The Bachelor Takes a Wife

by Jackie Merritt

  “Maybe. The only thing I know for sure is that this…the discontentment and confusion I’ve been feeling lately were not part of my personality before the Cattleman’s Club’s charity ball.” She turned her head to look at him. “If you’re not to blame, what is?”

  He returned her gaze and they sat without moving and looked at each other for a long time. Finally he said softly, “I never forgot you, Andy.”

  She jerked her head around to break their locked gazes. “You have no right to tell me that. It…it’s only upsetting and I don’t believe it anyway. You forgot me the minute you walked out after our big fight in college. I made a fool of myself screaming and crying and you had no more sympathy for me than you would’ve had for a dog with a splinter in its paw.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “It bloody is true! Forget it. I don’t want to talk about that, either.”

  “Well, at least we’re gaining ground through the process of elimination,” he drawled. “I expect that eventually you’ll get to the topic that really brought about this meeting. I say bless it, whatever it is, because it’s getting harder and harder for me to come up with an excuse or a ploy to see you. Of course, I can always hang around Kiddie Kingdom.”

  She stiffened. “I wish you would stop doing that.”

  “I know you do, and if you’d start seeing me…as in man takes woman to dinner…or something of that nature…then I wouldn’t have to attend your classes. Those kids sure are cute, though.”

  “When did you start liking children? Or even seeing them and admitting they are part and parcel of this world, for that matter?” There was nothing complimentary in her questions or tone of voice.

  “I didn’t,” he said flatly. “Until now. What I’d like to know…and have asked myself more than once…is why I never wanted kids and now…” He stopped, because he’d only recently been having these peculiar thoughts about sons and daughters, wondering why nearly everyone else he knew wanted babies and he never had. “I really don’t know my own mind on that subject,” he said quietly.

  “Except for the fact that you never liked kids and now you do. Maybe you’re in the process of becoming a nice guy. Have you considered that possibility?”

  He let out a surprised laugh. “Andy, I’ve always been a nice guy.” He crooked his arm behind her and gently touched her hair.

  “No, you weren’t, and please don’t start getting all touchy-feely.” She slanted her head away from his hand. “I’m here to talk, nothing more.” Was that true? she wondered. Just sitting next to him was warming her blood, so maybe all that need-to-talk stuff was pure nonsense.

  “So talk,” Keith said. “Tell me what’s on your mind.”

  Andrea swallowed nervously. How did a woman discuss really personal problems with the guy causing them? There really was only one way, wasn’t there? By beating around the bush?

  “I…I’ve been wondering if you, uh, remember my parents,” she said, stumbling over her own tongue because she never had been a proficient liar.

  “Your parents?” Keith frowned, for she’d really surprised him with that remark. “Well, I guess I do. Not very clearly, though. And more from a child’s point of view than from later years. Do you remember mine?”

  “Yours?” she said densely, before grasping his side of this strange conversation. “Oh, your parents. Well, yes, I have some memories of them.”

  “Is that why we’re here, meeting in a public place to discuss our parents? Andy, that’s pretty weird,” he said teasingly.

  “I know it is,” she replied grimly, not at all amused by his attempt to make her laugh. She immediately realized her mistake, for she could feel his eyes boring into her, looking for answers. She’d aroused his curiosity, and there wasn’t a reason in the world for them to be talking about their parents. Especially since she’d requested this meeting and given him the impression that she needed to talk about something important.

  She forced a laugh, because now she was boxed in and had to play along. “It’s very weird,” she agreed with false cheerfulness. “But my childhood memories of Mother and Dad are so sketchy that lately I’ve been bothered by it something awful. Unlike you, I remember their later years better. It’s the kid stuff that eludes me. Would you mind telling me what you recall of them? Tell me anything…events…things they said…things you might have overheard or seen by accident.”

  Keith was truly taken aback. After last night he’d expected some sort of discussion, possibly accusatory and disapproving about one of two things, his kissing her or his not kissing her more.

