“You have?” she asked, a soft quiver in her voice.
“I have.” He ran a hand lightly up the thigh of her fleece pants, his gaze holding hers. “I can’t get last night out of my mind.”
She quirked her lips. “I acted like a child.”
“No, you didn’t,” he corrected gently. “What I remember most is that you kissed me. Do it again, Libby. Now.”
It occurred to her to wonder how this could be happening. But he’d lost patience with her hesitation and put his lips to hers.
The kiss began as last night’s had, with a gentle edge of exploration, of sharpening interest, of fascination. Then he assumed control, dipping her sideways into his supporting arm and plundering her mouth with possessive purpose.
All her inhibitions and protective instincts were drawn out by the kiss and cast aside. She responded eagerly, fueled by his ardor and the tenderness of his touch.
His hand stroked up her thigh, then over her hip and down to her knee as she curled into him.
She kissed the line of his jaw, the lobe of his ear, his temple. He nipped along her throat, the underside of her chin, then buried his nose in her hair.
The baby gurgled and she lifted her head abruptly, horrified that for a moment he hadn’t been uppermost in her mind. He was smiling widely and rattling his ring of plastic keys.
Jared touched an index finger to the tip of his nose. Zachary squealed delightedly.
“He’s fine,” Jared said, his hand curving Libby’s hip as he drew her closer again. “He’s within my reach. Kiss me.”
She pushed at him halfheartedly, trying to surface from the desire billowing in her to remember that she’d intended to speak to him about how she’d gotten here. And with this sudden ignition between them, the need to do that was growing more and more urgent.
“I…have to tell you…something,” she said as his mouth roved over hers with taunting little kisses.
He groaned and covered her mouth with a deep, lengthy kiss. “We’ll talk later.”
That was definitely the way she’d prefer it, but as his lips traveled down her throat again and she felt his fingertips at the buttons of her sweater, she forced herself back to the issue.
“Jared, listen…” But he’d parted the top few buttons and the touch of his lips against the swell of her breasts made her forget every thought in her head.
His hand had slipped under the back of her sweater, and she felt it splayed between her shoulder blades, warm and strong and artfully seductive as it began to stroke.
Jared felt intoxicated by the depth of her response. She was like silk in his arms, entwining him, enfolding him. Now that he’d distracted her from the silly notion of talking, she was reaching under his shirt.
The first touch of her slender hand against the bare flesh of his abdomen caused his muscles to clench with the exquisite sensation.
He heard himself whisper her name, then she covered the sound with her lips and moved her hands around him to his back. He swung her astride his lap and sat forward to accommodate her. They kissed and stroked and finally drew apart to gasp for breath.
He looked into her eyes. “This would be easier upstairs,” he said, kissing her again.
In a hot cloud of need and desire, Libby turned to the baby and saw that he’d dozed off, the keys still in his fingers.
“I’ll put him in his crib,” he said, nipping at her earlobe, “and meet you in my bed.”
There was nothing she wanted more at that moment. She even considered falling in with his plan and telling him afterward how she’d come into his life. Surely after they made love, Jared’s reaction to her deceit would be sympathetic and understanding.
But as determined as she was to be Savannah’s and Zachary’s mother, she couldn’t make love with their father without telling him the truth. If he became furious and could not understand what had motivated her, then she would take him to court.
That was a strange thought to entertain, she realized, losing her fragile grip on coherence when she felt his fingers at the fastening of her bra and his lips on her warm flesh.
“Jared, we—” she began on a fragile whisper, but the peal of the doorbell interrupted her.
He raised his head to swear roundly, then slapped lightly at the thigh under his right hand.
“That’s what happens,” he said with a wry grin, “when you don’t seize the moment.”
He held her hands to steady her as she climbed off him, then used them to keep her still while he ignored a second peal of the bell and leaned over her to kiss her soundly. “Let’s hold on to our momentum. You put Zack to bed and I’ll get rid of whoever this is and meet you upstairs.”
By the time he reached the door, the bell was pealing continuously. Libby lifted Zachary carefully and turned in the direction of the stairs. But the sound of her friend Sara’s anguished voice stopped her.
Her heart rose in her throat and began to pound there.
“Jared Ransom?” Sara asked breathlessly from the porch side of the open door.
“Yes,” he replied.
There was a sigh and an exchange of feminine chatter. “Oh, thank God. I’m Sara Perez, and this is Charlene Whitney. We’re friends of Libby Madison. Please tell us she’s with you.”
“Yes, she is, but I don’t under—”
“What a relief!” That was Charlene’s voice. “We were frantic when she disappeared! I mean, we left her on the sofa with strict instructions to follow the doctor’s orders and remain quiet! Then we went to her place with dinner and she was gone!”
Libby could not have moved had a lion suddenly appeared to chase her. The jig, so to speak, was up. In her excitement at having Jared mistake her for a nanny, thus providing her with an entrée into the children’s lives, she’d completely forgotten that her friends would wonder what had happened to her—that they might even come looking for her. She should have forestalled this moment with a message on Charlene’s answering machine when she’d run home that first afternoon to pack a bag.
