Harlequin Superromance February 2014 - Bundle 1 of 2: His Forever GirlMoonlight in ParisWife by Design

by Liz Talley

  “She said that making a baby was Darin’s idea.”

  Of course. Blame it on the guy. That thought was quickly thrown out for the nonsense it was.

  This was Darin and Maddie they were talking about.

  “She said that when you wouldn’t agree to their marriage, Darin told her if they got pregnant, we’d have to let them marry.”

  His brother had the problem solved!

  The momentary glee he felt quickly crashed with a string of mental swear words.

  “They can’t have a baby.”

  “Maddie is considered medically sound enough to make that decision for herself. We can’t force her to abort the child. And she is adamant that she’s going to have it.”

  “I’ll make Darin change her mind.”

  He heard how ridiculous he sounded. And knew, down where it counted, that there was no way on earth he’d choose to have his brother’s child aborted.

  “What are their chances of having a mentally sound child?”

  “Darin’s handicap was caused by a diving accident and Maddie’s was caused by a lack of oxygen at birth. There’s nothing genetically wrong with either one of them.”

  His tension hit an all-time high. “There’s no way they can live on their own and raise a child.” Frustration getting the better of him, he ran his fingers through his hair. Paced his darkened living room and swore as he stubbed his toe.

  “Sorry,” he said into the phone when he realized she’d heard his expletive.

  “I said the same thing when I saw the test results.”

  “In front of Maddie?”

  “She wasn’t there. I told her the test results won’t be ready until the morning and sent her to bed.”

  “You don’t ever lie to her.”

  “I am the bearer of the results and I won’t be ready with them until the morning,” she said, sounding tired more than anything.

  “What are we going to do?”

  “I have no idea.”

  He had an idea. A ludicrous one. But he had to think about it—long and hard—before he voiced it aloud.

  He needed some encouragement from her, too.

  “Okay, well, I suggest we try to get some sleep and talk about this tomorrow.”

  “I’ve already rescheduled my morning appointments,” she told him. “I’m planning to take Kara to day care as usual. Maddie’s there in the morning, as well. As soon as they’re safely settled, I’ll come back here.”

  “I can call Luke to cover for me and meet you there after I drop Darin off at therapy.”

  “Okay.”

  That was it. An agreement.

  And lives that had just changed forever. He was facing an enormous challenge and waiting to meet with Lynn before attempting to solve it. Before making any decisions.

  He wasn’t going it alone anymore.

  Whether the change crept up slowly while he was busy ignoring the signs, or whether it was just borne that day, brought on by the near-crisis they’d avoided, Grant didn’t know. What he did know was that he needed Lynn.

  Hanging up with her, he stood in the living room that, in all these years since Darin’s accident, had always brought him peace but now only seemed to fill him with emptiness.

  He stood there and saw his life. He was a thirty-eight-year-old man with...responsibilities.

  A man who’d been so determined not to be struck down again, not to have life pull the rug out from under him again, that he’d quit living.

  A man without a wife. Without children of his own, or any hope of having children of his own.

  A man who’d fallen for a woman who’d just come through a harrowing day with calm and aplomb.

  She hadn’t fallen apart when Kara went missing, and didn’t fall apart after the little girl had been found, either. She’d hugged Kara, held on to her for the rest of the time Grant was with them, but she’d been incredibly calm.

  As if she had no real needs at all.

  She wanted him physically. But other than that?

  Darin certainly had needs. Maddie had them. And Kara and Brandon. But seemingly not Lynn.

  No, she was in complete control. Always.

  Was it because of what she’d been through with Brandon? Because, like him, she couldn’t cope with the idea of having her life change so completely again?

  Or because that’s just how she was? How she had always been?

  The funny thing was that up until that day, he’d thought himself to be just like her. In complete control. And yet here he stood, in silk shorts and nothing else, with a life that was completely out of control.

  He cared about Darin. And Maddie and Kara, too. So much so that he hadn’t wanted to leave them that night. He’d wanted to keep every one of them, Lynn included, under his roof where he could protect them.

  He looked out into the night, into the darkness that mirrored emptiness back at him, and saw a picture of his life to date.

  A wasteland.

  * * *

  LYNN SPENT A sleepless night. She accomplished very little. A couple of loads of laundry. Some ironing.

  She watched late-night television.

  And made decaffeinated coffee she didn’t drink.

  By morning, she was exhausted beyond her ability to cope. But she fed Maddie and Kara. Walked with them to the day care, telling Maddie that she’d have her results for her at lunchtime.

  The other woman didn’t seem the least bit concerned.

  She’d submitted to the test because Lynn had insisted that that was what would happen if she came to the clinic to see her. But she hadn’t needed the results to know what her body was telling her.

  She was pregnant.

  And not the least bit upset about that fact.

  Because Maddie couldn’t problem solve. Which meant that sometimes she couldn’t see the real problems in her life. She had no idea how much she’d just complicated her life.

