by Mollie Molay
“Cold?” she parroted. “I have a remedy for that, too.”
She drew his shirt off his shoulders and kissed a scar on his chest. She traced the mark with her finger. “How did you get the scar?”
“I’m afraid I’m not the most agile guy around. It’s not that I look for trouble, but trouble has a way of finding me,” he added with shrug. “Got a few more scars to prove it, too.”
“Where?” she asked, glancing over his tanned chest.
“Em, you don’t want to know.” He shrugged out of his jeans, his boxers and pulled the dust cover from the bed. He drew back the quilt and, with a wicked grin that sent her senses soaring, he carried her over to the bed.
“You’re a miracle, Em,” he murmured. He dropped to one knee and gazed down at her. “I’m not quite sure just when I realized my admiration for you had changed to desire, but I want to kiss every inch of you.” He dropped beside her and ran a gentle finger over her navel, around the curve of her hips and up to her breasts until she thought she couldn’t take it anymore. “Everything about you is a miracle.”
“Are you only going to talk about miracles?” she asked, taking his face between her hands. She dropped little kisses along his chin, his Adam’s apple. “How about creating a new one.”
“Can do.” To her delight, T.J. gathered her into his arms, swept his hands over her nude back, her waist, her aching breasts, warming her with his kisses until she was almost mindless with longing.
“More,” she whispered into his lips. He grinned and tongued her breasts until they rose in urgent peaks. His lips traced a path down to her waist, her thighs. His hands followed and caressed each sensitive spot he’d kissed.
When she couldn’t bear the ecstasy that threatened to engulf her, she pulled him over her and took him to her.
Streaks of electrical current ran through her as he filled her. Her arms embraced him, her legs held him close. Murmuring tender love words, she met him thrust for thrust, kiss for kiss, until waves of blinding sensations covered her, burst into flames and sent her spiraling into a world she’d never glimpsed before.
She heard him shout her name, felt him shudder as he joined her.
When they finally came back to earth, T.J. gazed down at her with a tender smile. “Warm enough now?”
“Almost,” she answered, drifting back to earth. She ran her hands over his back, which was covered with a silken sheen of sweat. Nuzzled his shoulders with little love bites. She held him tight while the flames inside her slowly dimmed. Cuddled in his arms, Emily murmured softly, “I have another confession to make.”
“Confess away,” he answered. With her still in his arms, he fell to his side and threw a leg over her. “Right now, I’m in the mood to forgive anything. As for doing anything about it, I’m afraid you’ll have to give me a few minutes.”
“Not that,” she laughed, cuddling closer. “It’s about something that happened when I first saw the sign advertising the bachelor auction. When I saw you, I felt as if some force drew me in to the auction room.”
T.J. fell silent. When she first saw him on the auction block? A cold chill ran over his heated body. Was it possible Emily still believed him to be Tim? “Like what?”
“As if we were destined to meet.” She laughed. “Crazy, isn’t it? Me, in the little town of Placerville, California and you here in Los Angeles. We don’t even know the same people or have anything in common.”
“No friends, sure, but as far as having something in common, there’s this.” He kissed the spot between her breasts. “What else?”
“I knew I’d met you for the first time at the auction. I knew you were the man with me in the photograph. But when I saw you at the construction site, for a few minutes I had the strangest feeling you weren’t the same man. You were more handsome and sexier than ever.” Her hands roamed over his chest as she met his eyes. “Of course, it was you. How could you be two people?”
T.J. blinked and roused himself from his sexual euphoria. Of all the times for Emily to hint that he might not be the man she’d won at the auction, this was the worst.
Heaven help him, it wasn’t the time or the place to confess she’d been right. He wasn’t the same man who’d flirted with her from an auction block. He was a man in love with her. He looked down at Emily. She’d fallen asleep in his arms.
To his surprise, he’d found he wanted Emily in all the ways he’d never wanted a woman. He wanted to help her dream of visiting the real Venice come true even if that meant he would have to give up his own dream.
