There was no hesitation, no doubt in her mind. Marissa raised her chin. There were a lot of unknowns in her life, but this wasn’t one of them. “Easily.”
Roberta nodded, rising. She’d heard enough. Stayed long enough. “She’ll do,” Roberta informed Alec as she left the room.
He stared after his mother, stunned. She was walking toward the front door. Leaving. He had expected something long and drawn out, a scene in which he would be forced to come to Marissa’s rescue.
Quick and painful, that was his mother’s modus operandi.
Alec hurried after Roberta. He caught her arm, turning his mother around to face him. “That’s it?”
She looked at his hand until he disengaged himself. “That’s more than enough.” She patted his cheek. “She’ll be fine for our girl.”
If he didn’t know any better, Alec would have said that he detected a trace of envy in his mother’s eyes. As if she were jealous of Marissa. Not of her looks, but of something else.
But that wasn’t possible. Roberta didn’t envy anyone. She expected to be envied.
“‘Our girl,’ Roberta?” he repeated. Since when had she really had a hand in helping with Andrea, other than the few times he had all but begged her to watch his daughter while he worked?
“Of course.” Roberta laughed at his incredulous tone, choosing to see no basis for it. “You bring her to me whenever you need help, don’t you?” She shook her head, making eye contact with Marissa who remained in the other room. “They forget when they need us.”
Alec was speechless. When had this happened? When had Roberta suddenly joined forces with Marissa? As far back as he could remember, his mother had never regarded any woman equal enough to share a sentiment with. She considered herself as someone who resided on a higher plateau than other women.
Sighing, Roberta took her keys out of her purse. “Well, I’m off. Scott Baron is taking me to the races.” She placed one hand delicately on Alec’s arm, sharing a confidence. “It’s a dreadful bore, really, but I do like eating in the boxed seats.” She rolled her eyes heavenward. “They have the most fantastic chef.”
Dropping her hand, she looked at Marissa again. Obeying the silent summons, Marissa came forward, Andrea in her arms. Roberta lightly passed her hand over the child’s head, barely making contact. “Take care of them,” she instructed Marissa.
Marissa smiled. She had every intention of doing that. It wasn’t in her to do things by half measures. “Yes, ma’am.”
Roberta cringed, but to Alec’s amazement, she didn’t chastise Marissa. “Roberta, please. ‘Ma’am’ makes it sound as if I’m old.”
“Never happen, Roberta,” Alec muttered mechanically. He looked pointedly at Marissa and saw that she understood. He wanted to be alone with his mother before she left.
“Nice meeting you,” Marissa told the other woman, withdrawing. Andrea curled against her, sucking her thumb, ready for her.
“Lovely girl,” Roberta commented.
Something was definitely up. Roberta never handed out compliments. Even under duress. “All right, Roberta, what’s this all about?”
She looked at him innocently. “It’s about your wellbeing, dear. Yours and Andrea’s. Weren’t you paying attention? I was conducting an interview for you.”
It wasn’t an interview, she was satisfying her curiosity. Why couldn’t she just admit to it? “You were checking her out.”
Her look silently asked him what his point was. “Same thing.”
He laughed and shook his head. Not by a long shot “Not where you’re concerned.”
Roberta raised one elegant shoulder in a familiar gesture that he unconsciously repeated time and again. “Maybe I was just interested in the new woman in your life.” She looked at Marissa’s retreating back as the latter went up the stairs, both children in tow. “You haven’t seen anyone since Christine died.”
Whoa. This was coming out of left field. “I’m not seeing anyone now, Roberta, except in the strictest sense of the word. As in, with my eyes open.” She laughed at his protest, as if he were a small boy to be humored. He hated it when she did that.
“Whatever you say, dear. But I beg to differ. If you really believe that, then your eyes aren’t open at all.” The smile was a regal one. “I do approve. Of her,” she added since he looked as if he didn’t understand what she was saying.
