by BETH KERY
“You shouldn’t sympathize with me. Jesse was your husband. That’s the cruelest loss of all.”
Faith swallowed convulsively. He wished he could read her expression. “In many ways, the people you serve with are closer than family,” she said quietly. “You spent time with Jesse, day in and day out. You depended on each other. I know how much he admired you. Of course you’d feel his loss deeply,” she said, her gaze traveling over his face.
“Are you still struggling, Faith? With his loss?” Ryan asked, both curious and cautious about her answer.
She bit her lower lip and met his stare. “Jesse was gone for a lot of our marriage, Ryan,” she said in a hushed voice. “It’s not as if I didn’t have to get used to being alone.”
He nodded slowly, unable to unglue his gaze from her lovely face.
“You seem so sad. You took his death really hard, didn’t you?” she asked. He was stunned that she seemed more concerned about his well-being than her own.
He felt a muscle flicker in his cheek.
“I do miss Jesse. But his death isn’t why I’m feeling so regretful right now.”
“Why, then?” she asked shakily, her clear green eyes intent on his face.
* * *
Had it been the tremor in her voice that made him do it? Maybe it’d been the mixture of uncertainty and desire shining in her eyes? Whatever it’d been, Ryan couldn’t have done anything else in that moment but step forward and take Faith Holmes into his arms.
Chapter Six
They hugged for a long moment. Ryan felt as if he sensed her in every cell of his body, every square inch of his awareness. He wanted like hell to comfort her. He wanted to be utterly confident of her safety and happiness.
She shifted her head and buried her face in his chest, and Ryan forced himself to acknowledge the truth.
He wanted Faith more than anything. Period.
She tilted her head back when she felt the slight pressure of his forefinger beneath her chin. Was he really seeing so much unchecked longing in Faith’s gaze at that moment? Or was it just what he was feeling reflected in her forest-green eyes?
“No matter how unwise and guilty I feel about it, I can’t seem to stop myself from doing this, Faith.”
He lowered his head so that their mouths were only inches apart. His gaze moved over her face, reading her reaction to his closeness. Her lips parted as if in anticipation.
He covered her mouth with his own.
The whimper that leaked out of her throat didn’t sound distressed, but wondrous. Ryan could completely understand the sentiment. She tasted fantastic. His mouth moved over hers, molding, caressing, shaping her flesh to his...memorizing every sweet nuance of sensation. He sandwiched her lower lip between his, drawing it downward. His tongue slipped between her lips. His first taste was polite, a gentle dip beneath the surface. Then Faith touched him with the tip of her tongue, and her flavor penetrated his consciousness. Heat erupted in him. She glided her tongue against his and sucked lightly, teasing him to come farther...deeper.
He groaned and accepted her invitation wholeheartedly, sweeping his tongue into her mouth.
He cradled her chin at the side of her neck, holding her hostage to his kiss. His fingertips stroked her nape, amazed at her softness. It’d never happened to him before—that a woman’s scent and taste could entirely obliterate logic. Apparently it wasn’t just a myth, that passion had the ability to burn away rational thought.
She stepped closer and reached around his waist. He made a sound of satisfaction, highly gratified by the feeling of her feminine, firm curves pressing so tightly against him. He put a hand at the small of her back, sealing their bodies into a fit that made everything go black for a moment. Her knees seemed to sag. He broke their kiss and tightened his hold on her waist. He pushed back her dark, coiling hair and pressed his mouth to the side of her neck feverishly.
“Faith,” he whispered roughly.
“I’m here,” she said.
A poignant chord struck deep inside his spirit at her two simple words. So generous. So sweet. So inviting to this crazy, but somehow inevitable experience. She shifted her chin and nuzzled his jaw. Something sharp tore through him. He turned, his mouth finding hers. They fused in a kiss. This time he took her with a raw, elemental hunger that scorched away even the most stubborn lingering doubts and confusion about what was happening to him...what was happening to them.
