by Sara Wood
‘You fool!’ Morgan muttered to himself in astonishment as he turned eagerly into the lane. ‘You’re actually nervous!’
And so he was. His hands were shaking for absolutely no reason at all. Hastily he checked his appearance, frowning and smoothing down a stray lock of hair—and then uttered a short grunt of annoyance at his action.
When he reached halfway down the drive Satan ran up to the car, barking ecstatically. Morgan parked in front of the house and climbed out, giving Satan a hug and hushing him.
He heard the door open and deliberately kept his head down, his arms around the dog. But his pulses were beating a tattoo everywhere they happened to appear in his body.
‘Morgan!’ Jodie cried, her voice sounding shaky. ‘Thank heavens! I thought my father had taken a turn for the worse or…or…you’d had an accident!’
Then he looked up. She’d been crying. Her mouth looked crumpled, her eyes pink-rimmed. ‘Jodie!’ he cried, unfolding his body and surging towards her in sympathy. He checked his watch, groaned, and then his arms were around her before he knew what he was doing. ‘I didn’t realise— I’m terribly late! I’m sorry. I should have phoned—’
‘No, you shouldn’t!’ she mumbled into his neck. ‘I’ve no right to leap at you with nagging accusations. It’s just that I was expecting you, and I waited, and you didn’t come, and I hung around and kept going to the window, and you weren’t there, and—’
‘Hey!’ he laughed, raising her face to his. ‘You have every right.’
He kissed her forehead. Very good, he told himself. Brotherly. Unfortunately his loins had different ideas. An intoxicating fragrance had wafted into his nostrils and his hands were aching to explore the neat-fitting jersey dress which poured over her beautiful body like red-hot lava. Quickly he detached himself before she noticed his arousal.
‘How’s my father?’ she asked breathily.
Morgan sobered up. ‘He’s improved a little, they tell me—though he was sedated and I didn’t get much sense out of him.’
‘As long as he’s all right…’ she mumbled. ‘You’d tell me if they were worried about him, wouldn’t you?’ she asked, her eyes misty with emotion.
‘I would,’ he promised. ‘Now. I’ll get Jack sorted, pour us both a drink. Then I’ll change into a sackcloth, roll in ashes, lie at your feet and beg your forgiveness for not phoning you.’
‘Excessive,’ she chided, all radiant smiles again, as he’d hoped, at his comically humble expression. She made a face. ‘You can make yourself useful and fix the fuse box instead.’
It was then that he noticed the house was in darkness. ‘Good grief! What happened? When?’
‘When I turned on the lights somewhere around three-thirty’ she replied. ‘There was just enough daylight left for me to search for candles.’
Morgan carried Jack into the hall. ‘I’ll do the fuses after I’ve taken him up to the nursery. He should sleep through. Perhaps you’d grab that candelabra and light our way. Your boyfriend didn’t teach you about fuses, then?’ he enquired, probing.
‘I met him when I was seventeen. Chas had strong ideas on what women should do and fuses were men’s work,’ she said drily.
‘You…mentioned thongs,’ he said, hating her boyfriend with a deep and abiding passion. She wasn’t the thong type.
She shuddered. ‘Vile. You don’t want to know,’ she mumbled.
He was pleased by her evident loathing. He glanced across at her, feasting on the soft glow bestowed on her by the candlelight. And was that a blush on her cheek? And a faint tremble to her mouth?
She’d been scared, alone in this big house. He felt overcome with regrets.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said abjectly, as they entered the nursery, ‘that you’ve been in the dark all this time.’
She started. ‘Do you mean in the dark as in the ex-boyfriend, or as in the light failure?’ she asked warily.
‘Whatever fits,’ he said, hoping to encourage her to open up. He wanted to know everything about her. To listen to her describing her life, her hopes, ambitions…
‘It was quite romantic, really,’ she mused.
‘Being with Chas?’ He shot her a dark look from under his brows.
