That's My Baby!

by Vicki Lewis Thompson

  “I forgot everything. I was ready to—”

  “I know.” Heart pounding, Jessica got out of the Bronco on shaky legs.

  “If you’ll take her out of the car seat,” he said, “I’ll unlock the place and turn on the security system.”

  “Right.” Spurred by remorse, she had Elizabeth out of the car seat in record time. Silly though it might be, she was glad Elizabeth’s seat faced backward and the baby hadn’t seen that sizzling, highly sexual kiss. As if an eight-month-old would know what was going on.

  Yet she wondered how the interior of the cabin was arranged and whether she and Nat would have any privacy whatsoever. She discovered that she craved privacy, considering some of the uninhibited activities she had in mind.

  “Sorry to ignore you like that, sweetheart,” she crooned breathlessly to the baby. “Mommy got a little involved with…with Daddy.” She liked the sound of that. But Mommy and Daddy would have to exercise a little more discipline from now on. Maybe once they’d taken the edge off their hunger, they wouldn’t be so ravenous for each other.

  As she stepped through the door of the cabin, the first thing she saw was a mason jar full of yellow and white daisies on a wooden table flanked by two chairs. The second thing she saw was a double bed with the covers turned back, snowy pillows plumped, as if someone didn’t want to waste any time when an opportunity arose to climb into that bed. The third thing she noticed was the wooden hinged screen positioned at the foot of the bed. Nat had been thinking about privacy, too. Sensuous warmth poured through her.

  Glancing in his direction, she found him watching her with a tense expression. She was so touched and aroused by his careful preparations that she wasn’t sure she’d be able to speak. But obviously she needed to say something. “The flowers—” She paused to clear her throat. “The flowers are very nice.”

  “Wish I could say I picked them in the woods, but the time of year’s wrong. I had to buy them in town. I realize the vase isn’t—”

  “Nat, if you say one more word of apology about this sweet little cabin, I’ll—well, I’m not sure what I’ll do, but you won’t like it.”

  He looked immensely relieved. “Then the place is okay?”

  “More than okay. I can’t think of anyplace in the world I’d rather be, or any two people I’d rather be with.”

  “Me neither.” He met her gaze and gradually a slow smile appeared as the anxiety in his blue eyes was replaced by a steady flame of eagerness.

  Her breath caught at the beauty of this man. And for the next week, he was all hers. Well, hers and Elizabeth’s.

  As if reminding her of that fact, the baby began to struggle, wanting down.

  Jessica loved knowing her daughter was becoming more mobile. She got a kick out of watching her crawl and could hardly wait until she walked. “If you’ll close the door,” she said, “I’ll put her down and let her explore the room a little.”

  Nat looked anxious again. “Are you sure it’s safe? I didn’t think about her crawling around on it until Matty said something about splinters.”

  Jessica surveyed the wooden floor and decided it looked smooth enough to her. The lack of throw rugs might even be a plus. “She’ll be fine.” She crouched down in preparation for lowering a wiggling Elizabeth to the floor.

  “Wait, is it clean enough? I swept it, but there’s no vacuum cleaner out here, so I’m sure I didn’t get every little bit. Let me get her playpen. We can put her in there.”

  She smiled indulgently at him. “Not for a solid week, Nat. She’d go crazy, and so would we. No, she needs to get down. Would you please close the door? Eventually I’ll let her explore outside, too, but—”

  “Outside?”

  Amazed by his scandalized tone, she glanced up. “Sure. Why not?”

  “She could pick up anything. Bugs, dirty rocks, snakes.” He shuddered.

  Jessica laughed. “I wouldn’t turn her lose and forget about her. I’d follow her every minute and make sure she didn’t put anything in her mouth that would make her choke. You can help me follow her every minute if it makes you feel better. She’s a good crawler, but I doubt she could outrun us.”

  “I don’t care. The idea of putting that sweet little baby down in the dirt doesn’t sit right with me.”

  She excused his attitude, considering he was so inexperienced. No doubt in a day or so of being around Elizabeth he’d get over it, but he was making her a little nervous. He sounded far too much like her father. She wouldn’t tolerate anyone smothering her daughter the way she’d been smothered, even if that person happened to be the sexiest man on the planet.

