“Had to help Jake move Latitude back to J.D.’s.”
The names were familiar only because J. D. Clay herself had been in Mallory’s office that week for an ultrasound and had talked the entire while about Jake, and the injured racehorse they were trying to save. It was certainly not because Ryan had been particularly talkative about what all he did for his cousin and her horse-boarding business.
He’s talking now, a small voice inside her reminded.
“Did that go well?” What she knew about racehorses would have fit on the head of a pin.
“As well as it could, considering he has casts on two legs now.”
“That’s good.” She wanted to keep him talking. But she was also aware of the clock ticking merrily along. She picked up another balloon, green this time, and blew it up.
After a moment he blew up his balloon, too, doing it in easily half the time that she took. He tied it off and handed it to her when she’d finished with her own.
“We always had an angel on the top of our tree.” He’d glanced up at the tree that—even if she did say so herself, looked particularly wonderful this year—as if the bare top was nagging at him. “Looked sorta like Courtney.”
The green balloon spit out from her fingers before she could wrap the ribbon around the end, and she scrambled after it before it could bounce toward the tree. Experience had long ago taught her that spiky Christmas tree bristles, no matter how fresh, were not compatible with filled balloons.
“Must have been a very pretty angel, then.” She captured the balloon and sat down with it again, rapidly attaching the curly ribbon. “Would have to be to look like your sister.”
He just picked up another balloon and filled it with only a couple of long, strong exhales. For every one balloon she filled, he did two. And in shorter order than she’d dared hope for, all of the balloons were full and he seemed willing enough to position the entire mess of ribbons and balloons where she indicated.
And then Chloe came down, clapping her hands together in appreciation for their efforts. “It’s the bestest tree we’ve ever had. I wish everyone could have a tree just like this.”
It was impossible not to smile about the happiness radiating from Chloe’s face, and Mallory found herself looking over her daughter’s head to Ryan. He, too, was actually smiling.
Not as widely as Chloe. Not even as widely as Mallory. But it was a smile.
And then his gaze met Mallory’s, and the world seemed to close in around them. Not because she saw the horribly frequent hollowness there that made her heart ache; not because she saw the sizzling flare that made her blood heat. Neither were there.
What was there looked like contentment. Simple pleasure.
Logically, she knew it could be just an echo of the happy emotion casting off Chloe like a fisherman’s net, but something other than logic insisted otherwise.
She felt the edges of her own smile tremble a little. “Okay.” She clapped her own hands together if only to break the spell she kept falling under where Ryan was concerned. “Christmas tree, check. Balloons and birthday cake, check. Birthday girl—” she picked Chloe up by the waist and kissed her nose “—check.”
Then she quickly set her down. “You are growing, my dear.” Getting taller every day. Would she be tall like Ryan and his sister? Considering Chloe already looked so much like Ryan it was a wonder people hadn’t figured out their relationship simply by seeing them together, Mallory supposed it was pretty likely that her daughter would also inherit some of his height. “You’ll probably be taller than me one day,” she told her.
“That won’t take much,” Ryan said drily and Chloe giggled.
“Hey. Good things can come in shorter packages,” Mallory defended humorously.
Ryan’s eyes seemed to skip down her body, leaving puddles of heat in their wake. “Unquestionably.”
“Mom, do you like my outfit?”
Focusing on her daughter gave her time to collect herself. “Very nice,” she approved. Chloe’s lavender T-shirt made her eyes seem bluer than ever, and her purple jeans were her newest pair, complete with a line of sparkling stitching right down the sides—that matched the purple cast on her arm. She’d even brushed her hair and slid on a shiny purple hair band that held it back from her face.
“Then can I open my presents?”
Mallory shook her head. “Presents after cake. Even the ones from Grammy and me.”
“But—”
“Maybe one,” Ryan suggested, drawing both of their surprised attention. “I got her something.” He looked vaguely diffident, suddenly. “Maybe she could open that one now.”
Chloe clasped her hands. “Oh, please please please.”
Chloe’s melodramatics, Mallory could have withstood. But the hint of vulnerability that was completely at odds with Ryan’s usual demeanor?
The way her heart was squeezing with tenderness inside her was just one indication that her resistance to that was thoroughly extinct. “Okay.” Chloe immediately cheered. “Just Ryan’s gift, though, Chloe,” she cautioned. “And then we’re going to help Gram, and make sure everything is ready for your guests. That’s part of being a good host.”
Chloe was nodding, bouncing on her heels as she tilted her head back to look up at Ryan. “What is it?”
“If I told you, it wouldn’t be a surprise.” He gestured to the couches. “Wait here. Inside and away from the window. Your mom has to help me bring it inside.”
“Bring what inside?” Mallory asked cautiously once they’d pulled on their coats and were outside on the step. She looked toward his truck parked at the curb, but couldn’t see anything unusual in the bed of it.
“I know you’re not going to be thrilled,” he started off, with no hint of apology in his voice, though her stomach clutched anyway. “But she obviously wants one.”