She arched her back against his hands, offering the soft harbor of her body as a solace to his raging, burning need. The sensation of her breasts crushed against his ribs made him groan. She rubbed against him subtly. He moved in turn, stroking her even as his flesh hardened and thrilled to her sweetness.
He made a rough sound and broke their kiss.
“You’re going to think I’m crazy, but when I was over there in that desert, I used to wish like hell you were mine and not Jesse’s. How’s that for a faithful friend?”
“Ryan,” she whispered shakily. “I don’t think you’re crazy.”
She went up on her toes and pressed her mouth to his. A shudder went through him. Suddenly, he was lifting her in his arms. His entire world shifted, until he didn’t know left from right, up from down...
...right from wrong.
The only thing Ryan knew as he carried Faith into the living room and laid her on the couch was the recognition of her in the very marrow of his bones...the basic, powerful knowledge that she was his.
He swam in a sea of Faith’s fragrance; soft, pale skin; eager, sweet lips and lush, supple curves. If he paused to think about what was happening, he’d stop, and he hated that idea.
Despised it.
He knelt next to the couch. He came down over her, his knees still on the floor, his mouth immediately finding the juncture at her neck and shoulder.
“You smell so good,” he muttered, inhaling her scent fully, feeling his blood pound in approval. She moaned softly. He relished the vibrations against his hungry lips. She arched her back. He paused, gritting his teeth at the sensation of full, firm breasts pressing against his chest. He was crazed to touch her, skin to skin. She ran her fingers through his hair, her touch causing prickles of pleasure to course down his neck and spine.
He bracketed her hips with his hands, taking her measure, finding her perfect. His fingers tugged lightly on the belt of her robe at the same time his mouth settled on warm, seeking lips. Her subtle perfume swamped his senses. He wanted to submerse himself in her and never come up for air. He probed the secrets of her mouth, relishing her unique flavor and uncommon responsiveness. She ran her hands beneath his shirt and molded his shoulder muscles into her palms.
The storm raging in his body gripped around flesh and bone, demanding release. He lifted his head a fraction of an inch, but couldn’t entirely move away from the sweetest mouth he’d ever tasted.
“Tell me you want me to go away, Faith, because I can’t seem to make myself do it,” he muttered next to her damp lips.
“No. I can’t do that,” she said. Her fingers traced his neck, and then his collarbone. He tensed when she opened the first, then second button of his shirt and stroked his chest, her fingers avid. He clamped his eyes shut, feeling the inevitability of her touch...the impossibility of denying it.
She leaned forward and caught his mouth again, plucking at his lips, coaxing and tempting him until he thought he would explode, then and there.
His hands moved on her hips, drawing up her robe and nightgown. When his fingers skimmed the satiny skin of her thighs, he grimaced, need clutching at him with talon-sharp claws. He once again took control of their kiss, ravaging her tenderly. His hand moved, drawing down her panties, finding her heat.
She was soft and warm and wet, and when he touched her, her whimper pierced straight through him.
He never h
ad a logical thought after that point. The world became his hunger. His world became Faith.
He tried to remove his pants, but she held him fast in her kiss, and goodness knows he was too wild for her taste to protest. His need drove at him relentlessly, however. He finally broke their kiss and pressed his mouth against the upper curve of her breast. Her robe had fallen open. Only a layer of thin cotton separated her skin from his caressing lips. She furrowed her fingers through his hair and held him to her as he explored firm, feminine flesh. When he reached the peak of a breast, he took it into his mouth, laving the pebbled, turgid nipple through the fabric.
Her sharp cry was his siren call.
He moved over her, need making him blind to everything but sensation. He felt her wet heat on the tip of his erection and muttered a curse that was a prayer.
“Oh...heavens,” he heard her say as if from a great distance. Desire pummeled him, gripping, squeezing...
He drove into her heat, feeling her deepest embrace in every cell of his body.
