Tender Loving Care

by Jennifer Greene

  “Not there. It hurts there.”

  “Does it?” But she worked specifically around that vertebra where he was obviously sore.

  “Zoe. I’ve been to Vietnam. I spent a month camping in freezing weather on a mountain in the wintertime. I was in China during the earthquake. I really don’t have a major problem coping with the elements.”

  “I know you don’t.”

  “So how could two small four-year-old boys-”

  “I really think it’s time you took me to bed,” she said gently.

  “-completely reduce a man to-” He stopped talking abruptly. His eyelids flew open, and he rolled over onto his back.

  In time, his right hand languidly reached out and captured her wrist. He tugged her down, slowly, as if terrified of setting off a box of TNT. Just as carefully, he leaned over her, pinned her legs with one of his and cleared his throat. Such machinations might have been enough to make Zoe smile, except that she couldn’t.

  A groove of a frown marred his forehead, and his eyes searched hers, roaming with intense concentration over her fragile features. He wrapped a strand of her hair around his fingers, then let it spring free…then did it again. “I must have heard you wrong,” he said finally.

  No man should have such blue eyes. “I’m pretty sure there’s nothing wrong with your hearing.”

  “So am I.”

  “Of course, you could have it checked tomorrow. There’s a doctor in town-”

  “Look at me, Zoe.”

  But what she saw in his eyes made her heart pound and her hands feel shaky. He wasn’t going to settle for a light and breezy tone from her, and she suddenly didn’t know how to tell him that she was afraid. His lips brushed hers with the tenderest of kisses, just one. And then he lifted his head, looked at her and reached for her hand. “Come on.”

  The hallway that led back to the bedrooms was really very short. Just then, it annoyingly lengthened into a long mile and a half. Still holding her hand, he popped his head into the kids’ bedroom for a minute and closed their door. By then he must have been able to tell she was having a sudden attack of nervousness, because her palm was damp, but he didn’t let on. In her room, without releasing her hand, he punched the lock on the door and pushed a chair in front of it. He was making so sure the kids couldn’t interrupt them that she tried another smile.

  All smiles seemed to be locked on the other side of her head. Her heart had been suddenly replaced by a trapped butterfly, her lips were parched enough to crack, and air was having a problem getting in and out of her lungs.

  The room was dark, and that helped, but then he switched on her bedside lamp. The soft glow illuminated him as he carefully pulled down her spread and blankets. When he tossed the pillows on the floor, she felt heat travel slowly up her cheeks. The white-sheeted mattress looked too bare. And then he turned to her, and she saw those blue eyes again.

  Gently, he unfastened the first button of her blouse. “So…are we going to be nervous?” he murmured softly.

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “Do we want to change our minds?”

  She shook her head, but she certainly didn’t look down. All of her blouse buttons seemed to be undone. Firm, callused fingers pushed the garment off her shoulders.

  “Are there two of us scared witless here, or is it just me?” he asked patiently.

  “Blast you, Rafe,” she said helplessly. “Would you stop being so darned reassuring and just kiss me?”

  His brows shot up in an expression of comical surprise. That relaxed her as even his touch couldn’t have. Her nervousness reflected how long it had been since she’d made love, but she felt no unwillingness. This was Rafe, a man she loved and trusted. A man she could be honest with, a man she could even be nervous with.

  A man she wanted very much to make love to, and his first kiss was dangerously delicious. Hello, Zoe, welcome to earthquake country. Her fingers fumbled with his shirt buttons, even as she returned pressure on pressure of kiss on kiss. She pushed the shirt off his shoulders as he’d pushed off hers. Under her fingertips was a playground of warm, bare flesh.

  His palms skimmed her shoulders, her spine. She felt the clasp of her bra being opened, and then that barrier was gone. Air rushed from his lungs when he felt her bare breasts crushed against him. He murmured something. If she didn’t catch the exact words, the intimacy of his tone was enough to make her knees quake.

