In the living room, he turned slowly and slid his arms around her waist. “I don’t have anywhere fancy to take you. I can’t go back with you to your suite. But I don’t want you to leave, Erica.”
His chin came to rest on her forehead, and she smelled the clean outdoorsy leathery scent of him. His hand came up and cupped her chin. “You understand what I’m saying?”
“Yes,” she breathed, taking in the strong, determined set of his jaw, the sensual curve of his lips, the raw yearning in his eyes.
“Come with me,” he said. He led her into the bedroom, and she was touched to see that he had found fresh flowers somewhere and put them in a tiny vase on the bedside table alongside the book she’d helped him choose from Justine’s library. He went to the dresser, found a match and lit a small candle, which cast the humble room in a golden glow.
He caught her expression and said sheepishly, “I wanted to make it as nice as I could.”
Erica swallowed, unable to look away. “It’s very nice.”
“Ah, Erica, so are you. I like the way you’ve taken to Kaylie. I like the way you pitch in when help is needed.” He pulled her close and kissed her, a gentle kiss that soon became more forceful. She felt the erratic beat of her heart, the weakening of her knees, as his kiss became wild and hard and demanding.
She was, finally, living her daydreams, the ones that always ended too soon. She curved her body to fit his contours, made it easy for him to touch her. His hands skimmed her ribs and came up to cup her breasts, which surged up out of her low neckline; his mouth feathered kisses down her jawbone. A low moan escaped his throat, and she arched backward so that he would find what he was looking for. He discovered the zipper and yanked it down so that her breasts tumbled out, and she shrugged out of the sleeves while he eased the fabric away to expose the rest of her. It puddled around her feet and she stepped out of it completely. Hank said shakily, “Oh, Erica, you’re even more beautiful than I imagined.”
In the mirror over the dresser, she saw the two of them, saw the reverent expression on his face as he beheld her, and she thought dreamily that it was like looking at two people in a movie. She could hardly believe that she, Erica Strong, was that blond, sexy woman, or that Hank, a big strong cowboy, handsome enough that he could have any woman he wanted, actually wanted her. She blinked, looked again. They were still the two people in the mirror, and Hank had somehow managed to divest himself of his shirt. He caught her against him so that her breasts were crushed against his chest, and then he swung her up into his arms.
The next thing she knew, she was beside him on the bed, her hands on the buckle of his belt and unzipping his jeans. Soon he was lying on top of her, hard and strong and murmuring her name.
She offered him her lips, but it was her breasts he wanted. His mouth sought her nipples, kissed them each in turn. His tongue traced their contours, creating ripples of pleasure that sizzled right to her core. He drew out each sensation to its utmost, and she found herself moving her hips restlessly against his until he could no longer ignore her. He slid a hand around to cup her buttocks, drawing her closer, and his hardness was hot against her thighs. She wanted him, all of him, but he seemed determined not to rush.
“I—I’m ready,” she gasped, but he only chuckled deep in his throat.
“You only think you are,” he said gruffly, and then he proceeded with the most exquisite torture, tantalizing her with deep, heartfelt kisses, returning again to her breasts and then finding her lips again. She trembled beneath him, presented herself to him like a wanton woman, and still he didn’t take all of her.
She reveled in the taste of him, in the texture of his hair when she wove her fingers through it, and she felt a certain reckless greed as she moved her hands downward. He poised above her, his mouth moist against her throat, his breath hot and heavy. She shifted her head, caught his breath in a kiss, sighed into it as her blood pounded in her ears. Everything was hot, hot and wet, and her hips arched upward, guided him in.
Fiercely, joyfully, she rose to meet him, mate with him. She cried out, the sound muffled against his chest. She felt herself building to a peak, racing to the end, fighting to get there, all the sensation in her body swirling, merging, coalescing in one spinning, swirling explosion of feeling. And then she felt him convulsing, pouring into her, their bodies the instruments that brought them together at last.
He held her, his breath rough in her ear, his skin damp against hers.