  Back at the bungalow, Lynn figured she had an hour to rest before Grant arrived. By her best estimation, they’d have another hour, give or take a few minutes, to find a solution to their problems.

  And then she’d be facing lunch. And Maddie.

  She went to bed and stared at the ceiling. After wasting five minutes of sleep time she moved out to the couch—hoping she’d trick herself into thinking she wasn’t really trying to go to bed.

  Five minutes later she started to cry. And knew that wasn’t going to work. She had to sleep. More than anything.

  She was a medical professional. Understood the importance of proper rest, most particularly during times of crisis. If she wanted to have the capacity to cope, she had to sleep.

  If she’d had a sleeping pill, she might have taken part of one. What she had was a bottle of wine Brandon had brought her from San Francisco several months before. It was in the cupboard above her refrigerator.

  A quarter glass of wine would calm her. The effect would be more instantaneous than anything else she could think of.

  So she poured—and felt odd doing so in the early hours of the morning. But she drank it. And when it didn’t work as quickly as she liked, she carried the glass—and the bottle—into the living room with her. She’d lie on the couch and sip slowly until the wine took effect. If it happened in the next ten minutes, she’d still have half an hour to sleep before Grant arrived.

  * * *

  NERVOUS AS HELL and hating the fact, Grant knocked on Lynn’s door ten minutes before their scheduled meeting that morning. In jeans and his Bishop Landscaping polo shirt he could have been facing any other day.

  But the only thing familiar about his day so far were the clothes.

  Lynn didn’t answer his first knock so he knocked again. Maybe she wasn’t back from the main building yet. He
was early, after all....

  He heard the door click. She’d unlocked it, pulled it from its jamb and left it hanging there.

  Catching a glimpse of her through the crack she’d made, he pushed his way in. The back of her bright green scrubs preceded him into the living room. So he followed, a bit concerned when she sidestepped and almost hit the lamp on the side table.

  It wasn’t until he’d skirted the couch where she’d dropped, ready to sit beside her, that he noticed the half-empty bottle on the table.

  “You’re drinking?” She didn’t drink much. She’d told him once that she couldn’t tolerate the loss of control.

  And unless he was missing his mark, he’d say she’d just consumed half a bottle of wine before eight in the morning.

  “I couldn’t sleep.” She didn’t sound drunk. Or even particularly upset.

  Maybe if he’d had more sleep, Grant would have held his tongue. He doubted it. His life had come unglued and he went right along with it.

  “What’s with you?” he asked, sitting on the edge of the couch, a good foot away from her, his elbows on his knees.

  “What do you mean?” Her gaze was steady as she looked at him.

  “You are the most controlled individual I have ever met. Nothing fazes you. Not even your daughter’s disappearance.” Once he started, he couldn’t stop, as weeks of pent-up tension erupted inside of him. “Oh, you were concerned, I’ll give you that, but you stood there completely engaged at all times.”

  “If I wasn’t how would I help find her?”

  “That’s just it, Lynn. You were thinking about helping to find her at a time when most mothers would be catatonic with fear and grief. But not you. You just stay right there in your mind, keeping control of everything, moving forward and solving the world’s problems.”

  The words were unfair. He knew it. He wasn’t as good as her. He’d tried to maintain control and lost it completely.

  “Don’t you ever just feel? So much that it drowns out all rational thought and you do something crazy?” Like ranting at the woman you loved when all you really wanted to do was take her to bed and lose yourself in her arms.

  “Crazy like drinking at eight in the morning?” she asked, calm as ever.

  “I’m sure you had a rational reason for doing so.”

  “Rational?” Lynn jumped up so fast she spilled wine down the front of herself. And did nothing to clean it up.

  It was going to stain.

  “You think I’m rational?” She wasn’t screaming, but her voice was raised louder than he’d ever heard it. “I was ironing clothes at three in the morning. Socks, Grant. I ironed socks! The elastic melted. I think I ruined my iron.”

  Pacing the room, her nearly empty wineglass still in her hand, she turned her back to him.

  If he hadn’t been so upset, he might have grinned.

  “The first thing I did after I got Kara to bed and said good-night to Maddie was run to my bathroom, curl up in the corner and sob.” She turned around.

  And the tears in her eyes stabbed him to his core.

  “If you want to know the truth, I’m scared to death most days of my life,” she said, standing in the middle of the room, crying openly. “I’m scared to death that if I don’t stay focused, stay calm, I’m going to fall apart so badly I’ll never get myself back together.”

  He stood. And she held out her hand—sloshing the remaining wine over her wrist—holding him off.

  “And then who would look after Kara? She’s just a little girl, Grant.”

  “I know.”

  “Do you?” She gestured with the glass again, and he watched to make sure that none of it got on the carpet.

  “Do you also know that I’m jealous of Darin and Maddie?” she asked, her tone accusatory, wild and hitting him in the heart. “They made love and they’re having a baby!” Her voice raised another octave. “Do you know that’s all I’ve ever wanted? To be in love, make love and have babies with the man I love?”

