by Sandra Brown
“God, Laney,” he whispered thickly before he sealed her mouth with his once again. As the kiss intensified, so did his caresses. He explored her body with an inquisitive hand, finding intriguing curves and hollows, loving the rustling sound of their clothing, which somehow made the caresses seem forbidden and therefore more exciting.
Their position on the sofa frustrated him because his movements were restricted. He rose and pulled her to her feet. She swayed and leaned into him heavily. That brought Deke to his senses. If his body hadn’t been raging, he would have laughed at himself and the situation.
She was drunk! And not on spontaneous passion, but on about a cup of brandy. Even residual trauma from the blackout couldn’t be responsible for the blank expression on her face.
He sighed, calling himself a fool and willing his ardor to cool. “Come on, Laney, I’m putting you to bed.” Hands on her shoulders, he pushed himself away from her. He peered into her face and she solemnly nodded assent. Taking her hand, he headed toward the bedroom. Like an obedient child, she followed.
He switched on the light as they went through the door. “Stand here and I’ll turn down the bed.” He propped her against the doorjamb and crossed to the wide bed, flinging back the blue suede bedspread, tossing decorative pillows helter-skelter into the deep armchair, plumping a pillow for her and smoothing the flawless toast-brown sheets. “Here you go. . . .”
The words died on his lips. She was still by the door. A small pile of clothing was forming around her. She had taken off her blouse, her skirt. As he turned around she was stepping out of a half slip. Stupefied, he watched her peel gossamer pantyhose down legs that could have been insured for their shapeliness. Then she faced him wearing only a flimsy excuse for a brassiere and a pair of panties that she could have saved money by not bothering with. Her body was both svelte and voluptuous.
None of his colleagues would have believed that Deke Sargent could be rendered speechless. But he stood like a gaping adolescent seeing his first naked woman. His mouth went dry. He had been with so many unclothed women, he couldn’t begin to count them. He had undressed most of them himself. He was deft. He could rid a lady of her clothes before she even knew what he was about. But this woman had so taken him unaware that for a moment he could only stand and gawk. What mystified him most was that she wasn’t trying to entice him. She had merely taken off her clothes.
She smiled at him demurely as she walked past him on her way to the bed. She lay down and trustfully rested her cheek against the pillow.
“No one is gonna believe I turned this down,” Deke muttered to himself as he went to the bed. He smiled down at her. “Good night, Laney, whoever you are. Sleep well.” He kissed her cheek and, straightening, automatically reached for the bedside light switch and turned it off.
“No!” She bolted upright, taking heaving breaths in the sudden darkness. Her flailing arms groped for him.
“I’m sorry,” he said, cursing his own stupidity and sitting down on the bed. His arms went around her and he felt her near nakedness. Every male impulse was instantly aroused.
“Stay with me. You promised,” she sobbed. Her arms went around his neck and her breasts flattened against his chest. An image of their ripe fullness and dusky centers was imprinted on his brain. “You said you would hold me.”
“Laney,” he groaned. His conscience and his body warred. “You don’t know—”
“Please.”
He let himself lie down beside her. Only for a minute. Only until she drifts off to sleep, he told himself.
But she held him tight against her and her entreaties were soft and urgent, just loud enough to drown out the protests of his conscience. His hands began to caress with a purpose other than comforting. Her skin was warm beneath his fingertips. His mouth found hers in the darkness and fused with it hotly, wetly.
Oh, God.
This was wrong. He didn’t know anything about her. She might be married. But he had already checked her finger. She wasn’t wearing a ring. That doesn’t mean a damn thing, Sargent, he thought.
This could get him into a helluva lot of trouble. Think of the publicity. An enraged husband charging into the apartment at dawn with a SWAT team and photographers.
Warnings were fired at him. Her sweet mouth and the feel of her against him shot them down.
He wasn’t above using dirty tricks and machinations to get what he wanted. But he had never taken such blatant advantage of a woman. She was intoxicated and didn’t know what she was doing.
