A Mother's Day: Nobody's ChildBaby on the WayA Daddy for Her Daughters

by Emilie Richards

  For now, though, she pushed all those errant thoughts of Sloan away. She had a team to coach, a team that was going to take home a championship trophy tonight. After that…

  Well, Naomi wouldn’t think about that right now, either. Another nice thing about being in the tournament was that it had given her something to focus on besides Sloan. But once this game was over, and she no longer had game plans and practices on the brain, she knew her mind was going to fill with thoughts of him.

  Later, she told herself again. She’d think about all that later. Right now, she—and her girls—had a game to win.

  After much sweating, shouting, and nail biting—and after two agonizing overtimes—the Lady Razorbacks squeaked by the Lady Falcons, thanks to Evy’s three-pointer in the last two seconds of the game. Like the rest of the team, Naomi was hoarse from yelling and cheering by then, but she didn’t care. They’d all worked so hard for so long, and now—finally—they could celebrate. They were the best in the state. And they had a big ol’ trophy to prove it.

  She was so caught up in the celebration, in fact, that she didn’t even notice the visitor to the locker room until Evy walked up with him in tow.

  “Hey, Mom, look who I found,” she said as she tapped her mother on the shoulder.

  Naomi spun around to find her daughter standing beside a very reluctant-looking Sloan, and, just like that, a hot flame ignited in her belly and spread a rapid wildfire throughout her entire system. Although she’d seen him from a distance often enough over the last couple of weeks, she wasn’t prepared now for this up close version. Especially since he didn’t appear to be either of the Sloans she had come to know and—dare she admit it?—love. Neither sweats nor business suit adorned his form right now. Instead, he wore lovingly faded blue jeans and a tight, long-sleeved, navy polo that strained over his broad chest and shoulders and doubled the intensity of his blue velvet eyes.

  Naomi opened her mouth to say something—though heaven only knew what, because her brain felt as empty as a pocket—when Evy saved her the trouble. Sort of.

  “I made him promise to join us for the victory celebration,” she said. “He hasn’t said yes yet, but maybe if you asked him, Mom, coach to coach, I mean…”

  She smiled as she let her voice trail off over that last part, as if she knew perfectly well that coaching had nothing to do with it, then she nudged Sloan discreetly forward. And then, pretending she saw something over Naomi’s shoulder, she shouted at one of her teammates and abandoned them both.

  At first, Naomi couldn’t say anything, because she was much too busy reveling in the joy of just being close to Sloan again, at feeling giddy and light-headed with his simple nearness. His eyes really were as blue as she’d recalled them being, she noted. And he really was as tall and as broad as she had remembered. She had thought maybe she was embellishing him in her memories, making him more of a man than he actually was. Now, however, she saw he was every inch the man she had thought him. And then some. And she was nearly overcome by having him close enough to touch again. She just wished she had the nerve to reach out and touch him.

  “Of course you should join us for the victory celebration,” she finally managed to say, trying not to stammer, doing her best not to blush, but unable to halt the way her heart hammered hard in her chest. Heavens, just looking at him made her dizzy. “You’re part of this team, too,” she added.

  “Not really,” he denied good-naturedly. “I was only around for a month.”

  “Hey, you made quite an impression during that month,” she said. “You made a huge difference during that month.” Too late, she realized how he might misconstrue the statements. Then again, she thought, maybe, deep down, she hadn’t been thinking about the team when she’d uttered them.

  His dark brows arched up slightly at her comment, and he offered her a halfhearted smile. “Did I?” he asked.

  She hesitated only a moment, then nodded. “Yeah. You did.”

  He eyed her thoughtfully in return, then, softly, he said, “With the team, you mean.”

  Naomi hesitated once more, then thought, what the hell? She might as well come clean. “Yeah, with them, too, I guess.”

  His smiled kicked up a few notches. “I wanted to call you,” he said, his voice even softer now. “After that last night, when we…” He gazed past her at the celebrating girls, and even though the members of the team clearly had their minds on something other than their coach and her former, temporary, assistant, he dropped his voice a little more. “After that night, I couldn’t stop thinking about you. About how much I wanted to make love to you again. About how much I just wanted to see you, spend time with you.” He took a step closer, started to reach for her, then checked himself and dropped his hand back to his side. “I’ve missed you, Naomi. So much. For the last couple of weeks, I’ve felt like a part of me has been gone.”