  He knew he wanted to be that man. And to run out the door and disappear at the thought.

  “Do you know that you’re that man, Grant? The one I dream about and make love with every single night when I close my eyes?”

  His throat dried up on him.

  “And do you have any idea...” Her voice broke. She sniffed. And then, very softly she finished. “How incredibly scared I am of the power my intense and illogical love for you gives you?”

  He moved forward a step.

  She took a step back.

  “Because someday, you could be just like Brandon, changing your mind about who you are and what you need out of life, and there wouldn’t be a single damn thing I could do about it.”

  She sipped from her empty glass. Didn’t seem to notice that there was no wine left and continued to hold on to the glass.

  “If you were even still in my life, that is,” she amended, frowning as she backed into the wall. And stood there, leaning against it.

  Her hair was pulled back tightly and neatly as always. She had no makeup to cry off. And her clothes were pressed. But she didn’t resemble, in any way, the calm, controlled woman he’d come to know and...love.

  The admission that he didn’t just care—that he was in love—was easier to accept knowing that she loved him, too. It wasn’t as if the concept was new to him. Just the admission.

  “We’re a pair,” he said aloud.

  Her frown grew.

  And he said, “So are you giving Kara up? Giving Brandon full custody of her?” He tried to sound as if they were talking about the weather when he knew the question was crazy. But he hoped it would prove a point that was only now occurring to him.

  He was fighting for something bigger than life here.

  “Of course I’m not giving her up!” His half accusation, half assumption hadn’t sat well with her. “Why would you even suggest such a thing?”

  “Well, just yesterday you were facing the possibility of losing her.”

  “You think I don’t know that? You think I haven’t been up all night, reliving that horror over and over and over again?” Fresh tears sprang to her eyes. And Grant needed to hold her.

  And to be held.

  “Can I tell you something?” He needed her to listen. He might not find a way to get the words out a second time.

  She nodded, watching him. Not quite suspiciously, but almost.

  “Last night, while I was sitting at home, thinking about Maddie and Darin’s situation, I couldn’t focus. I couldn’t face the thought. It’s like I had this barrier inside my chest that stretched up to my mind.”

  Her gaze softened. He couldn’t describe how, but he felt the change in her. And something within him pushed farther forward. “But coming here this morning, knowing that I was going to discuss the situation with you, it wasn’t overwhelming. I wasn’t daunted at the prospect. I’m not happy about it, mind you, but I can...believe that, together, we’ll find a solution.”

  The first step she took forward was a little shaky. “That’s how I was yesterday,” she told him softly, sounding more like the woman he knew. And loved. Really, really loved.

  “The whole time Kara was missing I was leaning on you, touching you, drawing all of my strength from you,” she said, coming slowly closer.

  The words were uttered simply, but there was nothing simple about them. She stopped a couple of feet from him.

  He took a step toward her. “Maybe, in loving, what we give up in control, we gain in strength to sustain us through the things we can’t control.”

  She seemed to be giving the thought serious consideration.

  “Sounds easier than it is, huh?” She was looking him straight in the eye. And his old Lynn was back. “I love you, Grant Bishop.”

  “And I love you
.” He’d never said the words to a woman before. Hadn’t ever thought he’d do so.

  And they hadn’t killed him.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  “HOW MUCH TIME do we have?” Grant hadn’t come any closer, but the hungry look in his eyes brought him right inside her.

  Setting down her empty wineglass, she looked at her watch. Darin’s therapy was over in twenty minutes. Kara and Maddie would be in day care a bit longer than that.

  “Fifteen minutes.”

  His hands went to his belt buckle. She took off her top. And felt wild and sexy when he stared at her breasts in her lace bra. Her nipples were already hard.

  Maybe because he’d released his fly, giving her the first real look at his penis, leaving absolutely no doubt that she turned him on.

  Really turned him on.

  “I showed you mine, now you show me yours,” he said, leering at her. Reaching behind her, she unfastened her bra, letting it fall off her arms. She should be shy. She’d been so uncomfortable the first time she’d let Brandon see her naked.

  She couldn’t get naked fast enough, for Grant.

  He took off his shoes. Let his pants drop and stepped out of them, leaving them with his briefs on the floor.

  She pulled her pants down, too. Leaving her underwear on. Because teasing him was fun.

  It made her feel powerful.

  And turned her on like she’d never been turned on before.

  This beforetime, the foreplay, was exquisite. They’d had weeks of it. And she was so hungry she was shaking with it.

  “You owe me one more. Take off your shirt,” she told him and couldn’t believe her luck when he revealed pecs that were so clearly defined she had to touch them to make sure they were real.

  So she did. Reaching out, she buried her fingers in the hair on his chest, teasing his nipples, squeezing muscles that had been built through years of hard work.

  She was hot and wet and ready to take him inside her. Except then...it would be over.

  “Condoms.” She barely got the word out, thinking of the ones she’d stashed in her bedside table weeks ago, in preparation for his visits.