Angels And Elves (The Baby Bet #1)

by Joan Elliott Pickart

  His mother, Forrest explained cheerfully, had made it clear early on that there was no such thing in the MacAllister household as “women’s work.” They were a family, pure and simple, and everyone would pitch in no matter what the task entailed.

  “Hooray for Mom,” Jillian said, smiling.

  “She’s terrific,” he said, nodding. “We all know how to cook, clean, sew on a button, sort and wash clothes, the whole nine yards. By the same token, Andrea can change a tire, check the oil in her car, fix a leaky faucet—you know, male stuff. It’s a good program.”

  “Indeed it is,” Jillian said, nodding. “That’s the type of innovative ideas needed in two-career marriages, which you are so stubbornly convinced are a major disaster from the onset.”

  “They are. Look, so the guy helps clean the kitchen after dinner. Then what? He disappears into his den with a briefcase full of papers he’s brought home. Or maybe it’s the wife who has to work through the evening. Where’s the quality family time? The kids get shortchanged.”

  “It doesn’t have to be that way, Forrest. Where is it written that a person has to bring work home night after night?”

  Forrest placed a plastic container of a few remaining green grapes in the hamper, then straightened, looking directly at Jillian.

  “In the corporate world you have to really scramble if you want to keep up with the competition. Don’t you work into the evenings a great deal?”

  “Well, yes, but...”

  “I rest my case.”

  “Well, I’m not resting mine. I work evenings because I’m free to do so. I’m accountable only to myself. As a husband and father, you could decide that once you come home at night, your first priority would be your family.”

  “Not if I wanted to provide for them the way I see myself doing in my mind. Nope, it won’t work, not in today’s economy.”

  “Darn it, Forrest, you have a closed mind on the subject. You’re putting too much emphasis on work, work, work. You’ve narrowed your existence down to slaving away over blueprints.”

  “That’s how it has to be. Your main focus is your career, too.”

  “But I don’t want the same things you do. You’d like a family. I’m perfectly content on my own.”

  “Are you?” he said quietly.

  “Yes. Yes, I am. Absolutely. But you? Forrest, you’ve got to get your act together, your head on straight. You’re going to sentence yourself to a lonely existence if you don’t stop and consider some alternatives to the way you’re thinking. Two-career marriages are flourishing all around you, but you’re only paying attention to the ones that aren’t. Are you listening to me?”

  “At the volume that you’re yelling, how could I not be listening?”

  “I’m not yelling!” She paused, then sighed. “Yes, I am.” She sank back onto her chair. “Ignore me.”

  Forrest leaned across the table and planted a quick kiss on her forehead.

  “Impossible,” he said. “I’d have to be dead to be able to ignore you while I’m with you. I can’t ignore you when I’m not with you. I think about you a great deal when we’re apart, Jillian.”

  She looked up at him. “I think about you, too, Forrest,” she said, rather dreamily. In the next instant, her eyes widened and she stiffened. “I did not say that.”

  Forrest moved around the table to where Jillian sat and pulled her gently to her feet, wrapping his arms around her. She stared at his chest.

  “Look at me,” he said gently.

  She raised her head slowly, her expression troubled when she met his gaze.

  “Jillian, I don’t quite understand why you’re suddenly so flustered, stressed, upset, whatever it is you are. We were talking about genderless household chores, for Pete’s sake.”

  “But we moved on to the subject of working too hard, how it affects a marriage, and on and on. I just hate knowing you won’t ever be totally happy because you’ll miss having a family.”

  “And you’re dead set against ever having a family,” he said. Jillian had tried marriage, it had failed. She’d been hurt, and he’d bet money that she wasn’t about to go down that road again.

  “Well, not everyone wants the same things from life, Forrest.”

  “True, that’s true,” he agreed, nodding.

  But what, he wondered, was a man supposed to do when he met someone who was poles apart from him as far as what they wanted, but there was something new and special of incredible intensity and depth happening between them? He wanted to know what it was, what it meant.