  Naomi’s heart pounded harder with every word he spoke, rushing blood through her veins at a frenzied pace. She told herself not to hope, not to put too much into what he was saying. But when she looked into his eyes and saw the flicker of heat burning there, she knew—she knew—his feelings mirrored her own.

  “Why didn’t you call me?” she asked him.

  “Why didn’t you call me?” he countered.

  She closed her eyes. “If you knew how many times I wanted to…” But she couldn’t quite make herself finish the statement.

  “Why did you leave that night?” he asked her.

  She opened her eyes again, then shook her head slowly. “I panicked. I didn’t know what to do. I’d never done anything like that before with anyone, Sloan. And I realized you probably did stuff like that all the time, and—”

  “I’d never done anything like that, either, Naomi,” he assured her fiercely. “That was most definitely a first for me.”

  She grinned. “You didn’t seem like a virgin to me.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “But you’re still a lot more experienced than me,” she pointed out.

  “Am I?”

  “I’ve only been with one man besides you,” she confessed.

  “And I’ve never been with a woman like you,” he assured her. “Never.”

  She swallowed hard at that. “Then why didn’t you call me?” she asked again.

  He expelled a soft, frustrated sound. “I wanted to. So badly. But I figured you had too many other things to worry about right now,” he said. “I didn’t want to distract you from the tournament by making you wade through…stuff…with me.”

  “Are you kidding?” she replied, feeling a bit bolder now after all of his revelations. “You’ve been nothing but a distraction to me since the day I met you.”

  He grinned hopefully. “You mean you won the championship in spite of me?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “No. Not in spite of you. We couldn’t have made it without you. It’s amazing the way you showed up right when we needed you the most.”

  “We?” he echoed.

  “Me,” she corrected herself. “You showed up right when I needed you most. And I couldn’t have made it without you.” She inhaled a deep, fortifying breath and decided to go for broke. “I still don’t think I can make it without you. I know I don’t want to.”

  He considered her with much speculation for a moment, then asked, “About this victory celebration…?”

  “Ah, yeah,” Naomi said. “Lou and I promised the girls we’d go for pizza or burgers or whatever they wanted before we take the bus back to Wisteria tonight.”

  Sloan nodded thoughtfully. “You’re going back to Wisteria tonight, too?” he asked.

  “Well, originally, I had planned to, yeah.”

  “I couldn’t maybe talk you into, oh…staying the night?”

  Naomi smiled, then turned to look over her shoulder at Evy, who was currently enjoying a traditional, after-championship baptism. “Well, gee, I guess I could depend on my oldest to take care of things at home for a night. She’s normally very
responsible. When she’s not getting a Gatorade shower, I mean.”

  “My place?” Sloan said when she turned back around to gaze at him again. “It’s not quite as homey as yours, but—” he smiled devilishly “—it’s closer.”

  Naomi smiled back, feeling every bit as devilish as he looked. “You know, maybe that’s something we can rectify,” she told him.

  He looked faintly puzzled. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean maybe we can meet halfway on that home thing eventually. Surely we could find something between Atlanta and Wisteria that has some promise.”

  His smile grew wider by a mile. “Maybe we can meet halfway,” he agreed. “Eventually. So what do you say, Naomi? Tonight? Your place or mine?”

  She felt her own smile growing wider as she said, “I have an even better idea. How about our place instead?”

  As afterglows went, Sloan thought, this was one of his better ones. He pulled Naomi closer and snuggled her damp, warm, naked body against his, tugging the sheet up over them in the king-size bed in the room they had taken at the San Moritz Hotel. Our place, he remembered her calling it only a few hours ago. He liked the sound of that. Maybe they should make it a tradition to come here every year, on their wedding anniversary or something, to commemorate the first time they—

  He halted himself before finishing the thought. Every year? he asked himself. On their wedding anniversary?

  He waited for a shudder of terror to rock him at the very thought of being married to someone. And waited. And waited. And waited. Strangely, though, there was no shudder of terror that even trickled through him. No, all he felt was a warm, wistful sensation of being exactly where he belonged wandering through him instead. The thought of being married to Naomi, instead of horrifying him, only made him feel wonderfully complete.

  “Hey, Naomi,” he said absently, letting his fingertips glide slowly over her upper arm and shoulder, then back again.

  “Hmmm?” she murmured, nestling her head beneath his chin, draping her thigh over his.

  “I’ve been thinking,” he continued.

  “Thinking?” she echoed softly. “How could you think during that? My brains were totally scrambled.”