She closed her eyes for a second, only to open them again quickly for fear that he’d conjure out of thin air what she was strongly hoping he wouldn’t. “Please tell me you didn’t get her a puppy.”
But she could see by his expression that was exactly what he’d done.
“He’s ten weeks old,” Ryan said. “Weaned and housetrained already.”
She wasn’t sure if she was more dismayed or irritated. “Great. Then you won’t have to worry about him piddling in your house,” she said. What if Ryan’s attentiveness didn’t last? What if fatherhood wasn’t for him after all? It had been only a week since he’d learned of Chloe’s existence. “Don’t you think you should have run this by me first?”
“He will be at my house,” he countered.
All the wind she’d been pumping into her righteous sails fizzled. The sails collapsed, leaving her blinking at him. “You have a house.”
His lips tightened a little. “Yes, Doc, even a derelict, mostly unemployed handyman that I am, I have a house.”
She wasn’t going to let him make her feel bad, because that hadn’t been what she’d been thinking at all. “But you live at the Sleep Tite.”
From his pocket, he pulled a key ring containing a very few keys. “As of this morning—” he jangled one key in particular “—I live over there.” He turned and pointed at the house diagonally across the street from hers. “And don’t get your panties in a knot. I didn’t buy it. I rented it.”
It was a wonder her jaw didn’t hit the cement step on which they were standing. “You rented that house.” She seemed incapable of doing anything but repeating every point he was trying to make. She eyed the house in question.
It was smaller than the one she was renting but looked quite a bit newer. And maybe it didn’t say much about her as a neighbor, but she hadn’t even realized the place was vacant, much less available for rent.
“But…why?”
“Because it’s available and because it’s close.” He exhaled so sharply that his breath was a visible stream in the cold air. “Though God knows that’s probably going to bite me on the butt,” he muttered.
She was supposed to be a fairly intelligent person, wasn’t she? So why was she having such difficulty comprehending anything that he was saying? “Why?”
“Living across the street from you?” He stepped off the porch. “I might as well set up camp right inside the fire.”
His tone was hardly complimentary. “Nobody asked you to live across the street from me,” she returned, stung. “So why are you?”
He gave her a look. “What good is a mutt for Chloe if she can’t see him when she wants? Now, are you going to help me get him over here before this place is crawling with miniature women, or not?”
Of course his unexpected change of digs was because of Chloe. His decision still had her completely thrown. Yet she found herself falling into step behind him, though she had to practically skip to keep up with him. “You do realize that you’re going to have this…this dog even when we go back to New York.” He was an intelligent man. Surely he knew that. “My leave of absence isn’t indefinite. They are expecting me back. You and I will work out a fair visitation where Chloe’s concerned, naturally, but I never intended that to include a dog.”
He stopped in the middle of the narrow street and turned to face her. “Fair according to whom?”
She stared at him, stunned. “Where is this coming from? Only a week ago you couldn’t wait to run away from the idea that Chloe might be yours.”
“Now it’s might be? Thought you were so damn sure she was.”
She felt ridiculous tears sting behind her eyes. She wasn’t even certain what they were disagreeing about or how easily they’d gone from companionably blowing up balloons to…this. “I am sure.” She jabbed her finger into his chest. “And so are you!”
He caught her hand, twisting it to the side. He wasn’t hurting her. He was just…completely controlling her ability to move a single inch. “If you didn’t want me to get involved in her life in any way, you shouldn’t have brought her here to Weaver.” He released her and turned on his heel, continuing across the street.
Wondering when she’d lost such complete control of the situation, she scrambled after him, the lapels of her coat flapping loosely, catching up to him only when he stopped long enough to open the front door of the house.
The second he did, she could hear a high-pitched yipping coming from inside.
She wasn’t one to yell, but that’s exactly what she found herself wanting to do. Yell. And pound on something.
Like his wide, wide back.
She curled her fingers into her palms and followed him inside, nearly slamming the door shut behind her. “Is that what you’d have preferred? That you never learned you even had a daughter? Never had someone who could sneak beneath that precious, almighty wall you want to keep built up around yourself?”
He stopped dead in his tracks again, turning so fast on his heel to face her that she gasped.
And she cried outright when his hands slid around her waist and she found herself pinned against the door that she, herself, had so angrily shut. “What do you think you’re doing?”
His grip didn’t lessen one iota. He stepped closer until she felt every unforgiving inch of him, from heart to hip, branded against her. “I told you before, it’s not Chloe I have a problem with.”
She lifted her chin, desperately ignoring the overwhelmingly masculine pressure of him. And her much-too-eager feminine reaction. “Right. I’m the problem. And this—” her voice dripped with hard-won disdain “—is the way you’re solving it. By…manhandling me.”
He gave a bark of laughter that was thoroughly devoid of amusement and succeeded only in pressing his chest even more squarely against her breasts. “Doc, of all the manhandling I’ve dreamed about where you’re concerned, very little of it was done vertically.”
Her cheeks went hot.
She was furious. He was none too happy, either.
But he was aroused and, heaven help her, so was she.
And they were both aware of it.
The puppy was still yapping, the incessant canine cries blending into the all-encompassing chaos that seemed to fill her head. “Stop dreaming about me.”
