She expelled a breath and a small sound that reminded him of Sean Connery in high purr.
She drew away to unbutton his shirt, then pulled it and his T-shirt off with flattering determination. They stood wrapped in each other’s arms and reveled a moment in the delicious sensation of being flesh to flesh.
Then he drew her down with him to the blanket, relieved her of her corduroy slacks and white lace panties, and put his lips to her flat stomach. He thought absently that she was smaller than the impression she made.
He felt her hands in his hair, her bare knee against his side. She urged him onto his back, worked at his belt and his zipper, and had him free of jeans and shorts with the same efficiency he’d employed on her.
Her eyes ran over him, a blush coloring her cheeks as she raised her gaze to look into his. He guessed the blush had more to do with surprise at her own behavior than embarrassment.
Her hair fell over her face as she braced herself astride him and he tucked it behind her left ear. “You usually do this with your eyes closed?” he teased gently.
She met his eyes frankly. “I usually don’t do this, period,” she said with a shrug that was hard to accomplish with her arms braced against the floor. “I mean, I have done it, but I’m friends with most of the single men in town, so that doesn’t work. And strangers aren’t safe, so the opportunities aren’t really…plentiful.” Her finger traced the line of his earlobe. “I suppose you do it all the time.”
“Not as often as you’d think.” He put a hand to the back of her thigh, fascinated by the cool silk of it. “I work a lot, I’m aware of being safe and selective, too, and contrary to what women tell each other, it isn’t the only thing guys think about. Unless they meet a woman who really catches their attention and then, yes, thoughts of lovemaking choke out everything else.”
She seemed amused by that admission. “And what have you been thinking about?” she asked.
“Oh, let’s see.” He ran both hands up her rib cage, then lifted her slightly to break her contact with the floor and lowered her to his chest so that they were flesh to flesh again, her breasts squashed against his chest, their legs entangled. “I’ve imagined making love to you on my cot upstairs in the medical center, in the back row of the movie theater, in my car, and right here, just like this.”
She raised her head to smile at him. “In the back of the movie theater?”
He nodded. “I went there the first two nights I was here.”
“But the movie changes only once a week.”
“I know. I saw Gosford Park twice. Incidentally, why is there duct tape on the screen?”
She grinned. “Dev threw a bottle rocket through it when he was a kid. I guess there’s just never been enough money to have it repaired or get another screen. Movie theaters are hurting all over the country, and they stay alive by charging a fortune for candy and popcorn. But not ours. So we live with the duct tape.”
“Sure.”
“You didn’t like the movie enough to see it a third time?”
“I liked it a lot. But I met you on the third day and came home with you, remember? I just went to bed and dreamed of making love to you amid all those British accents.”
“But you didn’t like me.”
“I had the hots for you, anyway.”
She slapped his chest and he held her close, laughing. Then he rolled them so that she lay beside him, her back to the fireplace.
“I went from thinking you were the most incompetent woman with a baby I’d ever seen, to falling in love with you. I mean falling—like off a cliff or a bridge.”
“I love you, too,” she said, as though that reality confounded her. “I don’t know what to do about it, but I do.”
“Do you have to do something about it?”
“Isn’t love supposed to encourage you to make decisions about your life?”
“I think it’s just supposed to heighten the life you’re already living.”
“Well, it is doing that.” She smiled in a way he found sweetly ingenuous.
“I’m glad to hear that.” He put a hand to her stomach and drew her to him with the arm that rested under her shoulders. “This is what I feel encouraged to do. Be quiet, please, and give me your full attention.”
She did. It would have been hard to do otherwise when his fingertips found every erotic zone she possessed and brought it artfully to full awareness. It occurred to her to wonder if it was unusual that one woman had so many—several of which she hadn’t even known about—but the thought went unexplored when he found yet another and she had to concentrate on drawing every breath so that she didn’t faint with each progressively erotic discovery.
Fulfillment had never been an easy accomplishment for her. And given the infrequency of her opportunities lately, even the last attempt had been some time ago.
It astonished her that she didn’t have to work for this one. She didn’t have to wait and wonder and accept disappointment. It just rode over her with the same style he’d applied in the exploration of her body. It rocked her. It found every sensitive little nook and cranny in her body and stirred the responses there until they met at the heart of her in one cosmic, rolling implosion.
She felt herself shudder, heard herself cry out. Connor’s hand closed gently over her mouth. Still in the throes of it, she wondered if he was worried about waking the baby—or possibly the neighborhood.
She hadn’t known she was a screamer. Hadn’t known she had eleventy-seven places on her body that went wild when touched. Hadn’t known she could feel as though she lay in a bath of stars.
“Hey,” Connor said, patting her hip, his voice soft but rich with amusement. “Are you still with me?”
She tried to raise her head, but it fell with a thunk against his shoulder. “I hope so,” she breathed. “I hate to think that’s the last time I’ll ever feel like that.”
“It isn’t. Want to feel like that again?”
“Yes.”
“Now?”
“Yes.”
He put his hand to one of those dynamite points, but she came to sufficiently to catch it and stop him.