  He smiled. Good. That was what a man liked to hear after making love to a special woman. And Naomi, he had learned over the last several weeks, was most assuredly special. Among other things.

  “I wasn’t thinking during that,” he told her. “You had me way too worked up to do anything as mundane as think.”

  “Good,” she murmured. “That’s what a woman likes to hear after making love to a special man.”

  Sloan narrowed his eyes suspiciously as he gazed down at the dark head snuggling against his chest. Jeez, they weren’t even married yet, and already she was reading his mind.

  “So what were you thinking about?” she asked him, her voice a quiet purr and warm caress against his throat.

  “I was thinking that, you know, the two of us made a good team when we were coaching,” he said.

  “Well, we are responsible for the current state champs,” she reminded him unnecessarily.

  He nodded. “Yeah, and it made me wonder if we’d be as good doing other things together.”

  She turned her head to look up at him then, her smile wicked, wanton and wild.

  “I mean at something besides what we just did together,” he qualified.

  She batted her eyelashes at him. “Oh.”

  “Though, mind you, we are awfully good at that, too,” he agreed. “But I had something else in mind. Another game we might play together that we’d be good at.”

  “What’s that?” she asked.

  “House,” he told her. “I thought me might be good at playing house.”

  Her dark brows furrowed downward in confusion. “House?” she repeated. “But…I never even played house when I was a little girl. Why would you want to—”

  “Okay, then we won’t play it,” he said. “We’ll just do it.”

  Now her dark brows arched upward in surprise. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean I want to live with you, Naomi. With you and your daughters. I want us all to be together. As a family. Because I love you. All of you.” When she only continued to gaze at him in massive befuddlement, he hastily added, “As long as that’s what you want, too, I mean.”

  “You want us all to live together?” she said. “You love us? All of us?”

  He nodded, feeling nervous for the first time since the two of them had started talking again. Surely this didn’t come as a surprise to her, he thought. Surely she saw this coming. Then again, a few hours ago, he’d been worried he would never speak to her again, and she hadn’t looked any too certain about the future, herself.

  “Gee, I don’t know, Sloan,” she said gravely. “I don’t think I could live with a man unless I was married to him.” She punctuated the remark with a dazzling smile, and he knew then that she was only stringing him along. “Of course, seeing as how I love you, too, maybe that won’t be a problem?”

  “Fine,” he said. “Then I’ll marry you. I need to make an honest woman out of you, anyway.” He hesitated only a moment before reminding her, “We did rather neglect something very important this evening, after all.”

  She studied him in confusion for a moment, then, suddenly, her eyes widened in obvious concern. “A condom,” she said. “We didn’t use one.”

  “No, we didn’t,” he confirmed. “You, my darling wife-to-be, could, as we speak, also be a mother-to-be.”

  She shook her head quickly. “Oh, no. No, no, no, no, no.”

  He smiled and nodded. “Oh, yes. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.”

  She nibbled her lower lip anxiously. “Well, Sophie did ask Santa for a baby brother last Christmas….”

  Sloan grinned again. “Would she be just as happy with a baby sister?”

  “Another girl?” Naomi asked. “Are you serious? Could you handle living in a house with that much estrogen?”

  “Are you kidding?” he replied, mimicking her shocked tone. “When Evy and Katie can kick my butt at roundball and Sophie has a train setup like the one I always wanted when I was a kid? Piece of cake.”

  Naomi smiled, too, then snuggled closer still to Sloan. “As long as you don’t mind the family plan, Mr. Sullivan, then yes, I think we could play house very nicely together.”

  Sloan sighed heavily and with much contentment, then scooted both their bodies down deeper onto the bed. “Then let’s get started,” he told her. “You be the mommy, and I’ll be the daddy. Naomi and Sloan and their daughters.” He grinned as he heard her laughter bubble up, then gathered her as close as he could. “You know,” he said softly, “I just don’t think it can get any better than that.”

  A MOTHER’S DAY

  Copyright © 2002 by Harlequin Books S.A.

  ISBN: 978-1-4603-0304-7

  The publisher acknowledges the copyright holders of the individual works as follows:

  NOBODY’S CHILD

  Copyright © 1998 by Emilie Richards McGee

  BABY ON THE WAY

  Copyright © 2002 by Marie Rydzynski-Ferrarella

  A DADDY FOR HER DAUGHTERS

  Copyright © 2002 by Elizabeth Bevarly

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the editorial office, Silhouette Books, 300 East 42nd Street, New York, NY 10017 U.S.A.

  All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.

  This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

 
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