She pulled herself together. “You weren’t around.”
“You knew I wouldn’t be far away.”
“I knew no such thing.” She began to pick her way across the clearing. She’d convinced herself that last night’s tenderness, the kisses and caresses, had been a fluke, a mistake. And nothing had happened today to make her think that he wanted to expand upon the kisses they’d shared last night. On their last night in the cabin at Silverthorne, their last night of relative safety, they’d been two lonely people, and she’d been scared, and Sam had comforted her. That’s all there was to it.
But now Kerry didn’t want to look at him. She didn’t want to talk to him. She didn’t even want to touch him.
Evidently he felt differently. He stepped into her path, blocking her way. And then his arms were around her and his head was against the top of hers, a warm hug that she felt from the top of her head all the way to the tip of her toes. It wasn’t sexual, that hug. And yet it wasn’t entirely platonic.
“I’m sorry,” Sam said. His lips and breath were warm against her temple. “Really sorry.”
This fervent apology, offered for no apparent reason, made her snap to attention. She repositioned herself so she could look up into his brooding eyes. “I want this baby. Doug and I wanted it.”
She expected him to acknowledge that this was true, to accede the validity of her statement. But his eyes were deep, sorrowful. She had the idea that he just didn’t understand. Well, what had she expected? This was Sam, Sam Harbeck. Understanding was not his strong suit. He was looking at her with—what? Was it pity? Or was it something else?
She didn’t know what else to say. Even though she thought she knew where he was coming from, she remained nonplused that he wasn’t happy for her. People were always happy about babies. And this one was going to be such a blessing. She inhaled a steadying breath of the frosty air.
“Look,” Sam said suddenly. His face was turned toward the sky.
It was the aurora borealis, the northern lights, and they were arrayed across the sky in all their glory. Kerry had seen them before, but never had they been so lively, the multicolored streamers seeming to dance on the wind.
“Sometimes I think I can hear them, out in the bush. They crackle.”
“Let’s listen,” she breathed, but all they heard was the gentle soughing of the breeze in the trees.
“So beautiful,” Kerry said, and Sam said, “Yes.” But when she glanced at him, she knew he wasn’t talking about the northern lights.
“I think we’d better go inside where it’s warm” was all she said.
Inside the hut the air was damp with evaporated moisture from their drying socks and coats. Sam didn’t bother to light a candle, but proceeded to pull off his boots and his coat in the dark. She did, too. Then they each crawled into their separate sleeping bags.
She didn’t know how long Sam lay awake, but exhaustion finally caught up with her and she fell into a deep and profound sleep.
KERRY WOKE in darkness to see Sam silhouetted against the window in the starlight.
“Sam?” She elbowed herself to a sitting position. “What are you doing up?”
“I heard something.”
“Like what?”
“A noise. A wolf howl.” He turned, and she couldn’t see his face. She couldn’t see anything about him except his shape.
“I thought I heard one earlier.”
“Well, there’s no sign of any wolves now.” His tone was brusque.
“What time is it?”
“Around midnight.” He opened the door of the stove and shoved in a piece of wood. “That should keep us until dawn.” The small square of flame lit his face. Kerry thought he looked sad, unsettled. The corners of his mouth were drawn down, and for the first time since she’d known him, he’d lost that jaunty devil-may-care quality.
After he’d slammed the stove door, Kerry pulled the sleeping bag up and around her shoulders. “I’m wide awake,” she said.
Sam eased himself down onto his sleeping bag and plumped his parka into a pillow. “So am I.”
They didn’t speak for several minutes, just listened to each other’s breathing. All she could see of Sam was his dark silhouette against the small window. He didn’t lie down.
Kerry didn’t get any sleepier. If anything, she felt more wide awake.
“Sam?”
“What?”
“I know you’re angry with me.”
Sam let out his breath in a giant sigh. “I’m not angry with you,” he said quietly.
“I wish you could be happy for me.”
