"Yeah," he said. "You'd better get some sleep."
"I... are you—I don't... I'm tired tonight."
"I've got work to do. I'll be up for a couple more hours."
He saw relief in her eyes and inside him, something snapped.
"Good night, then." She stood, waiting for him to leave. She was wearing the now-familiar jeans, but topped with a sweatshirt he hadn't seen before. He saw her bra lying on the top of the dresser behind her and knew she was naked under the shirt.
But he recognized the coolness in her eyes, and the wariness. While he was away she'd rebuilt her mask. Now, standing here, just staring at her, he could feel her slipping away from him.
"One thing," he said. His own voice wasn't working right.
She was his lover, his wife. What had happened to the intimacy they'd shared? What would it take before Sam would cease needing to restore the barriers every time they separated for even a few moments?
She shoved at her hair again, didn't seem to know what to do with her hands. He wanted to hold her, to feel her nestle trustingly against him as she closed her eyes and drifted to sleep. Maybe she wanted the same, but he couldn't see anything of the other Sam—of Samantha.
"What one thing?" she asked finally.
"A good-night kiss."
"What?"
"You're my wife. I'd like a good-night kiss before you go to bed." He needed her to look at him, to admit that she cared, that she ached for him as he ached for her. He needed her to be his lover, not just in passion but in life, and hadn't he seen that kind of love in her eyes, deep down, hidden behind the mask worn by the woman facing him?
"Cal, tonight I... you don't mean us to make love?"
"I want to kiss you good night," he said and admitted to himself that he intended to use that kiss to find the way through this mask she wore.
She stepped a few inches closer, offered her closed lips to him, her eyelashes dropped, concealing her eyes from him. Not quite trusting him. Did she think she would cool his desire by waving a challenge like that in his face? Passive lips, lowered eyes.
He took his time, sliding his hands into her hair first. She'd made a mistake, lowering her eyes, because he could study her freely. As he let her hair slide through his hands he saw the muscle jump in her throat.
"Sam?"
Her eyes fluttered open.
"Samantha," he said softly. His fingers stroked the curve of her cheek where the hair kept tumbling back. "You looked very beautiful sleeping in the living room." He smoothed the hair back and curved his fingers to the sweet contour of her cheek, her jaw.
He felt her swallow. Nervousness? Desire?
He intended to find out.
He covered her mouth with his, lips closed, and brushed her lower lip softly. His lips paused against the tiny dip at the corner of her mouth. Surely that was a tremble he felt go through her?
He angled her face just enough to allow him to seek the curve of her cheek, then the trembling fragility of her eyelids with his mouth.
Her eyes fluttered closed, then opened almost immediately. He pressed the softest touch to close them again and returned to her mouth.
"Cal?" Her voice sounded thin, fragile. "We... you said we weren't...."
He soothed her with kisses to her eyelids. "Hush, sweetheart."
She whimpered but didn't pull away.
He didn't take her mouth, which had relaxed enough that it might have given permission for him to slip his tongue into her. Instead he gentled her with his mouth on her throat, her earlobe. He felt her tremble again and he stroked her face, her throat, the slender curve of her shoulders through the sweatshirt, ran his hands down the outsides of her arms and linked his fingers with hers.
Then he angled his head and returned to her lips, but despite the slow hammering of his pulse, he forced gentleness, soothing lightly, refusing to slide into the temptation of her parted lips when she let out a long breath and her hands clenched in his.
He returned to her eyes, smoothed his hands up her arms. Her breath hitched.
"Should I stop, Samantha?"
She made a sound. It wasn't a word, more like one of the sounds she said Kippy had been making today. He stroked her with his voice. "I wouldn't want to keep you up when you're eager to go to bed."
When his hands slid down to her wrists this time, he felt her pulse hammer. She might hide her response from his eyes, but her heartbeat gave her away. He covered her lips with his and lifted her into his arms, lowered her gently onto the spread of her single bed.
