Indecision flickered in Sebastian’s eyes, but in the end he glanced away as if willing to give Matty her privacy.
Her heartbeat slowed, and she took a long breath. In weak moments she wanted to pour the whole story out so that she and Sebastian could comfort each other. But it was a selfish urge, and she’d managed to curb it so far.
“I respect Jessica,” he said quietly. “That could become a kind of love, and I’d work damn hard to try and make it happen. Maybe it wouldn’t, but I can promise you we wouldn’t fight the way my parents did.”
“That sounds very noble, but I think children thrive better when their parents really love each other.” She couldn’t help herself. What he was proposing sounded like a living death. “My parents’ marriage wasn’t perfect—Dad depended way too much on Mom, which is why he’s been such a basket case since she died. But one thing I’ll carry with me forever is the picture of them walking down the street holding hands, or kissing each other just for the heck of it. You can’t fake that kind of thing.”
“I wouldn’t fake it. If Jessica is the mother of my child, I’ll teach myself to love her. And I’ll teach her to love me.”
Matty stifled a groan of despair. Knowing his iron will, he just might be able to do it. There was always the chance that Jessica wouldn’t want such an arrangement, but Matty had a tough time imagining any red-blooded female resisting Sebastian if he poured his considerable resources into courting her. Yes, he might be able to teach himself to love the mother of his child. Now if only Matty could teach herself not to love Sebastian.
He gestured toward the paper sack. “I think it’s all in there. Maybe we should try to get some sleep.”
She nodded.
He started down the hall. “I’ll make up the bed in the guest room for you.”
“Just put the sheets in there,” she said. “I’ll put them on the bed. And I’ll also keep the dogs in with me, too. All you need to do is carry that drawer into your room.”
He turned with a half smile. “I thought maybe if I treated you real nice, like making up your bed and giving you the best towels, you’d take the drawer into your room.”
“Nope.”
He glanced uneasily toward the baby. “She’s probably going to wake up in the middle of the night, isn’t she?”
“I think that’s a good guess.”
“Are you going to get up with me?”
“No, I’m going to let you do it all by yourself.”
When he looked panic-stricken, she realized he didn’t know she was kidding. “Yes, of course I’ll get up with you,” she said quickly. “Isn’t that the whole point of having me stay overnight?”
“Then if you’re getting up, too, why don’t you just take her in with you? I’ll be happy to keep Sadie and Fleafarm in my room.”
“I’ll bet you would. But that’s not how we’re doing this. I’ll go see if the dogs want to go out before we close them in for the night.” She started toward the kitchen.
“I know from being on roundup with you that I’m a much sounder sleeper than you are. What if I don’t wake up when she starts crying?”
Matty chuckled. “That’s why I want her right next to your bed instead of mine. After hearing the set of lungs on that kid, I have no doubt the person sharing a room with her will wake up. Even you. Just leave my sheets on the bed.”
Sebastian heaved a dramatic sigh. “Okay.”
WHEN THE FIRST wails came from the drawer beside his bed, Sebastian felt as if he hadn’t slept at all, but a quick glance at the clock told him four hours had passed.
He switched on the light and fumbled for the jeans and T-shirt he’d left on the far side of the bed. Elizabeth’s wails brought back the terror he’d felt when she’d first arrived, and he hurried into his clothes. He needed to make that crying stop, both for her sake and his.
“Sebastian?” Matty rapped on his bedroom door. “Are you decent?”
“Yeah!” Relief flooded through him. Matty was awake. God bless her. He quickly zipped his jeans and reached for the T-shirt. By the time he’d pulled it over his head, Matty was crouched beside the drawer and reaching inside to take the wailing baby.
Groggy as he was, he couldn’t miss how sweet she looked in that flannel granny gown, or how it flowed over her cute little butt when she leaned over. From her tousled blond hair to her sleep-pink cheeks, she looked exactly like the sort of woman a man dreamed of waking up to.
