Suddenly, a bundle of dark curls launched herself at Leigh. “You’re Aunt Leigh? Do you know who’s coming tonight?” Leigh was almost pushed into a chair so that the cherubic-looking little girl could sit in her lap.
“Santa?” Leigh guessed.
“I’m Julie,” said one of the women with long, plaited dark hair and a bright ski outfit. “This is Jane—” she pointed to a rather homely woman in jeans and a man’s flannel shirt who had a wonderfully welcoming smile “—and this is Sandra.” Sandra was much more chic than the other two, in a cranberry jumpsuit that accented her blond coloring.
“You’re wearing my favorite color,” the cherub announced from Leigh’s lap. The women laughed, and tried to identify for Leigh which of the offspring playing around the room belonged to whom. The men were bringing in the tree, and Mrs. Hathaway never stopped talking.
“My name is Ruth, Leigh, but I’d much rather you called me Mother. Julie, Jane and Sandra do.”
“I’m Brandy,” the dark-eyed cherub offered.
“How could you get another lopsided tree? A whole forest to choose from…”
“No shaking those presents, young man, or Santa may just cross you right off his list!”
“Do you want a little wine, Leigh?”
She was suddenly overwhelmed—oh, but in a thoroughly wonderful way. She would have loved to play with the bright-eyed children, or chat with her mother-in-law, or answer her sisters-in-law’s questions, or even help trim the tree, but it couldn’t be done, not at once. It had been too long since she’d had something in her stomach, and they had already been up for twelve hours, and the contrast between the freezing, brisk air and this cozy but stiflingly warm room…
The child was lifted off her lap, and Brian swept Leigh up in his arms and carted her off to the room where the suitcases had been put. Without any ceremony, he pushed the door shut with his foot, set her on the double bed and briskly unzipped the back of her dress as he pressed her head down between her knees.
“I’ve never fainted in my life!” she wailed dizzily.
“You don’t regularly turn green either, Red. Are you sick to your stomach as well?”
She resented the question, refusing to answer it. “I’m going right back,” she mumbled.
“Sure you are. Why don’t you move one inch off the bed and see what happens to you?” Brian suggested mildly. From behind her, his cool hands splayed firmly around her collarbones. His palm heated to the warmth of her skin, and slowly he massaged the tension away, soothing in an almost ridiculous sensation of well-being and peace. Long after the overheated sense of dizziness had passed, she stayed still, inhaling the sensual comfort he offered, the peace, the privacy of just the two of them.
“Honey, are you ill?” The door opened as Brian’s mother stepped inside. Ruth spoke more slowly than before, with genuine concern.
“I don’t know what happened—I’m so sorry, Mrs. Hathaway. Really, I’m perfectly fine.” Brian’s fingers refused to release her, tightening just perceptibly when she tried to get up. Thoughts jumbled in her mind like jigsaw-puzzle pieces as Brian brushed aside her hair and zipped up her dress. A possessive and thoroughly experienced gesture, she thought irrelevantly. And that was just it. How easy it was for him to play the possessive and protective and loving husband. Suddenly Leigh felt a pang that it was all nothing but pretense, for that afternoon she had not entirely been pretending. In the midst of this warm, loving family, she had felt the icy chill that had so long surrounded her heart begin to thaw.
“She’s pregnant, Mom,” Brian said quietly.
“A baby! But neither of you said a word! Oh, my dears!” A kiss was extended to both of them, and a double hug for Leigh. But then Ruth Hathaway cast a cold, stern look at her son. “Because it’s Christmas, I won’t even scold you for carting this pregnant child all over the countryside.” She paused deliberately, and Leigh began to see just how she had managed to raise four rowdy boys, and to realize that her mother-in-law was no bit of fluff, for all her chatter. “We’ll get you something to eat and a place to put your feet up, Leigh, and it’ll be an early night for you. Just get out of here, Brian, and fix up a plate for her.”
