Kevin stared, wide-eyed. “He’s going to let a girl hit?”
“It’s her turn at bat,” Dani said, defending the decision.
“But she’s a girl.”
“If she was good enough to make the team, then she’s good enough to play.”
“You liberated females make me sick,” Lonny Hinson announced, glaring down at her from the row behind her in the bleachers. “That little brat is going to cost us the game. He should have sent in one of the twins.”
Lonny’s twin boys had been warming the bench all afternoon because they’d missed the past two practices. Lonny had been seething ever since he’d heard what their punishment would be. He was especially peeved that Hattie was replacing one of them.
“Would you rather win or do what’s right?” Dani asked, undaunted by his scowl. “Isn’t this supposed to be about kids having fun and learning about following the rules and about team spirit?”
“It’s about winning,” Lonny declared, just as the smack of the bat making contact with the ball sounded.
Their gazes flew to the field, where the ball was dropping into a huge space between the left fielder and the center fielder. Neither of the boys had been paying much attention. Clearly they’d been convinced that Hattie would never get a ball out of the infield, if she hit it at all. It was a full five seconds before either of them even reacted to the ball coming their way.
As two runs scored on the hit, Dani turned a triumphant expression to the chagrined man behind her. “Any comment?”
Lonny, whom she’d known since high school when he’d been a macho bore as well, was plainly torn. “Okay, so she’s got some power,” he conceded grudgingly.
“Remember that next time you want to see her plucked from the lineup in favor of a boy who’s been skipping practice, even if he happens to be one of yours. Maybe this will be a wake-up call to the guys that they’re not indispensable,” Dani told him with a grin, then gazed at Kevin, who was obviously dumbfounded. “You remember that, too, sport. Your dad knew what he was doing sending her to the plate.”
She and Kevin made their way to the winning side of the field, where a victory celebration was already under way. They arrived just in time to hear Slade announce, “Pizza for everyone.”
“Us, too?” Kevin asked his father.
Slade’s gaze met Dani’s. “Of course, you, too. If you’d like to come.”
Dani couldn’t imagine any place on earth she’d rather be, not even when the noise level in the pizza shop reached deafening decibels. Or when twenty filthy little children used grungy hands to reach for slices of pizza, which they stuffed into their mouths with little regard for the manners she was sure they’d been taught. She watched and listened, finally sighing contentedly.
“You love this, don’t you?” Slade asked, leaning in close enough to be heard. His stubbled cheek, which lent him a surprisingly sexy air, grazed hers, sending goose bumps chasing down her spine.
She grinned at him. “I do. Does that make me insane?”
“Not in my book, though I have to wonder why you didn’t decide to become a teacher. With your patience and your ingenuity, you’d be fantastic.”
She couldn’t bring herself to tell him that she’d balked at studying education because she’d always anticipated having a home of her own, children of her own who would need her full-time attention. She had not been one of those women who had a conflict over the desire for family and a career. She’d never wanted to have it all, as the saying went. To her a family was everything.
She took in the chaos around her. This was what she’d wanted, every noisy, messy, exuberant moment of it.
She looked straight into Slade’s blue eyes and caught what she thought was a flash of desire. Today, she decided right then. Today was the day she was going to ask Slade Watkins to marry her, though she thought something a little more private than their current circumstances was called for.
“Will you stop by the house later?” she asked, her breath catching in her throat as she waited for his reply.
“Actually, the boys are supposed to spend the night with the Bleecker kids,” he said, clearly leaving it to her whether to withdraw the invitation or to let it stand, sending an entirely different message.
She met his gaze evenly, drew on every last ounce of courage she possessed and declared boldly, “All the better.”
Then there was no mistaking the flash-fire of desire in his eyes. Unexpectedly, he reached over and curved a hand around the nape of her neck and brushed a kiss across her lips.
“Is that a yes?” she asked, between hoots of laughter from the boys who’d caught the gesture.
Pointedly ignoring them, Slade asked, “Is seven too early?”
“Seven is just perfect.”
Just perfect, she thought contentedly, her vivid imagination already in overdrive. It was going to be a night neither of them would ever forget.
* * *
Seven! Why on earth had she ever said seven would be perfect? It was six forty-five and her hair was soaking wet, her best blouse needed ironing and the skirt she’d decided at the last second to wear had a pinned-up hem she’d been meaning to stitch up for a month.
Maybe, if the gods were with her, Slade would be late just this once. Not likely, she thought with a sigh of resignation. The man had a built-in clock. If he said he would be over at seven, then he wouldn’t be so much as ten seconds past that.
Which meant settling for a pale pink blouse, rather than the hot pink one she’d hoped to wear, and for white linen slacks instead of the skirt. She used the fifteen minutes to try to blow-dry some style into her hair. She was actually satisfied with the results by the time the doorbell rang, precisely at seven.
Slade had used his time to clean up, as well, proving that she hadn’t imagined that he recognized the evening as the momentous occasion she envisioned. His hair was still damp from a recent shower. He’d shaved off that sexy stubble. He was wearing chinos and a soft blue dress shirt, the sleeves rolled up, the collar open. She concluded there was something far more enticing about a man who’d taken steps to dress down a formal shirt than there was about one wearing a sports shirt. Maybe it was because he looked a little as if he was already on his way to undressing.
