The rush those words brought was almost better than sex itself.
* * *
IN BETWEEN HER early-morning bike ride and work, Lillie managed to make a phone call to her doctor on Tuesday morning. She reassured Lillie that while the first time she and Jon made love might be a little uncomfortable for her, she would be just fine.
And while it was possible to tell if a woman had given birth—more so if the man in question had been versed in the physical intimacies of a particular woman’s body before the baby—it was unlikely in her case, as she and Jon had never made love before.
Dr. Jordon had also suggested, not lightly, that if Lillie were embarking on a serious relationship, she should tell the man that she’d had a son. And lost him just days after his birth.
Assuring the doctor that if she was seriously considering a long-term relationship, she would do so, Lillie hung up, relieved. And almost called Jon to tell him the good news.
Then she remembered that he hadn’t known there’d been a problem.
She hadn’t, either, until the night before, when they’d been seconds away from taking off their clothes.
When he called her later that afternoon, offering to get started on the tiling that evening—with Abraham in tow—she agreed immediately.
That night, as well as the two nights after that, she spent the early part of the evening looking after the little boy who was quickly tunneling his way into her heart, and then, after eight when she’d settled him into her bed, she spent the rest of the time working beside Jon.
By ten o’clock on Thursday night, Lillie was pretty well tied up in knots.
“Do you like it?” In his old work jeans and a T-shirt, with grout dust covering his hands and a portion of his cheek, Jon surveyed the new backsplash in her bathroom—the last of his tiling projects.
“I love it!” The glossy beige and tan and crystal squares looked even better than she’d hoped against the off-white walls and beige granite sinks. She was covered in grout, too, although she’d washed her hands.
“Good.” Putting the lid back on the almost-empty container of grout, he dropped his dirty trowels in the bucket of warm water he’d brought in with him and put the lid on that, too. “I’ll get this stuff out to the truck and be right back for Abe,” he said.
Reaching out a hand, Lillie grabbed his arm. “Don’t go.”
He froze, the few inches he had on her seeming more like ten as he looked down at her. “Don’t go?” he repeated.
Lillie nodded.
And because she’d been a little unclear the other night at his house, she added, “I’d like you to stay. To...hold me.”
“Lady, I am willing to do many things for you, pretty much anything you ask, but I do not believe I’m capable of simply holding you right now. Or anytime soon, for that matter.”
The intensity in his gaze went straight to her heart. “What if I’m not asking you to ‘simply’ hold me?”
He frowned and she rushed on. “I was hoping we could finish what we started the other night. You told me to tell you when I was ready.”
His gaze changed yet again, consuming her. “You’re ready?”
“Uh-huh.” Whether her grin was due to nerves or her surging homones, she wasn’t sure. She just knew she couldn’t stop herself from smiling up at him.
“Right now?”
“Yeah.”
Glancing around them, he dropped his bucket and took her hand, pulling her into her bedroom where his son lay sleeping on her bed. Still holding her, he scooped up the sleeping toddler with his free hand, settled him on his shoulder and hauled her gently down the hall, stopping where she’d dropped her purse on the counter when she’d come in that evening.
“You’ll probably want to grab that,” he said softly, leaning away from his son’s ear.
“We’re leaving?”
“I’m not going to blow this opportunity,” he said. “And the crib where Abe is safe, the monitor that keeps him that way, the shower I desperately need and the condoms I bought are all at my place. Not to mention a bed that isn’t occupied.”
Still grinning, Lillie grabbed her purse, laced her fingers through his, locked up as they left her house and said, “I do have a spare bed, you know.”
* * *
JON’S BED HAD come with the apartment. The sheets were his own. They were his one extravagance—a gift to himself after years spent sleeping on a bare cot with only a horsehair blanket to cover him.
That night, he and Lillie marked those sheets with their wet soapy bodies because they hadn’t been able to wait until they’d finished their shower and dried off. He’d intended to be slow and deliberate with every touch. To frame each moment in his memory. But he’d no sooner shoved his drawers to the floor of his bathroom and stepped into the shower, before she was in there with him—completely naked and slick with water.
“I was too impatient to wait my turn,” she said, reaching up to stick her tongue in his mouth. “I swear to you,” she said as she licked water off his chin, “I’m not a wild woman.” Her tongue dipped to his nipple. “This thing that you do to me...”
He would have asked what thing if he could get air out of his lungs. Just because he wanted to hear her talk about it. She was traveling lower and Jon knew that it would all be over before it began if he let her dip any farther.
Grabbing the bar of soap, he rubbed her back first, and then her arms, pulling her upright and moving on to her hands, her quads and knees and calves and toes. By that time she’d finished soaping up his back and backside and was sliding around to the front.
Choking, he grabbed her hand and made a beeline to the bed, tumbling their wet bodies down. He donned the condom in record time and sank himself into her waiting warmth.
“Can you stay?” Jon asked now, holding Lillie’s body against him as the aftermath of the most exquisite moment he’d ever known slowly faded and he settled back onto wet sheets.