When Brian was gone, his mother fluffed up the pillows and drew down the spread, encouraging Leigh to rest a little longer. “It’ll give us a few more minutes of peace before we face the confusion again,” she said sympathetically. “Brian always said that’s what drove him nuts about the family—no peace, no privacy and continual confusion. You’re two of a kind, aren’t you?”
“Oh, but I love families, Mrs. Hathaway,” Leigh protested.
“Mother,” she corrected gently. “And of course you do. But one can raise families in chaos—heaven knows that was my style—or with serenity, the way I’m sure you will.”
Leigh ate with a tray on her lap and Brian at her side. The tree was trimmed, mostly by the children, with handmade decorations they had brought with them, and with long strings of popcorn that had gaping holes where the goodies had inevitably been filched. There were a few tears over candy canes that weren’t to be eaten yet, and arguments and laughter over the placement of the tinsel, and then it was done. The tree lights were put on, the fire roared in the fireplace and all the other lights were turned off.
A hushed silence fell on the group. It was one of the most magical moments Leigh could remember. The tired yawns and smiles of the children, so wide-eyed in anticipation, so quiet now…the brothers instinctively paired off with their wives, inevitably close in the crowded room…Mrs. Hathaway beaming at all of them from her bentwood rocker…and Brian, one arm nestled around Leigh’s rib cage, the smell of his clean hair and the touch of the bristles on his chin as she leaned back in his shoulder, cuddling against his neck. Her palm slid up to his chest and rested there. For just that moment there were no fears and no past and nothing intruding on her consciousness. A yearning surged through her, alien and surprising, a yearning to stay this close to Brian and…even more.
People tiptoed past, one family after another, the youngest of the children carried sleepily by their parents. Still, for a long time afterward Mrs. Hathaway continued to rock contentedly in front of the tree, and Brian did not disturb the tresses on his shoulders that gleamed red-gold in the firelight.
***
In the way of dreams, myriad sensations touched her consciousness and passed by, replaced by others. She was drifting through clouds in slow motion, her skin brush-painted with the softness of fleeting white puffs of air. Then she was running through a meadow of spring flowers, on a hot summer’s day, her bare feet meeting the sponge of thick grasses, with a sensation of running to rather than away from… Another sensation, the best: floating in water at midnight, the sea swaddling her like liquid silk, caressing and enclosing her in warm moistness. She had never felt so safe, so warm, so cloaked in the most luxurious textures; even her breasts felt cupped in a protective velvet shield…not velvet…
Her eyes opened to full and instant wakefulness. Her naked back was to Brian’s chest, his arms around her and his hands cradling both of her breasts. She could feel the warmth of his fingers enclosing her taut nipples. Beneath a mountain of quilts, he didn’t seem to be wearing anything either. Shock stilled her breathing, and then, convinced from the total silence behind her that he was asleep, she tried to inch away, to get out of the bed and away from him. His fingers suddenly gripped her breasts more tightly, and she whirled to find his eyes boring into hers, as wide awake as her own.
“Good Lord, what are you doing here?” she hissed. “What are you doing?”
The room was freezing when she pushed back the covers, and for a confused instant she simply lay back again, settling for heaping the covers as a barrier between them. Brian continued to stare at her from beneath his rumpled matt of dark hair.
“This is the only bedroom,” he answered quietly. “It’s a two-room bungalow, plus the kitchen.”
“And you knew that—before? Of course, I assum
ed we’d have to sleep in the same room, but I didn’t realize there’d be only the one bed—not even a couch or an armchair or—” Panic and fury knotted in her throat, half choking her. Of course he knew that. “You can’t sleep here, Brian!”
“I just did,” he pointed out dryly. “And very well. You’re a kitten when you sleep, Red, all curled up.”
She turned her head away, taking a strangled breath. “We can’t stay here tonight, not like this. You’ll have to do something.”
“Red,” he said, “there is no alternative, and we are going to sleep here again tonight in the same bed. And yes, I expect you are a little ticked off, but then, it proved a number of things, didn’t it?”
“What?” she snapped.
