by Linda Turner
Hurriedly pulling the drain plug, she stepped from the water and she was reaching for a towel just when Lucas knocked at the bathroom door. “Rocky? How’s it coming in there? Supper’s just about ready. You need some help?”
“No!” Her heart in her throat, she jerked the towel around her dripping body and told herself not to be a fool. He couldn’t see through the door, and if he’d intended to walk in on her, he wouldn’t have stopped to knock. And it wasn’t as if he’d never seen her naked. Still, her voice was shaky when she told him, “I…I’ll be right there. Just give me a minute to get dressed.”
“No problem. I’ll start putting the food on the table.”
He walked away without another word, his footsteps loud in the hushed silence as he returned to the kitchen. Letting her breath out in a rush, Rocky realized she’d never be able to take a bath again without picturing him there, in her bathroom, lighting candles for her and running the water, kissing her. Why, dear God, had she ever agreed to this? He was carving a niche for himself in her life, and she was letting him. It had to stop.
She would talk to him, she promised herself, and lay down the law. Just because she was carrying his baby, that didn’t mean that he had the right to anything where she was concerned. Somehow, she would get that through to him. But after supper, she decided as her stomach grumbled, reminding her that it had been hours since she’d had lunch. First she had to eat.
Luke was damn proud of himself. Giving the table a critical eye, he thought it didn’t look half-bad, considering what he’d had to work with. Whatever else Rocky was, she obviously wasn’t much of a cook. Oh, she had expensive cookware and a set of dishes that had probably cost the earth, but her freezer was practically bare except for frozen pizzas and TV dinners. And there wasn’t a cookbook in the place. He wasn’t much of a gourmet himself, but he drew the line at TV dinners. Digging a can of stew out of the pantry, he’d topped it with a package of canned biscuits he’d found in the refrigerator, then stolen some candles from the living room to decorate the kitchen table. He might have the knives and forks in the wrong place, but he was willing to bet that stew tasted damn good.
“Something smells wonderful.”
At Rocky’s husky greeting, he turned, ready to tease her about her eating habits, but the second his eyes found her standing in the doorway from the hall, the words stuck in his throat. Her face bare of makeup and her hair still damp and curling from her bath, she wore a flannel gown and a robe and foam booties. Lucas’s eyes told him there was nothing the least bit sexy about the getup, but other parts of his body disagreed. His gut clenched, and suddenly just breathing normally was a chore. Soft and mussed and slightly rumpled, she looked as if she’d just crawled out of bed.
Stop right there, a voice in his head warned sternly at the thought. Don’t even think about hauling her off to bed. You’re here to give her a little TLC, nothing else. You try seducing her and you could lose whatever slim chance you’ve got of talking her into marrying you.
It was good advice, but just remembering what it was like to make love to her made concentrating on anything else damn difficult. God, she had him tied in knots! And that scent she wore didn’t help matters. Soft and subtle, it floated over to him and teased his senses, wrapping around him until all he could think of was her…the taste, the feel, the warmth of her.
His smile tight, he said thickly, “It’s just canned stew. Have a seat while I get us something to drink.”
He turned away while he still could, but there was nowhere to run. After pouring them both glasses of milk, he had no choice but to take the seat opposite her. Under the table, his foot accidentally nudged hers, and he felt heat streak up his leg like a bolt of lightning, straight to his loins. Muttering a curse, he jerked his foot back as if he’d been scalded.
If Rocky noticed, she gave no sign of it, but calmly proceeded to serve herself and chatter about how relaxed she felt after her bath. Feeling as if someone had connected electrical wires to his nerve endings, Lucas could only envy her. The way he felt right now, he’d never be able to relax again.
They both dug in, but any chance Luke had of enjoying the meal had gone up in smoke the second she stepped into the kitchen doorway. The stew tasted like mush, the milk seemed to thicken in his throat, and the only appetite he had was for her. Sometimes life could be a real bitch.
