Words of Silk

by Sandra Brown

  Because she wasn’t about to strain herself and the baby with a tussle she couldn’t possibly win, she sat. He resumed his chair. “By the way, I like that dress. Pregnancy suits you.”

  She looked at him in stupefaction. One minute he was issuing orders like a prison warden, then he was complimenting her on her dress. Her dress? She looked down at the plain red wool jumper. Under it she wore a white blouse with a black grosgrain tie. If it hadn’t been for her burgeoning stomach, she might have been a parochial schoolgirl.

  She didn’t thank him for the compliment. She didn’t say anything; instead she stared at him with all the animosity she felt for him. Any moment now she was going to have to get tough and throw him out. Where she would get the energy and the wherewithal, she didn’t know.

  “When I learned you were pregnant, I wrapped up the trial as quickly as I could.”

  “Not at the expense of your client, I hope,” she said, sarcasm dripping from her lips.

  “Of course not,” he snapped. “He was given probation.”

  “For what?”

  “Armed robbery.”

  She sneered at him. “I don’t like you, Mr. Sargent. Or your insufferable arrogance. Or even what you do for a living. Doesn’t it prick your conscience to send hardened criminals back onto the streets to strike innocent citizens again?”

  His eyes went cold for a second and his lips thinned in irritation, then he said calmly, “He wasn’t a hardened criminal. He was eighteen years old and his father had abused him and his mother since he was born. He had held up a liquor store in order to buy her medicine.”

  That took the wind out of her sails. She licked her lips nervously as she dropped her eyes from the penetrating power of his. “Oh,” she said in a small voice. But she wasn’t ready to surrender yet. “But you were well paid to defend him.”

  “I was court-appointed.”

  Damn! Was the man a saint? Didn’t he have one flaw? Yes, he seduced women ruthlessly, without one glimmer of remorse or a shred of guilt. “But you’ve been well paid before. You’ve gotten people off when you knew they were guilty.”

  “Yes,” he admitted levelly. “It’s not my job to judge them. It’s my job to defend them to the best of my ability.”

  He was so cool and collected, while she felt as if the elements of her life were scattering like the fallen leaves tumbling in the December wind outside. Physically she couldn’t combat him. Persuasion was the only weapon left to her. “You have no right to bulldoze your way into my life.”

  “I feel I do. After that night this summer.”

  “That was an accident. A freak incident. I didn’t know what I was doing.”

  “Didn’t you?”

  “No! You took unfair advantage. I didn’t even remember the details of what had happened until months later.”

  Knowing she was telling the truth, he pondered that for a moment, then asked, “What did you think about it when you remembered?”

  “I was horrified.”

  “By me?”

  “By me. I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “I do. What did you think about our lovemaking?”

  She shuddered. Was it out of revulsion or remembrance of his hands, his lips, his tongue? She drew in a gulp of air. “It was appalling.”

  “It was beautiful. You were beautiful. Why do you say it was horrifying and appalling, Laney?”

  “I’m not in your courtroom, counselor. Stop cross-examining me.”

  “Your breasts are larger.”

  “What?”

  He leaned forward and cupped one breast with his hand. She was too dismayed to react, but only sat there and watched as his hand moved lightly over her full breasts. He gently fondled one, then the other. “They’ve gotten larger with the baby. Are you going to breast-feed?”

  She grabbed his wrist, which was encircled by an eighteen-carat-gold watch, and shoved his hand away. Her breathing was rapid and shallow, and she didn’t know if it was because she was outraged at his touching her or because his caress had felt so good. Her breasts were fuller with the new life she carried. And much more sensitive.

  She wanted to smash his confidence, offend him, hurt him. “The baby or how it will be fed is none of your business. It isn’t yours.”

  For a moment he remained speechless and she took the opportunity to stand and go to the sink. She rinsed out her mug and then turned to him with smug triumph.

  He burst into hearty laughter. For long moments it echoed off the walls of her small kitchen. With his laughter Laney’s rage increased. She clenched her fists. “What are you laughing at?”

