast, then found her fingers and brought them down to wrap around him. Pulled back slightly to make sure she looked him in the eye. “Does this feel like I think your being out of practice is a bad thing?”

  She grimaced, unconvinced but hopeful. “Not exactly, no.”

  “All right then.” His grin was all suggestive bad boy— and bad all the way to the bone at that. “And anyway, it’s my fault. I liked it. You can wiggle against me any time you want.”

  If he intended to make her feel better—although knowing him as long and as well as she had, altruism was doubtful—he failed miserably. Her blush deepened; she pressed her arms across her chest, trying to contain the refreshed ache for him. “Oh, Jeez, Joe. What are you tryin’ to do to me? I’ve got to get up and take care of Maura in a couple of minutes and all you’re doing is making me want to stay here and—”

  “Hallie.” It was a command to shut up, a plea for relief. He pulled her around to face him where he knelt now at the side of the bed, spread her thighs at his waist and rubbed the hardened length of himself against the roughness of the curls above her mound. “Do you know what you saying that does to me? How hard it makes it—”

  “Well, yeah.” Hallie’s maternal instincts abruptly took over as Maura’s pronouncement of wakefulness grew more insistent. She shoved Joe back onto his heels and scooted across the bed. “As a matter of fact, I can feel how hard it makes you. But I can’t play with you anymore right now, Joe. Your daughter needs breakfast.” She eyed him, and from a place of forgotten wickedness she’d only ever used to torture Joe—the ability to needle other people came from someplace else entirely—found herself adding, “If she leaves anything, I’ll be sure to offer you the leftovers later.”

  Mouth agape, he stared at her a second too long. How did she do that, go from shy, befuddled, not-used-to-thiskind-of-thing lover to cheerful, sexy, you’re-in-for-it-now, tormenting vamp in the blink of an eye—and in the very instant he thought he had her where he wanted her? Then, before he could recover from his own question, Hallie gave him a grin and winked. He made a lunge for her. The metal edge of the sofa-bed frame caught him where it hurt; he grimaced and swore.

  Chuckling without sympathy, Hallie rolled quickly out of reach and off the bed on the other side, stooped to collect her pajama bottoms from the floor. “And let that be a lesson to you,” she advised.

  “A lesson in what?” he grunted. “How to emasculate a man with a sofa?”

  More laughter. “Aw, poor Joey,” she crooned. “Want me to kiss it and make it better?”

  His pain dulled for an instant, replaced by the sudden burn of an erotic image of Hallie on her knees in front of him “making it better.”

  “Yeah.” One step up took him to the center of the mattress. The next took him off the other side. “I do.” He made a grab for her. “If you think you can.”

  “Oh, I can.” Laughing, she dodged him, fled to put the bathroom door between them. “But since I’m n
ot sure you’d survive the experience in your present, uh, condition, I’m going to be kind and just send you to get your daughter out of bed while I get cleaned up.” Then she shut the door in his face and locked it.

  His present Hallie-induced “condition” leaving him at a total loss for dignity and decorum, he rattled the knob. “Hallie.”

  “Sorry, Joe.” Her voice through the wood was breezy. “Can’t talk. Gotta get ready to feed the baby.” He heard the water start to run in the shower, then Hallie’s voice at the door for an instant. “You could go talk to her about it. She’s a great listener in the morning. Might even have some advice for you.”

  “Halleluia, damn it!”

  Cursing his frustration, he shoved his hands through his hair. He’d better find some protection or other means of relief soon for the craving she roused in him, or being around her would, much sooner than later, kill him.

  “Hallie!”

  So much for being in control of the situation, he reflected. But that was the way it had always been between him and Hallie: one moment he punched her buttons, the next she dragged him around by the—Well, suffice it to say it was a lifelong cycle between them. Give a little, take a little; torture a little, get a little of your own back.

  Boy-girl, adolescent-adult. Man-woman, sex-love. Competition that had as little to do with actually competing against each other as it had to do with the battle—and the accommodations—between their sexes. His body wanted hers, his heart reluctantly needed her, and thirty years of friendship made him feel closer to her, love her in some ways better than anyone else he’d ever known.

  The shower curtain rattled and Hallie’s voice came out of a watery distance, cutting into his thoughts.

  “Coffee’s in the fridge if you want to make some after you get Maura up,” she called. “Now go away and let me shower in peace.”

  “Great!” he shouted through the door. Whatever pride he’d had in his capacity for self-control had gone the way of his dignity the moment she’d begun to tease him, tantalize him, taunt him. “Just great, Thompson. What about my piece?”

  A wicked chuckle drifted above the noise of the water. “Go away, Joe,” he thought he heard her say. “This water’s damned cold. So, right now if I have to suffer, so do you.”

  The cold-water part of her pronouncement brought back his sense of humor.

  “Just ’s long’s it’s both of us,” he muttered. Then, grinning, he released the doorknob and went.

  As much as he might want her, at the moment he and Hallie had other responsibilities to see to, he reminded himself. His daughter needed him. Or rather, she needed Hallie, but he was first available and he hoped that counted for something.

  But it was another lie. Oh, he didn’t lie to himself about Maura requiring attention, or about hoping his attention could substitute even briefly for Hallie’s, or even about his sense of responsibility to—his instant and irreversible love for—the incredible little being his genes had helped to create. Or about how it was possible to lose his heart so quickly to someone he hadn’t even known existed until yesterday... And he had, lock, stock and solid-gold key.

  But Maura and the heart she owned were rather beside the point when it came to his body’s hankerings, his spirit’s needs, his mind’s denials and Hallie.

  No, in that respect, it was the reasons he couldn’t keep standing outside the bathroom door listening to Hallie—the ones he wouldn’t let himself think about—that were his lies of omission to himself.