She put Zachary to her shoulder and patted his back, afraid to turn in the direction of the door. She could feel Jared looking at her, sense the suspicions begin to form in his mind.
“We’re her best friends in the whole world.” Sara’s voice again, then she laughed. “Well, at least in Portland. Can we just see her for a few minutes, please? Just to assure ourselves that she’s fine?”
“Of course.”
The reply was graciously polite, but Libby heard the quiet temper in it, the suggestion of confused anger.
“Come in.”
Libby turned as her friends came across the living room toward her. “Hi!” she said, trying to ignore what this encounter could mean to her future and thinking only that these women had worried about her, taken the time and made the effort literally to hunt her down and check for themselves that she was all right.
She would explain to Jared later. Right now, she had to make her friends welcome.
Sara and Charlene came to wrap their arms around her. She hugged one and then the other in her free arm.
“Hi, guys,” she said. “I’m sorry I frightened you. Everything happened so fast that I didn’t think about letting you know.”
They oohed and aahed over the baby, lowering their voices as he whimpered, then nuzzled into Libby’s neck.
“We thought you’d been kidnapped or had gone off the road somewhere!” Sara scolded softly, her anger at Libby’s thoughtlessness obviously tempered by relief at seeing her well.
“But what are you doing here?” ever-frank Charlene wanted to know. “Did you come to stake your claim to the children?”
Jared walked toward them, outward facade of civility in place. But Libby could see the storm in his eyes. He’d heard Charlene’s question about her claim to the children, and though he couldn’t possibly understand precisely what was behind it, she was certain he was getting a grasp of the nature of it. Trickery.
With a polite smile for her friends, h
e took Zachary from her. “I’ll put him to bed,” he said, “and make a pot of coffee. Sit down, ladies.”
Sara and Charlene literally twittered at his charming manner, but Libby saw the fury in his eyes when he claimed the baby. The gesture was significant. She wondered if she’d ever have the opportunity to hold Zachary again.
But that was for later. He was going to listen to her explanation, and if he was determined to be unreasonable, she would take it from there.
But now she had her friends to consider.
And it wasn’t long before she was thinking dryly that with friends like these, one needed no enemies. They didn’t know, of course, that she’d tricked her way into Jared’s life, so they had no cause to be subtle in their questioning. And they weren’t. They interrogated her as Jared came and went with coffee and a freshly thawed cake roll Darren had left in the freezer.
“What did he say when you told him you were going to file for adoption until the messenger hit you?”
“Did he invite you here, or did you just come?”
“Were the children glad to see you?”
“Are you trying for a kind of joint custody thing or something?” That question was Sara’s.
Then Charlene asked with a roll of her eyes as Jared went to check on Savannah, “Or are you working out a more convenient arrangement?” She flicked a finger at the collar of the sweater Libby had quickly rebuttoned, one button off. “He is one gorgeous daddy. And though you use them so seldom, I’m sure you must have skills in dealing with men as well as child-care skills.”
So far, Libby had scarcely had a chance to speak, but now she put in quickly, “I’m the nanny.”
“The nanny,” Sara and Charlene repeated together rather flatly.
“Well, that’s a…a nice arrangement,” Sara said with a forced smile.
Charlene eyed her skeptically. “But all you do is take care of the children. They’re not yours.”
“But she gets to be here,” Sara defended, trying to quiet Charlene with a look. “And who knows? You know. Something else could develop.” She waggled both eyebrows to suggest the very eventuality that had probably just been squashed by their arrival.
Charlene considered that and smiled. “That’s the solution to go for, girl. He’s nice as well as gorgeous. How is he with the kids?”
“Wonderful,” she replied.
“Well then, this could have a very happy ending after all, couldn’t it?”
Jared returned at that moment and took the big chair opposite the sofa. She guessed that he hadn’t missed a word of their conversation, though he’d been in and out of the room. The intercom was open in all the rooms for the convenience of hearing the children at all times.
She met his eyes and saw that though he had a smile for her friends, the gentle man of only moments ago was gone. In his place was an injured man—dangerous, possibly even deadly.
No, she thought resignedly. A happy ending did not seem to be in the cards at all.
Chapter Eight
Libby walked her friends down the porch steps into the driveway, where they’d parked Charlene’s sporty red Sunbird.
“Take care of yourself,” Sara urged motheringly, “and when you get a vacation, call us, and maybe we can all do something together. We can’t go to Truffles without you, you know.”
Libby felt as though she’d swallowed a cannonball. Dread sat in the pit of her stomach like something weighty and totally indigestible. But she smiled cheerfully as her friends climbed into the car. “Of course I will. I’ll write often and call when I can. And the moment I can get to Portland, I’ll let you know.”
Sara waved madly as Charlene looked over her shoulder to back out, then there was one final tap of the horn and they drove off into the darkness.
Libby wished more than anything that she could just run away into the night and not have to explain herself to Jared. But that would mean she’d have to leave the children behind, and wanting them so desperately was what had hatched this plot to begin with.
