A slender woman stepped onto the front porch, followed by four boys of various sizes, and then what seemed like the entire Old Orchard Women’s Club. The slender woman came down the stairs, then the sidewalk. “Hi, John.” She looked at Darby and smiled, extending her hand. “Hi, Darby. It’s nice to meet you. I mean face-to-face. I’m Bonnie. John’s brother Ben’s wife. And these guys are our four monsters.”
Darby cleared her throat. “Nice to meet you…all.”
“I’m on my way to drop the kids off at their cousin’s now.” Her expression became sympathetic. “Between you and me, I think the house is full enough already.”
John stuffed his hands into his jeans pockets and grimaced. “Yeah, amazing what Mom can do in two hours, isn’t it?”
Bonnie leaned in closer to John. “Just make sure they don’t scare her off, John. From what I hear, this one’s a keeper.”
She smiled at Darby, then gathered her four boys and headed for one of the minivans parked at the curb.
As she smiled at the remainder of John’s family, Darby threw him a glance. “Bring many women home, do you?”
John’s own grin looked forced and almost painful. “Nope. You’re the first.”
Darby felt something warm and thick spread through her chest. Something that made standing through the next fifteen minutes of introductions easier, somehow. John had never brought a woman home? Well, no wonder they were all curious about her.
Just as she was curious about all of them.
She’d always wondered about large families. Having grown up on a steady diet of The Brady Bunch and The Partridge Family, she’d thought it would be nice to have a houseful of people connected in such a close way. And it was nice to see she wasn’t wrong. As they all settled around the huge dining-room table, she thought the laughter of twenty people, given their different timbres and individual qualities, was wonderfully unique and incredibly moving. Not to mention noisy. She couldn’t hear herself think, much less have time to worry about how she looked.
Darby draped her napkin across her lap, slanting a gaze toward the head of the table and John’s father, Walter. He hadn’t said much since she’d come in. Merely nodded when they were introduced, then disappeared into the woodwork again. John’s mother, Edith, on the other hand, seemed all smiles and boundless energy, scoffing at the hand Darby offered and hugging her so tightly Darby could barely breathe. One minute Edith was in front of her, chattering away about how happy she was that John was finally settling down, the next she was carrying some sort of heaping dish or other from the kitchen. The frenzied activity was enough to make Darby dizzy.
John reached over and took her hand under the table, giving her fingers a gentle squeeze. She gazed at him gratefully, his touch providing the grounding she needed right that moment.
“So when’s the baby due?”
“Are you going to have a traditional wedding?”
“Don’t you have twin girls? We can’t wait to meet them.”
“How did you manage to hook the last Sparks bachelor?”
The questions came one after another, sometimes on top of each other. Darby managed to smile her way through most of them, allowing John to answer the more iffy ones. She leaned closer to him. “You told them we were getting married?” she whispered.
He glanced at her. “I told them I asked you to marry me. There’s a difference.” He grinned. “Of course they automatically assumed you would accept.”
She could certainly understand why. Any woman would be insane to reject a man like John Sparks. As it was, Darby was having a hard enough time.
“Let’s see the ring,” another of John’s sisters-in-law said from across the table.
Darby froze. She had hidden her left hand under the table at the first question about her and John’s wedding date. The same hand John held.
After a long, awkward moment John cleared his throat. “I, um, haven’t exactly bought her a ring yet.”
The room went silent. For the first time Darby heard a grandfather clock ticking somewhere. But before she could isolate where, the room erupted into a current of indignant protests from the women and sympathetic glances at John from the men.
“John!” his mother’s voice rose above everyone else’s. “I thought I raised you better than that.”
His father made a sound from the other end of the table. “Better he should save his money to support all those kids.”
Darby nearly choked on the water she was drinking.
“Oh, don’t be ridiculous,” Edith Sparks said. “Who should know better than us that you always have a way of finding money. An engagement ring is a once-in-a-lifetime gift.”
Darby raised her right hand to prevent further argument. “Actually…” she said over the din. Silence immediately settled over the table. She saw all the expectant faces and regretted opening her mouth. “John has presented me with a ring. A beautiful ring.”
A couple of the women nodded in anticipation.
“Is it being sized?” one asked, unable to stand the suspense.
“You didn’t like it. You took it back for another,” someone else offered up before Darby could respond to the first.
“No, I love it,” she said with a smile, squeezing John’s hand with hers under the table.
John put his napkin on his plate. “You see, Darby has yet to accept my proposal.”
Eyebrows shot up, mouths dropped open, and the sound of someone’s silverware clattering to their plate echoed through the room.
“Oh,” a sister-in-law said.
John’s father chuckled. “Smart woman.”
“So how about those Indians?” John’s older brother Ben asked. “The season’s started and they’re looking strong. World Series, here we come.”
John was wound up tighter than a ball of wire when he finally spirited Darby out his parents’ front door sometime after nine. They might have left sooner, but Darby had asked his mother for the recipe of one of the dishes she’d made that night and had actually seemed to enjoy a conversation she got into with his older sister, Josephine.