He did. And it felt wonderful.
He was a good deal older than she. Fifteen years, maybe.
He would probably burn in hell for this. But what did that matter? He was already on fire.
Laney came awake gradually. She lifted her eyelids once, twice. Yawned. Raised them again lazily.
Then they sprang wide. She was sharing a pillow with a total stranger. The man awoke instantly and whispered to her across the soft linen. “Good morning.”
Laney uttered a sharp, startled scream and tried to move away from him. Her legs were tangled with his; her knee—Good Lord! His hand was resting heavily on her breast. She thrashed and kicked until she was able to roll away from him. He stared at her as though she had lost her mind and blinked green eyes that even in her near-hysteria she couldn’t fail to notice.
She scrambled to the corner of the bed and huddled, making another trapped-animal sound when she realized she was as naked as he. She clutched the corner of the sheet and hauled it up to her chin.
“Who are you and where am I?” she asked, wide-eyed and breathless. “If you don’t give me an explanation immediately, I’m calling the police.”
Her threat was laughable and she knew it. She didn’t even know where she was, much less where the telephone might be.
“Calm down,” he said reasonably, and extended a hand toward her. She flinched and moved farther away from him. He cursed.
“Don’t you remember how you got here?”
“No,” she said shortly. “I only know I didn’t come of my own free will. Who are you?”
He cursed again and rubbed his hand over a broad, hair-matted chest as he stared at her in perplexity. “I was afraid you wouldn’t remember. You drank too much brandy.”
“Brandy?” She mouthed the word, but nothing came out “You gave me brandy? And what else? Drugs?”
He knew from the rising note of panic in her voice that she was about to lose her last vestige of control. “Let me explain.”
“Now! Explain now! And where are my clothes?”
He flung back the sheet and got up. She went pale at the sight of all his male power. He took two steps toward a wall of closets before she made another horrified sound. She clamped her hand over her mouth to stifle a full-fledged scream as she stared at the brownish-red stains on the sheets.
She raised glazed eyes to his and for the first time he looked embarrassed. “I didn’t know you were a virgin.” He spread his arms wide in appeal, seemingly unaware of his bold nakedness. “How could I have known until it was too late, Laney?”
Slowly she lowered a trembling hand from lips gone chalky. “H-how do you know my name?”
He shook his head in what she could only interpret as bewilderment and perhaps a little sadness. He went to the closet and took out a white terry-cloth wrapper and came back toward the bed. He extended the robe toward her. When she didn’t reach for it, he laid it down close by her and turned his back. “You told me your name in the elevator. Don’t you remember being in the elevator with me?”
She shrugged into the robe and wrapped it around her tightly while he rummaged through a drawer, finally coming up with a pair of pajama bottoms. He pulled them on, but he didn’t look like a man accustomed to wearing pajamas.
Facing her again, he asked, “Do you remember getting into the elevator?”
She brought a hand up to her throbbing temple and massaged it, trying to remember. Anything. Yes. She had visited Sally and Jeff last ni
ght. Great fun. Sights of New York. A terrific meal and a wonderful drink called a Velvet Hammer for dessert. Two drinks? Then . . . ? Yes. She had said good-bye at their door, hugged Sally, laughingly hugged Jeff; then . . . Nothing.
“You said you were visiting someone who lives in the building,” the man prodded quietly, after having given her time to piece together the fragments of memory. “I got on the elevator with you. We had a blackout. We were trapped for several minutes. No more. But you were all undone and I couldn’t leave you like that and push you out into the streets. I brought you here. Gave you brandy. I held you while you cried. You—”
“That doesn’t explain why I wake up in your bed, having been raped!”
“Raped!” he repeated on a shout of temper.
“Yes, raped. I wouldn’t have gone to bed with you willingly.”
She watched as he forcefully got hold of his temper. His face was tense with anger and frustration as he looked at her. He ran his hand through his gray hair, beautiful hair that went stunningly well with his darkly tanned skin and startling green eyes. “Did you know you are extremely claustrophobic?” he asked at last.
