His eyes had questioned why she stopped, but he’d allowed her to keep her secrets. She knew he must have wondered why she wouldn’t make love to him, especially when she’d made it clear she was no virgin. She’d made love with boys in high school and in college. She’d given herself to them physically. But she’d never gotten emotionally involved with any of them. Not the way she’d let herself get involved with Kane.
She hadn’t wanted to fall in love with him. She’d resisted the attraction. But he’d done what no other man in her life had ever done. He’d become her friend first. She’d learned to like him more than anyone else she knew. She’d learned to rely on him.
She’d trusted him. Which, when she thought about it later, was something she hadn’t allowed herself to do with any of the men with whom she’d been physically intimate.
She’d been shocked the first time Kane kissed her, because it had been so unexpected. And because she’d been caught off guard, she’d been assaulted by feelings she hadn’t expected. Tumultuous feelings. Jumbled-up feelings of love and like and to her surprise...enormous desire.
She’d been so upset, she’d refused to speak to him for a week after he’d returned. She’d wanted to talk to her best friend about what she was feeling, but Kane was her best friend, and she’d shut him out of her life. She’d expected him to walk away, as every other man had when he’d gotten what he wanted from her. She’d expected him to give up, to abandon her, as it seemed everyone always did.
But Kane had not given up. He’d persisted in calling her until at last she’d agreed to see him again.
“I don’t expect you to feel for me what I feel for you,” he’d said. “At least not right away. But I’m not going anywhere. I’ve got all the time in the world for you to change your mind. I’ve got the rest of my life.”
She hadn’t believed him. She’d figured he would get tired of waiting for her to put out—because she’d made up her mind she wasn’t going to have sex with him—and drift away in the wind.
But he hadn’t gone anywhere. He’d hung around, loving her, offering himself to her, stopping when she would remember that she didn’t want to give herself to him—even though she wanted to. Very much. She’d wanted him for a long time.
She just wasn’t going to let herself have him.
Because the moment she did, she feared he would be gone. Like all the others.
Only, now she knew why she believed she would be abandoned by anyone she allowed herself to love. Because it had really happened. Her parents had sent her from them. She couldn’t help wondering what her thoughts might have been as a child of two. What had that two-year-old imagined had caused her to be thrust from her family? What had she been told by those who had given her to another family to be raised as their own?
Your parents love you, but they had to give you away because they can’t afford to keep you. Probably not.
Your parents love you, but another family wants a baby and since your parents have two others just like you they offered to share you with this other family. Sounded possible.
Your parents are dead. This family really wants a baby and they chose you. Sounded probable.
But that didn’t really explain why her own parents would give her up. Charity still couldn’t imagine any scenario where she, personally, would give up a child.
But they’d said they might have lost all three children if they hadn’t given up one. What if she were the one on the verge of bankruptcy, with the prospect of becoming homeless and having to live in a car...or on the streets? What sort of life would that be for her child? A good family, a different family, would surely provide a better life for a child destined to grow up in abject poverty.
She could understand. But she could not forgive.
“Charity?” Kane said, his eyes studying hers. “What happened?”
“My parents didn’t give me up as a newborn,” she said bitterly. “They kept me around until I was two years old.”
She saw the shock and horror in his eyes before he pulled her close and clutched her tight.
“Sonofabitch,” he muttered. “So that’s it. I always figured... Damn them. Damn them to hell.”
“No.” The protest surprised Charity. She lifted her face to look into Kane’s eyes. “They...had no choice.”
“I find that hard to believe,” Kane said.
Charity frowned. “I believe they thought they had no choice,” she said. “They had three babies and one of them needed a lot of expensive medical care.”
“Still, that’s no excuse—”
“It’s all right, Kane. It doesn’t matter.”
“Doesn’t matter? How can you say—”
“Make love to me,” she said, looking him in the eye. She could see the confusion in his eyes, the distrust of her motives.
“Why now?” he asked. “What’s changed?”
She found herself putting into words what she’d begun to feel inside ever since her parents had explained to her what had happened when she was a baby. “My whole life I’ve never felt like I could really trust a man not to walk away if things got tough. I always thought it was because my father—my adoptive father—abandoned me and my mother.
“But that wasn’t it at all. He came and went so quickly in my life that I don’t think his leaving had much effect one way or the other. It was losing my family—my sisters and my mother and father—that made me so distrustful. Children are resilient. Everyone says so. The wound healed, all right. But it left a deep scar.”
“Are you saying you can trust me now?”
She managed a smile. “I wish I could. I want to, very much.” But she didn’t. She couldn’t.
His kiss was gentle at first, but that lasted as long as it took for her tongue to slide into his mouth. His passion rose quickly, and she could feel the hard ridge pressed against her belly.
“Wait,” he said breathlessly, holding her head between his hands so she was forced to look at him. “Wait.”
“What is it?”
“Will you marry me? Say yes, Charity. We can have the ceremony this week, while all my relatives are here for Jake’s wedding.”
