Rising on tiptoe, she kissed his clean-shaven cheek, then made her way down the hallway to her bedroom. She had been invited to share dinner with Kelly, Tricia and Beatrice Miller, followed by a game of bidwhist.
Renee rang the doorbell to Kelly and Ryan’s home, pushed open the door and walked into bright light, heat and mouthwatering smells.
Tricia appeared from the rear of the house, a bright smile softening her round face. “Hi. Come on back to the kitchen.”
Renee noticed Tricia’s curly hair was longer than when she’d been introduced to her. Thick black shiny curls fell over her ears and the nape of her neck. Tricia Blackstone was blooming—all over.
She walked into the kitchen and into a flurry of activity. Beatrice Miller stood at the cooking island slicing an avocado, while Kelly browned chicken cutlets in a frying pan. Kelly’s daughter, four-month-old Vivienne, sat in a high chair, patting the chair’s table as Tricia resumed spooning food into her birdlike mouth.
Beatrice, a petite woman with salt-and-pepper hair and smooth dark brown skin had a slender body that rivaled women half her age. A quick smile, soft drawling voice and a gentle manner made her the perfect companion for Gus Parker.
The four women, ranging in age from sixty to mid-thirties, shared a warm smile. “Thank you for coming,” Kelly said.
Renee nodded. “Thank you for inviting me. Can I help with something?”
Kelly shook her head. “Not this time. The first time you’re a guest. The next time you can do something more strenuous like set the table.”
Renee could not stop the rush of heat flooding her face. “I’m pregnant, not physically challenged.”
“Not yet,” chorused Kelly and Tricia.
Kelly stared at Renee’s belly. “By the time you’re ready to deliver you won’t be able to bend over to tie your own shoes.”
“Stop teasing the child,” Beatrice chided softly. “She’s carrying rather nicely.”
“When are you due, Renee?” Tricia asked.
“March third.”
Tricia sucked her teeth. “I’m due the beginning of July and already I can’t fit into my slacks.”
Kelly stared at her sister-in-law. “I told you even before you knew you were pregnant that I dreamt you were holding three fish. And that means you’re going to have triplets.”
Tricia sucked her teeth again, this time rolling her eyes at Kelly. “You and your lying dreams.”
Beatrice nodded. “You know the old folks say when you dream of fish you’re going to hear of a pregnancy.”
“I know for certain I’m having one,” Renee said quietly.
“Girl or boy?” Beatrice asked as she sliced a ripe mango.
“Girl.”
Kelly pressed her hands together. “Wonderful. Now Vivienne will have someone close to her age to play with.”
“May I feed her?” The question was out before Renee could censor herself.
Tricia looked at Renee and smiled. “Sure.”
“Where can I wash my hands?”
Tricia pointed to a door at the opposite end of the kitchen. “A bathroom is over there.”
The three women exchanged knowing glances as Renee went into the bathroom. “She’s going to need the practice before you, Tricia,” Kelly whispered to her sister-in-law.
Renee returned, exchanging seats with Tricia. Vivienne Blackstone was a beautiful little girl. She’d inherited her mother’s looks and her father’s curly black hair; her eye color had compromised. It was gunmetal-gray.
Over a dinner of chicken piccata, linguine with roasted garlic and oil, a tropical salad of smoked chicken with avocados and mangoes, toasted Italian bread and lemon sorbet, followed by a lively card game, Kelly and Tricia became the girlfriends Renee had left behind in Miami. Beatrice provided the sage advice she occasionally sought from her mother.
Ryan and Sean had returned from the dining hall in time to put Vivienne to bed; they retreated to the family room to watch a movie, leaving the women to their card game.
“Where did you learn to play bidwhist?” Kelly asked Renee.
“I used to watch my mother and aunts. How did you learn?”
Kelly smiled. “From my mother. She and her sorority sisters used to get together and play Sunday afternoons when they were in college.”
“How about you?” Renee asked Tricia.
