The Black Sheep’s Baby

by Kathleen Creighton

  For the first time in her memory, Devon was afraid.

  That in itself was enough to propel her up from the bed where she’d been sitting surrounded by the contents of her briefcase and overnighter, to begin an agitated and jerky pacing-across to the window-where she could look down on Eric’s “bunkhouse,” which she thought looked more like a dollhouse, or a cookie house decorated with spun sugar frosting-then to the door, and back to the bed again.

  What was he trying to do? What was he thinking of, to kiss me like that? What is he up to?

  She asked herself those questions and was suddenly angry…furious. He had to have done it on purpose, to upset her. She told herself he could not have actual feelings for her. Given the circumstances, even the possibility of lust seemed remote.

  He hadn’t mentioned the court order or the mission that had brought her here since the first morning, but he had to have thought about it-how could he not? Just because they’d declared a Christmas truce, didn’t mean they weren’t still at war.

  So, what was he up to? Could it be that- Oh, God. The truth hit her so hard she gasped and even buckled a little, as if from a blow to the belly. That was it-it had to be. Eric was deliberately trying to seduce her. Hoping she would then convince her parents-her clients-to drop their custody suit.

  As if he could! (As if she would!)

  If Eric Lanagan thinks he can get around me that way, he doesn’t know Devon O’Rourke!

  With that thought resounding like a bugle call in her mind, she all but lunged across the room, flung open the door and surged into the hallway, intent on setting the man straight, once and for all. She had actually reached the stairs-had one foot on the top step-when she remembered.

  Emily. She was baby-sitting.

  With a groan of frustration, Devon tiptoed back the way she’d come. She hesitated at her own open doorway, then went on past it and down the hallway to Eric’s room. That door, too, stood open. No sound came from within-thank goodness Emily had slept through the racket she’d made, barging out of her room like that. Still, she supposed she ought to check, make sure everything was all right.

  Holding her breath, she tiptoed closer and peeked into the room.

  The smallest of movements caught her eye: a tiny pink fist, poking up from the mound of pastel-colored blankets. As Devon stared at it, the fist waved, jerked, punched the air like a miniature shadow boxer. Without a sound. Fascinated, she crept closer, until, by craning her neck, she could see into the nest of blankets. Her breath hiccupped, quivered, then stopped again.

  Murky blue eyes gazed intently at the waving fist. The fist jerked, the eyes widened. Budlike lips drew together, forming a look of intense concentration on the round pink face.

  Devon couldn’t help it-she gave a squeak of laughter. And tried to hold it back with fingertips pressed against her lips. Too late-the eyes jerked toward the movement and the sound, and the look of concentration became one of expectation.

  Busted, thought Devon with an inward sigh. “Hello, little one,” she whispered aloud, and her heart did a stutter-step because that was what she’d heard Eric call her. “Hello, little girl,” she amended as she bent closer still, and daringly touched the baby’s chin with her forefinger.

  It was startling to her-it seemed the most miraculous thing-when the baby’s chin abruptly dropped and her mouth popped open, then widened…and just like that, became a smile.

  “Ohh…” Devon breathed. Something inside her chest-her heart?-grew huge and began to ache. Her eyes misted over.

  How it happened, she didn’t know, but somehow, then, she was sitting on the bed in the midst of all those pink and yellow blankets, and the baby was nestled in her arms, instead. She was cooing to her and rocking, softly laughing, and didn’t know or didn’t care that there were tears running down her cheeks.

  It was like stepping into a time capsule. From the moment Eric pushed open the door and switched on the light, he was fifteen years old again, coming home from school, getting off the bus and jogging up the lane, making straight for the bunkhouse. Throwing his backpack down on the narrow bed, reaching up to take the key to his inner sanctum, his darkroom, from its hiding place above the wall heater beside the door.

  It had been his dad’s idea to turn the back half of the bunkhouse into a darkroom, the part that included the bathroom with its water supply and drainage system to accommodate the mixing and disposal of chemicals. It had been years since they’d actually housed a hired hand in the bunkhouse, Mike had pointed out, and besides, it would be a whole lot more comfortable-and less expensive-than trying to convert the old root cellar and tornado shelter under the house, which had been Eric’s initial plan.