“Something smells wonderful,” he said at once.
“The pot roast,” she suggested.
He grinned and reached out to tuck a stray curl behind her ear. “And here I was thinking it was your perfume.”
She blinked at the unexpected compliment and the tender gesture. “You noticed,” she said, suddenly shy.
“It reminds me of your garden, the way it smells in the morning with the dew still on it.”
She stared into his eyes, trying to see if he was somehow making fun of her, but he seemed serious. She was surprised. She had never once thought of Slade as having a particularly romantic or poetic bone in his body. Not that he wasn’t a sexual creature. Goodness knew, the man radiated sex appeal from every pore. But that was different from spouting the kind of sweet remarks that could charm a woman’s socks off.
Convinced he was sincere, she smiled. “Thank you.”
He grinned. “The pot roast smells wonderful, too, though after all that pizza, I’m not sure I’ll be able to do it justice.”
Oh, dear, she’d never thought of that. She’d hoped to fill his stomach with good food and then, when he was thoroughly mellow and content, to pop the question.
“Maybe after a glass of wine you’ll feel more like eating,” she suggested. She certainly needed the additional bravado the wine would impart. She practically raced toward the kitchen, where she’d left an open bottle of her best Bordeaux to breathe, beside two of her best crystal wineglasses.
“I hope you like red wine,” she said, tilting it so quickly that it splashed all over the counter.
Slade quietly removed the bottle from her shaking hand and set it back down. He touched a finger to her chin and forced her to meet his gaze.
“What’s wrong? Why are you so nervous?”
“I’ve never done anything like this before,” she blurted, then realized he couldn’t possibly have any idea what she was talking about or how momentous she intended the evening to be.
Even so, a knowing gleam lit his eyes. His lips curved into a soft smile. “Then we’ll take it one step at a time,” he promised, just before he captured her mouth in a kiss that could have melted the entire Alaskan tundra.
For one frozen instant Dani realized that he’d misinterpreted her intentions completely, but then she recognized that it didn’t matter. Slade Watkins was going to make love to her, she realized with a belated flash of insight. Someone with more experience could have guessed his intentions right away.
She was going to let him, too. In fact, she was going to encourage the seduction. With the power of passion on her side, a mere proposal was going to be a snap.
Despite her resolution she was tentative as she slid her hands up his chest, then into his still-damp hair. She stood on tiptoe to fit her body more intimately with his, thrilling at the way he was the one who suddenly stilled now. She was both terrified and eager, but it was eagerness that won.
Her inexperienced senses drank in everything, the way his body heated wherever she touched, the intoxicating, masculine scent of his aftershave, the sound of his breathing growing ragged as their kisses deepened and pulled them toward an inevitable mating that had been in the cards since the day they’d met.
“Your room?” Slade queried eventually, his eyes dazed with desire.
More than ready to discover everything, all the secrets of passion, she said, “Upstairs, first door on the right.”
As if she were the featherlight heroine of a movie, he scooped her up and cradled her against his chest as he climbed the stairs, whispering kisses across her forehead and cheeks as he went.
Dani had never felt such a wild stirring of sensations. No one had ever made her feel so much like a woman. Her virginal insecurities and doubts fled replaced by a woman’s confidence. In fact, confidence soared with each caress she dared and each touch that Slade returned.
Her body shivered as he gingerly stripped away the clothes she had debated so long about before choosing. When she was wearing nothing but a bra and panties, feeling more exposed than she ever had in an equally revealing bathing suit, he stood back and studied her as intently as any artist had ever considered a model before putting brush to canvas.
Eventually, he dragged his gaze back to clash with hers. “You are so beautiful,” he murmured. “So incredibly beautiful.”
Surprisingly, she felt beautiful at that moment. Ashley had always been the declared beauty in the family. Her successful modeling career had only confirmed what the family had always known. Sara and Dani had taken a back seat to her.
And, yet, at this instant, Dani was certain that no woman could possibly feel as deliriously desirable as she felt.
Slade, in the heat of passion, was a revelation. As distracted as he might be in his day-to-day life, as distant as he could sometimes be, he was neither of those things now. His attention was riveted on her, and Dani blossomed under his increasingly deliberate caresses, the sure strokes of his hand across breast or thigh, the teasing, tormenting brush of his fingers across the most intimate of places.
She was enthralled with everything, but most of all with the man who was so thoroughly dedicated to pleasuring her. She could sense his own restraint in the bunching of his muscles, in the occasional tightening of his jaw or a quick, tormented moan. And yet he never lost his concentration on her needs.
That intensity didn’t surprise her half as much as the expression of genuine pleasure that accompanied each shocked reaction she uttered, each tiny signal that she gave that her body was slowly, inevitably surrendering to him. He seemed to revel in his ability to ignite this new and wondrous fire inside her.
When, at long last, he poised above her, she was trembling with need and a raw hunger to make this final, most sensuous discovery.
“Please,” she whispered. “Now.”
“Yes, now,” he replied softly.
