by Carol Rose
Why couldn’t this happen for Amy? For herself?
Here, surrounded by what felt like genuine affection and love, Kelsey struggled with widely divergent emotions. This felt so good, so happy and grounded. She loved being with this group of people…and she found herself filled with longing to really belong with them.
At the same time, it seemed so incredibly unfair that they had this kind of life together when so many families were filled with hatred and anger.
“Here, Dad,” Jared said, coming around the bed. He reached down for the baby. “Let me have a turn.”
Scooping the now-sleeping Amelia/Nellie up, he balanced the small bundle in his hands as easily as a football.
“You can take the chair,” Tom said, getting up and moving to slide an arm around his wife. They stood together, smiling fondly at the baby in their son’s arms.
Jared sat down, cradling the infant close, completely at ease. Next to him, Kelsey wondered when she’d get over the astonishment she felt seeing him this way. More and more men were connected with their children these days. It wasn’t such an unusual thing in a man anymore. But seeing Jared holding the baby so comfortably, his fingers brushing first over her cheek, then stroking her elegant long fingers, made Kelsey go warm inside.
Still standing next to his wife’s bed, Mike bent down and kissed her. “We’ve done a pretty good job, sweetie. Don’t you think?”
Carla glanced fondly at her new daughter. “Pretty good.”
A shaft of intense longing pierced Kelsey. She wanted this, wanted it to be as real for her as it seemed now to be for Carla and Mike.
But was it real? Was this kind of picture perfect moment ever real?
How long would it be before dirty diapers and a wailing baby built resentment between them? How long before one or the other of them grew bored with playing family?
Kelsey had friends with children. As sweet and lovely as babies were, they brought strain to a marriage, further weakening the fragile, temporary bonds of love.
Had her own father stood beside his wife’s hospital bed on the occasion of her birth, Kelsey wondered. Had they projected this same loving, blissful unity? How long had it taken for the moment to wear off? Not two years later, they’d split up and her father had disappeared from her life.
A welter of pointless longing and grief for her lost hopes churned inside her. No matter how whiny and bratty a child was, she deserved a mother and a father to love her.
But if love between a man and woman never lasted, what hope did any child have of growing up with an intact family? Kelsey had always promised herself she’d give her own child a very different childhood than she herself had endured.
How could she manage that if love never lasted, she thought now looking into little Amelia/Nellie’s contented face. Could a loveless marriage provide a child with the kind of nurturing shelter she deserved? People who stayed together just for the child?
***
Acutely aware of Jared’s hand at the small of her back, Kelsey lead the way into the small, exclusive restaurant tucked into a darkened, below street level space in upper Manhattan.
“This way, sir,” the maître D murmured, gathering two menus in his hands.
They followed him into the seating area, the lighting subdued and atmospheric, the conversations of the other diners muted and hushed as if there was a volume control in place.
Kelsey heard the thump of her own heart against her breast and knew she was being overly-emotional. The heightened feelings stirred up by their hospital visit just needed some time to settle, she told herself as they were seated.
Opening the menu, she tried to wrestle her tangled up feelings into manageable order.
Every woman wanted the fantasy of bearing a man’s child and reaping the joy of his love—every woman who had any interest in bearing children, that is. As a life choice, parenting had always been attractive to Kelsey. On some level, she wondered if she were longing to live out an improved version of her own childhood. Surely, that wasn’t the best reason to have a child.
But then she’d see a baby like little Amelia/Nellie and feel flooded with longing. Even the occasional tantrums kids through in Bloomingdale’s didn’t keep her from wanting children. Kids got overtired. They went through rough phases. There were bad moments in every worthwhile endeavor, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t a beautiful experience.
Their waiter appeared next to the table then and took their orders before dematerializing.
Kelsey smoothed the napkin in her lap, her gaze lifting to Jared’s.
He watched her from across the table, a smile playing on his lips.
“You have a wonderful family,” she said abruptly, trying to keep the husky note of longing out of her words.
His smile widened. “Yes, they are.”
“It must have been wonderful growing up together.”
“Most of the time,” he acknowledged, his gaze still on her face, a glimmering amusement in his eyes. “There were rocky times. I don’t submit easily to authority, my parents tell me.”
“I can imagine,” Kelsey murmured. She couldn’t imagine him submitting to anyone, even the parents he so obviously loved.
“My father wanted to string me up a few times.”
“I doubt that,” she said with a quirk of her lips. “He’s not a man who seems inclined to lose his temper.”
“No,” her husband laughed. “But I tried their patience a few times just in the process of discovering the world.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Alcohol? Drugs? Petty thievery?”
Jared shook his head, the faint smile still playing on his lips. “Nothing in the legal territory. I just had to make my own decisions about things rather than take their word that I wouldn’t like it. They didn’t want me to take a job when I was in high school—said I’d miss out on too much. But I took the job anyway.”
“And did you miss out?” Kelsey propped her chin on her hand and studied him. He’d have been a handful as a child. Was in fact, still too much man to manage.
“Of course,” he said, shrugging. “But I had money which made up for a lot of it.”
