“Let’s not get into that again,” Mac growled, as if he’d read her thoughts. “We made love and you’re mine, Kara. And you are, you know. You belong to me.”
He erupted with explosive force, astonishing himself. He was not prone to sexual possessiveness, and emotional outbursts over a woman were not his style. At least, not until now. Now...he slowly lowered Kara to her feet, letting her slide down the hard throbbing length of his body, turning the release into a long, provocative caress in itself.
Now things seemed very different. The thought of Kara with anyone but him was intolerable. It wasn’t much of a stretch to reach the corresponding tenet—that Kara and no other woman but her was meant to be his wife. It almost explained the Amy debacle in a mystical sort of way. Amy was not Kara; naturally their marriage had been doomed.
His thoughts spooked him. He was far more comfortable focusing on the physical aspects of their relationship than delving into alarming insights about destiny and cosmic ties.
And focusing on the physical was exceptionally easy when his body was pulsating with a passionate need that grew more urgent with each moment. “Come on.” He fastened his fingers around her wrist and headed toward the bathroom, dragging her along after him.
It took him seconds to turn on the shower, adjust the water temperature and the spray, then drop his robe to the floor. He turned to Kara, his dark eyes burning. “Let’s get you out of that and into the shower.”
Kara’s eyes widened at the sight of him, nude and fully aroused. She’d seen him last night in bed, but this was different. This was broad daylight and he was urging her to strip and get into the shower with him!
“I—I’d really better check on Clay,” she hedged, suddenly desperately shy. “If he wakes up—”
“He’ll get himself a bowl of cereal and turn on the TV to watch cartoons. There are cartoons broadcast all over the world, so they’re on at any given hour of the day or night. Clay always finds them.” Mac had already unbuttoned her wrapper and was slipping it off her shoulders. His fingers traced the elastic waistband of her white cotton panties. “Why did you bother putting these on?”
“Mac!” Kara flushed, scandalized. And tantalized. She watched him pull down her panties, watched his eyes dilate and darken as he brushed his fingers through the soft brown nest of curls.
He pulled her into the shower and under the warm spray. Kara sputtered as water poured over her head and into her eyes and mouth. Mac laughed wickedly. “Afraid a little water will melt you, sugar?”
“I don’t recall you laughing with joy when you got a dousing yesterday,” Kara reminded him. “In fact, you went berserk. Just ask Autumn.”
Mac held the soap and lathered his hands. “Well, that was then, this is now.” He grinned rakishly. “Come here.”
“You’re breaking your own rule.” Her legs were shaking, her body quivering. This was all so new to her, but so exciting, so tempting that her inhibitions and reserve seemed to dissolve like the soap bubbles floating in the air. “Yesterday, you officially banned all water play forever, remember?” she taunted cheekily.
“I’m lifting the ban.” Mac caught her in his soapy hands. “And making an exception to the rule. Because you are exceptional, baby.”
His mouth, warm and wet, opened over hers as his soap-slicked hands roamed over her, washing her as he caressed her. His tongue deep in her mouth, he thoroughly soaped her breasts, fondling, then gently squeezing, using his palm and then his fingers until she was moaning with pleasure.
He did the same with the rest of her body, the hollow of her waist and navel, the curves of her hips, the soft swell of her belly. She was primed and ready, waiting with shivering anticipation when his hands slipped between her legs. She gasped his name, clinging to him. She could hardly stand it. It felt so good, too good! Such acute pleasure bordered on exquisite sensual pain and she twisted against his hand seeking the release he had given her last night.
“Not yet, baby.” Mac’s voice was a sexy, teasing rasp in her ear.
Kara whimpered in protest and frustration, but he kept up his lusty play, bringing her to the edge again and again, but not allowing her to go over it. Driven wild and wanton, she blindly reached for the hard male length of him, wrapping her fingers around him.
“That’s right, honey,” Mac breathed. “You need to be taught what you want, and now you’re ready for your next lesson. That this will give you more pleasure than my fingers.” He lifted her, pressing her against the wall and plunged into her, sinking deep into her velvety softness.