Of all the things she could have—should have—said, that’s what came out?
She wanted the earth to swallow her whole.
“Believe me.” His jaw was so tight it was practically white. “If I could, I would.”
Humiliation was the perfect topping to her sundae of frustration.
He hissed out an oath. “Don’t go crying on me.”
“I assure you I won’t.” The scathing tone didn’t magically make the moisture blurring her vision disappear, though she wished it would.
His jaw canted slightly to one side. Then the other. “I can’t be what you want, Mallory.”
“I don’t want anything from you!”
“Bull. You want a father for Chloe.”
Add another helping of humiliation. Her love for Chloe was woven into her soul. So how on God’s green earth could she keep forgetting that everything that transpired between her and Ryan involved her daughter?
His physical attraction to Mallory was merely an unwelcome inconvenience to him.
“You think you can’t be her father so your answer to that is to give her a puppy that she’s only going to have to leave behind in a few months?”
“I can’t be a father in name only,” he corrected. “Did you even really want to find her father, Mallory? Or were you only looking for a face and a name to fill in the blanks in that baby book you’ve got on the shelf in your bedroom? Then you could take the book back with you all to New York and everything will be hunky-dory?”
It struck uncomfortably close to the truth, she realized. “You’ve been snooping in my bedroom?”
He gave her a look. “Chloe showed it to me. Just because you’re not home every evening doesn’t mean that I haven’t been over there.”
“I’ve had emergencies at the hospital,” she said, temper quickly puffing air into those sails again. Did he know how torn she felt whenever her career had to take her attention away from her daughter? Did he know how she worried that she was shortchanging Chloe for the sake of her own needs? “I’m a doctor. It’s what I do. And it’s how I can afford to keep a roof over my family’s head! For pity’s sake, Ryan. You of all people should know those are demands that can’t be ignored. And I’ve only had two emergencies this week!”
“And how many do you get back in New York?”
Her lips parted, but the words got stuck in her throat.
After what seemed an eternity, the fight went right out of her. Her shoulders sagged. “Too many,” she said. Her voice was husky. Her emotions beat.
Somehow his hands had gone from her waist to her hips and she hadn’t even been aware of it. But she was aware now. “Ryan—” But she broke off. She didn’t know what she wanted to say.
She felt his fingers flex. “Living in the fire,” he murmured.
And lowered his head.
Chapter Twelve
Ryan saw the startled widening of Mallory’s amber eyes in the moment before his mouth found hers.
If she’d protested, he’d have stopped.
But he’d known she wouldn’t, and he was right.
She tasted just as sweetly dangerous as she had the first time he’d kissed her.
But that kiss had been brief. Hard. Fast.
This time…this time, he took his time.
Exploring the shape of her lips that had distracted him from the moment he’d first laid eyes on her. Delving into the softness that before he’d barely tested.
And Mallory was more than accommodating.
Her head angled against him, her lips parting, tongue glancing, flirting, dancing away and then back again.
He wanted to devour her. He wanted to savor her.
Mostly, he wanted.
Her.
He could have blamed his ravaging hunger on how long it had been since he’d been with a woman, but he’d given up lying to himself when he’
d finally faced the truth that he couldn’t bring down Krager.
His hunger now was all about Mallory.
Only she could appease it.
If making love to her just once would put the dragon inside him back to sleep, he’d damn the consequences and find the nearest bed.
His hands gripped her hips. Her legs parted, allowing him to step even closer into the warmth of her body.
For that matter, who needed a bed?
Her hands were behind his neck. Her fingers clutched his hair, his head and soft, maddening sounds curled from her throat.
For the first time in his life, though, just once was not going to be enough.
Not nearly enough.
And he’d been around long enough to know that his newfound daughter’s mother wasn’t the kind of woman to burn up the sheets over and over again with a man without…entanglements.
He was a lot closer to forty than not, and he’d gone his entire life without that sort of tangling. He wasn’t about to start now, when the only thing he had to offer was an empty soul and a mountain of regret. Especially with the woman who was raising his daughter.
“Wait.” Her mouth tore away from his. She pressed her forehead to his shoulder. The scent of her hair teased him. Fresh. Like a summer day.
Grapefruit, he realized, and wondered how on earth it could smell so damn enticing that all he wanted to do was bury his face in her hair.
Her breaths were still shuddering through them both. “Wait. I…we…can’t do this.”
Isn’t that what he’d been trying to convince himself of?
So why in hell did he want to tip her head back again and taste her mouth; explore the smooth column of her throat; discover the warmth of her skin in the valley between her breasts—
He yanked his hands away from her hips, setting her feet on the floor. “Damn straight we can’t,” he muttered grimly. He stepped back and turned away from her, though he could see the way she swayed unsteadily, slapping an arm out to her side against the door for balance.
“Right.”
Even the sound of that single, breathless word made him want more. Made him want to know whether she’d moan softly when he took her, if she’d make those low, purring sounds in her throat as he drove her closer to the edge. He wanted to know if she’d cry out when they blasted beyond it.
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