by Diana Palmer
“Oh, hell, I don't want the kid anyway,” Dennis growled, standing. “I've got a job offer in South America. We're going down there to live.”
And smuggle drugs, Maggie thought bitterly. It was just his style, and he'd always threatened that it was an easy way to make money. But someday his own deceit would do him in, she felt sure of it.
“Custody is awarded to the Colemans, with my blessing,” the judge said. “And due to the circumstances, visitation rights are denied. Case dismissed.”
“She's mine,” Maggie whispered, and put her arms around Gabe. “She's mine.”
He stared at her for a long moment. Hers, she'd said. He felt left out, as if he didn't even matter. And there was that blond jackass glaring at him across the room. Suddenly his temper flared again. “Excuse me, Margaret, I've got something to do.” He started to stand up, staring at Dennis with an expression that meant trouble.
“No,” she pleaded gently. “Please don't.”
“I need to,” he said between clenched teeth. “I want to break his damned neck!”
Dennis caught his look and seemed almost to hear the words, because he grabbed his blonde attachment by the arm and half dragged her out of the courtroom in a faintly comical exit.
“Must read lips,” Mr. Parmeter mused dryly as he collected his papers. “Lucky man. I know that look. I've defended it in murder trials,” he added with a meaningful glance at Gabe.
“I wouldn't have killed him, exactly,” Gabe muttered, glaring after him. “But I'd have enjoyed breaking his arm.”
“Good job that detective agency did,” Mr. Parmeter said. “I'm glad we could afford it.”
“So am I,” Gabe told him, shaking the older man's hand. “Thank you.”
“Yes, thank you so much,” Maggie added fervently, and hugged him.
“My pleasure, and I mean it. Be happy,” he told them, winking as he left the courtroom. Maggie stared after him, wondering if he realized how difficult that might be. Gabe had turned to solid ice, and he hardly thawed all the way home. Worst of all, Maggie didn't even understand why.
Janet and Becky were standing on the porch, waiting for them with nervous apprehension.
“We won!” Maggie called out even as she opened the door. “We won!”
Becky burst into tears, running straight toward them. But it was Gabe she ran to first, and he threw her up in his strong arms, laughing delightedly, hugging her with rough affection.
“How's my girl?” He grinned. “And I do mean my girl.”
“I'm fine!” Becky laughed. “Oh, Papa, I knew you'd win!”
He kissed her warmly. Janet came forward to embrace Maggie, who felt oddly left out.
“I'm so happy for you.” Janet sighed. “We were so afraid.”
“So was I,” Maggie murmured. “But Gabe pulled it off. He hired a private detective agency,” she added with an accusatory glance at him, “and didn't even tell me. As usual.”
He cocked an eyebrow. “You didn't ask.”
She turned away. “We won, Becky mine,” she said, holding out her arms.
Becky hugged her, too, and planted a happy kiss on her cheek. “I'm so glad I can stay with you and my papa,” she sighed against Maggie. “I was scared to death, Mama.”
“I know the feeling.” She kissed the dark head. “How about some cake? I'm hungry, aren't you?”
“Starved,” Becky said, and holding on to her mother's hand on one side, and her grandma's hand on the other, she led them all inside.
That night, Maggie thought it was time she melted the ice between herself and Gabe. He'd hardly looked at her since they'd come home and seemed to draw into himself even more with each passing minute. She couldn't know that her careless remark about Becky being hers now, had cut him to the quick, made him feel used. His old suspicions about why she'd really married him had surfaced, and he was sure she didn't care about him. She'd only wanted him because he could help her keep Becky.
She put on a slinky peach silk negligee after the household had gone to bed, then walked into the bedroom to wait for him. He was a long time coming up: it was well after midnight when she heard his step outside the door.
He opened it, pausing when he saw her draped across the bed in a seductive attitude.
“What is it, payoff time?” he asked with cold sarcasm and a smile she didn't understand. He closed the door with a thud, looking dusty and tired and as if he'd worked himself into exhaustion. There were hard lines in his face, around his mouth.
