Father Found

by Judith Arnold

  His baby. Yet Allison had taken care of Sam the way a mother might. Gratitude barely began to describe what he was feeling.

  His feelings were irrelevant, though. He ought to be thinking about Allison’s feelings—specifically her feelings of aching bones and stiff muscles from having fallen asleep on the floor.

  He returned to his bedroom, smoothed out the sheets on his mattress and plumped the pillows. The least he owed Allison was a few hours of serious sleep on the most comfortable bed in the house.

  Returning to the nursery, he studied her for a moment. She hadn’t moved in his absence. She was obviously in a deep slumber. Was it deep enough for him to be able to carry her to his room without waking her up?

  There was only one way to find out. He squatted down beside her, slid one arm under her shoulders and the other under her knees and hoisted her into his arms. Her height made her unwieldy, and she weighed more than he’d expected—dead weight, since she remained fast asleep. Carefully, he hoisted her higher against his chest and straightened up.

  Without opening her eyes, without acknowledging that he was holding her, she looped her arms around his neck and rested her head against his shoulder. A quiet sigh escaped her.

  Her hands felt surprisingly sensuous at the nape of his neck, cool and soft. How soothing they must have felt on Samantha through the night. How soothing they must feel on all her patients. He wouldn’t mind being one of her patients right now, even if it meant regressing to Sam’s age. Allison would cradle him in her arms and cuddle him and peer intently into his face and say things to him, things he wanted to hear. And those smooth, capable hands of hers would stroke him and clasp him and…

  These were the kind of thoughts that made it difficult for him to walk. He let out a slow breath, then lugged her out of the nursery and down the hall to his bedroom. He lowered her onto the bed and did one of the hardest things he’d ever done—eased her hands from the back of his head and walked away from her.

  Feeling rather noble, he stalked to the kitchen and prepared a pot of coffee. While it was brewing, he ducked into his office, turned on the computer and called up the file containing his current column, about mothers selecting allegedly perfect mates for their sons. He returned to the kitchen to fill a mug with coffee, then headed back to the office to finish the column, all the while knowing that his mother could not possibly have met the perfect woman for him, because the perfect woman for him was lying in his bed right now, and he was being shamefully decent and moral and staying away from her.

  The column practically wrote itself. It contained cerebral chuckles and belly laughs, wry irony and droll wit. It was brilliant, or at least passable. When his mother read it in her local Arizona newspaper in a couple of weeks, she would never see herself in it.

  He printed a hard copy of the article for himself, then faxed a copy through his computer to his syndication company. His mug was empty, and he went back to the kitchen for a refill.

  The clock on the wall said ten-thirty. Allison had said she didn’t have to work at the hospital today, but even so, she might want him to wake her up so she could go home. Her grandmother might need her or she might want to buy groceries…or she might just want to get away from him.

  He filled a second mug with coffee and carried both mugs down the hall, stopping along the way to check on Samantha. She was still snoring, evidently making up for the several sleepless nights she’d suffered along with Jamie.

  Past the nursery, he entered his bedroom. Allison had rolled onto her side. Her hair spread in a riot of auburn locks across his pillow, and her shirt had ridden up slightly to reveal a sliver of skin above the waistband of her jeans. Her lips were parted slightly, pursed into the shape of a kiss.

  Bringing her the coffee had been a mistake. If this was a test of his willpower, his willpower was mighty close to flunking. The only way he could get out of the bedroom with his decency intact would be to leave the coffee on the night table without awakening her and sprint through the door as quickly as possible.

  He stole across the room, silent in his bare feet, and set the mug down with a muted thud. Just as he started to straighten up, her eyes flew open.

  “Jamie?” Her voice was hoarse, muffled by drowsiness and the pillow.

  He took a giant step backward. “I brought you some coffee.”

  She blinked and slid her hand along the surface of the sheet, exactly the way he’d imagined her sliding her hand across the surface of his skin. “Why am I in your bed?” she asked, sounding less troubled than curious.

