Sierra winced as pain and joy balled together and smacked her right in the middle of her chest. “Don’t fib, Alex,” she pleaded.
Bringing his forefinger beneath her chin, he lifted her face up to his. “I’m not lying,” he insisted.
“Then stop trying to charm me.”
He looked amused. “Why? Because you think I’m trying to seduce you? Well, I am.”
Desperate to hide how shaken she was by his blunt statement, Sierra turned her back to him and sucked in a shaky breath. “I can’t understand why. You can have any woman you want. And you’ve never wanted me.”
His hands curled over the back of her shoulders as he bent his head and spoke softly against her ear. “That’s not true. I can’t have any woman I want. And I’ve always wanted you as a friend. Now I happen to want you to be more than a friend.”
Sierra closed her eyes as all sorts of wicked images danced through her mind. At least he was being honest, she thought. At least he wasn’t trying to pretend he felt love for her. Especially when they both knew it was sex. And sex only.
But even knowing that wasn’t enough to damper the longing that was growing, spreading through every inch of Sierra’s body. She’d never felt such a sudden, overwhelming desire for any man, and maybe a few days ago she would have been too shy and worried to act upon her feelings. But tonight she was feeling anything but timid.
Turning slowly back around to him, Sierra lifted her face and met the dark, smoky glint in his green eyes.
“I think we’d better get Bowie and go home,” she murmured. “Don’t you?”
Surprise flickered across his face and then he gave her a slow, crooked smile. “Straight home. Without any stops or U-turns.”
Chapter Seven
Minutes later, Alex and Sierra were driving the short distance back to Sierra’s two-story. In the back, Bowie was fussing and chewing his fist.
“He must be hungry,” Alex suggested. “Isn’t that what a baby does to try to tell you that he’s hungry?”
Twisting around in her seat as far as the seat belt would allow, Sierra studied the baby’s red face and jerky arm movements. “I think so. But he shouldn’t be hungry. Mom said he just drank a whole bottle of formula.”
When the two of them had gone up to her parents’ office to pick up Bowie, they’d both made an issue of wanting to keep the baby longer and that they’d not had nearly enough time to spend with him. Maria had even suggested that she keep Bowie overnight to give Sierra a restful night’s sleep. But Sierra wouldn’t hear of it. She wasn’t quite ready to let her little guy be that far away from her. And besides, she got the feeling that Alex was around because baby Bowie was around. She didn’t want to take away his chance to spend more time with the baby.
“That may be the problem,” Sierra said as her forehead puckered with worry. “He usually doesn’t eat that much at a time. He’s probably got a tummy ache.”
“When a baby has a stomachache, don’t you call that colic?” Alex asked.
Sierra groaned. “Yeah. That and a nightmare.”
By the time Alex parked his SUV in front of the house and Sierra lifted Bowie out of his carrier, the baby was squalling at the top of his lungs.
“I’ll bring the diaper bag. You take him on into the house,” Alex told her as she carefully propped the baby against her shoulder.
Sierra went ahead of him and after turning on a lamp, she sank onto a wooden rocking chair and checked Bowie’s diaper. It was clean and dry so she ruled that out as the offending culprit.
Alex appeared and set the diaper bag down on the floor next to the rocker. “I’ve never heard our boy cry like this. He must be miserable,” Alex mused aloud as he gazed down at the baby nestled in the crook of Sierra’s arm. “And look how he’s drawing his legs up. Must be his stomach. What do you do for colic? Is there some sort of medicine you can give him?”
Ashamed that she didn’t have answers for all his questions, she said, “I’m sorry, Alex. I’ve never been a mother before. I’m just learning about all this stuff. Maybe we could call the all-night drugstore and ask the pharmacist?”
“Good idea,” Alex said. “I’ll call while you see if you can quiet him.”
Sierra began to rock and the lulling motion settled his screams to hiccupping wails. Smoothing her fingers over his head, she began to sing a lullaby in hopes her voice would distract him.