  Oh, man, this whole thing was crazy. He wanted to get married and have a family. Jillian didn’t. He felt it was impossible for him to have said family because of the economy making it necessary for both parents to have careers. Jillian believed that dual-career marriages could function just fine with the proper compromises.

  The wrong attitudes and beliefs were tacked onto the wrong people in this scenario. If he was smart, he’d cash in his chips and exit stage left before he went out of his beleaguered mind. But he’d never claimed to be a genius.

  He did not want, nor did he intend, to walk out of Jillian Jones-Jenkins’s life. He should, but he wouldn’t, just couldn’t.

  Well, at least there was one thing they agreed on: trust. He knew how she felt about trust between a man and a woman, and her beliefs matched his own.

  Forrest suddenly stiffened. “Thunder,” he said, his head snapping up. “We’d better see what’s happening with the weather. That’s thunder rumbling in them there hills, ma’am.”

  He gave her a fast, hard kiss, released her, and headed for the stairs. Jillian was right behind him.

  On the deck of the boat, they came to an abrupt halt as they saw the heavy dark clouds covering the sky, and the trees lining the cove whipped into a frenzy by a rapidly rising wind.

  “Holy smoke,” Forrest said.

  “We’d better get on the radio,” Jillian said. “It’s ship-to-shore, and we can contact the Coast Guard and ask what we should do.”

  They ran to the bridge as lightning zigzagged across the sky and thunder continued to rumble in a nearly steady cadence.

  Forrest quickly read the instructions on the laminated card taped to the radio, and minutes later was communicating with the man on duty at the Coast Guard station. As they talked, big drops of cold rain began to fall, being flung in all directions by the wind.

  “Roger,” Forrest finally said. “Thank you, and over and out.” He grabbed Jillian’s hand. “Let’s get below,” he yelled, above the roar of the wind.

  Even though the distance from the bridge to the stairway was short, they were thoroughly soaked by the time they got below deck. The boat rocked back and forth, and the picnic hamper began to slide across the table.

  “Whoa,” Forrest said, snatching up the hamper and setting it on the floor.

  Jillian wrapped her hands around her elbows, unable to stop her teeth from chattering. “Oh-h-h, I’m freezing, turning into an icicle.”

  “You heard the radio transmission,” Forrest said. “The Coast Guard wants us to stay put until this blows over. They said we’re safer in this cove than on the open water. We’ve got to get out of these wet clothes before we catch pneumonia. Do you know what the setup is here for light, heat, hot water?”

  Jillian nodded, tightening her hold on her arms. “There’s an independent generator that services lights, that space heater on the wall, and a small hot-water tank. I doubt that there are any spare clothes on board other than extra bathing suits, but there’s a stack of beach towels in the center drawer beneath the bed.”

  “Okay. Good.”

  Forrest turned on two lamps mounted on the wall, which cast a soft glow over the area. Opening the drawer Jillian had indicated, he removed four large, brightly colored towels. He crossed the room and gave two of them to her.

  “You go ahead and shower,” he said. “I’ll do a quick inspection to see if there’s anything that needs securing. We’re in for a bumpy ride,
or float, or whatever.”

  Jillian nodded and hurried to enter the small enclosure she referred to as a bathroom, knowing that nautical jargon said it was the head, which she’d always thought was rather silly.

  With difficulty, she managed to peel off her wet jeans, then the remainder of her clothing. She sighed with relief when she stepped into the shower stall and felt the welcome spray of warm water cascading over her chilled body.

  She’d have to hurry, she knew, as there was not a great deal of hot water provided by the minisize tank.

  Minutes later she stepped out of the stall, and vigorously rubbed her hair with the huge, thirsty towel. She dried the rest of herself until her skin was pink.

  Now what? she thought suddenly. Her clothes were soaking wet, including her bra and panties. The towel she’d already used was damp, so— Good grief, she had nothing to wear except the second beach towel. Well, so be it. The only other choice was to walk out of there naked as the day she was born.

  She finger-combed her hair into a semblance of order, wrapped the towel around herself like a sarong that fell to just above her knees, and tucked the flap of the towel between her breasts. Picking up her wet clothes and the damp towel, she took a deep, steadying breath, plastered a smile on her face, and opened the door.

