“You’ll want this,” he said, holding it out. “It was Daisy’s.”
She smiled then, a tender, grateful smile, and took it from him carefully. He imagined her with that same smile, but her belly round and full with a child.
Some other man’s child.
“Yard sale’s over,” he announced abruptly. He wasn’t in the mood for it anymore.
He noticed, too late, that no shoppers remained in the yard. The elderly couple were halfway down the street, their meager items under their arms.
“Make a killing?” Molly inquired mildly, her gaze on the items he’d stashed safely by his chair.
“Yeah.” From nowhere, anger spurted through him. Not from nowhere, he admitted, but from that image of Molly with a child, not his child, in her belly.
He dug in his pocket for the wad of bills he’d collected and held it toward her like a prized treasure. The money was proof that he was moving on. That everything, including everything between them, was temporary.
She looked over the money with interest, even prodding a couple of bills apart with a curious finger. “Way to go, big guy. Seven bucks.”
Molly felt the heat of Weaver’s stare as he followed her into the house. She carried the cradle, turning in the front doorway to be sure it wasn’t nicked.
He dogged her footsteps all the way to the kitchen. “Seven,” he said, disgust in his voice. “Seven lousy bucks. Four options, one baby, one dog. One woman who makes me absolutely crazy.”
Molly hung on to her calm by her fingernails. After a night without sleep, the fingernails were getting pretty darn short.
“Your partner, Gabe, called during your sale,” she said, putting the cradle down in a corner of the kitchen.
He flung himself into a kitchen chair. “Yeah? He didn’t want to talk to me?”
She shook her head. “Not when I mentioned your stated intent to get rid of everything. He thought you’d be pretty busy.”
He groaned, staring down at the measly wad of crumpled bills in his hand. “Don’t remind me. Does he want me to call him back?”
“No. He certainly is charming.”
Weaver shot her a narrow-eyed look. “He’s already a loser in the marriage department. Divorced.”
Molly rolled her eyes. “Anyway, he told me to tell you that I’m better than Mary Poppins and that I’ll make an even better bride.”
Weaver groaned. “You told him about that, too?”
Unease wiggled down Molly’s spine. “He asked me how you were feeling about giving Daisy up, and I guess I was a little excited. I told him about our arrangement.”
He was silent.
“You haven’t changed your mind, have you?” Her stomach twisted into a painful knot.
“No.” He stared at the cradle in the corner of the room. “What about you?” A hand ran through his hair. “Our marriage could put your search for true romance on hold.”
She swallowed. “Until our divorce, you mean.”
“Right. We’ll probably have to stay married for some time.”
Funny, the idea didn’t worry her at all. “I’m in no hurry. I told you that.”
“Well, I don’t see that we’d have to live together, really. Once this place sells…”
“We can move to my new house,” she injected hastily. “It will be ready by the end of summer.” Couldn’t the three of them be together for a little more time?
Weaver frowned. “You and Daisy certainly can do that. But I need to get back to Maryland ASAP. With fax machines and good luck, maybe I won’t even have to return to California for the adoption proceedings or the divorce.”
Molly bit her lip. “Oh, sure, and maybe we can get married by phone.”
Weaver apparently didn’t hear the irony in her voice. “Nah. We can go to Vegas for that.”
Molly sighed. So much for any semblance of tender emotion in their agreement. “Guess I’ll cancel the tuxedo and the wedding cake, then.”
That caught his attention. His gaze found her, pinned her in place as she leaned against the kitchen counters. “I told you, Molly,” he said, his blue eyes serious. “I told you what I’m about. I’m not a honeyI’m-home kind of guy.”
Oh, I know what you’re about, she wanted to say. You’re about caring for a little girl that isn’t yours. You’re about finding her the best life. You’re about fulfilling a dream for me.
You’re about being hardheaded and tenderhearted, if you’d just admit it.
