Maggie's Guardian (Harlequin Super Romance)

by Adams, Anna

  “Don’t wake Maggie, but hurry. Okay?”

  She didn’t even bother to answer as she rushed up the stairs.

  NOAH BRUSHED his teeth for the second time and stared at himself in the bathroom mirror. What should he do—take off his clothes and wait for her in bed, or keep on anything that covered his erection and try to make her believe he wasn’t as randy as a teenager on his first date?

  He’d been away from his wife for too long. He was fighting a less than civilized compulsion to prove she belonged to him again. What he really wanted was to belong to her. He turned back to his room and shut the door, rubbing his hand across his mouth.

  He hadn’t had a drink in four days, but he’d suddenly kill for a beer. Bad sign. He’d better lay off the beer for a while—until, in times of need, it didn’t seem like an old friend.

  Narrowing his eyes against the harsh overhead light, he turned on the bedside lamp and then went back to flip the switch beside the door. Better. She’d like that.

  Tessa hadn’t turned on her shower yet. He could just picture her stuck like a statue to the middle of her floor, convincing herself she was making a mistake.

  They hadn’t decided where they’d live. He hadn’t agreed to move here. She didn’t have all the answers yet.

  Neither did he, but the one he needed tonight was Tessa in his arms.

  He grabbed sweats, a T-shirt and a towel and headed to the guest bathroom. A quick, cold shower couldn’t hurt. It didn’t help, either, and when he turned off the water, Tessa still hadn’t turned hers on.

  He dressed and toweled his hair. And when he opened his bedroom door, he found Tessa, curled up in the armchair, a lavender silk robe covering every inch of her body from her neck to her toes.

  He searched the room for the baby monitor and found it on the nightstand. “Did you turn that on?”

  She nodded.

  He tried to grin. “That takes care of the important stuff. I didn’t hear you turn on the water.”

  “I hurried once you got in. I’m not sure about the hot-water supply.” She stood, and the lavender that turned her eyes a deep dark green also swathed her voluptuous curves in seductive silk.

  She tied his tongue, but not long enough. “You’re beautiful.” Smooth move. Original, and stirring, too, if he correctly read the somewhat nauseous look she turned his way.

  “You don’t have to do that,” she said.

  “Do what?” Tell her how much he wanted her? The robe was more revealing than anything she’d owned when they’d been together. Had she grown up since she’d left? Did she finally understand he needed her—not some doll-like ideal of beauty her mother had imprinted on her? He went to her, but he didn’t touch her.

  He didn’t dare, because once he did, he wouldn’t be able to stop or think. She still needed him to think.

  “I know I’m okay to look at,” she said, “but you don’t have to say I’m beautiful. I could lose a few pounds, and I haven’t had a haircut in about six months. I still don’t do manicures, and I’m too practical to pay for a pedicure.”

  She twitched her hem aside, revealing bright red toenails that made him laugh.

  “You’ve forgotten how I loved watching you do your toes. It was foreplay.”

  “Because you have some sort of gymnast fantasy, and you liked seeing me with my knees up to my chin.”

  Not exactly. She performed her self-pedicure at night after she’d showered and dressed for bed. Feeling all possessive of her as she’d curled up in his T-shirts to paint her toes, he’d seen more of her body than he often did when they’d made love.

  The tension that made even stray strands of her hair quiver in time with her pulse told him she wasn’t ready to hear that confession.

  “Come to bed.” As they walked together, the silk caressed her as he longed to do. Her nipples hardened, and so did he, all over again.

  He bent to pull back the sheets, and then he shucked off his T-shirt. Tessa’s hands, on his back, startled him. He stood still, while she stroked his muscles, sliding her palms in ever-widening sweeps from his shoulder blades to the small of his back. Nerve endings flashed urgent messages all over his body.

  He reached for her, finding her forearm with his hand. She leaned into him. Silk and flesh, lush curves pressed against his skin, as she traced the outline of his rib cage. With one hand, he pulled her around him, reluctant to break contact.

