Warm Hearts

by Barbara Delinsky

  His eyes were scanners, picking up every nuance of her reaction. “I just wanted you to know.”

  “Okay. Now I know.”

  Very slowly, his mouth softened from a firm line to a tentative half smile. “Aren’t you glad you asked about marriage?”

  She nodded. “It taught me more about you.” Her eyes twinkled. “And just for the record, the last vacation I took was a long weekend this past February. I stayed at a farm in Vermont, where I shared a bathroom with eight other guests. We ate family style, sitting around a long table with the couple who owned the farm and their three kids, and we helped pay our keep by doing chores. Mine was to collect fresh eggs from the henhouse.”

  “Did you enjoy that?”

  “I enjoyed walks in the nearby woods better than collecting eggs, but I’d go back to the farm in a minute. It was relaxing. Restful. A nice change of pace.”

  With a suddenness that startled her, Brendan bolted from his chair, rounded the table, scooped her up and carried her to the window seat.

  “What are you doing?” she cried.

  “Abducting you. You’re perfect. You have the right answer for everything.” He lowered himself to one knee on the seat and settled her sideways between his thighs. His arms closed around her, gently locking her in.

  “You’re abducting me to my own window seat? What kind of an abduction is that?”

  “You had something else in mind?”

  She said nothing, simply slipped her arms around his waist.

  He spoke against the top of her head. “Let’s go to Maine.”

  “Hmm?”

  “I said let’s go to Maine. We can fly up to Bangor first thing in the morning, rent a car and drive north. There are secluded little cabins for rent along the banks of the Penobscot. It’d be quiet and cool.”

  “That’s incredible,” she murmured.

  “Not necessarily incredible but certainly—”

  “No, no.” She raised her head until their eyes met. “I don’t mean Maine, but the fact that you suggested it. When I was fantasizing, I pictured us doing something like that. I pictured your sweeping me off somewhere where I’d … be … free of responsibility and guilt.” She sucked in a sudden breath. “Brendan?”

  He loved the way she said his name. “Mmm?”

  “That’s the moral of my story. When you ask me if we’re together, and I say ‘yes, but,’ that’s what I mean.” She responded to the confusion in his eyes by hurrying on. Her own gaze had taken on the same candor, the same urgency and vulnerability she’d seen in his moments before. “If there’s one thing I want—no, need—in a relationship it’s freedom. I’m tired of feeling responsible for people. I’m tired of feeling guilty when I want to do my own thing. I’m so tired of the strings and the obligations and the little catches. There are so many hassles in my life. I don’t want us to be a hassle.” She paused, and the pleading quality in her voice grew even more so. “Can we do it?”

  He was quiet for a minute, pensive as he studied her face. At last he said, “I don’t know. I’m not sure any relationship can be as free as that. By definition, a relationship implies some kind of tie.”

  “Mutual attraction is a tie, and that’s okay.”

  “What kind of attraction are we talking—physical or emotional?”

  Caroline was in the process of deciding that when his features distracted her. They were honest, open features, inviting honesty and openness in turn. “That’s exactly what I want,” she whispered. “Honesty and openness. I want to say only what I want and what I feel. I want you to say only what you want and what you feel. No lies. No little fibs or empty platitudes. No game playing. No bartering with vows and promises.”

  “I can buy that—”

  “But there’s more. I want to be able to lean on you. I want to be able to complain, to let off steam, to ask for sympathy and advice and coddling. I’m tired of being the mother in relationships. I’m tired of being the caretaker. I want to be the one taken care of—” Her voice broke off sharply.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I don’t believe I’m saying all this,” she muttered, averting her eyes. She tried to put some space between them, but Brendan’s arms tightened around her.

  He could see her embarrassment and touched those telltale spots—her cheeks, her lips, her forehead—with his fingertips. “You’re saying what you want. You’re being honest and open.”

  “I’m being selfish.”

  “Maybe you need to be selfish.”

  “But I can’t expect you to put up with that.”