“Wait,” she said, trying to collect herself. “You’re coming with me this time.”
“Okay,” he said, “but you’ve got some catching up to do.” His hand went back to that wild pulse point and she felt it all coming on again, even quicker than before.
She closed her hand over him and nudged him onto his back.
“Okay,” he said in a strained voice. “Maybe not so much catching up.”
She kissed him everywhere he’d touched her and a few places unique to him alone. She blew air in a little breath down the middle of his body, then kissed her way up again until she reached his mouth.
He tried to lay her down but she resisted him, tracing kisses across his shoulders and following with her fingernail, as though she strummed an instrument.
“Shelly…” he pleaded.
“Yes, Connor?” She was planting kisses on his chest, nipping at his ribs.
He took her firmly by the waist, lay her down beside him, and while she smiled into his eyes with deep satisfaction and anticipation, he entered her with one confident move and erased every other thought from her mind but the perfection of their union.
The world rocked—literally and figuratively. What she’d experienced before seemed magnified several times by the fact that he’d experienced it with her. His gasps and tremors contributed to hers, his pounding heartbeat was one with hers, their hold on each other made it impossible to tell whose flesh tingled.
It was a moment before she recovered. No, not recovered. It was a moment before she was herself again. She doubted that she’d ever recover from making love with Connor. She hadn’t intended to erase the old life, but she felt as though that was what had happened. Oh, she had all her precious memories, maintained all the love her parents had given her, and the friendships she’d made in Jester, but she was different.
And while sh
e hadn’t known a moment’s fear when turning this corner into a relationship with Connor, she experienced a moment’s trepidation now. Change! This was the change she’d been so worried about when Jester won the lottery. But it wasn’t the lives of everyone else that had changed.
It was hers.
She sank into an exhausted heap against Connor and accepted that.
CONNOR WAS A LITTLE SURPRISED by the emotional impact of making love with Shelly. He’d lusted after her body for days, knew his feelings for her were growing hourly, accepted that the safe bachelorhood he’d promised himself for the rest of his life was down the tubes. He’d known that loving her would present a challenge that could alter his life. What if she truly didn’t want children? Could he choose between having her and having children?
Loving her had quieted him, and he’d managed to forget the cursed O’Rourke determination that had driven one ancestor to kidnap an English bride when her father refused to give him her hand in marriage, and encouraged another to escape the potato famine and take a ship to New York with nothing but hope in his pocket. That same determination had made Connor, himself, turn his entire life around when he discovered he loved working with children.
His stubbornness lived, and it convinced him that he could have Shelly and he could have children if he was simply resourceful enough to figure out how.
The answer, he thought with sudden inspiration as he reached for his coverlet and pulled it over both of them, rested in little Max.
Chapter Nine
“We’ll adopt him,” he said to Shelly matter-of-factly as he followed her to the monument on the Town Hall lawn. She had a tour guide attitude this Sunday morning, and a digital camera in hand. He spoke lightly so that she wouldn’t panic. “His mother’s apparently not coming back, and now that we’ve cared for him this long, and have the backing of the sheriff and Jester’s family practitioner, I don’t see how they can turn us down.”
She stopped in front of the statue and turned to face him, shielding her eyes from the bright sun. It was a brilliant day with clear blue skies and not a cloud in sight. The temperature, though, was still in the single digits so the snow remained firm.
“You’re serious?” she asked.
He was pleased by the fact that she seemed only mildly surprised. She was vastly different this morning from the woman he’d met five days ago.
Five days! he thought in amazement. Had it been only five days? Destiny, he guessed, is what made it feel as though it had been forever.
She seemed less volatile, steadier, yet there was a new sort of concern about her that worried him. He knew she’d found last night as life altering as he had, but she’d emerged from it with a curious quiet that made him just a little nervous.
He might be alarming himself over nothing. She’d been staring at him when he awoke this morning, made love with him eagerly again, made him breakfast with a song on her lips, and suggested this outing together with obvious anticipation and good cheer.
As a doctor, though, he had good instincts. He’d learned to read information that wasn’t spoken aloud: he read eyes; he read between the lines. He should simply ask her about it, but he guessed she’d pushed it aside this morning, and he didn’t want to do anything to startle her into thinking that taking up with him had been a bad idea.
So he was going to wait it out.
“I’m very serious,” he replied. He had Max in a backpack—another loan from the Perkinses—and the baby pointed a mittened finger at the statue and squealed.
She grinned and shot a picture of him and the pointing baby. “You haven’t asked me to marry you.”
“I don’t have to,” he said, moving forward to read the plaque. “When I got up with him last night so you could stay snuggled under the covers, you proposed to me. ‘Dedicated to the memory of Catherine Peterson, horsewoman and humanitarian, and Jester, the buckskin range horse who made us famous.’ Famous,” Connor repeated consideringly. “That’s overstated just a little, don’t you think?” He looked up to see Catherine in a shirt and britches, a wide-brimmed hat dangling on her back from a cord around her throat. Despite the bronze that had gone green with time and the need for a good cleaning, her features were strong and beautiful. She sat determinedly astride the bucking horse, which looked as wild and exquisite as the woman.