“My grandmother taught me.”
Beatrice stared across the table at Renee. “Do young people still play?”
“I don’t think so. Some of the college students who worked part-time at the law firm where I worked talked about playing spades.”
Tricia laid down a card. “That’s too bad. I suppose we’re going to have to keep the tradition going.”
“You’re right,” Kelly concurred. “If Sheldon and his wild bunch can hang out at his cabin to play poker, smoke cigars and drink beer for their annual fall camping weekend, then I suggest we get together every other month for a bidwhist party.”
Tricia stared at her grandfather’s fiancée. “Did you smell cigar smoke on my grandfather when he got back this afternoon?”
Beatrice shook her head. “No. Gus swore he didn’t take one puff and neither did Sheldon, who told the other two guys that they couldn’t smoke inside the cabin.”
“They need to give up the cigars and the beer. It takes them two days to empty a keg,” Tricia grumbled.
“Get out!” Renee gasped. “That’s a lot of beer.”
Kelly put down her cards and placed a hand on her hip. “Why don’t you talk to your man?”
Renee’s eyes widened. “Sheldon’s not my man!”
Kelly lifted an eyebrow. “I didn’t mention Sheldon’s name. Gotcha!” she teased, pointing a finger at Renee.
Tricia peered over the top of her cards. “Is my father-in-law your man-n-n-n, Renee?” she drawled singsong.
“I’m not telling,” Renee teased back, flashing a dimpled grin.
Leaning across the table, Kelly and Tricia exchanged high-five handshakes. “Boo-yaw!” they chorused in unison.
Renee laughed until her sides hurt.
She was still chuckling under her breath as she climbed the porch steps and found Sheldon sitting on a rocker waiting for her. He rose to his feet, extended his arms and she moved into his embrace.
Burying her face in the soft fibers of his sweater, Renee felt safe, safer than she had ever been in her life. Even safer than when she’d slept in the Miami Beach mansion surrounded by gates, guard dogs and high-tech electronic surveillance equipment.
Easing back, she smiled up at Sheldon. “Are you ready for our sleepover?”
He returned her smile. “Yes, I am.”
Renee did not have time to catch her breath as he lifted her off her feet and carried her into the house. Sheldon shifted her body, locked the door and then headed for the staircase.
Sheldon did not walk to the end of hallway, but stopped before they reached his bedroom, lifting a questioning eyebrow. Every time he and Renee made love he had come to her. The only exception had been their first encounter at the cabin. However, the day of reckoning could not be postponed forever. He had to know whether she wanted him in her life as much as he wanted her.
“Yours or mine?”
Renee did not know how, but she knew what Sheldon was feeling at that moment. The doubts, questions as to where they and their relationship were heading, and if what they shared went beyond sharing a bed and their passion.
Closing her eyes, she affected a secret smile. “Yours.”
Sheldon lowered his head and pressed a kiss to the top of her head. In that instant all that made Renee Wilson who she was seeped into him, becoming a part of him.
It had taken three da
ys away from her, three days where he and three of his best friends had gotten together for their annual fall camping weekend, to remind him what had been missing in his life.
The wild bunch, as they’d called themselves, had become longtime friends who left the farm to kick back for several days of male bonding. They fished, hunted, cooked, smoked cigars, drank beer, swapped war stories and talked about the women they’d loved and lost. These men had become the brothers Sheldon always wanted, but never had. They were his confidants and his conscience.
However, this year it was different, different because although he had brought women to the cabin, none of them had touched the part of him that ached for more than a physical release. None of them were able to make him look beyond the basic human need of food, shelter and clothes for the one thing every human being needed for ultimate survival and perpetuation of oneself: love.
He’d stopped trying to rationalize why Renee had come to him carrying another man’s child beneath her heart. Why her and not some other woman, unencumbered by her past. And why did he feel so completely helpless whenever he thought about what she needed most: a husband. Jeremy’s parting cryptic statement was imprinted on his brain: “look at what you have, and what you could hope to have.”
