by Ann Yost
“Inside you,” he whispered. He should have known she wouldn’t deny him.
This wasn’t a referendum on their relationship. It was about the rescue, pure and simple. And about her generosity. The sex could backfire, but maybe it could show her that what they had was real, that they could still connect on this level, that they still belonged together.
Her hands were on him now, and he shuddered as she joined their bodies. He looked at her through lidded eyes. “That feels good.” His voice was hoarse.
“So damn good.”
It was more than good. It was perfect.
His head fell back against the rim of the tub as she began to move on him, slowly, relentlessly working the sensitive tip, then sliding down the pulsing thickness. Jesus.
He cupped her face and pulled it toward him so he could fit his lips on hers. The sensation was so exquisite, the relief so profound. He never wanted this to end, but it would end. Soon. It was time to remind her of last December. He slipped his fingers between their bodies then he gently rubbed the female flesh where it was most sensitive. She let out a satisfying little sound.
“Yeah, baby,” he whispered. “That’s right. Come for me.”
Her small, inner muscles gripped him and milked him as she moved to create the almost unbearable friction. He was too close. His thumb pressed harder. He felt her body tense, then she shrieked and came apart in his hands.
He got only an instant to enjoy the intense satisfaction. His own climax came at him like a shotgun blast at close range. He groaned heavily and convulsed. He felt her arms around him as he spent himself inside her.
His face was buried in her shoulder. She stroked the muscles of his broad back while he struggled for oxygen. He was definitely warm enough now. His skin burned her fingers.
She couldn’t touch him enough. It felt like an addiction. She didn’t want to stop touching him. Not ever. She threaded her fingers through his wet hair.
Baz.
He felt so good. He smelled so good, soap, sure and aftershave, but mostly he smelled male.
Hallie hadn’t even realized how much she’d missed it. Missed him. She pressed her lips into the folds of his neck.
He’d been a genuine hero today, but he was also a healer and a searcher. He sought new ways to treat animals and to feed them. He ran a research lab at a large university, but he could vaccinate a puppy with gentle care. The man had so much to give. Not her, of course. She knew that. This was a moment out of time. But she felt a rush of gratitude that he’d come east to reconcile with his family. Because that was why he was here. He just didn’t know it yet.
“Hallie?”
She’d pulled his head against her breasts. His breath tickled her bare skin in the most tantalizing way. “Mmmmm?”
“We’re together now.”
She sighed. “Let’s not talk about this now.”
“We have to talk about it, sweetheart. You came to me with your eyes open. I want you to know this time you won’t be disappointed. I’ll never send you away again.”
She tried to keep her voice even. “This was a special circumstance, Baz. It was about the moment,about the cold. Let’s just enjoy this time together, okay?”
“I can’t enjoy it until you admit this is a new beginning.”
He wasn’t going to give up. Big surprise.
“It wasn’t a new beginning. I told you before. I like my new life. I’m not going back to L.A. There’s nothing you can say or do, Baz.” She kept her voice gentle. “I’ve made up my mind.”
He leaned back and regarded her from underneath his long lashes. “You may not have any choice. In case you didn’t notice, we failed to use protection. You might be pregnant as we speak.”
She held very still for a long moment. Then she carefully peeled herself away from him. At least she tried to. He was still inside her and, as far as she could tell, he was, once again, growing hard.
“Hallie? Did you hear me?”
“I’m not deaf. I’ve got to get out of here before Cam and Daisy get home.”
“You can’t leave.”
“You’re warmed up now.” She grabbed one of Jesse’s fluffy yellow towels and wrapped it around herself.
“My core temperature’s still low.”
She twisted on the hard length of him. “I doubt that.”
“I’m not sure I can get out of here by myself.”
She thought he probably could, but she wasn’t taking any chances. He’d lost a lot of energy this afternoon what with the battering accident and the industrial-strength climax. She reached down to help him out of the Jacuzzi. She tried not to look at all that masculinity. It wasn’t easy.
“Here’s a towel.” She flipped one over to him.
“I’ll get you a flannel shirt out of Cam’s closet. Your golf shirts aren’t going to keep the heat in.”
“I know a better way to keep the heat in. We’ll go out to your apartment and climb into bed.”
“I don’t think so.” She hurried to find warm clothes for him. She borrowed a sweat suit from Lucy’s closet for herself.
“You seem to know your way around here.”
He was right. It had felt like her second home until he arrived.
“I’ve spent some nights here, you know, watching Daisy, hanging out with Lucy, and playing pinochle with your dad.”
A shadow crossed his hard features, and her heart twisted. He was thinking about the way she’d enjoyed his family while he’d been alone in California.
“Cam and Daisy will be home any minute,” she said, as she hurriedly tidied up the bathroom. “If you need me, for some reason, call my cell.”
“I need you now.”
She shook her head. “Get some rest.”
“Hallie.”
“Yes?”
“I know it’s too soon for me to regain your trust, honey, but I meant what I said. I’ll make it up to you.”
“I don’t want to talk about this right now.”
He continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “You won’t be able to ignore it if you turn up pregnant.”
Pain turned to fury.
