Keast, Karen

by The Surprise of His Life

  "You—" Walker said.

  Both stopped, hesitated, waited for the other.

  Finally, Dean said, "I haven't grown use to the idea of you and Lindsey, but I promise you that I'll try."

  "You may not have to," Walker said, a shadow now fallen over his heart.

  "What do you mean?"

  "I don't know what our future holds," he said without going into any detail. He noted, though, that he was no longer completely rejecting the idea of marriage. Too much had happened within the last few hours to hold too tightly to old beliefs. Maybe the basic truth was that life was just too short to spend it away from people you loved.

  "If you love her," Dean said quietly, "don't let her go." Suddenly, Dean grinned, a slow, simple curving of his mouth. "Did I just say what I thought I did?"

  The same smile at Walker's lips, he said, "It must be the acoustics in here."

  Ten minutes later the helicopter landed. As Walker was helping Dean from the craft, he saw Lindsey step from the terminal. Totally oblivious to the rain, she began to walk toward the two men. Slowly. Then not so slowly. Finally, she began to run. Walker stepped back, allowing her to sail into her father's outstretched arms.

  "Daddy!" she cried as she buried her head in his shoulder.

  "I'm okay," Dean whispered as her tears fell. "There's no need to cry. I'm okay."

  "I thought—"

  "Shh," he said, pulling her tighter, "everything's okay."

  For long moments, despite the rain, despite the howling wind, they just held each other. Walker watched, feeling a bright glow warm his heart.

  "I'm sorry I slapped—" Lindsey began, but again her father quieted her.

  "No apologies, baby. Now or ever. You're my girl. That's all that matters."

  Thunder crashed. Lightning flashed. Still they held to one another.

  "Dean?"

  The voice was soft, sweet, and barely audible in the stormy night. Nonetheless, Dean heard the calling of his name. He glanced up. Lindsey, too, had heard and turned in her father's arms.

  "Bunny?" he called, obviously uncertain whether his eyes were deceiving him or not.

  Bunny stood only feet away. The rain had doused her hair and was tunneling through her makeup, neither of which she seemed the slightest bit mindful of. The uncertainty in her husband's voice was mirrored in her face. It was clear that she didn't know how her presence would be received. Even so, she stood tall, unbowed, capable of dealing with whatever happened. She was substance and no longer shadow.

  Unhurriedly, Dean released his daughter and stepped toward his wife. She, too, started for him, symbolically meeting him halfway. Without a word, she tumbled into his arms.

  Walker saw tears of happiness rush to Lindsey's eyes and watched as she swiped them away. When she turned her eyes on him, everything that had ever been wrong in the world was suddenly righted, everything that had ever been cold was suddenly warm. Heart-warm.

  "See, I told you," she whispered. "If you believe in miracles, they happen."

  The only miracle Walker believed in at that moment was the miracle of love. On a groan, he pulled Lindsey into his arms. As he held her, his heart made a decision. Right or wrong, fair or unfair, he'd just decided their future.

  Later that night, all Gal-Tex rigs evacuated, the storm announced its intentions. As unpredictable as ever, it turned toward Mexico, hitting land near Matamoros. No one yet knew the full extent of the devastation, but early reports indicated that property damage far outweighed loss of life. If so, their Mexican neighbors had been lucky, Walker thought as he stood peering out his bedroom window into the rain-damp night. The last few hours had reminded him of the preciousness of life. Nothing else really matter.

  Walker grinned inwardly, thinking that he always managed to wax philosophical at a quarter to one in the morning. Taking a sip of cold beer from the can in his hand, he thought that he was also managing to be lonely. Damned lonely. At the airport, he and Lindsey had had time only for a heartfelt embrace. Though it had been one of the hardest things he'd ever done, he'd turned loose of her with nothing more than the brushing of her lips with his. Dean had been exhausted to the point of near collapse, and Lindsey had been needed to drive both him and her mother home. To the house they'd shared together, Bunny had insisted. Walker had done some insisting of his own. He'd insisted that Lindsey stay with them. They needed to be a family again. He had told her that there would be time for the two of them later.

