by Lisa Jackson
Her insides quivered, and as if he felt her resistance fading, he kissed her harder and his tongue gained purchase, sliding over her teeth, flicking against the roof of her mouth, exploring and plundering, causing her senses to reel.
It felt so right. His body melded close to hers, as if there were no clothes separating them, as if they belonged together, as if they were destined to fuse.
“Brand—” she murmured.
“Don’t tell me no.” He touched her breast, his fingers scorching her skin, though cotton fabric held them at bay.
“I—I won’t,” she whispered and gave up the battle as desire, deep and dark and wanton, seared through her blood. Her arms circled his neck and she kissed him back.
“Dani, love,” he said softly, his voice hoarse.
Her heart ached for the little boy who hadn’t known his father and the man who now did.
His hands tracked down her ribs. His weight forced her backward and they tumbled onto the couch. Brand, still kissing her, deftly worked the buttons of her blouse, parting the fabric then edging the lace of her bra with one long finger.
Dani quivered inside as his finger grazed her nipple. Her breast swelled and the nipple seemed to ripen, jutting hard against its lacy barricade. With a groan, he unhooked her bra and her breast fell into his open hand. Dani’s eyes fluttered closed and she was lost in the powerful feelings that this one special man evoked in her. He loved her. Hadn’t he said as much? He wanted to marry her.
A small cry crossed her tongue. She couldn’t marry him now—not until she told him the truth about their baby. She opened her mouth to speak, but he captured it with his again and his hands moved anxiously against her skin, ridding her of blouse and bra, then dipping seductively under the waistband of her jeans. She didn’t stop him, didn’t try. Liquid fire was building deep within her, flowing slowly as her jeans popped open and he slid them lovingly over her hips.
She unbuttoned his shirt, and gazing at the hard muscles of his chest, she laid a finger on one nipple. He groaned and the flat disk hardened beneath a swirl of dark hair.
“You’re asking for trouble,” he warned and she, with a smile, asked again by touching his other nipple, then slid her fingers down the washboard of his abdomen, tracing the hard muscles, watching him suck in his breath as she opened his fly and slipped her hands inside his jeans to touch his buttocks. Firm and supple, they flexed beneath her fingers.
He kissed her hard then, his lips fitting fiercely over hers, his hands tangling in her hair. Her body trembled, hot from the inside out. His fingers and lips were everywhere, touching her intimately, kissing her, stroking her, adding fuel to the fire that was already consuming her.
Moaning, she writhed beneath him, and he removed her panties and kissed her in the most intimate of places before shucking off his own jeans and briefs. Closing her eyes, she felt the world quake as he slowly brought up his head and dragged his body between her legs. “I’ve waited forever for this,” he said, his voice hoarse and low. Firelight flickered in his eyes and gilded his skin as he poised over her, gazed into her eyes and whispered, “I love you.”
The words were like a bucket of ice water thrown over her. She couldn’t. Not yet. Not until she told him the truth. “Brand, there’s something you should know—”
With a primal groan, he thrust into her, and her willing body arched up to join with his. Her worries, so vivid a second before, fled in the heat that he created as his arms surrounded her and his body moved over hers. She found his tempo, caught it and felt the earth shift again. Faster and hotter, as if trapped in a wildfire, Brand moved. Dani’s breath was short and fast, her heart pounding, her mind spinning.
“Dani!” his voice was raw, his head thrown back.
Her soul was ripped from her flesh in that instant when their bodies and the stars collided.
Her own throat was raw from her cries.
He collapsed against her and her arms held him close, waiting as his breathing slowed, feeling the soft fingers of afterglow cuddle them both.
One hand lazily stroked her hair, his other arm was wrapped securely around her waist. As he gazed down at her, he smiled and some of the pain had left his eyes. “What about it?” he finally asked in the near darkness. “What do you say, Dani? Will you marry me?”
A lump grew in her throat and tears starred her lashes. “I—I can’t,” she whispered, then bit her lip.
“Why not?”
