He arranged half a dozen small logs over kindling from the brass bucket on the hearth, then held a match to it. The well-seasoned chips flared to life, immediately sending a whiff of wood smoke into the air. Instead of moving away, he remained there, gazing into the flames. “Did you ever consider their suggestion?”
“No.”
“Not at all?” His tone suggested that he didn’t entirely believe her, and why should he? He had already shared with her his opinion that she was too traditional, too old-fashioned, to choose to be an unwed mother in a town where people still talked about her own unwed mother. He had already pointed out that her own illegitimacy made Amelia Rose’s illegitimacy so much more interesting a topic for gossip.
Crossing the room, she sat down in the big wood rocker, eased her shoes off with a little sigh, then propped her feet on a crewel-topped footstool. “I thought about it,” she admitted. “But never with any intention of actually doing it. I knew that it would have been better for me if my mother had put me up for adoption, but from the moment I suspected that I was pregnant, I wanted this baby. I knew it wouldn’t be easy. I knew there would be comments about following in my mother’s footsteps, jokes about virgin births and unending speculation about who the father was, but I didn’t care. I thought about adoption because it was there—it was an option. But it was no more viable an option than abortion. Call me selfish, but I couldn’t do it.”
He turned and sat on the hearth, facing her. “I don’t consider wanting your baby selfish.”
“Some people do.” Leaning forward, she pulled out the quilt draped over the back of the chair, gave it a shake and spread it across her lap and over her legs. Early winter weather was so unpredictable. Tonight she was chilly. Tomorrow it might be seventy-five degrees, and the day after that it just might snow.
“So,” Nick started casually, “tell me the jokes about virgin births.”
She stared at him a long time, her hands knotting into fists underneath the quilt. She shouldn’t have mentioned the jokes. She should have known that he would ask about them. But, heavens, this was New Hope, where little in her life remained a secret. Once he announced that Amelia Rose was his daughter, her life would be a totally open book. All it took was asking the right questions of the right people, and a person could find out anything and everything about her.
“You think you’re such a hotshot cop,” she said softly. “You figure it out.” She watched him, recognizing the very instant he arrived at the right answer. It was the moment his eyes widened and his face paled, the moment a look of unmistakable horror flashed across then disappeared from his face.
“I wasn’t allowed to date while I was in school,” she said quietly, “but that didn’t stop the guys from making jokes about it. When I did start, they always seemed to see me as a challenge — you know, who could succeed where the others had failed. The last man I dated sent me a bouquet of jewelweed when he broke up with me.” She smiled thinly. “They’re little yellow flowers, more commonly known as touch-me-nots.”
The few minutes she’d spoken had allowed him to regain control. Now he looked only slightly repulsed. “You were a virgin?”
“Didn’t you suspect it?” she asked dryly.
“No...yes...not —” He blew out his breath. “I thought you probably didn’t have much experience. I thought you were probably pretty damned innocent, but —” Abruptly he got to his feet and shoved his hands into his jeans pockets. He looked edgy, ready to burst. “Why didn’t I know?”
She simply shrugged.
“You’re supposed to bleed. It’s supposed to hurt.”
“It did hurt. But you were drunk for that part, remember?”
Squeezing his eyes shut, he muttered a string of curses before looking at her again. “It’s supposed to be obvious. It’s supposed to be messy.”
“Well, it wasn’t. I don’t know why, although logic says it’s going to be different for every woman.” She waited a moment, then matter-of-factly went on. “So that’s why it was such a surprise to everyone. I was the woman considered least likely to ever ‘do it.’ I was prim, proper and prudish. I was untouched by male hands. And I was pregnant. Can you blame everyone for being shocked?”
Chapter 7
A virgin. The mere idea appalled Nick. He had never been anyone’s first, not even back when he was sixteen and a virgin himself, and he didn’t want to be Faith’s. She deserved more. After waiting all those years, she deserved someone who appreciated and cared, not some sloppy drunk who couldn’t remember a thing afterward. She deserved better than a few hours with a stranger who would hurt her, impregnate her, then disappear from her life.
She hadn’t deserved him.
After a moment he released his breath in a heavy sigh. “You keep finding ways to confuse me.”
She almost smiled. “It was strange enough that sweet, innocent Faith chose to have a one-night stand with a stranger. Now you want to know why sweet, innocent, virginal Faith would do it.”
“Do you have any suggestions?”
“Nope.” Her eyes got a little bit misty. “It was just something I wanted to do.”
He supposed that could be true. She must have been curious, must have heard her friends talk about the things she was missing out on, must have wondered just how much fun it could be. So for him she had been — hell, he wasn’t sure exactly what—a few hours’ easy pleasure? And for her he had been curiosity. Experimentation. Simply the means necessary to achieve the ends.
As he’d told her last night, she worked wonders on his ego.
“So how was it?” he asked, offering a hesitant smile to cover his need to know.
“Male pride,” she scoffed. “If you wanted to know, you should have stayed sober.”
“Come on, Faith.” He teased her gently. “Have mercy on a poor fool and at least tell me whether it was worth waiting for.”
