The Daddy Decision

by Donna Sterling

  Then he noticed a sheen springing to her eyes. She pivoted away, as if to study the antique mantel.

  ″Laura?” He frowned, pressed closer and peered around her shoulder to see her face. “Are you disappointed with the house?”

  “Of course not. It’s...” she swallowed spasmodically ″. . .beautiful,” she croaked.

  He stared at her in absolute confoundedness.

  She averted her face again, and after a moment, in a strained voice that seemed to be holding back tears, said, “How could I be disappointed? The details are exquisite. Like the carving in here—the mantel, the cornices, the overdoor swags. It’s the work of a master carver. Probably Millard.”

  He nodded. He’d been told as much.

  She faced him, her eyes glossy, her bottom lip noticeably taut. “And did you know that the tile in the dining room mantel is James M. Beath’s artwork?”

  “No, I didn’t know,” he replied cautiously. “But that’s not a bad thing, is it?”

  “And the chimney breast in the drawing room...well, it’s. . .” she shrugged, as if unable to find words “. . .it’s a nineteenth-century masterpiece.” A tear escaped and rolled down her cheek.

  Bewildered, frustrated and helpless in the face of feminine tears, he spread his hands out wide. “Then what’s wrong?”

  “Nothing,” she whispered, dashing away a teardrop as another formed. “It’s just that I remember when you slept on a mattress on the floor because you didn’t have a frame and box spring. And you drove a c-crummy old Chevy with a cracked windshield, and sometimes ate peanut butter sandwiches or oatmeal for days.”

  “But what does that have to do with—”

  “You said you liked peanut butter sandwiches and oatmeal. I used to think that was s-so cute. I never really understood that you just couldn’t afford—”

  “I was a kid back then,” he interjected, annoyed by the memories he preferred to forget. “None of that meant anything.”

  “It did mean something. You worked six days a week running that bar and grill, and the night shift at a factory.”

  “So what? I needed the money.”

  “Yes, you did.” She smiled at him through her tears with such affection his heart stood still. “Yet you bought Steffie everything she needed. You insisted she stay in school. And when any of the others were having problems and couldn’t come through with their share of the rent, you never hassled them. You let them live in the house until they could pay. The electric company turned off the lights one time and your car was almost repossessed, but you. . .”

  “I did what I had to do,” he cut in, uncomfortable with the direction of the conversation. “Nothing more, nothing less.” If she knew the things he’d resorted to during the worst of times—before she’d even met him, actually—she wouldn’t think much of him at all.

  “You’re getting upset just thinking about being broke, aren’t you?” Her voice sounded tight and tear-laden again. “I knew you would. Like that Christmas when I gave you a leather jacket and you wouldn’t take it You said you forgot to buy me anything.” Fresh tears welled up. “But I saw the box you shoved under the mattress.” Her lips trembled. “It was a scarf.”

  He gaped at her, incredulous that she’d known about that cheap, silly gift he’d hidden from her. “You opened it?”

  “It was a beautiful scarf,” she whispered harshly.

  He closed his eyes, almost as humiliated now as he would have been back then. “I bought it at a drugstore for a couple of bucks.”

  “I would have loved it.”

  He clenched his jaw against a swell of self-directed anger. He shouldn’t have bought the damn thing to start with. It might have fallen apart around her neck, or the dye might have stained the expensive clothes she always wore. At least, they’d seemed expensive to him back then. “For God’s sake, Laura, that was fifteen years ago. You’re upset with me now for not giving you that scarf?”

  “You think I’m upset because I wanted the scarf?” She stared at him as if he’d lost his mind. “The scarf has nothing to do with it!”

  Never, never would he understand this woman! He gripped her by the shoulders and sat her down beside him on the immense Italian-leather sofa, one of the few pieces of furniture he’d chosen to keep. “Then why m the hell,” he demanded in soft, wretched puzzlement, “are you crying? ”

  She seemed to get choked up all over again. “Because you thought I would think less of you for giving me an inexpensive gift. You thought it would be better to say you forgot to buy me one at all.” Her brown eyes shimmered. “And now you have so much. Millions of dollars, the finest of cars, the most b-beautiful house I’ve ever seen.”