“Oh, Erica,” he said helplessly. “Oh, my sweet, my darling.”
Her mind was beginning to untangle the words, to make sense of the fact that he had called her his darling, when the baby started to cry.
Chapter Ten
“Oh, no,” Hank said. He rolled over and reached for his jeans.
Erica clutched the sheet to her chest, suddenly self-conscious. “Does she usually wake up crying in the middle of the night?”
“Not unless something is wrong.” He bent over, his hands on either side of her, and kissed her lingeringly and tenderly. “I’m sorry, Erica.”
She sat up as Hank went to see what was wrong with Kaylie. She pulled on his shirt and trailed after him. When she got to the living room, Hank walked out of the alcove with Kaylie against his shoulder. The baby had stopped wailing and was snuffling and rubbing her eyes.
“I think she’s cutting her first tooth,” Hank said.
Kaylie looked so pathetic that it wrenched Erica’s heart to look at her. “What can we do?”
“I keep a couple of teething toys in the freezer door. If you’d bring one, maybe that would help.”
Erica padded into the kitchen, found the toy and took it to Hank. He gave it to Kaylie, but she didn’t want to relinquish the pacifier.
“All right, Kay-Kay,” he said, settling down on the couch with her. “Let’s see what we can do to help you. Do you know anything about teething, Erica?”
Erica wished she’d paid more attention to Abby’s talk about Todd when he was a baby, but she’d more or less tuned out all those conversations. She sat down beside Hank, and suddenly a memory came to mind. “My mother used to massage my little sister’s gums, and it seemed to help,” she said.
“I can try that.” Carefully Hank removed Kaylie’s pacifier from her mouth, and before she could object, he began to rub the bottom center gum where her two first teeth would erupt. Kaylie relaxed, an absorbed look on her face.
“I think she likes it,” Hank said hopefully.
“Why don’t I get us a snack?”
“There are chocolate-chip cookies in the pantry.”
Erica found the cookies and rejoined him. “I didn’t think to ask if Kaylie needs something.”
“I suppose I could give her a bottle, but I don’t want her to get in the habit of waking at night in hopes of a snack. The book says not to do that.”
“You must depend on the baby book a lot.”
“I didn’t have a clue about taking care of babies when Anne-Marie died. I’ve had to learn it all from scratch. But we’ve both survived, haven’t we, Kay-Kay?” He kissed the top of her head.
“You’re doing a great job, Hank.”
“It’s fun most of the time, but I wish I’d had the advantage of learning everything right from the start.”
“Why didn’t Anne-Marie want you to visit Kaylie?”
He kept rubbing Kaylie’s gum and helped himself to a cookie with the other hand. “She didn’t want me coming in and out of her life. She said that she was the only parent Kaylie would need. I didn’t agree with her, but…”
Kaylie wriggled and pushed Hank’s hand away. He gave her the pacifier; she threw it on the floor. He handed her the teething toy, which she pitched behind the couch. Then she began to whine fretfully.
“May I hold her?” Erica asked.
Hank looked momentarily disconcerted. “Okay,” he said, and Kaylie held her little arms out toward Erica when she reached for her. This made Erica feel surprised and even honored, and when
Kaylie clung to her shoulder, she felt downright flattered. She also felt protective, a new emotion for her. In the past the only thing she’d wanted to protect was her position at work.
“She might like it if you’d sing to her,” Hank suggested.
“‘America, the Beautiful’?”
“Why not?” He gave her an encouraging smile.
She began to sing softly, and Kaylie, whose eyes opened wide at first, curved trustingly against her. Hank went to wash off the pacifier in the sink, and when he handed it to Kaylie, she put it into her mouth with a grateful sigh.
“I wish I knew some other songs,” Erica said.
“How about ‘Home on the Range’? I’ll sing it with you.”
“You start.”
And then they were singing together, their voices blending until they got to the chorus, where Erica surprised herself by singing harmony. Kaylie’s eyelids grew heavier and heavier, and before they’d finished the song for the second time, she was sound asleep.