Even after deciding to give Emily a chance to make her childhood dream come true, T.J couldn’t sleep. He should have been calm, relaxed, adrift in a sea of contentment after a night of loving Emily. Instead he was wide-awake.
His conscience insisted maybe he’d been wrong in trying to persuade Emily to give up a dream and stay here. He’d meant well. The fact that he’d fallen for her might have clouded his judgment.
He glanced lovingly down at Emily. Curled into his chest, she murmured in her sleep. The first rays of dawn drifting through the curtained window revealed auburn eyelashes resting on porcelain skin. Teardrops lingered at the corner of her eyes.
He wished he could make himself believe her tears were tears of happiness after a night spent in his arms making love. Somehow, he had the uneasy feeling she could just as easily have been lost in a dream of a childhood sheltered by her aunt’s loving arms. Arms that had shielded her from the reality of a seriously ill father and a mother too preoccupied with caring for him to give Emily the attention she needed.
To add to his misgivings, his senses told him there was something he needed to do. Now. He wouldn’t have taken the message seriously if he hadn’t sensed the “something” had to do with Emily.
He stirred restlessly. No way was he going to be able to get any real sleep until he did something about it.
Careful not to awaken Emily, he bent over and kissed her lightly on her forehead. When she stirred, he murmured soft words of reassurance. Luckily, she fell back to sleep. He cautiously inched his way out of the narrow bed to put on his jeans. Barefoot, so as not to awaken Emily, he padded across the hall and to the door Emily had been reluctant to open when she showed him around the cottage.
The bedroom door opened easily. He groped in the dark until he found the light switch by the door and flipped it on. To his interested gaze, the room was a bedroom like any other bedroom. Covered by a dusty white sheet, a large brass bed filled the center of the room. In a puzzling contrast, he noted that none of the other pieces of furniture had been covered as they had been throughout the house.
A nightstand with an open Bible and a brass letter opener resting on its surface stood beside the double bed. An oak chest of drawers topped with a framed picture of Emily and a bowl of potpourri stood on the other side of the bed. Two landscape paintings that, on closer inspection, were signed by a young Emily, hung on the wall. A yellow oak rocker, a lamp, and a padded footstool completed the furnishings.
T.J. inhaled the lingering scent of lavender potpourri and gazed thoughtfully at the photograph of a youthful Emily. Together with the Bible and the stories she’d told him about her aunt, the Bible and the photograph told him volumes of what had been dear to the heart of the room’s late occupant. The realization of their loving relationship sent a warmth through his own heart. And, crazy as it seemed to him, he began to feel a part of that relationship.
The room, its former occupant, and Emily’s memories seemed almost to have become his own. They gave him another reason to buy the cottage. Rather than see it sold to someone who might tear it down, he had to restore the cottage to its vintage glory.
That didn’t really surprise him. Since he’d met Emily, he’d been on the receiving end of enough unsettling events in his own life to change him from a rational, pragmatic man to a believer in miracles.
What was there about the room that drew him there? Curiosity, or the builder’s instinct, told him the strong od
or of mildew signaled the room needed attention.
He checked the room again. On the surface, there was still nothing unusual.
Except that one of the lathe-and-plaster walls appeared to have been damaged by water. He remembered smelling mildew when he’d first entered the cottage.
He was a poor example of a builder, he thought as he ran his hand across the damp wall. After he’d noticed a hole in the roof on his first visit to the cottage, any contractor worth his salt would have checked for interior water damage right away. Especially a builder with more than twenty years of experience restoring buildings.
He went to the door and walked across the hall to check on Emily. Reassured she was still asleep, he made his way back to the room to consider just how much work would be involved in repairing the roof and interior walls of the cottage. And yet, as he stood there, he couldn’t help wondering why a man in his right mind would be inspecting water damage when a warm and loving woman was waiting for him in the bedroom across the hall.
“T.J.? What in the world are you doing in here?”
A sleepy and disheveled Emily, wearing the shirt he’d left behind, stood in the doorway rubbing her eyes. Open to her waist and ending at pink-tinged thighs, the shirt managed to reveal more than it concealed. To add to his physical and mental discomfiture, the erotic sight sent his mind racing back to the incredible moment last night when Emily had said yes.