She sat up, blinking. “I don't understand.”
“I got Becky for you,” he said. “Is this what you've thought up to reward me? The sacrifice of your body?”
“Gabriel!” she cried, horrified. “It's never been that! Surely you know better!”
“Do I?” He took off his hat and gloves and threw them onto a chair, running an angry hand through his hair. “I need a shower, and some rest.” He glanced toward her coldly. “Thanks for the offer, but you're more than welcome. Becky's mine, too, now. I don't need gratitude from you.”
He went into the bathroom and locked the door, leaving Maggie shocked and speechless. For a long time she heard nothing but the sound of running water, as she sat quietly on the bed, her mind whirling with unexpected thoughts. Did he really think that she'd sold herself to him, just to enlist his aid in keeping Becky? Apparently he did. Then she remembered what she'd said in court. “Becky's mine.” When in fact, Becky was theirs….
She got up and paced the floor, puzzling out what to do, how to convince him. She remembered so many little things, then. His anger on her behalf in court, the careful way he put her feelings first, his gentleness in bed. Maybe he didn't know it, but he'd come to care for her. He had to care: why else would her careless remark have had the power to hurt him? And he thought…he thought she was only using him! It was almost comical, when she was dying of love for him!
But how to convince him of that? She paced some more. The water stopped running. She had only a few seconds left. If she let that cold wall come down between them, she might never be able to get it up again. Gabriel wasn't an easy man to convince.
And then she found the perfect way. The best way. The most loving way. With a tender smile, she went to her jewelry box and took out a small round pillbox. Clutching it in her hand, she turned to face him when he came out of the bathroom with a towel draped around his hips.
His hair was still damp and mussed, falling onto his brow. His face was dark and hard and formidable. When he glared at her, she saw the old Gabe, the intimidating stranger she remembered from her adolescence, the cold man who never seemed to smile. He looked utterly ruthless but she wasn't backing down. She had her spirit back, now that the fear was gone. And he wasn't winning this time.
She held out her hand. “Do you know what these are?” she asked quietly.
He cocked his head a little, his eyes narrowing. “They're your birth control pills.”
“That's right.”
She went to the trash can and, holding his gaze levelly, dropped them into it.
There, she thought to herself with a primitive kind of triumph. See if that ties in with your theory, big man.
Chapter Ten
Gabe didn't seem able to breathe properly after she'd thrown the pills away. He stood rigidly, watching her.
“What was that all about?” he asked, his tone curt. “Is that some other way of showing your gratitude, telling me that you want my children? Well, you don't have to go that far. You're welcome, is that enough?”
She hesitated, and while she was hesitating, he whipped off the towel and turned to the mirror to blow-dry his hair. He saw her watching him, but he didn't seem to mind.
Her eyes adored him. He was so good to look at. All muscle. All man. She smiled as her possessive gaze traveled from his dryer-blown black hair down to his very shapely masculine feet.
“Take a picture,” he muttered, because her look was bothering him. He wished he hadn't taken off the towel.
She was going to get a real eyeful in a minute.
She already had, in fact, and her lips pursed in frankly amused delight. “Well, well,” she said, folding her arms across her chest, “and I thought you weren't interested.”
He glared at her. “Stop that. Women aren't supposed to notice such things.”
She grinned. “Then put your clothes back on.”
“I'm getting ready for bed.” He put down the hair dryer and reached for a comb.
“So I noticed,” she commented dryly.
He slammed down the comb and jerked a pair of pajama bottoms out of his drawer. Pulling them on with an economy of movement, he snapped them up with a violent flick of his fingers.
“Prude,” she said softly.
He glared at her. “What in hell's gotten into you?”
She moved toward him with a sinuous grace, watching the way his eyes were drawn to her breasts, which were already taut and hard-peaked. The material was so sheer that with the light behind her, he could see right through it. “I want you,” she said, smiling demurely. “Doesn't it show?”