She took in a long, slow breath and tried not to break down, but her voice failed her, and when she spoke it was the barest of whispers. “Because,” she said, staring into his blue, blue eyes, hoping her words and courage wouldn’t fail her, “because . . . because somewhere—and I don’t know where yet—somewhere you and I have an eleven-year-old son.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
“We have what?” Brand’s eyes so recently glazed in afterglow were now sharp and burned as brightly as the coals in the grate. He rolled off the couch, swept up his jeans and yanked them on in a quick, angry motion.
“A son,” she said, swallowing hard.
Emotions from rage to awe transformed his face. “A son. My God, are you serious?”
“He’s . . . he’s the person I’m looking for. Our baby—well, child now. Oh, God, Brand, I wanted to tell you earlier—”
“This had better be your idea of a sick joke.” He hitched his jeans up.
“You think I would joke about this?”
“I don’t know. Would you?”
“For heaven’s sake, I’m telling you that when you left I was pregnant!” She climbed to her knees and reached forward, catching his hand, but he stared down at her with damning eyes.
“I can’t believe it,” he said, peeling off her fingers as if her touch revolted him. His gaze raked over her body and she’d never felt so naked, so vulnerable in all her life.
“Look, I’ve been meaning to tell you—”
“When?” he asked, snapping shut his fly, then leveled his gaze at her again, “When, damn it!”
“There was never a right time—”
“In eleven years? In eleven damned years?” He threw his hands over his head and turned away from her. She watched the smooth muscles of his back flex as he swore roundly over and over again. “Do you know what this means, Dani?” he asked, rotating swiftly, his nostrils flaring as he suddenly smelled something hideous. Striding up to her, he glared deep into her eyes. “Do you?”
“That—”
“That I have a son whom I’ve ignored. For eleven damned years. Just like my louse of an old man!”
“No—”
“Why didn’t you call or write or—”
“Why didn’t you?” she demanded, her anger getting the better of her. She was breathing rapidly, her breasts rising and falling each time she gulped air. He glanced at her nipples, proud little points, and then looked quickly away.
“It’s not the same.”
“No, of course not. But do you honestly think I would’ve tried to find you, to chase you down, just because I was pregnant? Why? So I could get some kind of halfhearted proposal, so that you in all your nobility would have offered to be my husband? Well, sorry. If you wanted me because you loved me, that was one thing. My being pregnant had nothing to do with it!”
“Like hell.”
“Did you call even once?” she demanded, a flush heating her body. “Even so much as sit down to write a letter?” She shook her head. “No. Because, face it, Brandon, you didn’t want to be tied down and it was the last thing, the very last thing I would have done to you.” Shaking, she reached for her clothes and tried to make her fumbling fingers work as she started dressing.
“You knew how I felt about being a responsible parent.”
“And you knew how I felt about you!” she retorted, her fingers unable to fasten her bra. Suddenly the dimly lighted room was too close and she just wanted out.
“And you gave him away.”
“Yes!” The bra was finally hooke
d and she found her blouse.
“Why?”
“Because I couldn’t raise him alone.” Stuffing her arms through her sleeves, she stared angrily at him. “And don’t you dare lecture me about not having the guts to do it. I gave him up, Brandon, willingly, thinking it was the best thing for everyone, and there hasn’t been a day, not one single day in the past eleven years, that I haven’t worried about him, wondering where he was, how he was doing.”
“At least you knew about him.”
“At least you were spared over a decade of heartache!”
He advanced on her as she stepped into her jeans. “So where is he?”
“I don’t know.”
“You never kept track?”
“I couldn’t.”
“Tell me what happened.” Strong hands gripped her shoulders, fingers digging into her muscles.
She zipped up her jeans and tilted her face up to him. “You want all the grisly details?”
“Every last one.”
“Okay, but you don’t have to manhandle me to get the truth,” she said, and he, as if realizing how hard he was clutching her, suddenly let go and stepped away.
