His Lost and Found Family

by Sarah M. Anderson

  She fell back onto the bed, panting. “How could I forget?” Then she managed to lift her left foot and nudge at the huge erection that was straining behind his jeans. “Might need a refresher on that,” she tried to say in a joking tone.

  “Woman,” he growled again as he shoved himself away from her. He yanked his jeans off, along with his boxers.

  “Don’t stop,” she moaned. “Babe, don’t stop.”

  But he looked at her, his eyes wide.

  And he stopped.

  * * *

  What the hell was he doing?

  Jake stared at her. His blood was pounding in his ears—and a few other places—and he could still taste her sweetness on his tongue. He’d—he’d decided to fight for her. That realization emerged from the haze that was his brain.

  But...should he really be having sex with her? At least, right now? Shouldn’t he give it another week—another day—so she could recover? Shouldn’t he be putting her needs above his own?

  “Jake?” She was staring at him with those huge blue eyes of hers. Perfect. She was just perfect. Always had been. And he’d always had so much trouble saying no to her.

  She lifted herself up and hesitantly wrapped her fingers around him. He shuddered at her touch, but he was powerless to put the brakes on, powerless to do anything but love her. Slowly—so slowly it was driving all reason out of his mind—she stroked him. And this time, there was no doorbell to save him from her. From himself. “It’s okay. I’ve waited too long for this.”

  If only she knew how long she’d been waiting.

  “But what if—?” What if he got her pregnant again?

  “Then I’ll remember. Oh, babe, I want you so much.” She stroked up, down, up again and it obliterated any reasonable thought. He hadn’t had sex in over ten months. Ten months without this woman under him—beside him—on top of him. It felt like a lifetime. He couldn’t stand it anymore. Not when she was here, loving on him like this.

  He gently pushed her back onto the bed and lowered his mouth to her breasts again. She’d always been a little insecure about how small she was, so he made sure that she knew how much he loved her just as she was.

  Soon enough, she was shifting underneath him, lifting her hips up so that she could be closer to him. “Jake,” she begged. “Jake, please.”

  He fell into her. He couldn’t stay away from her—he’d never been able to. His father had punished him each time Jake and Skye had been caught together. Jake had gone to college a year before she had. He’d gone to Bahrain without her. But he’d come back for her. He would always come back for her.

  He didn’t want to crush her slim body, so he propped himself up on his hands and fit himself against her.

  “Jake,” she hissed as he teased her with his tip. “Jake.”

  He couldn’t hold himself back, not with her tantalizing warmth surrounding him. He thrust into her, gently at first, but then her fingernails found his back, spurring him on. “Mine,” he said as he surrendered to her. “My blue-eyed Skye.”

  “Oh, yes,” she gasped out as her body tightened around his. He buried himself in her over and over again. Nothing between them. Not now, not ever.

  He sat back on his heels and pulled her hips down into his, thrusting hard. “Skye,” he ground out.

  Then she cried out his name and it pushed him over the edge. With the last bit of self-control he had, he pulled out as he came. Condoms. He was going to have to get some condoms immediately.

  He collapsed onto the bed next to her and drew her into his arms. They were both breathing hard. “I love you, Skye,” he said low and close to her ear. “Nothing—not even comas—can change that. I’ve loved you since I was seven and I will love you to the day I draw in my last breath.”

  “I don’t ever want us to be apart, Jake.” Her breath hitched her chest up. “Even when I was asleep, I missed you so much. Don’t ever leave me again.”

  He froze. Was she remembering something—or was she still operating under the assumption that he’d just been in New York for a job for a while?

  He hated this. There were many things that had gone wrong between them, but lying hadn’t been one of them. They were always honest with each other. Even if he was only glossing over the truth, it still sat wrong in his craw.

  He knew he needed to tell her about the past two years—he couldn’t keep secrets, not from her. He knew that it would be better if she heard it from him before she remembered it on her own.

  But he couldn’t. Not just yet. After all, on her first full day home from the hospital, she’d not only had to deal with surprise visits from neighbors, but from his family as well—well-meaning as they were. Then he’d ravished her, essentially.

  She had to be exhausted and the last thing she needed was another emotional shock. They’d have time to discuss everything that had happened right before her accident later. After they’d settled into the house and she’d gotten some of her strength back and they’d had a chance to spend a little time with Grace.

  He had time to show her what she meant to him before the past caught up with them. A week, maybe. Skye would be much better by then.

  He hoped. God, he hoped.

  Eight

  “Can we go now?” Skye asked for the fourteenth time that morning.

  “Noon,” Jake repeated. And then, because he was having trouble keeping his hands off of her, he leaned over as she held her leg lifts and kissed her. “Just a little bit longer.”

  Skye was not mollified by this announcement. She’d woken up in a good mood, but once Jake had gotten her back on the floor do to the exercises, that mood had turned into impatience. “I just want to see her,” Skye said as she struggled her way through the exercises. “I just want to hold her.”

  “I know,” he repeated, trying to keep her calm. “Lark said to come over at noon. We still have three hours. Let’s stretch.”

