“That he still belonged to someone else.” It had been three months since they’d broken up, but she still felt the need to deflect blows on Jeff’s behalf. How pathetic was that? She couldn’t seem to help herself. “In his defense, he was actually separated at the time we met, but he never mentioned that. Told me later that he was afraid I wouldn’t go out with him if he did. So he just conveniently tucked that little annoying fact away.”
“He should have told you,” he agreed.
“Yes, he should have.” Then, maybe, she wouldn’t be in this position, she thought. Turning away, she started to unpack the carton.
He looked at her back for a long moment. People did incredibly stupid things when they were in love. “Would it have made a difference?”
Taking out a set of books, she paused for a second. Thinking of the baby. “You have no idea.”
She made herself get back to what she was doing. Keeping busy was the best remedy for what ailed her. She couldn’t help thinking that Quade was being incredibly sweet. Far more sympathetic than she’d ever thought he would be. But then, he’d suffered his own broken heart. It gave them something in common.
For a second, she debated telling him about the baby, but something stopped her. The same thing that had probably stopped Jeff from telling her about his marriage that had been temporarily in limbo. And it wasn’t even something she could put into words. She felt a surge of guilt. Nothing good ever came from deception. But she wasn’t deceiving, she silently insisted, she was omitting. Technically, there was a difference.
Besides, it wasn’t as if the man was having those kinds of thoughts about her. He probably saw her as a nuisance, not someone to care about.
God, she needed someone to care about her.
It took her a second to realize that he had come up from behind and circled around until he was facing her. Tears filled her eyes.
Her damn hormones were acting up again, making her feel sorry for herself. Making her feel things she had no business feeling.
A single tear trickled down her cheek. Oh, great, he was going to think she was some kind of emotionally unstable female, given to crying jags. That wasn’t her. She was bright, happy, able to see the upside of everything, even loneliness.
Another tear made good its escape.
She held her breath as he brushed his thumb against her cheek, wiping away the tracks of the tears that spilled out.
“He’s not worth crying over.”
“I’m not crying over him,” she told him quietly. “I guess I’m just mad at myself for being that stupid.”
He could feel his heart being tugged one way and then another. After vowing never to feel again, powerful emotions for this woman surged through him. He’d always kept his promises before—why couldn’t he keep them now?
“Falling in love isn’t stupid,” he told her.
She raised her head, forcing a smile to her lips. “Falling for the wrong man is.”
“But you had no way of knowing that.”
“No.” The word spilled in slow motion from her lips. “I didn’t.”
As they spoke, the small distance between them grew even less. With each word he uttered, his face came closer to hers.
And she found herself raising herself up on her toes, anticipating. Waiting.
Needing.
Reaching up, she framed his face with her hands. “Anyone ever tell you that you were too tall?”
His smile felt warm against her palms as amusement widened it. “Subject never came up.”
“Well, you are,” she whispered.
“There’s a way to remedy that.”
The next moment, he raised her in his arms as he simultaneously brought his mouth down to hers.
Chapter Twelve
The kiss grew, swelling until it became everything. Until it pulled them into a vortex of swirling heat and tightly wrapped emotions.
As it deepened, as the sensations claimed them, emotions began to break free of their bonds. It was as if someone had fired a starting pistol at the beginning of a race.
Once committed to the moment, to the action, a frenzy seized them, urging them on to take this unforeseen, precious moment that had crossed their path.
Quade couldn’t believe this was happening, couldn’t stop himself from being part of it. If MacKenzie had said something, demurred, protested, made him feel that she didn’t want this, he would have somehow forced himself to withdraw. To back away even as everything within him begged him to go forward.
But she wasn’t pushing him away, wasn’t attempting to end the kiss, the moment. If anything, he could taste her acquiescence. Her eagerness.
And that was all he needed to set him on fire.
With urgent hands, Quade swiftly unbuttoned her blouse, his lips never leaving hers.
She echoed his movement, all but tearing the shirt off his chest.
For a split second, he slowed down. Passing his palms ever so lightly against her breasts.
Mentally bracing himself for a termination.
It didn’t come.
Instead, he heard her moan. The low, seductive sound raced through his veins like a flash fire, fueling his desire and increasing it tenfold.
He undid the clasp to her bra, got rid of it with no more attention than if it were a barrier constructed of tissue paper.
Her skin felt soft against his. Her flesh warm and smooth and pliant. Quade pressed her to him, the fire growing.
The snug low-rise jeans she wore were next. His fingers brushed against her belly and something in his own tightened sharply, stealing away his air. His belly tightened further as he felt her undoing his belt, felt her fingers on his zipper. Felt her reaching inside for him.
He caught his breath, the fiery kiss between them a five-alarm blaze by now. Air was barely making its way in and out of his lungs.
MacKenzie tugged his trousers off at the same moment that he got rid of her jeans.
She was wearing a thong.
He found that impossibly sexy. His tongue sought out hers as he slowly slid the scrap of material down her hips. Felt the heat and moisture building from her loins. She stepped out of the flimsy garment as he kicked aside his briefs. Shoes had long since disappeared.
They were free.
