She slid one of her hands under his coat, gliding her palm up his muscled chest, where she lingered over every contour.
Hot skin over firm muscle. The shape of a man.
A man she wanted more than any other.
Bewilderment tried to jam its way into her. Hadn’t Alan been the love of her life?
Or was she meant to be with Bo, her convenient husband, instead?
None of this had been planned, and it was exciting, stimulating her like a cool breeze over skin that had turned to flames of need, prickles of desire.
As she ran her hand down, over his ribs, Bo sucked in a sharp breath. The sound sparked even more passion in Holly, and she pushed at his coat, working it off of him in a near frenzy.
“Last chance,” he murmured against her.
“I’ll take it.”
She tossed his coat to the ground, then started on the snaps of his shirt, yanking it off of him until she got to bare flesh.
With his shirt tangled over her arm, she pulled back from him, just to see.
Just to enjoy all the more.
He was beautiful in the angle of light that seeped into the hallway from the living room. As golden as nostalgic days bathed in perfect memory—days Bo wanted to bring back to all of them.
Muscles, cut and smooth. Broad shoulders, toned arms and chest.
Holly reached out to touch his waist, the hard line of it leading to the ridges of his abs. Then she pulled her hand back, shyness overcoming her, even after all her bravado.
He lifted his hand, coasting his knuckles over her cheekbone, as if assuaging her, caring for her feelings even now.
Affection flooded her, and she shucked off her coat. It thudded to the floor as she went for her sweater, pulling it over her head, static snapping at her, crackling in the air along with the tension between them just before she discarded that piece of clothing, too.
A few hairs whisked against her face, floating, and Bo smiled, his hand going to her head to smooth down the rebellious strands.
But there was no taming the rebel in her, and she turned her head to kiss the inside of his wrist, grabbing his arm with both hands. She slid one of them upward, over the mound of his biceps while she nuzzled his palm.
His chest rose and fell, and she knew it was because he was trying to keep himself under control, letting her take the lead, still reluctant to do more with her.
She would change that. Bo felt something for her, whether or not he would admit it. Whether or not he was willing to risk the same chances she was all too revved up to take.
She roamed her hand down his chest, toward his belt buckle. His belly muscles jerked.
“Holly—”
“I want this.”
“And what about…”
He gestured toward her tummy.
Warmth—not the sexual heat that had been coursing through her, but tender, sighing warmth—surrounded her heart.
Even now, he was thinking about her baby. Thinking about her, beyond just being a short-time stand. A woman to take to bed.
“The doctor knew I’d be on my honeymoon,” she said, breathy. “So she told me it’d be fine. Just…gentle, okay? Slow. Easy.”
When she tugged at his belt, he exhaled, his breath shakier than she could’ve ever predicted. She undid his buckle, then the top button of his fly. He was already hard—she could feel that as her knuckles brushed against him.
Bo stifled a grunt, and she reached up to undo her bra. With the garment off, her breasts felt full, sensitive, and when Holly took Bo’s hands in hers and brought them up to her chest, the mere touch made her gasp.
He started to take his hands away, but she kept them against her, cupping her. She bit her lip, increasing the pressure, urging him to rest his thumbs over her nipples, moaning as he gently circled there.
A stiffness emerged between her legs, moistness. Readiness.
She brought a hand to the back of his head, and he understood, bending to her, his palms sliding to her back as he rubbed his lips against a nipple.
A craving for him almost decimated Holly, especially when he licked at her, getting her even more stimulated.
He kept gently exploring her breasts with his mouth, his fingers. Meanwhile, Holly pushed down her skirt, stepped out of it and then her panties.
Running his lips down her body, he came to her belly. Slowly, he got to his knees, fitting his hands to her roundness.
“You’re everything I could ever imagine,” he said.
He was saying this to her, the woman who’d been left behind by another. To the baby.
To the family they’d become.
Overwhelmed, she led him to her room, where the bed waited, white and wide under the moonlight coming in through the window.
After taking off his boots, he laid her on the mattress, staring down at her with so much adoration on his face that tears came to her eyes.
She raised herself up, pulling him down and guiding him to his back. She would be careful, so careful.
They faced each other, lying on their sides, and she skimmed the bulge in his jeans. She could feel the tip of him through the denim.
He cursed under his breath and, panting, Holly unbuttoned the rest of his fly and brought him all the way out. The breath left her as she held him in her palm, his entire, stiff length.
When she stroked him, bringing him to an arching, groaning point of no return, she watched his face—the play of emotion, the pained bliss of escalation.
Happy. She was making him happy, and she could do the same thing night after night like no other woman could, because she couldn’t imagine him in more ecstasy than this.
She loved him with her hands, explored him, made him all hers until he clasped the back of her hip.
“Yes,” she said, raising her leg slightly so that she parted for him, then positioning herself so that her tummy wasn’t between them.
He slid his tip against her most intimate part, teasing her, pressing against the center of her until the pressure drove her wild.