Charity felt a familiar flare of panic. “You’re moving too fast. I—”
“What are we waiting for?”
She searched his eyes and realized why he was in such a hurry. He was afraid her fear of commitment, for which she finally had an explanation, would rear its ugly head. “I’m not going to run anymore, Kane. I’m not going to hide from what I’m feeling. I’m not going to be afraid of loving you.”
Although she wasn’t yet ready to say the words to him.
He kissed her again, and she felt a yearning to be joined with him, to become one with him forever. Her hand slid down the front of his jeans and she heard him groan before he reached down to cover her hand.
“We’ve got all the time in the world,” he said. “A lifetime. Let’s do this right.”
She grinned and said, “I thought I was doing it right.”
“I mean, let’s make sure we have privacy and a soft feather mattress instead of a bed of straw.”
“What’s wrong with straw?”
“It’s itchy as hell.”
She laughed and slid her hand back up his chest until she was cupping his cheek. “I do...want you, Kane.” She could see from his face that it wasn’t what he’d been hoping to hear. But it was the best she could do.
“You haven’t given me an answer to my proposal,” he reminded her.
“So much has happened—”
“Say yes,” he urged.
She wanted to say yes. She wanted to marry him and be committed and be over the fear of abandonment that had followed her all her life. She opened her mouth to agree, but what came out was, “I’ll give you an answer soon.”
&
nbsp; “Tomorrow?”
“Soon,” she promised. She rose on tiptoe and kissed him lingeringly, fitting her body to his, feeling the rightness of it, enjoying the pleasure that rose inside her. “Are you sure I can’t tempt you right now?” she murmured in his ear.
His hands cupped her buttocks and he pulled her tight against him. “Lord knows I want you. But I think I’m going to hold out till our wedding night.”
She stared at him in astonishment, then burst out laughing. “Why, you...tease!”
He grinned at her and said, “I’ll use whatever works. If you want me half as much as I want you, we’ll be married by the end of the week.”
She took a step back so he was forced to let her go. She eyed him seriously and said, “I’m moving as fast as I can, Kane. I want to believe we can live happily ever after. I just...”
“Don’t,” he finished for her.
She grimaced. “I wish I could tell you what you want to hear.”
“But you can’t. It’s all right, Charity. Believe me, it will be all right. Now, where are these sisters of yours?”
“I...kind of ran out on them,” she admitted. “I’m not sure they’re going to want to have much to do with me.”
“Why is that?”
“Because I gave their parents—my parents—such a hard time.”
“They’ll get over it.”
She raised a brow. “How do you know that?”
He put an arm around her shoulder and headed out of the barn. “Between my twin sisters Karen and Kayla, and my older brother Kyle, I’ve had lots of experience with sibling rivalry.”
Charity took a deep breath as they left the fecund smell of the barn behind and stepped into the sunlight. She saw a blackberry-colored Saturn parked at Jake Whitelaw’s back door. Her sisters hadn’t wasted any time coming after her.
“Maybe you’re right,” she conceded.
She saw her sister Hope—she knew it was Hope because she had both hands—coming toward her, lips clamped tight, arms swinging angrily.
And maybe he was all wrong. She would know pretty damn quick one way or the other.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
HOPE
“I HOPE YOU’RE HAPPY!” HOPE SNARLED at Charity as she closed the distance between them. “Mom collapsed after you left, and Dad had to rush her to the hospital.”
Hope was as angry with herself as with Charity, whose face drained of color. She should have known better than to spring that kind of surprise on her mother, who’d been taking heart medication for the past three years. But she’d been half in shock herself, discovering she was actually a triplet, and had wanted answers from her parents as much as Charity had.
“Is she going to be all right?” Charity asked.
“How the hell do I know? She was gasping for breath and holding her chest and white as a sheet.”
“Then what are you doing here?” Charity demanded. “Why aren’t you at the hospital?”
“Because...” Because she couldn’t bear seeing her mother in pain, gasping for breath. Because she needed someone else to blame for what had happened.
“If you’re not going, I am,” Charity said sharply. “What hospital is she in?”
“There’s only one in town,” Kane said. “I’ll take you.”
A moment later, Charity was gone. Hope stared at the dust kicked up by Kane’s pickup, wondering at her sister’s abrupt about-face. Charity had said she didn’t care, that she would never forgive her parents for what they’d done. Yet, her first thought had been to race to the hospital.
“Is everything all right?” a female voice asked. “Where did Charity go in such a hurry?”
Hope turned to find Jake on the back porch with Miss Carter by his side, his arm around her waist.
Hope felt a stab of pain at the sight of them together. He was going to go through with the wedding. He was going to marry the wrong woman. Infernal man!
“Hope?” Miss Carter prodded. “Is something wrong?”
“You bet something’s wrong!” she shot back. She couldn’t say what was really wrong, that she was in love with the other woman’s fiancé. But Miss Carter had left an opening for attack, and Hope thrust hard. “Thanks to you, my mother’s in the hospital. She could die!”