By the time he’d cleaned his plate, his only thought was to get out of there. He needed some time to himself to figure out what the hell the woman had done to him. But when Rocky rose to her feet to carry their plates to the sink, she winced slightly and pressed a hand to her back.
“Your back’s hurting you again?”
“Yeah,” she sighed. “I guess it’s something I’m just going to have to get used to.” Rubbing at the aching spot, she grimaced.
He should have left her to deal with the problem the best way she could—after all, she’d made it clear that she didn’t want him in her life—but he couldn’t walk away. Not yet. Taking the plates from her, he set them back down on the table and grabbed her hand. “C’mon. I’ll give you a back rub.”
“Oh, but you don’t need to do that—”
“Yes, sweetheart, I do,” he said grimly, finding her bedroom and tugging her into it. She just didn’t know how much he needed to get his hands on her. Just for a second, he promised himself. What could it hurt? “Kick your shoes off and stretch out on your stomach,” he said in a rough voice as he stopped next to her antique oak bed and turned her to face it. “I’ll have you feeling better in no time.”
“But you probably need to be going. What if one of your patients needs you?”
“Mary will beep me,” he assured her. “Quit worrying. Unless, of course, you want me to leave. I know you’ve had a long day—”
“No! Don’t go!” The plea popped out before she even had an inkling it was there. Horrified, she slapped her hand over her mouth, but it was too late to take the revealing words back. Her cheeks stinging with hot color, she could do nothing but try to dog-paddle out of water that was suddenly over her head.
“I mean…it’s not that late, and I’ll be fine as soon as I get horizontal. I just need—”
He cut in gently. “I know what you need. Lie down, Rocky. Let me take care of you, honey.”
When he spoke like that, in that deep, tender voice that seemed to rumble up from his soul, her will just melted. Without a word, she kicked off her shoes, grabbed her pillow and lay down.
She felt the bed dip as he sat down beside her, and should have tensed, but she was just too exhausted. Then his hands settled on her shoulders, kneading gently, and she couldn’t have stiffened if her life depended on it. It—he—felt wonderful. Sure, knowing, talented, his fingers worked at muscles that seemed to have been knotted forever, smoothing out the kinks one by one as they moved slowly, steadily, down her spine. By the time he reached her lower back, she felt as if she’d died and gone to heaven. Unable to hold back a low moan, she went boneless.
“That’s it, baby. Just close your eyes and relax,” he murmured, leaning over her to press a kiss to the shell of her ear. “I’ll take care of everything.”
With a sigh of contentment, she did as he asked, and the world slipped away to the nether regions of her consciousness. Time must have passed, but she never noticed. There was nothing but the feel of his hands on her, the magic of his fingers, the steady beating of her own heart in her ears as he turned his attention from her lower back to every muscle in her arms and hands to the soles of her feet. As spineless as a jellyfish, she loved it.
When he brushed a kiss over the arch of her foot, she giggled. Then he pressed his mouth to the inside of her ankle and lingered, his tongue teasing the sensitive skin there, and her giggle became a muffled groan. He touched her nowhere else, just there on her ankle, but suddenly every nerve ending in her body was tingling. “Lucas—”
He heard the faint protest in the husky calling of his name…and the sudden breathlessness of r
ising passion. He knew he should concentrate on the former and stop right there, but it was the latter that urged him on and that he found impossible to resist. His own blood was on fire and had been from the first moment he touched her. And, God help him, he didn’t want to stop there. Not when she was soft and pliant on the bed and the memory of that night they’d shared on the mountain was suddenly there between them, as tempting as the devil himself.
Still, he couldn’t take advantage of her and risk destroying the fragile trust they’d managed to find over the past few hours. His fingers unconsciously tightening on her ankle, he said hoarsely, “I know. I feel it, too, honey. You know I want you—I can’t seem to help myself when you’re this close—but this has to be your call. If I keep touching you, I’m not going to be able to keep from making love to you. If that’s not what you want, say so now.”
