The Secret Baby Bond

by Cindy Gerard

  With another grunt, he hauled himself up higher, gauged the distance and made a lunge for the rail. He caught it on the fly and vaulted onto her balcony.

  “Still got it,” he congratulated himself as he landed on his feet—then caught his breath in a tight little hitch when he saw her.

  His heart, already slamming like a sledgehammer, picked up a couple of beats as he stood there, watching her through the glass panes of the French doors.

  And suddenly he wasn’t thinking about the risk he’d taken coming to her. She was worth every risk. And no amount of second guesses could stop him from thinking about finally having her, skin on skin, heat on heat.

  His face was grim as he walked straight to the bedroom door. As expected, the latch was locked. Without ever taking his eyes from the soft, sensuous form asleep on the bed, he reached in the breast pocket of his jacket and pulled out his pick kit.

  Just yesterday Ruby had given him the container of personal items Tara had boxed up after his “death” two years ago. She hadn’t known the kit had been in it. He wasn’t proud of the fact that in the most desperate times of his youth he’d used it with a fair amount of regularity—and not just to gain entrance into Tara’s room.

  “She saved this for you,” Ruby had said when he’d picked Brandon up for an afternoon in the park. “Nothing makes me happier than delivering it to you personally.”

  And right now, nothing made him happier than to realize the locks on the French doors hadn’t been changed. With a soft click, the tumbler gave. Muffling the sound with his gloved hands, Michael turned the knob and pushed.

  The door complained softly on its hinges and he stopped, cast a glance toward her bed. When she stirred, then rolled to her side, still asleep, he eased inside.

  And stood there, suddenly full of reservations, flexing his hands with uncertainty.

  Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all. Maybe she wouldn’t see this as romantic or reminiscent of the passion of their youth. Maybe she’d see it for what it was: a desperate man breaking into her bedroom with every intention of ravaging her.

  She stirred again, a restless slide of slim legs against smooth sheets. A gentle fling of an arm above her head as she rolled to her back.

  He stood at the foot of her bed, perfectly still but for the rapid-fire beat of his heart. And then she opened her eyes.

  He held his breath.

  She blinked once at the ceiling, then again. And then she sat up and looked him straight in the eye.

  Astonishment registered first. The round of her eyes, the frantic clutching of the sheet to her breast.

  Then came recognition. She reached over and flicked on the bedside light.

  “Michael.” His name was more breath than substance, more question than accusation as she stared at him in the dimly lit shadows.

  “How did you—” She paused, looked from him to the French door that was slightly ajar. “You didn’t.”

  “Um, yeah. I’m afraid I did. Tara, look, this was a bad idea,” he said quickly, carefully watching her face. “I went a little crazy.” He held up a hand, pleaded with his eyes. “It…it just seemed, I don’t know. Romantic, I guess. Like old times, maybe.”

  He dragged a hand over his face and shook his head. He tried not to think about how her firm, tight nipples pressed against the snug silk of her gown. “Now it just seems desperate.”

  She was looking at him like she’d never seen him before—or like she never wanted to see him again, he wasn’t sure which. He wasn’t sure of anything except that he had to get out of there before he made a bigger ass of himself.

  “I’m sorry,” he said again and lifted his hands in supplication. “Go back to sleep. I’ll just go.”

  He turned to leave, but her soft voice stopped him.

  “Michael.”

  He didn’t turn around. Couldn’t turn around.

  “It was romantic. It is romantic,” she whispered.

  He did turn then, turned and watched in astonishment as she lay back down on the bed and opened her arms to him.

  “Don’t go.”

  He wasn’t aware that he’d stopped breathing, hadn’t known he was starving for breath the way he was starving for her. He sucked in air on a rush. And yet he held back.

  “You’re sure?”

  “I’m not sure of anything.” Her eyes were wide, a little wild, a little desperate as he moved to stand beside the bed.

  “Do we have to be sure, Michael? Can’t we just act without thinking? Can’t we just indulge without guilt?”