  He couldn’t believe it, but as he stood over her and lifted her leg toward the ceiling, he found himself flirting with her. Yesterday, he’d been desperate to not flirt with her. But today? It was the best weapon he had in keeping her distracted. “Maybe we should try this in bed,” he joked.

  That got him a funny look. “And how do you suggest we pull that off?”

  “I have my ways.” She laughed, which he took as a good sign. “Here, roll over.” He began to give her a massage.

  “Mmm, good,” she murmured as he worked at a knot in her shoulder. “I hadn’t realized how tight I was.”

  Jake laughed. This was the Skye he’d run off with—the one who could make a suggestive joke and tell him what she wanted.

  When she rolled back over again, he couldn’t help himself. He lowered himself to her and kissed her. “As a reward,” he murmured against her neck.

  “You make me wish I was doing PT three times a day,” she said as she grinned up at him.

  She started to deepen the kiss—and Jake was tempted to let it go on—but they had to leave the house today. So he sat back and pulled her into a sitting position. “Shower?”

  Her eyebrows jumped. “Together?”

  “If that’s what you want.” He kept asking her variations on that—did she want to watch this? Do that? Eat that?

  But what he was really asking was if she wanted him. He wasn’t going to sit around and watch them fall apart again. When she remembered—it was just a matter of time—then he wanted her to have some new, better memories to counterbalance the bad ones. Memories in which he’d taken care of her—in which he’d still loved her, still fought for her.

  She would remember that he’d left. He wanted her to remember that he’d come back for her and for Grace.

  He helped her into the bathroom. She was getting stronger, he could tell—despite the hard workout, she was able to get undressed on h
er own. Jake stripped out of his own clothes and helped her to sit on the bench after he got the water to the right temperature. The shower was roomy and the showerhead could be removed from the wall so he was able to rinse her hair. “I’ll try to put it back like it was,” he offered.

  She leaned back, her head resting on his stomach. “Try?”

  “Try.” Then he had her lean forward so that he could wash her back again.

  “You know,” she said in a casual way, “I kind of thought you were avoiding me when you gave me that bath.”

  Jake froze, but then thought that might trigger something in her mind, so he went on lathering up her body. “Why would you think that?”

  She managed to pivot and look up at him. “I thought...it just seemed like you didn’t want me. I was afraid maybe I’d done something I couldn’t remember that, you know, wasn’t so good.”

  “I did want you. I do,” he hurried to say. “Honestly, I was afraid of hurting you.” Which, again, was not the whole truth. But there was some truth to it. “All I want is for you to get better, faster. I don’t want to do anything that might mess that up.”

  She beamed at him. “Okay, good.” She took the soap. “Now it’s my turn.”

  “What do you—oh.” Skye ran the soap over his body and, damn it all, he went hard in an instant at her touch. “Skye—you don’t have to do this.”

  “Who said anything about having to?” she demanded as she stroked him. “I want to. You’re taking care of me. Let me take care of you.”

  “I don’t—want you—to overdo—it,” he ground out as she worked on him. So she’d lost two years. She remembered what he liked—the strong, sure strokes. Then she rinsed him off and ran her tongue over his tip. “Like this?” she murmured, her voice vibrating up through him.

  “Just like that,” he managed to say. He leaned forward and braced his hands on the wall of the shower as she licked his tip and stroked his length and did everything she could to drive him wild with lust.

  “Skye,” he warned her as he tried to pull back. “Wait—let me—”

  “No,” she said as she held fast to him. “You, Jake Holt, are mine.”

  She claimed him then—took everything he had to give as the orgasm almost brought him to his knees.

  Hell, it actually did—he sank down in front of her and clutched her to his chest as he waited for his pulse to return to normal. “My perfect Skye,” he got out.

  “Was it okay?”

  He looked at her. “Okay? No.” Her face started to crumble, so he quickly said, “Great? Yes.”

  He was hers. She’d said so herself.

  He gave her a wicked grin. “Your turn.”

  * * *

  Before she knew what was happening, Jake had parted her legs, grabbed her by the thighs and pulled her so that she was barely sitting on the bench. “Perfect,” he murmured again as his mouth closed in on her.

  The warm water cascaded down over them as he worked his tongue over her and his fingers into her. Maybe yesterday he had been worried about hurting her—holding back just a little, just in case.

  He did no such thing today. Her body, already relaxed from the shower, gave itself over to his touches as they came harder, faster—

  “Jake!”

  “Come for me, babe,” he said against her sex. “Come for me.”

  So she did. Her body lit up as the desire overwhelmed her. Alive. She was alive and getting stronger here with Jake. It was all she’d ever wanted.

  After one of the longer—and better—showers in recent memory, Skye finally got into a clean set of clothes and Jake mostly got her hair brushed back over into a side ponytail. Skye didn’t even attempt eyeliner or mascara—her arms were already tired and she wanted to save her strength for holding Grace—but she managed to put on a little makeup without Jake’s help. Gloria had asked for pictures, after all. Skye wanted to look as normal as possible.

  “Ready?” Jake asked, a big smile on his face.