“I’ll put her back to bed,” Hank said. He gathered Kaylie into his arms, and Erica relinquished her reluctantly. While he went into the baby’s alcove, Erica returned to the bedroom where she began untangling her jumpsuit, shoes and underwear. She took them all into the bathroom and had started to dress when Hank rapped on the door.
“Erica?”
“I’m getting dressed.”
“Oh.” A few moments’ silence, and then he said, “I wish you wouldn’t.”
She halted in the process of zipping up her jumpsuit.
“I don’t want you to go,” he added.
Surprised, she opened the bathroom door. “You mean it?”
He drew her into his arms and kissed her cheek. “I want to sleep beside you all night long. I want to wake up later and make love to you all over again.”
She swallowed, overwhelmed by the emotion she saw in the depths of his eyes. “Well, hey, cowboy, that sounds good to me, too.”
He held her away so that she could see the quirk of his lips as he suppressed a smile. “The only thing is, now I’ll have to undress you all over again.”
“I’ll see what I can do to help,” she said as she kicked off her shoes and followed him back to bed.
ERICA WOKE UP early the next morning when she heard voices in the adjacent stable. It was barely dawn, and when Hank stirred beside her, he slid closer and curled his body around hers.
“That was wonderful last night,” he murmured close to her ear as his hands found her breasts.
“Mmm. You’re a terrific lover, Hank.”
A silence, and then he chuckled. “I didn’t mean the sex. I meant the way you sang to Kaylie so that she went back to sleep. The lovemaking was okay, too.”
She knew from the way he said it that he thought it was more than okay. She slid around in his arms to face him. “How long do we have until Kaylie wakes up? We could try to improve. If you’re interested, that is.”
“I’m interested, Ms. Strong. Very interested.” And he proceeded to show her how interested he was.
Afterward he held her close for a long time. She closed her eyes, listening to their hearts beating in unison. He nuzzled her ear, setting off a chain reaction of sensation all the way from her head to the tips of her toes. She couldn’t have imagined how sensitive she would become to his touch; it seemed as if every nerve in her body was primed and ready to go on alert if Hank so much as looked at her.
“How about a shower?”
“Want me to go start the water?”
“Go ahead,” he said. “I’ll be there in a minute.”
After he went to check on the baby, Erica went into the bathroom and turned on the water. While she was waiting for it to get warm, she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror over the sink. First of all, she noticed that she had gained weight. Only a few pounds, but they had filled out her spare frame so that she was more curvaceous. Her breasts were high and plump, and her waist nipped in above hips that were admirably slim.
To her embarrassment, Hank caught her at it. “Looking good,” was all he said, and even though she felt herself beginning to blush, he pulled her to him and said, “I like your new look.”
Then, before she could say anything, he dropped his towel, turned on the shower and pulled her under the cascade of spray with him. He took her in his arms. “Slippery when wet,” he murmured into her damp hair. “And oh, so kissable.”
She surrendered to his kisses, her skin slick against his, the warm water sluicing down in streams. She thought her heart would overflow with the pleasure of touching him, of skin against skin. Like all the rest of him, his body was perfect and fit hers like no other man’s ever had; he made her feel desirable, sexy, womanly. When she was swooning from the steam and the warmth and the steady onslaught of kisses, he reached for the soap and, moving slowly and deliberately, began to lather her arms and her legs and her breasts and her buttocks. She wanted to giggle when he tickled a spot above her navel, and she pressed against his hand when he found the sensitive place at the juncture of her thighs.
“Now you,” she said, barely able to speak, and he stood still while she ran the soap across his shoulders, over the muscles in his back, across his wide chest and down his abdomen. She hesitated before going lower.
“Go on,” he said, his voice husky with emotion, and she moved her hands lower, clasped them around his hardness.