Tossing the quilt aside, she got to her feet and started toward the kitchen. At the doorway, she turned back. “All right. It was the best I’ve ever had.”
He stood there for a moment, staring as she disappeared from sight, then burst out laughing. “Gee, thanks, sweetheart. Mom and Pop were right. You are generous.”
The soft, alien sound of her own laughter drew him in her direction. He stopped just inside the door, leaned against an old pine cabinet and watched as she padded around in socks, fixing dinner for two. Last night she had wanted an invitation to dinner that she could turn down. He was pleased that she didn’t bother with an invitation but simply assumed that he would stay. In fact, if he considered it too closely, he might discover that he was too pleased, too eager to spend time with her — and not for Amelia Rose’s sake. For his own.
So he didn’t consider it too closely. “I like your kitchen.”
She glanced around. “It’s just a kitchen.”
“No, ‘just a kitchen’ is what I have in my condo. It’s about four feet wide and six feet long. It has a little refrigerator, a little stove and no cabinet or counter space to speak of.” This kitchen was easily three times that size, big enough for an island, an old pine icebox, a pie safe, a scarred table that showed prime evidence of its years of use and a half-dozen mismatched chairs. This was the sort of kitchen his mother and sisters could cook in, the sort that became the heart of a house. “The first time Mom and Pop saw my kitchen, they just about dropped dead. Neither of them could imagine living with a place like that.”
“I spent a lot of time in here growing up. I learned to cook at an ancient old stove. I made cookies at the island, kneaded bread at that counter. I did my sewing and my homework at the table that used to be in here, and I washed a ton of dishes in that sink.” Her shrug underscored the faint sarcasm that laced her voice on the next words. “This was where Great-aunt Lydia taught me everything a proper young woman should know.”
Everything except how to live in the real world. How to choose her men wisely. How to prepare herself for the unexpected. Other than the everyday skills
like cooking and cleaning, he doubted that Lydia had taught her much at all of value.
When the microwave dinged, she used a hot pad to remove a steaming bowl of stew and placed it on a large wooden tray with smaller bowls, spoons and napkins. She added napkins, salt and pepper and fixed drinks for them, then faced him, one brow raised.
He carried the heavy tray into the living room and set it on a table between her favored rocker and an armchair with lace doilies on the arms and the back. After his first bite of stew, he complimented her, but she brushed him off. “Who can’t make stew? It’s idiot-proof.”
Most of the women he’d dated couldn’t make it. Cooking skills for the majority of them went no further than opening a can or turning on the microwave.
They ate in silence, but it wasn’t of the strained variety. It was comfortable enough, in fact, that it could worry a man. A week ago it would have worried him, but a week ago he hadn’t known that he was about to become a father. Even in his wildest imaginings, he hadn’t known that he was going to become a husband as soon as he could persuade Faith — which might be a very long time, since he hadn’t yet found the courage to broach the subject with her. By the time he convinced her that it was not just the right thing but the only thing to do, he figured Amelia Rose would be contemplating marriage herself.
It wasn’t until they were finished with dinner that he brought up something Faith had mentioned before, something that had caught his attention and wouldn’t let go. “When we were talking about adoption, you said that it would have been better for you if your mother had let someone adopt you. Was growing up with Lydia really so bad?” She had implied so last week, when the best thing she’d been able to say was that the old woman had never hit her. He wanted to know more, though. He wanted to know everything.
“It could have been worse,” she admitted in a feeble attempt at teasing. Sobering, she went on. “She did exactly what she had promised to do. She fulfilled her familial duty. She took me in, fed me, clothed me, gave me a place to sleep. She saw to it that I received an education and she filled in the gaps in that education with her own training. She was never cruel, but she was very strict. She never understood that there was more to raising a child than feeding, clothing and teaching.”
Like affection. Love. Fun.
“From the time I was little, she always reminded me what a terrible person my mother was, but she was family, and one has a duty to family. I knew I was here because of that duty long before I understood exactly what the word meant.”
So she had lived twenty-one years with a hateful old woman who had denied her love, made her feel unwanted and little more than a burden, and tried from the beginning to warp her view of life, of people, of her mother in particular and of men in general. Maybe all that, Nick admitted grimly, had something to do with why a sweet, innocent, virginal woman went to bed with an absolute stranger.
She shifted in the rocker, tucking the quilt once more around her legs. “I saw you at lunch today.”
From somewhere among all those grim thoughts, he summoned up a grin. “I was surprised to see you come walking in there. I figured you would avoid the place like the plague for fear of running into me.”
“It wasn’t my choice,” she said dryly. “I voted for the diner or Little Joe’s, but it was a special occasion. Wendy—she was in the shop last week when you came in — turned thirty today, and last night she got engaged.” She rubbed her hand over the pattern quilted into the pastel fabrics. It was a light touch, gentle, the kind that could soothe a cranky baby — or arouse some lucky man. He wondered if she had touched him like that, wondered if she might ever do it again. “I was surprised when you left without coming by our table.”