He had enough money to last him well into old age, had transferred a horse-racing legacy to the next generation and had set aside ten thousand acres of prime property for his grandchildren. He had everything a man could ever hope for—everything but a woman to share his future and the dreams he had for the second half of his life. Every time he opened his mouth to say the two most blissful words a woman yearned to hear, they died on his lips.
He remembered his mother on her deathbed begging his father to “marry” her before she drew her last painful breath. And, although James Blackstone knew he was breaking the law and could have been sent to jail, he had married the woman whom he had loved.
Let go of the fear, his inner voice whispered. Renee wasn’t Julia and he was no longer a thirty-two-year-old single father with two young sons who depended on him for their daily needs. Marry her, the voice continued. And if he did marry, Renee and her daughter would become Virginia Blackstones, a name with clout and influence.
Walking into the bedroom, he placed her on the king-size bed. The side of the mattress dipped with his weight as he sat beside Renee. A loud pop, followed by a brilliant shower of burning embers behind a decorative fireplace screen threw macabre shadows on the whitewashed ceiling and walls.
Leaning over, Sheldon quietly, seductively removed and then placed Renee’s clothing on the bench at the foot of the large bed.
Renee did not open her eyes as she luxuriated in the gossamer touch of Sheldon’s fingertips as he sculpted the roundness of her swollen belly before moving up to trace the outline of her engorged breasts. One hand slipped between her knees, moving upward and parting her thighs as it traveled toward the source of heat and the soft throbbing making it almost impossible for her to lie motionless.
Reaching for his hand, she held it against her moist, pulsing warmth, unable to stop the moans coming from her constricted throat. If Sheldon did not take her—quickly—it would be over within seconds. His finger searched and found her. It was his turn to groan when her flesh convulsed around his digit.
Pulling back, he sat on his heels and pulled the sweater over his head. Within seconds his slacks and underwear were pooled on the floor. Gently, he shifted Renee until her buttocks were pressed to his groin. He rested her top leg over his, then eased his swollen flesh into her, both moaning in satisfaction as their bodies melded as one.
I’m home, the scalding blood in Renee’s veins sang. It wasn’t the modest house where she’d grown up in a Miami suburb; it wasn’t the shabby apartment where she’d lived with her mother and brother after her father’s untimely death; it wasn’t the small condominium apartment she’d bought after working two jobs to save enough money for the down payment; and it certainly wasn’t the palatial beachfront mansion with views of the Atlantic Ocean and passing luxury yachts and cruise ships in the distance. Sheldon Blackstone was home and everything the word represented: love, safety, comfort and protection.
Closing her eyes, she tried concentrating on anything but the hardness sliding in and out of her body. Her heart rate skyrocketed along with the uneven rhythm of her breathing. She experienced extreme heat, then bone-chilling cold that made her teeth chatter. Sheldon had set a pace that quickened, slowed, then quickened again until she was mindless with an ecstasy that had become a mind-altering trip shattering her into millions of pieces before lulling her back to a euphoric state that left her weak and mewling as a newborn.
Sheldon clenched his teeth as he fought a hopeless battle. He did not want to let go—release the passion streaking along the edges of sanity. He wanted the whirling, swirling sensations to last—forever if possible. The passion Renee wrung from him hurtled him to heights of erotic pleasure he had never experienced before—not with any woman. He quickened his movements, mindful of the child kicking vigorously in her womb, then went completely still as he moaned and poured out his passions in a flood tide that made him forget everything.
They lay joined, waiting until their hearts resumed a normal rate. Sheldon moved once to pull the sheet and blanket up and over their moist bodies, then as one they fell into a deep sated sleep.
Chapter Ten
Renee slipped out of Sheldon’s bed early Thanksgiving morning, retreating to her old bedroom to shower. She hadn’t slept there since the night of her bidwhist party with Kelly, Tricia and Beatrice.
