She tried desperately to concentrate on the conversation. “Why?”
“Because I know that the people who come here to the institute, ready to give us their last penny, to borrow more if need be, just for the privilege of having a baby, will make wonderful parents. Because that’s what being a good parent is all about. Sacrifice. Putting the child in front of your own needs. If it’s in my power to help them, it would be unconscionable for me not to.”
She nodded. “It must make you feel a little like God, doing that. Creating life.”
“I’m not the one ‘creating it,’” he protested. “And I certainly don’t feel like God. If you want to follow the creation route, I’m just an instrument in all this. If God doesn’t want it to happen, then nothing I do will make it so.”
Ramona was quiet for a moment, reading between the lines. “So you’ve had failures.”
He thought of the looks on the women’s faces when he had to tell them that the procedure hadn’t resulted in a pregnancy. Thought of the way his sister Olivia looked when she came into his office a couple of weeks ago, desperate. Each time he lost a battle, it took a piece out of him. “Sadly, yes.”
She prodded a little further. “Then not every embryo takes?”
“No.” He really wished it would. Each failure, to him, represented a child who would never be born. “That’s a matter of record,” he told her. His eyes held hers for a long moment. “Was that what you were looking for? The failures?”
The question had come out of nowhere and in her present state, she wasn’t as prepared to answer as she should have been. She almost stuttered as she made the denial. “No, I told you, I’m doing a piece on the institute’s history and—”
He cut her short. “I know what you told me.” Paul moved in closer to her. “Now, I’m interested in the truth.”
“I am telling you the truth,” she protested, doing her best to sound indignant. She couldn’t quite carry it off.
“All right,” he allowed patiently, “then tell me the whole truth.”
Maybe it was the claustrophobia kicking up another notch and stealing oxygen from her brain. For whatever reason, she felt she had to give him something more than she had. He was surprisingly too intuitive to be satisfied with her pat alibi.
He understood the bond between mothers and their children, she mused. Suddenly, she knew what piece of the truth to give him.
Taking a breath, and then another because the first didn’t feel sufficient, Ramona began. “As it turns out, putting this in the ‘truth is stranger than fiction’ column, a couple of decades ago my mother donated her eggs to the institute.”
He kept looking at her, wondering if she was fabricating this story on the spur of the moment. But a moment later, he decided that she looked too distressed to be making it up. Either that, or she was one hell of an actress. “And you’re trying to find out if you have siblings?”
“Not exactly,” she corrected. “I’m trying to save my mother’s life.”
Chapter Twelve
Paul’s eyes met hers. On the scale of one to ten for dramatic statements, the one she’d just uttered was a ten. If she meant to capture his attention, she’d succeeded.
“I’m listening.”
Ramona suppressed any last-minute doubts. What did she have to lose? He couldn’t take her to task for being concerned about her mother, he wasn’t the type. And if she gave him this, it might make him stop looking for other reasons why she’d ventured down here, quite apparently far out of her comfort zone.
Maybe he’d even help her find the file.
“My mother has leukemia. And it’s progressing.” She paused a beat to keep her voice from quavering. “The doctor said she’s going to die without a bone-marrow transplant.” Ramona bit her lower lip. The pain in her voice was something she didn’t have to fake. She experienced it with every word. “Mine’s not a match. She has no brothers or sisters. Neither do I. At least, none that I knew about—” She took a breath. “And then I remembered.”
“Remembered what?”
She told him just the way it happened. “That when I was a teenager, I stumbled across an old box of receipts and what looked like bills in the back of my mother’s closet—I was looking for a pair of her shoes I wanted to borrow,” she explained in case he was going to ask why she was rummaging through her mother’s things. “Mixed in was a medical statement for a donation she’d made years ago. She donated her eggs to the institute.” Her eyes were on his now. “I need to know if they were even used and if so, by whom and whether the implantation resulted in a viable birth.”
There was silence for a moment, and then he shook his head. Ramona wondered if she’d set herself up for a fall. Had she been wrong about him after all? Was he strictly by the numbers with no heart?
“Why didn’t you just tell me what you were looking for?”
“Because I had no idea what your reaction would be,” she said honestly.
“Under the circumstances, did you really think I’d say no?”
“I didn’t know you. If I asked and you said no, you might have decided to put safeguards in to prevent my looking. This was too important to take a chance on that. My mother’s life depends on it.”
She wasn’t aware that she was crying until she saw Paul reach into his pocket and take out a handkerchief. Very gently, he took her chin in his hand and wiped away the tears that were sliding down her cheeks.
The movement was so delicate, so kind, Ramona could feel her heart swelling in her chest. None of her safeguards were in place.
Her eyes met his and their gazes held for what felt like eternity.
Again, she stopped breathing, but this time her fear of small, enclosed places had nothing to do with her response. Or with the sudden increased beating of her heart.