"Good night, Samantha," he murmured, his lips against her throat where her pulse throbbed. Her hands clenched in his shirt and he knew he had to leave, now, before this went too far. She'd told him, trusted him when he said it wasn't lovemaking on his mind. But he'd needed....
This was wrong. She'd trusted him.
Then she opened her eyes and he was lost, because it was there. Open and fragile, vulnerable.
"I want to love you," he said, his voice hoarse.
Her fingers clenched tighter in his shirt. He unfastened them and kissed the tension from them; then he lowered them to her sides and began slowly stroking her through the big sweatshirt. Her shoulders, her arms, the soft trembling of her midriff.
When her hands moved to him, he stopped her. "Hush," he murmured. "Let me do this for you."
He held his throbbing need harshly under control, forced his hands and his mouth to slow, slow gentleness. When she moaned under his touch he slowly drew the clothes from her, kissing her hands when they grew restless.
"Let me," he urged softly, and something happened to the hard knot of need within him. It eased, soothed by the soft touch of her skin, arrested by the pleasure of stroking her so softly he could almost hear her pulse.
He rolled her over and slowly massaged her shoulders, her back, and the curves of her buttocks. He heard her breath grow soft, relaxed, then ragged, and each time she moved, to touch, to grasp, to ease her own growing passion, he soothed her with his voice and his mouth.
When she was a soft bundle of ragged breathing and flushed skin, he gently rolled her onto her back again and stroked her feet, her calves, and her thighs. When she was moaning, her head rocking on the spread, he gently opened her thighs.
She opened to him, moist and trembling.
He covered her with his mouth, and she swallowed a scream, convulsing under his kiss. He felt his own breath tearing, as if he'd come with her, and he gentled her with soft kisses to her thighs, his fingers stroking hips and buttocks.
Then he took her up again. This time, her climax sent shudders echoing through her whole body and she spoke to him in soft moans, and when he stroked her she opened to him again and he kissed her mouth and felt her arms cling, holding him, needing.
Her mouth against his, he slipped his fingers into her creamy folds and felt her groan in his throat.
"I can't...." And she shuddered, deeply, and opened further to him. "Please... inside me...."
He entered her, thrust deep into her and felt her body tighten on him in strong spasms as she screamed into his mouth, her passage milking him, her tears spilling onto their faces.
His tears, too.
Afterward, he managed to tug the blankets over them, and she nestled against his chest, her body trembling. He smoothed the hair back from her face, gently dried her tears with a corner of the spread.
"Samantha?"
Her eyes opened slowly, and he felt a shaft of pain at the vulnerability he saw there. Tell me you love me, he wanted say, because if ever she would love him, surely it would be now. But her eyes stopped him.
"Sam? I need to know—"
"We'll talk about it tomorrow," she said, her voice husky.
He held her as she slept, but he'd seen her eyes and he couldn't fool himself that he'd won any battles tonight. He might just have lost the war.
Chapter Twelve
Had she actually taken a walk with Kippy yesterday and told herself she would keep her hea
d? That she'd talk business with Cal, discuss Jallison when he arrived Tuesday night, keep a bit of distance until she could handle intimacy without losing control?
Maybe she'd have done better if he hadn't caught her sleeping, if she hadn't woken in his arms, fighting the need to reach up and pull his head down to her, to tell him how desperately she needed him to be here, to be close, never to leave again.
Never to leave again.
She was in trouble. Big trouble, and she was lucky she'd woken in the bed alone, because if he'd been here, she would have curled right into him, would have melted, would have... might have started crying again, as she had last night. Crying when he made love to her.
I'm in love with you, he'd said, but she hadn't understood. Last night... it was his tenderness that had undone her so completely last night. Loving her... so... so lovingly, as if he would stroke and soothe her forever, as if her needs overwhelmed his.
Cal's love.
She stared at her eyes in the bathroom mirror as she brushed her teeth. She didn't know how to face him, how to look at him after last night. She wanted to find him, to run into his arms, to cling. She didn't know if she could do that, if she could make herself do that. And even if she did, how was she going to face the moment when she needed to pull back and meet his eyes?
