Laugh, he thought grimly. Was it his fault he'd left Boston a bachelor and come back a married man with a son?
At last, they were on the highway, heading for Beacon Hill. Neither of them had spoken since he'd taken the baby from her on the plane and he was weary of the silence.
"Do you need anything?"
"My freedom," Lara said politely.
His jaw tightened, but he warned himself not to bite.
"I meant for Michael. I can stop at a shopping mall, if you like."
She looked at him. His hands gripped the wheel in a way she knew, instinctively, was uncharacteristic. He'd be a driver who would hold the wheel lightly, let the power of the car seep into his muscles and his blood as he drove it.
"I'll need a lot of things, if you're serious about keeping us here."
Slade shot her a tight smile. "Hoping I've had a change of heart, Sugar? That I'm going to turn the car around, take you back to Logan and pop you on a return flight to Baltimore?" His smile vanished. "Give it up, Lara. You're here to stay, and I'm trying to be civil. Tell me what you need and we'll stop and get it."
Lara looked away from him and focused her eyes straight ahead. The city looked gray, even on a soft summer evening. Gray and old, and alien.
"A crib," she said, and fought to keep from sounding as frightened as she suddenly felt. "A stroller. A playpen. A high chair...."
"We can buy all that tomorrow. What do you need for now?"
"Nothing, I can feed Michael on my lap, or I can improvise. When he first learned to sit, I used to prop him in the corner of the sofa, with pillows on either-" She drew a ragged breath. "I'll manage."
"What about sleeping? Will he be all right in a bed?"
She gave a disparaging laugh. "You don't know much about babies."
"No," he said coldly, "I don't."
Lara flushed and caught her bottom lip between her teeth.
It had been a stupid thing to say, but she wasn't about to apologize.
"Michael will be fine. He'll sleep with me."
"For tonight."
She looked at him, at the implacable, hard profile, and felt her heartbeat quicken.
"If you think you're going to get your pleasure out of -my servitude," she said, her voice low, "you're
mistaking. You forced me into this marriage but you can't force me to sleep with you."
Slade turned off the highway and into a tangle of residential streets. They were almost at their destination, and sensed it. He could feel the tension mounting; it was a presence seated between them. He shot a look at Lara.
Her skin was pale, almost translucent, save for violet smudges of exhaustion beneath her eyes. She looked worn and frightened, and for an instant he thought of puffing to The side of the road, taking her in his arms and telling her she had nothing to fear from him, that he would take care of her and their son, that he would never ask anything else of her because theirs would not be a real marriage.
He'd said other things last night and even this morning but he'd been angry then. He was calm now, and he'd won a war. He could be generous and reassure her.
Any man would, if he had a handful of pride.
Slade pulled into the driveway of his home, hit the button for the garage-door opener, slid the Jag into place and shut -off the engine. Beside him, Lara sat still as a statue.
It was just that he remembered too much.
He remembered how perfectly her breasts had filled his hands, and the way the delicate pink tips had pearled at the touch of his tongue. The sweetness of her creamy flesh against his mouth. The softness of her thighs, and the woman-scent of her arousal.
And now she'd borne his son. Had her body changed? Was it even more lushly female?
Would just the sight of her arms opening to draw him down to her still be enough to make him hard with desire and need?
The part of him that remembered the night they'd spent together hoped it would be.
The part that hated her prayed it would not.
Slade's jaw hardened. He got out of the car, went around to the passenger side and opened the door for his wife.
* * *
CHAPTER NINE
LARA came awake abruptly, heart pounding, lungs straining for breath, the demons of her nightmare snapping at her heels.
The dream had been terrifying. She'd been in a strange room, in a distant land...
It wasn't a dream. It was real. She was in a bedroom in Slade's house. Her own room, with its pale yellow walls and windows overlooking a small garden, was hundreds of miles away.
She was trapped here, trapped here with ..
Lara bolted upright in the bed. "Michael?"
Fear flooded her senses. She'd fallen asleep with her arm around her baby but he wasn't there anymore. The only thing lying next to her was a teddy bear.