‘No! Using candles here! I didn’t mind at all, though cooking wasn’t too easy. I did worry about what had happened to you and Jack. You’d said eight on the dot, you see, and—’
‘I know. I’m an inconsiderate swine,’ he said vehemently, divesting the sleeping Jack of his day clothes. ‘I had so many things on my mind… Uh-oh. There’s a nappy needs changing here.’
He had the dirty nappy half undone when the phone rang and he waited while Jodie answered it.
‘For you. Gordon Cook,’ she told him, covering the receiver.
‘My secretary. Must be urgent. Can you carry on?’ he asked.
She was half-appalled, half-delighted. In at the deep end, she thought, grabbing from him the ends he was holding. A dirty deep end, she reckoned, gingerly starting to clean the little pink bottom.
‘What do I do now?’ she hissed, helplessly holding baby wipes.
‘Put those and the inner gauze in that carrier bag I put ready. They’re for dumping. Wet liner in the nappy bucket for recycling,’ he flung rapidly, before continuing with his call.
She managed that, and found some cream and fresh liners and gauzy strips in the changing bag. And then began the struggle. Try as she might, she couldn’t work out how everything went together. And when she thought she was almost there, Jack stirred, kicked his legs, and dismantled her beautifully constructed arrangement.
Worse, Morgan was laughing. ‘I’ve got to go,’ he chuckled. ‘Major disaster area here… No, only Jack needing me. See you next week. Cheers.’
Red-faced, she started again. ‘Why don’t you use disposables like the rest of the world?’ she muttered crossly.
Chuckling, Morgan knelt beside her. ‘Precisely for that reason. Environmental conscience. Let me.’
‘No—I want to learn!’ she protested, disappointed that she couldn’t show him what a natural mother she was. ‘I only need showing how. It’s not rocket science, is it?’
‘Like this. Take it round—no, that’s too loose…’ Gently he guided her fingers, then picked up a sleeping suit decorated with blue rabbits. ‘See? Easy when you know how. He can have a bath in the morning. I’ll put him to bed now. Pop the clean vest on, then the sleepsuit,’ he requested.
‘That vest?’ she cried, aghast. ‘With that minute opening? It’ll never go over his head!’
‘It will. Trust me,’ Morgan murmured in amusement.
‘Hmm. Well, if you say so. I’ll give it a go. Oh, his head’s so heavy!’ she exclaimed, gingerly lifting it.
Her eyes were huge and terrified with the idea that she could easily harm this child with a clumsy movement. She had a missing motherhood gene, she thought moodily.
‘Support his neck,’ Morgan advised when the head wobbled in an alarming way. ‘His muscles aren’t very strong yet.’
The tiny skull lay in the palm of her hand. With the other hand she was supposed to wrestle that vest over the baby’s head. It seemed an impossible task even for a rocket scientist, unless he had four hands in total.
Mesmerised, she stared at the beating pulse in the dip at the front of Jack’s skull, suddenly horribly aware of the extreme fragility of the tiny baby. This was Morgan’s pride and joy, more precious to him than anything in the world.
‘I can’t do it! You take over!’ she cried, panic-stricken.
‘But—’
‘No! I don’t want to! I can’t!’ she wailed. ‘Look at my hands! They’re not steady enough. I’ll drop him, I know. Take hold of him, Morgan, please!’ she begged frantically.
‘Of course,’ he soothed. ‘There’s no reason why you should do this.’ Deftly Morgan dressed his son, his movements so sure and confident that it looked easy. ‘Come on, sleepy, you and your rabbits need tucking up.’
He s
cooped Jack up with enviable confidence and placed him in the crib, securing the blankets around the sleeping child and watching him, a tender smile warming his entire face.
The appalled Jodie remained on the floor, her lower lip trembling annoyingly. She’d failed the test. The little body had seemed frighteningly vulnerable to her lack of expertise and her nerves had ruined her determination to learn.
Her chest tightened with misery. Suddenly it seemed of overwhelming importance that she should be able to look after his child. In the back of her mind she’d seen herself running the house, looking after her father and being a kind of…nanny…to Jack while Morgan went to work.
Just now she’d just proved how useless she’d be. And she dreaded to think how much worse her efforts would have been if Jack had been wide awake, yelling and wriggling.