And speaking of confessions…
Molly realized she had one herself. Because at 10 a.m. on Sunday morning, in the warmth of the summer, in a stranger’s house with an uncommitting man, she’d found love.
Her breath evaporated and her heart took a flying, fearless, feckless leap off the precipice she hadn’t even realized she’d climbed.
I told you what I’m about.
Those six words—there’s another number for you, Weaver, she thought in near hysteria—had brought everything to a head. What he thought he was and what she knew he was were so diametrically opposed.
What she knew he was, she loved.
What he thought he was kept them apart.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” Tension infused his voice. “What are you thinking about?”—I’m thinking how I want you forever. How I want to have Daisy as our little girL “I’m thinking about—” She broke their entwined gazes and looked around wildly. “The-the cradle.” How I want to fill it with brothers and sisters for Daisy. Our children.
The sound of his chair scraping back ran down her spine like a fingernail. He stalked toward her. “Don’t mention that damn cradle.”
She backed closer to the countertop, thinking fast. If Weaver pushed her much more now, she’d confess she loved him. Maybe lose him forever. But if she could show him how it could be with them…what love could do for them…
Her heart raced. She put her hands behind her, found the countertop edge, gripped it hard.
Weaver stopped in front of her. “Molly,” he began, then broke off, shook his head. His hands came up and cupped her shoulders.
“Can a kiss be Windex to the soul?” she murmured to herself. Because that’s what she wanted, needed. Weaver’s mouth. A kiss. Maybe opening herself to him, giving herself to him would make him see.
Weaver shook his head again. “A kiss is the only thing you said that’s made any sense to me.”
To her, too. Maybe she could reach his heart with her love.
“Weaver,” she whispered. Even through her T-shirt, the tile countertop felt cold against the heated skin at the small of her back.
“I want more, Molly. I can’t get you out of my head.”
She understood that “I want you everywhere in me.”
He groaned, his fingers flexed into her skin, and his mouth lowered.
She opened her mouth to him, invited in his tongue. He thrust into her, and his body pushed against hers, too, his arousal hot and hard and welcome against her stomach.
Molly’s nipples immediately stiffened, and she rubbed them against his chest to ease their ache. Her arms pulled him closer, pulled him tighter to her. She wanted to melt around him, have him deep inside her.
He lifted his head and looked into her eyes. “See?” he said, his groin still pressing her, feeling good, yet feeling it was not enough. “See what you do to me?”
She almost laughed because he said it as if it might worry her.
His fingers ran down her arms to her waist, then insinuated themselves beneath her T-shirt. Hard fingers against her supersensitized skin. Her nerves ricocheting like lightning bolts.
“See?” he said hoarsely, pushing up her shirt. He found her bra, a stretchy athletic one without any clasps. He pushed that up, too, freeing her breasts, then ran his thumbs over her nipples.
Molly moaned.
“See, Molly.” He said the same words again, but they meant something different now. He lightly brushed her nipples. “See how gentle I can be.”
/> He took her mouth again. Possessed it with his tongue as if it were his own, as if he needed to be close to her in every way he could. Molly lifted his shirt and rubbed against him, bare chest to bare chest
He groaned, broke away, and his fingers raced down her skin to the waistband of her nylon running shorts. “These have been making me crazy, you know.”
Molly smiled, her whole body trembling with arousal and need. “I didn’t know.”
His thumbs hooked the waistband. “Every time I see you in them, I want to do this.” He jerked them down, catching her panties at the same time.
He stared at her exposed skin, and Molly’s heart hammered at the focused, tense expression on his face. “Molly, I have to have you,” he said, his voice rough. “Let me have you.”
He didn’t wait for her reply, just fell to his knees and buried his face against her stomach, rubbing his prickly cheeks, one, then the other, over her flesh.
All the oxygen left Molly’s lungs. She might die from pleasure, from sweet, erotic anticipation.
His tongue found her navel, swirled wetly inside. She moaned.