Not that it would make any difference to him if she didn’t, but he was curious. “Why? You don’t usually approve of any woman.”
“That’s not true. It’s just that I have standards, Alec. Very high standards.” For a moment she seemed to soften right before his eyes. “Just as you do.” She smiled at him. “I do care, you know. In my own fashion, I care. About both of you.”
It made him uneasy, seeing her like this. Was there something wrong? “Is there something you want to tell me, Roberta?”
“No, nothing,” she replied lightly, rousing herself. The soft look was gone. “Well, take care, darling.” She brushed another kiss into the air above his cheek.
Alec stared after her disappearing figure, completely bewildered. Was she just being Roberta, or had there been an actual attempt at communication just now?
As usual, when it came to his mother, he didn’t have a clue.
Chapter Nine
When he walked back into the house, Marissa was just coming down the stairs. To Alec’s relief, she still didn’t look upset. If anything, she appeared to be amused by his mother’s visit. How she could be still escaped him. Any other woman would have taken offense at Roberta’s questions. He was beginning to think that Marissa was a rare human being.
He was waiting for her to say something, Marissa thought, to get him off tenterhooks. “Your mother’s very colorful.”
Alec followed her into the family room. Marissa began straightening up. Needing to do something with his hands, he joined her. The place looked as if a hurricane had hit it. He supposed, in a way, it had. Hurricane Roberta.
“She’s something, all right.” He threw a cushion back into position, then looked at her. He couldn’t quite decide if Roberta had left her unfazed or if Marissa was just very good at hiding her feelings. “I’m sorry if she insulted you.”
It hadn’t occurred to her to be insulted. She didn’t think that had been the woman’s intention. Marissa collected a handful of blocks from the coffee table, holding them against her. Christopher had left his mark everywhere and his mobility was tempting Andrea, urging her to try to catch up. Marissa had no doubt that within a few weeks, they would both be flying around this room and things would be twice as chaotic.
“She was only worried about you. And Andrea.” Marissa didn’t think he realized that.
“Worried? Roberta?” He hooted at the notion. That would be giving her credit for having traits like a mother and Roberta had never been one of those except by biological definition. “The only thing she ever worries about is whether or not she can continue to look like a glamorous woman in her early thirties.”
He didn’t even know how old his mother really was. The one time he’d asked her, years ago, she had evaded the question by saying he didn’t need to know that. He knew for a fact that she changed the year of her birth each time she had to fill out a form that required the information.
He’d been hurt, Marissa thought. A great deal. The first woman he had ever turned to in his life had rebuffed him. It was bound to leave some sort of scars. How could a mother be like that?
Marissa ached to soothe him.
If only he’d let her.
“She’s doing a great job,” Marissa answered lightly. She got down on her knees to scoop up a pile of colorful puzzle pieces around the perimeter of the coffee table. A couple had teeth marks in it. “She looks more like your sister than your mother.”
Alec dropped the puzzle board on the floor and joined her, fitting the wooden pieces in one at a time. A barnyard scene began to emerge. He’d seen Marissa sitting with the children, patiently en
unciating the name of each animal and then guiding chubby fingers until they found the right place for the piece. She was a mother, he thought. Not Roberta.
“She’ll be happy to hear that. It’s the look she’s going for.” Finished, Alec put the wooden puzzle aside. “How bad did it get?”
“You were here for the worst of it,” she assured him. “Don’t worry about it. Your mother’s a piker when compared to the Sergeant.”
“The Sergeant?” That was almost as bad as having to call his mother Roberta. “Is that your father?”
“Was,” she corrected. She placed Andrea’s lop-eared bunny in the playpen. “He died a few years ago. A casualty in one of those peace-keeping missions that are so awfully misnamed.”