“Why are you doing this, Baz? Why show up here out of the blue? Did you think I just waited around for twelve months? I got on with my life.
You’re going to have to get on with yours, too.”
“I want to get on with it, only I want you with me. Last year you said you loved me, Hallie. You asked me to marry you and give you a baby. I know I’m late, honey, but I’m here now. Let’s do it. Let’s get married. Let’s have a family.”
Anger took away her breath. She was amazed she could find the words.
“It’s too late.”
“How can it be too late? You’re single. I’m single.
We’re not a hundred and five. We lost a year, but we’ll make up for it.” He grinned his lopsided grin.
“We’ll make up for it starting immediately.”
She closed her eyes and called on the last of her reserves. “People are allowed to change their minds.
I’ve changed mine.”
“I know I have to regain your trust, honey. I understand that. But surely you haven’t changed your goals. Having a baby was the most important thing in the world to you last year. Are you trying to tell me you don’t want to do that anymore?”
She stared at him. “I’m trying not to tell you I can’t do it anymore. But there’s no point. The baby ship has sailed, Baz. That’s the long and the short of it. It’s not on my radar screen anymore.”
“Is this about that damn sheriff?” His eyes flashed dangerously, and he waved his arms. The towel slipped on his slim hips. “He’s got a couple of kids so you don’t want to go through a pregnancy?
‘‘Cause I don’t believe it. I won’t believe it. You couldn’t have changed that much in one year.”
She was raw and hurting, and she just couldn’t fence with him. She couldn’t face three months of repeating this conversation, either. She knew Baz Outlaw.
He’d decided he wanted her, and he’d never give up until he fully understood that there wasn’t anything to want.
“You asked some questions, and I’m going to give you the answers. Please listen carefully, because I don’t want to talk about this again. I don’t have a boyfriend. I don’t want to marry anyone. I can’t marry anyone.” She kept her voice even and reasonable. “I’m not pregnant. I will never be pregnant. I can’t get pregnant. I told you last year that I had a small window of time when I had a good chance of conceiving. I am now clinically infertile.
The endometriosis sprinted to the finish line. My window is now as closed as this conversation.”
She started for the door. She heard a startled hiss.
“You can’t know that for sure that you’re infertile.”
“I’ve got a lab report that says otherwise.”
He cursed, harshly.
The back door opened and closed. Cam’s and Daisy’s voices wafted up the stairs. It was time to leave.
“This isn’t over, Halliday.”
She didn’t bother to respond. It had been over for some time now.
Hallie’s feet were frozen by the time she ran barefoot across the courtyard and climbed the outside steps to her apartment. She remembered she’d left her purse at the house along with her clothes, so she had to fumble for the extra key under the outside mat.
She slipped in the door. The dusk of early evening turned the furniture into lonely, ghostly shapes, but she didn’t turn on the lights. She didn’t want to encourage visitors tonight. She picked up the Storm-at-Sea quilt, designed and sewn by Jolene’s Aunt Rhonda, pulled it around her shoulders, then she curled into a corner of the worn chintz sofa.
Tomorrow she’d rise with the dawn and rejoin the human race. She’d take care of Eden’s pets, cultivate her friendships, enjoy the home she’d found in this small town. Tonight, though, she wanted to be alone to mourn again the loss of the child she’d wanted, and the man she’d loved.
I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if you were already pregnant.
Her eyes stung and she closed them.
****
Baz stood very still as water dripped down his body and pooled around his feet. There was a hundred-pound bowling ball on his chest, and his brain waves resembled a television screen full of snow.
He felt more helpless than he had in the icy river. What the hell had happened? The answer to that was almost too painful to face.
It was too late.
She’d said so repeatedly since he arrived on Christmas Eve. He just hadn’t realized she meant it literally.
Too late.
For some reason his mind flashed back to their first date some eighteen months ago. Oh, they hadn’t called it a date. They were co-workers, and Hallie had made it her mission to coax him out of the lab and into the real world. She’d gotten him to agree to a picnic, and, despite the thunderstorm outside, she’d shown up at his condo with a basket of tuna sandwiches, chips, fresh fruit, and pink lemonade.
He still remembered the pounding thunder and the lightning flashes. He still remembered watching the horizontal rain smack against his tall windows.
She’d insisted he take off his shoes and sit on the quilt she spread over his carpet. As soon as they’d eaten she’d produced a deck of cards.
“Poker?” he’d asked, hopefully.
She’d flashed him that million-mega-watt grin, the one where her hazel-golden eyes shone brightly enough to warm his insides. “Crazy Eights.”
He’d scoffed. “That’s a kid’s game.”
Her grin widened. “I know.”
He didn’t know why he’d agreed to it. He’d have preferred to watch the rain and listen to Bach, just as he’d have preferred wine and paté for lunch but, somehow, he couldn’t bear to disappoint her. He watched her deal. What kind of a woman kept a deck of cards in her purse? The question startled him. He never probed into the past.
“Did you play cards as a kid?”
She nodded and spoke without losing count.
“When my dad was alive, we played Poker and Go Fish, Slap Jack, Canasta, and Seven-Up.”
“And after he died?”