“Well, I don't want you,” he shot back. “Not this way.”
She lifted her eyebrows. “For a man who isn't interested, you sure do have a visible problem.”
He actually flushed. “Will you quit!” he cried. “For God's sake, Maggie!”
“Am I embarrassing you?” She clicked her tongue. “Sorry, I thought you wanted me to be a little more aggressive.”
“I did. I thought.” He scowled at her. His heart was beginning to race. She could see his pulse throb under the dark, hairy mat of his chest. “I don't want gratitude from you. Not when I know that's all you can give me.”
There was a deep note in his voice that made her tingle all over. “You sound as if that's not all you want from me,” she murmured, smiling gently.
He ran a hand through his thick hair and sighed in angry frustration. “I don't know what I want anymore,” he said. “It was all cut-and-dried, wasn't it? We'd get married and keep Becky, and I'd take care of you both. We'd be…friends.” He looked up, his eyes possessive, exciting. “But we don't make love like friends, Maggie. What happens to me when I love you…isn't sex. And I don't ever want it to be just physical.” He took a slow breath, his pale eyes troubled as he looked at her. “I thought a convenient marriage would be enough. Until today, in court, when you laughed and said that Becky was yours. And I felt like an outsider looking in, like a convenience.”
“I know—now. I didn't mean it that way. I'm sorry I hurt you. Because I did, didn't I?” she asked gently, and moved toward him, stopping when she could feel the heat and strength of his body. “And I did it again, today, when I told Janet that you hadn't told me anything about the detective. But it was true. You share nothing with me except your body. You don't want to let me that close.”
His pale eyes narrowed. “You don't know how close I want you,” he said huskily, with fierce emotion in his voice. “You don't have the faintest notion.”
Her lips parted. “Don't I?” She slid the peignoir down her arms, watching his eyes fall to it.
“Not sex,” he bit off.
“It won't be,” she whispered. “I promise. Watch me, Gabriel.”
She slid the straps of the gown down her arms, too, and slowly, seductively, bared her body to his glittering eyes. He started to reach for her automatically, but she held his hands gently at his sides, shaking her head.
“Shh,” she whispered. “I…need to show you…that I'm whole again. I think you need the proof.”
As he held his breath, her cool hands reached for the snaps of his pajama bottoms and undid them, letting the fabric slide down the length of his powerful, hard-muscled legs. She moved close to him then, just barely touching, letting him feel every texture of her skin as she brushed against him.
“Maggie,” he groaned, his eyes closing.
“I want all of you,” she said, putting her mouth to his chest, sliding her hands down the warm, smooth silk of his back and hips, around to the hair-roughened skin of his flat stomach and thighs.
He bit back a harsh groan and his muscles convulsed, but he didn't try to stop her.
“Oh, Gabriel,” she breathed against his skin, her eyes closed, her hands adoring his body, loving the freedom of touching him as she'd always dreamed of doing, arousing him, giving him everything there was of passion and love in her whole being.
“Let me lie down,” he whispered, “before my knees give way.”
He went to the bed and stretched out, his body arching in sensual expectation, his eyes open. “Come on,” he whispered, his eyes glittering, challenging. “Do it.”
She'd invited him once in exactly those words. And now she took the invitation. All the things he'd done to her, she did to him. Exploring. Touching. Drawing the very tips of her fingers over skin so sensitive that he began to make odd, hoarse sounds.
“And you say I'm a noisy lover,” she teased at his lips as she smoothed her body completely down the length of his and lay over him. “You're noisy, too.”
He looked up into her soft, loving eyes and suddenly didn't need words; suddenly knew. His hands slid to her hips, holding them lightly to him. “That pill…” he whispered. “Did you take it today?”
“No.” She smiled. “And if you miss even one—” she bent to his open mouth “—it can be very, very dangerous.” She bit his lower lip. “I feel absolutely primitive. I want to bite you all over.”