Without realizing she was doing it, Ramona silently willed him to kiss her. If she kissed him first, it would throw everything off. She didn’t want seduction—because it would be seen as that—to be perceived as part of her arsenal in going after the evidence to substantiate her story and, in hindsight, that would be what Paul would think.
But if he kissed her, well, these things happened sometimes, especially under the unusual circumstances that they found themselves in.
The fact that she was willing him to kiss her had nothing to do with her ultimate goals was something she wasn’t going to think about now.
Paul knew he shouldn’t.
He was a grown man with better-than-average self-control. He always had been.
And maybe that was the problem. He’d used it so often, held himself in check in so many different ways—be it denial of his own desires, or simply holding his temper in check when it came to dealing with Derek—that something felt as if it was cracking inside him now. He wanted—needed—to break free. To act on these feelings and unexplored emotions that were rushing over him now.
Maybe it was the look in her eyes that finally pushed him over the edge. He really wasn’t sure.
The pure, basic fact of the matter was that he slipped his fingers into her hair, framed her face with his hands and brought his mouth down on hers slowly enough for her to pull away if she so chose.
But she didn’t pull away.
Instead, she offered herself up to what was happening, making the kiss between them flower into something far more powerful than what it was intended to be. It wasn’t a kiss to console, or comfort, or support. Rather, it was something so powerful that it overwhelmed both of them.
Paul felt his control shatter and Ramona’s lips met his own. Suddenly, passion and desire were all around him, urging him on, making him realize that he wanted her. Not just to hold, not just to kiss, but to have. He wanted to make love with her.
The last time he’d made love with a woman seemed light-years away; he couldn’t even summon up a face, a name. Hell, right now, he realized, as fire raced through his veins, he’d have trouble summoning up his own name.
There was nothing and no one, only this wom
an whose very presence was sending him into an emotional tailspin. And that unnerved him.
Badly.
This was better, better than she’d even imagined. The taste of his lips excited her to the point that it took supreme effort not to begin tearing at his clothes. She couldn’t return his passionate kisses, couldn’t get caught up in the fever pitch that seemed to be sizzling between them. Because he would think she’d planned it all. And he’d hate her even more than he would once he found out who she really was.
The thought chilled her for a moment, but then her need to be with this man, to feel his hands on her, to have him come to the ultimate union with her, overwhelmed everything else. All she had was the moment and she meant to savor it for the thrill that it was. Later would have to take care of itself. She wanted Now.
A moment ago—or maybe a lifetime ago—they’d been sitting sedately next to each other on the sofa. Now their bodies were pressed against one another. The instant she felt his hands, pulling her blouse from her waistband, her fingers began to tug at his shirt, all but ripping away buttons as she yanked them through the buttonholes.
She could feel her breath growing shorter, but this time it wasn’t because of any sort of panic. This time it was because of anticipation. Anticipation that blazed through her body like a wildfire as they discarded their clothes in a growing frenzy.
Paul couldn’t believe this was happening, that he was really so immersed in this woman whose soulful eyes had gotten through his carefully constructed reserve.
But he had to regain at least a modest amount of control over himself, he thought fiercely. Though he felt the heat of her response, he had to be sure that he wasn’t just forcing himself on her because her claustrophobia had rendered her defenseless. He wanted their joining to be mutual.
She was beneath him on the sofa, the movement of her body setting him ablaze. But he had to give her a chance to back out. So, with extreme effort, Paul pulled himself back just far enough to give her room to slip out from under him, and looked down into her face.
She was breathless, but it didn’t bother her. She was that wrapped up in what was happening, that wrapped up in these extreme, delicious sensations that were holding her in their grip. And suddenly, the building crescendo halted like a video on pause.
She felt air along her skin as he created a space. Was he getting up? Now?
“Is something wrong?” she asked in a voice that was hardly above a whisper.
As she spoke, her breath trailed along his skin, tightening his groin. He wanted her with such an intensity that he almost broke.
“Wrong?” he echoed. “It’s never felt this right,” he confessed, even as he counseled himself to dole out his words sparingly.
She didn’t understand. Her body was all but screaming for his. “Then why did you stop?”
He watched her lips move. It took everything he had not to press his against them. “Because I want to make sure you don’t want to change your mind.”
“We’re taking a vote?” she asked incredulously.
The next moment, she heard him laugh, the sound rumbling along her abdomen and breasts, teasing her almost to the breaking point. Her core was moistening, aching to accept him. She didn’t bother with words. Instead, she framed his face with her hands and brought his mouth down to hers.
Bathed in kisses that Paul pressed along her neck and shoulders, Ramona felt she was more than ready for him when Paul finally locked his fingers with hers and slowly entered her body.
Ramona gasped as the first forceful wave of a climax exploded through her. She began to move her hips frantically in order to reach the next plateau.
And then the next one.
By the time they reached the ultimate limit, they were both drenched, breathless and almost beyond exhaustion, but content.