Him? He’d been ready to bolt for the door the instant his father made the crack about his saving his money.
He held the door to the Jeep open for Darby, then rounded the vehicle and climbed in the other side.
“Well, that wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be,” Darby said, waving at the family members who stood on the front porch.
“Easy for you to say. I think that qualifies for one of the worst nights of my life.”
Darby laughed quietly and he pulled from the curb, not even glancing back at his family, much less acknowledging them with a wave.
She scooted closer to him and put her hand on his leg. “The night’s not over yet, Sheriff,” she whispered.
Everything that had happened over the past three hours shot out of John’s head, as heat, sure and swift, raced to his groin.
Darby sighed. “It must have been great growing up in a big family,” she said, a faraway look on her face. “Always something going on. Always someone to talk to.”
“Always a line to go to the bathroom. Never enough food in the fridge.” John glanced at her. “Don’t romanticize my family, Darby. They’ll make you regret it.”
“I doubt that.”
He put his hand over hers where it lay on his thigh and inched it upward ever so slightly. She glanced at him and smiled.
“Your dad seemed a little off-putting.”
He grimaced. “That’s Dad for you. If he’s not condemning the pope for outlawing birth control, he’s cursing Mom’s fertility.”
He felt her gaze on him and inwardly winced, wondering if he’d revealed a bit too much.
“But he loves you all. You know that, don’t you?” she asked quietly.
He shrugged. “I suppose.”
She squeezed his leg. “I know. I saw the looks he gave all of you throughout dinner. The pride that beamed from his face. The love.”
“Maybe he
had indigestion.”
Darby lay her head back against the headrest, voluntarily inching her hand up a little farther. John nearly groaned, suppressing the desire to slide down in his seat so that her hand would be exactly where he wanted it.
“I’m sorry about that.”
He looked at her in the light from the streetlamps they passed. “Sorry about what?”
“I don’t know. Your brothers must have given you quite a ribbing when we told them we weren’t engaged.”
“Yet,” he corrected, then grinned. “Actually I got a few congratulations, if you can believe it.”
She gaped at him.
“Ben said he thought it was the first time in Old Orchard history that a guy knocked a woman up and a shotgun wedding didn’t follow the next day.”
“Must be a guy thing.”
“Yeah.”
He’d had something in mind all night, and it had driven him crazy just thinking about it. Whenever things were at their worst throughout the night—which for him was almost every moment—he’d remember where he planned to take Darby and would find himself grinning stupidly. His brothers had teased him, telling him that he was in love. He hadn’t worked that part out yet, but he did know he was definitely in lust. And that he couldn’t seem to get his fill of the sexy woman next to him.
He pulled onto a dark gravel road.
“John?” Darby asked, looking around. “Where are you taking me?”
“Where do you think I’m taking you?”
She squinted through the window, the yellow light from the dash casting shadows against her face. “I think you’re taking me to Lovers’ Leap.” She sat back. “Not planning on jumping, are you?”
“The story about that lovelorn girl jumping from the cliff in the 1950s is a myth.”
“It’s documented fact.”
“Oh, really? Where?”
“All the newspapers at the time wrote about it.”
“No. All the newspapers wrote about was the mystery surrounding the rumor. No body was ever found.”
He caught her smile as she said, “If you were hoping to make this a romantic outing, I think you’re failing.”
He chuckled as he pulled to a stop at an area just short of the cliff where the trees gave way, offering a breathtaking view of the lights of the town some hundred yards down and half a mile west of the cliff. Before he could switch off the ignition, Darby was cuddling up to his side.
“Come up here often, Sheriff Sparks?”
His breath caught in his throat as her hand finally found the part begging for her attention for the past fifteen minutes. “All the time,” he said roughly. “I bring all my dates here.”
She reached for and found the release for his seat and it slid all the way back. She took advantage of the space and straddled him. “Liar.”
He grinned, his arousal growing by the second. “Yeah, well, that may be the case. But obviously you’re an old pro at this.”
She leaned forward and kissed him. “Maybe.” She ran the tip of her tongue across his bottom lip. “Wanna see what I know?”
Oh, boy, did he.
Things got hot and heavy very fast, with John claiming her mouth with a hunger that surprised even him, his hands finding their way up her cotton shirt and to her breasts, plucking at her gloriously engorged nipples. Darby shifted, tugging up the hem of her skirt so that he could gain closer contact. John groaned when he realized all that separated them were his jeans and her cotton panties.
He jerked his leg when she ground her hips, bumping his knee on the dash. He cursed and continued his assault on her hot, delectable mouth. Tasting wine there. And chocolate-mousse. And one-hundred-percent-needy Darby.
When he pushed her back slightly to gain access to her breasts, she knocked her head on the ceiling. Her soft yelp of pain was followed by a deep moan as he fastened his lips around a stiff crest, pulling a nipple deep into his mouth and swirling his tongue around it.
He slid down farther in the seat, his hips bucking up against her as he fumbled for his fly. This time both knees jammed against the dash.
Darby giggled. “You know, there’s this perfectly empty house, with a perfectly big, soft bed waiting for us not ten minutes from here.”
