She might. She was pretty damned persuasive. If she’d been anyone else, anywhere else, he’d lean forward just the little bit it would take to press his lips to hers. If she was anyone else.
“Can I ask you a question?”
She had to be completely oblivious to the effect she was having on him. She wouldn’t be sitting there so close, so relaxed, if she had any idea of the temptations he was fighting.
Or the heat in his blood.
“Of course,” he said, taking another sip of wine.
“If you had to pick the one person in the world who truly knows you, who would it be?”
He’d expected something much harder than that. “Cal.”
She nodded, as though she’d expected the answer.
“That’s right. And he thought you were not only deserving of a child, he gave you his child.”
She had a point. There wasn’t much about him that Calhoun Sanderson hadn’t known. The good, the bad, the women—his friend pretty much knew it all.
Leslie licked her lips and Kip had to restrain himself from offering to do it for her. The house was too intimate, in spite of its size. The room was too close, the lighting too dim. The wine was too good. The Christmas tree holding the promise of a real home and family that weren’t his. The woman too sexy.
Maybe that was the problem. He needed a woman. Not Leslie Sanderson. Just a woman. It had been a while. And he wasn’t used to depriving himself.
“Thank you,” he said, although he’d meant to excuse himself. He reached out a hand, pushed a curl back from the corner of her eye. “You’re right. No one knew me better than Cal and he wants me to raise his son. Me.”
She didn’t pull away from his hand as he’d expected. As he’d deserved. She might even have leaned into it. Or he might have moved closer.
“I know it’s made a huge difference to me in the past couple of weeks. Every time Kayla throws a fit and I freeze and can’t think and feel a panic attack coming on, I remember that he wanted me to have her, and somehow the panic is averted.”
He found another curl to smooth away. “I would never have guessed you were the kind of person who has panic attacks.”
“I don’t,” she said quickly. And then, with a bit of a smirk, “At least, not anymore.”
Her face was inches from his. Soft beneath his palm. Her eyes captivated him. “What would you have to panic about?” His voice sounded embarrassingly soft.
She licked her lips again. “Right now, I’m not aware of a thing,” she told him.
He believed her. He wasn’t aware of much himself. Except maybe her breasts, how incredibly tempting they were, pressing against the white cotton of her shirt.
“Kip?”
“Yeah?”
“Are you going to kiss me?”
“I’m thinking about it.”
She nodded. Said nothing. With his thumb he gently touched the corner of her mouth. She let him.
“How about you?” He was impressed with his ability to form coherent words.
“What about me?” Her lips moved against the pad of his thumb.
“What are you thinking about?”
“Whether or not it’ll be as good as I imagined back in junior high, when I had the crush of all crushes on you.”
Kip was not a stupid man. No way in hell was he going to refuse that challenge. Still…
“You had a crush on me?”
“Don’t pretend you didn’t know.”
He shook his head. He wished he had known, although he wasn’t sure why. It wasn’t like he would’ve done anything about it. Other than stay away from the Sanderson home.
So it was a good thing he hadn’t known.
“You were always such a private little thing….”
With desire for her consuming him, Kip couldn’t reason, couldn’t even care that he couldn’t reason. He moved slowly toward her until his lips finally touched hers.
He’d meant the kiss to be gentle—a simple hello. But as soon as he felt the sweet softness of Leslie’s mouth, Kip could only react. Lifting her right off the couch, he settled her in his lap, turning her to brace her head against his arm. He nudged her chin with his and, as her mouth fell slightly open, slid his tongue inside. Her lips moved against his, participating. But not her tongue. It was almost as if she didn’t know what to do with it.
Kip’s desire swelled as he sought that tongue, coaxed it out to play, taught it how tease with his.
Then taking her bottom in his hands, Kip moved her against him, groaning with the delightful anguish—and then gasped for breath. He had to slow down. To savor this.
He didn’t know how. Didn’t recognize himself—or his reaction. Kip hadn’t been an inexperienced schoolboy since his thirteenth birthday.
“You taste so good,” he whispered against Leslie’s lips. She groaned, reached for him again with lips that were wet and swollen. He pulled her tighter against him, feeling her breasts against his chest. She was woman everywhere. So much woman.
He couldn’t get enough of her.
Her tongue eased lightly along his lips and he loosened his hold on her, reaching between them to find the softness of her breast.
“Oh, God, Les, you feel good,” he said, careful to touch tenderly, to please her. He found her nipple through her bra—it was hard and waiting for his touch. He teased her with the side of his thumb, then ran an index finger lightly around the tip. His mouth yearned to be where his hand was.
Sliding his hand beneath her shirt, he delighted in the satin of her skin against his palm, learning the contours of her stomach, her side. Her kisses, on the corner of his mouth, full on the mouth, inside—tongue touching tongue—were tentative and bold at the same time, innocent and hungry, dazing him with a desire that took away all conscious thought.
He found the front closure of her bra, fumbled as he slipped it loose and realized that his hands were shaking. The mound of her breast was womanly, both soft and full, enticing him to do things he’d never even considered doing to Leslie Sanderson. Her nipple was hard, and he rubbed his finger quickly back and forth against the tip, lifting his hips to her bottom as she groaned. He had to taste her. He had to—
“No.”
