Keegan opened a menu and studied it as though he hadn’t already decided on a double cheeseburger deluxe with everything.
For some reason, Molly found his silence almost impossible to bear.
“Say something,” she said.
“You really need to look into other career opportunities,” he replied.
Suddenly her sinuses clogged up again, and her eyes burned. “I thought I had a whole new career lined up,” she told him. “I was going to be my son’s mother.”
Keegan closed the menu.
The waitress came back and, without taking his eyes off Molly, he ordered for both of them.
“I’m staying at Psyche’s place tonight,” he announced when the food-service professional had gone. “Just in case another of your clients shows up to do research.”
CHAPTER 11
PSYCHE, LUCAS AND FLORENCE were all sound asleep on the sunporch when Keegan and Molly returned to the house—Psyche in her hospital bed, Florence in a chair pulled back from the table, and Lucas in his playpen.
The sight had a curious effect on Keegan; they were a brave little band of three, lost in some strange and uncertain place and huddled together for safety.
Molly moved to approach Lucas, probably intending to carry him upstairs and put him to bed in his crib, but Keegan reached out, stopped her. Shook his head when she gave him a curious, somewhat wary look.
He put a finger to his lips when she would have spoken and stepped back into the kitchen. Molly followed, and he reached past her to pull the sliding door shut, careful to make as little noise as possible.
“Sit down,” he said when Molly began to look rebellious.
She balked, then shrugged stiffly, went to the table and sat. “What?” she asked in a testy whisper. Evidently the salutary effects of a double cheeseburger with everything were already wearing off.
Keegan sat down across from her. Hesitated. “This is going to sound crazy,” he said.
Molly leaned forward a little, lowered her brows slightly, practically daring him to say anything she could possibly take issue with. And she waited.
“It’s not just going to sound crazy,” Keegan went on. “It is crazy.”
Molly threw him off with a quick and totally unexpected smile. “It can’t be any worse than what Davis Jerritt did,” she said. “In terms of crazy, I mean.”
Keegan wasn’t so sure of that. He drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. “We could get married.”
The smile faded. She looked wary again. “If this is some kind of joke,” she said, “it’s not funny.”
“It’s not a joke,” Keegan said. “Maybe it should be, but it isn’t.”
“You?” Molly pointed to him. “And me?” Pointing back to herself.
“I don’t see anybody else around here,” he said. “Yes, you and me.”
“But…”
He saw realization dawn in her face. As a kid, she’d probably been cute. As a woman, she was beautiful—even with puffy eyes from all that crying.
“It’s what Psyche wants,” he said. “And we could raise Lucas. Together.” He paused, suddenly very uncomfortable, and cleared his throat. “Of course, we wouldn’t have sex or anything like that.”
Molly leaned back a little way, folded her arms across her chest in a reflexive motion, then let them fall to her sides again. “Of course not,” she agreed, but she looked skeptical. “What’s in this for you, Keegan?”
“Lucas,” he said simply.
“You and I don’t get along very well,” she reminded him. As if he needed reminding.
“Not a problem,” he answered.
“Not a problem? How do you figure that? Psyche wants Lucas to have a family. She has a fantasy, I think, that we’ll fall madly in love, you and I, and live happily ever after, if she can just get us together. We both know that isn’t going to happen.”
“We’ll agree to live under the same roof. Most of the time you can go your way, and I’ll go mine. We might not love each other, but we both love Lucas.”
“What kind of home would that be for him?” Molly asked. “And maybe you don’t mind going the rest of your natural life without sex, but I’m not ready to give up on it yet. For one thing, I’d like to have more children—someday.”
“Okay,” Keegan said generously. “If you want sex, I’ll oblige.”
Molly widened her eyes at him. “Gee, thanks,” she said.
He shook his head. “You are deliberately not understanding this,” he said.
“I understand only too well,” Molly replied. “What happens if one of us falls in love with somebody else? There’d be a divorce then, and Psyche doesn’t want that for Lucas. Neither do I.”
“Trust me,” Keegan said. “I’m not going to fall in love with anybody. Been there, done that.”
“Well, I’ve never been in love—” She fell silent suddenly, blushing.
“Not even with Thayer?” Keegan asked carefully. He was a man walking through a minefield, and he had to step lightly.
“That wasn’t love,” Molly said. “It wasn’t even lust.”
“What was it, then?”
“Stupidity,” she answered with flushed certainty.
“Look, if sex is such a big thing to you, we could give it a trial run.”
Molly’s mouth fell open. She snapped it closed, drew a couple of breaths in through her flared nostrils and steamed them back out again. “A trial run? I’ve met some jerks in my life, Keegan McKettrick, but you take the freaking prize!”
“How do you know you wouldn’t like it?” he asked. He was in so deep by then, there was nothing to do but keep wading and hope his boots didn’t fill up, figuratively speaking.
She blinked. “Why, you arrogant—”
He put up a hand. “Molly,” he said, “I’m offering you a choice between busing it back to L.A. empty-handed and staying right here in Indian Rock to raise your son. Think about it. Little League baseball games. School pictures. Trail rides. The kind of things Psyche wants for Lucas.”