  He caught her face in his hands, and she opened to him. He kissed her, holding nothing back, taking from her, learning the taste and the feel of her mouth as if he’d never known her before.

  She tiptoed to reach him, but the difference between their heights kept him from feeling enough of her against him. He lay down and pulled her onto the cool sheets at his side.

  Her gaze melted as she tilted her head back. She breathed in, and he followed the rise of her breasts with his gaze and his hands. Her nipples teased him. He kissed her again and again, whispering her name, until she pushed him away to explore the lines of his face with her fingers.

  “I think I’ll die if we don’t make love,” she said in a voice so soft he prayed he wasn’t indulging in another fantasy. When she unknotted her robe, he knew he must be dreaming.

  He rose on one elbow above her, and she drew him closer. Her silk lapels had parted on beautiful, creamy flesh that begged for his touch.

  Spreading his fingers against the web of bones beneath her throat, he opened the robe farther. She grew shy for the first time, and she turned her face into his shoulder as he dipped his head to the luscious hollow between her full breasts.

  He waited for her to change her mind. Each breath she took lifted her closer to his mouth until he couldn’t wait any longer. He opened his lips on her breastbone and kissed a slow path to her navel.

  She tasted faintly of soap. Against her skin, he licked his lips. “You were in a hurry. You still use the same brand.” He licked again, rimming her nipple and then covering the peak. “Mmm, better without the soap.”

  A sound half moan, half a chuckle, vibrated against his mouth. He closed his eyes. He’d wanted her so long, needed her so badly. If he was dreaming, he prayed he wouldn’t wake until he’d forgotten the past and remembered only making love to his wife.

  He slid his hand between the sides of her robe and parted the cloth to caress her belly, the jut of her hip. He knew her body as well as his own. Except she had become more vital to him than the air he breathed or the nourishment of food and drink.

  Suddenly Tessa pressed her hand to his chest to hold him off. He braced himself on his elbow again, and she sat up, not looking at him as she reached for the lamp.

  The robe fell off her shoulder. He ran his hand over her skin, beneath the silk, dipping to bare her back. “I’m hungry for you,” he said, and then he asked for what he wanted. “Don’t turn it off.”

  She pushed the switch.

  “Tessa?”

  Her stillness refused him, but she didn’t lie down again.

  “Please,” he said. Only she would ever make him utter that word. “Turn on the light. Let me see you.”

  “I can’t.” Her voice, stretched as thin as her nerve, made him want to protect her from the taunts that had shamed her. Lucky thing her parents were out of the country. He’d like to talk to her mom about true parenting.

  “Let me see you,” he said again. The yearning of all their years together made him speak. “I want to watch you make love to me.” He tried to tug her back, but she resisted. He tightened his hand on her shoulder. “You carried my child inside your body. One look at you, and I forget what I’m doing here. Don’t you know I want every inch of you? I’ve always wanted you.”

  She waited so long he thought he’d lost her again. But finally, she leaned away from him and a switch clicked and soft light formed a circle on the bed. A circle that held them both as one.

  Tessa eased onto her back and rolled toward him, her hair catching in silk as she shrugged out of the robe. The wariness in her
eyes brought a lump to his throat. After everything, she actually thought he was capable of pretending.

  Her courage humbled him. She could doubt her own beauty and yet uncover herself for him simply because he’d asked her to.

  He looked his fill, tracing the delicious curve of hip to thigh, smiling at the pleasure that slipped between her lips in a soft moan. She caught his hand, when he ran his finger across the pale triangle at her pelvis. Her skin, pale against his darkness, was softer than he remembered. She reminded him of love and the child they’d made together. She was more precious to him than he’d remembered.

  He looked into her eyes. As she gazed back her alarm began to fade. He smiled in surprise. Who’d known a woman’s trust could give a man such power?

  A secret promise of intimacy curved her mouth, and she took his hand and placed it on the slope of her breast. Her nipple prodded his palm, and he forgot how to breathe.