  “You,” he said, grinning up at her. “You’re priceless, wonderful.” He studied her in sheer delight, then his eyes grew serious as he gazed into hers. “Laney, you were a virgin the night we were together.”

  She licked her lips rapidly and her mind spun crazily. “There was a man in Tulsa. We had been seeing each other for a long time. He wanted to marry me. After New York, I felt terrible about what I had done and—”

  “And you slept with him out of guilt.”

  “Yes, yes, several times before I moved here.”

  “Why aren’t you together now? Where is he?”

  Where is he? “He was disillusioned to find out that I wasn’t . . . that I had—”

  “Been with another man.”

  “Yes,” she agreed readily, getting into the spirit of her lie. “You ruined that for me too.”

  “So, because you had been with me first, he decided, after all those times you slept with him, that he couldn’t stand the thought of your having slept with another man and dumped you.” He ticked the points off on his fingers as though trying to arrange them in logical order. “Even though you were carrying his child?”

  “I really can’t blame him.”

  Deke barely contained his laughter. “I think he’s a damn fool.”

  “Well, you would! Because you don’t know the first thing about decency and honor.”

  “Apparently you don’t either. There’s no decency and honor in lying, Laney. That’s not only a bald-faced lie, it’s a badly constructed one. I know a lie when I hear one. Remember, it’s my business to spot them.” He placed his thumbs together and extended his arms, framing her stomach between his outstretched hands. Cocking his head to one side and squinting one eye, he said, “That’s my child, all right. I think he even looks like me already.” He was laughing.

  “I tell you, the baby isn’t yours,” she fairly screamed.

  He was unperturbed. “Then I’ll just wait around until it’s born and we’ll know by the birth date, won’t we?”

  Her shoulders heaved in anger and her face wrinkled in frustration. “Don’t, darling. Don’t get so upset.” He reached out and caught her around the waist, pulling her between his wide-spread knees. One hand splayed over the small of her back, the other spread over her swollen abdomen. He rubbed his palm over her in soothing circles.

  “This is my child, Laney. I know it. I mean to have him and I mean to have you.”

  “You can’t have either.” She hated the note of desperation she heard in her voice.

  “I do,” he whispered. “Right here in my hands.” He nuzzled her stomach with his nose and mouth, brushing ardent kisses into the material of her dress. Through the fabric she felt them. They made her insides flutter. “You won’t have to bear it alone from now on. I’ll be with you.”

  Almost lulled by his caressing, she suddenly caught his hair between her fingers and brought his head up. “You can’t mean that you intend to stay. In this town?”

  He smiled a smile that was coming to be familiar. A naughty-little-boy smile. “In this house. I’ll admit Main Street in Sunnyvale isn’t exactly Fifth Avenue, New York, but I think it’s a rather quaint place. Middle American. Wholesome. For the time being, this is our home.”

  “But you can’t.” She struggled with her thoughts. None of this was possible, yet it was happening. This cosmopolitan man was crowd
ing into her small niche on the planet and she wasn’t prepared to cope with his intrusion or the way she felt about it. “We can’t live together. What will people think?”

  He laughed. “They think we’re married, remember?”

  “I’ll tell them we’re not.” The moment the defiant words left her mouth, she saw the trap she’d caught herself in. He apparently, by his sly grin, had already thought of that.

  “Then you’ll be truly offending their sensibilities, won’t you? Because you’ll be confessing to having a child out of wedlock. Not to mention lying and making fools of them all.” He made a tsking sound with his mouth. “I don’t think Mr. Harper would like that.”

  Neither did she. Her job was more important now than ever. She couldn’t risk losing it just before her child was to be born. How would she support him? “I’ll tell them that we tried to mend our differences but that they were irreconcilable.”

  “And I’ll say the opposite.”

  A groan issued from her throat. At first she thought the sound was one of frustration and helplessness. But it may have been generated by pleasure. His hands were massaging the base of her spine and he had rested his cheek on her stomach.

  At that moment the baby moved. It was a swift, sudden kick.