Happy for her? Sam said nothing. A knot of guilt wrapped itself around his gut, and that was all he could feel at the moment.
“Did Doug ever talk to you about our problems? About the fact that we couldn’t have a baby?”
This put him on the spot, but he decided that there wasn’t anything he could do but be truthful. “He told me,” he said.
“I wanted children—we both did—more than anything in the world.”
“Well, looks like you’re getting your wish,” Sam said gruffly.
“We had already made arrangements with a fertility center. I was going there to be inseminated in the next couple of weeks when Doug—when his plane crashed. Naturally I had a lot of second thoughts in the months after he died, but I decided to go ahead with the insemination four months ago. I think that’s what Doug would have wanted.”
Sam rubbed his eyes with the thumb and forefinger of one hand. In his present crisis of conscience, he had no idea how to reply to this.
“Don’t you think so, too, Sam? Don’t you think I’m doing the right thing?”
In that moment all Sam could think about was Doug’s relief when he, Sam, had volunteered to be the donor. And how happy Doug had been that Kerry would get her baby. And how they’d made a vow of silence never to reveal to her that Sam was the true father of the child. “I’m sure Doug would approve,” Sam said. It was the best way to answer such a loaded question. He wasn’t sure Kerry had done the right thing, but he couldn’t tell her that because then she’d demand to know why. And now that there actually was a baby, now that the destruction of that vial of his sperm was no longer relevant, his lips must remain sealed out of loyalty to his best friend and the vow that they had made never to reveal to Kerry the child’s true parenthood.
“I hope you’ll eventually be glad that I’m happy,” Kerry said in such a lost voice that Sam stood up and walked back to the window. He couldn’t look at her.
But he couldn’t not look at her. The hut was so small that he couldn’t help seeing her out of the corners of his eyes, and he noticed the way her hair fell softly to her shoulders, the way the sleeping bag was pulled up to her neck and the determined set of her chin. And more than that, the sweet curve of her jawline, the winging of her brows. The parting of her lips.
It was getting too warm in here by far. He shouldn’t have put that last log on. It was heating the hut into an oven, and maybe he’d better go open the door, let fresh air in for a few minutes until the temperature normalized.
Kerry must have thought the same thing because she was shaking her shoulders free of the folds of the sleeping bag, exposing her shoulders and her breasts, but she had on clothes, red thermal underwear that molded to her slight frame and left little to the imagination. He turned to go to the door, but as he did, she slid fluidly out of the sleeping bag and came to stand beside him at the window.
He took in the gentle rounding of her belly, her swollen breasts, the slope of her shoulders, her long, long legs. The top of her underwear had a deep V neck, and he thought about how good it would feel to bury his face in the hollow between her breasts.
He turned, thinking to go to open the door, but in the process he brushed up against her and her arm slid up and around his neck. He couldn’t believe it; he hadn’t expected this. He caught his breath, not daring to believe this was really happening and afraid to hope.
&nb
sp; “Hold me, Sam,” she whispered. “Just for a minute.”
He caught her other hand, the one that no longer wore Doug’s ring, and placed it against his chest. His heart speeded up, and her hand rested there for a moment before it slid upward to join her other one. In that moment Sam knew that he no longer considered her Doug’s wife. By now, Kerry was the mother of his child, his child! And that made everything different—every look, every nuance, every wish he’d entertained since he first laid eyes on her.
The tender and passionate feelings he felt for her in that moment sprang from the bottom of his soul. He closed his eyes, certain that she could read these things in their depths and not at all sure that he wanted her to. He gathered her close, reveling in the smoothness of her cheek, the warmth of her body against his. She was going to have his baby. That made her all the more precious to him.
Kerry had never been overtly seductive, but she was so sensual and so devastatingly beautiful that he couldn’t have helped desiring her from the very first night he had spent in the cabin with her. All this time he had been wanting, waiting, and he didn’t want to wait any longer. He wanted her with all the pent-up longing a man could feel. He wanted to kiss her breasts, her hair and her eyelids. He wanted to lie beside her in the cold dark night and warm her with his body. With his heart.