Her daily routine had changed since she’d begun sleeping in Sheldon’s bedroom. She retired earlier and woke up earlier. Weather permitting she usually took a morning walk. And what Sheldon had told her about additional security around the perimeter of the farm had become apparent whenever she spied a man sitting on horseback with a rifle resting in the crook of an arm or slung across his chest.
Dressed in a bulky sweater, stretch pants, boots and a baseball cap, she set out on her walk. A haze hung over the valley like a diaphanous blue-gray veil. Although a national holiday it was not a farm holiday. Horses had to be washed, groomed and turned out into the paddocks for daily exercise.
Her early morning walks were now a part of her daily exercise regimen. The added weight had put pressure on her lower back, but since she’d begun walking it eased.
Forty minutes and a mile later, she stood in front of one of four barns where the Thoroughbreds were stabled. Several grooms were hosing down horses. She spied Shah Jahan as he stood motionless under the stream of water sluicing over his ebony coat. She couldn’t pull her gaze away from the long arching neck, noble head and the sleek powerful lines in half a ton of regal horseflesh. Jahan had raced twice since the International Gold Cup, and had come in first both times. The scorecard with Jahan’s racing statistics read:
Owner: Blackstone Farms
Trainer: Kevin Manning
Sire: Ali Jahir Dam: Jane’s Way
Starts: 3 Wins: 3 Earnings: $1.2 million
What had most people in the world of Thoroughbred racing wagging their heads was the fact that Shah Jahan had yet to celebrate his second birthday.
Nodding to the grooms, Renee walked into the barn. The sounds of stalls being swept out reverberated in the large space. The sweet smell of hay masked the odor of sweat, manure and urine.
She stepped aside just in time to avoid a ball of black and white fur scampering around her feet. Leaning down, she picked up a tiny puppy. It wiggled and yelped as it struggled to free itself.
“To whom do you belong?”
“No one, Miss Renee.”
Turning on her heel, Renee stared at Peter McCann, a teenager whose pleasant looks were neutralized by an outbreak of acne.
“Is he a stray?” she asked.
Peter nodded. “His mama whelped a litter about six weeks ago. Dr. Blackstone has already given away four. He’s the only one left. Doc already gave him his shots.”
Renee smiled at the large black eyes staring back at her. “What breed is he?”
“Mutt,” Peter replied, deadpan. “His mama is part lab and sheepdog. Don’t know about his papa. Lady Day must have snuck off the farm when she was in heat and found herself a man. She didn’t come back until she was ready to whelp. Now that she’s weaned this last one Dr. Blackstone plans to neuter her. He claims we have enough dogs to keep the horses company.”
Sheldon had explained to Renee that most horse farms kept either dogs or goats as pets to keep the stabled horses, which are by nature social animals, company. She did not know why, but she felt an instant kinship with the puppy.
“I think I’m going to take him home with me.”
“He’s going to be a big one, Miss Renee. Take a look at his paws.”
She looked at his paws. They were rather large for a small puppy. “If he’s part sheepdog, then he’ll adapt to staying outdoors.”
“None of the farm dogs come inside, except when it snows. If you’re going to take him home, then I’ll get a leash for you. I’ll also bring over some food after I finish up with my chores.”
Renee gave him a warm smile. “Thank you.”
It wasn’t until after she had attached the leash to the collar around the puppy’s neck that she thought about Sheldon. Would he even want a dog in his house? Had his sons grown up with pets?
She hadn’t had a pet of her own since her mother was forced to sell their house and move into an apartment where the landlord had posted a sign prohibiting pets of any kind.
The puppy tired, stopped and sat down. Squatting, she picked up the dog, cradling it against her jacket. She’d just walked past Jeremy and Tricia’s house when she saw Sheldon striding toward her. A sensual smile curved her mouth. He had a sexy walk. His back ramrod-straight, he swaggered, broad shoulders swaying from side to side.
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