  He wished now that he hadn't been so generous, particularly since his heart was so full of feeling, particularly since there were so many things that he wanted to say to her.

  Checking his watch, he saw that the minute hand had moved only slightly. It was now twelve minutes until one o'clock. As though to mark the hour, lightning bolted through the sky, a golden thread erratically woven into the blackest of velvet. On a sigh, he took another drink of beer and wondered what Lindsey was doing. He also wondered if he should crawl into the unmade bed behind him and try to get some sleep. This last produced a quiet laugh deep in his bare chest. Sleep was farther away than Lindsey's Timbuktu.

  Lindsey.

  How he longed to hold her, kiss her, make love to her. How he longed to just be with her. But he wasn't, and that was that, and he had the remainder of a long night before him. Tomorrow. He'd see her tomorrow and—

  The pealing of the doorbell startled Walker, causing him to jerk his head in the direction of the front room. A frown on his face, he moved silently from the bedroom to the source of the sound. Which was once more invading the stillness of the house. Whoever was ringing the doorbell was obviously impatient. Impatient. As impatient as he? A thought—actually a wish—crossed his mind. Was it even remotely possible that he knew who was standing at his front door?

  "What took you so long?" Lindsey asked the minute Walker opened the door. She was cocked against the doorjamb, a pretty, come-hither smile crooking her moist lips. Flagrantly, like the vixen she could be, she ran her eyes up and down the man dressed only in jeans. She particularly admired his chest, which rippled with muscles. Nothing in her appearance said that earlier in the day they'd been at emotional odds. Nothing in her appearance said that the night before she'd angrily fled his bed after accusing him of not being totally committed.

  A slow sexy smile sauntered across Walker's lips. "What's a lady doing ringing a man's doorbell in the middle of the night?"

  "Could be the lady just misses the man," she said softly, and without a trace of the smile.

  Quicksilver. She was like quicksilver, going from sexy to serious in heartbeats. His own smile faded. "Gee, what a coincidence. The man was just missing the lady."

  "Was he?"

  "Uh-huh."

  "Enough to invite her in?"

  "For the night?" he asked, his heart beginning to pound, his temperature rising.

  Lindsey's heart began to pound as well, and she could feel her body growing warm and pliable. She had thought the drive to his house would last forever. Each mile traveled, each block passed seemed to take her farther away instead of closer. In fact, the night had dragged as no night in her life ever had. When it became apparent that it was never going to end, when it was obvious that her parents were so absorbed in each other that they wouldn't miss her, she'd slipped from the house. She had to talk to Walker. Now. Tonight. She had to tell him that she would stay in his life, "For however long you want," she heard herself say in answer to his question.

  Behind her, rain fell in a now slow sheet, pummeling the roof, the concrete, with a steady drizzling rhythm. The beat of the rain, combined with Walker's shallow breathing and Lindsey's steamy look, produced syncopated notes that sounded like jazz. A lover's jazz.

  Walker didn't know whether he pulled her into the house. Lindsey didn't know whether she stepped in of her own volition. Whichever, Lindsey found herself pressed against the closed door with Walker's mouth devouring hers. His hands, one still holding the beer can, were braced against the door, while his body urg
ed itself into hers. He could feel her rain-damp clothes—jeans, cotton blouse, even the lacy undergarments she wore beneath. Lindsey could feel his bare chest, his tight pants, the desire he couldn't hide and which she didn't want him to.

  They kissed over and over and over—warmly, wetly, wildly. Their mouths nipped and bit, sipped and supped. Just when one seemed ready to end the kiss, the other would begin it all over again. Gasping, both finally came up for air, though, even then, they didn't pull their mouths from each other. They simply rested bruised mouth against bruised mouth.

  "I think your beer is going to my head," Lindsey whispered.

  Walker grinned, providing a whole new set of tactile stimuli for Lindsey. "That's exactly where I like it going. God, I've missed you!" he added, as though just remembering the loneliness of minutes before.

  "I've missed you," she said. "God, I hate fighting with you!"