  “You fell asleep on the floor of the nursery. I carried you in here because I thought you’d be more comfortable. That’s all there is to it, I swear.”

  “Don’t swear.” She pushed herself up to sit and reached for the coffee. With the mug halfway to her mouth, she hesitated and shot him a startled look, as if her mind were only just coming into focus. “You carried me in here?”

  “I told you, you’re a skinny Botticelli angel.”

  “And you’re an Olympic weight lifter.” She put the mug back on the night table and studied him. “I was in your arms?” she asked in a small voice.

  He swallowed, feeling certain parts of his anatomy do the guy thing as he picked up her radar. “Yeah,” he said just as softly.

  “And I didn’t even wake up?”

  “You put your arms around me,” he told her.

  She sighed, obviously embarrassed. Her cheeks grew pink.

  “I know you didn’t mean anything by it,” he told her.

  She shot him another piercing look. “How do you know that?”

  If his willpower hadn’t already failed, this was enough to push it into the D-minus column. He wasn’t even aware of walking back to the bed, but in less than a second he was there, practically dropping his mug on the night table next to hers and offering himself for her to put her arms around again. She did, without hesitation, without explanation. She did it as if she understood that it had to be done, that not putting her arms around him would kill them both.

  “I don’t want to want you,” she whispered as he rained kisses over her face. “I don’t want to feel this way.”

  “It’s okay,” he assured her. He had no idea what it was, let alone whether it was okay. All he knew was that he felt the exact same way she felt, and pretending otherwise wasn’t doing either of them any good.

  “I dreamed you were carrying me to your bed,” she confessed. “I didn’t think it was real.”

  “It was. It is,” he said, touching his lips to her cheeks, the bridge of her nose, the delicate, narrow tip. “This is so real, Allison. It doesn’t get any more real than this.” Her skin was like velvet against his lips, velvet dipped in fresh berries. Did his soap really smell so good or had she brought her own soap with her in that toiletries bag?

  He kissed a path down to her mouth and held his breath, waiting for her to come to her senses and push him away. But she didn’t. She closed her arms more tightly around him and moaned in resignation, in relief, in pleasure as he sank onto the bed beside her and took her mouth with his. She opened to him, welcoming his tongue, burying her fingers in his hair and arching against him.

  He knew what she meant about not wanting to feel this way. The feelings were too uncontrollable, too massive to contain. The tenderest, toughest woman he’d ever met was kissing him as if her life depended on it, and maybe it did. Her tongue did wicked things to him, her legs shifted to accommodate his weight between them and she arched again, pressing herself against him. He felt the sweet curves of her breasts as she moved, and the tautness of her nipples. That physical sign of her arousal short-circuited the wiring of his psyche, rendering him unable to think of anything beyond now, anyone but Allison.

  This was dangerous. It wasn’t fun, it wasn’t a lark—it was, as he’d warned her, as real as it got. He wasn’t sure he was ready to accept so much reality at one time—but he couldn’t stop. He couldn’t stop wanting her even more than she wanted him, couldn
’t stop kissing her, leaning into her, nestling between her thighs and feeling her shudder, hearing her gasp.

  “Allison,” he groaned, tearing his lips from hers. His heart was pounding like a jungle drum, sending urgent messages throughout his body. “Allison, if you want me to stop, say so now. Because if I keep kissing you, I’m not going to be able to stop.”

  “Don’t stop,” she pleaded, tightening her hands at the base of his neck and pulling him down to her. “Don’t stop.”

  This was it, then. Reality at its most compelling. She had told him not to stop, so he started.

  He pulled back enough to reach for her shirt and draw it up. She released him and slid her arms through the sleeves, then circled her arms around him once more as he brought his hands down along the narrow straps of her bra to her breasts. Through the cream-colored lace he could see the dark circles of her nipples, plump and straining at the fabric. He teased them with his fingertips, loving the way she sucked in a breath and writhed beneath him, loving even more the way she looked once he’d undone the clasp and shoved away the fabric. Her breasts were soft and round, golden flushed with pink. If he kissed them, he expected to taste peach.