Kara cried out, her soapy slender body so aroused that she was in a fever of need. It burned and spread and intensified until she was aware of nothing else but their bodies, joined together, wet and throbbing and swollen with desire.
And then the tension and fever exploded to flash-point, lifting them to the heights of ecstasy, to a summit of pure sensual rapture....
Afterward, a languid and rather dazed Kara took a turn at soaping Mac, while the water sluiced the suds off her own body. They shampooed their hair, and they flicked soap bubbles and water at each other, thoroughly violating the house ban on water play.
“Appendectomy?” Mac guessed, tracing his finger along the faded white scar on her belly. “A long time ago?”
Kara nodded. “I was six. I got sick in school and was taken to the hospital, and operated on later the same day. I was scared at first, but my dad rearranged his schedule so I wouldn’t be alone in the hospital. My mother was very busy—did I mention that she was a buyer for a department store? She was on an important buying trip and couldn’t come home, but I didn’t mind.” Her eyes misted in reminiscence. “My dad was there. He even slept on one of those chair-bed contraptions at night.”
“Your dad. That would be Reverend Will?”
“Yes.” Kara nodded her head. “I always thought of him as my father back then, and in those old memories, he still is.”
“It must’ve been weird for you,” Mac said thoughtfully. “He was your father and then he wasn’t. He turned into some kind of faux uncle whom you seldom saw.”
“It was weird.” The word didn’t come close to describing her pain and sense of abandonment but Kara let it stand.
“No wonder you had trouble trusting any man after the way you’d been dumped.” Mac was proud of his insight. “It explains why you stayed a virgin all those years.”
“Please! No armchair psychology,” Kara said lightly. She pushed open the shower door. She did not feel like being analyzed by Mac Wilde. Nor did she want him feeling pity for her or the child she had been.
Mac followed her out of the shower. “You’re here with me to stay, Kara.” He caught her water-slick arm, halting her in her tracks. “You proved it by trusting me enough to sleep with me.”
“Maybe I was just sick and tired of being the oldest living virgin on the planet.”
He laughed. “Well, now you’re not anymore. You’re my sweet and sexy fiancée. My passionate little mail-order bride.” Wrapping her in a thick blue towel, he began to rub her dry.
She closed her eyes, enjoying his ministrations. Too much. “Mac, I know you need someone to look after the kids for you, but you have to seriously consider what marrying me means to them. If you—if we—decide things aren’t working between us a few years from now, they’ll be hurt, especially Clay and Autumn.”
“That’s not going to happen,” Mac said stubbornly. “It will work, Kara.”
It would’ve been the ideal time for him to tell her that he’d fallen irrevocably in love with her, and that they would never part, sighed a wistfully romantic little voice inside her head. Kara wanted to hear him say it so badly that she almost didn’t care if he were lying.
But honest, up-front, blunt Mac didn’t lie. And he didn’t say it.
Kara told herself she appreciated his honesty, that she could never trust a smooth operator who said things he didn’t mean.
Nearly half an hour later, the two of them walked dow
n the hall together, dried and dressed, Mac’s arm draped possessively around Kara’s waist.
“It’s still raining,” he remarked. Raindrops pounded hard and steady against the house, and a glance out a window revealed no break in the sky’s gray cloud cover. “Looks like I’ll be stuck in my office today. I needed to catch up on the paperwork, but I hate it.”
“Hate the paperwork or hate being inside?” asked Kara.
“Both. I’m a rancher because I like the outdoors. I don’t know how the pencil pushers in those city skyscrapers take it, being cooped up and inactive, day after day.”
“That was me,” Kara murmured. “A pencil pusher in the commerce department in downtown D.C.”
“Was being the operative word. You’re not going back there, Kara.”