“Huh?” He dropped her shirt, lifting his head as the quiet plea half registered. Or maybe it was just that she’d covered her breasts with her hands.
She didn’t jump off his lap. Resting her forehead against his, she said, “I’m so sorry, Kip. I’m just—”
A rush of sweat, met by the room’s air, cooled him enough to let him make his way through the fog.
“Don’t apologize, Les, that was wonderful,” he said, breathing heavily, meaning every word. He couldn’t think of a time when kissing had been better.
“But I…”
“Ssh,” he said, giving her a long, slow kiss. “You stopped a stupid man from rushing things for you.” As soon as the ache in his body dissipated, he’d be grateful.
“You aren’t mad?”
“Of course I’m not mad.” Other than the ache that would pass, he felt great. Ready to laugh out loud with the unexpected and exhilarating turn of events. “It was our first kiss and I was taking us right on home. Insensitive of me, I admit.”
She chuckled. “I suspect you often go right home on a first kiss.”
Did she care about that? Did the other women bother her?
Kip laid his head back against the couch, watching her through lowered lids, bemused, confused. This ground was new to him—kissing a woman he was going to be seeing again every day for the foreseeable future. Kissing a woman he had history with.
“You aren’t a woman to rush,” he said when he sensed that she needed something from him.
“What does that mean?”
“Honestly?” He raised a brow, grinning at her.
She nodded, her lips swollen and gorgeous and so tempting.
“I don’t know.”
Leslie bowed her head, although the grin she was wearing reli
eved him. “It was good, wasn’t it?” Her question was softly spoken.
“The best.”
She glanced up. “Really?”
Holding her face between his palms, Kip looked her straight in the eye. “Really.” He wanted to tell her how incredible, how different, holding her had been from any of the other women he’d held in recent years, but couldn’t bring himself to be that vulnerable. So many changes in so little time—he needed time to catch up.
NERVES SINGING, Leslie sat next to Kip on the sofa, close but not touching, fear warring with a very timid and fragile hope as she experienced, for the first time, the aftermath of unrequited desire.
“So what do we do now?” She asked the question they’d both been avoiding for the past half hour. The wine bottle was empty, their glasses almost so. It was late. The kids would be up early.
“Go to bed?” he quipped, but while his mouth grinned, his forehead creased.
“Forget it ever happened?” she offered, half hoping he’d say yes. Maybe more than half hoping.
He glanced down at her. “Is that what you want?”
She could ask him the same question. And he could tell her that he’d asked her first. And they could play childish games and avoid the whole thing.
But they had to live together.
And she’d feel cheap. Bottom line for Leslie, she could not, would not, allow herself to feel cheap—like she had during that brief period in college. She might not find her way back a second time.
“No,” she said now, slowly. “But I’m not sure what I do want.”
“That’s fair.”
Peering up at him, she tried to chuckle like a woman of the world and managed a weak smile. “What does that mean?”
His eyes were warm, tender—he looked at her as though she were precious to him. Basking in that gaze, Leslie knew no fear.
“I think it’s clear to both of us that we have to be very careful,” Kip said, obviously choosing his words with care.
“We have the kids to consider,” she agreed. “The most important thing is not to let anything that does or does not happen between us disrupt their lives.”
“Parents fight, Les. Kids learn how to disagree in a healthy way by observing their parents.”
She grinned for real and it felt good. “How would you know?”
“I told you I watched a lot of television.”
“So it’s okay if we fight? That’s a relief.” Inane conversation, but how did you discuss sex with your housemate, who also happened to be the father of your child’s sibling? Added to the fact that he was the one man in her life she’d ever had those feelings for…
Kip sighed and Leslie’s heart opened up wide—too wide, she feared. “Listen,” she said, taking his hand as she turned on the couch to face him. “The only promise we can make—have to make—is that we have honesty between us,” she told him, knowing even as she said the words that they were going to burn her someday.
“I agree completely.”
It was the response she’d needed. So why didn’t she feel better?
She stared at the lights for a long time, sitting there holding his hand, saying nothing. She was tired, needed to sleep, and couldn’t go to bed yet. She had to know…
“So…are we going to do it again?”
“Yes, I think we are.”
She thought so, too.
And didn’t see anywhere it could lead except to hell. Her own personal hell.
Unless she dared to hope.
MANY HOURS LATER, lying in bed alone, Leslie was still awake in spite of all her attempts to sleep, reliving the night, the incredible miracle she’d experienced, and its potentially tragic results.
Hand sliding to her breast, Leslie rested her palm there, gently, remembering the touch of Kip’s fingers—and the shard of desire that shot down between her legs. Her other hand lay across her pelvis and tears dripped slowly down her cheeks.
That shard of desire was the miracle. She’d never once, in her entire life, known how it felt to want sex. To burn with physical need. She’d been craving that sensation her entire adult life, had feared that she’d die not ever knowing how it felt. The feeling was heady, stronger than self. There was no way on earth she could turn her back on it.