He trailed a path of kisses down her abdomen as his hot, big hands caressed her legs, moving from her knees to her thighs, gently forcing them wider.
Molly’s breath came in shallow pants, and her body felt as if lightning had struck her skin. She was on fire, burning, and at her core she melted with the heat. “Weaver.”
Couldn’t he see? Couldn’t he see what his touch did to her, what her heart felt for him?
“I’m getting there, honey.” His fingers found the apex of her thighs, and she shifted, silently making room for them, but he skirted the hot center of her to move up and part her feminine folds. His mouth unerringly found its target.
Molly lost her voice, her reason, any hold on reality. She climaxed, her body helplessly tensing, one hand flexing in Weaver’s dark hair.
He kept his mouth there while she trembled, genfling his kisses until her body quieted. He slid up her body and cuddled her against him.
She leaned on him bonelessly, releasing a long sigh.
He chuckled in her ear, kissing her cheek. “Liked that, did you?”
Tears stung her eyes, and she swallowed hard. “I liked it okay,” she said, intentionally putting a smile in her voice. “But I want something more, something better.”
He pushed away a bit and looked down at her with a quizzical half smile on his face. “I’m game, of course, but more? Better?”
She grabbed the neckline of his T-shirt in her fist and stepped away from her shorts and panties. She tugged him toward the bedroom. Oh, how easy it was to say in this context, “I want you.”
The bed was rumpled and smelled like Molly’s perfume and sex.
Weaver stretched and idly ran his hand down the length of her body, watching with relish as her nipples puckered and her eyes flew open.
“Daisy?” she asked sleepily.
He shook his head. “Still taking a nap, too,” he answered, his gaze going to the nursery monitor on the bedside table. “Though why you thought we needed to grab this is beyond me. Not like we can’t hear her bellowing lungs from a thousand paces.”
“Thought our attention might be elsewhere.” She scooted toward him to place a kiss over his heart.
The damn thing kicked up, racing against his chest. He groaned. “You’re going to be the death of me,” he said, feeling the blood rush to his groin. His hand stroked over the long, loose fall of her hair. “I don’t think I can do it again.”
She eyed the evidence springing up between his thighs. “That a fact?” From the bedside table she grabbed a condom, and he helped her roll it onto him.
He groaned again, reveling in her caresses, then moved to pin her beneath him. He slipped easily inside, rocking softly against her. His eyes closed. “This is good, Molly.”
Her pelvis tipped forward and he slid deeper. “Very good.”
They made love again, like that, his gaze focused on her face so he could tell what pleased her.
Her silver gaze stared back, showing him her heart, her soul. What he saw there scared him, yet his body stilled as he felt himself become one with her again. Together.
He wanted to turn back, but her hands were on him, gently clasping him to her, and he wouldn’t, couldn’t, break the delicate connection.
Just as he couldn’t stop the primitive satisfaction he felt when he watched her climax, or his own groan of release when he followed right after.
10
His body still in hers, his heartbeat not yet calming, Weaver kept his gaze locked with Molly’s.
“I have to tell you,” he said. “I tried it once before.”
A haunted look came into her eyes. Tension stiffened her body. “I was there,” she attested lightly. “Remember? About, um, twenty-five minutes ago.”
“That’s not what I’m talking about, Molly.” She tried to wriggle from beneath him, but he kept her gently pinned.
“I need to get up. I want to take a shower before Daisy Ann wakes.”
He shook his head. “I didn’t want to tell you. But now I see that I have to.” Looking inside her soul, he had seen what he was doing to her. How much he might hurt her if he didn’t make her understand about him.
“You have a right to your privacy,” she said, and bit her lip.
But that was fear talking, he knew. He didn’t have any rights anymore. Not when he’d entered her silver heat. Not after he’d reached for that connection to her, then hung on to it as though it might save him.