Across the room, Alex hung up the phone and hurried back to Sierra and the baby. “He said it sounds like colic and there’s not much you can do for it. If he doesn’t get better soon, he suggested giving him a few drops of liquid simethicone. But he said before we resort to that, we might try making him burp the gas off his stomach.”
Sierra was incredulous. “Use medicine as the last resort? Wouldn’t easing his stomach with medicine be better than him screaming with pain?”
Alex shook his head. “The pharmacist said when it comes to infants as young as Bowie, it’s best not to overmedicate.”
Put like that, Sierra could understand. But she could hardly bear to see the baby in such distress.
Shifting in the rocker, she started to lift Bowie to her shoulder, but Alex quickly bent and reached for him. “Here, let me have the little guy. I was the best belcher in the high school locker room. If anyone can get it out of him, I can.”
Sierra didn’t know whether to laugh or cry as she handed the fussy baby over to Alex. “Just because you know how to rid yourself of gas doesn’t mean you can make Bowie do it,” Sierra argued. “He’s a baby!”
Placing the infant against his broad shoulder, Alex began strolling around the large living room as he patted and rubbed Bowie’s back in a circular motion.
Sierra watched Alex’s tender ministrations and her heart clutched with something that felt soft and warm and terrifyingly like love.
No! That couldn’t be, she silently denied. Wanting Alex in her arms was one thing, but loving him was something altogether different. He was a man who played fast and loose. In and out of the courtroom. She couldn’t love a man who would never love her back.
As Alex completed another circle around the room, he paused by the rocker to toss Sierra a droll look. “Of course I know he’s a baby,” he said, attempting to raise his voice above the baby’s wails. “And I’m not a dunce. I’ve seen all this stuff on television. You pat their back and soured milk spews out. Just give me time.”
Alex had hardly spoken the last word, when a loud burp erupted from Bowie.
Putting a hand to her mouth, Sierra began to giggle. Alex twisted his head in an effort to see what sort of substance was running down the back of his shoulder.
“Oh, I’m so sorry about your shirt, Alex,” Sierra said between laughs. “But you should have seen Bowie’s face. He looked so surprised and relieved.”
Alex grinned with inane pride. “Told you I could do it. Do you think that’s all of it? The gas, I mean?”
Sierra left the rocker and headed toward the kitchen. “I don’t know. Maybe you should pat him a little more and I’ll get a towel for your shirt.”
In the kitchen she grabbed paper towels and dampened a dish towel with warm water and soap. She was turning away from the sink when Alex appeared in the doorway. He mouthed the words “asleep” and with his free hand pointed to the baby.
Sierra walked quietly over to the two of them and peered at Bowie’s face which was scrunched up against Alex’s shoulder. The baby was snoozing peacefully as though he’d never experienced a moment of colic in his life.
Breathing a sigh of relief, Sierra nodded. “He’s out like a light.”
“What do I do with him now?”
Sierra wanted to laugh. For a man who’d seemed so confident about baby care a few minutes ago, he sure seemed lost now.
“Bring him into my bedroom and we’ll put him to bed in the bassinet. Hopefully he’ll stay asleep now that he’s rid of some of that formula.”
Putting down the things to clean his shirt, Sierra foll
owed Alex to the bedroom and straightened the blankets in the little bassinet. Once she stepped out of the way, Alex carefully laid the sleeping baby onto the bed and covered him with a light blanket.
“He has dried milk around his mouth,” Sierra whispered.
Alex turned wide, threatening eyes on her. “You’re not about to wake that little boy up just so that he can have a clean mouth,” he said in a loud whisper. “He’ll sleep just fine like that.”
To make certain Sierra didn’t try anything, Alex took her by the arm and led her out of the bedroom. Sierra left the door partly ajar so that they could hear the baby just in case he did wake up with another bout of colic.
“I’m so sorry about all of this, Alex. You’ve worked hard all day and you didn’t plan on relaxing like this,” she said.
Disappointment was evident in his green eyes as they roamed her face. “Why do you think you need to apologize for Bowie? We’re in this together, aren’t we?”