  “It’s all yours,” she said breezily. Her gaze swept over the room, taking in the beach towels spread on the table and over the backs of the chairs.

  “We can put our clothes on these,” Forrest said, placing a towel on the last chair. “Hopefully they’ll dry out a bit, and the furniture won’t be damaged. I turned on the heat and—” He looked up at Jillian and stopped speaking. “Holy smoke,” he whispered.

  Jillian walked forward and dumped her clothes in the center of the table.

  Do not, she told herself, look at that man. She’d heard his hoarsely whispered reaction to her apparel, or lack of same. She was acutely aware of the fact that she was naked beneath that towel, and Forrest was not a stupid person. She didn’t want to see what message might be radiating from his expression, or from the depths of those incredible brown eyes of his.

  She busied herself with her clothes, letting out a whoosh of breath as she heard the water in the shower. Hesitating when she picked up her soggy lace bra and panties, she mentally shrugged, deciding that a virile man like Forrest MacAllister had no doubt seen his share of woman’s undies.

  Her laundry tended to, she glanced around for a place to sit. There was a small, cushioned seat against one wall that was the top of a storage box. She’d sat on it in the past, and it was as hard as a rock.

  No contest. She was declaring first-come-first-served, and claiming the bed. Forrest could plunk himself on the bench.

  She took one of the pillows from beneath the spread and placed it against the back wall. Crawling over the bed, she sat straight up, legs extended, facing the room. After checking to be certain her towel was secure, she folded her hands primly in her lap.

  In the next moment, she decided she looked like a Victorian maiden on her wedding night. She crossed her ankles, striving for a more nonchalant pose, then stared at her hands, wondering what on earth to do with them.

  “A magazine,” she said. “Yes. Perfect.”

  Hearing the water stop running in the shower, she scrambled off the bed, nearly losing the towel in the process, dashed across the room to snatch a magazine out of a holder mounted on the wall, then hightailed it back to the bed.

  The towel was straightened, her ankles crossed in a casual mode, and her nose was buried in the magazine she held up in front of her face, when Forrest returned to the main room.

  “That shower was heaven itself,” he said. “Man, that felt good.”

  “Mmm,” Jillian said, not looking at him.

  “These clothes are sure wet, considering we weren’t out in the rain that long.”

  “Mmm.”

  “The boat isn’t rocking too badly. We’ll pretend it’s a giant-size cradle.”

  “Mmm.”

  Forrest crossed the room and wiggled one of Jillian’s big toes. “Hey, you.”

  She gasped in shock, and smacked the magazine onto her lap.

  And then she stopped breathing as she stared up at Forrest MacAllister.

  He was beautiful, she mused, finally taking a breath. He’d tucked the towel around his waist, allowing it to fall to midcalf. The soft light made his tanned skin appear like polished bronze. The broad, bare expanse of his chest caused her fingers to itch with the urge to tangle in the mass of damp auburn curls, then slide over the taut, perfectly proportioned muscles of his arms.

  Masculinity personified, her mind hummed. Gorgeous. Blatantly male. And naked as a jaybird beneath a scrap of terry cloth.

  “Jillian?”

  “Who?” she said, then blinked. “I mean...what?”

  Forrest picked up the other pillow. “Move over.”

  “Why?”

  “Because we’re going to be here for a while, toots, and I’m not sitting on that brick of a bench. There are wet clothes on all the chairs, so...please move over and share the bed.”

  Share the bed, her mind echoed. They were going to share the bed. This bed, the one she was sitting on in the secret cave created by the lazy carpenter, was the one they were going to share.

  Jillian, stop it, she ordered herself. She was getting hysterical. She could handle this. She was a mature woman, not a flaky adolescent. Yes! She was woman! But, oh, dear heaven, Forrest was the epitome of man.

  “Hey!” he said.

