“So you can say thanks for letting you out of this?” She couldn't believe she'd actually said what had flashed through her mind again. And she hated that not only had it come out so spontaneously, but that she sounded so small, so full of dread.
Andrew didn't respond immediately. He tossed his room key onto his unmade bed before he glanced back at her with a serious expression lining his features.
“No,” he said as if he didn't have any idea where a question like that would have come from. “I made up my mind last night after licking my wounds that I wasn't leaving here without you. I just went downstairs to make sure I could have the room as long as I need it, and I came back to get the keys to the rental car so I could show up on your doorstep again.”
“Not to tell me you were accepting the annulment-divorce?”
He shook his head. “I'm not letting you call it quits just because I said something stupid in the heat of a fight with my brother. That's not grounds for an annulment or a divorce.” Then, on a lighter note, he added, “I was going to try bringing flowers today, though, to see if that might help.”
Apparently with age didn't necessarily come wisdom, Delia thought, feeling foolish for having been so ready to end everything over an eavesdropped phone call when Andrew was taking a more rational view of the situation.
“Would the flowers help?” he asked then. “Because I can still go downstairs and get them.”
“No, I don't need flowers,” she answered before quietly confiding what she hated going through her mind. “I just want not to feel like the ugly cousin your mother made you take to the prom. But I don't know if I can.”
“Because of the forced marriage thing,” he finished for her.
“You made me believe that getting married was what you wanted,” she accused.
“Would you have married me if I had told you what was really going on behind the scenes?”
“No.”
“Nobody would,” he said as if he didn't think anyone should.
“And you wouldn't have married me without what was going on behind the scenes,” she said, but it stabbed her even as she did.
“Maybe you could think of it like this,” Andrew suggested. “We're at the first summer camp dance of the season. The boys are lined up against one wall across the rec room from the girls on the other wall, and no one will make the first move. But everyone knows that you and I kissed down by the campfire at the end of the last year, so my friends give me a shove away from the wall to put the wheels in motion. Now, I could balk and elbow my way back against the wall. Or I could cross the room—”
Which he did right then as if he were demonstrating, stopping only a scant foot in front of Delia where she'd ended up after going only far enough into the room to allow him to close the door.
Then he continued with his fictitious scenario. “I'm nervous about it-scared out of my head, to be honest—but I cross the room. And once I'm standing right in front of you and I take a good, long look at you again, I do ask you to dance. Because in spite of the push I needed to get me off that wall, there you are. You're as beautiful as I remember you. As beautiful as you were in all my memories of the summer before, all my fantasies. You're as smart and fun to be with. You're an amazing, incredible person, and I want you every bit as much as I wanted you the year before at the campfire.”
Delia had been reluctant to look him in the eye and, as a result, had been staring at his chest. But now she tilted her chin, looking up into his dark, piercing gaze as he said, “That's how this was. I picked you myself, if you'll recall. In Tahiti. Without any help from anyone. It wasn't as if my family put a personal ad in a newspaper and then told me I had to marry the one woman who answered it. And I think I would have come to the idea of marriage myself after the baby news had sunk in and I'd had some time with you again to hash through that, to get to know you. But to do it instantly? That took a nudge,” he confessed. “Only a nudge, though, Delia. The baby business threw me for a loop—I'm not denying that—but it only took a little while of being with you, getting to know you, getting to know what a great person you are, to realize I wanted you myself. Like I said last night, that's what got me to the altar last week. Not my family.”
“And if I tell you—or even sign some kind of legally binding contract—that I'll never reveal your paternity or cause a single shadow to be cast over you or any of the Hansons or Hanson Media Group to cause a scandal? Then what would you say?” she tested, because as much as she wanted to believe him, she was still afraid he might be doing this for reasons other than his own.
“I'm not going to let you hide that this is my baby. And this stopped being about my family or about Hanson Media Group a while ago. I really knew it had stopped being about anyone or anything but you and me on Thursday night when I was going out of my mind thinking something might have happened to you. I wasn't just saying it when I told you that I love you. I do love you. And I'll fight tooth and nail to keep you and this baby, even if it means a media scandal of its own. I'm not letting you or this baby go. Not now, not ever. And if you think about it, consider how we spent last week. Did any of that seem like it was family mandated?”