  “Why don’t you let me decide what I’ll put up with and what I won’t? Right now, I’m trying to understand exactly what it is you’re saying.”

  Her earnest eyes went to his. “I’m saying that I can’t promise you anything.”

  “You want a straightforward, uncomplicated, pleasure-as-long-as-it-lasts relationship.”

  Very slowly, she nodded. “I think that’s all I’m capable of right now.”

  “Because you’re being pulled in so many different directions?”

  “And because I feel used up … burned out … drained.”

  Brendan didn’t have to consider his options. Nor did he have to argue with Caroline about her capabilities. She might tell him that she felt used up, burned out and drained, yet she’d given him more in the past few hours than any woman had given him in years.

  “I accept your terms,” he declared.

  “You do?”

  He nodded. “I don’t need a mother. Or a therapist. I can’t promise to be a yes-man, because that’s not me. I can’t lie about my feelings and I don’t think you’d want that, anyway. But I won’t take advantage of you. I won’t expect or demand. I’ll be yours to use as you want.”

  Caroline wasn’t quite sure what to make of his easy compliance. She’d expected some sort of argument. Or was it that she’d hoped for one?

  “You … really don’t mind?” she asked hesitantly.

  “Nope.”

  Her skepticism lingered for just a minute longer. In the end, it was destroyed by the very selfishness she’d worried about. She had what she wanted. Brendan Carr—secret friend and neighbor, white knight, lover extraordinaire—had agreed to honor the terms of her fantasy. He was what she needed right now. If he had no complaints, who was she to argue?

  “Okay,” she said, smiling. “We’re a couple.”

  “How about Maine?”

  “I still can’t believe you’ve suggested that. When I was fantasizing, I thought of someplace up north where the nights would be cool. Only I imagined we’d drive the whole way.”

  He gave a quick shake of the head. “Not enough time. It’s a ten-plus-hour drive. We’d have to turn around as soon as we got there and drive right back in order to get to work on Monday. If we fly, we’ll have nearly twenty-four hours up there. Do you have anything here tomorrow or Sunday that can’t be missed?”

  “No.”

  “Me, neither. So what do you think?”

  “I think that I’ve never thought of doing anything half as impulsive as this before.”

  “Wrong.”

  “Wrong?”

  He took her face gently in his hands, fingertips tangling with the damp tendrils by her cheeks. “Making love with me earlier tonight was more impulsive, don’t you think?”

  She blushed and nodded.

  “Which goes to show that our impulses are good where each other is concerned, so let’s go to Maine.”

  “Okay.”

  7

  It was a lovely idea, “was” being the operative word. But to have caught a flight to Bangor and allowed for driving time from there would have meant leaving at seven, and at seven that morning Brendan and Caroline were dead to the world. After a night of much loving and little sleep, it was no wonder.

  Brendan was the first to awaken. Sprawled facedown on the bed, he turned his head on the pillow, dragged in a sleep-roughened breath, then stretched. His body felt utterly
spent, but it was a relaxed kind of exhaustion, a lovely lethargy that spread from his neck to the tips of his toes.

  Satisfied. He felt incredibly satisfied. It was a new sensation and it puzzled him, until he managed to pry open one eye and see where he was. Unable to resist when his gaze lowered over a disheveled head of hair, an ivory-smooth back and a softly rounded bottom, he broke into a very slow, very smug, very male grin.

  A minute later, the grin vanished and his head popped up. “Oh, no,” he whispered, focusing on the nightstand clock. “Eleven?”

  A soft moan came from Caroline, whose head was tucked by his ribs. She curled a leg sideways and straightened one arm on the rumpled sheet, then, with another moan, reversed each of those movements and slowly turned toward him. He knew the instant that awareness hit her, because she went abruptly still. She extended the fingers of one hand and tentatively touched their tips to his waist. Then, as tentatively and almost disbelievingly, she raised her head and met his gaze.