“Are you all right?” he managed between a clenched jaw. He pried open his eyelids. The vision of Faith laying there while they were fused, her dark hair spread on the cushion, her lovely face tight and glazed with desire, was scorched into his brain...quite possibly for an eternity.
She reached for him, her fervent kiss his answer.
* * *
The buzzing sound of his cell phone interrupted his heated memories. Ryan glanced at the number, scowling, and hit the receive button.
“Hey,” Ryan greeted his sister gruffly.
“Did I wake you up?” Mari, his sister, asked.
“No, I was watching the Tigers game. I’m going to drive over to the airport here in a bit to meet with the owner of a Cessna I want to buy. What’s up?”
“I just wanted to confirm lunch tomorrow. Did Faith say she’d come?”
Ryan and Mari had been close growing up, but the sudden, tragic loss of their parents when Mari was eighteen and Ryan was twenty had tightened their bond even more. He could hear the threads of anxiety and excitement in his sister’s voice at the prospect of meeting Faith. When he’d told his sister last night about Faith and the pregnancy, she’d first expressed her worry about how he was handling things. After she’d listened to him describe Faith, however, excitement had started to filter into her voice.
“She’ll be there. Are you sure you should make the trip?” Ryan asked, standing and turning off the television.
Mari laughed. In his mind’s eye he could clearly see the droll roll of her whiskey-colored eyes. “I think I’m up to the hour drive from Chicago to Harbor Town. You’d better get used to the idea that a pregnant woman isn’t disabled, Ryan.”
“Between you and Faith constantly telling me, I’ll likely learn the lesson soon enough,” he mumbled dryly as he pulled a shirt out of the closet.
“Good. Faith sounds like she’ll keep you in line. Can you pick me up at Brigit’s? I wouldn’t ask, but I promised to meet with Deidre about the project she’s started for veterans with post-traumatic stress syndrome at the center,” Mari explained. She referred to The Family Center, the innovative community and treatment center for survivors of substance abuse that Mari had begun several years ago. Mari, the Reyes family, and all of the Kavanaugh children were intimately involved in the funding and workings of The Family Center, since all of them were direct survivors of substance abuse. Members of all three families had lost family members following a car wreck caused by Derry Kavanaugh when he’d been driving drunk seventeen years ago.
“Yeah, I wanted to double check with Deidre that she’s all squared away with Scott to fly to Tahoe tomorrow, anyway,” he said. “I’ll pick you up at twelve-thirty,” Ryan said before he bid her goodbye and hung up the phone.
He finished dressing, intent on going to the airport and finalizing the details for his purchase of the new plane for Eagle Air.
He only hoped Faith hadn’t changed her mind about agreeing to come tomorrow.
* * *
Faith stood in her backyard the following morning watching Topsy poke her nose into every possible crevice she could. She soaked up the warm sunshine, glorying in the first bona fide springlike day of the year.
“Faith?”
She spun around at the sound of the deep voice calling from the front of the house. “Ryan, I’m back here!”
He came around the side of the house a moment later. She waited, appreciating the sight of him while he approached. He wore a pair of canvas pants along with a button-down blue-and-white twill shirt. Both items of clothing fitted him perfectly, highlighting long legs, narrow hips and the appealing slant of his torso from a lean waist to a powerful chest and shoulders.
He looked good enough to eat.
Recognizing her errant thought, she plastered a smile on her face as he opened the fence gate and approached her.
“You got here quicker than I’d expected. I thought I better let Topsy out before we left.”
“There wasn’t any traffic in town. I got here fast,” he said, his dark eyes moving over her. She felt her cheeks warming beneath what appeared to be an appreciative male appraisal. “Isn’t this weather amazing? The first real day of spring,” she said breathlessly.
“You look like springtime,” he murmured, his stare sweeping over her floral-colored skirt and lingering on the front of her lightweight peach-colored sweater.