“I should never have pursued you.” He took a deep breath, thinking of all the would-haves, shouldhaves, could-haves. “I should never have let you get involved with me, knowing how you feel about family.”
“Knowing how you feel about family.” She was listening now.
“Yeah.” He rolled off her but kept his hand at her waist. She had to hear him out.
With his other hand, he brushed her hair off her forehead, kissed her there.
A look almost of pain crossed her face.
“I’m sorry, honey.” He cupped her cheek in his hand. “But I’m not going to do the family thing. I never am.”
Her eyes closed briefly, then opened. “But why?” she whispered.
That’s what he’d been waiting for. He was ready to tell it all, and she was ready to hear it. “You know my folks abandoned me when I was a baby. That I grew up in foster homes.”
She nodded. “So you said.”
He ran his thumb over the slope of her nose. “I don’t know what you think about foster care, even how much you know about it, but I didn’t have a good experience.”
“I guessed that.”
“It was the never belonging. Never feeling really wanted. Moving on from one place to the next, from one set of so-called parents to the next.”
She stiffened. “People didn’t hurt you, did they?”
He half smiled at her protectiveness. “Not physically. Not even intentionally. There are a lot of good people out there trying to provide for throwaway kids like me.” He took a breath. “It’s just that I didn’t learn how a family operates. The support, the structure, the cooperation.”
She pulled up the sheet around her nakedness. “Well, if you realize that, why couldn’t you learn?”
Here came the hard part. He tucked the sheet around her, as if he could protect her from the truth. “Remember how I told you that my cousin found me?”
“Daisy’s father.”
“Right. When he first married Daisy’s mom, Jim came looking for me. He was excited about finding a blood relation. I’d just enlisted in the navy, and there he was, several years older, talking about the connection we’d have for the rest of our lives. He talked about his marriage, the children he planned to have.”
Molly bit her lip. “Poor Daisy to have lost him. He sounds like a wonderful man.”
“Yeah. He even got me thinking. So I’d been raised without family. That didn’t mean I c
ouldn’t raise my own, right?”
Molly’s eyes rounded. “Sure,” she said. “Plenty of orphans and foster kids go on to have their own families. But you? I thought you’d always been dead set against a family for yourself.”
He shook his head. “Not always. I was nineteen years old. I’d been thinking about Jim for months when I met Terry and Sam.”
Wariness mixed with the surprise on her face. “Go on.”
“Terry was older, twenty-five, and Sam was her son, the greatest four-year-old you ever laid eyes on. I fell for him instantly, and then for Terry. Sam’s father wasn’t anywhere around, and it didn’t take me long to see myself as his daddy, and as Terry’s husband. I wanted to marry her, adopt Sam.”
“You’d found your family.” Molly had the sheet up to her neck now, and she gripped it in her fists.
“So I thought.” Even now, all these years later, the pain twisted in his belly. He touched Molly’s cheek again and felt it ease. “But apparently Terry didn’t think so.”
“What happened?”
“I thought I was doing everything right. Sure, I had a little catching up to do when it came to holiday rituals and that sort of stuff, but I knew when I made the marriage proposal to Terry I should do it on one knee and with a big ring in my pocket.”
Molly swallowed, and the color left her face. “So you proposed?”
“And she laughed in my face.” The knot in his belly drew tighter. “Told me everything I should have known but didn’t want to hear. That I didn’t know anything about being a father or a husband. How did I think I could ever be a parent when I never had one?”
He paused to take a breath before repeating the most damning words. “What did I know about love when no one had ever loved me?”
“Witch.” Color flared on Molly’s cheekbones.
A strangled laugh rose up in Weaver’s chest. “Thanks, honey. But while she might not have been tactful, I recognized immediately that Terry was absolutely right.”
“But—”
Weaver placed a finger over Molly’s lips. “But nothing. That’s why I’m not taking any chances with Daisy Ann. Or with you. Both of you deserve to have the love that I can never give.”
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