  But he decided to play along and see where this led. “Andy, my childhood memories are mostly about us, you and me. Both your parents and mine are shadowy background figures. Hell, my folks were so busy with social obligations that I rarely got to eat dinner with them. Dad was a dynamo, I recall that quite vividly, and Mother shopped.” He laughed and sounded genuinely amused. “She shopped in Houston and Dallas and New York and Paris. Can you even imagine making shopping the highlight of your life?”

  “And my folks?” she prompted.

  “They were around more, but I think you answered mostly to the housekeeper, or whatever she was. Yes, I’m sure of it. She was a heavyset lady that came outside and called your name every hour or so. Do you remember her?”

  “Mrs. Dorsett! We called her Ducky Dorsett behind her back because she waddled when she walked. I haven’t thought of Ducky in years.” Andrea was beginning to get a real sense of the distant past. “My mother was a very beautiful woman,” she murmured.

  “Was she?”

  “Extremely beautiful. I have boxes of photos and snapshots in the attic to prove it. There’s one of her and Dad in my bedroom, and I swear they both look like movie stars. He was handsome and she was glamorous, with never a hair out of place and always, always dressed to the nines. Now I remember that very well.” Andrea laughed quietly and added nostalgically, “Sometimes when I went into a room where she was, she would say, ‘There’s that dirty little girl of mine,’ for I was forever making mud pies or doing something outdoors that soiled my clothes.”

  Keith chuckled softly. “We started out clean every morning, but we sure never worried about getting dirty.”

  “Very true.”

  Was this innocuous conversation actually the reason for this after-dark meeting? Keith wondered. He couldn’t make himself believe it. This had to be about last night, about why he’d kissed her so passionately and then abruptly left. But how could he explain it to Andrea when he didn’t understand it himself?

  Gently he took her hand. “You’re really thinking about last night, aren’t you?” he said in a low voice.

  She turned her head to look at him. “I’ve thought about it, yes. Haven’t you?”

  “Constantly.”

  She was glad he’d forced the issue. It was time to stop beating around the bush. “Keith, what happened?”

  “I wish to hell I knew.”

  “But…” They had only scratched the tip of the iceberg, and she wanted to keep talking.

  It had gotten so dark that Keith could just barely make out her face. All the same he could tell how troubled she was. He hadn’t been kind last night, and she deserved better.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered.

  “That…that’s it, all you can say about it?”

  He searched for an addendum to his apology. “You said that you haven’t been happy since the charity ball. I hope you know that it wasn’t my intent ever to make you unhappy.”

  “Did I say unhappy? I believe I said confused and discontented.”

  “Well, a woman could hardly be in a rollicking happy mood if she’s all confused and dissatisfied.”

  “Did I say dissatisfied? Stop putting words in my mouth, for heaven’s sake. The ones I used are disturbing enough. I certainly don’t need your suggestions to add to the list. Besides, why would you even think the word dissatisfied in connection with me?”

  “Because of l
ast night,” he said in a low, barely audible voice. “I wish I hadn’t left when I did. I’ve wished it all day. We wanted each other…we needed each other…and for some crazy, incomprehensible reason I walked out instead of doing what my heart and body ached for. I’m still aching, in case you’re wondering.”

  “I…I’m not,” she whispered, too deeply shaken to do anything but lie. Certainly she couldn’t admit to the aches and yearnings she’d endured and tried so hard to ignore all day. All of last night, as well. Desires she’d never felt so intensely before were the reason she was on this park bench tonight, after all, the only reason she’d returned his phone call, in all honesty.

  “After the explosive passion between us last night, I find it pretty hard to believe that you don’t give a damn about my feelings tonight. Andy, I care about you, won’t you at least consider that?”

  “How can I worry about your feelings when my own are overwhelming me?”

  “They are?” Keith moved closer to her and curled his arm around the back of her neck. “Sweetheart, if you only know what hearing that does to me.”