The possessive command in his voice thrilled her when they were in bed, but out of it, she felt the need to assert herself. He had to know that there were times when he could dominate her and times when he most certainly could not. “I’ll have to go back, Mac, I—”
“No.” His tone brooked no argument. “We’ll pay a moving company to pack up your stuff and send it out here. You can submit your resignation to the commerce department and tie up whatever loose ends there might be by phone or fax. You’re staying here, Kara. I’m not going to let you go.”
“Actually, I don’t have to resign. My job was phased out in the last round of budget cuts.” It was difficult making the admission, she felt like a flop, but Kara felt compelled to be honest with him. How could she not, after what they’d shared? “I’m taking my week’s vacation now, and then I have to go back to wrap up my final two weeks.”
“You’re not going back. Who cares if you’re there for your final weeks? If they were stupid enough to fire you, they don’t get the benefit of your presence. We do.” He kissed her, hard and long. “Your days as a city statistician are over, honey. Get used to it.”
She already was, and she was loving it, Kara thought dizzily.
The sounds from the television drew them into the big living room-den. Clay was sitting on one of the bright floor pillows, eating a bowl of cereal, his eyes glued to the big screen which featured the Roadrunner outrunning his hapless coyote pursuer.
Tai crouched on the deep sill of the bay window, staring as a squirrel dashed from tree branch to tree branch. He ignored Mac and Kara’s arrival. So did Clay.
“You see? Cartoons.” Mac cast Kara an I-told-you-so-glance. “The electronic baby-sitter is truly a gift from the gods.” He dropped a kiss on the top of her head. “I guess I’ll head into my office now. See you later.”
He was turning Clay over to her, and she accepted the responsibility.
Mac watched her sit down beside the child and strike up a conversation. Thank God she was here! He’d spent some rainy days cooped up in the house with Clay, and felt himself perilously close to losing it on those trying occasions. Today, Kara was in charge. Whistling, he headed into his office to face the hated paperwork.
The phone rang a half hour later as Kara was sitting at the kitchen table watching Clay laboriously print spelling words on a piece of yellow lined paper. She automatically answered it.
“This is Bear Creek High School, calling to verify that Lily Wilde is still sick,” came a brisk voice over the line.
“Still sick,” Kara repeated blankly, but the attendance officer took it for an affirmation.
“Thank you. We hope she’s feeling better soon.” The woman rang off.
Kara stared at the receiver in her hand and a chill of apprehension rippled through her. Lily wasn’t in school today? In her mind’s eye, she saw this morning’s scene unfold once again—Lily sauntering across the room to Webb who watched her, his green eyes cool and intent, his hard mouth drawn tight.
Was that how it had been? Or was she letting her imagination run away with her? Webb might be completely innocent. He might’ve dropped Lily off at the school not knowing that she intended to ditch, to slip away to “paradise” with her mysterious lover.
What if Webb Asher really was that man?
She would ask Lily point blank as soon as she came home, Kara decided. Until then, she ought to keep her suspicions to herself. The prospect of presenting her theory to Mac without any evidence was daunting, indeed. He’d thanked Webb for driving the kids to school today! If he thought that his ranch manager had absconded to “paradise” with his niece....
Kara shivered.
* * *
It was still raining when Lily arrived home with Brick and Autumn later that afternoon.
“We didn’t have to take the bus home and walk up that long muddy driveway,” Autumn said happily. “Webb picked us up at school and drove us right to the door.”
Kara nodded in response, but her attention was focused on Lily. She’d become perceptive at recognizing visible signs of spent passion, and Lily’s dreamy-eyed face was an unmistakable display of exactly that. The teenager went immediately to her own room, pleading a headache. Kara didn’t buy it, but her plans to question Lily privately were foiled by Mac and the three younger children.
They hung around the kitchen, munching on peanut butter bars she and Clay had baked earlier, talking and joking and bidding for her attention.
Mac smiled his satisfaction as he watched the kids consume their snack. Nobody had thrown food or committed any other untoward acts since entering the house. The aura of calm and order was a dramatic change from the chaotic pre-Kara era. Mac watched her interact with the kids and was filled with a sense of rightness.
And with desire. Just looking at her, watching her move, turned him on.