The stricken look on Miss Carter’s face gave Hope little satisfaction. She felt as though she’d been sucker-punched when Miss Carter broke into tears and Jake opened his arms to her, offering comfort.
The reproachful look Jake gave her over Miss Carter’s shoulder made Hope want to dig a hole and climb into it. She felt like screaming with frustration, but she wasn’t about to do it in front of her rival. She could see Jake expected her to let Miss Carter off the hook. But she couldn’t do that, either.
“It is her fault!” Hope protested to Jake. “She’s the one who got us all together.”
“Whose idea was it to confront your parents?” Jake asked.
Hope gritted her teeth to keep her chin from quivering.
“It’s all right, Jake,” Miss Carter said, looking up at him with tear-streaked eyes.
How could Miss Carter look so pretty when she was crying? Hope wondered. Hope always looked terrible when she cried, her face patchy, her eyes red and swollen. She watched, her stomach knotted, as Jake used the pad of his thumb to gently wipe the tears from Miss Carter’s cheeks.
“What happened isn’t your fault, Amanda,” Jake said. “It was the girls who decided to surprise their mother.”
“I could have said something. I could have told the girls’ father, so he could have prepared their mother in advance. I could have—”
Jake turned to Hope, his look stern—like a father, not a lover, not a husband, and damn it, not an equal—and said, “Hope, I think you owe Amanda an apology.”
“Not in this lifetime!” she spat. “You’re not my father, Jake. You’re not my husband. You’re not...anything to me. You don’t have the right to give me orders.”
She whirled and marched toward her car in high dudgeon. She hadn’t gone two steps before Jake grabbed her arm and swung her around.
“You need someone to teach you basic, common courtesy,” he snapped.
“You can go to hell!” she retorted.
“Watch your mouth, little girl, you—”
She hadn’t known she was going to slap him. Her arm seemed to rise and swing on its own, cracking against his cheekbone with a satisfying thwack!
He looked at her for an instant with eyes as stunned and angry as her own.
“You asked for it,” she said breathlessly. “You shouldn’t have called me a little girl. Because I’m not, Jake.” She could feel the tears welling in her eyes, feel her chin begin to wobble. “I’m not a little girl, Jake. I’m not. I’m not!”
She was crying in earnest when she felt his mouth on hers, offering succor, offering solace. She felt his strong arms wrap around her and pull her tight, her breasts crushed against the hard wall of his chest. She rose on tiptoe to fit their bodies together, her hands clutching at his hair, holding him with all the desperation she felt, her mouth opening to meet the urgent thrust of his tongue.
She moaned.
He made a guttural sound in his throat, and she felt his hands behind her hips and then under her knees, lifting her up into his arms.
“I’m sorry,” he murmured against her mouth. “I’m sorry, Hope.”
He turned to walk into the house with her and froze.
Hope felt him stiffen and opened her eyes. And saw Miss Carter staring at them, her eyes wide with dismay. Well, more like shock. All right, horror. And something else that made Hope feel ashamed. Humiliation.
Hope made a little move in Jake’s arms, indicating that he should put her down. He released her knees and she slid to her fee
t. He took a step to the right, his hand falling off her shoulder.
Hope straightened her shirt and lifted her eyes defiantly to Miss Carter’s, but she couldn’t hold the other woman’s gaze. She had wanted to strike back. But not like this.
Jake spoke first. “Amanda, I—”
“There’s no need to explain,” Miss Carter said in a high, clipped voice. “I think the situation is perfectly clear.”
“Amanda, I—”
“Please, Jake. I’d like to go home now.”
Hope’s stomach sank to her toes. Of course. Jake had brought Miss Carter here from church, so he was going to have to take her home. The two of them were going to have to get into a car together and spend the next half hour in uncomfortable silence.
“We need to talk,” Jake said.
Hope didn’t like the sound of his voice. It grated with pain and self-disgust. She knew how he felt. She wasn’t feeling very proud of herself at the moment.
“I’m sorry, Miss Carter,” she blurted.
“Are you really, Hope?” Miss Carter challenged. “I think you got exactly what you wanted. Exactly what you’ve wanted for the past three years.”
Hope felt the blood leave her face. The accusation made her sound wanton. Like some sort of female vampire sucking blood from an unwilling victim. But Jake had kissed her. All she’d done was...provoke him.
“That’s enough, Amanda,” Jake said. “We’ll discuss this in the car.”
Hope was surprised to hear Jake come to her defense. Or maybe he just didn’t trust her not to make another scene.
“I’ll get my purse and meet you at the car,” Miss Carter said. She turned and walked inside, her back ramrod straight, her shoulders squared, letting the screen door slam behind her.
Jake thrust both hands through his hair and groaned.
Hope wasn’t sure what to say, what to do. She wasn’t going to apologize to him. He was in the wrong. He knew how she felt about being called a little girl. They’d been lovers. She was his equal in every way—except age. And there was nothing she could do to change how old she was.
Sisters Found Page 18