He entered her slowly, with only a brief moment of startling pain, then withdrew just as deliberately. His mouth closed over her breast, sending shock waves crashing over her. Each sensation created its own magic. And then they blended into something so compelling, so incredibly powerful that Dani thought she would die from the wonder of it.
Again and again he repeated the pattern until she was crying out with frustration and urgency. Her hips thrust up, seeking him, drawing him in, until finally there were no more games, no more sweet torment, only the riotous pleasure of an explosive climax that rocked them both to their very cores. The purest joy she had ever felt cascaded through her and settled in her heart. She had waited–far too long, she had sometimes thought–but it had been worth it. Nothing could have equaled this. Nothing.
“Oh, my,” Dani murmured as she sank back against the mattress.
Slade’s body–his incredible, heart-stopping body–remained tangled intimately with hers. When he would have lifted himself away, she held him close.
She’d learned something in the past hour, something totally unexpected. Not just her dream was wrapped up in this man, but her heart.
The stakes of the game had just escalated wildly, but Dani refused to let that daunt her. With her hands framing Slade’s face, she looked straight into his eyes.
“Marry me,” she said with the quiet serenity of a woman who’d found everything she ever wanted and was determined to have it.
Before he could hide his stunned reaction, before he could utter a word, she kissed him, deeply and thoroughly, just to prove that the suggestion wasn’t half as outrageous as he might think.
When his expression remained dazed, when it appeared he was about to murmur some sort of polite, instinctive response that would have dismissed any such notion forever, she touched a finger to his lips.
“Don’t answer me yet. Think about it.”
If she had her way, it was unlikely he’d be able to think about anything else for some time to come.
Chapter Eight
Slade was absolutely certain he couldn’t have heard Dani correctly. He thought she’d asked him to marry her. Was it possible that out of the blue, just like that, the woman had proposed?
Of course not. Women didn’t do that sort of thing. He shook his head to clear it, but the same words echoed and then he remembered belatedly that it was one of the infamous Wilde sisters with whom he was dealing. They were notorious for doing the unexpected.
“Marry me.”
There it was again. No matter how absurd it seemed, it sure as hell sounded like a marriage proposal. He couldn’t think of any other spin to put on two words as direct as those.
Not that they weren’t in the sort of intimate situation at the moment that might stir thoughts of marriage and a future in some women. Hadn’t he warned himself of the potential for that very thing with Dani? Hadn’t he reminded himself again and again that she was a forever kind of woman? She’d been a virgin, which should have been proof enough that she didn’t take sex lightly.
But even knowing all of the potential dangers in terms of emotional entanglement, he hadn’t been able to resist her. In fact, the past hour had been incredible, as tempestuous as any he’d ever spent. Dani had been everything a man could ever want in a lover–sweetly sensual, wildly passionate, generously giving. A lover, though, not a wife.
The thought of marrying again had never crossed his mind. Marriage was a sore subject with him. If he had his way, he would never chance it. His marriage to Amanda had been a terrible mistake, one he didn’t plan to repeat. Surely he had made that clear to the woman beside him. Even if he’d never said the words, he’d dropped clues, danced around the subject, done everything, in fact, except spell it out.
Apparently he hadn’t been clear enough, he realized as he gazed into expectant brown eyes. The subject had deserved
explicit statements, not innuendos.
Shock left him speechless for several minutes. Embarrassment rendered him tongue-tied.
He thought about the past few weeks. Had all the signs been there? Had he missed the fact that she was falling for him? He’d been convinced that she was far crazier about the boys than she was about him.
Oh, sure, the sparks of desire had been in her eyes every now and again. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have found themselves in the middle of her bed on a hot and humid July night. He certainly couldn’t blame their presence here on Dani alone, either. She’d flat-out admitted to him earlier that she had never done anything like this before, and the evidence had been there, too. She’d been a virgin and eager enough to change that.
He cursed his insensitivity. He had taken advantage of a sweet, innocent virgin with nothing more on his mind than the night ahead. She’d clearly had more on her mind. A lot more.
But marriage? How the hell had he missed that one coming?
Now that it was out in the open, though, he was thunderstruck. Feeling a little shaky and a lot desperate, he reached for his pants and then his shirt. He needed clothes–and neutral turf–for the difficult conversation they definitely needed to have right this second, before things got any further out of hand.
“Maybe we’d better talk about this somewhere else,” he suggested.
“Someplace less…cozy?” she inquired, looking amused and not the least bit offended by his less-than-enthusiastic response to her proposal.
“Exactly,” he said, dragging on his shirt and heading for the door, impressed in spite of himself with her calm. Any other woman would have been totally humiliated by his stunned reaction. Dani appeared to be taking it in stride.
“Fine,” she said.
She was still so blasted cheerful he wanted to spit. In fact, he concluded after daring a look straight into her eyes, she seemed to have expected his reaction. That suggested that this wasn’t some impulsive, spur-of-the-moment idea that he could dismiss with an appropriate dose of logic. He had the distinct impression she was going to have a laundry list of positives to counter anything he could come up with in his befuddled state of mind.
The Bridal Path: Danielle Page 9