She laughed her musical laugh. “I tried to play both hands for a while. Eventually I got a library card.”
“No playmates?”
“I had a nanny for a while then a housekeeper until I went to boarding school.”
“I went to boarding school, too.” He paused. That was another thing he never did. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d volunteered information about himself.
“Any sisters and brothers?”
He didn’t want to open that can of worms, but he found himself loathe to see disappointment in those friendly hazel eyes. “One of each,” he said.
“What kinds of things did you do together?”
He found himself telling her about the forts he and Cam used to make under the sheets hanging in the backyard and the way they’d get cookies and milk from Asia then take it up to the tree house in the backyard where they’d pretend they were stranded on a desert island.
He told her about the big stone house in Eden and his dad’s practice in the clinic out back.
“What about your sister?”
“She’s younger. She was just a baby when I left.”
“When you left?”
He cursed himself. The conversation had become much too personal. “My folks divorced when I was fifteen. My mother and I moved to Colorado. The others stayed in Maine.”
“I’m sorry.” He heard the sincerity in her tone. It was as if she understood the devastation of a family break up. “Did you visit your dad in the summer?”
Baz thought about his mother. Evelyn Outlaw had been a hard woman who’d discovered infidelity in her marriage and had decided to punish her ex by splintering the family. He realized, for the first time, just how selfish she’d been.
“No. I haven’t been back.”
“And now?”
The golden gaze was full of empathy.
“I have no plans to go back.” Too much time had passed. The Outlaws weren’t his family anymore.
“Ah, Baz.”
Something gave inside him. Suddenly the Pandora’s Box opened, and the bitter memories spilled out. They somersaulted through him, stinging, hurting, wounding. It was like he was stuck in a nightmarish film reel until he felt her warm fingers on his wrist. The memories faded from black and white to gray until they were nearly invisible, until he felt exhausted but relieved. He felt her hand on his arm. He’d forgotten she was there.
“Don’t give me any advice,” he’d growled.
She’d nodded, solemnly. “Just remember, blood is thicker than water.”
She was as good as her word. They never again talked about Maine until that morning he’d sent her into exile there. He wondered now about his motivation. Had he known, on some level, he’d come after Hallie? Had he wanted an excuse to see his father again?
Father. He winced at the word. He didn’t know his father, and now he’d never know his son. Thanks to him Hallie wouldn’t get to have a child, so he’d never be a father again. Robert was his only chance.
And he’d left Robert.
Baz had gone over and over this. He’d always planned to leave Nicole. It was part of the bargain.
But it was one thing to tell a woman who was barely pregnant that he was leaving. It was something else to walk out on a month-old child.
He’d provided for them, but he knew, better than anyone, that money wasn’t enough. A kid needed caring parents. Robert had a teenage mom and no dad, and it was his fault.
What about Hallie? All she’d wanted was a child of her own, one person with whom she could share blood ties. Last year he could have given her that.
Now it was too late.
Hallie would never be a mother to a child of her own. She’d never share blood ties with anyone.
She’d probably never forgive him. He sure as hell wouldn’t forgive him
self.
The door burst open. Daisy rushed in, followed closely by Lucy and Cam. “You’re a hero, Uncle Baz,” the child said. She wrapped her arms around his knees.
“Everybody’s talking about it,” Lucy said. “It’s gonna be the lead story in the paper next week. I just know it.”
“How’s Hallie?” Cam asked. “Did she go back to the apartment to change before supper?”
“She’s beat,” Baz said. “I think she’s gonna eat something over there and go right to bed.”
“I wanna see her,” Daisy yelped. “I wanna tell her about the coloring book Lillie gived me.”
“Tomorrow.” Baz picked his niece up in his arms. Even though she weighed next to nothing, he was sort of surprised he’d found the strength. “Let’s let Hallie get some rest.”
“You sure she’s all right?” Lucy asked.
She wasn’t all right. She’d never be all right, and it was his fault. The least he could do was give her some privacy.
He forced a smile.
“She’s fine. C’mon. Let’s go down and find something for supper.”
“You know, Baz,” said his newly rediscovered sister, “you really are a hero. You risked your life for a perfect stranger.”
She had him nailed. He’d risk everything for a stranger. But for the woman he cared about he couldn’t do a goddam thing.
It was too late.
Chapter Six
The next morning Hallie pulled on chocolate brown corduroys and a fuschia pullover with an asymmetrical collar. When she’d arrived in Maine last year, she’d needed winter clothing. She’d figured bright colors would cheer her up. As result her closet was a rainbow.
She gazed into the mirror, and, while brushing her rich brown curls, she searched for the upside.
There was always an upside; usually she could find it.
It had been something of a relief to tell him.
Now that there were no more secrets since he understood her position, he’d leave her alone. He’d stay the three months because he was a man of his word. After that he’d return to L.A., and she could return to her life in Eden.
Except it wouldn’t be that easy. It was pretty obvious Jesse wanted Baz to stay or, at least, visit on a regular basis. How could she handle that? Could she bear to see him meet someone in Eden, marry and reproduce? Probably not. Could she deal with seeing him and his family a couple of times a year?