  He lowered his mouth to the tantalizing flesh and tasted not peach but Allison, lush, ripe Allison. The way she moaned when he closed his lips over one nipple made him wonder whether he could make her come just by doing this. The temptation to try was great, but she clearly had other ideas. She groped at his shirt, tore at it until he shucked it and tossed it across the room, and then he realized he was the one in danger of climaxing from nothing more than her touch, the erotic brush of her fingertips against his skin.

  She caressed him as if he were a sculpture and she were a blind person. She traced each rib, each sinew, each curve and hollow. She stroked his nipples, his sternum, the dusting of hair that daggered down to his navel. She explored his back, his shoulders, the bunched muscles of his upper arms as he propped himself above her. She touched the small of his back, and he had to bite his lip to keep from groaning.

  “This was part of my dream, too,” she admitted, following the edge of his jeans forward to his fly.

  “Quite a dream. I wish I’d been there,” he joked, although his voice was too ragged to sound particularly funny.

  “You were there. You are there.” The button at the top of his fly came loose, and she slid the zipper open.

  “Allison,” he whispered, his voice all but gone. She traced his hardness through his briefs, and he didn’t bother to smother his moan this time. “You do that again and I won’t be responsible for my actions,” he cautioned her, though he did nothing to stop the tentative motion of her hand on him.

  “You’d better be,” she warned.

  He laughed. She smiled. He hadn’t expected her to be this unselfconscious—not that she was overly aggressive, but she wasn’t behaving like the prim and proper nurse he might have expected. She was adventurous, playful, bold. Hotter than he’d dared to imagine.

  He worked off her jeans and panties. When he reached between her legs, she lurched and bit back a cry. He slid his fingers down over her, into her, and she clamped her lip between her teeth and closed her eyes, as if to focus all her attention on his hand.

  She felt like heaven, slick with arousal. Again he was tempted to do nothing but this until she came. Her hands tensed against his thighs; her head fell back against the thick down pillows. She was so close, so very close.

  He wanted to be as close as she was. He wanted to be with her when she peaked. He wanted—God help him, he wanted her more than he wanted to want anyone.

  He was scarcely able to pull back enough to reach into his night table drawer for protection. Scarcely able to tear open the envelope and ready himself for her. She flexed her fingers against his thighs and hips. Her fingernails pinched just enough to launch him into orbit.

  He cupped her hips with his hands and plunged into her. He heard himself mouth her name, heard her breathe his. Almost instantly he felt the magic, her magic, that miraculous moment when her body turned from mortal flesh into blazing sensation, action and reaction. She felt so good, so good. So good…

  He was lost. Deep inside her, captured by her, taken by her. Like a chain reaction, she ignited him and Jamie McCoy vanished. All that was left of him was energy, ecstasy and the soul-shaking knowledge that Allison Winslow had changed his world.

  Oh, yes. He was lost.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  SHE’D REALLY DONE IT this time. She’d won the Gold Medal in the Stupidity Olympics. All that was missing was the playing of the national anthem.

  She was too honest to blame what had happened on sleepiness or sympathy or Jamie’s eyes—or on the hours she’d spent comforting and bonding with his fretful little daughter last night. No, Allison had managed to fall in love with Jamie all by herself. And, like a world-class athlete, she’d discovered, in the physical expression of that love, that she was capable of giving more, feeling more and wanting more than she’d believed possible.

  He propped himself up above her. He’d shaved since she’d last seen him, but his hair was mussed—no doubt her questing fingers were responsible for that. His lips were damp from her kisses. His lean, hard chest hovered above hers, and she gave serious thought to flinging her arms around him and pulling him back down on top of her.