He growled deep in his throat. “I don’t think I can wait that long.”
She pushed his hand out of the way and unfastened his fly. “Good. Because neither can I.”
A light tapping of something solid against the window next to them sent John jackknifing into a sitting position, knocking Darby’s head against the ceiling again. Darby scrambled to pull her top down even as John used her skirt to cover…certain strategic areas.
He pressed the button to open the window a couple of inches.
“John? Is that you in there?”
John cursed under his breath as he realized who it was. A flashlight beam hit him square in the eyes even as guessed he’d never be able to live this one down. “Turn that damn thing off, Cole,” he told the deputy sheriff.
“Oh. Sorry.” Cole fumbled to do just that, then tipped his head to Darby. “Evening Ms. Conrad.”
“Hi, Cole,” she said, and John heard the laughter in her voice.
“Cole, what do you want?” John asked impatiently.
The deputy stood up straight. “Well, John, I don’t think I have to tell you this, but, um, public display of affection to a certain degree is illegal in these parts.” John could see him fighting a grin. “Would you like me to lend you my code book? Maybe you need to brush up.”
“And maybe I need to sock you in the jaw.”
Cole’s grin didn’t budge. “That, sir, would get you into even more trouble than you’re in now.”
“Yeah, but it would be worth it.”
Cole stepped back, as if suddenly uncertain of John’s intention. “I’m going to have to ask you to move on, Sheriff.”
“Fine. Just fine.”
“Now.”
“I’ll get out of here just as soon as you go back to your car, deputy.”
“As you wish.”
Ah, if life were only that simple. If it were, Cole would have disappeared altogether.
John pushed the button to close the window, then exhaled, his condition dampened not at all by the interruption. Not when he had Darby flush up against his erection, her panties damp and hot.
“I think we’d better do as the deputy says,” he said.
“Yes. I was thinking the same thing.”
She said the words, but didn’t move.
“Darby, if you don’t want Cole to have a front-row seat to a live sex show, then I’d suggest you, um, move to the other seat.”
She laughed, then kissed him lingeringly. “How fast do you think you can get us home?”
He groaned, loving the feel of her tongue in his mouth, hearing her quickened breathing in his ears, feeling her softness pressing against his hardness. “Blink, baby, and we’ll be there.”
Chapter Thirteen
John burrowed deeply under the covers, reaching for the woman who eluded him at every turn. Finally his fingers found her and he hauled her to him so that her back rested against his front. He grinned and made a sound deep in his throat.
“John?”
“Hmm?” John slowly came to realize it wasn’t a dream, but reality. Darby was in his arms. And that was exactly where he intended to keep her. Forever. Or at least for the next few minutes or so.
“John?” her whispered voice became more insistent and she grabbed at his hands.
“What?” This time John popped open an eye. And when he did, he wished he hadn’t.
Standing on Darby’s side of the bed were two unhappy-looking little girls.
“You’ve been very bad,” Erin said, shaking a finger at both of them. “Very, very bad.”
John released Darby more out of fear than her struggle to free herself.
What were the twins doing there? Not just in the bedroom, but at the house at all? They were supposed to b
e at Darby’s mother’s house until later. Much later. He squinted at the clock. It was only 7:00 a.m.
“Sorry.” Adelia Parker’s voice came from the open bedroom door. “I got called into work and had to bring the girls home now.”
This time John scrambled to sit up, fighting Darby for the sheet she was using to cover herself.
Suddenly Darby’s bedroom had turned into Grand Central Station at rush hour.
“Mom.” Erin tugged on the sheet, threatening to pull it from both of them as she vied for Darby’s attention.
“In a minute,” Darby said, looking at her daughter. Then she closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “Mother, would you please take the girls downstairs so I can get dressed?”
If John wasn’t mistaken, Adelia Parker was fighting a smile. “Okay. But I only have five minutes.”
Darby nodded. “Five minutes. That’s enough. Plenty.”
No one made a move.
“Go,” Darby said in a steely voice.
The twins scrambled from the room, leaving John and Darby staring at the closed door.
“I can’t believe that just happened,” she whispered.
John ran his hand through his hair several times, trying to get a handle on the situation. “Yeah, it’s a first for me, too.”
He looked at her. God, she was beautiful. Her brown hair curled around her face in soft waves, her cheeks were filled with color, her green eyes danced with amusement.
“So…do I dare take up where I left off?” he asked, hiking a brow and allowing his gaze to skim her body.
Darby dropped the sheet so that it puddled around her waist, leaving her marvelous breasts bare.
John groaned and tackled her back down to the pillows, nuzzling her neck with his morning stubble.
“Mom? Are you done yet?” a small, irritated voice came through the closed door.
John looked at Darby. “Not nearly,” she whispered.
He smoothed her hair back from her face repeatedly, then kissed her. “A rain check?”
She smiled. “Yes.” She squeezed his shoulders. “But next time we get a different baby-sitter.”
“You know, the girls should get used to having him around,” Adelia told Darby a few minutes later. They were standing by the counter in the kitchen. “And not just in the guest bedroom.”
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