“I don’t have much choice, do I? Since you’re my ride home and Abe’s fast asleep.”
He didn’t even glance at the computer he’d still had the mind to set up on its pad on his nightstand, so that he could hear his son and see his room, as well.
“I could get him up. He’d never know the difference.”
“I’ll stay.”
That was all Jon had needed to hear. “Stay right here a second,” he said, sliding out from beneath her and covering her with his robe as he strode buck naked out of the room. His bathroom had come with a separate shower and tub.
The tub, while apparently standard in this part of the country, was unlike anything he’d ever had at his disposal before. Double-wide and deep, he’d never used it, preferring the more standard, shallower tub in the bathroom across the hall from Abe’s room to bathe his son.
Filling the thing now, he added a dab of shampoo to the water gushing from the faucet, tested the temperature once more and went back to the gorgeous woman who was lounging back on his pillows watching him approach.
“How about we get this dried soap off our skin?” he asked. “Then we can raid the kitchen for some lemonade or tea and see what we can do to a second set of sheets.”
“You have a second set of sheets?”
“Five of them,” he told her, standing there, letting her look him over. Letting her see the obvious effect her unabashed perusal was having on him. “Abe was sick a couple of months ago. Kept throwing up. I couldn’t care for him and worry about laundry, too, so I took some money out of my savings and bought new sheets.”
She was staring at his penis. And swallowed. He watched her.
And when she lifted her arms, he bent and picked her up and carried her into the tub with him where he didn’t think about sheets at all.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
LILLIE
WENT TO the day care on Saturday specifically to see Abraham. She didn’t pretend, even to herself, that she had a legitimate reason for being there. After Jon had dropped her off early that morning, on his way to take Abraham to Little Spirits and then to work at the cactus jelly plant, she’d showered, put on a clean pair of scrubs in case she was called into work, stopped for a bagel at the diner and ended up in the Little Spirits parking lot.
Her phone rang as she was heading in the back door. Seeing the name of her caller, she answered immediately.
“Papa? Is everything okay?”
“I just saw my son.”
Dropping her purse off in the locker she’d been assigned, Lillie closed the small staff room door, poured herself a cup of coffee and sat down on the small, faux-leather couch.
“He said you two are talking.”
“We’ve had two conversations,” Lillie told him. “You have nothing to worry about, Papa. I’m a big girl. And I won’t make the same mistake twice.”
“My son seems to think that there’s something still there between you two.”
Kirk was Braydon’s father. There would always be something there. But not in the way Papa meant.
“I’ve made it clear to him that there isn’t.”
“Apparently not clear enough.”
Looking at the colorful collage of photos on the wall in front of her, Lillie said, “You want me to call him?”
“No!” Jerry’s voice was unusually sharp. “Exactly the opposite. I know my son, Lil. When he wants something he gets it. At any cost. And right now he’s convinced himself that he’s going to win you back. I won’t have him hurting you again.”
“No worries, Papa.” And before she could talk herself out of it, she added, “I’m not available.”
“What?” His voice took on a confused tone. “You’ve met someone?”
“Lillie has a boyfriend?” Gayle’s squeal in the background sounded clearly over the line.
They were going to make far too much of this, which was why she hadn’t intended to mention her friendship with Jon. But if it put their minds at ease...
It wasn’t as though they’d ever have occasion to meet Jon. He wasn’t free on Sunday mornings when they met for breakfast. And Papa and Gayle rarely visited Shelter Valley. Never without first letting her know.
“His name’s Jon, Papa.” Kirk’s father would tell Kirk. And put an immediate end to any plans Kirk had, too. This was all good. “He’s twenty-seven.”
“Who is he?” Gayle’s voice again. “Where’s he from? What does he do?”
“When can we meet him?” Jerry asked.
This was all good, Lillie reminded herself as she took a deep breath and said, “His son was a client of mine.”
“He’s divorced?” Jerry’s tone sharpened again.
“No. Never married. Abraham’s mother had him and left him at the hospital.”
“This is the guy you told us about at breakfast—that single dad you were helping out in exchange for renovation work.”
“Yes,” Lillie admitted.
“So...does he know...about Braydon?” Papa’s question was uttered softly.
“No, Papa.”
“Don’t you think you should tell him?”
She and Jon were just friends. With benefits. Jon wasn’t ready for more. And neither was Lillie. “I’ll tell him,” she said because she knew that Papa and Gayle would make way too much of things if she didn’t agree. “When the time’s right.”
“Tell her to bring him and Abraham to breakfast in the morning,” Gayle’s could be heard saying.
“Jon’s really busy,” Lillie said before Papa could ask, wondering if she’d made the best choice in telling them about him.
And then she thought of Kirk. And knew that his knowing about Jon was the best thing. Especially now that she knew he’d told Papa that he was going to win Lillie back—in spite of his promises to her that he accepted that they were through. Kirk was too smart to let his prey know that he was preying on them. He was a master at finding entry where there were no doors or windows. Why Kirk was doing this, she didn’t know. Because he was bored? Because she was the one thing he couldn’t have? Because he really had experienced some kind of life change and wanted to right his wrongs?