Dani found her glass on the floor and poured herself a gulp of wine. She swallowed and leaned on the mantel, her fingers sliding along the varnished wood, her thoughts rolling back in time. Inside she was shaking, but she tried to appear calm and in control.
“I didn’t know about the baby until after you’d left,” she said, blinking against tears. She couldn’t break down. Wouldn’t! “And when I realized I was pregnant, I was scared. Damned scared. I didn’t tell anyone until I was starting to show and then I confided in my mother. She . . . well, she was devastated at first, and between her and Jonah McKee they convinced me—”
“McKee?” Brand bellowed, a new rage contorting his features. That slimy son of a bitch. “What the hell did he have to do with this?”
“My mother worked for him, you know, and he’d always helped out. I . . . I think she was in love with him.”
Brand snorted. “Looks like we have more in common than I thought. He rested his hips on the end of the couch, then nodded. “Go on.” His lips were still hard and flat, the corners of his mouth bracketed in white lines of fury, but he seemed to have control of his emotions as he sat, without his shirt, the firelight throwing gold shadows over his skin.
Slowly, Dani told him the rest of the story, about Estelle and the hospital, about keeping his name a secret and her newly found frustration of trying to locate the boy.
All the while, Brand sat there, watching her intently, as if looking for a flaw, a lie that he could latch on to. When she was finished, he rubbed his chin. His voice was flat and cold, without any inflection whatsoever. “What will you do when you find him?”
“Nothing. I’ll just be happy to know that he’s okay.”
“Will you?”
“Yes.”
“And what about me? What is my role in all this? Don’t you know this is my worst nightmare—to know that I fathered a son and abandoned him?” He cleared his throat and Dani fought the hot tears that slid from her eyes.
“I . . . I’m sorry. I didn’t think I’d ever see you again and then you showed up here. I wanted to tell you then, but the timing never seemed to be right.” She dashed away any trace of her tears and stiffened her spine, her chin angled in defiance, as if daring him to hit her with another emotional blow. “So now you know.”
And a silent thought passed between them; they’d made love again. They already could have started the same chain of events as before. Neither of them had given any thought to protection, even against any possible disease. Passion had ruled over sanity. Brand mentally kicked himself. How could he have been such a fool as to not protect her?
“I’m going to find him,” he said, reaching for his shirt.
“No—”
“And when I do, I’m going to go through the courts and do whatever it takes to exercise my rights as a father—”
“Stop! Brand, for the love of God, listen to yourself. You can’t bust in on an eleven-year-old boy’s life and turn it upside down.” She repeated the same warnings her sister had said to her. “You don’t know what will happen, but all you’ll cause is heartache for you, me, the boy and his parents.”
“I’m his damned parent.”
“No.” She shook her head miserably, knowing full well that she couldn’t have wounded him any more than if she’d stabbed him in the heart. “I took that right away from you.” She watched the look of defeat enter his eyes. “I’ve said I’m sorry and I’d say it a million times over if it would do any good, but it won’t. I can’t change what happened, nor can you. The best thing we can do for our son is to let him grow up healthy and happy and secure with the family he has.”
“Oh, God, Dani, listen, will you? We have to—I have to find out about this.” He stood near the door, his shirt open, his shoulders so tight they looked brittle, his spine ramrod stiff. “I think you should go.”
She didn’t need his invitation; she knew that whatever they’d shared was over. The expression in his eyes was condemning, the set of his jaw grimly determined. Whatever they’d recaptured, even fleetingly, was gone. “I’ll tell Sloan about you, in case you want to work with him.”
“What I want to know is why would Jonah McKee give two cents about your kid?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I’ve never understood his relationship to my mother or us.” Shivering from a cold deep within, she swept past him and tried not to notice the scent of his skin or the weight of his gaze. With as much pride as she could muster, she walked out of the house and out of his life.
* * *
“You’re mad, aren’t you?” Chris asked as he followed Dani out to the vegetable garden. She was toting a hoe over her shoulder and walking with strides so fast he had to jog to keep up with her.