  “Let’s start with the cabin, and we’ll worry about outside later,” she said.

  “Okay.” Nat walked over and closed the door.

  Jess put Elizabeth on the floor, and then sat down beside her in order to take off the baby’s cap. “There you go, honey-bunch. Free at last.”

  Immediately Elizabeth rocked forward onto her hands, and with a cry of glee started off toward the potbelly stove.

  “Oh, God,” Nat said. “We won’t be able to use the stove. She might burn herself.”

  “Sure we can use the stove. When it’s hot, we’ll make sure she doesn’t get close to it.” Jessica kept her eye on Elizabeth as the baby bypassed the stove and went on to the table, where she crawled underneath and sat down, looking pleased with herself.

  Jessica chuckled. Elizabeth was obviously mimicking Sebastian and Matty’s dogs, who both loved to lie under the dining-room table. “Are you pretending you’re a doggy?” she asked.

  “Ga!” Elizabeth said, giving Jessica a toothy grin.

  “Good girl.” Still smiling, Jessica looked up at Nat and was surprised at his frown. “What’s wrong?”

  “I really didn’t expect her to crawl around this place,” he said.

  “What did you suppose she’d do?”

  “I guess I thought we’d carry her, or put her in the playpen, or in that backpack thing that Sebastian uses all the time.”

  “She’s really too old to be confined that way for any long period.” Trying to hold on to her patience, Jessica returned her attention to Elizabeth as the baby started crawling toward the bed.

  “Then maybe we shouldn’t have brought her out here.”

  Her stomach twisted. “Maybe not, if you’re going to be like a mother hen about it.”

  “I just—Elizabeth, no!” He hurried over and snatched her up. “Give me that!”

  Elizabeth started to howl.

  Jess was on her feet in an instant. “What? What did she get?”

  “Well, it’s a long piece of wild grass, but it could have been anything!”

  “Give her to me.”

  He seemed glad to get rid of the baby, and Jessica carried her over to the window. “It’s okay, sweetie.” She rocked Elizabeth and kissed her wet cheeks. “No problem. Easy does it, little girl. Look! Look out the window! See the birdie? Look at that. A pretty little bird has come to say hello to Elizabeth. Can you say hello?”

  “Ba,” Elizabeth said, snuffling. Then she took a deep breath and swiveled in Jessica’s arms to look at Nat.

  Jessica followed the direction of the baby’s gaze, and Nat’s lost expression ripped at her heart. “She’s fine,” she said.

  He shook his head. “I can’t do this, Jess. I’m no good at it.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake.” Still holding Elizabeth, she walked over to him. She could feel Elizabeth shrink away a little, which was all the more reason to erase the last incident from the baby’s memory.

  “She hates me,” Nat said.

  “No, she doesn’t. You scared her a little. Talk to her.”

  “And say what?”

  “That she’s the prettiest baby in the world. You could give her that piece of grass, too.”

  “But it’s been under the bed!”

  “It won’t hurt her. Deer eat it all the time.”

  Nat looked unhappy about it, but he held out the long
blade of grass. “Is this what you wanted, Elizabeth?”

  “Ga!” She reached for it.

  “Tickle her nose with it,” Jessica suggested.

  “Put it on her face?”

  “Yes. Play with her. Remember how much she loved peekaboo. Playing with her is important.”

  He took a deep breath. “Okay. Hey, Elizabeth, you like this?” He wiggled the tip of the grass against her nose.

  The baby laughed with delight.

  “You do, huh?” Nat repeated the motion and earned himself another baby giggle. “I like the way she laughs,” he said. “It makes her nose sort of wrinkle.”

  “I know.” The tension in Jessica’s stomach eased as Nat continued to play the tickling game. Had she thought everything would go smoothly once the three of them were together? If so, she was a foolish woman. She and Nat had never had the basic discussions that future parents needed to have about parenting styles and expectations.