They were bound.
To one another, the moment and the need that hadn’t allowed either of them draw a single unobstructed breath since the moment he’d lowered his mouth to hers.
His body pulsed, vibrating with demands. He wanted to sheath himself inside of her, to feel her softness tighten and close around him.
But then it would be over much too quickly.
And he didn’t want it to be over, didn’t want the moment, the woman, to turn into something that lived for him only in the past.
He wanted it to continue.
Wanted this wild rush he felt to continue. Because it had been so long that he had been dead inside, so long since he had felt like a man. So long since he had felt alive.
Sweeping her into his arms, still kissing her over and over again, Quade took MacKenzie into his bedroom.
The covers on the bed were all tangled up from the night before. Typical male, he never saw the point in making his bed. The sheets and comforter would only become tangled again by daybreak, so why go through the useless motions?
He wanted to see her in his bed. To make love with her in his bed.
She felt the impression of the mattress against her back as she sank down.
What the hell are you doing? a voice inside her head cried. She’d never, ever gone from zero to a hundred and twenty before, no matter how tempted she’d been to take the ride.
It was as if she’d lost her mind and, in a way, she supposed that she had. Because if she’d still possessed even one ounce of sanity, she wouldn’t be here like this with him. Wouldn’t have dragged his clothes off his body as if she were some kind of sex-starved, depraved creature out for a thrill.
She wasn’t out for a thri
ll, she was out for the thrill.
With him.
Though she would have never admitted as much to Dakota because the woman was so fixated on the mystical powers of the cameo, there was something about Quade that pressed every single button she possessed. That made her want to abandon what little good sense remained and just give herself over to the moment.
To him.
To the wild sensations that were racing pell-mell through her.
She’d suspected it would be like this, a wild tangling of bodies unlike anything she’d ever known. She’d had no idea, though, that it would be more.
So much more that she wasn’t sure if she could stand it. If she was equipped to stand it. Even happiness had to be consumed in finite doses.
She was going to regret crawling out on this limb, she knew that. It was as certain as the sun rising again tomorrow. But she didn’t care.
All she wanted was to feel like a woman.
His woman.
Heaven help her, she’d lost her mind. And she didn’t care.
He had held himself in check far longer than he’d thought humanly possible. His hands played along MacKenzie’s body as if she were a fine instrument, touching her everywhere. And each new slope, each new peak that he explored made her twist and turn into him. Made her moan as an urgency to make love seemed to take over her body.
When her fingers urgently cupped him, he nearly gave it up and knew that there was no more holding back. It was no longer humanly possible for him.
Pushing MacKenzie down against the bed, he slid into her, at first gently, then at the last moment, he thrust his pelvis hard.
The rhythm began.
Words bubbled up inside of him. Words that came from nowhere and sought her out as their target. Tender words. Sweet words. Trapped behind his teeth and on his tongue as he struggled to keep from uttering them.
Were they mirrors of the emotions he was feeling? Or born of the moment?
He’d never wanted to tell another woman that he had feelings for her during the act of lovemaking. Not even with the one who had gained his heart.
What was happening to him?
He couldn’t spare the time to think, to wonder. An urgency had gripped him, pushing him on faster and faster as MacKenzie moved her hips swiftly and seductively beneath his.
When he reached the peak he sought, a euphoria seized him, holding on so tightly that it slowed his descent. Quade’s hammering heart helped decelerate his fall back to earth.
Drawing in a huge breath, feeling shaken to the core, Quade looked down at the woman who had caused him to have this out-of-body experience.
“What the hell just happened here?” he whispered in a voice that threatened to crack if he raised it.
It took her a moment to realize he was talking. Another moment to focus on the words and make sense of them, like small pieces on a Scrabble board that somehow managed to come together.
She took a deep breath, wondering how long it would take her to stop vibrating inside. She wanted to hold on to him forever.
And it frightened her.
Because she knew that “forever” was only a myth for the very innocent. And she wasn’t that any longer.
“I’m not sure, but if we could patent it, we would probably both stand to make a great deal of money,” she murmured.
Damn, she was making conversation, she upbraided herself. Striving to play down the moment and the wildness that was ricocheting inside of her. While he was still inside her, she realized abruptly.
It was unreal.
And yet, it all felt so natural that it made her ache. Because she wanted it to continue. All this was wrong seven ways from sundown and she still wanted it to continue.
As if reading her thoughts, Quade very gently rolled off her. Then, in a movement that would forever touch her, he reached over to the crumpled sheet that was beside her and pulled it over to cover both of them.
An almost unbearable sweetness ignited within her.
The air seemed to shift within the room. He caught a whiff of her perfume. Muscles tightened within him. Needs began to rebuild at a prodigious rate.
Heaven help him, he wanted to make love with her again.
Quade looked at the woman beside him in wonder, a man fighting his way to the surface before he drowned. “What did you put in those cookies?”
“A lot of chocolate chips, cinnamon and oatmeal.” She turned her face toward his. Their breaths mingled. Her pulse went into overtime again. “Nothing that would cover this.”
Quade didn’t like what he was feeling. Didn’t like that he was feeling. Missteps became all too possible then.
