She shifted, not caring her leg scraped against the other seat, caring only to open herself to his caress.
Oh, the feel of his hand on her… He cupped her breast, stroked the pad of his thumb across the nipple in a rhythm that matched her pulse, or set it.
He kissed her mouth. Then she kissed his, sliding her tongue across his lips, inside, delving into him, this amazing man who kissed her, tasted her like there was no one better in the world.
This is what people mean about losing themselves in a kiss.
Only she hadn’t lost all of herself. Parts of her remained, enjoying—more than that—joying.
With no warning, he pulled away, leaving the coolness of loss like a slap across her lips and breast.
“This isn’t going to work.” She felt his words as a rumble in his chest, as if they had been wrenched out by force.
“Seems to be working fine.” Her voice sounded husky, unused.
She had the internal evidence of the way her body churned and tingled. She had the external evidence of his reactions, his heart banging against his ribs under her hand, his uneven breathing. Not to mention the hard, hot evidence against her hip. If this wasn’t working by his standards, the mind—and body—boggled at what constituted working.
A stream of air crossed her face as he let out a breath. “Yeah. That part is working fine. More than fine.”
“I shouldn’t have dumped on you.”
He swore, kissed her hard and fast, holding her head between his hands. He raised his head, looked directly into her eyes. “That is bull, Kay. Don’t you ever think that. That’s not the problem.”
As if the word problem reminded him of their positions, he shifted so they no longer touched anywhere except his hand on her shoulder.
“You can’t say we’re not compatible in this area.”
She hitched herself to a sitting position, accidentally brushing her hip against his lap, and feeling the immediate reaction.
“More than compatible.” He sounded strangled, and she found satisfaction in that. Maybe the brush hadn’t been entirely accidental if she dug down to the subconscious level. “Easy. Don’t rock the boat.”
“I’m not rocking it.” If he’d meant it metaphorically, he was the one who had jump-cut this scene from one mood to another. If he meant it literally, she had simply used her hold on the edge to lever herself upright, and if the boat swayed a little in the water, tough.
“Kay, listen. It wouldn’t be fair—not to either of us—to let this…this other aspect get out of hand. I’m staying here in Tobias. I want kids and a family. You’re going back to New York for a career in film.”
She could have given the exact same speech herself. It made total sense. Not only that, he was a gentleman. A good person. Looking out for her.
And she felt like shit.
“Are you all right, Kay?”
She whipped her head around, hoping her smile would blind him.
“Absolutely. But look at the time—I have to pick up Chester.”
A heartbeat passed. A long, painful heartbeat, while the sun spotlighted his face and she saw intelligence and caring, all trained on her.
If he didn’t look away—now—she was going to crack. Scream. Cry. Jump overboard.
“I’ll get you back right away.”
He raised the sail, and she turned her face into the puff of breeze, grateful it would dry a solitary tear.
If the sun hadn’t been behind her head, what would he have seen in Kay’s face in that moment?
Her story had explained a hundred things about her. When Dora Aaronson became estranged from her son’s family it had meant the end of normalcy for Kay. She had become the poor-little-rich-girl locked in the tower of her parents’ social ambitions.
What a mess.
He hadn’t known what to expect when he asked about the rift in her family. But it sure hadn’t been that her grandmother had turned her father in to serve a prison term. This is what she’d meant whenever she’d talked about betrayal, about snitches and loyalty. He thought of her words: The law! The law has no heart. People come first…people and animals.
And here he was about to join her grandmother in the ranks of whistle-blowers.
Not only was he about to crash his career into the rocks, but being around him could draw Kay into a rerun of her childhood nightmare.
It wouldn’t be as sexy a story as her family’s situation had been, but he didn’t fool himself that it could be kept quiet, either. The firm was too well known. The media was going to swoop down on him, and anyone in his vicinity could be caught as well.
Just what Kay needed.
No. He’d been right to stop before they made love. It was the only thing he could do.
And then another thought hit him—what Kay hadn’t said, the question she hadn’t answered. Her father didn’t seem to think he’d done anything wrong, her grandmother did. But what about Kay? Did she recognize that her father was wrong, that he deserved to be punished?
All I thought was that he was my father, and he was going to jail.
“Rob, I told you, you don’t need to stay, you didn’t need to bring me here.”
“We’re here, and I’m staying.”
Kay opened her mouth, no doubt to tell him again to get lost. In the politest terms possible, but the message was the same.
And maybe he should get lost. But not yet. She’d been nervous about this vet appointment from the start and after these past few hours… He wasn’t going anywhere until he was sure she, and her dog, were okay.
He was spared another get-lost message because the office assistant, speaking into the phone receiver, drew every bit of Kay’s attention.
“Dr. Maclaine, Ms. Aaronson is here. Chester’s owner…. Okay.” The assistant hung up, smiling. “You can go in now. Chester’s in with the doctor. That’s an unusual name for a female.”
Kay wasn’t interested in chitchat. She was headed for the exam room. Rob said, “She’s an unusual dog,” then caught up with Kay.
He put a hand to the small of her back as he reached around her to open the door.