"Michael," she said, her voice rough with fright.
She tumbled from the bed and searched the room, got on her knees, peered under all the furniture, opened the closet and checked the bathroom.
Her baby was gone.
Frantic now, she ran to the door and flung it open. Ahead, sunshine flooded a skylight that illuminated the dangerous twists and turns of a spiral staircase.
"Michael," she whispered as her heart raced into triple time. "Oh God, Michael..."
A peal of childish laughter rang through the silent house.
Lara swung around, listening, her hand at her throat. "Michael?" she whispered, and the sound came again, this time as a bright counterpoint to the deeper, full-throated laugh of a man. Lara ran down the hall, past closed doors, following what had become giddy squeals and chortles to an open doorway at the end of the corridor...
And found Slade's bedroom, and his bed, and the source of all the laughter.
Slade lay sprawled on his back in a tangle of pale blue sheets. Michael sat on his belly, leaning back against Slade's upraised legs. They were holding hands, the man and the child, Michael's tiny fists lost within Slade's grasp.
"All aboard," Slade said, and gently tugged first Michael's left hand, then his right. "Choo chop choo. Choochoo-choo. Choochoochoo... "
Michael guffawed. Laughter bubbled out of his mouth as he played with Slade. With the stranger who wanted to be his father.
Lara strode into the room. "What in hell do you think you're doing with my son?"
The giggles stopped. Michael looked around and Slade raised his head. She marched to the bed-a bed far larger than any human being needed for something so simple as sleeping-and snatched her baby into her arms.
Michael's mouth trembled. "Ma-ma-ma?"
"I'm here, sweetheart," Lara crooned, but her tone changed when she looked at Slade. He was sitting up and now she realized he was wearing nothing but a pair of white silk boxer shorts. She felt a sudden rush of heat, and that only made her more angry. "I asked you a question, Slade. Just what were you doing with my child?"
Michael whimpered and tucked his thumb into his mouth. Slade's eyes flashed a warning as he swung his legs to the carpeted floor.
"Hey, Mike," he said gently, "it's okay. Your mom was probably worried about you, that's all."
"Probably?" Lara glared at him. "I wake up and find my son missing and you think I was probably worried?"
"Look, I'm sorry you were upset." Slade ruffled the baby's hair. "I woke up and heard him crying. When he kept crying, I went in and got him."
"If he'd cried, I'd have heard him."
"He was crying, okay?" Slade got to his feet. "What'd you want me to do? Leave you a note?"
"You could have-" Her gaze swept over him and her dace pinkened. "Do you mind?"
"Do I mind what?"
"Must you walk around like-like that?"
Slade looked down at his shorts, then at her. "These, should be Illegal?"
"Yes." Her voice was almost as rigid as her spine. "I realize this is your house but a little decorum-"
Slade laughed. "This is a little decorum. I sleep in the raw
but I stopped long enough this morning to put on a pair of shorts before I went to rescue my son." His gaze swept over her, taking in her sleep-ruffled hair, then skimming down the T-shirt she'd slept in. "Seems to me you're not dressed for a meeting with the Queen, either."
Her blush darkened. "I was frantic," she said. "When I couldn't find my baby-"
"Yeah," he said gruffly. "Okay. Never mind."
He swung away from her and told himself he really was going around the be bend. Lace was sexy. Lace, and silk. Not T-shirts, certainly not an oversize T-shirt that had come out of his bureau drawer. She hadn't wanted to take it but she had nothing else. He'd had a couple of bad minutes during the night, lying sleepless in his bed, picturing Lara sleeping just down the hall and how she looked in that shirt.
Now, he could see what he'd only imagined. The faint outline of her nipples. The shadowed darkness at the juncture of her thighs, and the long length of her legs. She was warm and rosy from sleep, half-naked in his bedroom, and she was his wife...
Oh, hell, he thought, and he pulled a pair of jeans from his closet.
"I didn't mean to scare you," he said gruffly, as he stepped into the jeans and zipped them up. "You were asleep. I got him, I diapered him, I fed him-"
"You diapered him?"