She nodded tersely.
“I thought you might not remember the sequence of events last night because you were terribly upset.” His features softened and she didn’t know which frightened her more, his temper or his gentleness. She felt that she could submit to either one.
“As to the other,” he added softly and glanced down at the telltale stain on the bed, “I assure you I did nothing you didn’t want me to.” She whimpered slightly. “I’d like to talk to you about it all. Calmly. Over coffee.” He went to a connecting door and opened it. “Here’s the bathroom. You might want to shower. I’ll bring your clothes in or you can stay in the robe if you don’t feel up to dressing. I’ll make coffee and slowly we’ll put the missing pieces of the puzzle together until it makes sense to you. All right?”
Not all right. But she nodded her consent. He left her for a moment and came back carrying her hopelessly rumpled clothes, her shoes and her handbag. He said nothing before leaving again and closing the door behind him.
Laney didn’t waste time. She bounded off the bed and rushed into the bathroom. She turned on the shower’s spray, but she didn’t step under it. She only wanted him to think she was in the shower. As much for psychological cleanliness as physical, she washed from the basin.
God! What had she done? One week in New York and she had gotten drunk on a lethal concoction called a Velvet Hammer and gone to bed—to bed!—with a total stranger. She couldn’t yet grasp the enormity of it.
Her hands were shaking as she pulled on her clothes. Wasting no time, she pulled on her panties, cramming the rest of her underwear into her handbag.
Who was he? She didn’t want to know. She would never know.
She opened the door cautiously and peered out. A radio announcer was predicting the weather for the day. A good day for getting the hell out of this city, she thought as she crept toward the front door. She could see his back as he puttered in the kitchen. He seemed not the least upset. Indeed, he had the happily smug bearing of a man who had coerced a woman into his bed and into his shower. Apparently scenes like this morning’s weren’t infrequent or unfamiliar to him.
Good-bye, Mr. Whoever-You-Are, she mouthed as she opened the front door and slipped through. She raced on silent feet toward the elevator and pushed the button. It took an interminable amount of time for the car to get to the twenty-second floor and then an even longer time to reach the lobby. Would he notice her absence? Phone down to the doorman and impede her escape?
Laney hurried past the doorman, who bid her a cheerful good morning. She virtually ran two blocks before she even paused to hail a cab. If she wasted no time, she could return to the hotel, pack and still make it to LaGuardia in time to catch her plane.
Her head fell back onto the stiff vinyl seatcover. She experienced a weariness she had never known before. Her body felt sore in new ways she wished she could ignore.
How could it have happened without her even knowing it? She closed her eyes tightly and willed away curiosity. It persisted. He must have been gentle, for surely she would have remembered suffering pain. How had he talked her, Laney McLeod, into making love with him?
“Oh, God,” she said, and buried her face in her hands. She didn’t know if she was regretting that she couldn’t remember it or that she might have to pay severe consequences.
Who was he? He could be married. He could be infected with something. He could be a sexual deviate.
Mirthlessly she laughed to herself. Most women would consider her damned lucky. At least she didn’t have to worry about the ultimate horror. Her inability to bear children had been a shield against relationships, a reason for never making a commitment to anyone. She could almost be glad she was barren. She might yet be doomed to suffer some consequences for last night’s calamity, but she wouldn’t get pregnant.
CHAPTER 2
You’re pregnant, Ms. McLeod.”
Laney stared blankly at the doctor for a moment, then she laughed on a short gust of air. “That’s impossible.”
He smiled in a kindly, fatherly fashion. “Oh, it’s quite possible. I would say you’re in your tenth week. Didn’t you have an inkling?”
She was shaking her head adamantly, impatiently. “You don’t understand. It’s impossible. I’m barren. I had appendicitis when I was thirteen. A secondary infection set in and lasted for weeks. The doctor told me and my mother then that I would never be able to have a child.”
