Nothing—not even memories that might change his perception of who he’d been or who he was—could ever take this away from him.
But even as he told himself that, there was a quiver in his head, as if something was beginning to come loose.
Rita whispered from above him. “Conn...?”
He glanced up at her, resting his hands on her hips. Without a word, he tugged down her skirt all the way, then her undies.
Her lips parted as she leaned her head back against the wall.
When she was fully bared to him, he took a moment to drink her in. His curvy, gorgeous Rita.
His. Not anyone else’s.
He urged her legs apart, and she raised her hands above her head again, her eyelids half-closed, her lashes like dark fans casting crescent shadows on her cheeks.
A chemical explosion—one part lust, one part a feeling he’d never known before—blasted through him, and he rubbed his cheek against her thigh. The scratch of his five-o’clock shadow seemed to dominate every other sound, even her heavy breathing.
Even the avalanche that seemed to be shifting in his head...
Furiously pushing everything in his mind away, he kissed his way up the inside of her leg, reaching up with a hand, touching her between the juncture of her thighs.
She inhaled, long and hard. “Oh.”
He parted her folds, then kissed her there, as she slowly sank down the wall. He had to bring her gently to the ground as her moans came faster, rising into mewling cries.
Using his mouth to love her more, more, he brought her to a climax, and he’d never heard a sound so wonderful.
Not even in the memories he did have.
Between breaths, she said, “Did that...bring anything back to you?”
She was worried about the return of the playboy.
Conn tenderly rested a hand on her belly. “I’m in the here and now, Rita, nowhere else.”
And it was true, because his mind had quieted, especially when she smiled, then reached for his gaping shirt.
He let her take it off him, and when it was pooled on the floor, he eased his hands under her, lifting her and carrying her to the bedroom.
After he laid her out on the bed, he hesitated, brushing his gaze down her once again.
But this memory he was making with her was stronger than anything he’d ever experienced before. He felt that, more than ever, he was this new man.
And he would always be.
“It’s okay,” she said to him. “We can do this while I’m pregnant.”
That wasn’t why he’d been just standing here, but he didn’t tell her that.
In answer, he shucked off the rest of his clothes, then climbed into bed. She was watching him as if this were their first time.
But it actually was, wasn’t it?
She took him in hand, caressing him, making him even harder than before.
“At this rate,” he said, “I’m not going to last long, Rita.”
“I won’t, either.”
They wouldn’t need a condom—she was already pregnant, and the doctor had cleared him of any health issues during a checkup. He assured her of that as they lay on their sides, and she put her leg over his.
When he slid into her, flesh to flesh, he was suddenly blinded by a light in his head. He cradled her as they moved together, slick and slow, their cadence intensifying as the heat flared between them.
A blank slate, he thought, because that was what his mind was right now. Yet, thrust by thrust, he was starting to fill up with utter sensation: the smell of her skin, the sound of her rising gasps, the feel of her as they fit together so perfectly in this moment.
She was his everything, and he was hers, as his mind brimmed with patchwork colors and images of Rita—her in that bridesmaid’s dress at Heartbreak Hill, her at the drive-in with her lips lush and ripe from his kisses, her face as he looked into it now, seeing how deeply she felt for him.
Each picture was building, rising, new memories shooting and rumbling toward the sky...
As his body tightened, the images began to quake, as if they were going to come apart, and he fought to keep that from happening.
But then, instead of bursting into pieces, the images began to burn at the edges, consuming him, turning into a tower of light...
Seething, crackling, flexing—
With a breath of fire, the images did explode, sending jagged pieces in the air. But then, as they got closer to hitting the ground, they looked more like laces of ash, floating, drifting, landing on each other again like a scrapbook coming back together.
Conn held Rita, breathing hard, afraid to let go. Because there was something about those pictures that were darkening in his mind, triggered by the great emotion Rita had brought out in him.
Nothing else could’ve done this, he thought. But why did it have to be now?
Rita cuddled into him, her face burrowed in his neck. “This is true happiness,” she said.
Swallowing, he refused to let her go, even as the pictures in his mind became clear again, turning into frames in a memory, just like a film reel.
He tried to battle the sight of it, but slowly, undisputedly, the reel started to play, and he saw what he had been fearing the most.
* * *
Conn opened his eyes, sunlight peeking through the curtains of a hotel room.
Slowly, he absorbed the sights around him: old-fashioned furniture like an armoire and a dressing screen, velvet on the walls and chairs...
Then last night came back, and he looked down at the woman next to him in bed who was still sleeping.
Her name was Rita.
Conn propped himself up on an elbow, tempted to kiss her awake, but something told him to wait. He wanted to look at her a bit longer because there had been something different about this woman, much more than any other one he’d ever bedded.
He’d flirted with her in a saloon, seduced her, been invited up to this room, and he had intended to leave in the middle of the night, yet... He hadn’t.