He caged her against the wall, one hand on each side of her. “I can’t resist you,” he said, his voice low. “There’s something about you that turns me on, Erica. Something…” His voice trailed off as she pressed against him, and then he braced himself against the wall and took her there with the water running down, the soap slicking their bodies as they moved against each other, the steam enveloping them in their own private world.
Erica stopped thinking, began living in the moment, this moment. For it was a moment like no other, and this cowboy was real, not a daydream. She wanted to imprint everything about this experience on her mind, her heart and her soul. Because when it was all over, and it would be over, she wanted to remember. She would hold this memory, the memory of Hank, close to her heart. And instead of a daydream, she would have the memory to comfort and keep her long after she returned to her real life.
FOR HANK, it was a busy day. He led a trail ride and gave his scheduled riding lessons. He briefed Paloma on Kaylie’s teething and listened to her complain that if Kaylie was no longer going to take a morning nap, Paloma deserved a raise. He was in such a good mood that he agreed to the raise and suggested that he might call Paloma to baby-sit more often in the evening, to which she eagerly agreed.
“It is easy, taking care of Kaylie at night. I am saving so much money, you wouldn’t believe. My wedding, it will be sooner than I think, maybe.”
For the first time in a long time, Hank discovered that he didn’t feel envious of Paloma’s happiness.
He returned a call from Justine, who was disgruntled because Lizette had shown up on her doorstep and wanted to talk about his mental state, which according to Lizette, would improve with therapy.
“The only therapy I need at present is for Lizette to return to New York,” Hank informed her through clenched teeth.
“Lizette is a registered guest,” Justine shot back.
“Whose fault is that?”
“Well, even if you’ve broken up with her, I hope you’ll be pleasant,” Justine said.
Hank was on the brink of telling his sister that he had found someone to be pleasant to, except that he didn’t know how Justine would take it if she knew he was sexually involved with Erica, so he hung up.
“Sexually involved” didn’t exactly describe the way it was between him and Erica. There was more to it than sex. He couldn’t stop thinking about the way she’d held Kaylie last night, her sweet voice as she sang, the sweep of her eyelashes as she gazed down at the drowsy child. And Kaylie liked her. This meant a lot to him. He couldn’t, for instance, imagine Kaylie falling asleep in L
izette’s arms.
He wanted to see Erica again that evening but hesitated to call her because he had so little to offer. Another night of burgers and beer? Another night of possible interruptions?
Another night of sweet, passionate love. Another night of tenderness and falling asleep with Erica in his arms.
He picked up the phone and dialed her suite.
ERICA TOOK PART in Rancho Encantado’s usual activities, which included brunch with Shannon and Natalie in the dining hall, a meditation gathering in the palm grove and an afternoon class on choosing wardrobe colors. When she checked her phone messages, she was elated to find a voice mail from Hank suggesting that they rendezvous at the oasis hot pool after dinner. She called him and left a message that she’d be there.
She also had an e-mail from Charmaine.
Erica—
????????????
Love, Char
Erica only smiled. She didn’t reply. She wanted to think over what she was going to say very carefully.
Justine called as soon as Erica logged off her e-mail. She sounded worried. “Erica, how about coming early for dinner? You remember Tony, the van driver who picked you up at the airport when you arrived? He had an ‘episode,’ and they’re keeping him in the hospital overnight for observation. I might want to drive over there tonight and visit him. He’s seventy-six years old, and I’m concerned.”
“I don’t blame you. And of course you should go to see him.”
“Do you mind if I invite Hank and Kaylie for dinner, too?”
Would she mind? Hardly!
“That would be fun.”
“Good. See you soon.”
Erica hung up, wondering what Justine would say if she knew about her and Hank. Should she tell her? Considering the conversation she’d overheard in the stable the first day she was here, perhaps not. Although Justine’s attitude seemed to be that Hank should socialize, Erica wasn’t sure she meant he should sleep with the guests.
Only, she didn’t think Hank made a habit of it. She’d seen no signs of other women around his apartment—no extra toothbrushes, no shower caps, no feminine articles of any kind.
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