She hesitated, uncertain as to what he wanted to hear or what she needed to say. “Well…yes. I suppose we are. Without you I couldn’t have kept Bowie. Child services believe you’re going to be acting as his father.”
His brows pulled together. “I am acting as his father, aren’t I? I’m the closest thing to a daddy that the kid has right now.”
Sierra’s head tilted up and down in agreement, but her expression was clearly sad.
Seeing the woeful look on her face, Alex pulled her over to the couch and sat her down next to him. “What’s the matter, you don’t think I’m capable of being a daddy, is that it?”
She couldn’t believe he was running off on a tangent like this. It wasn’t like him. But then it wasn’t like him to take her out to dinner or to care for a colicky baby, either. This Alex was not the same sardonic friend who scolded her for having a mushy heart and useless boyfriends.
“No, Alex! That’s hardly what I was thinking.”
“Well, you had a damn miserable look on your face,” he accused. “What was that all about?”
She shrugged one shoulder. The last thing she wanted to do was hurt his feelings. Especially after the closeness they’d shared in Red’s courtyard.
“I was just thinking that you’re only a part-time daddy for Bowie.”
Something like regret tugged down the corners of his mouth and he looked away from her as he rubbed his hands against his thighs. “Yeah. Well, that’s about par for the course, isn’t it? An adopted kid wouldn’t know how to be a real dad.”
“Alex! Damn you!” she cried as she snatched a grip on his upper arm. “That’s an awful thing to say. To imply something like that is to—you’re insulting thousands of adopted men out there—”
“I’m not talking about other men,” he interrupted sharply. “I’m talking about me.” He plunked a finger into the middle of his chest. “I grew up living a lie. My own father didn’t want me. And the man who raised me didn’t have the guts to tell me the truth.”
Her fingers tightened on his arm. “Oh, Alex, why are you bringing all this up now? I believed—” She paused as her brown eyes pleaded with him. “We were going to have a nice evening together. Bowie is asleep. And the house is quiet.”
The soft, inviting tone of her voice got through to him and the angry lines on his face slowly relaxed. Sierra sighed as he smiled and reached for her.
“God, I’m sorry, Sierra. I didn’t mean to go off like that. We were coming home for other things, weren’t we?” he asked with a throaty chuckle.
Her cheeks warmed with color as she nestled her head against his shoulder. “Bowie got us sidetracked.”
Sierra slid her hands around to his back to slide closer, but suddenly her hand came in contact with something wet and gooey.
“Ugh! Your shirt!” Pulling away from him, she wrinkled her nose with disgust. “You’ve still got spit-up all over your back.”
“Sorry,” he said, then quickly suggested, “Maybe you should wipe it off for me.”
Rising to her feet, Sierra held out a hand to him. “Maybe I should wash the whole shirt. Give it to me.”
His jaw dropped as he feigned a look of shock, then with a wide, wicked smile, he stood and began to unbutton the blue, windowpane shirt. Starting with the bottom button and working his way to the top, his fingers maneuvered the fastenings until the fronts of the shirt fell away to expose a slice of male flesh.
Sierra’s pulse rate nearly doubled and her mouth went desert dry as she watched him slip the garment from his shoulders and hand it to her.
As her fingers clutched the fabric, her eyes darted to the walls, the floor and the ceiling as she tried to avoid staring at his bare chest and arms, and the hard abs that disappeared beneath the waist of his chinos.
“What’s the matter?” he asked, obviously amused at her reaction. “You look like you’ve never seen a man without a shirt on.”
Heat filled her face and spread downward until it felt as if her whole body was blushing as she forced her eyes to meet with his. “Of course I have. But this…is…different. You’re a friend.”
Dimples bracketed his mouth as he stepped forward and slipped an arm around her waist. “And that just makes it all the nicer,” he whispered.
Her heart was beating in her throat like a nervous little wren caught in the talons of a red-tailed hawk. And when he pulled the shirt from her hand and tossed it to the floor, she could hardly speak.
“Uh—would you like for me to find you another shirt?” she offered.
The amused look on his face turned into an all-out grin and he murmured in a voice as smooth as whiskey, “What I’d like won’t require a shirt.”