He’d stayed long beyond his normal comfort level with a one-night stand. Hell, he was a real pro when it came to knowing when enough was enough, and he could scram with the best of them before things got serious.
But this time he had stayed, and he had lost track of time and common sense.
He touched her hair. Curls. They’d felt good against his skin as she’d trailed kisses down his body. The sex had been amazing, and honestly, there’d been a few moments during the afterglows when he’d thought to himself that he wouldn’t mind coming back tonight, after he’d finished with business.
Not knowing what to make of this strange morning-after emotion, Conn crept out of bed, quietly getting ready to leave the room before she woke up. Maybe he would check in to a room somewhere else, since he hadn’t gone to a hotel before stopping by the saloon last night for dinner. It would allow him to shower and spruce up, because he sure didn’t want to be wearing day-old clothes and stubble to a professional appointment.
But just as he stepped into his jeans and boots, Rita stretched awake, the morning sun kissing her bare skin. She opened her eyes and smiled lazily when she saw him.
Then her gaze darkened when she realized he was getting dressed.
He knew just how to manage this. “Morning. How’d you sleep?”
“I barely did.” She kept watching him cautiously.
On the floor, on top of her clothing, a necklace gleamed. Its pendant was an R that spread apart. He’d taken it off her last night, before they’d fallen into bed and never gotten out of it.
Now he bent to the ground and took it in hand, dangling it. “We dropped this.”
She blushed.
He grinned, knowing the gesture was the best tool in his bachelor kit. “I thought you might let me take it with me today.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t want to be anywhere but here, Rita, and if I have it handy, it might give me some consolation.”
Tha
t seemed to please her, and oddly, her smile pleased him, too.
Then again, the entire night had been out of his realm of experience. He had genuinely listened to her talking about her daughter. He had even found himself telling Rita things he usually didn’t say to other women—about his misspent time in college, about his family. And that seemed to sway her now into trusting him.
Thing was, he wanted to take this necklace with him. In fact, he really did want to spend more time with her, no lies there.
Just one more night, he thought. What would be the harm?
“So what do you say?” he asked. “It’s just some insurance—a guarantee I’ll come strolling through the lobby again tonight.”
She paused.
He added, “I will bring this bauble back to you.”
“Bauble? I spent hard-earned money on that. Not much of it, but still...”
“I’ll treasure it. I promise.”
She laughed, and it was like a release for her. “As long as you bring it back, Conn.”
“I will.”
And, damn it all if he didn’t mean it with all his soul.
One more night, he told himself again, even as he started to suspect that there was something else going on here.
He went to the bed and kissed her, and that was when his assurance totally evaporated.
Whatever it was that had gotten to him about her last night had invaded him again, even as he still tried to play it off. And now, with his lips pressed so affectionately against hers, his body churned with a weakness he didn’t want or need.
He panicked, pulling back, recovering himself so quickly that he almost fooled himself into thinking that it would be easy to drive away tomorrow morning, after he’d been with her one last time.
Rita, content as a kitten, sighed, then closed her eyes and went back to sleep.
Conn merely eased to the door, almost second-guessing himself and leaving the necklace on the end table. But he could fight this. He would come back tonight, and then that would be it.
Tomorrow, he would just write off this affair as a temporary infatuation and things would go back to normal again...
Chapter Eleven
What was wrong with Conn?
His arms had stiffened around Rita, and even though she hadn’t been with more than two men her entire life, she knew that this wasn’t normal for an afterglow.
A contented flow of hormones had been undulating through her, but now it cooled to a near stop. She rolled away from him a bit, enough to look into his eyes.
He was trying to hide whatever he was feeling; his gaze was shadowed, blocking her off.
Warily, she asked, “What’s going on?”
He started to shake his head, but she stopped him by cupping his face.
“Don’t,” she said. Her worst fears pushed at her, conjuring questions, suspicions.
She didn’t want to ask, but it was as if the words came all on their own.
“Did we just trigger something in your mind, Conn?”
He didn’t seem to know what to say, and panic set into her. “I can see there’s something going on. It’s right there in your eyes.”
Even as he rested his hand under her jaw, the shadows still loomed in his gaze. “Rita, I—”
She sat up, gathering the sheet so she could pull it over her chest. Suddenly, it felt as if he were more of a stranger to her than he had ever been. They should be in each other’s arms after making love, not a million miles apart.
“What did you remember?” she asked and, God help her, but it sounded like another of her accusations.
He sat up, as well, bracing himself against the headboard, as if lying down left him too exposed. “It wasn’t anything we have to talk about right now, Rita.”
Now her heart was spinning, like a pinwheel caught in a stormy wind. “You’re not going to tell me what you saw?”
He reached out a hand to her in what seemed to be a peace offering, but there was an edge to his voice when he spoke, indicating that everything wasn’t so okay.
“This isn’t the time.”
“I think it is,” she said.