  Despite his concern and bewilderment, gladness seeped into his chest The most beautiful house she’d ever seen. So she was affected by the place, the same way he was. Which meant he wasn’t entirely delusional in believing he could keep her happy here.

  He tightened his grip on her shoulders and pulled her closer, moving his hands in a lightly kneading massage, savoring the warm, vital feel of her. “My rise in fortune is a good thing, Laura,” he whispered, caressing her forehead with his chin. “Trust me on this.”

  She pulled back and gazed at him with an agonized tenderness that spread warmth to every part of his body. “Yes, and I’m happy for you. But the way you were watching me, waiting to see if I liked your car and your house...” another tear spilled over her spiky lower lashes “...as if my approval meant something so...so personal....”

  Her insight disturbed him. Her approval did mean something very, very personal to him. How could he explain that, though, when he barely understood it himself?

  “I get the feeling,” she whispered, “that you believe these fine, expensive things are more important than they really are.”

  “No, hell no,” he gruffly reassured her, glad for something he could honestly deny. “Things are just things.” He slid his hands along her damp, silken face, cradled it between his palms and gently wiped away her tears with his thumbs. He still hadn’t grasped the exact cause of her anguish, but she felt strongly enough about it to cry—and it was clearly over him. The warmth within him turned needful.

  “You can afford to give a woman incredible gifts now,” she went on with a catch in her tremulous voice, “that might even change her life. But that could mean that you never recognize the most valuable thing you have to offer.”

  Distracted by a need so great it made him dizzy, he angled his head and pressed his lips to her tear-dampened cheek. He’d waited so long to feel her skin beneath his mouth again. The sweet, salty, velvet texture filled him with a delicious ache.

  “I’m afraid you′ll sell yourself short,” she whispered.

  He murmured a vague, fervent promise and brushed his mouth down the curve of her face, lost to everything but the feel, the scent, the taste of her.

  She closed her eyes. Parted her lips. And drew in a long, audible breath.

  By the time he reached her mouth, he was hot, hard and driven. Deeply, passionately, he kissed her.

  6

  LAURA SLID HER ARMS around his neck and sank into the sultry pleasure of his kiss. She needed this—the hot, intimate contact with him; the deep, urgent thrusting of his tongue; the flare of answering fire within her. Ah, yes, she needed this!

  The pressure in her heart had grown too great to bear otherwise. He had watched her through dark, veiled eyes, waiting for her reaction to his car and house as if her approval meant something personal and vital. The vulnerability seemed so at odds with his toughness, his strength, his unwavering self-assurance.

  She ached with the knowledge of that secret vulnerability, because she wasn’t the person who could fill his underlying need. He’d told her so before he’d left her—I don’t love you, Laura. And isn’t that what she believed he needed—someone to love, someone who would love him? Isn’t that why she had cried—because she feared his riches would buy him someone who didn’t?

  The sensuo
us play of his tongue in her mouth coaxed her away from her emotional turmoil, distracting her with seductive sensations she felt only with him; the hot, virile flavor she tasted only in his kiss. He could lure her so easily into the sweetest delirium.

  But she pulled back, too troubled to let herself go. “I told you last week that I hated you.” Anxiously she searched his swarthy, rugged face. “You...you don’t think I’m kissing you now because of your car or your house, do you?”

  A glimmer of amusement flashed through the fierce desire in his gaze. “You’re forgetting my ego.” He pulled the pins from her hair and freed it to tumble in an unruly cascade around her shoulders. Weaving his fingers through its heaviness, he returned his stare to hers. The amusement had fled, leaving only serious heat. “I’m egotistical enough to believe that you’d be kissing me,” he whispered hoarsely, “even if I were some poor factory worker with a beat-up old Chevy and peanut butter for every meal.”