She was wearing a gray pleated skirt, short but not outrageously so, and a sand-colored jersey and printed vest. He admired her legs as she walked and he ogled her breasts as she stretched and bended. He knew she was wearing lacy peach panties and a matching bra under that tastefully demure outfit; he’d watched her put them on this morning.
And then there were those stockings she wore—not cumbersome panty hose but sheer thigh-high stockings, which miraculously stayed up and on without a garter belt, though he certainly wouldn’t have minded her wearing that fantasy-inducing item. But those stockings of hers were the stuff of fantasies, too. She’d shown him the lacy elastic bands at the tops of the stockings which kept them in place, and he’d stroked the silky soft skin, bared between her panties and stockings. He’d been ready to take her back to bed right then and there, though nature should have decreed such a surge of desire impossible after that tryst in the shower such a short time ago. But the desire was there, hot and urgent, and he’d had to exert considerable willpower to hold back, knowing that Clay was undoubtedly up and about.
Mac’s thoughts drifted to that passionate interlude in the shower, then back to the intimate ardor of last night. He felt himself growing hard, the blood pooling thick and hot. He wanted to dispatch the kids to somewhere else and carry Kara back to his room....
“I’m going with Courtney Egan now,” Brick announced rather proudly. “She’s the prettiest, coolest girl in the eighth grade. Maybe even in the whole school.”
“Tom Egan’s daughter?” Mac was fully attentive to the conversation now. Tom Egan was a local attorney, a guy he’d grown up with. He hoped his friendship with Tom would survive Brick’s sudden relationship with the pretty little Courtney.
“Everybody looked so stupid dressed in those geeky clothes today,” Brick chortled as he helped himself to his fourth peanut butter bar. “Wacky Tacky Day! How lame can you get? Only me and Jimmy looked cool. Courtney dumped Chad Walters and told her friend Bethany that she liked me and asked me to her party on Friday. I said okay, and she wrote me a note.”
“And so now you’re going together?” Kara asked. “My, that happened quickly.” Her eyes darted to Mac who was watching her with hooded eyes. “A regular whirlwind romance,” she added. She felt lighter than air when Mac chuckled at her small joke. It was fun being with someone who shared her sense of humor.
<
br /> “Brick is as impulsive as I am,” he muttered out of earshot of Brick. “Let’s hope he’s not as fast, hmm?” Mac grinned salaciously and swung out an arm to catch her by the hand.
He lifted it to his mouth and pressed his lips against her palm. Tingles of sensation rippled through her.
Reverend Will Franklin’s arrival a few minutes later interrupted the camaraderie. Mac invited the pastor in, but he wasn’t pleased by the impromptu visit. He was polite but cool toward the pastor.
Reverend Franklin ignored him. His attention was focused exclusively on Kara.
“You simply must come to dinner tonight, Kara dear,” he insisted, taking her hand in his. “Ginny is cooking a wonderful meal, and we all hope that you’ll come along with us to the church’s fall white elephant and clothesline sale afterward. Tonight is the first night of it, and you’ll have a chance to meet some of our friends in town and—”
“Elephants?” Clay piped up. “White elephants? I saw white tigers at the zoo one time. How come the church is going to have elephants there? Is it like a circus?”
The reverend frowned. “It’s not polite to interrupt when others are talking, son. Let me finish and then I’ll explain.”
Clay was undaunted. “I want to go see those elephants, too. Can we, Uncle Mac? Please!”
“A white elephant sale has nothing to do with elephants,” Mac explained patiently. “People bring things they don’t use or don’t want anymore and sell them to other people who want and can use them.”
“Stuff like clotheslines?” Clay was perplexed.
Reverend Franklin made a clicking sound of impatience.
“People bring clothes they’ve outgrown or don’t want anymore to a clothesline sale.” Kara took her turn supplying the explanations. “They don’t charge very much for them, so the people who buy the clothes get a good bargain.”
“I have lots of clothes I don’t want,” Autumn exclaimed excitedly. “Can I get money for them?”
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