Whatever Kirk’s reason was for wanting to get back together with her, she wasn’t going to be his victim.
Not ever again.
* * *
LILLIE SPENT THE night at Jon’s again. Waking at dawn on Sunday morning with her lying naked beside him, her head resting on his shoulder, Jon knew that he was going to ask her to marry him.
Clearly this was more than just sex. She was the one. And now that he’d finally found her—after a lifetime of searching—he saw no point in wasting any more time.
Until he thought about the truths he’d have to tell her—things she deserved to know before she bound herself to him for the rest of her life.
Maybe he’d wait a bit. Enjoy the moment. At least until the sheriff caught whoever was behind the Shelter Valley break-ins.
Until he was a little more certain that Lillie loved him for more than just his body. And his son.
Still, as he lay there, unable to fall back to sleep, he imagined what it would be like, lying in bed with her as his wife.
And he smiled.
* * *
THE FIRST THING Lillie saw when she opened her eyes was the pair of pudgy hands on the edge of the mattress.
“Illie! Ake!” Abraham’s smiling face peering over the top of the bed was only inches from hers and she leaned forward to give him a kiss.
“Illie! Ake!”
“Abraham!” Jon’s voice didn’t sound nearly as pleased as his son’s as he strode into the room dressed in a pair of black sweatpants and nothing else. “I’m so sorry,” he said, his tone dropping to a dangerously sexy tone as he turned his attention on her. “I told him not to bother you. He’s got the doorknob thing down pat, unfortunately, and I can’t lock the bedroom from the outside.”
“No worries,” she said, wishing she wasn’t naked under the covers and could lift the toddler into the bed with her.
Note to self: next time bring a nightie to store over here.
As Jon came close to pick up his son, she got a whiff of him, and wanted to make love again.
They’d already done it more than half a dozen times in two days. She was beginning to think something was wrong with her. A hormone imbalance, or something.
And then she saw the clock on Jon’s nightstand. “Is it really seven?”
She never slept past five.
“Yeah, I was just waiting for you to wake up to make breakfast.”
Her eyes wide, she sat up, pulling the sheet with her. “I can’t stay, Jon! I have to go.”
And she couldn’t get up with Abraham right there. It just didn’t feel right. She wasn’t the boy’s mother.
Couldn’t be a mother. Couldn’t be waking up to pudgy hands and wet kisses.
“I have to be... I have something I have to do and I’m going to be late,” she said. If she told him about breakfast with Papa and Gayle he’d want to know who there were. How she knew them.
And if she told him they were Kirk’s parents, he’d want to know why she was still in touch with them.
“Illie! Ake!”
“Yes, Abie, Lillie’s awake!” she praised as thoughts flew through her mind.
“You’re working on a Sunday morning?” Jon asked, still standing there, the delicious glint in his eyes distracting her.
How could a man look so sexy while he was holding a toddler with his fist in his mouth?
“No...it’s...no, I’m not working.” Her business was her business. She and Jon were just friends—their no-commitment agreeme
nt had been very clear—but she couldn’t lie to him.
“Oh. Okay, maybe next time.” Something changed in the air. With him. “We’ll be in the other room,” he said. Turning his back, he picked up his robe off a chair and laid it on the foot of the bed before leaving the room with Abe.
Lillie didn’t use the robe. She stepped into the scrubs she’d had on when Jon picked up Abraham the previous afternoon and asked her to join them for take-out burgers and a Disney movie at his place.
Thinking about the day before, the different activities she’d done with Abe to see if she could detect anything of concern regarding his hearing, she joined the Swartz men in the living room.
“You okay?” she asked Jon, who’d been standing by the front window when she walked in. Abraham was playing with his zipper pillow, sitting in the middle of a sea of little cars.
“Fine.” He turned, smiled that hungry smile that captivated her every time and moved over to plant a very thorough kiss on her lips.
Tempted to call Papa and postpone breakfast, Lillie thought of Abraham on the floor beside them, and pulled away, saying, “I have to go, but...what are you doing tonight?”
The toddler was holding two cars, one in each hand.
“Making macaroni and cheese. From scratch. As of this week, Abraham won’t eat the boxed kind anymore. You want to join us?”
Nodding, Lillie said, “How many cars, Abraham?” He knew his numbers. Bonnie had moved him up to the three-year-olds’ class as soon as she’d tested his cognitive development. And maybe because there was a bit less chaos with the older age group.
“Vroom, vroom,” Abraham said, ignoring her question. Not unusual for a toddler engaged in play. She leaned down, put her face in front of his to ensure she had his attention and asked him again, “How many cars do you have in your hands, Abe?”
The little boy looked at his hands, as if seeing them for the first time. And then, dropping a car, he worked hard to get two pudgy little fingers to stand out from the rest and held the result up to her.
“That’s right, son!” Jon grinned. “He knows two, all right. It wasn’t just a fluke!” They’d shown Jon the boy’s progress the day before.
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