  Deke jerked his head up, looking first at her stomach, then at her face. “The baby?” he whispered, as though he might disturb it.

  She nodded dumbly, anger and frustration suspended for the moment. The high emotion that overrode his features clogged her throat and glossed her eyes with tears. The result of their night together was a bond neither could deny. The miracle of it swamped everything else. “Yes.”

  “I still can’t believe it.” He kissed the spot on her stomach, then brought his hands around and completely covered the maternal mound protectively. He lifted his head and looked at her once again as his hands glided up her body, over her breasts, and came to rest on either side of her neck as he stood. “Laney.”

  He kissed her. This kiss was just as sweet and tender as the one in the schoolyard. But this one had an added element. Passion—passion held prisoner for hours but now unbound.

  His lips were warm as they covered hers. They were persuasive, but brooked no argument to his right to kiss her. He ignored the tension that spiraled through her body and stiffened her muscles, ignored her attempts to draw away, ignored her firmly set mouth. His tongue flicked the corners of her lips mercilessly, relentlessly, until they parted. Lazily he sampled the sweet lining, then pressed his tongue deep.

  Her whole body went limp under the onslaught and he sighed in supreme satisfaction when he felt her body’s response. “Laney,” he sighed as his arms went around her and he hauled her close.

  The scent of his cologne filled her nose, her head. She remembered the feel of him, the texture of his hair as her fingers clutched at his nape. The taste of his mouth was one she would never forget, and as his kiss intensified, she relished the flavor of him.

  At long last he pulled away and smoothed mussed strands of hair from her flushed cheeks. He kissed the tip of her nose. She watched him through a haze of sensuality, her whole body tingling with aroused senses that had long been asleep.

  “Do you want to take a nap or go into town and do some shopping with me?”

  “Town? Shopping? What for?”

  “A king-size bed. I may hurt you if we share that double.”

  CHAPTER 4

  The words were like a bucket of ice water thrown in her face to shock her out of her daze. She pushed herself away from him and sailed through the door into the living room. The racquetball racket offended her most of all. It, more than pajamas and toothbrush, hinted at permanence. She picked it up and flourished it in his face.

  “You cannot just move into my house and into my life this way. Please leave.”

  He was taking his coat from the coat tree and slipping it on. “Do you play racquetball? After the baby comes, we could have fun playing together.” His green eyes were dancing.

  “Don’t you hear me?”

  Impatiently he sighed. “Yes, I hear you, Laney.” He went to the door. “I think a nap would be better for your bad mood than a shopping trip. I’m going to the furniture store and then to the supermarket. Go lie down.” He held up his key. “I won’t even have to disturb you when I come in. I have my key. By the way, you have the most erotic mouth.” His voice took on a gravelly pitch and his eyes narrowed. “Do you remember everything,” he stressed the word, “we did that night?”

  “No.”

  The hot color that flooded her cheeks was a dead giveaway to her lie. He smiled lazily. “Yes, you do. And so do I.” He flipped up the lock, blew her a kiss and left, quickly closing the door against the cold wind.

  Laney stood in the middle of the living-room floor, still foolishly brandishing the racket. As though it weighed a thousand pounds, she let her arms drop to her sides. Never had she felt so defeated. What was she going to do? Covering her eyes with her hands, she made her way blindly toward her bedroom. She barked her shin on one of the suitcases standing in the middle of the floor and kicked it viciously, sending it sliding across the hardwood floor toward the fireplace.

  “Damn him!” she cursed. Tears blurred her eyes. Her whole body felt clumsy and heavy and tight. Her clothes were restricting. She had never been so tired, physically and emotionally. She felt that she had been on the rack all day and that her bones and her spirit were about to break with the final turn of the crank.

  But she knew she couldn’t break. If she gave him an inch, he would take a mile. Two miles. As soon as he got back she would pack him up and send him on his way. Somehow. Only she was too tired to think of a plan now.

  She peeled off her clothes and let them fall where they might as she dragged her feet toward the bed. She collapsed on the side of it and barely managed to take off her pantyhose before falling back onto the pillows and pulling the bedspread over herself.