Memories of tangled bodies, passionate kisses, and a journey into a memorable erotic experience with a woman he’d begun to think of as his destiny sent his body stirring once again. If he had any sense, he would kiss her lips, her slender neck and her pouting breasts. Take her back to bed and bury himself in her warmth.
“I’m sorry I awakened you, Em,” he said with an effort to make sense out of his midnight wandering, “but I couldn’t sleep. I just wandered in here so as not to awaken you.”
“In the middle of the night?”
“Guess so,” he answered sheepishly. “I gotta tell you, I’d much rather be back in bed.”
Emily slid her arm through his and rested her head on his shoulder. “And all I can say, Mr. Kirkpatrick, is let’s go back to bed. I’m cold.”
With a last look around the room, T.J. put his arm around Emily’s shoulder and turned her into his arms. “You are cold,” he muttered, and nuzzled her neck. “I know just the way to warm you up.”
“I can’t wait.” Emily lifted her face for his kiss. “I can’t think of another place I’d rather be than in bed with you.” With a lingering glance around the room, she led T.J. back to her bedroom.
“This bed could be a little larger,” Emily murmured as she dropped tiny kisses over T.J.’s nude chest. “It doesn’t give me much room to explore the rest of you.”
For T.J. the bed was the perfect size—the closer she was, the greater the contact. What had gone on before was only a prelude to the present. He intended to take his time and try to show Emily how much she meant to him. “Explore away,” he said as he slid her over him. “Now that we’re both awake, I intend to do some detailed exploring myself.”
Emily smiled into his eyes. “You do have a way with me, T.J. But, before I go any further, is there some name I can call you? T.J. sounds so imperial.”
He ran his fingers over her lips and watched the colors in her hazel eyes change. Gray and blue were joined by warm streaks of gold and green as her eyes mirrored her thoughts. She was right. Initials were impersonal, a means by which a guy could hide his emotions, something he realized he’d done for most of his life. Maybe it was time to open himself to Emily. “You can call me Tom.”
“Tom,” she repeated as she held his face between her hands and nipped at his chin. “And I really am Em.”
“I guess I’ve known that all along,” he replied with a tender kiss. “‘Em’ suits you.”
“Be careful how you use it,” she cautioned. “Only two other people have called me by that name. And one of them is gone.” By asking him to call her Em, Emily felt as if she’d given him her heart to hold.
T.J. smiled up into her eyes. “I’ve got to go soon, so why don’t we get back to more explorations?”
His teasing glance sent waves of heat coursing through her. The need to belong to him again was strong. Each kiss she gave him was a renewal of her trust in him. Otherwise she knew she wouldn’t have been able to invite him to call her “Em.”
Emily was still asleep when T.J. quietly dressed and left the cottage. He left a note on her pillow telling her he would see her later, but he had a disturbing feeling there was something he’d left undone.
If anyone needed to talk things over with a mind more rational than his own, it was he. Who else would listen to talk of spirits? And who else would understand why he’d decided to ask Emily to marry him?
“SO YOU SEE, DAD, I’m between a rock and a hard place,” T.J. said when he’d finished telling his father about Emily. “After spending the past few days with Emily and realizing what a wonderful woman she is, I’m thinking of asking her to marry me.”
His father regarded him under raised eyebrows. “Well, that’s certainly a first. I’d almost given up on you.”
“It surprised me, too,” T.J. answered as he paced the floor. In the living room, a grandfather clock sounded the noon hour. “I suddenly realized Emily had all the attributes I wanted in a woman. She’s honest, caring and loving. She treasures the past and admires all the things about it that I do. I realized how much when she showed me the interior of the cottage and told me all about her life there with her aunt.”
His father regarded him thoughtfully. “If you’ve made up your mind, why are you here?”
T.J. paused in his pacing. Embarrassed at the thought that this would be the first time he had freely discussed his gratitude for having been adopted, he gazed at his father. “You may think I’m nuts, but even though I love Emily, I don’t think I have the right to get married now.”