  “Tara, I want to be with you more than I want to breathe. But I don’t want you to be sorry. I don’t want—”

  “I don’t want to analyze this until we’re both paralyzed with indecision.” There was impatience woven with desperation in her voice.

  She sat up and closed her eyes, as if to settle herself down. “You acted on impulse coming here. Let me act on mine. Let this be my dream, Michael. Do you know—you couldn’t possibly know—how often I’ve dreamed of you.”

  She reached for his hand, slowly pulled off his glove. She kissed his palm, then placed it over her breast.

  “Please.” There were tears now, warm and glistening as they slid down her cheeks. “Be my dream tonight.”

  “I don’t want to be your dream. I want to be your reality,” he murmured as he worked off his other glove then cradled her face in his hands.

  “Look at me. Tell me you know this isn’t a dream.”

  “This isn’t a dream.” She covered his hands with hers. “You’re real. Oh, God, you’re real.”

  He cut off her sob with the slant of his mouth over hers, bruising and hard, reckless and greedy. He couldn’t help himself. He’d been wanting her for so long, needing her for an eternity.

  And when she matched his hunger like a tiger, he forced her to her back on the bed.

  She tore at his shirt, dragged it over his head until he wore nothing but a sheen of perspiration.

  He rolled with her across the bed, caught up in her aggression, surrendering to his own need. The force of it sobered him. The desperation finally brought him to his senses.

  “Easy,” he managed on a ragged breath.

  He forced himself to settle, forced himself to soothe.

  “Easy,” he said more sternly and wrestled her to her back again. He dragged her hands above her head, locked them there with one hand as he sat up, his thighs straddling her hips.

  With the other hand, he smoothed the hair away from her face and tried to catch his breath and his bearings.

  “We need to slow this down, babe. Tone this down or we’re going to hurt each other.”

  She sagged, trembling against the pillow. Her breath was as ragged as his. Her heart beat just as rapidly.

  “I just…Michael, I want you so bad.”

  “Shhh. I know. I know.”

  He drew another bracing breath, watched the rise and fall of her breasts. “Can I let you go now?”

  She nodded, the silk of her hair sliding against the pillow. Slowly, she raised a hand to his chest. Hesitantly, she eased up on her elbows, leaned toward him. He sat rigidly still as she touched her tongue to his shoulder. He sank a hand in her hair when she licked his skin.

  “Tara—”

  “Let me.” She made a sensual, wandering path with her mouth, lapping at his skin, caressing with her lips. She rode the ridge of his collarbone then moved slowly down, until the tip of her tongue swirled with languorous intent at the crest of his nipple.

  He groaned, dragged her head back and watched her face, aglow with the power she had over him, sultry with the need to give and take. Only she knew how to drive him wild. Only she knew how to please him.

  “I want this off.” His hand was shaking as he hooked a finger under the thin strap of her gown and slid it down her arm. Lying back on the pillow, she shrugged the strap off her other shoulder, then helped him shimmy the gown down and over her hips.

  “Talk about a dream,” he sa
id huskily and stretched out on his side beside her. He traced the cream and honey heat of her with his eyes.

  “You are so pretty.”

  He laid his hand on her thigh, caressed, smiled when she moved into him.

  “So pretty.”

  He couldn’t stop looking at her, couldn’t stop touching her.

  “My turn.” His whisper was gritty with need as he lowered his mouth to hers, gently this time, controlling his passion, feeding his desire with tender, lingering kisses to her jaw, to the slender column of her throat. With delicious patience, he kissed the gentle round of her shoulder, lifted her arm and feasted on the silken flesh just inside her elbow.

  He couldn’t get enough of her breasts. Couldn’t touch them enough, couldn’t hold them enough or mold them enough in his hand, in his mouth. Couldn’t imagine how he’d lived this long without the gentle weight of them, the resilient softness, the drugging taste.