  Eric had insisted on paying for the renovations himself, out of the money he’d earned working summers for his mom and the sale of 4-H project animals, money that was supposed to have been saved for college. He’d been arrogant, he remembered, about the fact that he’d paid for it with his own money. It was only now, looking back, that he realized how much help on the project he’d gotten from his dad-and his mom, too. And that they hadn’t said a word about him spending his college fund. Had he ever even thanked them, for any of that? Probably not. The thought made him feel itchy with guilt.

  The bunkhouse was cold as a meat locker. He turned on the heater, and while the shoebox-shaped bed-sitting room was slowly filling up with warmth and the smell of burning dust, he felt above the heater, without much hope, for the key. Incredibly, it was still there. He felt a knot take hold in his chest as he fitted it into the lock, turned the knob, opened the door, flicked on the light. Sucking in a breath, he slipped the key into his pocket and stepped into the murky red gloom.

  It was all there. Everything too large and bulky to take with him when he’d left home the summer he’d graduated high school, the drying racks and counters and shelves he and his dad had built out of scrap lumber and plywood from the local builder’s supply store. There were even some packages of paper and chemicals, almost certainly long expired. And more than a few spiderwebs, not to mention dust, but not nearly as bad as he’d expected. Which made him wonder if his mom might have been keeping the place up all these years. That thought was another knot…another guilt.

  Methodically then, he began to move among the racks and counters, waving away cobwebs, blowing off dust, sorting, counting, rearranging, setting to rights. And while he did that images paraded through his memory-mostly black-and-white; he hadn’t been equipped, then, to process color-images taken with his old Pentax, his first SLR camera, given to him by his mom and dad on his thirteenth birthday. Images of Mom on her tractor, Ellie feeding baby calves, Dad at his computer, Aunt Gwen-well into her nineties and still wearing jeans-with her apron full of the eggs she’d gathered. Caitlyn on the swing, sticking her tongue out at the camera. School friends, wild geese flying, the tornado that had passed just to the north one spring. He saw the images the way he’d seen them for the very first time, floating in a pan of water, barely discernible shadings on white paper, gradually taking shape, becoming darker…clearer…sharper…while he held his breath and his heart trip-hammered in the excitement of each new discovery, each tiny moment in time now captured forever, each little miracle, like a birth happening right there in his developing trays. He thought it was the way he’d always seen the world-a series of images, flat, like photographs, composed, framed and developed in his mind, frozen and preserved and filed away forever in his memory.

  Until Susan. Until he’d held her hand and watched the life fade from her eyes. Until they’d placed her baby in his arms, wet and covered with her mother’s blood. And he’d known that this was life. Not a photograph, and not forever, but all the more precious for being so fragile and so fleeting.

  The reality of that had hit him on that day, for the first time not in his head, but in his heart. In his guts. And he had known he would never be the same.

  God knows, he wished he could be. God knows he’d been a much more carefree Eric, watchin
g the world through the lens of a camera rather than feeling its pain in the pit of his stomach.

  God knows he wouldn’t be aching now for the damaged little girl he knew in his heart must be somewhere in the lost memories of a beautiful woman named Devon O’Rourke.

  God knows he wouldn’t be thinking of that woman every waking moment, thinking of her and remembering the feel of her heartbeat banging against his chest, the weight of her across his lap, the warmth and softness of her feminine places a delicious pressure on his masculine ones, and the taste of her still in his mouth…

  He jumped, as something thumped against the bunkhouse door, as if he’d been guilty of the action itself rather than just the thought. He lunged for the darkroom doorway and got there as the outer door burst inward, and there was Devon, cheeks flushed, eyes wild and hair flying. She was holding in her arms what looked like a bundle of bedding.

  His heart dove into his socks.

  “I’m…sorry,” she panted, “I…didn’t know what else to do. I tried…everything. I fed her, and she didn’t want any more, but she was still crying, and…I couldn’t…” Her face crumpled. “I don’t know what’s the matter with her.”