When she’d mentioned her father earlier, Alec had no idea that he had died. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. It was the way he would have wanted to go. In a foreign land, on duty for his country.” That was his first love, she thought. The service. He would have been a lot better off if he had never swerved from his dedication and had that fateful tryst with her mother. Her mother would have been better off, too. “My mother remarried the following year. First time I ever saw her happy.”
“Was he hard on you, the Sergeant?” He tried to imagine what it must have been like for her, growing up with a strict military man for a father. He wondered if that was better than not having a father at all.
She shrugged. Time had a way of softening the edges, taking some of the pain away. She understood her father better now, knew that he’d done the best he could, given his temperament.
“He didn’t think so, but, yes, he was. Harder on me than the others because I was the oldest.” And she was to be an example to the others. “Because I had no buffer the way they had.”
She had been their buffer, he thought. She was like that, protecting the weaker ones. A bantam rooster, dancing around the cock of the walk to divert his attention.
Marissa retrieved a half-eaten cookie from behind the television set, wondering how it had gotten there. “Every time I got home from a date, it was like a scene right out of Marathon Man. You know, where Laurence Olivier is asking Dustin Hoffman questions. Except that the Sergeant didn’t know how to pull teeth. At least—” she laughed quietly, it was a sad sound “—not literally.”
What had she been like as a young girl? he wondered. “Did you go through that a lot?”
There was no nostalgia when she thought of those days, only relief that they were behind her. “No, fortunately, the Sergeant was away a great deal of the time. I guess he thought he had to make up for it when he was around.” She was making excuses for him, but it was easier to believe that than to think he had done it to satisfy a set of principles. “Most fathers do it with quality time and family outings, mine did it by making sure we were growing up the way he wanted us to.” She lifted her chin, her shoulders back, standing the way her father always demanded that she stand when he lectured her. She could almost hear his voice ringing in her ears as she repeated, “‘Straight and upstanding. Honorable. Good solid citizens’” She looked at Alec, letting her body relax. “Old habits are hard to break. But it did do wonders for my posture.”
She was making light of it. Was it because she was embarrassed at this glimpse she was giving him into her past, or because of her unflagging good humor?
“You sounded as if you were reciting that.”
“I was. It was the Sergeant’s credo. After all these years, I know it by heart.” She sighed, shrugging. “What little he allowed me to keep.”
Alec sincerely doubted that anyone could take away her spirit. “I get the feeling that no one ‘allows’ you anything, Marissa.” He had the urge to touch her, to kiss her again and feel what he had this morning. He forced himself to keep his hands in his pockets. “You do what you want to.”
His assessment amused her. More than that, it pleased her. “Is that what you think?”
He turned, taking Andrea’s huge not-so-white teddy bear and placing it on top of the toy chest. “That’s what I think.”
Marissa nudged him aside and lifted the lid. The teddy bear leaned precariously back against the wall as she deposited one last toy into the box. She let the lid drop into place again.
“You might be half right.” She straightened and looked up at him. “I don’t overstep any boundaries. But in here—” she touched his chest “—and here—” she feathered her fingers along his temple “—I’m my own person. No one tells me how to think, how to feel. That was always my business.”
Why was it, no matter where he moved within the room, he always seemed to wind up like this, standing beside her? Close to her. He looked down into her eyes. Was she putting him on notice?
Or did he just want her to?
As her hand slid away from his face, he caught it, slipping his hand over it. Alec closed his fingers around Marissa’s and just held her. As firmly as her eyes held his.
“Like I said, you’re very independent,” Alec whispered, inclining his head toward hers so slowly that he hardly seemed to be doing it at all. Until his lips were almost on hers. “I never thought of independence as being sexy before.”
It was happening again. The ground was liquefying beneath her feet and she was standing on nothing, waiting to free-fall through space. “And now?”
“And now—” his breath warmed her “—I do.”
Alec couldn’t stop himself, no more than a bird could keep from flying. He thought he could, but he couldn’t. Her kiss had lingered on his mind throughout the entire four-and-a-half-hour meeting. Throughout the drive to the office and then home. Haunted him until there was nothing else on his mind but her.