It had never been easy to reach him where he lived. He kept his emotions in check. There’d been no string of girlfriends before Ellen. He’d been rather surprised by Ellen, by the tenderness he’d felt when he was with her. By the desire to protect, to shield, that she’d evoked in him. When she’d died, he was certain all those feelings had died with her.
Until today, he didn’t think he was capable of ever feeling any of those emotions again. And yet, here they were, poking through, trying to emerge.
Trying to take him hostage again.
He knew the end result of that. Had gone through it once and had no desire to ever, ever experience any of that again. It had taken a great deal of time and effort to get his heart back into relative working order. He didn’t want to mess with it again.
What he was feeling, what he thought he was feeling was just a fluke, a freak of nature, he told himself. Born of loneliness and nothing more.
Somehow he couldn’t quite convince himself.
Quade was looking at her as if he were trying to dissect her. He was as shaken up as she was by all this, she realized. Her mouth was suddenly dry and she had no idea what to say. Where to go from here. Should she reassure him that this was just “one of those things” that happened? That she didn’t expect anything because it had?
Because that would have been a lie, even as she tried to convince herself of it. A lie because a part of her did expect something, did hope for something. Hurt beyond words by Jeff, it still hadn’t managed to kill the optimist within her.
But men didn’t like strings, didn’t want to feel as if things were expected of them just because they’d made love with you.
Damn it, say something. Say something before he thinks you’re mentally perusing bridal catalogs.
And then, suddenly, she was off the hook. At least for the moment.
Someone was knocking on the door.
The second knock was followed up by a woman’s voice. It rang clearly even in the bedroom. “Quade, are you in there?”
Quade and MacKenzie looked at one another at the same moment. Aggie? Why was she out there at this hour?
Quade was out of bed and on his feet in less time than it took to contemplate the action. Moving swiftly, he went into the other room and grabbed their scattered clothing from the living-room floor.
Without a word, he tossed her undergarments and street clothes to her, then closed the bedroom door. Aggie was knocking a third time as he hurried into his jeans and then his shirt. He stuffed his briefs into his pocket and belatedly realized that he was barefoot. The woman probably wouldn’t even notice.
Taking a deep breath, he centered himself. The spell that MacKenzie had intentionally or unintentionally cast over him was hard to shake.
“Hang on,” he called out. The moment he opened the door, Aggie came sailing in like the Queen Mary II docking in the harbor. There was a newspaper clutched in her hand.
“Have you seen MacKenzie?” she asked. “Her car’s parked here, but she doesn’t seem to be answering her door.”
He was about to tell the woman that he didn’t know where MacKenzie was when he heard a flushing sound coming from his bathroom. The next moment, MacKenzie walked out into the living room, beaming broadly.
“That’s because she’s here,” he told Aggie, trying his level best to sound disinterested
and not as if his very blood had crept up to the boiling point around the other woman.
“Hi,” MacKenzie greeted Aggie affectionately, pressing a kiss to the woman’s soft cheek. “Where have you been?” she asked, employing a maneuver her father had once taught her. When in doubt, go on the offensive rather than just defending your own line in the sand. Being on the defensive unexpectedly tended to confuse the other party. “I was looking for you earlier.” She gestured toward the plate of cookies that was still on the coffee table. “I wanted to give you some of the cookies I made. When you weren’t home, I came to offer some to Quade and wound up staying to help him unpack.”
There, MacKenzie silently congratulated herself. She’d covered all the bases. She just hoped that she didn’t look as flushed as she felt.
Aggie picked up a cookie and sampled it. She nodded her approval immediately.
“Heavenly,” she pronounced. Her eyes fluttered shut for a second as she savored the taste of the cookie before finally continuing. “I came looking for you to show you both this.” She thrust the newspaper section toward Quade. It was the section that was strictly devoted to entertainment. She had it folded to the page she wanted them to read. “It’s under ‘But That’s Just My Opinion,’” she prompted.
Taking the paper from her, Quade scanned the page.
MacKenzie looked at it around his arm and found the article first. There was even a small photo of Aggie at the bottom.
“There.” She pointed to the third column.
“Read it out loud,” Aggie instructed after he had begun reading it to himself.
Quade passed the section to MacKenzie. “You do it,” he told her. When she raised her eyebrow, he added, “I’m not much on reading out loud.”
“We’re going to have to work on your speech,” MacKenzie said with a shake of her head. She could feel Aggie watching her expectantly. She began reading: “I don’t usually stop at the Laugh-Inn for my nightly dose of entertainment, but someone twisted my arm this time and I’m glad they did. Amid the painfully meager talent which we won’t go into here because we’re merciful, a shining light struggled to emerge the other night. Agnes Bankhead, known as Aggie to her friends—and we all want to be her friends—is a talent to watch. And guess what, folks? She’s old enough to be your grandmother. But that doesn’t stop this lady. My prediction, she’s going to go to the top. And take us with her, laughing all the way. If the manager of that club has any smarts, he’ll hire her on as a regular. But that’s just my opinion.”
She’s Having a Baby Page 14