  He nuzzled her under the lower swell, where fragile ribs met luscious heat, ran the tip of his nose around her pretty pink areola, then laved it with his tongue until she moaned.

  There was more. So much more that he’d missed about her. So much more he could do to her that would make her quiver and tingle and come apart for him.

  He knew what she liked. And she was settled now. Settled and pliant and completely trusting as he slid down her body. He lingered at the sweet indentation of her navel, nipped with a scrape of teeth, a brush of lips at the sharp, slender point of her hip, then indulged in the essence of what made her Tara.

  She cried out as he tipped her hips to his mouth. She clutched the sheets in helpless abandon when he parted her feminine folds with his tongue. She groaned his name when he delved deep inside and made slow, intimate love to her with his mouth.

  She wasn’t the only one who’d dreamed. He’d dreamed of this, ached for this, to hear her sighs, to feel her heat, to taste her release as she stiffened, shuddered and shattered. For him. Only for him.

  He raised his head, pressed a kiss to the inside of her thigh, then watched her drift, witnessed her glide in the tingling aftershock of the pleasure he gave, the love he made.

  “I love you,” he whispered, in awe of her sensual release. He positioned himself between her thighs, bit back a groan as the moist tip of his sex nudged her there, where she was wet for him, ready for him.

  “I love you,” he repeated as he eased into her tight, sheathing heat and she took him in.

  With her arms around his back, her sleek legs wrapped around his hips, she took him deep, guided him to that place where nothing existed but him and her and the incredible rush of losing himself inside of her again.

  Ten

  Tara leaned against the headboard of her bed, the corner of a sheet wrapped around her to ward off the chill, her arms wrapped around her knees. And she watched her husband sleep.

  He lay on his stomach, spread-eagle across the center of the bed, his dark hair mussed, his body limp and sated. He was so beautiful.

  She wanted to touch him again. She felt like she’d never get enough of touching him. But she held back. Let him sleep.

  It was close to morning. They’d made love all night long. Hot and hurried. Slow and languorous. Intense and demanding.

  It had been incredible. It had been wonderful.

  It had been a horrible mistake.

  She’d given herself to him completely, let him break down all of her barriers and bare her soul in the ultimate act of intimacy.

  And where did that leave them now?

  It was so easy when they were together like this. Naked. Vulnerable. Completely trusting each other with their bodies, but not their thoughts.

  That had always been part of the problem—they’d used sex as the cure.

  And it scared her. She’d just given herself over to him. The love she felt was so powerful. She’d lost herself in it once. She was afraid of losing herself again.

  “Hi.”

  Her gaze connected with his in the pale light of a slow-breaking dawn.

  “I didn’t know you were awake.”

  “You okay?”

  She looked away. He wasn’t having any of it. He raised up on an elbow. “Come here. Come here to me.”

  Telling herself that she shouldn’t, knowing that they should talk, she still took the coward’s way out. She let him pull her down into the warmth he offered, let him wrap himself around her back, let him find the heat of her, the need in her, let him take her to that place where nothing mattered but the moment and the pleasure and the need.

  Flat on his stomach, Michael eased awake by inches. He felt wasted yet reborn as he burrowed deeper in Tara’s bed, savoring the scent of her and of sex and of a morning that glistened with sunlight.

  He stretched out the kinks then rolled to his back, disappointed but not surprised that she was gone. They’d made love all night and here he was, wanting her again.

  He gave a moment of thought to whether he should just get dressed then leave the same way he’d come in or walk down the stairs like he belonged here. In the end, he decided that after last night, there couldn’t be any question that he belonged.

  She’d surrendered to him. In every way. Body, heart, soul. He couldn’t wait to talk to her, to start making plans for the three of them to be together again.

  He already had it figured out. They could live in both Chicago and Ecuador. She was going to love it there. The Santiagos would love her. And Maria—Maria was going to melt into a puddle on the floor when Brandon opened up his arms to her with that joyful infectious grin.