Even the buttoned-up neckline appealed to him. He’d been convinced that a woman needed scanty, sheer nightgowns to look sexy. He hadn’t counted on the challenge to his manhood presented by a row of tiny buttons, or the lure of breasts demurely covered. When she stood up and cradled the baby in her arms, the weight pulled the material down so her breasts were outlined perfectly in soft blue and white cotton. His mouth watered.
Matty gave him a disparaging look. “I’m afraid upright isn’t good enough. You’re going to have to participate.”
“Uh, right.” Close call. She’d noticed his eyes glazing over and assumed sleepiness instead of arousal. He glanced away before she could reevaluate his expression. “What do you want me to do?”
“Go get her bottle ready while I change her. Then you can feed her.”
Barefoot, he started toward the kitchen. “Where are the dogs?”
“I told them to stay in my room.” She followed him down the hall. “They both went back to sleep.”
“Lucky dogs.” He turned on a lamp in the living room and continued on into the dining room.
“Don’t you dare complain,” Matty said. “I could be at home, you know, tucked into my warm bed, with at least an hour before the alarm went off.”
“I know.” He felt instantly contrite. “You’re terrific to do this for me, Matty.” He winced at the bright light as he flipped on the overhead in the dining room.
“We’re neighbors,” she said.
She said it so matter-of-factly that he was disappointed. “And friends,” he added, looking at her.
“Yes, friends.”
He gazed at her in the unflattering glare from the overhead light and couldn’t get over how great she looked, how warm and cozy and inviting. He might have known Matty for ten years, but he realized now he’d never really seen her, at least not the way he was seeing her now.
He longed to stroke her smooth cheek. He wondered how that full lower lip would feel under the pad of his thumb, and if her eyes would darken if he rubbed his thumb back and forth over the moist surface.
“You’re zoning out on me again,” she said. “Snap out of it, Sebastian. Once you’re settled in and feeding her, I’ll make coffee. Until then you’ll have to pull yourself up by your bootstraps. Honestly, I don’t remember you being so loopy in the morning during roundup, even when you hadn’t had your coffee.” She positioned Elizabeth on the changing pad.
He thought about telling her what was making him loopy and discarded the idea. A man who might have to do the honorable thing before long didn’t have a right to lust after his neighbor, who was only trying to be a friend. “Maybe I’m coming down with something,” he said.
She glanced up at him. “Sounds like dishwasher’s bellyache, to me. You’re not getting out of this routine, Sebastian. Go fix her bottle.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He went into the kitchen, washed up and busied himself getting the bottle ready. He could hear Matty talking and crooning to Elizabeth, and the baby’s cries became more sporadic. Even without experience, Matty was catching on fast. She was a born mother, he thought. Someday, somehow, she should have kids of her own.
Immediately desire stirred in him, restless and urgent. Damned if he knew why thinking of Matty as a mother should produce that sort of reaction. It sure as hell wasn’t his job to take care of it. But the image of sinking into her flashed through his mind in vivid color and sound, like a tape that had been wound and ready, waiting for the proper cue. As he poured the formula his hands shook.
He had to take sev
eral deep breaths before his hand stopped trembling and he could finish getting the formula into the bottle. He tried to tell himself he was still stirred up from the episode with Charlotte, but that argument didn’t wash. This wasn’t about Charlotte, and he knew it. Charlotte hadn’t inspired him to fantasize, not even after he’d kissed her. He hadn’t even kissed Matty and his head was full of fantasies.
Perhaps they’d been trapped in his subconscious for years. If so, he wished he’d dusted them off a little earlier. Now was a very inconvenient time to develop a crush on his neighbor.
“Sebastian? You about finished?” Matty called. “She’s almost ready for you.”
“I’m on my way.”
“Hurry up. I’m taking her into the living room.”
“Okay.” He smiled at the impatience in her voice. Making love to her would be a kick-and-a-half if she put even some of her normal spunk and sass into the endeavor. He had to stop thinking about the possibility, though.