She felt like she was spring-loaded, ready to fly open with just one more nudge of his erection against her, one more…
With a burst, she expanded, cried out, all of her scattered to the winds that seemed to whip through her. High, low, she was everywhere as Bo slipped himself into her.
Velvet, slick, she gasped as her orgasm made her clench around him.
They moved in leisurely rhythm, a long cadence that flowed like a sinuous river, running, then after a while, picking up speed bit by bit until Holly felt as if her cells were tumbling over each other, roaring, pushing—
As he stiffened, finding release, she dug her fingers into him, watching his face, loving how she made him feel just as much as she…
Loved him.
Their breath evened out, unmatched now, and she waited, listening to him, wondering what he would say.
Then he pulled her closer, his chest against hers, making words unnecessary.
While she fell asleep against him, giddier than she’d ever been in her life, she dreamed of ice cream trucks, a green yard where the musical songs floated over a sunset breeze.
Yet, this time in the fantasy, Bo was there, too, right by her side, the man she’d been meant to find.
After putting himself in order, Bo came back to bed, where he held Holly again. He even took the covers and wrapped them around them, just like a cocoon.
But weren’t cocoons meant to be broken? Didn’t other things emerge?
More beautiful things, he thought, though with every beat of his heart, he wondered what could come of this.
What they’d done.
He looked down at her, lying so sweetly in the crook of his arm, her lashes fanned over her cheeks, her lips so soft that he wanted to kiss them again.
And again.
The only matter stopping him was the guilt.
Who would’ve guessed it? This experience had shaken him more completely than any other time. It had ripped him to shreds,
making the scraps of him free fall to the ground, where the thrusts of his emotions destroyed him so thoroughly that he wasn’t sure he could ever find himself again.
Not after her.
Holly sighed in her sleep, snuggling against him, a smile taking over her mouth as she nestled her hand just beneath his ear. Even a simple touch like that had the power to get him going again, his belly clenching, heat rushing to his groin.
But there was also something rushing to his heart, and every instinct that had kept him intact told him to flush it out.
He couldn’t fall in love with her. That hadn’t been part of their deal. Sure, he could keep all the other components of his bargain with Holly, but this…?
This, he hadn’t expected.
This, he hadn’t been able to resist when Holly had made it so clear that she wanted to include the marriage bed in their bargain, and he hadn’t been able to stop himself from giving in and putting a smile on her face that she was even wearing during sleep.
She’d found happiness in making him happy…
As she stirred against him again, he automatically took her in his arms. An impulse. A necessity.
His downfall.
He began to ease away from her, just so he could leave, get her out of his system, think a little.
Think.
But then she opened her eyes and he was just as lost as he’d been that first time, when he’d turned around like a fool and kissed her, the beginning of this end.
While she flashed those big blues at him, Bo turned to jelly.
“Hello,” she said, her voice raspy.
“Holly…”
He couldn’t finish when she wiggled closer to him, the baby bump curving against his stomach. Absently, he rested his fingertips against the baby’s curve.
When he felt a kick, he was a total goner.
Holly quietly laughed. “Hopper’s at it. I read that after sex, a baby can get more lively.”
Sex. It didn’t seem to describe what had gone on here, although it was the best he’d ever had, no matter how you put it. It’d mingled the explosions of his body with something more—a rising sensation that went beyond any climax. A closeness, a moment when he’d taken her all the way into him and felt that, for the first time in his life, he’d found a completion above anything else.
Intimacy.
Even the word scared the tar out of him, and his pulse shuddered. Fight or flight.
Survival.
But there he was, keeping his hand against her belly, hoping to feel another kick, another sign of the life that was soon to join them.
And what kind of life would it be, after their deal was up? Would the child despise Bo for leaving them, after he or she was old enough to know the meaning of desertion?
Or…
Good God—would Holly think that tonight meant that there’d be no annulment?
Damn, he wished his brain had possessed the power to trump his body tonight. When he’d proposed to her, he’d only been thinking about the campaign, the good of the many versus the good of the few.
But, for some reason, Holly and her baby seemed far more important than any big crusade now, and that wasn’t what he’d proposed when he’d offered up this marriage to her.
Think man, think.
Bo rested his cheek against her head. He hated himself for losing his mind when she’d pulled him in for a kiss, but he would live up to his end of the deal, show her that he would always be there. There had to be a way to do that while not hurting her.
“You need sleep,” he said, getting to his elbow. But as he did, it gave him a better view of her, with those tossed curls and the lazy posture of a woman who liked to snuggle.
At his distance, a look of confusion covered her expression, and it was beyond Bo not to appease her.
He adjusted their positions so that he was sitting and holding her feet in his hands. During a few idle moments in the office, he’d done a search on pregnancy, and he’d read that foot massages were a pretty popular thing for an expectant mother.
After combing his thumbs down her insteps, he was proven correct when Holly sighed, curving her arms over her head.
Unfortunately, that highlighted her breasts, showing off how full they were, even if they’d probably been smallish before, with Holly’s slender figure. It showed off the dark pink of her nipples, which looked like cherries.