“If—if I agreed to this, where would we live?”
“Definitely on the Triple M. This mausoleum is no place for a kid to grow up.”
“You think Psyche would agree? This is her family home, and one of the original terms was that Lucas had to grow up here.” She paused, swallowed. Beneath her thin T-shirt her nipples hardened visibly. Not that Keegan was looking at her breasts. Much. “Besides, she’d surely suspect that it wasn’t a real marriage.”
“She’s betting on both of us falling hard, sooner or later. And what she doesn’t know won’t hurt her.”
Molly gnawed on her lower lip. “No, but it might hurt Lucas.”
“Not if we act like civilized adults, it won’t.”
“This is a seriously mental idea. Did Dave Jerritt suggest it?”
Keegan ignored that. “That’s the offer, Molly. Take it or leave it. Psyche made her terms pretty clear.”
She wanted to agree, he could see that.
He could also see the nipples, pressing against the front of her shirt.
“You don’t trust me,” she reasoned. “Why would you want to marry me?”
“I don’t. I want to raise Lucas. So do you. Connect the dots, Molly.”
“But there’s a tremendous risk—”
“There’s always a risk,” he interrupted, “tremendous or otherwise.”
She got up out of her chair unexpectedly, and crossed the room to ease open the sliding door and peek in at Lucas. Apparently he was still sound asleep, because she closed it again, very quietly, and turned back to face Keegan.
“I want the trial run,” she said.
Keegan was so stunned, he couldn’t answer for a moment.
She smiled. “What’s the matter, McKettrick?” she asked. “Are you chicken?”
“Molly, we can’t just…”
“Why not? We can ‘just’ get married. We can ‘just’ agree to raise a child together. I’m not going for this until I kn
ow you can deliver, buckaroo.”
Heat surged through Keegan, partly indignation, partly every cell in his body yelling yahoo. “Are you on the pill?” he asked.
She shook her head. “No reason,” she said. “I’m not involved with anybody at the moment.”
What did she mean by “at the moment”? he wondered. Was there another married man in L.A.?
“I didn’t bring…”
“You can’t seem to finish a sentence,” she pointed out, clearly enjoying the fact that she’d turned the tables on him somewhere along the line. “If you were about to say you didn’t bring a condom, no problem—I don’t want you to wear one.”
“Why—” He had to stop and swallow. “Why not?”
“Because I wouldn’t mind getting pregnant,” she said. “I know I can’t replace Lucas, no matter how many babies I have, but if this whole thing blows up in our faces and Psyche decides to give Lucas to Travis and Sierra anyway, I might go back to California with something more than a broken heart.”
Keegan pushed back his chair, but quietly, and got to his feet. “There’s one flaw in your logic,” he said fiercely. “If we make love and you get pregnant, the baby would be just as much mine as yours. There’s no possible way I’d let you just vanish into LaLa Land with my child.”
“If you knew there was a child in the first place,” she said.
Oh, she was a negotiator, all right. Probably very good at her job.
But she was overlooking one important fact. He wasn’t half-bad at driving a bargain, either.
“I’ll know, Molly,” he told her, and he could see by the expression on her face that she believed him.
She jutted her chin out a little way. “Fair enough,” she said.
Then she started off through the kitchen, toward the dining room.
Keegan followed, wondering what the hell he was getting himself into. Moreover, what was he getting Devon into, and Lucas?
They moved through the dining room, into the huge entryway.
Molly jabbed at the elevator button, a challenge in her eyes. And there was something else, too—she thought he was going to back down.
Breaking news: he wasn’t.
The elevator came and they got in, standing as far from each other as they could without plastering themselves against the walls.
Keegan pushed the button for the third floor.
They jolted upward.
Presently the elevator stopped.
Keegan pushed back the folding grate, opened the door beyond.
Molly’s eyes were huge. It was beginning to dawn on her that he was about to call her bluff, big-time. She could always change her mind—it went without saying that he wasn’t going to force her into anything—but he was betting her pride wouldn’t let her back down. And since she’d said she wanted a trial run, she was going to have to be the one to call a halt.
She stood still for a moment in the elevator, then pushed past him into the hallway, marched to the door of her room and pushed it open. Of course, she could still slam it in his face. He certainly wouldn’t try to break it down.
He waited, fascinated and—he wouldn’t have denied it—horny as hell.
Molly left the door open.
He smiled to himself and followed her as far as the threshold. Stood there, waiting for a cue from her.
She dragged the T-shirt off over her head, threw it defiantly aside. Her bra was pink and lacy, a gossamer thing with about as much substance as a breath. He couldn’t be sure, with nothing but a little moonlight to go by, but he thought it had one of those catches at the front. One motion of his thumb and her breasts would spill, warm and deliciously natural, into his hands.
Keegan stepped into the room, closed the door and took off his shirt.
Molly waited a beat, then kicked off her boots.
Keegan, grinning a little in the semidarkness, did the same. Damn, but he’d been hoping the bra would go next, even though he relished the prospect of removing it personally.