  An emotion too strong to be called tenderness overpowered her, and she met him in a hard, openmouthed kiss. His arms came around her, crushing her to him. She reveled in the muscled breadth of his chest; the strength of his body; the arousingly masculine scent of his skin.

  He groaned and pushed her down onto the sofa.

  Their kisses grew longer, more voluptuous. She’d forgotten how intoxicating the taste of him could be. How each kiss heightened the need to merge with him; to draw him in ever deeper. How the longing could grow desperate.

  The parry and thrust turned too rough, too needful. He drew back with a hard exhalation of breath, his stare smoldering through the sensual haze he’d submerged her in. “I never forgot you, Laura,” he rasped. “I never stopped wanting you.”

  She believed him, because she’d never stopped wanting him. Heat and emotion seared through to her heart, and she tangled her fingers in the thick, silky hair at his nape, pulling him down for another kiss. He thoroughly possessed her mouth, then moved to her jaw, her chin, her throat. Her body arched uncontrollably at the hot, wet glide of his tongue across her skin.

  A fiercely erotic appreciation pulsed through her. How she loved the feel of his mouth on her! And his hands, which now coursed down her body, kneading every curve, branding her with heat through the soft knit of her dress. She writhed beneath his touch, fanning the urgency between them.

  He didn’t spend much time on any particular area, and she fervently approved, ruled by the same driving need to connect in a larger, more full-bodied way. To rediscover. Repossess. They’d been without each other for too long. Sensual artistry could wait until this voracious, elemental hunger had been fed.

  He returned to her mouth for a ravenous kiss and used both hands to mold her body to his.

  She moaned at the pleasure, the rightness, the relief of reuniting with him in tight alignment from mouth to thigh. He felt harder and stronger than she remembered, yet they still fit together so well. So very, very well. Except she needed to twine her legs around his powerful hips. And to grind her breasts against his muscled chest. Slide her hands beneath his shirt along his sweat-dampened skin... his lean waist...his sinewy back and wide, taut shoulders. She needed all of this, and nothing would stop her from luxuriating in it.

  He broke from their kiss, reared up and ran his palms around the curves of her hose-covered legs, which she’d wrapped around him. His face had beaded with sweat; his chest expanded and contracted. He pushed her dress up higher, his heated gaze following his hands. Slowly he rounded her hips, splayed his fingers around her bottom... lifted her, tilted her....

  Closing his eyes, he leaned in and rocked his straining arousal against her intimate softness. She gasped and arched against the denim-clad pillar in a reflexive undulation that sent the need shooting sharply through her.

  A groan rose in his throat, and he released her, only to hook his fingertips into the waistband of her hose to pull them down. She almost helped him, nearly faint with the longing to feel him push inside her, deep and hard and ultimately explosive.

  But reason—cold, cruel reason—flooded back in a sickening rush. She couldn’t go that far! She shouldn’t have gone as far as she had! Her inner woman had somehow blinded her to practical matters, goading her beyond prudence, beyond fairness.

  “Cort, stop,” she cried, catching at his dark, muscled forearms. “We’ve got to stop. I’m not using any kind of birth control.”

  He stared at her with stark, sexual hunger, and she wasn’t sure her words had even registered. But he finally uttered between harsh pants of breath, “Condoms. Have ’em in my wallet.”

  “No. That won’t do. A condom could break.”

  He shook his head, his dark face glistening. “No, no, it won’t break.” He released his hold on the waistband of her panty hose...and swept the back of his fingers down in a long caress to the damp silk between her legs. Shutting his eyes, he swore in a hoarse, tremulous whisper, “I promise you, Laura, it won’t.”

  Ripples of quicksilver sensation coursed through her loins at the slow, provocative stroke of his fingers, and she gritted her teeth against the desire to welcome him inside. A little sob lodged in her throat. She caught and held his hand. “You can’t promise me that, and you know it.”

  Comprehension gradually stole across his face, and she knew he remembered. How could he not? They’d used condoms on such a frequent, regular basis that they’d barely given them a thought, until one had broken. He’d insisted she test for pregnancy as soon as she could get a reliable result. She had sensed such excruciating anxiety in him.