But the minute he walked into the living room and saw her standing there, making love was all he could think about. Even the fretful baby in her arms didn’t distract him.
Surely it was by accident that she’d placed herself in front of the lamplight as she stood near the rocking chair waiting for him. The light filtered through the nightgown, tracing her body underneath in loving detail. He stared, wetting dry lips.
Not that he didn’t have a fair idea of her shape after seeing her in slim-cut jeans and tapered western shirts for the past ten years. But although her normal clothes defined her body, they acted almost like armor. Her loose nightgown was a flimsy, easily breached barrier between him and the naked woman underneath. She smiled and nearly gave him cardiac arrest.
“Quit stalling.” Her voice was low and teasing. “And get over here.”
A low, needy sound rumbled in his chest.
7
“SEBASTIAN?” MATTY FROWNED. He was standing there as if someone had hit him upside the head with a branding iron. Surely he wasn’t this freaked out about feeding the baby. “Are you okay?”
He shook his head.
She melted. He was this freaked out. Scared speechless. She gentled her response. “Look, I can understand being scared the first time, but I got through it without killing her, and so can you. Let’s forget about me making coffee for now. I’ll stay with you and help you through this one time.”
“It’s…not the baby,” he ground out.
“Not the baby?” That threw her. “Then what’s wrong?”
“It’s you.”
“Me?”
“And that…that nightgown. And the way the light—” He waved a hand toward her in mute explanation.
When she finally understood what he was talking about, embarrassment hit her like a blast of super-heated air. She glanced down reflexively but couldn’t see what he was seeing from his vantage point. Stepping away from the lamp, she clutched the baby closer to her chest.
Mortification clogged her speech. “I…didn’t realize I was displaying myself. Sorry.” Oh, God. She prayed he wouldn’t think she’d done that on purpose.
Elizabeth fussed and wriggled in her arms, and Matty loosened her death grip on the baby.
“Matty, you—”
“Sit in the rocker, Sebastian.” She avoided his gaze but hadn’t missed the bulge in his jeans. How nice if that reaction was for her, but she knew better. He wasn’t turned on by her, not dressed in her conservative little granny gown. He was still revved up from his bout with Charlotte, and the shadow of her naked body had reminded him of unsatisfied needs. “We have to get this baby fed.”
He walked over and eased into the rocker, the bottle in his right hand.
Matty’s breathing was uneven as she leaned over him and settled Elizabeth in the crook of his left arm. His warmth and the scent of aroused male nearly caused her to moan aloud. None of it was because of her, she reminded herself again. “Now offer her the…nipple,” she said in a ragged voice.
The bottle trembled in his grip. It took a couple of tries before Elizabeth connected. At last she grabbed on and started to suck.
Matty backed off, her pulse racing. “Got her?”
“I guess.” He focused on the baby, but his voice was hoarse, as if he hadn’t put sexual thoughts completely behind him. “Is that angle right, or should I prop her up more?”
“That looks about right.” She backed away from the rocker and crossed her arms over her chest. “Um, do you have a bathrobe I can borrow? I should have asked you to bring mine, but I didn’t think of it.”
He gazed up at her. “Listen, don’t—”
“Or maybe I should just get dressed. That might be the best thing.”
“Please don’t leave me here alone with this baby so you can cover yourself up.”
She swallowed. “I feel uncomfortable.”
“You’re not in the light now. It’s okay.”
Her cheeks still felt very warm. “I don’t want you ever to think that I would deliberately….” She couldn’t bring herself to spell out what she would never, ever do, but she figured he’d understand the unspoken thought.
“You think I don’t know that about you? That’s what made the moment so…effective. You didn’t mean to. You were just…there.”
She swallowed again and looked up at the ceiling. If only she could believe he was really attracted to her. But she couldn’t, and so his words made her feel lonesome and teary-eyed. “I suppose you were pretty frustrated when the baby arrived in the middle of your evening. Any old body probably would turn you on about now.”