  By this time Eric had relieved Devon of her burden and was peeling off the enormous comforter that completely engulfed the carrier-seat. “Let’s hope you haven’t smothered her,” he muttered dryly, before he thought. He could have bitten off his tongue when he saw Devon’s features freeze in a look of pure horror. He threw her a lopsided but reassuring smile as he tossed the comforter onto the bed. “Hey, I’m kidding. She’s fine. Sound asleep.”

  “Really? Are you sure?” Her voice was cracked and fragile.

  “See for yourself.” He turned the carrier and edged it closer to her. They both gazed in silence at the baby’s plump pink cheeks and delicately curled fingers, her mouth still making sucking motions as she slept.

  Devon let out a long breath and closed her eyes. “Oh, God. I feel like such an idiot.”

  “Hey, it’s okay.” He glanced at his watch. “My fault, in fact. Didn’t mean to desert you. Guess I lost track of time.”

  “Why do you suppose she was crying like that? Did I do something wrong?” Green eyes, bright with worry, searched his across the carrier seat.

  Under that stark appeal, Eric’s chest tightened. “Who knows why?” he said gruffly. “Babies cry.” Then he asked, “Did you burp her?”

  She clapped a hand to her forehead. “Oh, God-”

  “Hey, look, it’s no big deal. Obviously.” He turned abruptly and set the carrier on the floor beside the bed, then reached around Devon to close the door. In her haste to sidestep out of his way she lurched awkwardly, and he put a hand on her arm to steady her. He heard a sharp hiss of breath.

  Heat engulfed him. His lungs felt sticky with his breath. He glared at her. “Forgot your hat and gloves again, I see.”

  She didn’t answer, except to lift a hand to her head, as if to verify that what he’d said was true. When she lowered the hand again, somehow it came to rest on his arm.

  Neither of them said anything. Both of them looked down at her hand, resting there on his arm. In the silence, Eric could feel his body rocking with the impact of his pulse. Just when he thought he would have to act or be suffocated by his own self-restraint, he felt the almost indiscernible lift of her shoulders, then a small sigh.

  “It’s still there, isn’t it?” she said sadly.

  Chapter 12

  H e couldn’t pretend not to understand. He shook his head and breathed a soft affirmation.

  “I was hoping…” she lifted her head and gave it a little shake, and he braced himself to meet her eyes “…it was, I don’t know…some kind of crazy fluke.”

  “Temporary insanity.”

  “Yeah…”

  He snorted. “It is, you know.”

  “Insanity?” Her lips quivered, and twisted when she tried to keep them from it. The look of utter desolation on her face tore at his heart. “It is-I know it. I don’t know what else it could be.” She would not meet his eyes. “I’ve never felt anything like it before. I know I can’t let it happen. I can’t. But, dammit…” She clamped a hand across her mouth, muffling the rest.

  “But…what?” Something made him say it, lowering his face closer to hers.

  He could barely hear her whisper, “But, I do so want it to.”

  His heart ached, trembled, thundered within him. He could remember experiencing such emotion only twice before in his life. Ironically, once for a birth and once for a death. Which, he wondered, was this?

  “You want me-” he whispered, and could not go on.

  “Yes-God knows why…beyond all reason.” She said that angrily. “I want you-” her voice broke, then, and she tilted her face upward, defying her own resolve…tempting his beyond all reason “-to make love to me. Only-” with a hand covering her eyes she rushed to deny it “-only I know we can’t. I know it. It’s unthinkable. It’s-”

  “We can.” He heard the words dimly, and the stirrings of excitement deep in his belly and groin told him they were his, though he felt them merely as a flow of breath over lush, warm lips, lips that were slightly parted and quivering in anticipation of the kiss they both already felt, and so badly wanted. Wanting made him believe the words were true. Overwhelming need made him nudge her chin with his and caress her lips once more. “We can…”

  She gave an anguished moan. He closed his eyes so he wouldn’t have to see the pain and confusion in hers as slowly, slowly they sank into each other, as their mouths melted together-though their bodies remained apart, swaying a little, touching only where his hand rested on her arm, and hers on his. All he thought about then was how hot and sweet her mouth was, the most intoxicating thing he’d ever tasted, like some enchanted elixir put in his way by a capricious god to tempt him. One taste, and a man would be lost forever.