  His knuckles brushed against her tummy when he unsnapped her jeans. His palms slipped inside to bare flesh, and he learned her with his hands as he languidly pushed down the denim fabric. His lips wandered from her throat to the tips of her breasts, and by the time she lay outstretched on the bed, she had no clothes on and neither did he.

  When she felt him trace the scar below her navel, her fingers burrowed in his hair. He must have felt that sudden tension, because his head lifted. For a moment, he just looked at her, and then his head dipped down. He branded her right breast with a kiss, then placed another just over her heartbeat; he counted her ribs with more kisses, but that caressing trail aimed relentlessly lower. Her eyes squeezed closed when she felt his mouth on the thin silver ribbon.

  The scar had no feeling; she could have sworn it had no feeling, yet when his tongue traced the line of it, she felt a shattering inside, like color exploding, like a fierce ache that was more compelling than pain.

  “Don’t,” she whispered.

  He heard her. He climbed back up her body, kiss by kiss, and when he was face-to-face with her, he leaned up on an elbow. As if his heart weren’t pounding nor need tearing through him, he played lazily with a strand of her hair. The thick, low whisper came from the back of his throat. “Don’t isn’t a word for lovers, Zoe, and never for us. What’s yours is mine in this bed, and it goes both ways.”

  Her skin glowed like ivory under the lamplight. He was aware-too aware-that Zoe was only sure for the moment that she wanted him. Whatever had changed her mind, he didn’t want to know. His conscience pricked him for not asking. It seemed more important-he hoped it was more important-to show her how it could be between them. He kissed the tips of her fingers, then the palm of her hand.

  “I read somewhere you should never bring frustrations to bed,” he murmured. “I always thought that was dead wrong, Zoe. This is the worst place I can think of to fake anything. Know that you can bring frustrations to this bed. Or fear. Or old hurts, or a damned rough day. Your scars are mine when I make love to you. I want who you are with me.”

  She touched his cheek, mesmerized by the thick fringe of black lashes that softened his eyes. The strain on his features, the sapphire sheen in his eyes, was so clearly for her. She answered him in the only way she knew how, by lifting her head and touching her lips to his.

  He offered her honesty. He offered her the intimacy and allure of yielding to a man who needed her, just her. He offered her the fragile sensation that she was precious to him. He offered her the irresistible promise of being wanted without boundaries, beyond sense, above thought, past right and wrong.

  She took what was hers. The right to love and be loved. She matched urgent touch for urgent touch, kiss for kiss, the heat of her body with his. Heartbeats clashed and skin kneaded skin, and she’d known from the beginning he wouldn’t be a careless lover. He was never that.

  When he finally claimed her body, he filled her up, engulfed her with him, with wanting, with long, lean hands and lips and the fierce cadence of heat and desire. Rafe showed no interest in basic satisfaction. He wooed her with abandon, with giving, with the uncontrollable force of an avalanche, with speed and fire and ice. He wooed Zoe, all of her, cells and pores and fingertips and toes. And even when that diamond brightness of release glowed through her on one fierce, sweet cry, she held on to those rights of loving. To that wonder of feeling loved by him, to the awe of loving him. There was the treasure.

  Silent as a cat, she’d nearly reached the door when she heard Rafe’s groggy “Where on earth do you think you’re goin
g?”

  “Go back to sleep,” she whispered. “It’s three in the morning, Rafe. I’m just going out to the couch.”

  They’d both napped after making love. She’d wakened to a second fantasy of swift, strong passion, but then afterward she hadn’t slept, couldn’t. She knew she’d have to move away from the warm circle of his arms and return to the living room; the children would be up at six. She wasn’t about to let Aaron or Parker find her and Rafe in bed together.

  “Come back here,” Rafe ordered in a low voice.

  She shook her head, undoubtedly a motion he couldn’t see in the darkness. Silently, she lifted the chair away from the door. There was no point in talking about it. For two hours, her conscience had tried to make her regret having made love with him. She regretted absolutely nothing, but the reality was that two small children made a relationship impossible. She was guilty of being foolish, but never of being a fool.