Inside, Kay knelt by Chester, who beat the wall with her tail. Rob faced Allison Maclaine. “Hi, Allison. I’m a friend of Kay’s and thought I’d come along in case—”
“Please, doctor,” Kay interrupted, looking up, “if there’s something wrong with Chester, please—”
“Nothing is wrong with Chester,” Allison said firmly. So firmly that the worry cleared from Kay’s face, and Rob felt something expand in his chest. “But it’s still good to see you, Rob.”
She cleared her throat and her manner became entirely professional. “Ms. Aaronson, am I correct that you don’t have much experience with dogs?”
“I don’t have any experience. I’ve never had a pet. Chester was all on her own, and I couldn’t leave her to starve. I checked about the right food and a leash and—”
“Ms. Aaronson, I’m not questioning if you’re a fit mother for Chester. What I’m trying to tell you is you’re going to be a grandmother, so to speak. Chester is going to have puppies.”
Kay sat back on her heels. Hard. After a beat, her heels parted and her little behind dropped to the floor.
Rob laughed, but his gut also tightened. And that wasn’t all that tightened. God, all it took was for her to sit on the floor and he was…?
“Puppies? She’s going to have puppies?” Kay’s face had gone pale. “Oh, my God, puppies! Are they going to be okay? Is she okay?”
“All fine. And don’t worry, dogs do this all the time,” the vet said.
“But I don’t.” It was a very quiet wail, but a wail it was. “Puppies! Oh, my God. What am I going to do?”
“You can start by reading the pamphlets I’m going to give you.”
“But…but puppies. Puppies!” She sounded overwhelmed, awed, scared and ecstatic.
“You’ll do great.” Rob said. He knew the next words were coming, knew they shouldn’t, yet couldn
’t stop them. “I’ll help you.”
“What does that one say about prenatal nutrition?” Kay asked Rob without looking up from the book she was reading. Doughnuts and cheeseburgers—what had she been thinking?
Rob occupied the extra-wide recliner on the Hollands’ sunporch, across from where she sat on the floor with her back against the sofa. Chester had curled up beside her, resting her head on Kay’s thigh with a contented sigh. Kay’s leg was now asleep, but she wasn’t about to move.
“Relax. We’ve got the food Allison recommended. And remember she said the first half of the pregnancy isn’t as vital for nutrition as the last half, so what matters is from here on out.”
“Here on out isn’t very damned long! Three more weeks!”
“Or four,” Rob said. “Allison can only guess that she’s about five weeks along.”
Gestation’s sixty-three days, the vet had said. That’s give or take. But about twenty-four hours before the puppies start coming Chester’s temperature should drop, so that will give you warning.
Some warning. A measly day.
“They should have classes or something,” Kay grumbled.
“Like Lamaze?” He laughed. “Quit worrying. Allison told you, it’s a natural process and Chester’s in fine shape.”
“Yeah, well, you and Dr. Maclaine can be casual about this, but Chester and I have never had puppies before and this is a big deal.”
The vet had given her a brochure on dogs giving birth—it was called whelping—and had answered questions. But more questions kept hitting Kay, so she’d asked Rob to stop at the bookstore so she could get any books she didn’t already have. He’d been a good sport about staying in the car so Chester wouldn’t be alone.
Kay considered changing Chester’s name in the face of impending motherhood, but by the time she’d emerged from the bookstore she’d decided Chester would remain Chester. Heaven knows the dog seemed secure in her sexuality.
“This one says prenatal nutrition is vital,” Rob said. He traced a passage in the dog-care encyclopedia with his long index finger.
“Especially for a dog like Chester who’s been on her own for who knows how long.”
“Yes, prenatal nutrition is vital,” Rob continued. “Also says here that letting an owner and her friend die of starvation is not good for the expectant dog.”
That was the second time today he’d referred to himself as her friend.
She had not felt the least bit friendly toward him today. Too happy to see him when he arrived this morning, wanting to strangle him when he proposed Dora do the mural, relieved to tell her family story, right—so very right—in his arms, hurt when he withdrew, angry he wouldn’t leave her alone.
All that and more. But not “friendly.”
Since they’d returned to the Hollands’ they’d both pursued this fiction that they were a couple of buddies reading up on dogs having puppies.
It had to be as much a strain for him as her. Plus, there’d been that expression at the vet’s after he’d said he would help her. A decidedly Sydney Carton-ish expression as he went to the guillotine in A Tale of Two Cities. “It is a far, far better thing that I do…”
“Rob, you’ve been great.” She talked fast, not letting worry about her inadequacies in caring for Chester tempt her. “Above and beyond the call of duty. So I’m not holding you to your generous offer to help me with Chester when she—” No, better not to contemplate what she was turning down. “Later. I know you have a lot of other things to do, and I can’t ask you to do this.”
“You didn’t ask. I volunteered.”
“It was very kind, but—”
“I don’t renege. So you’ve got an assistant canine midwife whether you want me or not. Unless you starve me before the big day arrives.”
“Rob—”
“I’m not going anywhere, Kay.”