His voice was soft. “I don’t think so, Matty.”
She didn’t want him deluding either himself or her. She brought her gaze back to his. “Oh, come on, Sebastian. I’ve been your neighbor for ten years. If the sight of me turned you on, you’d have figured that out a long time ago.”
“You’d think so, wouldn’t you?” He looked confused. And oh, so sexy, in his T-shirt and jeans, his hair mussed and stubble shadowing his jaw. And to top it all off, he was holding a pink confection of a little baby cuddled against his chest.
Matty fought the urge to take what she could get from him, second-hand though it might be. But the reckoning would come eventually, and she’d hurt less if she stayed strong now. “The explanation’s pretty obvious. You’re reacting to this whole situation—Charlotte, the baby, Jessica, the possibility that you’re a father. Your libido’s waking up, and I happen to be handy.”
He gazed at her, the heat still simmering in his eyes. “Are you trying to convince you or me?”
She sighed and looked away from that heat. A girl could only take so much temptation. “Maybe both of us. I don’t want to be caught in a hail of hormones.”
“And that’s the only reason I feel like kissing you right now? I’m being pelted with hormones?”
Her pulse rate shot up a few more notches and her lips began to tingle. She didn’t dare look at him or she’d stare at his mouth and imagine…everything. “Have you ever felt like kissing me before?”
“Yeah.”
If he confessed to an obsession he’d carried around for years, then she might change her mind about things. “When?”
“Last night.”
Her one tiny hope died. “That doesn’t count. You were already in the middle of this thing by then. I mean before that.”
“Not that I remember,” he said with blunt honesty.
She fought back disappointment. She had to be sensible about this, or her heart would be broken beyond repair. “That makes my point. It’s not me. It’s the situation. Can I borrow your bathrobe?”
“Don’t have one.”
“Then I’ll get dressed.” As she started out of the room, Elizabeth began to choke. Matty spun around and hurried back to him.
He’d already jerked the bottle from her mouth and set it on the table beside him, but he was frozen, obviously unsure what to do next. “Do something!” he cried.
“Put her up
to your shoulder and pat her back,” Matty instructed.
He scooped her up awkwardly and propped her against his shoulder while she sputtered. “She’s still choking! What if she dies?”
“She won’t.” Even though Matty had refused to assume full care of her nieces and nephews at this age, she’d been around them enough to know this little sputtering wasn’t dangerous. “She just got a little down the wrong drain. Pat her.”
He patted. “It’s not working!”
“Like this.” Matty leaned over him, grasping the arm of the rocker for balance as she tapped her palm against the baby’s back.
Gradually Elizabeth’s sputters subsided. She coughed a couple of times and relaxed against Sebastian’s shoulder.
“There,” Matty said with relief. She started to lever herself away.
“Matty.” He’d never said her name quite that way before, low and rich with meaning.
Her breath caught. Slowly she turned her head and looked into his warm, compelling eyes. His beautiful mouth was inches from hers.
“Matty.” A plea. A plea that was reflected in his eyes.
“You don’t want me,” she whispered.
He didn’t answer, just gazed at her with that heart-stopping expression in his eyes.
She lost the battle. With a soft moan she leaned closer…and slowly touched her lips to his.
He met her halfway, molding his mouth against hers in gentle welcome.
At the heady contact, she grew dizzy. She’d dreamed this moment so many times…perhaps she was dreaming still. Ah, but his sculpted lips felt good against hers, and the contact made there, mouth against mouth, echoed all the way to her toes.
Breathless from the richness of it, she drew back. Struggling to compose herself, she gazed at him and wondered if he’d disappear in the fog of yet another dream.
But he was right there, solid and real, his eyes still closed. “That…was so sweet,” he whispered.
“I shouldn’t have.”
Slowly his eyes opened and his voice was a gentle murmur. “We shouldn’t have,” he corrected. “But it felt damn good.”
The Colorado Kid Page 8