Bracing for rejection, he wondered how the hell he was ever going to find the strength to walk away from her, but instead of telling him he’d better leave, she rolled onto her side and reached for his hand. Without a word, she tugged him down on the bed beside her.
A slow smile curved the corners of his mouth as his eyes met hers. “Does this mean you don’t want me to leave?”
For an answer, she lifted a delicately arched brow. “What do you think?”
What he thought was that he was going to die if he didn’t have her, and damn soon. How long had it been since he’d kissed her? Really kissed her, and lost himself in the taste and feel and wet, giving heat of her mouth? Days? Weeks? A groan of need rising in his throat, he leaned over and pressed his mouth to hers.
He promised himself he was going to take this slow and easy. He wanted her wild for him and hot, so much in need that she wouldn’t even remember her own name when he finally put them both out of their misery and took her. But the second his lips touched hers, her arms came around him, and it was like coming home. His thoughts blurred, his heart thundered in time with hers, and she gave him back kiss for kiss, touch for touch, as if they had been lovers for an eternity and had done this hundreds of times before, instead of just once.
Trust. It was there in the way she arched under his hands as he tugged her robe and gown from her, in the way she cried out when he moved over her, dropping kisses over every sweet, naked inch of her. It was his name she called, his shoulders she clung to as if she would never let him go. Touched, emotion gripping his heart, he felt her move against him, her hips nudge his, and the control he’d been so sure was unshakable was suddenly very shaky indeed.
His teeth gritting on a groan, he reminded himself that she was pregnant—he couldn’t take her like a madman. But she murmured his name and kissed him long and sweetly, and it was all he could do just to hang on to his sanity. A muscle ticking in his jaw, he tried to tell her that he was close to losing it. “Sweetheart…I don’t want to hurt you—”
“But you are,” she murmured huskily, nipping at his ear as she moved her fingers to the snap of his jeans. “I ache, Doc. Can’t you do something to make it feel better?”
He closed his eyes on a groan. “God, sweetheart, don’t do this to me….”
“What? This?” Through his jeans, she dared to caress him, and found him hard and ready for her.
Lightning-quick, his hand closed around hers, but the damage was already done. She knew he wanted her more than he wanted his next breath, and there was no stopping her. The rasp of his zipper was loud in the expectant silence, and then she was pulling his clothes from him and he was helping her.
After that, there was no time for talking, no time for anything but hot, openmouthed kisses and hands that seemed to never stop moving. Her breath caught in her lungs, her heart quickened, and he shuddered as her fingers curled into his hips. Then his hands were parting her legs, his fingers gently searching, and the world could have stopped without either of them noticing.
Urgency flared between them and burned like a flame in their blood. Her legs circled his hips, and with a low groan he surged into her. In the dim light that spilled into the bedroom from the hall, her eyes met his. Then there was nothing, nothing but the two of them moving together, racing toward the sun.
Nine
“Marry me, sweetheart. Let me take care of you and the baby. You know we belong together.”
Snuggled spoonlike in the darkness, his chest pressed to her back and his arms cradling her to him, Lucas murmured the proposal in her ear like a temptation and had no idea how much Rocky wanted to jump at it. She loved him. She’d been fighting the truth for weeks now, but after tonight, when she felt more content and safer than she ever had in her life, she could no longer continue to deny the love that burned in her heart. He was a good man—honest and caring—and he would make a wonderful father and husband. All she had to do was say yes.
God, how she wanted to! The word was right there on the tip of her tongue, but before she could get it out, the arm around her waist tightened, pulling her more firmly against him, and he said huskily, “We can make it work, honey. I know you have doubts and you don’t want to give up flying right now, but in your heart, you’ve got to know it’s the right thing to do. And just because you give it up for now, it doesn’t mean you’d be grounded forever. After the baby comes, we’ll talk about it.”