He had to see if the magnitude of his reaction was just because he hadn’t kissed a woman since Christine had died. Since his soul had died. Maybe his mind was playing tricks on him, taking a tiny seedling and turning it into an entire symphony of flowers just because the field was so totally barren.
And ripe for fruition.
That had to be the reason that just one taste had been enough to form such an impossibly romantic reaction within him.
He had to find out He had to kiss her again. If he was rationalizing, so be it. But he had to know, no matter what the cost.
Alec’s mouth covered hers. Instantly the kiss deepened, whether by his design or hers, he wasn’t sure. He just knew it had. And he was falling in.
His hands cupped the back of her head. He wasn’t bringing her to him as much as trying desperately to anchor himself to something that still existed in the real world. Because she was sending him off again, off to regions that were so far beyond his scope of knowledge they sucked away his mind, and then his will.
He was hers. For this one moment he was hers completely, body and soul. Because he hadn’t romanticized his reaction to her. If anything, he’d downplayed it.
She did nothing with the gift. Nothing, save to give him something in return. She gave him herself. He could feel it, taste it. There was surrender in her kiss, surrender aligned beside the power.
He wanted more.
She gave him more.
This time, Marissa didn’t hold back. This time, she wasn’t stunned. She was prepared. Prepared to lose herself, to savor, to enjoy reaping the unexpected harvest thrust into her possession.
She could feel everything, hear everything. Music, the sound of his ragged breathing. Her own blood pumping madly through her veins. She was a part of it all. One with it.
And yet, there was nothing else in the world, but him. Only him.
Alec.
She wondered if he knew what he was doing to her. If he understood what was happening. Marissa wasn’t all that sure that she did. But she knew she wanted it to go on forever.
Marissa wrapped her arms tightly around his neck, moaning from the sheer pleasure that flowed through her body. Pleasure that he created.
Slowly, Alec pulled away, shaken, concerned. Bewildered. For a moment he framed the side of
her face with one hand, just looking at her. Into her eyes. Looking at the woman who had almost unwound him like a spool of runaway thread.
What the hell was happening to him?
He swallowed, trying to get his bearings. It wasn’t easy when his compass was missing. “I didn’t want to do that.”
She read his eyes and had her answer. “Yes, you did.”
He didn’t know why he couldn’t seem to control himself, but she had to know that there was no future in this. That he couldn’t let her think this would lead to anything but awkwardness. Just as it was doing now.
“Marissa—”
“Shh.” She laid a finger to his lips. He wasn’t ready for this. She understood. But she didn’t want to hear him deny his feelings, either. “No apologies, no regrets.” She searched his eyes, looking to see if some part of him understood. “It happened. Twice. And it was lovely each time. That doesn’t mean you have to marry me. Or that you’re being unfaithful.” Something flickered within his eyes.
Though he didn’t seem to move a muscle, she could feel him stiffening. As if she’d hit a nerve. “Why would you say that?”
She could see through him, she thought. Even without his mother’s input. “Because you’re the kind of straight arrow the Sergeant would have approved of. A man who gives his heart just once and believes it’s gone forever.” His brow rose. “Your mother gave me some background on you.” That didn’t sit well with him, she could see it. “I didn’t ask, she volunteered.”
That didn’t sound like his mother at all. Alec released Marissa, placing more distance between them. “She did?”
He didn’t look as if he believed her, she realized. That bothered her a great deal. “She did.”
Maybe Roberta was changing. He wouldn’t have thought she would stop by to pay a visit, but she had. Maybe this was part of the new Roberta, too. In which case he’d better be forewarned. “What exactly did she tell you?”
“The truth,” she answered simply. “That you hadn’t been out since…Andrea was born,” Marissa concluded tactfully, thinking his daughter’s birth was a better way to mark time than his wife’s death.
Your Baby Or Mine? Page 12