I love you.
No. No, she didn't. At least—maybe she loved him, but she wasn't in love.
"Fool," she muttered at the woman in the mirror, a woman with big, vulnerable eyes, flushed face, and tangled hair. She couldn't handle in love. She really couldn't—she would cling to him, needy, as her mother had clung to so many men. Then time would shift everything, and she'd be screaming, demanding, out of control.
She wouldn't! She was Samantha Moonbeam Jones, and she knew moonbeams were allocated to fantasy, not reality. She'd always known. She had to know, had to keep control. She would not be her mother.
She stepped into the shower, soaped herself hard, as if she could scrub away need and vulnerability and spinning out of control in the daytime as well as the evening.
Kippy!
She'd woken, had got up, gone into the upstairs bathroom, brushed her teeth, and showered without even a thought for Kippy. Why hadn't the baby's early morning cry woken her?
She rinsed off and hurriedly toweled herself.
When she stepped out of the bathroom, she heard the baby's gurgle from downstairs.
"Open up," said Cal's voice. "Cereal and fruit, just what you wanted."
Kippy's gurgle turned bubbly, as if she'd accepted a mouthful of food and was blowing bubbles with it now.
She felt herself tremble deep inside.
Grow up, woman. He's your husband. He made love to you—spectacular, earth-shattering love. You 're going to be facing him for a lot of years—eighteen years, at least. So grow up and face him.
Clause eleven in the contract. Eighteen years, to bring Kippy through childhood. Eighteen years wouldn't be enough. She wanted more. She wanted forever.
Oh, no. She really couldn't....
Her fingers trembled as she dressed. Not jeans, because today was the day she and Cal would stand together in court and tell the judge they were a couple, a real couple, and exactly what Kippy needed, a real mother and father.
She'd thought it a lie, but it was the truth. Deep truth.
She put on the suit she'd worn the day Cal flew her to Nanaimo to rescue Kippy. How astounding that he should do that—leave Tremaine's in the midst of important changes and take hours, days, to make sure she got where she needed. To help her with Kippy, to care.
He'd wanted to be sure she didn't leave Tremaine's.
But it was more than that. Even then, he must have cared, loved her.
Pantyhose, bra, blouse, skirt. The jacket over it all. In the mirror, she looked like a child in grownup's clothes, the business suit's effect softened by the long, unruly hair streaming over her shoulders.
Better put her hair up. Didn't want the judge to think she was too immature to be a mother.
When she went downstairs, she would walk over to Cal and she'd kiss him. Then she'd tell him—there, in front of Kippy, with Cal's black eyes staring questions at her, she'd tell him.
I'm in love with you.
She caught her hair back and brushed its length to smoothness, then twisted it up in the familiar roll. She wondered if she could say the words. It would be easier in his arms, in the night.
No. She'd say it now, this morning. With daylight flooding in the windows and Kippy as her witness. She'd kiss him first, and that would help. Then she'd say the words.
She tucked a stray strand of hair into the bun, and she could see her nervousness in the mirror. All right, so she was nervous. She'd been nervous before, hadn't she? When she'd done her first solo consulting job for Mirimar, she'd been terrified she'd mess up. She'd survived that, hadn't she?
She'd be fine. Cal loved her, so it wasn't as if anything could really go wrong.
She dropped her arms, took a deep breath, and walked to the stairs.
Downstairs, Cal was sitting in front of the high chair, a spoon of baby cereal in one hand, a damp cloth in the other. She froze when she saw him. He was her husband. Hers. The thought dried her throat.
Kippy had spread cereal everywhere. Spatters on Cal's chin, his shirt, his hands.
"One more," he said, his voice rumbling with the vibration she remembered from last night, so gentle, so soft, his touch so achingly loving. "Come on, kiddo. Open up and take one more; then we'll quit."