  "Then, let's not fight." He started to kiss her again, but Lindsey wriggled free.

  "No," she said, "I want to talk before you completely intoxicate me."

  "Okay," he said, feeling a little drunk himself—drunk with the nearness of the woman he loved.

  She had stepped away from him, knowing that there had to be some distance between them if she was to think straight. "I came here to tell you something, and I want to say it now."

  Walker saw her uncertainty. The cocksureness she'd arrived with had vanished entirely. "Then say it."

  Now that the moment had come, she wasn't sure where to begin. She'd rehearsed her speech a dozen times, but now could remember only fragments of what she'd planned. In the car coming over, it had all seemed so simple—just say what she was feeling. Suddenly, with her future—their future—on the line, simple had become complex. "I, uh, I think that Mother and Dad are going to try to work things out."

  It wasn't what Walker had expected her to say, though he wasn't certain what that was. Even so, the news was welcome. "I'm glad."

  "Dad told Mother about the... about the affair. And Mother told him that she already knew about it. He told her that he'd gone crazy for a while, but that he thought he was over it and that, if she wanted to, he wanted them to stay together, to try to work things out."

  "And what did your mother say?"

  "She's taking him back, though she's insisting on his getting counseling with her. She's also determined to go on to school as planned." Lindsey smiled. "I think he's a little fascinated by this new woman he finds in Mother. Alongside the familiar woman who depended on him, loved, cooked and cleaned for him is now a woman who wants to belong to herself, as well."

  "I can understand the fascination of the two," Walker said. With her hair pulled back in a ponytail, with the topic of her parents on her lips, Lindsey looked young again, though only seconds before she'd kissed him like a mature woman. This duality had once troubled him. He now just let himself enjoy it. "I can understand," Walker repeated.

  "Anyway, this isn't what I wanted to talk to you about," Lindsey said abruptly, obviously nervous about how to proceed.

  "It isn't?"

  "No," she said, looking him square in the eyes. "I mean, it is and it isn't." She sighed. "I'm doing a terrible job of saying this."

  "No, you're not. Just say it." At her hesitation, he repeated, "Just say it, Lindsey."

  "While we were waiting to hear about Dad," she said, "Mother and I had a talk, which was the whole point of bringing up Mother and Dad, I guess. She told me that love wasn't always perfect, that you couldn't always get it the way you wanted it, that sometimes... that sometimes you settled for what you could get." What hadn't been said, but what Lindsey had heard her mother silently saying was that women were the preservers of relationships. She still heard the words singing in her heart.

  Confused up until this point, Walker thought he finally saw the purpose of the conversation. "I see. And what are you willing to settle for, Lindsey?"

  Lindsey licked her suddenly dry lips, swallowed, then said bluntly, "I'll take you any way I can get you. If you don't want to marry me, that's fine. I can live with that. What I can't live without..." Her voice lowered to a breathless whisper. "What I can't live without is you."

  The words humbled Walker as he could never remember being humbled before. Setting down the beer can, he stepped toward her and cupped her cheek with his palm. He stared deep into her silver-blue eyes. "You'd do that? Stay with me under those conditions?"

  "Yes," she said frankly, feeling the coolness of his hand, the warmth of his body.

  "You'd give up wanting marriage?"

  "I wouldn't give up wanting it, or trying to persuade you, but I'd accept whatever you were willing to give me."

  "What about children?"

  She shrugged. "I'll do what you want."

  "And what do you want?" he asked huskily.

  "To have your baby."

  "Even if we're not married?"

  "I don't care," she said, looking him square in the eyes. "People who aren't married have babies all the time."

  "And you'd do that?"

  "Yes," she said unflinchingly.

  "Ah, Lindsey," he whispered, lowering his head and kissing her gently.

  He then pulled her into his arms and held her. He knew that as long as he lived he would remember the unselfishness he'd witnessed this night. If possible, it had made him love Lindsey more. It had certainly awakened him to just how lucky he was. It also convinced him beyond a doubt that earlier that night he'd made the right decision.

  "Lindsey?" he whispered.

  "Mmm?" she asked dreamily, content only to be in the arms she'd so sorely missed.