  He left because he was afraid if he stood there any longer he’d find himself admitting something to himself about Hallie that finding the scar on her chest during the night had almost caused him to blurt out right then. A claim she held on his heart that, even after a lifetime and a day of knowing her, he was nowhere near ready to name.

  Standing in the shower, Hallie scrubbed the scar she’d all but forgotten about until Joe’s intensely wordless reminder that it existed.

  She’d been half afraid when he’d found the scarring, holding her breath, wondering if it would cause the same reaction in him that it had in Zeke. Her scars had been a fearful, almost living entity that continually said to him, “My job is dangerous, I might not live to grow old with you.”

  Zeke had never been able to touch or even accept that, even though her life had been threatened and she’d survived. He’d never made love to or cherished a single portion of her body the way Joe had lavished his attentions on her scar.

  The memory brought a lump to her throat. Even if the whole thing fell apart on them in the next few hours or days, she was incredibly glad she’d made love with Joe last night.

  She’d also been incredibly careless in loving him. She did figure that, Joe being Joe, she’d nothing to worry about where his health was involved. Not to mention that even to her limited experience he hadn’t exactly behaved like a man who’d, um, been, er, regularly gettin’ any.

  Not that she could know with absolute certainty, of course. Hallie had made love with two men in her life, and he was one of them. However, she’d still be willing to bet it didn’t even occur to him to keep condoms in his truck, “in case,” or that he’d ever particularly considered sex with the single stranger at all in the last twelve months.

  He was too much a man on a mission, and Mary had occasionally complained—inappropriately, Hallie had always thought, that when Joe was obsessed with a case, Mary sometimes found it difficult to, well, “get his attention” at all.

  One more illustration, Hallie reflected sadly, of how it took two to make or break a marital trust. Zeke had often complained to her about the same thing.

  And in the end, despite his ability to trust her not to take another lover, it had taken a whole lot more self-assurance than Zeke possessed to stay married to her.

  Especially after she’d been shot.

  But that was another thought entirely. The point of this self discourse being that whether it was her and Zeke, or Joe and Mary, the appearance of perfection in a relationship was a curious phenomenon. It was perhaps not quite a lie, but it was never the entire truth, either.

  It was also a good lesson to look to right now while the engram of last night’s perfection and this morning’s seductive byplay still muddied her senses, Hallie realized. And in consequence, she would be well-advised to consider her mother’s favorite bastardized axiom, “Bed ’im in haste, repent at leisure,” before she spent any more time throwing herself into Joe Martinez’s arms.

  Or trying to keep him—wrapped up safely with his daughter—in hers.

  In the long run, sex—even when she was sure it was not sex, but making love—would hardly be the thing that stopped Joe from trying to take Maura from her. Nor would it be the thing that reminded him to trust her enough to stop guarding whatever secrets he still kept from her about Mary’s death.

  But on the other hand, loving him physically was an amazing experience, and if the only way she could love him right now was to take him into her bed—when the boys weren’t around, she qualified—she’d do it again in a heartbeat.

  Or less.

  She had—as she vaguely remembered him admitting to her about her when he thought she couldn’t hear him because she was unconscious and fighting for her life after that nearly point-blank-in-the-chest shooting—owned his beating heart for thirty years, after all.

  But the memories from her coma were faint and perhaps only unreliable, six-year-old dreams to which she should never pay attention.

  Especially now.

  Blowing out a breath of shower spray and unresolve, she swiped the last of the shampoo out of her hair. Cleaned up and—hopefully—back in control of herself, she shut off the water and climbed out of the shower. Toweled off and dug a clean nursing bra out of the basket of laundry atop the dryer. Somewhere the other side of the door she heard Joe descend the stairs, promising an apparently happy Maura the sun, the moon and breakfast in whatever order his daughter preferred. Maura’s response was loud and thoroughly enga
ging, and Hallie listened as Joe laughed and talked nonsense, made wistful wishes about those things he couldn’t yet promise Maura.

  And made Hallie’s heart wrench a little out of place, and start to bleed.

  Mechanically she began dressing. Found some purple cotton underpants and pulled them on. Followed the panties with a button-front violet satin camisole, a long-sleeved violet Egyptian-cotton blouse and a pair of women’s Dockers pants.

  Lord, how would she ever be able to take his daughter from him? Even assuring herself that keeping Maura was well and away the rightest thing to do for the infant, how could she possibly do it to Joe? How could she begin to contemplate the machinations and manipulations of a custody battle—the unwhole truths she’d be forced to speak—if he decided to pursue one?

  She couldn’t. At this age, it might not be too hard on Maura, but it could destroy Ben and Sam. It wouldn’t do much for her, either. And Joe...

  Jeez. She blinked, unanticipated emotion cluttering an issue that couldn’t be solved by it. She didn’t know. Despite their shared years, last night’s closeness, she hadn’t a clue what warring with her over what was best for his daughter would do to Joe.

  Or to their relationship—whatever that relationship might currently be.

  From somewhere deep down inside, half a sob rose and got stuck in her throat.

  “Hallie?” Joe knocked on the door. “If you’re ready for the kid, I’ll make Mexican omelettes while you feed her.”

  “Uh...yeah. Okay.” Hallie sniffed, grabbed a hunk of toilet tissue and dabbed at her uncharacteristically weepy eyes and runny nose. Damned postpartum hormones, anyway. Made you cry over anything and everything almost more than pregnancy hormones did. “Sounds good. Be right there.”

  She gave her nose a final swipe, patted her eyes with a cool washcloth, smoothed down her clothes and took a last look in the mirror. Her eyes looked a little bleary, but they weren’t bloodshot and her nose wasn’t quite red. So, okay. Not perfect, but passable. Certainly good enough to fake it through breakfast with Joe Martinez.