by Linda Cajio
“You mean I’ve grown accustomed to it?”
She giggled. “Somebody has to. I never thought, though, that I would be so … selfless.”
“Angelica, you’ve always been unselfish—”
“No.” She stepped over to the edge of the patio and stared into the blackness of the forest underbrush. “Not unselfish, although I thank you for the thought. Selfless. It’s as if all the essentials are put on hold for someone else’s sake. A little baby’s. And it just seems so natural to do that.”
His silence startled her, and she glanced over at him, wondering if she’d said anything that had offended him. He was staring at her fixedly, and she felt like a rabbit caught in an eagle’s hungry gaze.
“You surprise me, Angelica,” he said in a low voice. “Continually and unexpectedly, you surprise me.”
She gaped at him, his words leaving her speechless.
He reached out and touched her cheek. “I promised myself I wouldn’t do this. Not yet.”
His fingers traced her jawline, lingering on her sensitive skin. His touch was mesmerizing her into a frozen statue. Despite the protest clamoring on the edge of her brain, she couldn’t move or speak.
“I knew you would feel like cool porcelain,” he said softly. “Now let me taste the fire.”
He lowered his head.
Six
Dan felt her initial jolt of surprise, and he knew he was rushing her. He had to back away, otherwise he’d frighten her off.…
But he could feel the tips of her breasts brushing his chest, her hands gripping his shoulders for balance. He needed just one more moment of bliss.
A low moan from the back of her throat reached his ears, and then to his delighted astonishment, her arms were winding around his neck, clinging tightly as her lips moved against his.
He wanted her with a shocking fierceness, and he gathered her closer. He plied her mouth with a quickening rhythm, feeling her respond with each change and movement. Their tongues entwined, and he tasted more than fire. He tasted a need that matched his own.
His hands slipped of their own accord down her back, his fingers trailing across the soft skin beneath her sweater. He cupped her derriere and pressed himself into her.
He had denied himself of her too long, he thought. He wanted her, needed her now, and damn the consequences. Her mouth was fast to his, and her arms were tight around his neck. She wanted him, he knew, and he wondered if all their arguing and disagreeing was a defense against their wild hunger for each other.
It would be so easy, he thought. And so wrong.
Cursing the sudden appearance of common sense, he forced himself to lift his head and set her away.
He cursed even more when he saw Angelica blink in confusion and gradually open her eyes. Her expression changed rapidly from lassitude to bewilderment to angry hurt.
“Well,” he said, hoping to ease the tense silence, “we are engaged.”
Her mouth lifted for an instant, then she schooled her expression. “I better go inside in case Patrick needs something.”
She seemed so distant that he immediately said, “Angelica, let’s discuss—”
“Dan, there’s nothing to discuss,” she said flatly. “We’ve been taking care of a baby together, and we just got caught up in ‘playing house’.”
He shook his head. “There’s more to it than that, and I think you know it.”
She looked away for an instant, then said, “I’m attracted, and I admit that. But it doesn’t mean that there’s any more. We’ve known each other for nearly a year. Don’t you think if there were more between us, we would have acted on it before?”
“Maybe we’ve had obstacles.”
“I doubt that would matter.”
“Maybe we allowed them to matter.”
She waved a hand. “You see? We can’t even agree on why we kissed each other. Right now, we’re making an effort to get along for Patrick’s sake. We’re not really being our normal selves. We reacted to the close quarters we’ve been sharing, and the constant togetherness. And that’s all we did.”
She turned around and strode into the house. Dan watched her go, grinning.
She had been fighting to deny the kiss. It was a reaction he understood and knew from her. Still, Angelica was not a woman to be pushed. What he had to do now was feed what the kiss had started.
He had a feeling he was going to enjoy that immensely.
Angelica tossed and turned in the guest bed, while listening to the patter of rain against the roof.
Damn, she thought, as she hopelessly tried yet again to wipe Dan’s kiss from her mind. How could she have clung so desperately to him? How could she have fused her mouth to his like that? How could she have wanted it to go on forever?
It had been those stupid thoughts of being wanton that had caused her to react so … enthusiastically to him. In fact, she’d been past enthusiasm and heading into “unbridled passion” territory.
And knowing he was just yards away for yet another night made her want to get up and go to him.
It had just been an eruption of nature caused by their close proximity, she told herself firmly. Men didn’t understand the intricacies of making love. They saw sex as a simple, straightforward function. But women lost a part of themselves, even in a simple, straightforward affair. At least she had. This time, though, was hardly simple or straightforward. She knew she would be the one who would be hurt afterward, when Patrick went to a permanent home and the affair between the adults came to an end. So why start something that was doomed in the first place?
She refused to step in with her eyes open and be knowingly hurt, and, dammit, being involved meant being hurt. That was insanity. This crazy situation demanded intimacy, nurtured the idea of union. Only the three of them weren’t a union. They were an extremely temporary arrangement.