He remembered how they’d felt in his mouth—smooth, the nubs of them like little stems for his tongue to play with.
She yawned, even as she said, “I’m not sleepy.”
When he concentrated on one foot, applying pressure with both thumbs now, she wiggled her hips.
Careful, he thought, and it wasn’t just because it was best not to work her up again. It was because he needed the warning, too.
But as Holly closed her eyes, her breath becoming shallow, Bo’s chest warmed. He lavished a look on her—one that he felt free to give, now that she couldn’t see it—and thought about what it might be like if he were a different man.
And if he could change and become that man for anyone, it would be Holly. It would be for the baby.
But he wouldn’t change, not for a marriage that would no doubt turn sour one day, just as he’d seen his parents’ do.
As Holly drifted off, Bo tucked her in, staying by her side and watching her for far too long before he left the room, shutting the door softly, but firmly, behind him.
Morning came through Holly’s window with the song of a bird, a bright stream of sunshine and the warm breath of the central heat coming through her bedroom vent.
She stretched, her skin feeling…different.
Awake. Slightly sore, as if…
Bo.
Reaching out next to her, she grasped air, then turned on her side to discover the reason.
No Bo.
She sat up, and as the air hit her skin, she pulled up the sheets, covering her bare chest. Her breasts were sensitive, too, but in a good way, and she remembered Bo’s mouth on her, sucking, bringing her to places she’d forgotten existed.
Where was he?
As she started to get out of bed, she saw a piece of paper on the pillow. A note.
Gone to the office already. Didn’t want to wake you. See you for dinner?
No signature, no xxx’s or ooo’s… No sense of what had gone on between them last night.
Then again, Bo was a man, and how many guys did she know who left xxx’s and ooo’s?
Even so, hadn’t he kissed her with all the desire that she’d felt, too? Hadn’t they…
Holly wiped a hand over her face, thinking for a second that maybe she’d imagined it. But he’d been in her room. The note had proven it.
Heavy with doubt, she got out of the bed and pulled on a thick terrycloth robe.
Had Bo just left a note because he wanted to flee from her room?
Did he regret being with her?
When she opened her door, the aroma of coffee and breakfast hung in the air. She looked down at the floor, where there was another piece of paper.
An arrow.
She cupped her hand over her belly, following the arrow to another one, then another, until she got to the kitchen and the refrigerator.
Inside, she discovered breakfast laid out on a tray: a glass of orange juice that had been protected by a baggie. A plastic-covered plate featuring a big omelet smothered in grated, unmelted cheese.
There was a note here, as well.
Warm in the microwave—doc’s orders.
This time there was a smiley face at the bottom, next to a scribbled “Bo.”
“Not exactly xxx’s and ooo’s,” Holly said out loud to her unborn child, “but it’s an improvement.”
She took out the tray, thinking that she could joke with Hopper, but did her baby sense that she was unsettled by Bo’s notes? That she was disappointed that he hadn’t woken her up with a kiss?
That heaviness pushed down on her as she warmed up her breakfast. But then s
he started to wonder if some men, especially commitment-shy ones like Bo, were better with gestures, like making her breakfast and taking care of her in that way, rather than with endearments and good-morning kisses.
She tried not to think about how this caretaking still smacked of the playacting husband. Tried not to wonder if Bo had backed off because…
Oh, God, had she been terrible in bed?
Had she let him down?
After all, Bo was older, more experienced. There was also the chance that he might’ve just taken pity on her since she’d come on to him like a cat in heat.
Did he regret their whole marriage?
As her paranoia snowballed, she walked toward the bathroom to get ready for a day of light work—she was supposed to make some arrangements for a Halloween fundraiser at the resort.
But the questions kept at her.
Alan had left her because she’d done something wrong with him. Could it be that she was a walking case of failure? Even after she’d spent so much of her life trying to avoid screwing up, here she was, a two-time loser…
Maybe she should call Erika, but as soon as Holly thought it, she quashed the idea. Her friend had been afraid this would happen. Plus, she was knee deep in her wedding arrangements. No way would Holly lay this on her.
But just she was gargling with mouthwash after brushing her teeth, she heard her phone ring, and she rushed to her room, riffling through her coat, which Bo must’ve put in here after they’d stripped in the hallway last night.
When she found the phone, she answered. “Hello?”
“Holly?”
It wasn’t Erika, as she’d hoped.
“This is Rose.”
A bolt of fear hit Holly. Why would Rose be calling?
“Is Bo…?” she asked.
His manager must’ve heard the worry in Holly’s tone, because she quickly said, “Nothing’s wrong. I only thought I’d call to check up on you after…that rally.”
It took Holly a second to calm her pulse, to remember that there’d been things that had occurred last night besides her and Bo getting cozy.
Things like the heckler and the moment in the campaign office when Rose had placed her hand on Holly’s shoulder, as if telling her that she knew everything that was going on between the fake couple.
When the Cowboy Said ''I Do'' Page 13