That made Delia smile involuntarily. They'd made love more times, in more places, with more urgency than any honeymooning couple she could imagine. The man hadn't been able to keep his hands off her any longer than she'd been able to keep hers off him. Because there genuinely was something overpowering between them. Something far stronger than any family mandates.
She couldn't deny it and if there were any doubts left in her after all he'd said, she had only to remind herself that she'd given him a way out-no strings or scandals attached—and he still hadn't taken it.
“Are you saying I'm stuck with you?” Delia managed to joke, feeling suddenly much better than she had since Thursday morning.
“Permanently,” he confirmed. “Although I would like to hear you say that if this was last week at this time, you'd marry me all over again. In spite of my big mouth.”
“It seems just the right size to me,” she said with an innuendo-laden tone.
He reached for her then, pulling her into his arms and wrapping them tightly around her. “And here we are, within inches of a hotel bed….”
“Plus it's our one-week anniversary….” she contributed.
That was all the encouragement he needed to kiss her. A deep, reconnecting kiss that let Delia know he meant all he'd said, that he genuinely did want her. As much as she wanted him.
And even though it hadn't been long since they'd last made love, it was as if eons had passed because suddenly clothes were flying off—her sundress and sandal and panties, his shoes and socks and jeans and shirt-and they were on their way to the hotel bed with mouths still clinging together hungrily, with hands already exploring, seeking, finding and arousing by the time Andrew gently laid her on the mattress and joined her.
But despite his tenderness in getting her there, what erupted between them from that moment on was explosive. Needs, demands, desires ran hot. By then each knew what the other liked, what spots were sensitive, just the right amount of force, of finesse to use to build anticipation, eagerness, pleasure.
And neither of them held back. Instead, as if all inhibitions had been set free, they came together in a way even more powerful than they ever had before, culminating in a simultaneous, blindingly potent peak that left Delia feeling as if they had physically sealed once and for all the bond they'd formed under less than ideal circumstances. A bond they gave new life—just as they'd created new life that night on the beach.
Afterward, exhausted, spent, satisfied, Andrew held her close, stroking her arm from elbow to hand and back again where her wedding ring once again shimmered from her finger resting on his chest.
“I love you,” Delia whispered then. “And I'm sorry for what I said to you last night when you said that to me.”
Andrew squeezed her even tighter. “That was pretty tough to hear,” he said. “But pr
obably not as tough as what you heard from me.”
“I'll forgive and forget if you will,” she proposed.
“Done.” He kissed the top of her head. “And you know why?”
“Why?”
“Because I really do love you.”
“I really do love you, too,” Delia repeated, kissing the masculine mound of one of his taut pectorals.
“And the age thing—I'd like it if you'd let go of that,” he told her.
“Your reaction to what's happened since Thursday morning was more mature than mine was,” she admitted. “I kind of decided when that occurred to me that maybe it was time to forget the age thing, too.”
“Finally!” he shouted at the ceiling.
Then he let out a sigh that she recognized. It was what he did when he was relaxing for sleep.
But she was ready for a little of that herself and so she gave up the fight against the fatigue that had settled over her, too, and closed her eyes.
Their legs were entwined, their bodies rested together in the perfect meeting of curves and valleys, his chest was the best pillow she'd ever had, and as Delia reveled in that sublime comfort and let it all cushion and embrace her, she also took secret pleasure in knowing that Andrew would still be there when she opened her eyes again.
And that was when it struck her that paradise wasn't only an island in the South Pacific.
That right there in Andrew's arms she had her own private slice of it.
Her own private slice of paradise into which she would bring their baby.
A baby she had no doubt Andrew would be there to greet with her when she delivered it into the world.
Just as she had no doubt he would be there for her from that moment on.
Special thanks and acknowledgment are given to
Victoria Pade for her contribution to the
FAMILY BUSINESS series.
ISBN: 978-1-4592-2219-9
THE BABY DEAL
Copyright © 2006 by Harlequin Books S.A.
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* A Ranching Family
† Baby Times Three
** Northbridge Nuptials
The Baby Deal Page 19