  “What’s next, Noah?” She leaned toward him, pressing a kiss to the corner of his mouth. She traced the seam of his lips with her tongue and rubbed her nipple against him.

  He kissed her back and cautioned himself to go slowly.

  They’d been apart for a long time. He wanted her to remember their private reconciliation with joy. Fighting a selfish urge to roll her beneath him, he lowered his head and opened his mouth against the underside of her breast, teasing lightly with his teeth. Her groan lost itself in his. Her satisfaction weakened him with his own need.

  He didn’t give a damn about a judge’s ruling on their former marriage. He was making love to his wife, the only woman he’d ever truly wanted, the woman who would carry their other children and make a family with him and Maggie.

  She was sustenance after deprivation. She was rain after a drought. She was love after loneliness that even now taunted him from the memories of eighteen months of empty nights.

  And she arched against him, her body an invitation to hurry.

  “Tessa, I meant to—” Offering her other breast, she interrupted his proposal to take her slowly. All but drinking from her body, he thrust against her thigh, unable to hold back. “I thought we’d take our time,” he said, kissing where he could reach her, hungry for any taste of her skin.

  “I can’t.” She opened her legs, reaching for his hips. “We’ll talk about time later.”

  “I wanted this to be for you.” She was ready. He couldn’t stop himself. She took him inside her, and as she caressed him, he gritted his teeth, fighting the inevitable just long enough to give his wife equal pleasure.

  “This is for us,” she said on a broken note that shattered as her body took his to the deepest joy he’d ever known.

  Her way was infinitely better than his.

  TESSA OPENED HER EYES and looked for Noah. He’d turned his back on her in his sleep. She cuddled into his warmth and listened. Not a sound came from the monitor behind her.

  Thank God for babies who slept through the night.

  But maybe Maggie wasn’t sleeping.

  The thought dragged her upright. She curved her knees to her chin. She’d taken so long coming to Noah tonight because she’d been reluctant to leave the baby alone. But she didn’t want to teach Maggie to be afraid, and her urge to overprotect might scare a growing girl.

  Nevertheless, as she listened to the silent monitor, she had to admit she couldn’t quit being who she was cold turkey. She had to make sure the baby was all right.

  Creeping from Noah’s bed, she snatched her robe off the floor. She belted it at her waist before she opened his door. The house was quiet, too. They hadn’t managed to waken Joe and Eleanor.

  Good.

  She eased her own bedroom door open. She’d adopted a night-light rather than the lamp she’d left on the first night she’d had Maggie with her. Even the dimmer light offered enough illumination for her to see the baby’s stomach and chest moving up and down.

  She was breathing. She was alive.

  Tessa braced herself for the usual wave of relief. As always, she rocked on her feet, unable to believe she was so lucky. She’d left the room, and Maggie was still sleeping—not hurt, not dead.

  A hand flattened against her back. She immediately recognized Noah’s touch and his smell. She smiled, happier than she’d believed she could ever be again.

  “She’s all right?” he said against her ear.

  She nodded and turned him toward the door. Noah let her push him. She smiled again, feeling utterly feminine. He’d let her push him when they’d made love, too.

  She’d enjoyed feeling in control, not worrying about how she’d looked. Noah seemed to like the way she looked. Believing him, after all these years, had been something of an aphrodisiac.

  His slow, loving pace had frustrated her. She’d needed him to destroy her, to fuse her old self with the new woman who believed he wanted her. In the end, they’d destroyed each other, rocking together until the last pulsing vestiges of their lovemaking had faded to lovely echoes of feeling. They’d fallen asleep, wrapped up in each other.

  She shut the door behind them, but then Noah turned her and she let him lead her back to his room.

  “I hope you had enough sleep.” He was already pulling the robe from her shoulders.

  Turned out, she wasn’t completely convinced yet. Without thinking, she lifted her hands to cover herself, but Noah pulled them away, tripping as he tried not to step on her feet. He took her not to the bed, but to the window.