She groaned. Or had she whispered his name? Whatever had come out of her mouth didn’t matter as Alex bent down and scooped her up in his arms.
“Bowie is in your bedroom. We don’t want to wake him.”
Sierra shook her head. “He sleeps soundly. We won’t disturb him.”
Assured by her answer, he began to carry her toward Sierra’s bedroom.
Except for a faint strip of moonlight from the window, the room had grown very dark. Slipping through the shadows, Alex carefully made his way to the four-poster bed and placed Sierra onto the smooth yellow comforter.
For one wild second, as she watched his smiling face bending down to hers, she panicked. Oh, what was she doing? she desperately wondered. Alex was a playboy. This didn’t mean anything to him. It was all fun and games.
Yet she couldn’t roll away from him. She couldn’t demand that he allow her up and out of the cozy bedroom. Like a deep craving that couldn’t be denied, she had to kiss him, hold him and feel her naked body pressed against his.
“Sierra,” he murmured as he moved up beside her and rubbed his nose alongside her heated cheek. “Why has it taken us so long to get here?”
Shifting toward him, she reached up and cradled the side of his face in her palm. “Are you even sure we should be here?” she asked softly.
He groaned and then brought his lips to hers. Sierra slipped her arm around his neck and snuggled closer against his chest. His skin was smooth, hot and filled her nostrils with a scent she’d come to recognize as simply Alex. It was a heady scent and she gathered it in her nostrils as her lips eagerly searched his.
“Doesn’t it feel like we should be here?” Alex asked once he’d ended the kiss.
Sierra’s breath was nearly gone and she waited a second for her head to stop spinning before she spoke. “It feels like magic, Alex. But—”
His nose and lips nuzzled the curve of her throat, the back of her ear and finally her temple. “But what?” he asked. “Do you want this all to end? Are you afraid to make love with me?”
Make love with me. Yes, that was exactly what she would be doing, Sierra thought. She’d be making love with him straight from the center of her heart. She’d be giving him her body and soul. That was enough to make her terrified. And yet her fear, as strong as it was, still wasn’t powerful enough to beat down the
desire she felt for this man.
“No.”
A sigh of relief rippled past his lips and brushed her cheek. “That’s good. Because it would be hell to take my hands off you now.”
Before she could make any sort of reply to that, Alex covered her mouth with another kiss. And after that, nothing else mattered. She didn’t want to talk. She didn’t want to worry or wonder how she’d feel once the sobering light of day arrived. Alex wanted her and she wanted him. That was enough for now.
As Alex kissed her, he could feel the struggle inside her collapse. Her body went limp, her mouth became even hungrier. The idea that she wanted him was a powerful aphrodisiac and his veins pulsed with heat and the throbbing need to be inside her.
Urgent now, his hands found the tie at her waist and tugged it loose. Her blouse had no buttons so as quickly as the sashes fell apart so did the front of the garment. She wasn’t wearing a bra and Alex drew in a short, sharp breath as his eyes laid upon her small, perfectly made breasts.
“Oh, woman,” he whispered, “how very beautiful you are.”
Reverently his hand reached and cupped around the soft mound centered with a rosy-brown bud. Sierra moaned and arched toward him in silent need. Alex shifted so that his mouth was level with her breasts and for a moment he buried his face between them and breathed in the sweet, womanly scent of her skin, listened to the rapid beat of her heart as it shook her left breast and caused his own hands to tremble as they slid over her warm, satiny skin.
When his mouth finally touched her nipple, desire shot through him like an arc of electricity and he felt his loins tighten with overwhelming need, his manhood pulse. The strong, sudden reaction to the woman in his arms was shocking to Alex. Wanting a woman wasn’t supposed to move this quickly!
Tearing his mouth from her breast, he reached to peel away the rest of her clothing, which consisted of only her skirt and a skimpy pair of pink panties. After tossing them to the floor, he dealt with his jeans and shoes. The items landed on top of Sierra’s with a soft thud as he turned back to her.
Fortune's Heirs: Reunion Page 43