  She’d had nine months to read up on the subject of child rearing while she formed her ideas of what kind of mother she wanted to be. Although she didn’t want Elizabeth to repeat her own childhood, there had been positives in it, including the certainty that she was loved. Nat had no yardstick for measuring how a loving parent should act.

  “It’s nearly lunchtime,” she said at last. “If you’ll get her high chair out of the Bronco and set it up, I’ll feed her.”

  “Okay.” He turned away and Elizabeth yelled in protest. He turned back, the beginnings of a smile on his face. “She doesn’t want me to leave,” he said with some surprise.

  “No, she doesn’t.” Jessica found herself smiling, too. “But she might tolerate it if you give her that grass.”

  He glanced at the long blade of grass in his hand. “I guess I have to, don’t I?”

  “Trust me, it won’t hurt her. I’ll monitor the situation while you’re gone.”

  Reluctantly he handed the grass to Elizabeth, who waved it and chortled with happiness. When she put it in her mouth, he winced. “I hate that.”

  “I know. Don’t worry, I’ll make sure she doesn’t choke. She’ll be fine.”

  “She has to be.” He looked into her eyes. “Because if anything happened to either of you, my life would be over.”

  NAT UNLOADED the Bronco and set up the high chair first so Jess could feed the baby. While she was doing that, he brought everything else in and set up the portable crib and the playpen, the one Jess had already informed him they wouldn’t be using much.

  Now that he thought about it, Elizabeth had crawled around the ranch house quite a bit, but Matty and Sebastian kept the place really clean. And besides, at that point he hadn’t assumed the responsibility for what happened to Elizabeth when she was on the floor, because there were always several people around who were ready and willing to do that.

  He’d been so hell-bent on getting out here so he could make love to Jess that he hadn’t fully realized how the responsibility of the baby would settle on him with the weight of an elephant. When he’d contemplated this week, he’d thought his major worry would be whether Jess’s stalker would show up. Now he looked around at the small cabin and saw a million dangers to Elizabeth, none of them having to do with some weirdo on the loose.

  Matty had packed sandwiches for their first meal, so once he had the baby furniture up, he took Jess’s suggestion to stop for lunch while Elizabeth was still awake. He hadn’t missed Jess’s meaning when she’d made that suggestion, either. Once that baby went down for her afternoon nap, he and Jess didn’t want to waste time with lunch.

  How he needed that woman. He couldn’t remember feeling this raw and vulnerable in his life, and he ached to take refuge in Jess’s arms. But the ache deep inside wasn’t only about taking. Now that he understood more of what Jess had been through because of him, he desperately wanted to shower her with all the pleasure he was capable of giving.

  He barely tasted his lunch. He was too preoccupied with Jess—the moist invitation of her mouth, the gentle movement of her breasts under her shirt, the snug fit of her jeans when she leaned over to pick up the baby. His groin tightened in response to the flash in her brown eyes and the catch in her voice when she caught him looking.

  While she used the portable crib as a changing table and got Elizabeth ready for her nap, he washed up the lunch dishes. He could only see the top of her head above the folding wooden screen he’d set up between the crib and the double bed so they’d have some privacy, and he made a mental note to take the screen away when they didn’t actually need it. He hungered for the sight of her.

  “I haven’t seen anything that looks like an alarm system,” she said as she continued to dress the baby for her nap. “Where is it?”

  “There’s a monitoring screen up in the rafters in each corner of the cabin,” he said.

  She glanced around. “Wow. I didn’t even notice them.”

  “Seth likes to make his systems unobtrusive,” Nat said. “The cameras are on the roof, camouflaged with all those leaves and pine branches. If someone doesn’t know a security system exists, they won’t try to dismantle it.”

  “Did Sebastian give you a gun before we left this morning?”

  He paused in the act of wiping a dish. “Yes. It’s in the green metal box I put on the top shelf. Does it bother you to have it there?”

  “It bothers me to have to do any of this. I assume you know how to shoot it?”

  “If necessary.”

  “That’s good, I guess.”

  “I guess.”

  She murmured something to Elizabeth and began singing to the baby.

  He couldn’t see her anymore and decided she must be leaning over the crib, trying to soothe Elizabeth to sleep.