“The right to fall in love and get married?” His father’s eyebrows arched. “You’ve got to be kidding!”
“Nope. It may sound weird,” T.J. answered, “but it’s the truth. I’ve never told you how I felt about your adopting me and Tim, but here goes.” Unaccustomed to sharing his inner thoughts, he took a deep breath. “I’ve always felt grateful to you and Mom for deciding to adopt Tim and me instead of opting to hold out for infants. I guess my way of showing my gratitude is by helping with Tim and taking over the day-to-day running of the business since your accident.” He smiled sheepishly. “It sounds stupid, but I’ve always thought love and marriage would get in the way of those responsibilities.”
His father pulled himself into his wheelchair and nodded. “Come on into the kitchen. After what you’ve just said, I could use a cup of black coffee.” As he wheeled himself into the kitchen, he added, “I’ve often wondered why you worked harder and played less than most boys of your age. Now that you’ve come this far, you might as well get everything off your chest. Anything else on your mind?”
“Some,” T.J. answered, relieved by his admission. “But first, I’m going to make us a pot of blacker-than-sin coffee. You can supervise.”
“Lead on.” His father laughed. “You don’t need my advice about making coffee, but it’s beginning to sound as if we’re both going to need it.”
T.J. led the way into the kitchen where his late mother’s loving touches were everywhere—in the cheery green curtains, the “apple” pattern of the dishes in the open shelves and in the copper plates hung around the walls. A handwoven rag rug rested under a maple breakfast set. He relaxed, sure in the conviction his mother would have loved Emily.
Under his father’s thoughtful gaze, he rummaged in the pantry for a can of coffee, filled the coffee-maker with water and set it to drip. When the smell of fresh coffee filled the air, he filled two cups and settled down at the kitchen table.
“I’ve never told you this before,” he began, “but I think it’s time to say it now.”
“Shoot.” His father sipped the hot coffee. “I’m all ears.”
“I never talked about it, but I’ve never forgotten the day my birth mother left me and Tim at the foundation. I used to think something had to be wrong with us, with me. Bottom line, I never really felt worthy of being anyone’s son.”
“Stop right there,” his father said. He locked his gaze with T.J. “You and Tim are the best sons a man could ask for, and don’t you forget it!”
“Thanks, Dad.” T.J. gazed into his coffee cup. If he didn’t, he knew he’d break up. “Anyway, I worked extra hard to make you glad you adopted us. And that’s not the whole of it,” he said when his father started to protest again. “I made up my mind that when I did find the right woman, she would have to be the kind of woman who would never walk away from me or any children we might have.”
“That’s a heavy burden for a man to carry,” his father said. He toyed with his coffee cup, then met T.J.’s eyes. “If I’d known, I would have told you long ago that when we saw the protective way you held your little brother’s hand and refused to leave him, we were hooked.” He paused and cleared his throat. “Maybe your mother and I didn’t try hard enough to show you how much we loved you, but we did and I still do. I respect you as a grown man, too. But let’s face it, you are a grown man now. It’s time you buried the past.”
T.J. grimaced and stared at his empty coffee cup. “Easier said than done.”
“Of course it’s not easy.” Thornton Kirkpatrick heaved a sigh and sat back in his wheelchair. “I’ve been there, done that myself. And paid the price. As long as we’re talking man to man, I might as well tell you that as a young man, I was a lot like Tim, dead set on enjoying myself and not answering to anyone but myself.”
T.J. shook his head in disbelief. This wasn’t the father he knew and loved. “Not you, Dad. You’ve set an example I’ve tried to live by.”
“Maybe so,” his father answered wryly, “but by the time I faced up to loving Lorena, to my lasting regret, I’d already had a vasectomy. That’s why we opted for adoption. Considering our ages, we couldn’t take an infant, anyway. We thanked our lucky stars for the opportunity to adopt you and your brother. So, don’t fool yourself. You don’t owe me anything. If you love Emily, go for it.”