“Raising a child is such serious business,” Kelsey said somberly. “So many mistakes to be made.”
He reached across the table, taking her hand in his. Lightly clasping her, he drew his thumb across the back of her hand. “Maybe, but it looks like a lot of fun to me. It’ll be interesting to watch Carla and Mike raise this kid. Carla has always been a tomboy. I’ll bet this baby likes ruffles and bows.”
“It always seems to work that way,” Kelsey agreed, trying not to notice the connection of their fingers, intertwined now. Trying to ignore the rush of heat and longing for things she couldn’t even understand. “Carla was probably a tomboy because she wanted to keep up with her brothers. Don’t tell me that you and Brian weren’t rowdy.”
He laughed, the flickering candlelight leaving half his face in shadow. “We were wild, but Carla not only held her own. She was frequently the instigator. My mother knew better than to blame everything on her sons.”
“What a wonderful time you must have all had,” Kelsey commented, glancing down, acutely aware of him leaning intimately toward her, his eyes intent and purposeful. She felt the heat and intensity of his focus, the power of his attention all centered on her.
“Fun wasn’t my mother’s description of a few of our escapades. It was weeks before she forgave us for bringing home the baby skunk.” He grinned in remembrance, his face all the more attractive for the hint of devil in his eyes.
“A skunk? Why would you bring it home?” she asked in disbelief.
Jared shrugged. “It wasn’t my idea, but Carla found the thing and didn’t want to leave it to fend for itself. I’d have left it there, alone or not. But I have to say in my sister’s defense that it was pretty small and didn’t much look like a skunk. But my mother knew what it was immediately when we brought it into the house.”
He’d have left
the animal to fend for itself. That was Jared, a combination of callous disregard for things and people not important to him. But he’d called his sister everyday this past week, just to see how she was doing.
“Did your mom yell at you to take the skunk outside?” Kelsey asked with effort, awareness and craving swirling inside her.
“No.” He shook his head. “Mother’s a smart woman. She calmly took the thing out of Carla’s hands and walked quickly to the door with it. Later, she told us she felt like screaming when she first saw it, but she didn’t want to frighten the animal into jumping out of Carla’s hands and hiding in the house. So she just got it outside as fast as she could.”
“A very smart woman,” Kelsey approved with a smile. “I’m not sure I’d have been as calm.”
“My mother’s quite a woman,” Jared responded, a quiet pride in his eyes. “She handled the three of us well, most of the time.”
“I like your parents,” agreed Kelsey, glancing up into his eyes. It was hard not to envy the childhood he’d enjoyed when her own had been so chaotic. She loved her mother, but she’d never lied to herself about the woman’s limitations when it came to child rearing.
“That’s why I want to have kids,” Jared commented quietly, his voice firm. “There are so many idiots out there having kids and abandoning them—like your father—I can’t help but think that responsible men need to give the job a shot.”
“You think you could do it better?” she asked, her throat feeling tight at the contemptuous way he mentioned her father’s behavior. There was no reason why she should glow at his championing of her. It wasn’t as if she needed that. She’d given up on her father years ago.
But having Jared look at her like this, hearing the fierce anger in his voice when he spoke of her father—it left her feeling as though she’d been added to the list. Somehow, she’d made the list of people Jared cared about. Championed.
“I think I will do a hell of a lot better job when I have children,” he confirmed, his glance glittering over her face. “A hell of a lot better.”
***
Jared closed the apartment door behind them, setting the locks without turning on the lights. The dim light filtering up from the city streets lit the living room. Standing beside him, Kelsey didn’t want to catalog the emotions she felt. They’d finished their dinner and driven home.
Home.
That’s what this place and this man’s arms had come to feel like. She had grown accustomed to him, she told herself as he turned and took her into his arms. Never before had she made love with a man and slept beside him night after night.
How long would it last?
She’d never been this close to a man even this long before. It was proximity and lust and respect that prompted her to lift her arms to his broad shoulders, lift her seeking mouth to his.
Brushing his lips over hers, he drew her closer, scooping her up into his arms like Scarlett being carried up the staircase. Only this was no demand for wifely duty, but the hush of hearts beating together, the anticipation of losing herself in the heat of his touch.
He lowered her on to their bed without speaking, his fingers drawing down her zipper, his breath warm against the skin below her ear.
“So soft,” he murmured, the tips of his fingers caressing the curve of her breast as he tugged her dress down. “You smell…like flowers and rain.”
Spearing his splayed hands into her hair, he lifted it, bunched in his fists, guiding her mouth to his. Helpless, held for his kiss, she met his ravaging with the devilry of her tongue at his mouth. So right, his kiss. So filled with the same need she felt, the same quiet intensity.
With her dress half off her shoulders and falling to her waist, Jared paused in kissing her to remove the rest of her clothing. No raging lover, tearing at each hook. This touch lingered and fondled as if he’d never found such beauty before, never passed his hands over a surface so fascinating.