  "We need to talk."

  "We just did."

  "Oh, no, babe," he said as he swung her into his arms and started for the bedroom, "we've only just begun."

  Epilogue

  "Would you let me do that?" Walker said a year later as he and his wife were putting the finishing touches to the bedroom they'd converted into a nursery.

  Like a mirror image, there was two of everything in the room—two cribs, two chests, two hanging hampers stacked high with diapers. There was also an assortment of woolly teddy bears, all waiting expectantly for the twins the doctor said Lindsey was carrying. Twins. A boy and a girl, if sonography could be trusted. At first, Walker had been shocked at the news, but then wondered why he had been. Lindsey never did anything by half measure. Besides, she herself was so full of life that it seemed only logical that she'd bear it in abundance.

  "I'm not helpless. I'm just pregnant," Lindsey said, trying to wedge her huge belly close enough to a crib to hang a brightly colored mobile. When she couldn't, she tried a new angle. This one didn't work any better.

  "Yeah, very pregnant," he said as he took the mobile from her hand. He stole a quick kiss as he did so.

  Lindsey loved the feel of his mouth on hers. A year's worth of kisses had only made her need them more, had only made her love him more. That she was his wife, which he'd insisted upon her being the night she'd gone to him willing to sacrifice whatever she had to to be a part of his life, always gave her pause, always gave her the purest pleasure. She felt as if she were living a fairy tale, a bona fide, happy-ever-after fairy tale.

  "So what do you think?" he asked, propping his hands on his hips and standing back to view his handiwork.

  Instead of checking out the mobile, she gave her husband a thorough going-over. A pair of glasses perched upon the end of his nose, and he could still predict weather with his arthritic knee, which he gave in to on occasion and let Lindsey rub. Those things considered, however, he'd never looked younger or better to her. Or more relaxed and at ease with life. Even so, he swore that his hair was grayer, the result of trying to keep up with his young wife. She swore that she had trouble keeping up with him.

  "I think I love you," she said.

  At the sudden seriousness in her voice, he turned. And was once more struck by the child-woman quality his wife possessed. Wearing jeans and one of his long-sleeved white s
hirts, with socks and tennis shoes on her feet and her hair sleeked back into a ponytail and caught with a scarlet ribbon, she looked like a bright-eyed child. The enormity of her belly belied that youthfulness, however, and Walker knew for a fact that she made love, and loved, like a full-fledged woman. His woman.

  Stepping to her, he took her into his arms and, peering through the lenses of his glasses, he found her eyes. They looked like sparkling diamonds. "Let me get this straight," he said. "You're nine months pregnant with a man's child—"

  "Children," Lindsey corrected.

  "...children and you think you love him?"

  Lindsey could feel his hand at the small of her back— the aching small of her back—urging her belly as flush against his as it would go. She could also hear the teasing in his voice. Encircling his neck with her arms, she tilted her head to one side and playfully said, "Well, it could be that if you kissed me I'd know for sure."

  Walker fought a grin. "You think that would do it?"

  She shrugged coquettishly. "Maybe."

  Lowering his head, he kissed her forehead in a fashion that could only be called fatherly.

  "You're going to have to do better than that," she said.

  "How about this?" he asked, kissing the tip of her nose.

  "Not much better," she said, twitching said nose like a bunny rabbit.

  "This?" he asked, dipping his head and nipping the side of her neck. His tongue made little circles on her flesh, producing hot, tingly feelings that skipped across her body.

  "Now we're getting somewhere."

  He nipped the other side of her neck. Bit gently. Then worried the lobe of her ear with the same eager teeth. "Ah, yeah, now we're cooking, although—"

  Before she could say another word, Walker's mouth slid onto hers, silencing her to all but a slow moan. Tightening her arms, she leaned into him. At the same time, she parted her lips, encouraging his tongue to do the deliciously wicked things it always did. His tongue did not disappoint her. It darted, dove, delved. In seconds, both were breathing hard, so hard that Walker wrestled his mouth away and rested his forehead against hers. Their breath commingled.