That intent look was in his eyes again. No, not again, because this one was different. There was the heat of desire in it—she’d always recognized that—but there was something else there, too. Something that made her feel more sure, yet terrified.
And the strange thing was, she didn’t know what she was sure of, or what she was terrified of.
“What I was going to say,” she lied, “was will you order pizza to be delivered? I hate to disturb the mother-to-be.”
Hunger pangs satisfied by pizza, they plotted out the remainder of Chester’s pregnancy on calendar grids Rob had printed out from her computer. She’d had no idea her software included calendars.
Rob, who had moved to sit beside her on the floor, wrote in the steps the vet had described, feeding Chester more frequent meals, keeping up the exercise, another vet visit and the due date.
But it wasn’t only Chester’s changes that Kay saw in those calendar boxes.
There it was, the weeks sliding away to Bliss House’s opening in mid-October…and Kay’s departure date.
“October sure is coming fast,” she said, fighting to keep the words light.
“I’ll be gone before then.” He tapped a calendar box less than two weeks after Chester’s due date.
“Oh, your leave will be over. Of course.” She’d known it was only for the summer, but she couldn’t imagine Tobias without Rob.
Could she imagine anything without Rob?
His silence finally penetrated her thoughts. She looked up and found him watching her intently.
“It’s not the leave that will be over, it’s my career, Kay. I’ll go back to Chicago, but not for good. I have to get some things started and then… The career I’ve had, the income, the position, the title—they’ll all be gone.”
She waited, but that seemed to be the end of his speech. “Okay.”
“Okay? That’s all you’re going to say?”
“Yeah.”
He had to know she wasn’t a material girl. So what was this about? Did he think she wanted him only if he was a high-flying successful financial whiz?
And then she knew. This was the big thing, the thing that was bothering him beyond the divorce.
He’d worked hard to reach his goal, and now he was losing it.
“Do you understand what I’m saying? I’ve had this career, a successful career, and it’s about to go up in smoke. Other than knowing I won’t be working in a major financial firm, I can’t see any farther than a few weeks. I have no future. So I can’t offer you a future.”
Questions about what was happening in his career evaporated. Her heart rapped against her ribs. “Do you want to offer me a future?”
“Whether I want to or not, I can’t. So there’s no future between us.”
She stroked the back of her fingers down his cheek. “There’s the present, Rob.”
Still he held back.
“Kay, I can’t offer you anything like you’re used to having, the life you’ve led.”
She tipped her head, making sure he could see her eyes. “You are so much better than anything I’ve had in my life.”
Cupping his jaw, she stretched up to glide her lips across his. Praying he didn’t draw back this time.
One, slow, gentle kiss.
“Kay, there’s more—”
God, she hoped so.
She kissed him hard this time. Hard and hot. Sliding her tongue past his lips, pressing against him. Throwing herself at him as she had that first evening on the patio. But this time with a kiss instead of words.
This time…this time…
Yes. His arms came around her, his mouth captivated. Kiss after kiss. Long and fast and deep.
He raised his head, breath rasping. “No stopping.”
Ah, her do-right Rob was issuing one last caution. A warning that if she wanted to try to escape this, she’d better do it now.
“No stopping,” she agreed.
Chapter Nine
Rob didn’t remember how they got upstairs. He did remember the stop on the stairs.
His shirt was gone…somewhere. Her tank top came off over her head. He
stroked across the swell of her breast to the tip, already pointed and stiff. They slid, down, down in slow-motion, together. He dragged down the strap of her bra, unwilling to take time with the hooks to free her, and took her nipple into his mouth. The pebbled smoothness, the warmth. Her taste.
She was the catalyst, sparking this reaction that burned through him, seeking more and more of him as fuel for its combustion. His skin, his muscles, his blood, his bones, they all burned for her, with her.
Chester’s whimper from the bottom of the stairs was the only reason they didn’t make love right there on the landing.
Kay’s sound was half frustration, half concern. She struggled to sit up. He was already on his feet, mentally cursing the dog, but also thanking her. Birth control. He’d almost forgotten.
Chester gave him a final warning stare before he closed the door to Kay’s bedroom behind them. He stepped out of shoes, socks and jeans, pausing only to secure the condoms from his pocket and slap them on the night table.
Kay, standing still beside the bed, followed his motion with her eyes. He expected a comment about his confidence in bringing them—in fact it had been his lack of confidence in his self-control.
But she looked back at him, smiled completely, as only Kay could, and inexplicably murmured, “Boxers.”
She slid her hands inside them at either side of his waist, then down, down, down. When she traveled back up, with a pause to hold and stroke him, he knew a temptation, but not one that threatened his need to be inside her.
That need clawed at him. It was a most unreasonable need. And it would answer only to her.
They tumbled diagonally on the bed, tangled together. He found the hook at the back of her bra, bared her. He cupped and kissed her breasts, brushing the tight points with his thumb, then his tongue.
Tugs, whispers, moans. Her shorts and panties gone. The condom on. He opened her legs with his knees, found the heated welcome.
Urging him forward with her hands, she tilted her hips. “Yes.”
Least Likely Wedding? Page 15