  She nodded. It felt good to know that she’d put that smile there, that he’d returned the favor. She didn’t remember them having a bench in the bathroom in their apartment, but if they moved back here to Royal permanently, they’d have to make sure they had a bench in their new home.

  She wanted to tell Jake that—but something held her back. Jake had made his position quite clear—he was never coming back to Royal. She remembered that. But hadn’t that been because of his family? Well, her family, too.

  They’d had a lovely lunch with his parents—people so warm and friendly that she almost couldn’t believe they were the same two who had forced Jake to choose between the Holt ranch and Skye. And now, after a careful trip down the stairs and out to the car, they were going to go see Keaton and Lark and...

  Grace.

  Skye’s heart tried to skip a beat at just the thought of the tiny baby in all the pictures David had showed her.

  “Nervous?” Jake asked her as he backed out of the driveway. “Or just excited?”

  “Both,” she admitted. “I hope I don’t drop her!”

  “I don’t think that’ll happen,” he assured her. “We’ll get you set up on Lark’s couch and you can just hold the baby.”

  “I hope I can feed her,” Skye said. “I want to help take care of her.”

  Jake shot her a silly look. “You may want to avoid diaper duty for a while longer. I’m just saying, I may be emotionally scarred for life from that.”

  Skye laughed at him. “Jake,” she said, feeling light and free. “I don’t know if I’ve ever been this happy.”

  All the silliness bled out of his face. “We were happy,” he told her. “When it was just the two of us.”

  “Oh, I know—I don’t mean that we weren’t. I love living with you. It’s just, well, you know—our families are getting along and we have a baby now. I secretly hoped that this would happen.”

  At least, she’d thought it was secret. But Jake said heavily, “Yeah, I know.”

  “You do?” She didn’t remember telling him that. In fact, she’d thought she’d done a very good job hiding that from him because she knew that he’d never wanted to come back here.

  “I mean,” he quickly corrected, “I suspected as much.” All serious now, he looked over at her. “Do you still want to come back here?”

  At least, that’s what he said. But deep inside one of the holes in Skye’s memory, she heard a different question.

  Why do you still want to go back there?

  She tried to grab hold of that other question, that other memory—but she couldn’t. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “You’re right—we’ve been so happy on our own. But there’s things I missed—having a friendly neighbor fix my hair or lunch with your folks, or my sister babysitting so we can...shower together.” She gave him what she hoped was a coy smile, but the stony look on his face rebuffed her advance. “It’s not something I want to fight about, Jake.”

  His jaw worked, as if he was trying to say something and also not trying to say something at the same time, which left her greatly confused. What was in that damn hole in her memory? What couldn’t she grasp? “Jake?”

  “You know,” he said through clenched teeth, which undermined the casual tone of his voice, “you’ve only been home for a few days. We’re going to be here for a month, maybe—your doctor wants you to stay close. So let’s not worry about this right now. Let’s just focus on you getting better and seeing Grace, okay?”

  She looked down at her hands. All the light, happy feelings from the shower earlier were gone now. “Did I do something wrong?”

  “Of course not,” he said. “I don’t know about you, but this has been a pretty awesome day. Especially the shower part.”

  “I don’t mean that. I mean...am I forgetting something I did? Did we have a fig
ht?” He didn’t answer, but she could tell he was gripping the steering wheel with enough force to break it off the column. “Is that...?” She swallowed, her throat suddenly closing up on her. “Is that why you weren’t with me when I hit that storm?”

  Jake didn’t reply, but then, he was pulling into another driveway. He put the car in park and leaned over. “You were pregnant,” he told her as he cupped her face in his hand. “You didn’t want to travel to the job with me. I think you’d decided to come see Lark while I was gone.”

  Suddenly she had tears in her eyes. “Did we fight?”

  His mouth opened, but instead of answering her question, he leaned over and kissed her. She let him because she couldn’t remember what she couldn’t remember, but Jake’s love surpassed it all. “Whatever happened in the past isn’t as important as what happens in the future, Skye.”

  “But—”

  Just then, the door to the house opened up and there stood her sister with a small bundle in her arms. “Skye?”

  “Oh!” What were they doing, sitting here and having...well, a conversation, although a highly strange one, when their daughter was just over there? “We should go.”

  “Yup,” he agreed, getting out and coming over to her side of the car.

  She wanted to walk on her own two feet. She didn’t want to be too weak even to walk to her own daughter. But her left leg tried to buckle on the fourth step and Jake had to put his arm around her waist and half carry her to the door.

  But the frustration at not being able to use her body in a normal, typical way disappeared in an instant as Skye looked down at the baby in Lark’s arms. “Oh, Grace,” she said, choking up. “My little bit of Grace.”

  The baby—with bright blue eyes and almost no hair—was looking around, as if everything were new and surprising. “Come inside,” Lark said. “I don’t want her to get too cold, but we were waiting for you—weren’t we, Grace?”

  Skye and Jake followed Lark as she led the way into a large room filled with every kind of baby toy imaginable. “I don’t—we don’t have any of this stuff,” Skye said. She’d been so focused on just getting her strength back up to the point where she could carry Grace that she hadn’t even considered all the things a baby required.