She felt herself falling back to earth after what amounted to a surreal experience. Paul Armstrong was easily the very best lover that she had ever had. He had surprised her with his technique, his gentleness and his prowess. Ramona kept her arms wrapped around him. She was holding on so tightly that she didn’t think she was ever going to release him.
And part of her didn’t want to.
She didn’t want this moment to pass. She didn’t want the world, with its myriad complications, to descend on her, robbing her of this wondrous sensation.
But all too soon he was rolling off her, sitting against the arm of the sofa, leaving open space next to her. Ramona doubted very much that this was just a random choice on his part. He knew, she thought, knew that the other way would make her feel hemmed in and stir up her claustrophobia all over again now that the temperature of her blood was returning to normal.
As he looked at Ramona, Paul searched his brain, trying to find something reassuring to say. Something that would let her know that this wasn’t the way he ordinarily behaved, even under these extraordinary conditions.
He wanted to apologize—but he was only sorry if she felt compromised in any way. Because, looking at it from his own point of view, he was as far from sorry as a man could possibly be.
But how could he express any of that without sounding as if this had all somehow been carefully plotted out and rehearsed?
Paul began haltingly, clearing his throat. He got no further than whispering her name. “Ramona…”
Ramona pressed her index finger to his lips, silencing him. For some reason, she had a feeling she knew what he was about to say and she didn’t want him to agonize over what had just transpired.
“I know,” she murmured.
And she did. She’d found out everything she needed to know about what had just happened between them just by looking at him. It was there in his eyes. And it was enough for her.
He looked at her quizzically. “You do?”
Touching his cheek, she smiled at him. He could almost feel that smile radiating warmth within his chest. “Yes.”
Was the woman a witch, or just good at second-guessing? He had to ask. “And what is it you think you know?”
Funny, she never thought of herself as being particularly insightful when it came to men, at least not on a personal level. When it came to breaking news, she could read them like a book. This was different. It was as if, having made love with him, they were connected on a deeper level.
“That you didn’t plan this. That you don’t generally do this kind of thing and that you want me to know that you weren’t trying to take advantage of me.”
Paul stared at her for a long moment. It stretched out so far that she thought she’d really overstepped the line this time. Maybe she’d gotten it wrong after all. Maybe he had just fooled her.
No, she silently insisted. He wasn’t that kind of person. She had to be right about him.
And then he said, “When you filled out your résumé, under special skills, why didn’t you put down mind reading?”
Yes, she was right after all. Pleased, Ramona grinned. Grinned from ear to ear before answering his question. “I didn’t want to brag.”
“I see.”
Propping himself up on his elbow, he lightly swept her hair from her face. There was a feeling going through him. He couldn’t really begin to describe it. The closest he could come to it was admitting to himself that he felt happy. Lighter than air and really, really happy. He’d never felt that way before.
“It would have been nice to be forewarned, though. I wouldn’t have bothered talking as much as I did. You could have just read my thoughts.”
She laughed then, shaking her head. “You consider what you did a lot of talking?”
“For me.”
“I see.”
Just looking at him, all she wanted to do was kiss him again. And again. And then follow that to its natural conclusion one more time. Maybe two.
Giving in to her impulse, Ramona bent her head and pressed a kiss just above his collarbone. The small, guarded sigh that escaped his lips as she did so thrilled her and fueled her inclination to repeat at least p
art of what had just gone before.
Pressing him back against the sofa, she shifted so that this time she had the upper position. It wasn’t about first moves anymore. It was about enjoying each other while the rest of the world was still at bay.
Ramona wreathed his face and neck with a string of fleeting, light kisses that she dispensed with growing fervor.
As spent as he thought he was, Paul had no choice but to rise up and offer her a return on her investment.
They made love again and then again after a sufficient amount of time had passed, turning the small confined former vault into a miniparadise where each had found his soul mate, as temporary as that might turn out to be.
And during all this time, the one constant that remained was that Ramona forgot about her fears.
All she felt was wondrously alive.
Because of him.
Ramona hung on to that for as long as she could. And, without being aware of when and how it actually happened, she dozed off in his arms.
Chapter Thirteen
“Breakfast,” Paul announced the next morning, his voice cutting through the last layer of sleep swirling in her brain.
Ramona blinked several times to focus. Somehow, Paul had managed to get up without waking her. He’d had to be part contortionist to have managed that feat.
He’d gotten dressed as well, putting on everything except his white lab coat. That, she now realized, he’d draped over her to give her some semblance of privacy.
Again, she was caught off guard by his thoughtfulness. There was so much more to the man than she’d originally thought.
Sitting up, holding his lab coat pressed against her, Ramona looked at the energy bars that were in the palm of his hand. She couldn’t remember anything ever looking so good to her. Controlling the impulse to grab them as her stomach all but moaned in its emptiness, she looked up at his face instead.
“Where did you get those?”
He nodded toward the worn, black leather object that had tripped her and set off this chain of events last night. “I forgot I had them in my briefcase.”
Prescription for Romance Page 12