  His body was still locked deep inside her. She fluctuated around him in ebbing pulses—and each pulse was so sweet, so utterly lovely. She’d never known sex could be this wonderful. If she had, she probably would have thrown herself at Jamie a whole lot sooner.

  How could she love him? He was the sort of man who slept with strangers, who spilled his seed indiscriminately, who knew how to get a woman to do what needed doing. He’d figured out a way to lure Allison to his house, to have her care for his sick child all night long and to carry her, literally, off to his bed the following morning.

  Yet gazing up into his face, seeing the sublime pleasure radiating in his eyes and curving his mouth in a faint, astonished smile, she couldn’t ascribe such base motives to him. In any case, he hadn’t taken anything she hadn’t given willingly, blissfully…stupidly.

  “I’m sorry,” he murmured, bowing to brush a kiss against her lips.

  “Are you?”

  “I rushed. I got carried away. I wanted you so much, for so long…. Can we do it again, slower?”

  If they did it again, it just might kill her. If she didn’t die, she would surely fall even more deeply in love with him—not a particularly good idea.

  As if that mattered at this point. What was the old saying about shutting the barn doors after the horse had run away? She was already in love with Jamie, foolishly, recklessly in love with him. Even though he himself had won the men’s gold in stupidity thanks to his mistake ten months ago, even though his life was still a disastrous mess and she was afraid to get saddled with the chore of sorting it out for him, she loved him.

  “Yes,” she said. Gold medalists ought to revel in their prizes, at least until the thrill wore off and the repercussions set in. “Yes, we can do it again. As slowly as you want.”

  A sound passed through his parted lips, almost a groan, almost a sigh of pleasure. He flicked his tongue against her teeth, moved his hips in a leisurely circle and grinned when she gasped at the way his body revived inside her. “Did I mention that you’re beautiful?” he asked, framing her face with his hands, pushing her hair back from her cheeks and peering down at her as if he intended to memorize every freckle, every pore.

  “You don’t have to say things like that.” She skimmed her hands along the knotted ridges of his shoulders. “I don’t need sweet talk.”

  “I said it because it’s true. Sweet talk is not one of my many talents.”

  “What was that, then? Sour talk?”

  “True talk.” He moved his hips again, and she felt a sharp tug in her womb, her own arousal blossoming once more.

  “Tell me about your many talents,” she challen
ged him, her voice oddly breathless.

  “Why tell you? I’ll show you,” he promised.

  He withdrew from her, and she wanted to protest. But she couldn’t, because he was kissing her, and kissing him back seemed like a better idea than arguing with him. He rolled off her to lie beside her, bringing her with him so they could face each other, their heads sharing a pillow. Running his hand down her side, he followed the slope of her waist, the rise of her hip. “Did I say you were skinny?” he murmured, ending the kiss just when she was beginning to contemplate whether passing out from a lack of oxygen was worth losing contact with his lips. “You aren’t”

  “I’m fat?” she countered, pretending to be hurt.

  “You’re slimly feminine.”

  “And you’re a writer. Clever with words.”

  “You asked about my talents. That’s one of them,” he joked, stroking the outer edge of her thigh before gliding back to up to her hip and clamping his fingers over the curve. He rolled again, onto his back, and lifted her onto him. “There,” he said. “I’m giving you the upper hand. This is your chance.”

  She straddled him, sandwiching his hips with her knees and settling herself provocatively against his groin. “My chance for what?”

  “Your chance to seduce me.”

  “I thought I already did that.”

  “You were half asleep.”

  “And I thought this was about your talents, not mine.”

  “One of my talents,” he teased, playing his hands deftly over her belly and up to her breasts until her breath caught in her throat, “is that I can persuade you to seduce me.”

  She wasn’t a seductress. She wouldn’t know how to go about seducing anyone, let alone an experienced man like Jamie. But when she moved against him again, he moaned and reciprocated, twisting below her, using his body to stroke her.

  “Jamie.” She closed her eyes, felt her elbows become too wobbly to hold her up and sank onto him. “Tell me what to do.”