But she liked having the companionship of a man and the innocent love of a baby. Lord, but she liked it, she thought, swallowing back sudden tears. She believed she had been bracing herself for the inevitable. But, here, in the deep hours of the night, she finally admitted she hated the thought of giving up Patrick. She had tried to keep herself from feeling anything more than affection for the infant. But he was so helpless and so trusting that he was wrapping himself around her heart. Every smile, every chuckle, and even every fussy cry only added to her dilemma. Each day she had to keep telling herself that she was making sure he got the best, and when the best came along, she could and would let him go. There wasn’t anything else she could do.
This should have been a night when she could have caught up on her sleep, she thought unhappily. Instead, it looked to be the longest of all.
“So what do you say, Patrick? Next time we come to the island, we’ll bring poles and try a little surf fishing.”
Smiling indulgently at Dan and Patrick, Angelica listened to the conversation as she sat on a rock and watched the waves pound against the beach. The Northwest waters were not kind, she thought, but they still allowed enough beach for a morning walk.
Pushing her windblown hair back from her cheek, she decided she felt much better. The morning had brought a renewed determination to stop worrying and just enjoy herself for the next few days. Surely, she was capable of that. All she had to do was make it clear to Dan that she’d meant what she’d said last night. So far, unfortunately, she hadn’t found a proper moment to do so without spoiling things.
“I thought we came out for a walk,” she said, getting up and dusting haphazardly at the damp sand clinging to her jeans.
“You’re the one who stopped to sit on a rock,” Dan said, from ten paces away. He was carrying Patrick since the stroller was practically useless on sand.
“So now I’m walking.” She frowned as Patrick ducked his head away from the strong breeze. “I think it’s a little too windy down here for the baby.”
“Mmm,” Dan pointed toward the trees. “There’s a path that way that goes through the woods. What say we go look at th
e trees, buddy?”
Patrick sneezed.
“I hope he’s not catching a cold,” she muttered, staring speculatively at the baby.
“I hope not, too. How do we know if he’s getting a cold?”
“He sneezes?” she asked, while inwardly cursing her ignorance. Patrick looked clear-eyed, dry-nosed, and normal. “Brother, you get a little confidence and bingo! The kid does something to throw you.”
Dan chuckled. “Maybe it was just a sneeze. We all sneeze without having colds.”
“True. I suppose we shouldn’t panic before we have to.” She looked at her watch. “We can walk in the woods as long as we don’t dawdle. It’s almost ten-thirty, time for Patrick’s nap.”
“Why do I feel you’re going to be a drill sergeant about naps?” Dan asked, frowning.
“Because Patrick needs a routine. You know Jan said that.”
“But he hasn’t had one yet, and he’s been fairly content.”
“Dan,” she said patiently, “all babies need a routine. It even says so in the baby book.”
“That’s right, it does.”
Since she’d made progress with one subject, she decided to try a more intimate one.
“About last night,” she began.
“Yes,” he broke in. “I wanted to talk to you about that too. I think you were right.”
“You do?” she asked in astonishment, instantly forgetting about sneezes and colds and naps and routines.
He nodded. “I was getting caught up in playing house with you. Okay, so we’re attracted, but so what?”
She gasped. “So what!”
“Sure. Letting our attraction get out of control would be extremely foolish. After all, we both know how incompatible we are. Whatever attraction we feel is just momentary, and we can avoid blowing it out of proportion—”
“Out of proportion!”
“Right. We’ve got enough to do without our normal basic sexual urges complicating matters. We’d probably argue about it the same as we argue about everything else. I just want you to know that I am a man, but I can easily ignore that.” He smiled kindly at her. “It won’t be a problem again, I promise you.”
“I see.” A perverse anger shot through her at his vow. “Well, that’s just wonderful, Dan. Just terrific. I think I’ll go back to the house now. I’ll take the road, it’s shorter.”
“Don’t you want to walk through the woods?” he asked, surprised. “I promised Patrick we’d walk back that way.”
“You go ahead.” She waved a hand vaguely in the direction of the trees and started off toward the road.
As she strode quickly back to the house, she furiously decided to skewer one Daniel Roberts. Granted, she had wanted reassurances from him that the kiss wouldn’t be repeated. But she definitely hadn’t wanted to know that it would take little effort for him to restrain himself. And did he have to go on and on about their incompatibility? Once had been quite enough, she thought angrily.
Her feminine ego had taken a beating, and it was tempting to show him just how much effort it would take to keep from “complicating matters.”
Very tempting.
Dan watched Angelica march up the beach and disappear over the small rising dunes.
“There’s more than one way to avoid an argument, Patrick, my boy,” he said with satisfaction.
Patrick grinned at him in infant innocence.
As he carefully walked through the gripping sand toward the edge of the woods, Dan admitted that outwitting Angelica was extremely stimulating. He wondered why he hadn’t thought of it before.
“So much for a 180 IQ,” he said to his companion. “I really am an idiot.”
Last night he had thoroughly cursed his solitary bed. Then he’d decided it would be the last time. He had also realized how torn he’d been lately about Angelica. Despite his fascination with her, despite his longing to share his bed with her, his common sense told him it was foolish to pursue a relationship with someone as volatile as she. It would be a mistake to become involved with her. But last night he’d finally realized the truth.