“To you, I wanted to prove I wasn’t going to rape you—for once and for all. And if you turn those frightened eyes on me just one more time, I’m liable to take you over my knee or shake it out of you—one or the other. Do you hear me?”
He sounded angry, but she was the one with cause for anger. She had been tricked into coming here for the holidays, when he knew what the sleeping arrangements would be. But her initial fury faded. The panicky, sick sensation of dread was more powerful; it always had been.
“But I was trying to prove something to me, too, Leigh,” Brian went on. “Something I’ve suspected for a while. You led me to believe you were dead inside sexually, that there was some man you were holding a torch for so you didn’t want any other kind of involvement with anyone. And how well I thought that suited us, two cynical people who knew better than to get too involved.”
“I am dead inside,” she said tightly. “I don’t know what you’re trying to—”
“Either you’re lying to me or you’re lying to yourself.” Abruptly his tone softened, and he turned to look at her. When she averted her face from his too perceptive eyes, his arm reached out from under the warmth of the quilt to force her gaze to meet his. “Leigh, you’re not only not dead, you’re so much alive it hurts. It’s hurting you all the time. You slide away from every touch like quicksilver. But there’ve been times, Red, when you haven’t had the time to think, when you’ve all but asked for someone to hold on to—”
“Never,” she denied, trying to twist her face away. He snatched at her hands and held them still between his.
“You’re afraid.” His steel voice was low and gravelly. “It isn’t that you don’t feel. It isn’t that there’s someone else. It isn’t that you don’t want—”
“Don’t!” she hissed desperately, closing her eyes so she wouldn’t have to look at him. “What I feel has nothing to do with anything! Brian, we were doing fine—we could still be doing fine. Don’t pry, or you’ll ruin everything!”
She turned over so that her back was to him. She would have leapt from the bed if his hands hadn’t suddenly closed like a vise on both sides of her waist from behind. She froze, facing a white-curtained window, not moving for fear of inviting more contact. It was enough, his palms on her hips and his fingers laced across the smooth, warm flesh of her stomach. He didn’t hurt her, but there was enough tension in his hold to convince her she wasn’t getting up, not that easily.
“And then I thought something else, Red,” he said softly. “That your aversion was simply for me. A physical antipathy of some kind—and that was quite a blow to my ego. But then I saw that it applies to other men even more than to me, so—”
“I don’t want to discuss it!”
She started trembling. Helplessly, she felt the arm encircling her waist draw her back to the cradle of his chest, and felt his lips touching the nape of her neck, teasing, soothingly soft. “Convince me, Red,” he said in a low voice. “Convince me you feel nothing at all for me, and I’ll never so much as touch you again.”
“Don’t,” she pleaded softly. “Please don’t.”
His hard thigh drew against the back of her leg and she felt a shudder pass through her. The trembling had intensified. He leaned just over the back of her, slowly smoothing the protective blanket of her hair from her face. His expression as he bent down was intense, even grave, his lips smooth and warm, closing her eyes, following the trail of his fingers. “I think you’re shaking because you do want me, and it frightens you. I won’t settle for that, Leigh. I won’t allow fear—not with me.”
His hand crept up from her waist and cupped a breast. The creamy globe was tender; her breasts had been sensitive for some time now, swelling with the knowledge of the child within her, but under his palms the nipples became as hard as pebbles. Her skin felt strangely warm wherever he touched; his touch was as firm as it was gentle, and so loving that she felt oddly, frighteningly weak.
“I have no intention of making love to you, Leigh,” he whispered. “Not here, not now. I like complete privacy for real lovemaking.”
She breathed a little, closing her eyes. He murmured something approving when a little of the tension left her, and cradled her closer yet to his chest. He was so warm, and his palms stroked more warmth down the still curve of her hip and up to the small contour of her stomach. His palm rested for a moment between her breasts, willing her heartbeat to still its pounding, then moved up to the sensitive hollow of her throat. The sensations were terrible: the fear threatening to make her physically ill; and a wanting, newly born, fragile but far stronger than she could understand. She ached inside, suddenly and desperately. It struck her that there was still a chance—that if she turned to him Brian might…be able to make her forget about David, and she could almost imagine losing herself in that gentle, sensual world of his touch. But there was a greater chance that she couldn’t, that she would merely open a Pandora’s box and find herself incapable of responding, numb, frozen, as she had been with Peter. And she suddenly understood how very little Peter had ever meant to her in comparison. Not for Brian, an ice maiden; never could she risk that.