Her mouth drooped at the corners. Everything had gone downhill since she’d seen that photo of Morgan’s wife. Her confidence had begun to desert her. Had her assertiveness been an illusion, then? Was she heading back to dependency and anti-depressants?
She felt sick at the thought.
‘Have you eaten?’ Morgan asked in a conversational tone, as he selected Jack’s clothes for the morning.
She felt sicker. ‘I had a sandwich,’ she mumbled.
‘No humble pie for me to eat, then?’
She wouldn’t be cheered up. ‘I did a pasta for us with a herb and tomato sauce, but…it’s gone rubbery. You could make car tyres out of it,’ she said, her face mournful. ‘And I burned it whilst trying to keep it hot,’ she added honestly.
‘Then we’d better start again,’ he suggested. ‘After all, it was my fault I wasn’t back at the right time—and I imagine you don’t know how to keep things warm in the Aga. I’ll give you a lesson.’
She sniffed, finding it hard to cope with his easy-going response. It had been his fault, but irrationally she still felt disappointed in her efforts. She’d wanted to welcome him to a warm house, with delicious smells wafting towards him which would be mingling alluringly with her new and expensive perfume.
All her painstaking cleaning and cooking, her new dress and carefully made up face had been to no avail. He couldn’t see how spotless everything was without electric light, he’d not even noticed how nice she looked, and her scent must have been overpowered by the stink of incinerated pasta!
Her lip trembled. Discovering she had no natural aptitude with babies was the last straw!
‘What’s upsetting you?’ Morgan murmured.
‘Nothing.’
Sulky as a stupid child, she jumped up and went out, forgetting the lack of light. When she snapped on the switch outside the door she was met with a resounding nothing in the way of illumination, but pride prevented her from going back and she made her way to the stairs by feel alone.
And failed. Wrapped up in her own misery, she crashed into something hard, doubled up and gave a loud yell of pain.
‘Jodie!’
Both light and Morgan appeared in seconds and his arms came securely around her.
‘I hit my shin!’ she gasped. ‘Stupid, stupid!’
‘Don’t cry,’ he said gently.
‘I’m not!’ she cried, dashing her fists across her eyes. ‘What would I cry for?’ she demanded shakily. ‘Just because I’m the most cack-handed woman in the world where babies are concerned, just because I totally f-forgot the electricity was off and—and I was too pathetically silly to admit that and g-go back for a candle…’
‘Slow down,’ he murmured lazily, his blurred face swimming inches away. ‘None of this matters. Remember, you’ve been through a hell of a lot. Take a deep breath… Jodie… Jodie! Don’t look at me like that,’ he muttered thickly.
‘Like…what?’ she mumbled, trying to focus.
He groaned like someone in despair. She heard the metal base of the candelabra being placed on a table, then felt the soft touch of his tongue on her upper lip, and before she could work out that he’d lapped up a salty tear his mouth was driving into hers, hard, firm, determined and totally abandoned.
‘I’m sorry. I must!’ he whispered into her hot mouth.
Something terrifying leapt within her, a wild, frantic hunger that fought for freedom, snapping the overstretched thread of restraint and flinging her headlong into a dark, unknown world of flames and heat which licked through her hungry body and turned it into a smouldering furnace.
‘Yes!’ she moaned.
Her hands reached up fiercely to rake his hair, feeling the silk between her fingers, the warmth of his scalp, as her mouth responded to his dizzying kisses with a ferocity that stunned her.
‘God, you’re beautiful!’ he growled.
‘Me?’
‘Oh, yes, yes!’
She was all force, all need, all desperation. And he was, too, his groans echoing hers, his hands everywhere, like hers, every part of her demanding the relief as his questing fingers cupped, held, kneaded…
Her head rolled back and his mouth descended hotly on her throat, his lips finding the hollow where her pulse beat violently and moistening it with such a delicate sweep of his tongue that she moaned and whimpered as the sweet pain shot through her needy body, contracting her loins and rendering her totally helpless.
‘Morgan!’ she said on a sigh, and made an inarticulate, incoherent cry of longing when his teeth grazed her lower lip and his tongue tasted its swollen softness.