“Mad? No. Angry? Well . . . no, not really.” She offered the kid a smile. Ever since he’d moved in with Brand two weeks earlier, he’d been puppy-dogging after her, following her around and helping out. He was still cocky, but for the most part, he seemed to enjoy life on the ranch and was learning fast with the horses. Aside from his complaints about the lack of a dog at the ranch, he seemed happy with life. If he was worried about Venitia, he kept it to himself.
Though Chris was always underfoot, Dani hadn’t seen much of Brand since she’d confessed to him about the baby. The few times they’d run into each other, he was barely civil, hiding behind aviator glasses that shielded his eyes as well as guarded his expression.
“Wanna help?” She tossed Chris the hoe.
“Nah. I hate weeding.”
“Don’t think of it as work, but more like . . . character building.”
“I think I got enough character.”
She couldn’t help but grin as she stared at him with his untied shoes, hat turned backward and peach fuzz on his upper lip. “Yeah, maybe you do.”
He didn’t seem concerned that his mother was, as he put it, “drying out.” His attitude was more of relief. But Dani thought it strange that his father never called or wrote or visited the boy. Brand was right on that score. Al Cunningham was a zero of a dad. Seemed to run in the family. Jonah McKee had been less than zero.
She hadn’t said anything to Skye or Max about Jonah being Brand’s father. They had their own worries as Skye was due to deliver her own baby any day. Why get them all worked up about Jonah’s illegitimate son? Besides, that was Brandon’s call and deep down she hoped that the word never got out—for the sake of the McKee family. Jonah may have been a louse, but his wife didn’t need to be reminded of it.
Chris handed her the hoe before trotting off to the garage where he was working on a skateboard ramp.
Dani, frustrated, attacked the rows of squash and green beans with a vengeance, slicing at weeds with her hoe and wishing that life hadn’t become more complicated than it already was. Finally her finances were in decent, if not g
reat, shape and now she had the emotional, gut-wrenching problem of dealing with Brand. Or not dealing with him.
Sweat dripped on the ground and she wrapped a handkerchief around her forehead to catch the drops before they trickled into her eyes. The old windmill blades rattled occasionally, but the air was fairly still and searing.
She felt Brand’s gaze before she saw him. Steeling herself, she glanced over her shoulder to find him standing in the shade of an apple tree, resting his elbows on the rickety split-rail fence between the garage and the garden.
“I thought we should talk.”
“What about?”
“The other night.”
“I think we said enough.”
“Not quite.” He vaulted the fence and walked down the dusty rows of bush beans, looking cool and hard, his face set, no trace of a smile. She was tired of his cold determination and the disapproval in his eyes.
“The answer is still no.”
“Answer?” he asked cautiously.
“I still won’t marry you and nothing you can say will change my mind.”
He almost smiled. Not quite, but almost. “Brassy, aren’t you?”
“Bossy, aren’t you?”
At that, he caught hold of her wrist, forcing the hoe to drop with a thud to the hard ground. “Enough, Dani. We can’t spend the next eleven months sniping at each other.”
“So what do you propose?” she asked, emphasizing the last word.
His jaw clenched as he gazed at her with piercing eyes. “You’re a hard woman.”
Her stupid pulse was jumping again; he could probably see it throbbing at her neck or feel it beneath his fingertips wrapped around the inside of her wrist. “Not half as hard as you are.” She yanked her arm away and picked up the hoe. “I’ve got work to do.” She started down a row of corn, now as high as her shoulder.
“We’ve got to think about Chris.”
Stopping short, she turned and wanted to scream at him, wanted to shout at him that over the past two icy weeks she’d come to realize how much she cared for him, how much she missed the soft rumbling sound of his laughter, how she’d come to wait for him each night, hoping to see him, how she loved him. Damn it, that was the crux of the problem: she loved him. Biting down on her lip, she grabbed hold of her runaway thoughts. “You’re right. Chris doesn’t need to see us acting like children.” Leaning against the hoe, she yanked off her work gloves. “So what do you suggest, some kind of truce?”