He slid his hands down to her buttocks and ground her tight against him, so tight that she uttered a little gasp. He released her immediately. “I didn’t mean to hurt you,” he said.
But, surprising him, she only laughed low in her throat. “It didn’t hurt. I’m strong as an ox, Sam. You should know that by now.”
He should, but he didn’t. Her bones beneath his fingertips felt so fragile and delicate. He explored them, moving his fingers down her vertebrae one by one, along her arms to the elbows, then back up again and under her arms to her ribs, then down to her hipbones. He avoided the area where the baby was. He was reluctant to touch her there because he thought it might hurt, but she seemed to sense his curiosity and cupped one of his hands over her abdomen.
“That’s what it feels like,” she said softly. “Not too scary, is it?”
He shook his head, speechless because he knew that beneath the palm of his hand, floating in its own special world, was a major miracle, his child.
She smiled at him tremulously, her eyes shadowy so he couldn’t read their expression, but somehow he knew what they were saying and he replied in the best way he knew, which was to crush her mouth beneath his, her luscious mouth, exploring her in excruciatingly passionate detail—tongue, teeth, lips, all of it. And when he had finished, although he thought he would never be finished, must return to drink of her kisses again and again, he drifted his mouth downward to her neck and twined his hands in her bountiful hair, his lips exploring the cool hollow of her throat, the shadow between her breasts.
His hands slid under her long-sleeved knit underwear. She wasn’t wearing a bra, and his hands molded to her breasts as if made to fit. The nipples puckered at his touch, were hard against his fingers. He was surprised, but then not surprised, when she pulled the top up and over her head in one swift motion and tossed it on the bunk. She tugged at his shirt. “Now you,” she said.
Moments later he was glad that he hadn’t opened the door after all, because the temperature in the hut was toasty warm and comfortable for two people who stood before each other wearing nothing, absolutely nothing at all.
Kerry felt suddenly self-conscious and shy. She’d wanted this to happen, and now, paradoxically, she was apprehensive. She wasn’t sure whether her desire was born of loneliness, desperation or a need for reassurance. And maybe it was something else, an unexpected thread of emotion that curled up from somewhere deep inside her.
She studied the dark whorls of hair on his chest, refusing to lock her eyes with his in those long moments when she thought that this might be a terrible mistake. He curved his hand to her waist, urged her toward him, and she thought that of all the ways she had come to know Sam Harbeck in the past few days, this was the most momentous. And then she couldn’t think at all.
He held her carefully at first, like he might hold a carton of eggs, but she nestled up against him and said, “I won’t break, Sam.”
He chuckled into her hair, and it was an exultant sound, and it made her feel happy. Happy that they were doing this. Happy to be with Sam.
He kissed her then, nothing restrained about it, and his hands cupped her breasts and played across her nipples until she thought she’d go mad with the wanting of him. Her own hands strayed downward, down, down, until she touched the nest of curls there, and he was ready for her, all ready, but she thought she needed more time.
“Over here,” she whispered, and she led him to the bunk where her sleeping bag cushioned the narrow ledge, and she pulled him down on top of her. His weight was welcome, hard, and he kept kissing her, and she kissed him back, and he kissed her up the slope of her jawline to her ear, leaving a damp trail, and she hid her face in his neck and wanted to say his name over and over, but didn’t.
After spending the past few days together, the smell of him was achingly familiar, and so was the shape of him even though she had never explored it with her hands before. Now she did, as much as they could when she was pressed up against the wall that was so cold against her back.
He began to move against her, slowly at first, carefully supporting himself above her so she wouldn’t be hurt. There was no question of lying side by side or any other way except one on top of the other, and with Sam on top she was so comfortable, felt so overwhelmed by him that she had no thought of wanting it to be any other way. Her hands skimmed his back, the muscles tensing there, and the ones lower. He levered above her, his face working with emotion, and said, “Am I hurting you?”