  “We overslept,” he said. His voice, still sandy with sleep, held the same element of unsureness that he saw in her gaze. He didn’t know whether she was pleased, displeased or indifferent, and the matter of the trip to Maine was the least of it. Hard as it was to believe, when he felt as though he’d known her forever, this was the first time they’d faced each other in broad daylight.

  Caroline’s only problem was an initial disorientation. She wasn’t accustomed to waking up with a man, and his sheer physical presence with its distinct warmth and scent confused her—until she realized that this was Brendan. Her confusion vanished quickly. Brendan. It seemed perfectly natural that he should be in her bed. With the softest of smiles, she lay her forehead on his middle.

  “Caroline?”

  She yawned.

  “Are you okay?”

  She hummed a yes.

  “I think it’s too late to try for Maine.”

  “S’okay,” she murmured. “This is nicer.”

  He gently twisted her hair off her neck. “Anyway, it’s raining.”

  She hummed another yes.

  He wondered if she knew what was going on, because it sounded to him like she was falling back to sleep. At least she seemed content, he mused with another smile as he looked down her prone form.

  She was a sprawler like he was. There’d been some tight moments on her double bed during the night, times when, in their sexual abandon, they’d nearly toppled to the floor. Even now he was perilously close to the edge, while she angled out from his side. But he didn’t mind.

  Lord, was she sweet. Sweet and natural and uninhibited. She was perfectly at ease with him. They were made to be together.

  Unfortunately he couldn’t tell her that, though every instinct inside him wanted to. She’d think that he was trying to put ties on her, and he’d promised her that he wouldn’t. He’d also promised that they’d go to Maine, but he’d broken that one.

  “I should have set an alarm,” he said in a soft apology to himself as much as to her, then mumbled something resembling “Guess I had other things on my mind.”

  For someone who was allegedly falling back to sleep, Caroline’s good-humored if groggy-sounding “I’ll say” was prompt. She knew precisely what Brendan had had on his mind, and she’d been guilty of the same. She couldn’t begin to review each single instance when they’d turned to each other during the night. At times he’d been the initiator, at times she had been. Who had moved first hadn’t mattered, though, because they’d shared a fierce and endless hunger. Even now, when she opened her eyes to the lean, manly lines of his torso and legs, she felt a stirring inside. Slightly dismayed by that, she stirred the rest of her body, maneuvering up to meet his head on the pillow. She couldn’t restrain a moan in the process.

  Rolling to his side so that he faced her, he put a hand on her hip. “What’s wrong?”

  Her cheeks grew pink. “Nothing. Just a little sore.”

  His hand slid down her thigh, then up its inside. “Here?”

  She nodded.

  “You haven’t been with a man since Ben?”

  “No. And I never did this with him.”

  Brendan’s lips twitched. “Marathoning?”

  She laughed. It was a soft sound, feather light and gay. “Mmm. I guess that says it.” She was quiet for a minute. “Where do you get your strength? You’re probably not the least bit sore.”

  His dark eyes twinkled as they held hers. “I wouldn’t say that. I thought I was in good shape, playing raquetball and all, but this morning my upper arms and shoulders are protesting something or other I did to them.”

  She pictured precisely that something or other he’d done, and her skin warmed. “I’m glad to know it’s not only me,” she said more softly. Looking into those velvety brown eyes, she was mesmerized. But it wasn’t only his eyes. It was his tousled hair and his stubbly jaw and the breadth of his chest and the fullness of his sex—all of which were powerful items in her periphery.

  He caught her lips in a soft, sweet kiss. The backs of his fingers feathered the warm curls at the apex of her thighs. Gently, so gently he touched her, but it was enough to generate all sorts of fiery little responses. When she moaned again, it had nothing to do with the soreness.

  Riding on the pleasure brought by his stroking fingers, she whispered his name, then said in the same awe-filled breath, “This could go on forever.”

  “Let it,” he whispered back. His fingers sank deeper and he delighted in the audible catch in her breath.

  “I’ve never been like this,” came her soft words of denial, but her eyes were closed, her lips remained parted, and she’d bent one knee to give him better access.