Just that easily, the moment was shattered. Hurt, disillusioned, she could just imagine how they would talk about it. He would decide that the mother of his child had no business flying all over the wild blue yonder when she had a baby to take care of, and that would be that. End of discussion.
Sudden tears stinging her eyes, she threw off his arm and scrambled out of bed before he could stop her. “What’s the use of talking about it?” she asked bitterly as she snatched up her robe and struggled into it. “You’re never going to approve of me flying, so the answer is no. I can’t marry a man who doesn’t support what I do.”
His jaw granite-hard, he snapped on the light. “Why do you have to be so damn stubborn about this? I never said I didn’t support what you want to do. But it’s different now, dammit! You’re pregnant, and you’ve got a baby to think about.” Tossing back the covers, he rose naked from the bed, magnificently male and furious as he jerked on his jeans.
“I do think about it,” she said angrily. “That’s why I can’t marry you. You want a traditional wife who stays home where she belongs and doesn’t take risks. That’s not me, Lucas, and it never will be, so you might as well get used to it. I’m going to continue to fly as long as I can—”
“Just to prove to me that you can.”
“No, dammit! Because it’s what I do. What I’ve always wanted to do. I’m sorry if that upsets you, but it’s really none of your business.”
“The hell it’s not!” he growled. “In case you’ve forgotten, that’s my baby you’re carrying. And whether you like it or not, that gives me a whole hell of a lot of rights where you’re concerned. If you won’t take care of yourself, I will.”
She lifted her chin at that, refusing to flinch at the fury that rolled off him in waves. “You can’t do anything I don’t allow you to do, and no one’s going to stop me from flying. Not right now.”
They glared at each other like two fighters in the ring, neither willing to back down, the tension in the air so strong it practically crackled. Frustrated, so angry he wanted to throw something, Lucas muttered and cursed and jerked up his shirt from the floor. Trying not to think about how it had gotten there, he pushed aside the image of her tugging at his clothes until he’d been as naked as she and said grimly, “That doesn’t mean I’m going to stop trying, so you might as well get used to it. Every time you even think about taking one of those damn planes up, I’m going to do whatever I have to to keep you on the ground.”
Bristling, she demanded, “Are you threatening me?”
“You’re damn right I am,” he said curtly, heading for the door. “And if you don’t like it, tough. I protect what’s mine.”
What was his! she fumed, sputtering. Oh, she
’d tell him what was his—nothing, that was what! She wasn’t a commodity to be owned, dammit! But before she could open her mouth to tell him just that, he was gone, slamming the front door so hard that the windows rattled.
She winced and only then remembered that he’d driven her home in her car. And as furious as she was with him, she couldn’t let him walk home in the dark when it was freezing outside. Jerking open the front door, she half expected to find him waiting on the porch, fighting the need to ask her for a ride home. Instead, he was backing out of the driveway in her car!
“Hey!”
“I’ll bring it back tomorrow,” he yelled through the open driver’s window. “You’re not going to need it, anyway. You’re not going to work.”
“The hell I’m not! Damn you, Lucas, you come back here! Do you hear me?”
For an answer, he only waved jauntily and drove off. If she could have gotten her hands on him, she would have killed him.
The snowstorm hit just before dawn, whistling and moaning like something straight out of the bowels of hell, and it was still going strong two hours later, when Rocky was ready to go to work. And she was going, she assured herself grimly. She didn’t care what Lucas said or how long he kept her car. It was in just such conditions that her services were needed the most, and she planned to be right there by the phone if a call came in. If that meant calling the sheriff’s office for a ride so that she could get there, then so be it.
But just as she glanced out the living room window to see how deep the drifts were, Lucas drove up in his Bronco. Surprised—after his parting shot last night, she hadn’t expected to see him at all today—she moved to the front door, the light of battle gleaming in her eyes as she waited for him to knock. If he was back to pick up where they’d left off last night, she was ready.