She unsnapped her jeans, shimmied out of them, kicked them away. The moon gilded her slender thighs in silver. She was wearing a skimpy pair of panties, pink like the bra.
Keegan was so hard, it hurt. He unfastened his belt buckle, then his jeans. And he enjoyed the look of shock on Molly’s face, visible even in that thin light, when she realized he wasn’t wearing anything underneath.
He was naked.
She was still wearing panties and a bra.
She knew it was her move, and whatever else she was, she was a sport. She hooked her thumbs under the elastic in those panties and pushed them down. Stepped out of them.
He went to her then, more because he couldn’t not go to her than because he had any specific intention. He cupped her face in his hands, bent his head and kissed her—
Keegan’s lips seared Molly’s, and his tongue—well, if this kiss was anything to go by, he knew how to use it. The possibilities made her knees go weak, and she might actually have lost her balance if he hadn’t caught her, his hands strong on her bare hips, and held her upright.
And still the kiss went on.
She’d issued a challenge, down there in the kitchen and again when he’d paused on the threshold a few moments before. She’d expected him to backpedal, been surprised and thrilled when he hadn’t.
He broke off the kiss, stepped back a little way. Worked the front catch on her bra with an expertise that both galled her and vaporized her blood. He caught her breasts the instant they were free, and held them gently. Chafed the already-hard nipples—he’d noticed them in the kitchen, damn him—with the sides of his thumbs.
Molly, who had not been with a man since Thayer, well before Lucas was born, let her head fall back and groaned as Keegan caressed her. She might have told herself any man would have done, her need was that great, but she knew it wasn’t true.
Like it or not, Keegan McKettrick was the only game in town.
He took one of her nipples into his mouth.
Molly gasped and plunged her fingers into his hair, not to push him away, but to hold him closer. She was going to regret this, she was sure of it, but in the dizzy meantime, she intended to give herself up to every sensation.
Keegan eased her down onto the rumpled bed, still unmade. Stretched out beside her, agile and graceful, his hard body warm and solid.
He moved on top of her, and she was relieved.
He was going to take her.
She would come to her senses soon.
Taking her wrists in a gentle grip, he raised them high above her head, pressed them into the pillows. Kissed her again, languidly, but with an intimacy that left her dazed.
Take me, she pleaded silently, too proud to say the words aloud.
He didn’t, though. He moved down her body, still holding her wrists in his hands, nibbling at her neck, the upper rounding of her breasts and, finally, a nipple.
Molly groaned aloud.
Keegan chuckled, the sound a seduction in its own right, melting things inside her. He attended thoroughly to her other breast, and then guided her hands to the brass spokes of the headboard.
“You’d better hold on, Molly Shields,” he murmured.
She would think about his arrogance later. About his audacity—
Oh, God.
He was kissing her belly, parting her legs with a motion of his knee.
He wasn’t going to—he couldn’t be about to—
He was.
He went down on Molly, took her clitoris into his mouth with no hesitation whatsoever.
She arched her back, strangling on a moan.
He feasted on her, tongued her, draped her knees over his shoulders and suckled, now slowly, now greedily, until Molly was pleading incoherently, her body slick with perspiration. She wanted him inside her, she wanted what he was doing to her now to go on and on, forever.
She came to the brink of climax, everything within her tensing for the eruption, but he made her wait. He teased her, brought her back to
the edge, left her quivering there, withdrew again. Planted light kisses on the insides of her thighs.
“Oh, Keegan…” she whimpered.
“What?” he murmured.
“Do it. Please do it!”
“Do what?”
“Make—me—come…”
“Ummm,” he said, almost thoughtfully. And then she was full in his mouth again, and he was suckling in earnest.
She let go of the headboard and groped for his hair, buried her fingers in it, would not let him leave her.
The orgasm was shattering, like some enormous collision, fiery and ferocious. It would relent a little, then catch her up again, toss her helplessly about in some high, invisible place where she couldn’t catch her breath. Keegan drove her into the core of it, again and again, and when he finally lowered her to the bed, she was all but insensible with the echoing force of her release.
She felt his enormous erection against her.
He’d satisfied her completely—or so she thought. This part would be for him—she would play along. Pretend a little, if she had to.
Then he moved inside her.
There would be no pretending, she realized, beginning the climb again with the first long thrust.
She had thought the initial orgasm was the pinnacle.
She’d been wrong.
She locked her legs around Keegan’s thighs, tilted her hips up so she could receive everything he wanted to give her and take anything he might hold back, as well.
He raised himself onto his hands, hammered deeper into her, and then deeper still.
After several frenzied minutes they came together, with a ragged cry that might have come from either one of them but probably came from both, Keegan with his head thrown back, Molly sobbing and pressing into his back with her fingers, lest he somehow withdraw from her too soon.
But he didn’t.
She descended slowly, through a series of softer, ever softer releases, so sweetly intense that she groaned at each one. And at each one, Keegan stayed with her, still hard, still plunging deep.
When it was finally over, he lay down beside her, on his back, gasping for breath. He moved her easily to lie on top of him, and tugged up the blankets, keeping her snug.
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