When he blew out a ragged breath, she could see he was frustrated.
This couldn’t be good, she thought. Why wouldn’t he just tell her?
She wiped a hand over her face, but that was a mistake, because it blocked her view of Conn. And in that second of darkness, she saw another man in his place.
Kevin.
Conn couldn’t have known it, but his refusal to be honest with her was too damned reminiscent of her ex-fiancé on the night he’d sat her down at the kitchen table, telling her that he had been lying to her for a long time about loving her. He wasn’t ready to be a father—he wouldn’t ever be with her. And by the way, he’d been seeing another woman, who was waiting for him in a hotel just outside of town.
Lies. That was where the trouble started with men, because when lies were discovered, they led to full-on betrayal.
But was it fair to compare Conn to Kevin?
Why ask herself, when she couldn’t even stop the comparisons?
She tried to still her pulse, but it was impossible. Yet she did manage to smooth out her voice.
“You’re scaring me right now, Conn.”
He cursed. She could tell that he felt trapped because, through and through, the Conn she had come to know was an honest man. Lying was eating at him.
The room was soundless except for her heartbeat nattering away in her ears, and when he finally started to talk, it was as if she was hearing him through a layer of cotton soaked by ether.
“You were right,” he said. “Being with you did bring something back to me.”
“What?”
He slowly connected to her gaze, his own still troubled. “The morning I left.”
She paused, and relief pumped through her. “I thought you were going to say something worse. We know what happened that morning. You took my necklace, said you’d be back, then you got in that accident.”
“That’s what I remembered before now. But there’s more to it than that.”
More?
The word echoed like a growl in a dark cave.
He said, “Maybe my mind is playing tricks on me. Sometimes I don’t even know what I can believe.”
“Are you saying that your mind is creating false memories? Has that happened before?”
“No.”
But he was wishing it had happened now, right?
“Just tell me,” she said, because waiting was tearing her apart.
He stared straight ahead, and time ticked by.
Then he finally said, “It’s like I don’t even know the guy in the memory. I woke up in bed with you and—this is the only part that makes sense—I felt my heart grow about fifty times its normal size. You did something to me that no one else has ever done before, Rita.”
That should be good news.... But then why did his low tone suggest that a bad part was yet to come?
Conn had pulled the sheets up and over his hips. “Emmet always tells me that I didn’t invest much feeling in my one-night stands. And that was obvious in this memory. But I guess the fact that I felt something for you confused the hell out of me....” He emphatically shook his head. “No, I take that back. It confused the hell out of him.”
No, you got it right the first time, Rita thought, fear gripping her again, even though she wanted so badly to banish it. It confused the hell out of you.
Because even if the new Conn was trying his hardest to separate himself from the old one, his memories were still a part of him. And once he got used to them being there again, how long would it take for him to go back to old habits?
How many other returned memories would it take for him to change back into who he really was?
Sheer horror was gripping her as the truth piled up on itself, making a bigger and bigger case for the reality of their situation—one she had been hoping would never, ever materialize.
“And what ca
me next?” she asked in a monotone. Numbness. It was the only way she could hear the rest of this.
His skin had gone ruddy, as if he were mortified. “Just remember that I’m as far away from the old Conn as I can get. You can do that, right?”
She barely nodded.
He cautiously went on. “I remember how I wanted more time with you than just the one night we had together. I wasn’t sure I even wanted to leave that morning, even though I had to. I was going to that appointment at the Hervy Ranch, and—this part isn’t pretty, but I won’t lie to you—I was trying not to wake you up as I got dressed.”
She recalled that moment—her waking up, seeing him shrugging into his shirt, then grinning at her.
“You saw me in bed,” she said, “and you picked up my necklace from the floor and told me you’d return it to me when you came back for another night.”
“Yeah.” His face got even redder.
She had a really bad feeling about this. “What is it, Conn?”
A thud of time slumped by before he said, “I was intending to be there only for one more night, and that’s it.”
Oh.
She wanted to yell at him for not sugar-coating the truth, for not letting her down easily. But she had wanted to hear it.
Anger and embarrassment forced the words out of her. “You just wanted a little bit more of the St. Valentine slut, and then you were going to gracefully let me down, just like you did with all the others.”
“I wouldn’t put it that way.”
“Then what way would you put it?”
He merely shook his head, probably knowing that, for Rita, this was just like a slow-motion instant replay of a sick accident. This was confirmation that he hadn’t planned to stick around at all, and in spite of all his recent good intentions, he would’ve eventually left the woman he’d so carelessly seduced, just as he had anyway on the night he was supposed to have shown up again at her hotel, and then the morning after when he still hadn’t appeared, and then the day after that.
Even if he had come back for one more night initially, he would’ve dumped her in the end.
“Maybe,” he said, “I would’ve changed my mind after I came back to you and stayed beyond that second night. We don’t know that for sure.”
Daddy in the Making Page 15