He burst out laughing, although it was a sound laden with passion and delight. He held her hips. “Sit up,” he whispered, daring her. “I'll help you.”
“I don't know how,” she said.
“Shh.” He sat up against the headboard, drawing her over him, facing him, her body close and warm against his as he eased her onto his hips and watched her lips part on a breath as he deepened the contact into stark intimacy.
Her nails drew sensuously against his broad, dark shoulders. She looked into his eyes as she lifted and fell, and trembled a little at the newness of what they were sharing.
“I've never done this deliberately,” he whispered. “Knowing that a child could come of it, and not minding.”
“Neither have I,” she whispered back, catching her breath as she saw the depth of emotion in his eyes. “Becky will…like…having a baby in the house.”
His lean hands smoothed her hips down against his. “It may take a while,” he told her. “Sometimes it takes months. Years.”
She smiled through the building passion. “I'll like that. Won't you?”
He shuddered as she moved again, his fingers biting into her. “Don't. I'll bruise you.”
“I don't mind,” she whispered at his lips. “I'm not afraid of passion anymore. Not with you.”
He took a deep breath. “Tell me this isn't some new way of showing me how grateful you are about Becky,” he said, his movements beneath her growing sharper, quicker.
“It isn't,” she whispered. She lifted closer, watching his face grow taut at the sensuous brushing. “It's simply a new way…of showing you…how very much I love you,” she murmured, and found his mouth, and moved suddenly, sharply.
His mind exploded. He wanted to ask her, to make her say it again. But she was showing him. Her body was telling him everything she felt.
He groaned hoarsely under the flame of her twisting body, and his back threatened to give way as the frenzy of trying to get as close as possible threw it into convulsive spasms. He cried out something he didn't hear because the blood was beating in his ears. He was vaguely aware of her own voice, then the world seemed to go dark and warm and gently trembling around him, and he buried his face in her throat and shuddered.
“I love you,” she whispered against his shoulder. She kissed his face, his closed eyes, his warm mouth. “I love you, I love you….”
“Keep saying it,” he whispered, his voice weak with exhaustion. “Say it until I die. I want to hear it all the time, all my life.”
&n
bsp; She smiled against his lips. “You love me, too,” she murmured smugly. “You said so. You said so, just before your body went wild. I heard you.”
“Said it? God, I screamed it!” He held her closer, wrapping her up, cherishing her. “I didn't even know it, until today. I'd always wanted you, cared about you. But I didn't realize it was love until that blond jackass started telling lies about you, and I wanted to kill him. Because you were my Maggie, and he was hurting you.”
She smiled, her heart bursting, on fire with new delights. “I knew it the night after you made love to me on the sofa,” she told him. “All at once I realized why I'd let you. I couldn't have done it without loving you.”
“I didn't even think about that. I tried not to think of you, it disturbed me so. Every time I went in the living room afterward, I'd see your body lying in exquisite positions on those cushions and I'd bend over with pain.”
She laughed, looking into his pale eyes lovingly. “Me too,” she confessed.
His hands smoothed over her, his eyes adoring every soft curve. “I thought my legs were going to give way when you threw those pills in the trash can,” he said dryly.
“Mine almost did,” she told him. “I could hardly walk by the time I started undressing you. And you just stood there and didn't even protest.” She cocked her head. “I didn't think you'd let me make love to you like that.”
“I wouldn't have stopped you, no matter what you'd done to me,” he chuckled. “That was so damned exciting, my heart stopped beating a time or two. I never thought I'd hold off until you stopped torturing me long enough to take me.”
Her eyes widened with delight. “You really didn't mind?”
“Honey, lovemaking is give and take,” he said gently. “It's as exciting for a man to be aroused as it is for a woman. I don't feel any less a man because I give you that kind of freedom with my body. In fact,” he added with a wicked laugh, “I feel a lot like a man with his own private harem, intent on his pleasure. I loved it.”