The rap on the door was startling, like a shower turned cold.
“Leigh? Brian?” Mrs. Hathaway rapped again and then opened the door. “I thought I heard the sound of voices. Merry Christmas, you two. It’s time you were up. I’ve got breakfast on the stove.”
She closed the door again and Leigh turned over to stare into Brian’s dark eyes, which were dilated still, midnight-black. “Merry Christmas,” he echoed, and dipped his head for a very quick and passionless kiss on her nose. “Your heart’s going at the same rate mine is,” he whispered teasingly. “Tell me about indifference, Red. Tell me how you feel nothing.”
“Brian—”
He bounded out of bed to the bathroom. “Sorry, Leigh, but the subject’s been tabled, not closed.”
He left the bathroom door more than half open as he took a quick shower, with a thorough lack of modesty that appalled Leigh. It was as if, on the sheer arrogance of a whim, Brian had decided to change everything and so he was doing it all at once. She leapt from the bed, deciding to forgo bathroom privileges until later, and quickly put on underwear and then a winter-white angora skirt and sweater that were as soft as they were festive. Not too formal for a day that would include playing with children.
Brian had finished his shower and was standing in the doorway to watch as she straightened the bed. There was only a towel slung carelessly around his waist, and his face had a full white beard of shaving cream. The hairs on his chest still glistened from the water in the shower, and the smooth slope of his shoulders was a reminder of the physical strength inherent in his long, lean body. She hurried to bring the covers into some kind of order.
“You know,” he said conversationally, “for someone so indifferent to ‘matters of the flesh,’ Red, you shocked the hell out of me when I undressed you last night. You really think that little bit of powder-blue lace has any support to it?”
“Stop it,” she hissed, a dark flush staining her cheeks. She couldn’t find her shoes; there were so many suitcases and such a jumbled disorder of wrapped packages for the children. And she had to find the present for his mother.
“I
was even a little worried—you’ve got such a tiny little curve of a stomach that it was almost impossible to believe you were pregnant. The whole package is still bikini material, Red, and when I think of how you had me totally fooled when I first met you—”
She didn’t have the nerve to slam the door on the way out, for fear Mrs. Hathaway would hear the sound.
Chapter 11
Leigh felt as though she had finally stepped off a roller coaster when the door was closed behind her. It was all so simple, really. It was Christmas and nothing should be allowed to happen that would mar the holiday, if only because there were other people involved. And Brian… Perhaps it was just an insane moment. Perhaps if she just ignored what had happened—or maybe she could talk to Mrs. Hathaway. There must be some other place to sleep. A couch—she could say that she was sleeping poorly because of the pregnancy, that Brian’s tossing and turning disturbed her.
But Leigh did nothing of the kind. Mrs. Hathaway teased her over the breakfast table about how absolutely soundly she had slept curled next to Brian the evening before, and not even the comings and goings of twelve people had stirred her. Brian’s mother looked absolutely stunning in a cherry-red dress that set off her white hair; she looked like Christmas itself, with a sprig of holly pinned on her collar. “I’m sorry for all the confusion yesterday, Leigh. I wanted so much to have some time with you, just ourselves, to get to know one another, but it’s impossible with the holidays. I know Brian said he had to leave tomorrow, but couldn’t you just stay a little longer?”
Brian arrived just then to help himself to enough bacon and eggs and fried potatoes to bring a smile of satisfaction from his mother. “She can’t, Mom,” he said definitely. “For one thing, I don’t want her flying back alone in her condition. And the airports are a mess this time of year. I don’t want her stuck standing around for hours at a stretch.”
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