  And yet he could not make himself stop tasting. Do it-yes, everything in him shouted. Do it. Sort it all out later.

  Breath drained from him as, in full surrender to the enchantment, he drew her arms around him and gently enfolded her in his. Deep inside her bulky jacket he could feel her body tremble. Galvanized by that, he lifted one hand and drove it into her hair, wove his fingers through the cold, slippery curls to cup her head in his palm, curled his fingers into a fist, tangling them in the vibrant mass of her hair as he held her against the deepening thrust of his kiss. Held her that way, kissed her that way, until he was trembling, too, and dizzy with the need for more.

  With the hand not caught in the skein of her hair, he found the pull tab of her jacket zipper. It made a growling sound as he tore it down-a sound echoed a moment later, deep in Devon’s throat, when she took her arms from around him long enough to shrug the jacket away. It slithered to their feet, and then her arms lifted, clearing the way, and her body was hard and taut against him. His hand was under her sweater, his fingers spread across the remembered, tender-soft skin of her back, and her hands were tangled in his hair, now, both of them-claiming and holding his neck and head as if they were precious treasures she’d found.

  A strange, giddy happiness enfolded him, against all logic and reason, and his body, naive and feckless as an adolescent boy’s, believed in it. He simmered with excitement, shivered with delight and smiled against her mouth as he picked her up in his arms.

  What had he expected to do then? Who knew? He was in freefall, drifting on that strange, unwonted euphoria, conscious of and caring about nothing else but the woman in his arms, the soft-firm resilience of her body, the cool, damp smell of her hair, the hot brandy taste of her mouth. Had he intended this? He felt the bed bump against his knees, and he was laying them both down, still kissing her deeply and hungrily, filling his arms, hands and mouth with her. Was he thinking about causes, consequences and aftereffects? He was beyond thought.

  And she, too, it seemed. She made no objection at all when he measured her naked breasts in his hands, and gasped when he teased a
taut nipple between forefinger and thumb. When his fingers discovered the button on her slacks, when he tore the zipper down, she only arched her body closer, turning…seeking…and her sounds were soft moans and tiny growls, every bit as famished as his. His knee slipped between her legs, urging them wider apart, and she moved them willingly, eagerly, inviting him to know the warm, pulsing, vulnerable softness hidden there. Her fingertips made frustrated forays beneath the waistband of his jeans.

  He tore his mouth from hers and raised himself on one elbow, thinking to make the way easier for her. But she ducked her face into hiding against his chest and gasped out a muffled cry. “What are we doing?”

  His tongue felt thick, his brain muddy and shocked. “I thought we were-”

  “No.” She reared back her head and glared at him. Dimly he registered the fact that her eyes were bright as diamonds, glittery with something that wasn’t all desire. “What is it with you, Lanagan?” Though her voice was sharp and her words angry, her face was defenseless as a child’s. Her hands clutched fistfuls of his sweater. “You can’t possibly love me. I don’t know how you can even want me. Why are you doing this?”

  He felt his body go still. The hand still tangled in her hair relaxed its grip and opened to cradle the back of her neck. Accepting the sea change in her passion, he reluctantly gentled his, and with a stroking touch along the sides of her throat, said warily, “I don’t know why. Any more than you do.” He tilted away from her and gave her a crooked smile before he added, in a raspy growl that was meant to be sardonic, “It’s not like I had this on my agenda.”

  “Are you sure?” She hadn’t returned the smile. Eyes the impenetrable green of jungles gazed accusingly into his.

  The movement of his fingertips over the velvety surface of her skin stopped abruptly. He caught his breath, held it a moment then let it go in a gust of incredulous laughter. “You mean, as in ‘Plan B: If All Else Fails Get Devon into Bed?’”