  He was up on an elbow, alternately watching her face and the action of his hand. His voice was thick. “It’s good for you.”

  “So much?” she whispered.

  “Uh-huh.”

  She gave a tiny gasp and undulated against his hand. “We have to stop…”

  “Not yet.”

  “I don’t know … how much more I can take.”

  “Just this.”

  Her fingers dug into his shoulders. “Brendan!” Her breathy cry held both surprise and wonder, which was incredible to Brendan, since he’d brought her to many other climaxes in the course of the night. But her body rocked under the force of this one, and by the time the spasms had begun to wane, she had her face buried in the crook of his shoulder.

  In time she let out a long, ragged breath.

  “Good?” he whispered huskily.

  “Mmm.”

  They lay for several minutes listening to the gentle sough of the warm rain falling in the courtyard and, beyond that, the distant sounds of traffic.

  “Whatever must you think of me?” she murmured, raising sheepish eyes to his.

  “I think,” he said, “that you’re a very passionate woman.”

  Her hand was resting on his stomach. She slid it lower, whispering, “And you? You share the passion. Will you let me pleasure you, too?”

  His fingers closed around hers, guiding them back the way they’d come. “Not now.” He kissed her forehead.

  “But you’re hard—”

  “And enjoying the knowledge that I’ve satisfied you. It’s enough this time.”

  Caroline found it hard to believe that a man could be so selfless. Yet, studying his face, she saw nothing but sincerity etched in his features. “Are you sure?” she asked in a whisper.

  He smiled and nodded.

  What a handsome smile, she thought. A confident smile. A gentle and generous one. It caused a distinct tightening in the region of her heart.

  To counter that tightening, she sent him an accusing look. “You’ve bewitched me, I think. Either that or there’s something in the air. Do you suppose exhaust fumes from the courtyard could be an aphrodisiac?”

  Barely restraining a grin, he shook his head.

  Her grunt held begrudging agreement. She didn’t smell exhaust fumes; she never had. At the moment, th
ough, the air surrounding them was musty, a mixture of humidity, sleep and sex that she found to be delightfully earthy.

  Closing her eyes, she fit herself more snugly into the arm Brendan offered and smiled in contentment when he began to stroke her hair. It amazed her that she welcomed the physical contact, particularly given the weather. But then, physical contact with Brendan was like nothing she’d ever known before. It was new and refreshing, offering a counterpoint to the heat. His firm body supported hers even as it yielded to her curves. Regardless of how casual or incidental, his touch was exciting in the tremors it caused, and in the case of deliberate provocation it was stimulating, sensual and satisfying. It was also a total distraction from the rest of the world.

  Body and mind, both buzzed with lingering pleasure. Caroline was thinking that she could spend the entire day with him this way when he gently eased her aside and rose from the bed.

  Bending down to kiss the tip of her nose, he whispered, “Be right back,” before disappearing into the bathroom. When he reemerged moments later, he crossed to the refrigerator, poured a large glass of orange juice and delivered it to her in the bed.

  “I’m impressed,” she said, propping a pillow between her back and the headboard. She accepted the orange juice, took a healthy drink, then handed it back. “Breakfast in bed. Not bad.”

  He took a swallow of juice. “If I were truly chivalrous, I’d be making an exotic omelet.”

  “It’s okay. I’m not a breakfast person.” She smirked. “But you don’t know that, do you?”

  Pursing his lips, he shook his head slowly. “Can’t see in during the day. I only know you as a creature of the night.”

  She chuckled at that. “You make me sound wicked.”

  “Not wicked. Maybe wild or sensual, even wanton, but never wicked.” He slid down against the headboard until they were flush side to side and slanted her a glance. “So. Since we’ve blown a trip to Maine, what’s your pleasure? Washington is a romantic city. We could play tourist and walk around in the rain.”

  “In the rain?” she echoed meaningfully.

  “Mmm. Forget walking around. We could take a drive to the country.”