"More or less. Don't look so amazed. I just followed the instructions on the box."
"And you fed him? How would you know what to feed a baby?"
"It was easy." Slade sauntered toward her, his fly zipped but the button on his jeans undone, his hands tucked into his back pockets. "I just asked myself what I would want, first thing in the morning. So I made Mike some crisp bacon, a mushroom and onion omelet, some home fries, black coffee..."
"What?"
The look of horror on her face made him laugh. "Relax, Sugar. I let him slop his way through some orange juice while I scrambled him an egg and made a slice of toast." He grinned at the baby, who grinned back. "And Mike ate every bit of it, didn't you, pal?"
"His name," Lara said coldly, "is Michael." "Michael's too formal for a guy and his dad." Slade held out his arms. Lara tried to hang onto her son but he lunged for his father. "We like Mike just fine, don't we, buddy?" She watched in silence as Slade lifted the baby high in the air. Michael squealed and kicked his arms and legs. "Da-da," he said exuberantly.
"That's right, buddy. I'm your daddy." "He didn't say that."
Slade looked at her and she blushed. She knew how she'd sounded, overprotective and angry, but she couldn't help it. Twenty-four hours had passed, one short day, and she was already losing her son.
"Sure he did. Mikey? Who'm I?" He held the baby up again and grinned at him. "Say, Daddy. Come on, pal. Let's hear it. Dad-dy. Dad-dy..."
"He's too young to talk," Lara said brusquely.
"He says Mama, or something that passes for it."
"He just makes sounds. Anyway, that's different. I'm his mother."
"And I'm his father," Slade said, his voice suddenly cool. "The sooner you get used to that, the better,"
"You don't know anything about Michael. Not anything."
"Trust me, baby. You don't want to start down that road." Slade forced a smile to his lips. "Anyway, it worked out fine. He likes playing Choo-Choo Train, and he's partial to his old man's scrambled eggs."
"Didn't it ever occur to you to ask me what he eats?"
"I told you, you were asleep. So I called Helga."
A cold fist seemed to twist around Lara's heart. "Helga," she said brightly. "Really."
"And she said-
"Oh, I can just imagine what she said. Caviar. Champagne. Maybe some pat..."
"Stop it."
"Don't you tell me what to-"
"I said, stop it. You're scaring the hell out of my son."
"Your son? Your son?" Michael began to cry. Lara glared at Slade and took the baby from him. "Now see what you've done," she snapped, and marched from the room before she could make herself look even more foolish.
She knew she'd overreacted, but she'd been worried. Couldn't Slade understand that? And, dammit, couldn't he have gotten dressed? Did he did have to stand around like that, in unbuttoned jeans with his chest bare? Did he have to display those muscled arms and shoulders? That hard chest with its silky whorl of dark hair that tapered down over his ridged belly and vanished under the waistband of the open jeans?
Lara shut the door to her room and leaned back against it while Michael snuffled against her throat.
As for whatever advice a woman named Helga might provide... Who cared?
Certainly, not she.
Her only concern was for Michael, and he was exhausted. She knew it was from the endless hours of their journey yesterday but she told herself it was because Slade had worn him out with that game.
She sang to him, rocked him in her arms. When his lashes drifted to his cheeks, she held him until she was sure he was sound asleep. Then she made him a bed on the floor, secured him within an enclosure of pillows and blankets, and blocked the open bathroom door with the chaise longue.
Showered and dressed, she carried the sleeping baby downstairs and built him another safe bed in a comer of the living room. Once she was sure he wasn't going to awaken, she followed the scent of brewing coffee to the kitchen. She knew where the room was, even without the coffee to guide her. Slade had insisted on showing her through the house last night, even though she'd made it perfectly clear she didn't give a damn what it looked like.
"I don't give a damn, either," he'd said coldly. "You can like the place, hate it your opinion of my home isn't important. I just don't want you falling down the steps and breaking your neck, if you get up during the night."
