Hoodwinked

by Diana Palmer

"A bit of both." He touched the tiny sleeping face, and a wave of love so fierce that it made his cheeks ruddy washed over him. "My God, he's a miracle," he breathed.

  "Yes." Maureen reached out, grimacing as the incision pulled, and touched Jake's hand where it rested on the child's body over the soft blanket. "I love you, darling," she whispered. "Thank you for sticking it out with me."

  For he'd been there every second through her long labor, right up until the time they'd wheeled her into surgery. They'd prepared for natural childbirth, but something had gone wrong at the last minute.

  "He's mine, too," he reminded her. His hand curled around hers and his eyes darkened. "Like you."

  "You aren't sorry you married me?" she teased sleepily.

  "I'm sorry it took me so long to find you," he replied, and he wasn't laughing. His eyes softened as he looked at her tired face. "I've never said the words, have I?" he asked quietly. "Not even when we made love."

  "You wouldn't have stayed with me if you hadn't cared a little," she replied evasively.

  His fingers edged between hers and he looked at her entwined hands and at their little boy, sleeping so peacefully in his arms. "I had to learn what love was before I could feel it, or express it," he said simply. "I learned that it's selfless. It puts the other person's feelings first, the other person's needs first. It never demands, it only accepts." He lifted his dark, steady eyes to hers. "Gibran said that love can't be directed, that if it finds you worthy, it directs your course." His fingers contracted around hers while her heart ran wild. "Will it shock you to learn that it's been directing my course for quite some time now, Maureen?"

  Her lips parted. "It shouldn't," she confessed. "But I think it does. You're so private"

  "I love you," he said gruffly, his eyes blazing with it. "Deathlessly. Obsessively. I don't even know when it became love, but I know when I realized it. It was the day I came back from Chicago and you met me at the airport. You looked as if I'd hit you, and I felt sick at the things I'd said. I'd missed you so terribly, and I couldn't even tell you. Then we went back to my apartment, after we'd bought the house." He smiled wickedly. "And I told you something I'd never told anyone. That was when you made love to me. And somewhere in the middle of it, I knew that you were my world."

  She colored at the sweetness of the memory and her fingers curled lovingly around his. "I knew that about you from the very beginning, Mr. MacFaber." She smiled. "Even if I didn't know your name, you've been my world since the first time I saw you."

  "Maybe life would have been less complicated if I'd been that mechanic."

  "It would have. But I don't love you any less as you truly are." She touched their son's sleeping face. "And he won't, either. You'll be his whole world, too."

  He had to swallow twice before he could answer her. It was new, to admit love and hear it spoken of so openly. But he liked it. He liked it very much.

  He lifted dark eyes to hers and smiled. "I guess it's a good thing that I've delegated some authority at the corporation, then, isn't it?" he murmured. "Things are going to be a lot less complicated from now on. I'll have an occasional trip out of town, but I'll be home most nights and on weekends."

  "Jake!"

  "Shocked? I told you. I love you. I can't very well be a proper husband and father if I'm never home."

  "But the corporation"

  "Is no longer my life," he said simply. He brought her hand to his mouth and kissed it hungrily. "You are," he said, and the tone of his voice made her skin tingle.

  "We can go on picnics," she whispered. "And have birthday parties for Joshua."

  "And his brothers and sisters," he added with a purely masculine glitter in his dark eyes.

  She caught her breath, and her own eyes began to sparkle. "Oh, darling!" she whispered.

  "There's just one thing," he said, and he looked so somber that Maureen felt apprehensive.

  "What?" she asked worriedly.

  "Could you please ask Mrs. Candles to stop making chicken crepes?"

  "But it's your favorite dish!" she exclaimed.

  "It was, until we had it every night for two weeks," he said through his teeth.

  She burst out laughing. "I'll save you, don't worry. We'll never have chicken crepes again."

  "Good."

  "We'll have beef crepes instead."

  He started to say something, but young Joshua moved and opened his tiny eyes. And the playful banter got lost somewhere in the wonder of two new parents looking at their infant son.

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