  And when they’d learned she wasn’t pregnant, the anxiety hadn’t entirely dissipated. He’d left her a few short weeks later. She couldn’t help but believe that his fear of her pregnancy had driven the first wedge between them. She understood his concern much more clearly now, of course. A baby would have meant countless complications, a moral dilemma and financial disaster.

  Cort propelled himself forward and shifted to lie beside her on the sofa, pulling her into his arms and earnestly holding her gaze. “That condom was probably old when I bought it.”

  “We don’t know that. It might have just been defective.”

  “A condom hasn’t broken on me since, Laura. That was a single freak occurrence, and you can’t stay away from sex because of it.”

  “I’m in the most fertile part of my cycle,” she whispered.

  He stared at her, digesting the information, then let out a harsh breath and tightened his arms around her. “So we′ll drive to the drugstore and pick up some other form of birth control to use along with a condom. They’ve got all kinds, don’t they? Foams and gels and so on.”

  “None of them are foolproof. I have friends who can testify to that. Besides, I won’t use those kinds of chemicals right now. I know that might sound overly cautious, but I′ve been studying this subject, and...well...” She felt her face flood with color. “I′m preparing my body for pregnancy.”

  Again, he wordlessly stared.

  To dear up any confusion that the seeming contradiction might have caused, she haltingly added, “But of course, I can’t risk getting pregnant by the wrong man.”

  Cort wasn’t sure why those softly spoken words hit him as hard as they did. They knocked the very breath out of him. They ricocheted through him like bullets off an alley wall. The wrong man. She couldn’t make love to him, couldn’t risk getting pregnant with his baby, because he was the wrong man.

  And nothing he could say or do—no sum he could pay—would change that fact. He was, and always had been, the wrong man for her.

  An almost unbearable pressure throbbed in his loins, in his head, in his heart. He wanted her so much he hurt. But he also wanted her happiness.

  Gathering her to his chest, he held her close, stroked her hair and uttered into its fragrant, silky thickness, “It’s okay. I don’t blame you for stopping.” He swallowed against a painful swelling in his throat “Because you’re right. As slim as the risk of pregnancy might be...” he clenched hi
s teeth and finished on a whisper “...we can’t take that chance.”

  THE HOUSE, with all its grand potential and intriguing possibilities, engaged Laura’s attention for the rest of that afternoon, keeping her absorbed enough—or almost enough—to disregard the constant ache beneath her breastbone that had formed when Cort walked out.

  If he had been angry or sullen, her emotions would have been much easier to handle. But he’d held her with such tenderness that moisture had welled again in her eyes.

  After he’d released her and risen from the sofa, he told her he had work to finish at the office. He took her luggage to a bedroom, showed her the garage where his two other cars were parked and gave her the key to the one she chose. He led her to the kitchen and encouraged her to help herself to anything she wanted. His housekeeper, he’d informed her, had prepared a supper of roasted chicken, rice and vegetables, which Laura should take from the refrigerator and heat up whenever she was ready.

  He wasn’t sure when he himself would be back. He gave her a phone number where he could be reached. But as he spoke, he didn’t look at her, or come near her. He certainly didn’t touch her. And he left without a smile.

  She set immediately to work, exploring the house and its graceful, stately features, absorbing the ambience of each room. She jotted down notes, sketched ideas and formulated questions to pose to Cort regarding his selections. She refused to dwell on personal matters between them, or the complicated feelings roiling within her—regret, frustration, unfulfilled longing.

  But as the hours crept into late afternoon and early evening, those feelings intruded more and more. She’d wanted so much to make love to him! Was she being overly cautious in refusing to depend on a condom? She had to admit that she hadn’t known one to break in fifteen years. But neither had she fully trusted one. She hadn’t gone off the Pill until a few months ago...and hadn’t been intimate with anyone since long before that.

  How much of a risk would it actually be to make love to Cort, protected only by a condom? The answer, of course, depended on how bad the situation would be if she became pregnant by him.