The doctor shrugged and smiled broadly. “He was wrong!”
“I came in here for a routine stomach virus,” she said stridently.
“That stomach malady you suffer from was around long before we discovered viruses. It’s called morning sickness.”
Laney became utterly still as she stared at him. He could barely hear her when she said, “You’re serious, aren’t you? I’m pregnant with a child?”
When he saw the stricken expression on her pale face his tone and manner softened considerably. “Aren’t you happy about it, Ms. McLeod?”
Happy? Happy that her sins were finding her out? Happy that she was to pay for one mistake for the rest of her life? Happy that she would make an innocent child pay for her mistake?
“I’m not married,” she blurted out. She stood and went to stand at the window. The doctor’s office was on the ground floor of a medical complex. People hurried past on the sidewalk. A pickup truck raced through a yellow light. A lady in a station wagon was coaxing a golden retriever to sit down in the backseat. Teenage sweethearts strolled by, their arms around each other’s waists.
Normalcy. But nothing was normal. She was pregnant by a man she couldn’t even name.
“The father is—” he began.
“Unreachable.”
You’re very beautiful, Laney.
The doctor coughed lightly behind his hand.
Laney felt like a fool. She could read the doctor’s mind. She was rather old to be “getting caught.” She had never bothered with contraceptives because she had been under the mistaken impression that she was sterile. Besides, there hadn’t been a man until—
“If you make up your mind within a few days,” the doctor was saying quietly, “we could terminate the pregnancy. But we don’t have much time left.”
“An abortion.” The whole idea made her shiver with nausea. “No. I don’t think so.”
I can’t believe someone as beautiful and rare as you fell out of the sky into my arms.
“It’s not that terrible an ordeal now. We—”
“No,” Laney said, spinning away from the window and grabbing up her purse. “I could never do that. Thank you, Doctor,” she said hurriedly, desperate now to be alone and to think.
“I’ll phone the pharmacy for a prescription of morning-sickness pills and vitamins with iron. You’re slightly anemic.”
“Thank you.” She had almost forgotten wha
t had brought her to see him in the first place—those annoying bouts of queasiness that struck her in the mornings and evenings and that prevailing lack of energy. She had never considered that she could be pregnant. Years ago she had accepted the fact that she would never have a family.
“Check with the receptionist as you leave. Since this is your first pregnancy, I want to see you once a month.” The doctor came around the edge of his desk and took her arm kindly. “If there’s any way I can help . . .”
He left the offer open-ended. “Thank you,” she said, but shook her head no. After making the appointment at the receptionist’s desk and accepting the woman’s hearty congratulations, she left.
Sunnyvale was having its rush hour, which wasn’t an hour at all but lasted from five to five fifteen each workday. It was a bustling community surrounded by a hundred miles of rich farmland. Laney got in her second-hand compact car and drove down the main street. The town boasted most of the nation’s fast-food chains, but there was still the Ozark Cafe, where one could eat black-eyed peas and cornbread and homemade banana pudding. There was the obligatory J. C. Penney store, but most of the businesses around the town square were privately owned. Everyone knew everyone else’s business.
Everyone knew that the new kindergarten teacher was single. In a few weeks everyone would know she was pregnant.
Laney pulled her car to a stop in the gravel driveway of her rented house and laid her forehead against the steering wheel. “What am I going to do?” she said in anguish.
Touch me.
“I’ll lose my job. Then what?”
Oh, God, Laney. That’s it, sweetheart. Don’t ever be afraid to touch me.
She squeezed her eyes shut and tried not to hear the words. “I could tell them that I was married and lost my husband somehow.”
Your breasts are beautiful. Did you know that? Perfect size, shape. Laney, Laney.
“Stop it!” she shouted to the ceiling of her car. Her breath was coming fast. Her upper lip was beaded with perspiration. She covered her breasts with her hands so she wouldn’t feel the caressing any longer, wouldn’t feel the nipples pouting as though they were being kissed. “Stop it, stop it, please,” she moaned.