  “Yes, I’m sharing. I’m moving over right now. Here I go, wiggling right over here.” She clutched the towel at the center of her breasts, then readjusted the pillow. “There. Now you have room. Go for it, MacAllister.” She grabbed the magazine and placed it in front of her face again, close to her nose.

  She was tense from head to toe as she felt Forrest move onto the bed, prop his pillow next to hers, squirm around, then settle into place.

  A long, silent minute ticked by.

  “Interesting,” Forrest said finally.

  “Hmm?” she said, her undivided attention directed toward the magazine.

  “You have many facets, Lady Jillian. I wouldn’t have thought you’d be so engrossed in a Popular Mechanics magazine.”

  Jillian’s eyes widened as she comprehended for the first time what she was holding.

  “Well, of course, I’m interested,” she said, turning a page. “One never knows when one might need to do something mechanical...and popular.”

  “Oh,” he said, with a burst of laughter.

  “It’s true,” she said firmly. “I own a home, you know. Things need fixing at times.”

  “Popular things,” he said, still smiling.

  “Whatever,” she mumbled.

  “Tell me something, Jillian.”

  “Hmm?” She turned another page.

  “How can you see to read? Those lights I turned on are pretty dim. It’s very shadowy back here in your secret cave. You must have remarkable vision.”

  Jillian squinted at the magazine. “Oh.” She snapped her head around to look at him, and nodded. “I do. Oh my, yes, I have excellent vision. Superb vision, as a matter of fact. I— Aaak!” she yelled, in the next instant.

  The boat had suddenly seemed to lift nearly out of the water, then tilt to one side. The magazine flew in one direction, Jillian in the other—toward Forrest.

  As she sprawled across his lap, his arms shot out, one wrapping around her beneath her breasts, the other under her knees. He scooped her up and planted her firmly on his lap. The boat returned to the gently rocking motion.

  “Easy does it, there,” Forrest said. “Either some idiot was whizzing past at the end of the cove, or the Coast Guard went by, but we’re all right now. Everything is under control.”

  Except Jillian Jones-Jenkins, she thought frantically. She was perched on Forrest MacAllister’s lap, for crying out loud. Her heart was doing the tango, and the heat... Oh,
dear heaven, the heat within her was churning and pulsing, low and deep. Everything was under control? That was the most ridiculous thing she’d ever heard.

  “Jillian,” Forrest said, his voice quiet as he looked directly into her eyes.

  And she was lost.

  No longer could she resist the urge to sink her fingers into the auburn curls on the muscled wall of Forrest’s chest.

  And so, she did.

  No longer could she keep from inhaling, then savoring, his scent of soap and man.

  And so, she did.

  No longer could she ignore the fact that only two terry-cloth towels separated her from him, making her acutely aware of the rock-hard feel of his thighs beneath the softness of her own. She wanted to rejoice in the magnificence of his masculinity compared to her own femininity.

  And so, she did.

  No longer could she ignore the raspy sound of Forrest’s quickened breathing as he continued to gaze into her eyes, nor the tempting sight of his lips so very close to hers. She wanted to kiss those lips, taste them again, meet his tongue with her own.

  And so...she did.

  She slipped one hand to the back of his head, burying her fingers in his thick hair, and spread her other hand flat on his chest, feeling the rapid beat of his heart. She leaned forward and claimed his lips.

  A groan rumbled in Forrest’s throat as he met her mouth eagerly, urgently. He moved his arm from under her knees to wrap it around her, his other arm still firmly beneath her breasts.

  His arousal was instantaneous. Heavy, aching, pressing against Jillian with the declaration of his want, his burning need. He jerked his head to break the kiss.

  “Jillian,” he said, then drew a rough breath. “I want to make love with you. Make love, Jillian. You can be certain of that. What’s happening here is important, very special.” Something that was becoming much, much more than an Angels and Elves assignment.

  “Yes,” she whispered. “Yes, Forrest, I want to make love with you, too.”

  Jillian? her mind nudged. What are you doing? Think. Forrest is The Project. He’ll be gone in less than two weeks. Jillian!

  But she ignored the niggling little voice, pushed aside the warnings of her mind, and listened only to her heart.