And that was the tragedy.
Because if things progressed, panic would soon replace anything that resembled a miracle.
CHAPTER TWELVE
SUNDAY AFTERNOON, while Kayla was down for her nap, Kip asked Leslie if she’d keep an eye on Jonathan for a while. He’d taken the boy for a haircut earlier that morning and Jonathan was still a bit subdued over the whole episode. But with the switchover at SI, Kip had some changes to make at the main facility—a couple of offices that needed to be cleaned out, others moved—and he’d prefer to get the work done while the hundred-member staff wasn’t there.
Happy to spend some time with Jonathan, she’d also been glad of the respite from Kip’s alluring company. All through breakfast, she’d been watching him—and vacillating between anticipation of a future she’d only dared hope for on the periphery of her mind, and a heaviness she knew well.
Earlier, she’d set Kayla up in her suite in front of a Disney video with a box of crayons and an oversize pad of white paper. Sitting on the floor with her, Leslie had perused the journals she’d kept during her years of intense therapy with Juliet. In those long months, she’d discovered, very slowly, that she was worthy, she was competent, she was beautiful and talented and had much to contribute to the world.
“Cwy?” Kayla’s baby voice had brought her out of her deep reverie to see the child staring up at her, pink overalls giving her cheeks a rosy glow.
“Nana cwy?”
“I’m Aunt Leslie,” she said, rapidly wiping away tears she hadn’t noticed. Then she touched the little girl’s cheek with the back of her knuckles. “But you can call me Mama if you’d like.”
Kayla’s brows drew together, as though she was considering the offer.
“Nana cwy?”
“No, Aunt Leslie isn’t crying anymore,” she said, chuckling as she lifted the child onto her lap, uncaring about the wrinkles that would leave in her navy cotton slacks, pulling the pad of paper and crayons with her. “Now, let’s see if we can get some more color onto this page….”
While they’d been sitting there, Kayla had only used one crayon—brown. Leslie understood the choice. There were times in life when keeping things basic just felt safe.
LESLIE FOUND JONATHAN in the living room, running a plastic train engine around the Christmas tree when she came in from putting Kayla to bed. Kip had left about five minutes before.
The boy, with his very short haircut, was wearing navy-and-white nylon sweatpants, a navy T-shirt and white tennis shoes today. Leslie had begun to look forward to Kip’s daily ensembles for his new son. If nothing else, Jonathan Sanderson was going to be the best dressed kid in his kindergarten class when school started again in January.
“What do you want to do this afternoon?” she asked, sitting on the edge of the couch.
Jonathan chugged and scooted. “I dunno.”
She clasped her hands together, surprised by their sudden clamminess, and barely resisted wiping them along the arms of her long-sleeved white shirt. This was her first time alone with the boy, but he was just five years old. A child. Her brother’s child.
“What would you be doing back in Ohio?”
Chugga, chugga, chugga. “I dunno.”
“Do you want to read a book?”
The little boy sat back on his heels and looked at her. “I ain’t good at it yet.”
“You’re not good at it.”
Chin jutting out, he nodded.
“I could help you. Or read to you.”
“Okay.” He didn’t sound all that enthusiastic.
“Is there something you’d rather do?”
“I dunno.”
The afternoon was not going to be the respite she’d been hoping for. Won
dering what mothers normally did to occupy their small sons, Leslie landed on the only thing she could remember her mother doing with her and Cal on any kind of regular basis.
“Let’s make some cookies.”
“HERE.” LESLIE PUSHED the big silver mixing bowl across the island to rest in front of Jonathan, who was sitting opposite her on a bar stool. She held out a metal cylinder with a turning crank. “This is a sifter,” she said. “Just turn that crank, and the flour and soda and salt will fall through the screen into the bowl.”
The little boy frowned. Took the sifter. And turned it with jerky movements.
“Boys don’t make cookies,” he said so softly Leslie wasn’t sure if she’d been meant to hear.
“Of course they do,” she answered anyway. Dropping the unwrapped stick of butter in a pan, she added four squares of unsweetened chocolate. “Your daddy cooked all the time. And he baked.”
At least he had when she’d known him. And since, as far as she was aware, he’d lived alone all of his adult life, she assumed he’d continued to do so.
“Not cookies,” Jonathan said. “Only Nana made cookies.”
“And you didn’t help her?” She glanced from the pan on the stove, where the butter and chocolate were melting together with a cup of sugar, over her shoulder to see Jonathan shaking his head. And still cranking. Flour surrounded him on the beige-and-brown granite counter top. And spotted his cheek.
“Why not?” She wanted so badly to understand this child. To be close to him. She already loved him so much. And she feared some of the things he represented.
“Boys don’t make cookies,” he said again.
Leslie chuckled, more for Jonathan’s sake than because her amusement was real. “Who told you that?”
“No one,” he said, shrugging.
“So why do you say it?”
He turned harder, his tongue darting in and out of his mouth, the sifter resting against his navy T-shirt. It also was streaked with white.
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