“Thanks,” she managed. Something about his low, gruff voice made her already warm cheeks burn. She’d purchased some springtime items for her wardrobe, well aware that her breasts were growing past the confines of her prepregnancy blouses. Even this new sweater seemed to highlight her growing curves, however. Ryan’s appreciative glance didn’t offend her like it would have if another man had perused her in such a manner.
In fact, his warm glance made her feel downright...desirable...
...aroused.
“Topsy!” she called, eager to derail her potentially dangerous train of thought. The puppy glanced around at her call and suddenly tore through the yard. She immediately went to Ryan, wiggling and hopping around his ankles. Ryan grinned and bent to pet the caramel-colored fluff ball, scratching Topsy behind the ears until she literally vibrated with pleasure.
“You’ve made a friend for life,” Faith said, enjoying watching Ryan’s long fingers stroke the puppy. No wonder Topsy appeared to be in a state of bliss. What was it about seeing a big, masculine man with something so tiny and adorable that appealed so much to a woman? A strange, powerful feeling tightened her chest.
What would it be like to see him hold their child?
“You think so?” Ryan asked, picking up Topsy and holding her in front of his face, examining the canine soberly. Faith burst out in laughter at the comical sound he made when Topsy lapped at his nose with a pink tongue.
* * *
“Why are you so quiet?” Ryan asked her several minutes later when they were on the road to Harbor Town.
“I’m worried about meeting your sister,” Faith admitted, staring at the sun-gilded, blooming trees and meadows zooming past the car window.
“She’ll love you. There’s absolutely nothing to worry about.”
“Easy for you to say,” Faith said quietly. She glanced at Ryan when he reached across the console and put his hand on top of hers where it’d been resting on her thigh. His heat soaked down into her skin.
“It is easy for me to say, because I know Mari, and I know you. What specifically are you worried about?”
Faith bit at her lower lip, hesitant to reveal her insecurities. Ryan tightened his hold on her hand, as if in reassurance.
“I know it’s ridiculous,” she murmured, watching as they passed the city limit sign for Harbor Town. “I’m thirty years old, not a teenager, but I can’t help but feel like she might think I’
m...some kind of a...”
“What?” Ryan prodded when she faded off.
“Loose woman,” Faith burst out. It sounded so ridiculous when she said it, she couldn’t help but give Ryan a sheepish grin. He wore an incredulous expression that segued to amusement.
“Loose woman? This isn’t the 1950s, Faith. Lots of women have babies who aren’t married, or even in a serious relationship.”
“I know. Maybe loose isn’t the word. Maybe stupid is. Women in this day and age aren’t supposed to get pregnant after a...a...” She struggled to finish her sentence, becoming increasingly uncomfortable when she couldn’t. When Ryan released her hand, she looked at him in alarm. Had she offended him? She hadn’t meant to minimize Christmas Eve, she just didn’t know how to describe what had happened between them.
Still.
“Mari isn’t going to judge you,” he said as he stared out the front window and drove. “She’s not a judgmental person, in the first place, and in the second place, there’s nothing to judge. She’s as aware as anyone that you can’t always plan life. You just live it as best you can.”
Faith inhaled slowly, studying his profile. He turned into a residential neighborhood featuring a tree-lined street and attractive older large homes. Of course he was right. How could she possibly feel the tiniest shame about the miracle of life growing inside her?
Ryan brought the car to a crawl.
“See that house there?” he asked, pointing to a lovely sprawling residence complete with a sweeping porch and swing that had been built in the Arts and Crafts style and lovingly restored. “That was our summer house.”
“It’s beautiful,” Faith breathed. “Isn’t there a beach down at the end of the street?” she asked, pointing to a wooded cul-de-sac. “What a wonderful neighborhood for kids this must have been.”
“Yeah, the beach is on the other side of those trees. We lived on that beach during the summer. A bunch of the parents on the street conspired to serve dinner at the same time every night so that only one of them had to go down to round us all up for supper,” Ryan said, smiling in memory.