He cherished off her dress, his hands trailing along her arm, over the curve of her waist, the slope of her hips. With exquisite care, he drew off her hose, lingering over her thighs. Tenderly, he skimmed his hand over her knee, cupping her calf in his palm, circling her ankle. Unexpectedly, he bent to press a kiss to the sole of her foot.
Leaning back on her elbows on the bed, Kelsey found herself holding her breath lest she break the enchantment of this shadowed moment. He knelt before her, smoothing down her stocking, his hand large and warm on her foot. Lifting it, Jared kissed her ankle…and the inside of her knee.
He caressed her sensitive inner thigh with his mouth, trailing a damp path northward, his breath warm on her. Finding the barrier of her panties, he straightened, tugging her upright.
“When I’m at the office,” he said, his hands working at the hooks of her bra, “I think about you. About how perfectly your breasts fit into my hands.”
Discarding her restricting lingerie, he suited his actions to his words, his thumbs brushing over her taut nipples. “How perfect you are. You feel…so good.”
Kelsey sank back to sit on the edge of the bed.
From his position, kneeling before her, he bent forward, his tongue flicking over one puckered crest and then the other. “There are no words in any language I know to describe how you taste. So sweet and so hot.”
Tugging her up from the bed again, he skimmed her panties down her legs, still that erotic stroke of his hands on her, the smoothing of her bottom. He steadied her as she stepped out of the last scrap of her clothing.
On the floor before her, he was fully clothed. Too fully clothed. She reached for his tie and loosened it. Distracted by the brush of his fingers over her belly, the tug of his teeth nipping gently at her breast, she persevered, opening his shirt, pushing off his jacket. Soon he was before her, his torso bared in the half-light from the window.
Not a man who worked with his hands, he still stripped down beautifully, his body warm and muscled. She ran her palms over him, over his shoulders and biceps, the flat planes of his chest.
Jared cupped her buttocks in both hands and pulled her against his body, her naked breasts against his bare chest, his strong arms encircling her. Nestling her face into the crook of his shoulder, she licked him, tasting salt and man.
There were still his pants to lose. Sliding her hands down his chest, she loosened his belt, unzipped him and pushed his trousers down. Returning the favor, she reached around and cupped him through his briefs, drawing them together tightly, his arousal hard through the thin cotton knit.
He held her in his arms, his hands brushing at her back, tracing her spine, skating to the hollow of her back, to the flare of her hips. Moving against him, her breasts against his chest, her mouth on his neck, his shoulder, his earlobe, she did her level best to incite the beast.
Jared made her long, made her yearn. Made every touch precious, every moment golden. She wanted him so badly her hands were shaking as she pulled on his briefs.
Stepping back from her, he shed his one remaining barrier and came to her where she stood by the bed. He urged her back on the bed, smoothing his hand down her belly to tangle in the curls between her legs.
She moaned, unable to stop the breathless, betraying sound. Tantalizing, teasing, he stroked her, his mouth on hers, his scent surrounding her. The tight coil of wanting brightened inside her till she could hear the harshness of her breath in her throat, but she held back. Next to her, his face was planes and angles in the shadowed light, harsh intensity in his expression, taut and rapt.
Stroking a hand along his thigh, Kelsey cupped him. Hot and aroused, he stilled at her touch and then began moving against her hand, slowly thrusting as if he couldn’t help himself.
Never before had she been so aware of having power with a man, of having the means to send him over the edge with the slightest squeeze of her fingers or flick of her tongue. Her body next to his, her heart wide open, she leaned forward, stroking the full length of him. Somehow in this darkened room, their breath mingled, the
ir souls as entangled as their bodies, they’d forged a link, a reflection of the merging of their lives.
“Don’t!” he said, the word breathless with effort. “I need to be inside you, all wet and welcomed.”
Rolling over on his back, Jared urged her to mount him, straddling his rock hard, glistening arousal. Her hands at his shoulders, Kelsey lowered herself onto him, inch by wondrous inch, till he was sheathed in her, tight and perfect.
Beneath her splayed hands, his chest rose with each breath, his heart thundered. Rising and rocking on him, Kelsey gave herself over to sensation. Stroke after stroke a ripple of pleasure. Her head rolled back, her body locked with his intimately.
Together, locked together. Bound in ecstasy, they found the sun.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Her period was a week overdue.
Kelsey stared at herself in the bathroom mirror, grateful Jared had an early meeting. She was alone in the apartment, but she still couldn’t bring herself to open the box that held the pregnancy test.
Anxiety roiled in her stomach like acid. It was as if her fears had come true.
She was never late. Her first period had dawned in the summer of her twelfth year and had come since then as regularly as the cycles of the moon. Now, she was on the pill which made for even more consistency. She knew to the day when she should have started.
But just over three weeks ago she’d been sick, she remembered. Jared had taken care of her so wonderfully. She hadn’t worried about anything, had only basked in his care. Too busy being amazed at his sweetness despite his annoyance with her, she hadn’t even thought to take her pill that day or to double up the next.
Kelsey dropped the pregnancy test on the counter next to the sink and slumped into the vanity chair. Staring sightlessly into the mirror, she remembered the day after she’d been sick.