  She would rest for just a while. Then she would carry his belongings out to the front porch and call the police if necessary to keep him out. The project sounded exhausting. But she would feel better and have more energy as soon as she rested.

  “How can you sleep with all that activity going on?”

  The low voice gently beckoned her from a deep sleep.

  “Hm?” she murmured, yawning broadly. Her eyes remained closed.

  “He’s kicking up a storm. I think he’s hungry for his dinner, even if you’re not.”

  “Dinner?” she repeated drowsily, stretching and rolling slightly to her back. Then her whole body jerked in reaction and her eyes popped open.

  Deke was crouched beside the bed. Though she was covered with the bedspread, his hands were beneath it, lying on the naked skin of her abdomen. She had stripped to her brassiere and panties. She could still wear bikinis. They rode just beneath the bulge of her stomach.

  “What are you doing?” she asked hoarsely. She was thirsty and her head was buzzing, still muzzy from the depth of her slumber.

  “Marveling over the wonder of it all.” His hands were soothing on her stretched skin. His fingers pressed into her lightly and he laughed when the baby seemingly did a complete somersault. “What is that little guy doing in there?” His expression and voice were filled with delight.

  For a moment Laney was moved by the extent of his apparent joy in the child. But she remembered the resolution she had made before falling asleep and struggled to prop herself up on her elbows. The bedspread slid away and she was left with only her underwear and Deke’s hands to cover her.

  Dismayed, she looked down to see that her breasts were coming out of her brassiere. She grabbed for the bedspread. Deke was quick to move it out of her reach. “Let me see you. Please.” His hands seemed to sift down until she felt their touch.

  “Lovely,” he murmured as his index finger traced the upper curves swelling over the tenuous border of lace. His touch was feather light, but it sizzled into her and singed each nerve ending. S
he bit back a gasp of pleasure. Shock rendered her muscles useless as she watched him straighten, lean forward and plant a soft, loving kiss between the plump, warm breasts.

  When he raised his eyes to hers, they were liquid in the lamplight. “Are you ready for your dinner?” he asked. “Everything’s ready.”

  She could only nod dumbly and wonder how his eyes could be so green and how she could, in her right mind, lie there virtually naked with his hands and lips moving over her and not even care. What had happened to all those plans to drive him out? Somewhere between her falling asleep in angry exhaustion and waking to his gentling caresses, her feelings had mellowed considerably.

  “Why don’t you slip this on instead of dressing again,” he suggested, standing and offering a robe to her. She noticed then that all her clothes had been picked up and hung in the closet and that he had chosen her oldest, most comfortable robe for her to wear.

  “J-just leave it. I’ll join you in a minute.”

  “All right.”

  When he left, Laney pulled on the robe and hurried into the bathroom. She knew by his broad grin that he had understood her request. When she was done, she stared at herself in the mirror over the basin. Her hair was a tangled mess around her head, but somehow, with her rosy cheeks and sleep-laden eyes, it looked appealing and . . . seductive.

  She banished that thought and ruthlessly raked a brush through her hair. Handfuls of warm water rinsed the sleep from her eyes and she rinsed her mouth out. When she felt that she was at least presentably, if not quite properly, attired to entertain a gentleman at dinner, she stepped into terry-cloth slippers and made her way through the house to the kitchen. A fire had been started in the fireplace. In spite of herself she was smiling with the pleasure of its homey glow when she entered the kitchen.

  “There you are. I thought you might have fallen asleep again.”

  Not a chance, Laney thought ironically. After having had his warm mouth kissing the inside curves of her breasts? He must be kidding.

  He had changed into comfortable clothes while she was asleep. Gone were the tailored slacks and Italian loafers, and in their place were worn jeans and scuffed jogging shoes. He had on a Harvard sweatshirt with the sleeves pushed to his elbows. An apron was tied around his waist. With a pair of tongs he was fishing spaghetti out of a boiling pot of water and transferring it to the center of a shallow serving dish.