  She’d accepted the presence of the gun better than he’d thought she would. He remembered the last time he’d held one. It was this same gun, and the guys had been joking around about who was a better shot one summer day at the Rocking D. Sebastian had set up a few beer cans on a fence and everybody had taken some shots except Nat. He hadn’t wanted to touch the thing.

  Finally, the teasing had become so bad he’d given in. He’d told himself he was over the revulsion he felt at holding a gun, but apparently he hadn’t been. He’d nailed the cans—bing, bing, bing. It seemed all the hours of practice as a kid had stuck with him. Then he’d put down the gun and walked around to the back of the barn so he could throw up.

  His friends had thought he had a case of stomach flu, and he’d let them think that. He had no interest in telling them that when he was thirteen, his father had made him shoot a horse. Sure, the horse had turned mean, but only because his father had regularly beat him the same way he’d beaten Nat. When the animal had kicked Nat and broken his arm, Hank Grady had flown into a rage and forced Nat to shoot that poor horse. Nat hadn’t fired a gun since.

  Jess was the first person who had made all those bad memories fade. Until he’d left her seventeen months ago, he hadn’t appreciated the unique brand of magic she’d brought to his life. Loving her healed him. And God, did he need healing now.

  She hadn’t reappeared from behind the screen, but he realized that her soft lullaby had ended. Maybe Elizabeth was finally drifting off to sleep. Maybe, at long last, he was going to make love to Jess again.

  He stopped working on the dishes and gazed at the screen. The silence was encouraging. Very encouraging. At the thought of what was to come, moisture pooled in his mouth. He swallowed and took a deep breath.

  Then her head reappeared above the screen, and she turned toward him with a smile. Oh, such a smile. He’d forgotten how seductive she could be when she put her mind to it.

  “She’s asleep?” he murmured.

  Jess nodded.

  Nat tossed down the dish towel. Holding her dark gaze, he started toward the bed, unbuttoning his shirt as he went. Now. Right now.

  Then she mouthed the word wait.

  He stopped and lifted his eyebrows in question. Wait wasn’t the word he
wanted to hear at the moment. Yes was more like it.

  But she’d turned around again, and he wondered if Elizabeth still had some settling down to do. Okay, he’d wait, even if he was frustrated enough to chew a handful of Boone’s horseshoeing nails. Once he started on this program, he wouldn’t be able to stop, even if Elizabeth woke up again. So it would be best for all concerned if the baby was fast asleep.

  Then Jess turned to look at him again and her cheeks were pink. “Okay,” she whispered, and came around the screen.

  He nearly lost it.

  Her shirt and jeans were gone. In their place was an outfit that belonged in a skin flick. He struggled for breath as she walked toward him. She had fantastic legs. Just looking at her bare legs almost made him climax. This presentation of hers was overkill, but he wasn’t complaining. He didn’t know where or when she’d come up with the black lace number, but it would live in his fantasies forever.

  The sheer, tight material undulated with each step she took toward him. The top cupped her breasts and pushed them up in a way that made his eyes glaze with lust. A series of ties down the front begged to be undone. He loved it, loved her for going to the trouble of making this an unbelievable moment.

  “Gwen and I made a fast trip to Colorado Springs,” she said, a trace of shyness in her tone. “Do you like it?”

  “Oh, yeah,” he said, his voice hoarse. “Very, very much. And after all that effort, I hope you won’t be offended when I strip it right off.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  NAT REALLY MEANT to undo each of the ties so as not to rip anything on her new outfit, but once he got the first few open and filled his hands with her breasts, his control deserted him. He laid her across the width of the bed without much fanfare or finesse, his mouth hot and seeking against her plump breasts. The first taste of her nipple drove him out of his head.

  Dizzy from the wild-strawberry feel of her tight nipple rolling against his tongue, her soft whimpers and the urgent way she clutched his head, he became frantic to have more of her. Ties ripped from their moorings as he yanked the sheer lace down to her knees so he could touch…there, where her waist nipped in and there, where her belly heaved, and God, yes, bury his fingers there, where she was already soaking wet. Gasping, she arched away from the bed.