  No! She couldn’t pretend everything was all right when it wasn’t. She jerked loose of his embrace and got to her feet. “I’m in an emotional quandary and all you can think of is…”

  Keith had gotten up when she did, and he put his arms around her and pulled her up against himself. “I can cure your emotional quandary,” he said gruffly before uniting their lips in a breath-stealing kiss.

  At first Andrea tried to push him away, but then she began kissing him back, exactly as she’d done last night in her kitchen. Moaning deep in her throat, she leaned into him. He slid his big hands down her back, cupped her buttocks and urged her forward. What she felt against her belly was perfectly normal and not surprising; what she felt because of such undeniable proof of his desire made her dizzy as a spinning top.

  “Andy…sweet, sweet Andy,” he whispered raggedly between hungry kisses.

  Was he sweet? No, she couldn’t call him sweet. He was big and sexy and overpowering her senses. She wanted what he did, and to worry over why seemed utterly silly. What did it matter when her body was reacting all on its own?

  But when he unbuttoned her shirt and buried his face in the cleavage of her breasts, she gasped, “Not here, Keith. Not in the park.”

  He didn’t argue. Instead he buttoned her shirt, took her hand and began leading her to the parking lot and his car. His SUV, actually, with its marvelous fold-down seats. It took him about one minute to create a lovers’ nook in the back of his vehicle, and since his windows were tinted against the glare of the hot Texas sun, no passerby would be able to see in.

  She didn’t say no when he beckoned her inside, but she did steal a long, shaky breath. It was time she knew it all, felt everything she should have felt in college with him.

  She wasn’t thinking with her brain at all. Her body was directing the play, every act of it, and it did not want to say no. She lay down with him, and when he removed his shirt, rolled it into a ball and put it under her head for a pillow, she laid her hand on his cheek and whispered, “Maybe you are sweet.”

  “What I am is on fire,” he said thickly, and spread himself across her legs and warm, sexy body to take her mouth in a kiss that conveyed the truth of his words. His bare skin was hot, and his heat even came through his pants. She reveled in that heat, for it intensified her own.

  Gasping for air between kisses they wriggled out of their clothes. Andrea had never made love in the back of a car, and she suffered a momentary regret over doing something at her age that she probably should have done twenty years ago. Unquestionably she should have experienced this urgency of wildfire desire before, whether in a car, a bed or leaning against a wall. Oh, yes, she’d read about this kind of feeling, this wild lovemaking, she just hadn’t experienced it herself.

  She dug her fingertips into Keith’s back and writhed beneath him, absorbing every tiny nuance of hot bare skin deliciously chafing hot bare skin.

  Keith groaned silently. He didn’t have protection with him. Why would he? It was pretty lax of him to be without it tonight, though, because he’d known in advance that he was meeting Andrea and had still been frustrated as hell over his stupidity last night. He should have been prepared for what was happening, given all that had been going on between them since the ball.

  But he wasn’t prepared, and he would cut off his tongue before telling Andrea they couldn’t make love. Besides, would a baby upset the applecart for him? It sure would have in times past, but now?

  Hadn’t he recently read somewhere that many, many women were choosing to have their babies after forty? Why, Andrea wasn’t even forty yet, so she would undoubtedly create an incredible child.

  “I adore you…love you,” he whispered against her lips.

  She knew he’d said something, but she was in another world, one in which everything was sensation and pleasure and joyful surrender, and she didn’t ask him to repeat it. She gave him everything she was, her heart, her soul, her body, without even knowing how deeply she was involving herself in the dangerous game of truly great sex.

  When he entered her she cried out. He froze in alarm. “Andy…darlin’…am I hurting you?”

  “No…no.” Her head moved back and forth on her shirt-pillow, and she clutched at him. “Don’t stop…don’t stop,” she moaned.

  He tried to be especially gentle, but he couldn’t be, not when it was Andy beneath him, the woman he’d wanted all of his life. Nearly blinded by passion and the fierce pounding of his own blood, he rode her hard. Her legs rose to encircle his hips, and as dazed as he was he was still aware of every sound she made, from her gasping little breaths to her hoarse cries of unabashed pleasure.