  She’d just turned the knob on the door when she felt his arms swamp her from behind. Sleepy and warm, he turned her around and wrapped her up as if she were a fragile present and he were the ribbon. His chest hair tickled like a memory, and his forehead touched hers in the darkness. He hugged her, and life seemed so simple. And then his finger lifted the strap on her nightgown. “I like it better when you don’t wear clothes,” he said sleepily.

  “This is my favorite nightgown, I’ll have you know.”

  “Still no good, Zoe.”

  “No?”

  “Bare is better. Your skin is better.” He touched the fabric. “This is just silk.”

  She smiled, nuzzling just a moment more in the hollow of his throat. He smelled so sleepy and warm, so uniquely like Rafe. His whiskered cheek scraped against her forehead. “Come back to bed.”

  “I can’t. You know I can’t. The children…”

  “At the moment, Zoe, the only one I care about is you, and you’re not going out to a cold couch in the middle of the night.” He added, “I’ll stay awake; I’ll get you up before they’re up. But you’re sleeping with me.”

  His words both warmed and disturbed her. How many thousands of times had she desperately wished for a man who wanted her more than he wanted children? Only that man couldn’t be Rafe. He had to care about the little ones, and he had to care more about them than about her, because their future mattered so much.

  Still, he wasn’t an easy man to argue with at three in the morning. He led her back to bed, and then, like a man, still wasn’t pleased. Her cheek had to be pressed to his shoulder, her leg anchored gently between his, the covers arranged just so. He even bullied her into closing her eyes, but she whispered, “You can’t fall asleep.”

  “I won’t. Zoe?”

  “Hmm?”

  “I love you.”

  “I love you, too.”

  “Not that kind of I-love-you. Not the words that get said automatically after making love. I mean I love you.”

  She didn’t have to think. She didn’t even have to open her eyes. “No, you don’t.”

  “Funny, but I’m damn sure I do.”

  “No. It’s just…needing each other right now. Because we’ve been thrown together in this situation with the kids.”

  “If I’d been thrown together with a three-hundred-pound battle-ax with warts because of the kids, I assure you I wouldn’t be in bed with her right now.”

  “Thank heavens you’re discriminating,” she murmured, but his mood would not be lightened.

  “What I feel for you has nothing to do with the children, Zoe. I’ll tell you as often as I have to, until you finally believe it.” Before she could answer, he’d heaved up on an elbow. Dark eyes bore down on her as he stole first one pillow and then the second from beneath her head. “Honey,” he scolded gruffly, “what I would like you to do, just once, is not think about anyone but yourself, what you feel, what you want, what you need. I realize you think you’re a very selfish lady-you certainly keep telling me how selfish and cold-blooded you are-so just try to be that way. Just once.”

  “Rafe-” Her nightgown seemed to be skimming over her head.

  “I’d better confess right now that three times in a night for an old man like me might be close to a miracle. But we’ll try. Someone’s got to teach you to be selfish, to be greedy, to be just a little bit of a taker. The whole rest of the world mastered those vices a long time ago. It’s not so hard. But you want to pay close attention, because this is a very serious test about what you want.”

  “Rafe-”

  “Are you concentrating?”

  There was just no talking to him.

  Chapter Eight

  Just as Zoe lifted the toothbrush to her mouth, the bathroom door was nudged open. “Morning, Snookums.” Parker was still trailing his blanket.

  “Morning, pumpkin,” she replied to the wearer of the sagging teddy-bear pajamas, and whisked an eye to the doorway where his sidekick stood.

  “Morning, Snookums.” Aaron yawned.

  “Morning, lovebug.” Her hips shifted back to make room as both boys climbed up on stools and reached for their toothbrushes. Especially this morning, she would have appreciated an ounce of privacy, but the assembly line was already being organized. They brushed and spit in a harmonious trio, followed by three face washes, and then immediately the boys scrambled up on the vanity and perched on either side of her. Aaron patiently held the hairbrush and Parker automatically started to open lipstick tubes to figure out which one matched her outfit. Some day that decision could take time, but today her outfit for work was jeans and a fisherman’s sweater. Parker could choose any color he liked, his favorite game.