And now it was more complicated than that. Now she wanted him, too.
All right. She turned toward the house and squared her shoulders. There had to be a way to make him understand why she’d been less than honest.
His tall figure was silhouetted in the doorway against the living room’s light. He seemed to fill it, his stance wide, his hands in his pockets.
She climbed the porch steps. He remained firmly planted in the doorway and she stopped several feet from him, wondering if the challenge to her position in his home had already begun.
He studied her with chilling dispassion. How much his gaze had changed, she thought, from the man who’d devoured her with depthless velvet eyes just an hour ago.
He finally stepped back without a word for her to enter, then closed the door behind her and locked it. Libby went to the fireplace, where the flames were just beginning to die down. She held her hands out to them and felt a meager warmth. She pushed aside the thought of how symbolic it all seemed.
Abruptly, she turned to see Jared standing on the other side of the sofa, his hands on his hips, his weight on his right leg.
“I can explain,” she said quietly and with as much dignity as she could muster.
“Oh, good.” His voice was cool and mocking. “Start by explaining why your friends think you’re a waitress, but you told me you were a nanny.”
That was the toughie. She drew a deep breath. “If you’ll remember,” she began, “I never told you I was a nanny. You presumed the agency had sent me, and I…I let you believe it.”
He turned away from her in disgust, took a few paces, then turned back again, anger alive in his eyes. Somehow she found that a relief. Knowing he was furious was somehow easier to deal with than thinking he was coldly indifferent. Particularly since her feelings were so strong in the matter—in several ways.
“You’re not suggesting,” he demanded, “that that absolves you of lying to me.”
She angled her chin. “I am. You needed a nanny, and I stepped into the role. It’s true that I haven’t been a nanny before, but can you say I haven’t done the job well?”
He couldn’t, and that was what fueled his anger. Like any red-blooded male, he hated the thought that he’d been deceived—and more than that, he hated the thought that he hadn’t even suspected he was being deceived—at least, personally.
He’d made such a point of being vigilant with women since Mandy. He’d told himself he wasn’t cowardly enough to try to protect himself from getting hurt again, but simply from the embarrassment of being stupid.
Yet this little blond waitress had managed to make him look precisely that.
“You misrepresented yourself,” he accused brutally, “and you lied. There is no way to sugarcoat it, Libby!”
“I love those children!” she shouted at him, the words erupting out of her strong emotion. “And I wanted them!”
That declaration was still echoing in her ears when she realized what a mistake it had been. She’d intended it to justify her deceptive manipulations, but what it did, judging by the turbulence in his eyes, was show him that from the very beginning she’d been working against and not for him.
His gaze narrowed on her. “You wanted them,” he repeated ominously.
She read the outrage in his eyes and spun back to the fireplace for a moment, trying to collect herself. She had to remain rational. She had to see that he remained rational.
He caught her upper arm in a viselike hand and yanked her around. “What do you mean, you wanted them. Why? You’re not related. Miller told me he’d searched for relatives…”
“No, I’m not related.” She tried to yank free of him, but he held her in place. Resigned, she began a partial explanation. “I told you I knew them from the hospital.”
He raised an eyebrow. “You mean that part was true?”
She sighed wearily. “Do you want to hear this?”
“No, I don’t,” he replied mercilessly. “I’
d like to just toss you out on your pretty little butt and never have to see you again, but I need some answers first.”
She had so little leverage in this exchange that she grasped at straws. “You start talking about my pretty little butt, Mr. Ransom,” she threatened, “and I may have to bring you up on charges of harassment.”
He made a scornful sound. “Really. You must be forgetting that you ran into my room in the middle of the night and flung your arms around me.”
She stiffened. “That was genuine fear. I wasn’t quite awake. Your remark was simply patronizing.”
“Allow me that, Miss Madison,” he said, imitating her sudden bristling formality. “You lied your way into my household. Where the safety of two little children is concerned, I think any judge would be on my side. Now, do you want to continue to explain, or shall we keep threatening each other?”
“You might want to let me go,” she said, a sweep of her eyelashes indicating his grip on her arm, “before bruises form. That might very well sway a judge in my direction.”
He considered her a moment, grudgingly decided she was right, then pulled her aside to line her up with the sofa and gave her a gentle but firm backward shove that landed her in the middle of it. “Then sit down and tell me the rest of it while I still have the patience to listen.”
She glowered at him. This was what he was like before he lost his patience? She opened her mouth to comment on that, then decided against it.
“I fell in love with them, all right?” she said candidly, abandoning all attempts to put it delicately or to work around him so that he saw things her way. That suddenly didn’t seem like a possibility. So she may as well go for broke. “They were so sweet and beautiful. They were also very alone and so was I. Mr. Miller had been trying to locate family for four days, when he suggested that I was getting along with them so well, I might consider adopting them.”
He sat down in the corner of the sofa nearest the fireplace, his body angled toward her. The lines of his face were rigid and severe, though she thought she saw something flicker in his eyes. Compassion, she wondered, or just the movement of the flames cast against his profile?
The Comeback Mom Page 14