Angelica was not a mistake.
She was unique, and she stirred things in him that no other woman had. Although he had put up a tremendous fight, he had never been able to ignore her. Maybe he’d sensed from the beginning that he wouldn’t walk away from Angelica unscathed, and he hadn’t been willing to risk himself until Patrick had come into his life and showed him just how sterile an existence he’d been living. He was risking, and gladly, his emotional well-being with the baby. It was impossible not to fall for Patrick, even knowing that the child would be leaving eventually. The old saying about it being better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all suddenly made sense. He intended to “seize the day,” as the Romans had. What the hell, he thought. If it was good enough for those centurions to conquer the Western World, then it was good enough for conquering Angelica.
Dan felt the baby clutch at the pocket of his jacket, and he glanced down and smiled as Patrick’s head bobbed rhythmically with each step he took.
“I hope you don’t get seasick,” he said. “It would be a hell of a way to repay you for opening my eyes.”
Once he had faced his fate last night, the problem had been to bring fate around to thinking the same way he did. Persuading Angelica would not be easy. He had racked his brains for a way to woo her, then realized that he had years of logic training at his command. Logic was action and reaction. All he had to do was find the right action to produce the right reaction in Angelica. It had hit him that if he acted as if the kiss had meant nothing, she would probably react in the opposite way. She was used to disagreeing with him, after all. It certainly looked as if his method of wooing her was off to a beautiful start.
“A little application of logic, Patrick, and you too can have that pretty girl in the next playpen panting to play with your blocks.”
Then he added, “We hope.”
“Yes, Martha, he’s just fine and dandy,” Angelica said into the telephone receiver. “In fact, he’s been in bed for close to an hour.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” Martha said. “You sound less harried, Angelica.”
“I feel less harried,” she admitted, as she sat at the kitchen table and absently fiddled with the curled cord of the telephone. Talking to Martha was a release from thinking about the non-argument argument she’d had with Dan on the beach that morning. She’d had plenty of time to think about it too. When Patrick went down for his morning nap, Dan had finally decided to tackle his paperwork. He had briefly appeared for lunch and had played with Patrick, then had gone back to work, once again leaving her alone. Maybe if she kept talking she’d get it out of her mind once and for all, she thought. “And coming to the island has been good for Patrick too, Martha. We’re getting into a routine.”
“Excellent. I’m less worried about letting you go, although please don’t take him into Victoria. Since that’s Canada, it could cause all sorts of complications if anything should happen.”
Angelica chuckled, envisioning Martha’s panic if they unthinkingly went shopping in Victoria. “You sound a little like you expect us to vanish across the border with the treasure.”
“My boss would have my head on a pike if you did.”
“And then you would have ours.”
“You got it.”
Angelica grinned at Martha’s stern tone. “I promise well exercise our right to stay in this country. Have you …” She swallowed back a lump of anxiety. “Have you made any progress on Patrick?”
There was a slight hesitation before Martha said, “No, no one’s showed up or given us any information on him. We did a national check using his footprint, and it looks like his birth wasn’t registered.”
Angelica gasped. “But that’s impossible! Everyone has a birth certificate. The hospitals do it automatically.”
“Not every baby is born in a hospital,” Martha said. “In fact, the numbers that aren’t would shock y
ou. From the beginning, I’ve felt that Patrick’s mother is probably an unwed teenager from a depressed background … or a runaway, and scared to come forward now that she’s abandoned him. We’ll find something eventually; we usually do. But it will take a while.”
“What about …” Angelica drew in a deep breath. “What about a permanent home for him?”
“I hope to have something on that very soon. You two have been great, but I know how disruptive this has been to your lives. Believe me, the department’s working hard on this—”
“It’s no problem, Martha,” Angelica said quickly. “I’ve grown very fond of him. In fact, I’ve even had fun. But please take your time and find him a really good home. Dan and I would be glad to have Patrick with us for as long as need be.”
Dan strolled into the kitchen just in time to hear her last words. He immediately rushed over to her side.
“What?” he whispered, into her free ear. “What about Patrick staying?”
She motioned with her hand for him to be quiet, as Martha said, “We certainly appreciate all you’ve done for him, believe me. But we really are working very hard to find a suitable foster home.”
“Martha, we don’t want you to rush something through that might not be really good for the baby.” Angelica gritted her teeth as Dan pulled the receiver away from her ear just enough for him to hear Martha’s end of the conversation. “Patrick is certainly very content. He only fusses when he’s hungry.”
“Don’t tell her that!” Dan whispered fiercely. “He’s always hungry!”
“I beg your pardon?” Martha said.
Angelica glared at him, then turned away so she had a measure of privacy. “It was just Dan, adding his, ah … sentiments.”
“I’ll talk to you tomorrow,” Martha said.
When Angelica hung up the phone, Dan fired off his questions.
“What’s all this about Patrick?” he demanded. “Have they found a home for him?”
“No, not yet,” she said, and glared at him. “Just relax, Dan! Martha was only reassuring me that they were making an effort to find him a home.”
“It sounded like they were getting close.”