“I wouldn’t have, if my parents hadn’t just spent ten minutes telling me all the reasons I should stay away from you.” That brought her attention back to him—a startled look, an embarrassed flush, an aching vulnerability. “Not because of you, sweetheart, because of me. They think you need to be protected from me. They think you deserve better than me, and they’re probably right, but you’re already stuck. Of course, when we tell them that they’re about to become grandparents — for the twenty-fifth time — they’ll change their tune. They’ll think we’re a perfect match, that no one could settle me down better than sweet, old-fashioned Faith, that no one could take care of you better than their eldest son, the cop.”
His words made her uncomfortable, made her gaze skitter away like some frightened creature, made her fingers nervously work the edges of the baby quilt. If she reacted like this to the mere mention of settling down, how was she going to respond to the M word? How frightened would she be by a proposal of marriage?
Rather than venture into territory that obviously scared her, Faith focused on the least important thing he’d said. “Don’t you mean ex-cop? Didn’t you tell them that you’d quit your job?”
“I got a new one this morning with the New Hope P.D.I start in a couple of weeks. I figure that’ll give me a little time with Amelia Rose.”
Unable to sit still any longer, she slid to her feet and wandered over to the fireplace, standing with her back to him. “You’re serious about moving back here, aren’t you?” she asked, her voice low and shaking a little.
He left his chair, too, crossing the richly patterned area rug, not stopping until he was right next to her. She turned a little, keeping him behind her, and he let her. He didn’t try to make her face him, didn’t try to get a glimpse of her face so he could see the emotion there. Instead, he touched her. He laid his hand on her shoulder and felt tension ripple through her. Laying his other hand on her other shoulder, he gave her taut muscles a squeeze or two, then deliberately pulled her back against him. She squirmed, trying to force his hands away, trying to wriggle free, but he wrapped his arms around her and held her tighter.
“Would you stop it?” he demanded, his mouth only millimeters above her ear. “I just want to hold you. I’ve done it before. I did a hell of a lot more than this before. Just let me hold you.”
She took a deep breath that pressed her breasts against his arms, then went still, but the tension didn’t leave her body. She practically hummed with it from head to toe.
Closing his eyes, he gave free rein to his other senses. She smelled of flowers he couldn’t identify, something exotic and just a little bit sweet. Her skin — what little was exposed by her sweater — was soft and smooth, warmer on the side nearest the fire. Her breasts were soft, too, and full, flattened underneath the weight of his arms. They weren’t normally so large, he knew — and then wondered exactly how he knew. Was it a guess, based on his experience with six sisters who shared twenty-four pregnancies between them? Or a memory, buried somewhere in the mystery of that long-ago night?
He slid his hands around her stomach, then back to her waist. The appearance of delicacy was an illusion. Her body was strong, lean in spite of the extra thirty pounds she carried. The muscles that were tensed against him were well developed.
And familiar. It was all somehow familiar. He couldn’t remember details, couldn’t recall anything that could be clearly identified as a memory, but somewhere deep inside he knew he’d done this before. His arms, his body — his desire — recognized her. He’d held her before. He had kissed her, undressed her, stroked her. He had found pleasure of such intensity inside her that it haunted him even now.
“Faith?”
A moment of silence, then, suspiciously, warily, “What?”
“It was unusual, wasn’t it — the sex. Making love.”
She didn’t speak.
“It was different from what you’d thought it would be.”
After another moment of silence she sighed heavily and much of the tension left her body. “It was everything I’d thought it would be, and then same.” She sighed again and injected sarcasm into her voice. “How many virgins can say that about their first time?”
Beside them, the fire popped and crackled, its heat intensifying. Reluctant as
he was to let her go, he did, and took a few steps back to the opposite side of the fireplace. Slowly, reluctantly, she turned to face him.
“Ever since that night I’ve had dreams,” he admitted. “There was nothing of substance — sweet blue eyes. Long brown hair. Arousal intense enough to make a man beg. I thought they were just dreams. I didn’t believe you existed. I knew I had certainly never met you. Then you fainted last Wednesday and I carried you to the sofa in back. That was when I got a good look at your face. That was why I went back that evening.”
She folded her hands across her stomach. “That was why you didn’t need proof about Amelia Rose.”
He nodded.
“You still should have waited before you made any major changes like quitting your job and moving home.”
“Waited for what? For Amelia Rose to be born? For blood tests to confirm what I already know?”
“Most men would want proof.”
“Most men aren’t dealing with you. You can’t lie worth a damn. Besides, I know what I feel. And if it’s proof you want, you’ll have it when you see her.” He risked a grin. “She’s going to look just like my entire family. Although, to be honest —” reaching out, he brushed his hand over her hair, and the grin disappeared “— I wouldn’t mind one bit if she has her mother’s eyes.”
Faith was as conscious of her appearance as any other young woman, but until that very moment she’d never thought there was anything of particular interest about her. Her hair was long and wavy and behaved best in a no-nonsense braid. Her complexion was fair. Her nose was too uncomfortably close to earning a description of “pert,” but was no more remarkable than her mouth, chin or forehead. As for her eyes, what could she say? They were blue. Not dark blue or pale blue, certainly not the vivid blue of tinted contacts. Just plain blue.
Discovered: Daddy Page 17