‘Oh, yes!’ he rasped.
His deep, shuddering tone made her go limp in his arms and she felt herself being borne backwards by the weight of his body… A welcome pressure, she thought with a groan of pleasure, the full force of his powerful chest and thighs moving her inexorably back and her own weak legs barely able to hold her upright.
And then they both collapsed onto the softness of a bed and she could forget the effort to stay on her feet and give her whole concentration to the wonderful sensation of being pinned helplessly by hot flesh and blood, hard bone and muscle…
Instinctively she arched against him, murmuring her hazy delight when her pelvis slid against his and encountered the hard shaft leaping from his loins.
Her legs wrapped around his body, reckless heels driving into his back and grinding him into her thighs.
‘Please!’ she whispered, beyond all modesty, all caution or rational thought.
It was as if something snapped in him too. His lips burned intense kisses on every inch of her mouth; his hands cradled her face with a vehemence that exhilarated her.
He shook with desperation and uttered a low, guttural cry, then sat back, the silvery moonlight in the room revealing his eyes to be hot with arousal as he frantically tore off his sweater, swooping down to kiss her senseless and then struggling to undo the buttons of his shirt with hopelessly incapable fingers.
She couldn’t wait. She wanted him naked against her. In a quick movement borne of intense need, she sat up and dragged her dress over her head, then put her hands on the front edges of his shirt, ripping them apart.
And she buried her face in his chest, smelling him, kissing, nibbling and tasting. He jerked and gripped her shoulders when her mouth enclosed one taut nipple and, trembling with passion, he pushed her away.
‘Too much,’ he croaked in torment, catching his breath at the sight of her breasts, swelling luxuriantly above her scarlet silk bra.
‘It isn’t,’ she husked desperately. ‘It’s not enough—’
Panting, she recognised the sexual greed in his dark eyes and a shiver of anticipated ecstasy rippled through her entire nervous system, intensifying the molten heat between her thighs.
‘Touch me,’ she whispered, her hands lifting her breasts for his delight.
‘My God, Jodie—you…you are…perfect!’ His growl was hoarse and thick with desire and she felt her nipples stiffening even more than before, thrusting painfully at the tightly stretched fabric.
One trembling male hand reached out. She watched, hypnotised with expectancy, her eyes drugged
and limpid, her breathing harsh and moaning as his finger extended.
There was the briefest of touches through the silk, a faint slide across the taut swelling at the centre of her breast, and she bucked as if he’d sliced her through with a knife.
‘Ohhhh!’ she groaned. ‘Again… So good… Touch me, touch me, Morgan!’ she implored.
A thumb this time. She recognised its breadth, its greater heat. She swallowed, almost incapable of bearing the pleasure. Her head rolled back, her lashes fluttered in a plea that he should ease the agony of her other untouched breast.
Gently he slid the straps from her shoulders, his eyes burning into hers, holding her captive. He was too slow, too gentle…the tantalising drift of his fingers on her arms far too delicate. She wanted more. Now.
Her back straightened and the twin globes lifted free. The silk slithered down to her waist and she sat there, waiting, waiting, while he held his breath and the muscles in his chest snatched tightly into spasm then held rigid.
He devoured her with his eyes. His lashes lowered, thick and black against the gleam of his cheeks, and he drew in a short, hard breath that shuddered through him like a wave.
Slowly he shrugged his shoulders out of the shirt. She sighed softly and leaned back in a sinuous movement, raising her arms above her head. Moonlight turned his skin to polished silver, his Latin cheekbones sharply pronounced beneath his liquid tar eyes.
Intent on her, promising everything she longed for, he lifted a muscled arm and flung the shirt behind him. It hit something. Into Jodie’s subconscious came the sound of an object slithering and then a crash followed by shattering glass.
Morgan’s head jerked around. And he froze.
Jodie could see nothing. When he turned back she saw that a terrible anguish wrecked the beauty of his face, twisting his mouth into an agonised groan. Jodie sensed him retreating into some dark hell of his own, a place which had no corner for her.