  “Which perfume today, Zoe?” Aaron asked sleepily.

  “This one. You can spray it.” Neither showed the least expression when she unlocked the medicine cabinet to remove a vial of perfume, though they both knew darn well she usually kept the scents on the dresser in her bedroom. “Did you give Uncle Rafe a hard time yesterday?” she asked casually.

  Two small jaws dropped. “’Course not. We were wonderful,” Parker assured her.

  “I take the question back,” Zoe said wryly. “Let’s put it this way. You are going to go easy on Uncle Rafe today, understand?”

  “Sure.”

  “Sure.”

  “Because if you go very easy on Uncle Rafe today, late this afternoon you can come visit me and my whales.”

  “We will be awesome.”

  She listened patiently to the rash promises. Aaron was going to make lunch for everyone. Parker was going to remember to flush every time. Both planned to cultivate silence. No one was going to hit anyone even if Aaron hit him first.

  “’Scara, Zoe?”

  “Thank you.” With the mascara wand in her hand, she leaned closer to the mirror, her movement mimicked by the two urchins, who never seemed to lose their fascination with the mascara wand. She’d just finished one eye when a fourth reflection appeared in the mirror.

  All she could think of was: and now we pay the piper.

  The man standing behind her was wearing navy blue pajama bottoms, which were tied with a drawstring below his navel. His arms were loosely folded over a golden chest peppered with dark hair. His whiskered chin gave him an unkempt, dangerous look; his muscled shoulders again made Zoe think of a lumberjack’s, and there was an elemental maleness about this particular man-fresh-out-of-bed that set her nerve endings rippling like the stir of a breeze on the surface of a cool, smooth pond.

  His slash of a smile set off waves of more intimate proportions. Suddenly and privately conscious of a delicate tenderness between her legs directly related to the man in question, Zoe felt color seep up her cheeks. It deepened when he uncrossed his arms and moved directly behind her.

  “You helping Zoe get dressed?” he asked the twins.

  “We always help her,” Aaron affirmed. “She couldn’t do it without us.”

  “And I can see you do a terrific job.” Yawning, he reached for his toothbrush…by sliding both arms under Zo
e’s from behind her, and made the boys giggle when he applied toothpaste to the brush the same way.

  “You look like you got four arms, Snookums!”

  And one set was distinctly male, not to mention what was pressing intimately against her back. She scolded him with her eyes in the mirror.

  “Shouldn’t I be brushing my teeth in front of the kids?”

  Such innocence, and she must have jumped sky high when the fingers of his left hand walked all the way down her spine and ended up with a private little pat. “We’ll just go out and start breakfast,” she said swiftly.

  He behaved no better in the kitchen. When she leaned over the table to pour Corn Flakes, her fanny was treated to a surreptitious squeeze. When she reached into the refrigerator for milk, Rafe reached in front of her, slid his hand over her breast and emerged with butter for toast. At the sink, he stood behind her length to length. At the table, he brushed imaginary toast crumbs from her lips. When she bent down for goodbye kisses at the door, Rafe was third in line. He managed a loud smack like the kids, but those weren’t a child’s eyes staring back at her. They were a man’s, and that unrepentant grin made sure she knew it.

  She reached for the doorknob with a heart gone thumping and her nerves in shreds.

  “Forgot your jacket, Zoe,” he said idly.

  “Yes.” She rushed back to the front closet for her navy parka.

  “Forgot your purse, Zoe.”

  The shoulder strap was dangling from his finger. Completely addled, she snatched that, too.

  “Zoe?”

  She turned back one last, exasperated time.

  “Just wanted to make sure you hadn’t forgotten anything else,” he said cheerfully from the door.

  Over lunch with her coworkers, Zoe considered sending Rafe a package of darts in payment for his dangerous sense of humor. She knew exactly what he didn’t want her to forget. The foolish man-if she were knocked out, half dead, unconscious or suffering from amnesia, she still couldn’t forget having made love with him the night before.