She shook her head, pulled him fiercely down upon her, guided him into her softness. He murmured indistinctly against her hair, and she gasped at the utter strangeness of him inside her, and then they found a rhythm and silently pursued it. It was so quiet, so still, that the sound of their own breathing seemed magnified, so much so that soon there was only sensation and their breathing, each one containing the other. And because the bunk confined them so closely, Kerry couldn’t tell where Sam began and she ended. And then passion took over, became paramount, and she gasped against his cheek, saying his name over and over until it became her breathing, her pulse, her everything.
When it was over, when their breathing had slowed to normal, Sam sat up and pulled the edge of the sleeping bag over her. He wove a strand of her hair between his thumb and forefinger, smoothing it, and then he let that one go and did the same thing with another one. “You are very beautiful, Kerry,” he said.
She smiled at him, replete. “I’m glad you think so,” she said.
He looked as if he might want to say something else, but he didn’t. He leaned down and kissed her lightly on the cheek. “Time to go to sleep,” he said. “We have another long walk facing us tomorrow.”
She didn’t want to think about that now. She didn’t answer. She didn’t want to be apart from him on this night. She wanted to sleep safely enfolded in his strong arms.
He stood up and went back to his sleeping bag, scuffed his fallen clothes out of the way.
“Wait, Sam, I’m coming along,” she said, and then she got up and dragged her own sleeping bag down to the floor.
“Wouldn’t you be more comfortable on the bunk?” Sam said, wrinkling his forehead at her in that utterly charming way of his.
“Not on your life,” Kerry said firmly. “Help me zip these bags together.” The bags, once connected, made a snug nest on the floor.
“Well, I didn’t suspect that one of those creepy-crawlies on the floor that you referred to earlier would be me,” Sam said as they both climbed inside.
She laughed and snuggled close. Sam wrapped his arms around her, tucked her face against his shoulder, and the last thought she had before falling asleep was, This feels so right.
RIGHT OR WRONG? was what Sam thought as soon as he woke in the morning.
He was a believer in situational ethics. That is, he preferred to let the situation dictate morality. Oh, there were certain absolutes—stealing was always wrong, and kindness was always right. But the gray areas in between could be handled in whatever way seemed appropriate at the time. However, in all his life, Sam Harbeck had never slammed up against a situation remotely like this one. Nor had anyone else he’d ever known.
He gazed down at Kerry, her body curved to fit his, her hair rioting across his chest. She had been so passionate last night. So loving. So—needy? No, he wasn’t sure that would be the word. This was an independent woman, but at the same time she wasn’t afraid to show her vulnerability. For him, that made the utmost difference. He’d never come across a woman who was strong enough to let him see who she really was in her most defenseless moments.
The morning’s light looked gloomy and gray. He woke Kerry with a kiss, and she opened her eyes and smiled at him. Her smile was like sunshine on such a dreary day.
He boosted himself out of the sleeping bag first and went to the window. A low-lying cloud cover brushed the top of the trees.
“How does the weather look?” Kerry wanted to know. She reached for her long underwear and pulled on first the bottom, then the top, staying inside the sleeping bag where it was warm.
“It doesn’t look good.” He glanced back at her. He liked the way she looked with tousled hair.
“Then we’d better start right away.” She scrambled out of the sleeping bag.
“Maybe we should stay here. I’ll go out and take a look around, bring back some water from the creek to heat for washing.”
“Good. I’ll use yesterday’s water to start breakfast.” She was already tearing the tops off packets of oatmeal.
Sam donned jeans, a T-shirt and a heavy wool shirt. He kept sending covert glances in Kerry’s direction, studying the way she looked in that red underwear. She had a great figure, and you could hardly detect the bulge in front. Last night during their lovemaking he hadn’t thought about it at all. She was a woman who left no room for thought. With her, it was just feelings—mental, physical and emotional.
That's Our Baby! Page 16