Runaway Bridesmaid
Page 26
“The radiators haven’t even starting clanking yet. We have time.”
But Dean no sooner lowered his mouth to hers when he heard a voice.
“Mama?”
Sarah flipped around to face their daughter standing in the doorway, tugging the old quilt over her shoulders. Dean pulled her against him, threading his hand under her arm and reclaiming her breast; he wondered if Katey could hear the slight catch in her mother’s voice. “What are you doing up, baby?”
“Mama Viv called, asked if I’d like to help do breakfast for the guests this morning. So I just wanted to tell you I’m taking my bike up there, if that’s okay?”
“Sure, honey,” Sarah said, more quickly than she might have in other circumstances. As Dean listened to his daughter’s footsteps tromp down the stairs, he buried his face in Sarah’s back and started to laugh. She smacked his hand underneath the covers. But she didn’t remove it. “You’re terrible.”
“That’s not what you said last night.”
She humphed in response, then caught her breath as he began to nibble her earlobe. “So…” he said, in between tastes of her delectable neck. “Your mother will actually let Katey into her kitchen?”
“Uh…yes…she’s…become…quite the cook…oh…” She made a sound that was giggle and groan and sigh all mixed together. “That was nice…”
“Mmm,” he replied, slipping his hand down over her ribs, over her belly, soft and puckered from childbirth, then down even lower. “Thank God for that. At least somebody will be able to cook around here…ouch!” He sat up, rubbing his arm where Sarah had plucked out a hair. “Guess I deserved that, huh?”
“Yes, you did.”
He looked back over his shoulder at his wife, his beautiful, sassy Sarah, lying on her back with one arm behind her head. The covers were down to her waist, exposing her full, ripe breasts. She reached up to him, smiling—
The baby wailed. Sarah sighed, then laughed.
“Guess that settles that,” Dean muttered with a rueful grin, then leaned over and scooped his infant son out of his cozy bed. “Hey, sport,” he said softly as he changed the baby’s soggy diaper with the efficiency of an English nanny. “Couldn’t give us ten more minutes, huh?” Then he laughed at Eli’s enormous toothless grin as the baby flailed arms and legs as if trying to swim the Channel. “Here’s breakfast,” he said, skootching down under the covers and handing the baby to Sarah, who was lying on her side, waiting.
After a couple of frantic seconds, Eli settled down into a bout of contented, noisy nursing, slurping and gulping as if he hadn’t eaten in a couple of days. Dean watched in awe, as he did each time he witnessed this basic ritual, as Sarah alternately stroked the blond peach fuzz on the baby’s head and kissed it. Then he noticed the tear that had slipped out of the corner of her eye.
He reached over and wiped the drop away. “What?” he gently asked.
“I never got to do this with Katey, you know,” Sarah said. Then she looked up into Dean’s eyes, a peaceful half smile tilting up her lips. “Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For not giving up on me. On us.”
“Shoot, baby…” Dean snuggled closer, draping his arm over Sarah’s shoulder under the bedclothes. “Giving up wasn’t even an option.”
The smile his wife gave him was brighter than the Alabama country sunshine just now skirting the windowsill, streaking across an old patchwork quilt.
ISBN: 978-1-4592-0700-4
RUNAWAY BRIDESMAID
Copyright © 2001 by Karen Templeton-Berger
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