As it turned out, she hadn't gotten up. Her sleep had been plagued by dreams but she'd slept straight through until morning, so soundly that she hadn't even heard Slade enter her bedroom.
Slade, in her bedroom, standing over her. Watching her. The idea made her feel breathless. And that kept her anger humming.
Slade was sitting on a high-backed stool at a white marble breakfast counter, reading the paper. His hair was wet, probably from a shower, and curled lightly around his ears and the nape of his neck. He'd put on a T-shirt, thank goodness, but it was as tight and as faded as his jeans. His feet were bare, and she almost laughed because she'd half expected to see him wearing boots.
Lara frowned.
Laughter would not be helpful. Anger. Anger, was what she needed. Not laughter, and certainly not this sudden, dizzying wave of heat that swept from her breasts to her belly as she imagined coming up behind him, laying her hands on his shoulders and, when he turned, kissing his mouth.
This man-this gorgeous male specimen-was her husband.
She must have made a sound, some little murmur of self despair, perhaps, because just as she was about to flee, Slade looked up, turned and saw her. For a heartbeat, she regretted that she'd plaited her hair into a braid, that she'd pulled on a shapeless T-shirt and a pair of old jeans she'd stuffed into a small suitcase at the last minute, but his gaze slid past her, as if she weren't really worthy of his notice, and she felt her anger return.
"I hope I'm not disturbing you," she said, with all the sarcasm she could manage.
Slade didn't seem to notice. "Not at all," he said politely. "Where's Mike?"
"Michael," she said pointedly, "is asleep."
"Is he okay alone?"
She gave him a pitying glance as she walked to the stove and poured herself some coffee.
"I wouldn't have left him, if I didn't think he was."
"There's sugar and cream, if you want."
Lara looked at him over the steam rising from her mug. "Thank you," she said coolly, "but I prefer it black."
"So do I."
"Is that supposed to make me jump up and down with joy?"
"I only meant... Look, don't you think it'll make things easier, if we know a little something about each other's habits.
"No," she said sweetly,
"not particularly."
Slade drew a deep breath, then let it out. "Okay. Okay, we'll stick to a safer topic. Tell me about Michael. I mean, I don't know much about kids-"
"Indeed."
"-but, for instance, does he generally nap in the mornings?"
"No. But he's exhausted."
"Yeah." Slade propped his elbows on the counter, wrapped his hands around his coffee mug. "Well, that was a lot of travel time we put in yesterday."
"It was this morning that tired him. All that rough play, with you."
"You think?" He grinned at her over the rim of his mug. "He loved that game I invented."
"So you may think, but he isn't used to that kind of roughhousing."
"Well, he's going to get used to it. We had a great time."
The scene she'd walked in on flashed into Lara's mind. Michael and Slade together, Michael giggling and laughing. Her throat tightened, and she gave him a pitying smile.
"Once I buy him some toys," she said, "you'll see that he prefers quieter pastimes."
It wasn't true. Her baby loved to play tickle, and I See, but none of that mattered half as much as making sure Slade understood he was an outsider. If only the man didn't have such thick skin. Right now, he looked completely nonplussed.
"Well, he'll have the chance at both. Quiet stuff, with you, and rougher stuff with me." He cleared his throat. "Speaking of toys ...I got him some things."
"What are you talking about?"
"I ordered some stuff."
The words were tossed off in a manner that was loose and easy, but she could see the proud glint in his eyes.
"Stuff?" she said, cautiously. "What kind of `stuff?"
"Oh, some blocks. A wooden train. A couple of stuffed animals-I saw how much he loves that bear and I figured, a lamb and a dinosaur couldn't hurt."
"A dinosaur?" Lara said faintly.
"The purple one. Helga said kids love 'em." "Helga," she said, even more faintly.
"Uh-huh. And..." He eased from the stool, folded his arms and leaned back against the counter. "And some other things. A crib. A playpen. A high chair. Oh, and a stroller ... you know, stuff you mentioned yesterday."
Sandra Marton - Slade Baron’s Bride Page 12