  He actually found himself singing as he showered in her bathroom, then grinning as he opted out of shaving when all he found were fragile pink razors that probably wouldn’t skim the fuzz off a peach. Although, he thought with a smile as he stepped into his jeans and zipped them, her legs had been as smooth as silk against his back, against his mouth.

  “Shake it off, Romeo,” he muttered. “Get yourself downstairs and find your woman.”

  Deciding he was as presentable as he could make himself, he opened the door and walked into the hall. All was quiet upstairs so he descended the grand staircase and followed his nose to the family dining room.

  Emma looked up then masked her shock with a warm smile when she saw him hesitate in the doorway. “Well, this is a nice surprise. Good morning, Michael.”

  “I hope I’m not intruding,” he said, unable to suppress a smile.

  Grant looked startled, then resigned. Eyes fixed on Michael’s face, he lifted a cup of coffee to his mouth.

  “Ruby,” he said, after a sip, “looks like we need another place setting for breakfast.”

  Not exactly “Welcome back to the family, son,” but it was a start.

  “I’ll get on that right away,” Ruby chirped and tossed a wink over her shoulder as she bustled into the butler’s pantry.

  “Da!”

  “How ya doing, buddy?” He crossed the room to his son, who sat in his high chair like it was a throne and he was lord and supreme ruler of his domain. “Pancakes, huh?”

  “Um,” Brandon mumbled and forgoing his spoon, shoveled a big bite of a syrupy cake into his mouth.

  “Maybe you can teach the boy some manners,” Grant grumbled with a frown that immediately melted to an indulgent smile when his grandson turned his irresistible grin his way.

  Michael was still absorbing the implications of Grant’s grudging acceptance of his unannounced presence when Tara walked into the room, a wet washcloth in hand.

  “Here you go, Bran. Let’s get some of that syrup off your fingers, okay, baby?”

  She stopped short when she saw Michael.

  There was that blush again.

  “Good morning,” he said.

  “Um. Good morning,” she said, regaining her composure, but not her natural color.

  “I hope this is okay,” he said carefully, watching her face for any sign that she felt as reborn and renewed as he did after their night together.

&nbs
p; He saw only nerves, recognized a tension in her body language that said she had closed off again, shut him out again. It hurt that she wouldn’t look at him.

  Okay, he thought rationally. This was awkward for her. He could understand that. Maybe. Or maybe not after everything they’d shared last night.

  A tightly coiled anger had him clenching his jaw. Maybe he should have just left. Maybe he shouldn’t have come in the first place.

  And maybe you should just put yourself in her shoes and realize that she took a major step toward you last night when she could have shoved you away.

  Yeah. Maybe, he decided and settled himself down.

  God, she was beautiful. He wanted to talk to her. He wanted to tell her that he understood—at least he was trying to. That he was willing to give her time.

  But that wasn’t destined to happen. At least not this morning.

  “Call for you, Mr. Connelly,” Ruby said as she entered the dining room, a portable phone in hand.

  “Connelly here,” Grant said, his coffee cup in midair. “Oh, Lord.”

  Michael looked across the table at his father-in-law. His face had drained to pale. He suddenly looked ten years older than when Michael had walked into the room less than five minutes ago.

  Grant set the cup down heavily on the table and slumped back in his chair. “Yes. Yes. I can be there. Thank you.”

  He punched the disconnect button, heaved a breath that held the weight of the world.

  “Grant?” Emma reached over and covered his hand—a hand that was visibly shaking. “Darling, what is it? What’s happened?”

  “It was the police. There’s been another murder.”

  “Oh my God,” Emma murmured. “Not one of the children, Grant—”

  “No. Oh, no, darling,” he quickly assured her. “It’s…it appears to be Tom Reynolds,” he said bleakly.

  “Of Rey-Star?” Michael put in, recalling Tara’s accounting of the private investigation agency Grant had hired.

  “Yes,” Grant said grimly. He looked across the table at Michael, then slowly moved his gaze to his wife. “I have to go. I have to go down there.”