Shelly laughed and rolled her eyes. “I said you were so handy to have around I was going to keep you. And, no, I don’t think it’s overstated. At least, during the Spanish-American War, it wasn’t. Jester sired a whole line of surefooted cow ponies that served the United States Army.”
“Keep me, marry me. Same difference. I read in Mrs. Hollis’s book that Catherine tamed Jester when none of the local men could.”
“True. She had a gift—with horses and with people.”
“Are any of Jester’s descendants still around?”
“The Petersons have a couple. I work all the time,” she reminded him.
He nodded. “And yet we managed to watch a baby and have a life. I think it’ll work.”
“You do?”
“I do. See? We’re already rehearsing wedding vows.”
She kissed him lightly on the lips. “You’re so cute. Now, get out of the way so I can take the picture.”
Connor stepped out of the way, catching Max’s little hand as he pointed and squealed again. “Horse,” Connor said, pointing. “Horse.”
Max pointed and squealed something indecipherable.
The picture taken, Shelly indicated the little white church next door with its tall spire and country church simplicity. The roof was in obvious disrepair, with quite a few shingles missing.
“Pastor Brooks says he’s afraid to hammer in new shingles,” Shelly explained, “afraid it’ll make the whole roof collapse.” She stepped back into the middle of the street and took a picture.
“Nice little place to get married,” Connor said with a casual smile. “Would look wonderful in our wedding album.”
She gave him a scolding look. “You’re obsessing.”
He smiled impenitently. “Yes. Where to next?”
She pointed to the streetlight on the corner right behind him. “We used to have flower baskets there once upon a time. I think it’d be neat if we did that again.”
“What do you do in winter?”
“Seasonal ornaments. Last year, Amanda made a witch out of an old mannequin’s body, put high heels on it and a broom under it and made it look as though she’d smashed into the pole. Required no head, just a witch’s hat askew. Made everyone laugh. We could do those all up and down the street. And, of course, Christmas ornaments, hearts for Valentine’s Day, bunnies for Easter, then it’s warm enough to put up the baskets.”
“Sounds good.”
“I’m just a fountain of great ideas,” she boasted teasingly and caught his hand to lead him across Megabucks Boulevard to Main Street. “Come on. We’re heading for the park.”
They photographed dead flower beds, bleachers that were much the worse for wear, and a wooden pavilion near a pond that looked as though it had seen better days.
She dragged him behind the bleachers and across the street to Jester Public School. She pointed to the empty playground. “The playground equipment was so old that it was no longer up to code. The kids are spending all their recess time at the park. Which isn’t bad for the bigger kids, but the smaller ones need monkey bars, sandboxes, that kind of stuff.”
“Makes sense to me.”
“Okay. Come on. I’ll show you the old Victorian on the next block.”
“Good grief,” he said. “You’re going to fix that, too?”
“No,” she replied. “I just think it’s neat. I think the mayor wants to buy it, but the title isn’t clear or something. I don’t know what the problem is. It’s been empty for a long time.”
Connor studied the crumbling old house while Shelly took several pictures. He had to agree with her. It was the kind of house you wanted to know more about, the kind
of place that suggested a history that had to be fascinating.
She walked him back to the corner and pointed down the block to a vacant building. “Auto repair shop,” she said. “When I was little, I used to think I’d like to work there because you probably didn’t have to wash dishes. But as I grew older I realized there probably were a lot of other ugly jobs I wouldn’t want to do.”
He nodded. “The grass is always greener. It’s just human nature.”
She hooked her arm in his as they walked up Lottery Lane to Orchard Street. “Okay, I’ve got my pictures. What do you want to do now?”
“Want to go to the movies at four?”
“Haven’t you already seen it twice?”
“It changed on Friday.”
“What about Max?”
“We’ll sedate him and take him with us.”
“Connor!” She looked horrified.
He laughed and teased her for believing he’d do that. “We’ll bring a bottle, his pacifier, all that stuff and if he gets too fussy, we’ll leave. He’s been awake for hours, got lots of fresh air, he should sleep for a couple of hours. This could work.”
“What’s playing?” she asked, catching her hat as Max pulled it off her head. “You’re not taking me to some war or horror thing, are you?”
“No, it was a Julia Roberts movie, I believe.”
She brightened. “Really? And that’s okay with you?”
“Yeah. Why wouldn’t I want to see Julia Roberts?”
She punched his arm playfully. “Because you claim to be in love with me.”
“But looking is different from…”
She tightened her grip on his arm. “It’s not,” she corrected. “So, if we ever were to get married, don’t go thinking you can look at all the pretty girls and I won’t get upset.”
All right! She was thinking about it.
“Jealousy’s very sexy in a woman.”
“You won’t think so when I hit you with a frying pan.”
The movie appeared to be a serious story about love between a dedicated career woman and a witty, charming man who had a terminal illness. Until the heroine discovered that the hero had lied about being ill. It was a tool he used regularly with women to avoid commitment. His pretended illness solicited the care and cosseting of his female companions, while saving him from having to promise himself to a relationship.
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