by Diana Palmer
Her hands touched his dark, cool hair. “Worth…!…” She swallowed and searched for the words while his big, warm body went curiously still. “Would you mind very much if…well…if I…someday…fell in love…with you?”
His breath started again, in spurts, his hand slid under her neck and began to massage the nape absently. “Do you think you could?” he whispered hesitantly. “I’ve been cruel to you, Amy.”
“Only because I hurt you, and didn’t realize that I had.” She kissed his throat, his chin. “Oh, Worth,” she whispered, pressing wild, sweet little kisses all over his face. “Worth, if you’d let me love you, I think I could give up breathing!”
An odd sound tore out of his throat. His mouth slid across her cheek to find her own, and he kissed her into a sobbing, trembling submission with lips that were hungry and possessive and urgently demanding. His body trembled, and she felt a wetness on her face that she wasn’t sure had come only from her own eyes.
“Let you,” he ground out, and he sounded hoarse. “Oh, God, don’t you know what I feel for you? Can’t you see it, hear it, feel it?” He lifted his head and stared down into her eyes with a wild hunger that a blind woman couldn’t have missed. “Amy, I love you, too! I love you so much!”
Her arms drew him down to her; her eyes bled tears as she kissed him, savoring him, adoring him with her mouth and her hands and her body. It was a dream come true. It was the world and the sun and moon, it was breath itself.
“Now make love to me,” she whispered brokenly, nibbling at his mouth. “Now, take me, and we won’t hold back anything, anything at all, darling.”
He framed her face in his hands and his lips moved against hers. “Yes,” he whispered. He made her part of him, he watched her as he rocked against her, seeing the love, feeling it. He smiled shakenly and bent to her mouth, trembling all over. “And so we truly love,” he whispered as it began all over again.
It was midnight before he carried her into the bedroom, leaving discarded clothing all over the living room and the VCR still purring away.
“Everybody will know,” she murmured drowsily.
“They’re all human,” he reminded her. “And all married, too. Let them snicker. I’m a bridegroom, what the hell do I care? I’m not supposed to have any sense on my wedding night.”
“If you did have any, I’ve deprived you of it,” she teased gently, her eyes loving as they met his. “Worth, if Jeanette had kept improving, would you still have come after me?”
“Of course,” he said. “She wasn’t all that ill, you know,” he added with a smile as he closed the door behind them. “She was lonely. And so was I. I couldn’t live without my heart, so I went to Georgia to find it again and bring it home.” He drew her closer. “I won’t ever let it go, now.”
She reached up and kissed him. “I’m very glad. And the baby? You really don’t mind.”
He laid her down on the bed, standing over her magnificent in his nudity, faintly amused. “Well, let me show you how I feel about the baby.”
He opened his closet door. Teddy bears and baseball bats and gloves and dolls and rolling toys and mechanical toys and stuffed tigers all rolled out onto the carpet in glorious profusion.
“Now,” he said, hands on his hips, “do you have any more questions?”
She could only laugh. “No, darling. Not a single one.”
She held out her arms and he went into them, and the eyes of one of the teddy bears reflected the lamp. The bear seemed to be laughing as the light switch went off and plunged the room into a warm, secret darkness, full of love and new promise.
* * * * *
DIANA PALMER
Diana Palmer is a prolific writer who got her start as a newspaper reporter. As one of the top ten romance writers in America, she had a gift for telling the most sensual tales with charm and humor. Diana lives with her family in Cornelia, Georgia.
eISBN: 978-1-4603-3822-3
LOVE BY PROXY
Copyright © 1985 by Diana Palmer
Published Silhouette Books 1985, 1993
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