  When he opened the curtains, she drew back, but Noah maneuvered her gently into the light. “I’ve wanted to see you like this since the first time we made love,” he said, “with the moonlight painting your skin.”

  “And the neighbors taking pictures?” She tried to make a joke of it, but his frank passion made her forget all the good-girl teachings her mom had ever offered her. And her cautions about being such a short girl for so much weight.

  She was the woman Noah wanted. For him, she’d dance nude in the near darkness that still held too much light for her taste.

  “Let the neighbors find their own women,” he said. He ducked his head to kiss her, lifting her out of the paltry body that kept her here on earth. She opened to him, offering all she could find of the finest parts of herself, the love that no longer seemed to need proof of an equal measure of his devotion. Trust that made her lift her arms in the moonlight.

  “Too late for showing off.” He smiled against her mouth, scooping her close against himself. “I need a close-up view now.” Just then, headlights slashed the window and Noah turned her away from the glass. “The police,” he said.

  “They promised to patrol. I’m glad, for Maggie’s sake.”

  “I don’t understand why you’re so determined to believe Eric didn’t kill David.”

  “If he’s not the guy in the picture, he’s not the killer. I’ve seen Eric at his worst. He’d barge in. He’d call and list the reasons he was the man for me, and he’d send me details of his bank balance, but I can’t see him getting violent.”

  “He stole your panties.”

  She shivered. “Leave it to you to state your case in blunt terms. I want to get sick every time I think of him in here, rooting through my things, and I’m not about to let myself imagine what he might have done with them. But I can’t believe he’s capable of stabbing David like that. Why would he if he’s after me? It would make sense if he’d come to my office to kill me and David had interrupted. But you’ve often said yourself, whoever killed David meant to kill him.”

  “No one else makes sense, Tessa. This bad guy knew David. No stranger would attack a man with so much vindictiveness.”

  “And the picture?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know. I didn’t get a good enough look at him. Weldon doesn’t seem as reluctant as you to think it’s Eric.”

  Tessa had another reason. She still wasn’t satisfied that they’d put away the drug dealer possibility. Her promise to David nagged at her conscience. Someone high on one of the drugs Joann
a had been unable to resist might do that much damage and not even know about it later. What if Eric went to prison because she didn’t want to tell anyone the truth about Joanna?

  The drug industry was limited in a town as small as this. Weldon could easily find and question the known dealers, and if she spoke up, he could start with Hank Sloma.

  Where did her loyalties lie? With David in the past, even though he might have been wrong to swear her to secrecy? She had to think of Maggie first. If a dealer was that angry with Joanna’s family, he might eventually get around to being pissed off at her baby.

  “I have to tell you something, Noah.”

  He stepped back from her, and suddenly she felt naked. Skirting him, aware he was about to be furious, she reached for her robe again.

  He turned with her. “Do I want to know what you need to say?”

  “It’s about Joanna.”

  He came to her in one step, and she dropped the robe. “Weldon told me what he thinks, but you know the details?”

  His relief took the wind out of her sails. “That came out easier than I expected.”

  He didn’t seem to think she’d made a joke. He grabbed her forearm. “Where did she get the drugs?”

  “I don’t know. If I did, I’d have checked it out myself.”

  He tightened his hand. “I’ll bet you would have, without telling me. You’d risk your life and Maggie’s future because you don’t want to involve me. Maggie needs you to be more responsible.”

  “You’re not hearing me.” She denied his ridiculous accusation. “How much more involved could I beg you to be? I promised David I’d never tell anyone. I walked in on him after her funeral when he was flushing her drugs down their bathroom toilet, and he begged me to help him make sure Maggie never found out.”

  “She’s a baby. By the time she grows up no one will care how her mother died.”

  “She’ll care, and Joanna loved her. She would have stopped using if she could have, because of Maggie.” Tessa shrugged, grief for David and Joanna sweeping her with an even stronger determination to protect their child. “Besides, Prodigal is a small town. People care for a long time.”