  And then she cried out, “Oh, Keith…Keith…” and he knew she was almost there. He held himself in check through sheer willpower, and when she went over the top, so did he. They rocked together for an eternity, it seemed, squeezing every drop of pleasure from their simultaneous release.

  But that particular eternity ended, as that sort of bliss always does, and Andrea found herself sweaty and wide-eyed, pinned beneath Keith in the back of his SUV in Royal Park.

  Eight

  After dropping Andrea off, the drive home didn’t take long, nor was there much traffic. That was a relief, as Keith couldn’t keep his mind on the road no matter what he did. This night’s events were burned into his brain, all but blurring his vision, certainly making concentration on anything else particularly difficult. The physical effects he felt were surprising and confusing. After such incredible lovemaking he should be relaxed and serenely happy, and instead he felt tight as a drum.

  After driving Andrea to her home from the park, he’d asked to go in with her. She had stammered out a few words, “No…please…not tonight,” and he’d experienced the strangest rush of relief. That was something to wonder about: Why in heaven’s name would he be relieved over Andrea’s haste to end an absolute dream of an evening?

  Keith’s eyebrows nearly met in a troubled frown. There was something terribly wrong in his attitude at the moment, but what was it? Certainly he wasn’t afraid of serious involvement, was he? For days he’d done everything but stand on his head to capture Andrea’s notice, to regain her attention, to make her see him as she once had, and he’d succeeded, too, or they never would have made love. And now, when everything seemed to be going his way, he was fearful?

  “Preposterous,” he muttered. Hitting the remote control that opened the iron gate securing his driveway, he drove in, pushed another button and opened one of the four doors on his garage. He walked into his house with a scowl on his face, for he didn’t like the direction of either his feelings or his thoughts.

  His relationship with Andrea was different from any other. Vastly different from that he’d had with his ex and those he’d had with women he’d dated before and after his marriage. Actually, he hardly remembered them; they simply hadn’t been important. He respected women but
…but he loved Andrea!

  That was the crux of his startling misery, he realized in one fell, rather shocking swoop: he was totally, madly and almost painfully in love with Andrea. He’d suspected it before, but there were miles of variances, discrepancies and disparities between suspecting something and knowing it for fact. Doubts and what-ifs had flown the coop, completely deserting him. He was on his own now, a man who had fervently pursued one very special woman, had reached the finish line and was now in a sweat over what to do next.

  He didn’t understand himself and it was a foreign, discomfiting sensation. What he needed was some time to sort through this whole thing, to figure out what was really going on in the pit of his stomach and to come up with some answers.

  Instead of going to bed, Keith wrote a note for Gabriella, phoned Sebastian to tell him that he wouldn’t be at tomorrow morning’s meeting and where he’d be if he was truly needed, packed a bag with some changes of clothing, then carried it and his briefcase out to the garage. He drove from town heading south, refusing to look at his departure as running away. There was nothing wrong with a man taking a few days by himself to do a little soul-searching.

  At least, that was what he kept telling himself.

  Andrea awoke at two in the morning, uneasy and apprehensive. She lay still and listened, wondering if some outside noise had brought her out of a sound sleep so abruptly, but she heard nothing unusual. Still not satisfied, she got out of bed and walked through the dark house. Everything was normal; obviously her middle-of-the night-jitters were internally caused.

  Well, she thought with a sigh, why wouldn’t she have jumpy nerves? Actually, it was surprising that she’d gotten any sleep at all tonight.

  Then, suddenly, she knew what had awakened her: a dream. It was vague and fuzzy now, mostly unconnected images of the past, not frightening, certainly not eerie enough to pull her from sleep, and yet it had. She didn’t normally pay much attention to dreams, but considering her free and easy behavior with Keith in his SUV—and the emotional turmoil with which she’d fallen asleep, wasn’t she bound to have suffered a few disturbing dreams?