He slid the spoon in Kippy's open mouth before he saw Samantha. She saw him freeze, and she told herself to smile, to walk to him, and take the spoon, then cover his mouth with hers, wish him good morning.
This morning was the real beginning of their life together. They'd exchanged civil vows last weekend, but today was the first time she understood that she and Cal were meant to be together, that this man was her only lover, partner, husband.
"Cal...." She shouldn't be frightened, didn't need to be frightened after last night. "You've got Kippy's breakfast all over you."
He drew the spoon out of Kippy's mouth. "Yeah, I do."
This was where she crossed the empty space between them and kissed him, but his eyes weren't inviting. They were cold.
"I can take her," she offered. "I'll clean her up."
"You're not dressed for it." His voice was cool, too.
"Cal, I need to talk to you."
He put the spoon in Kippy's bowl and placed both out of the baby's reach, wiped Kippy's hands and face with the cloth.
"About last night?" he asked.
"Sort of." She didn't know what was in his eyes.
"Gaa-gaa!" shouted Kippy and bashed both fists on the high chair tray.
Samantha needed to close the distance between them, to kiss Cal before she lost her nerve.
"Last night should never have happened," Cal said.
Kippy bashed the high chair tray again and Samantha reached for her, but Cal beat her to it, lifting the baby out of the high chair.
"Cal, what do you mean?"
Cal grabbed the cloth and gave another swipe over Kippy's face, where a new lump of cereal seemed to have emerged.
"I made a mistake, Sam."
"A mistake?" She didn't know what to do with her eyes, her arms. She folded them across her midriff. "What do you mean? What mistake?"
"I think that's obvious," he said grimly.
"What's obvious?" She sounded like a windup toy, repeating everything he said. Last night shouldn't have happened. A mistake. Obvious.
He shifted the baby to his shoulder and rubbed her back. Kippy squirmed.
"I should have left you sleeping in the living room." He jerked his head. "Can you step aside? I need to take her into the bathroom, to clean both of us up."
She stepped back, right into the log archway. When his eyes met hers, passing her, she saw nothing but ice. She didn't watch him go, but she heard water running in the bathroom.
She hugged herself tighter. "Yes, I'll do that."
He didn't answer.
She could shout I love you through the bathroom door, but if last night was a mistake, then she'd made a mistake too. She'd believed it was real. Two hearts, two souls.
He'd said he was in love with her. He had. But last night was a mistake.
"I'll pack Kippy's diaper bag!" she called.
He didn't answer.
She packed the diaper bag. Five diapers, more than enough. A rattle and the big plastic baby spoon she liked to chew on. A bottle of formula from the fridge. Fill up the little travel container of baby wipes. She heard Kippy babble through the bathroom door, but not a word from Cal.
Tonight they'd be in Seattle. They'd talk. Maybe, by then, she'd understand, or at least figure out how a woman handled this sort of situation. Right now, she'd better get the baby carrier and put it into her car.
She wouldn't cry. She wouldn't.
At her car, she placed the diaper bag in the back seat and discovered a brand-new baby car seat fastened right where she'd be able to turn her head and check on Kippy if she was driving.
He must have bought it in Seattle. He'd taken the time to look after her and Kippy, despite what had to be a very hectic day at Tremaine's. And he'd come here, late last night. He'd wanted to see her, or he'd simply have slept over in Nanaimo.
She slid into the front and started the engine. She couldn't reach the pedals, and her mirrors were out of adjustment. Everything set for Cal's height and length.
Maybe he'd like to drive?
Maybe he would, but she needed the wheel between her hands, needed something to do. Kippy would be belted into her car seat, so Samantha couldn't shield behind the baby.
This wasn't right, feeling so awkward, so tense. She had to stop it, had to find a way to be natural with him, to get past the fear and the panic. He'd been abrupt this morning, and she'd reacted, giving it meaning it might not have. After all, he'd had to get up with Kippy, because she must have slept through the crying. Maybe he—
Think About Love Page 19