“You know what to do,” he encouraged her, bringing his hands up under her arms and pulling her higher on him.
“No, I don’t” Losing her balance, she grabbed hold of the headboard above him.
“Sure you do,” he said, and she realized that grabbing hold of the headboard was exactly what he’d wanted her to do. He slid her higher and rose to kiss first one breast, then the other, then the hollow between them.
He was the seducer, she the seduced—but it didn’t really matter. Not when her reflexive response was to tighten her thighs around him, to curl her toes against the sides of his hips. Her reactions only seemed to arouse him more.
“Come higher,” he whispered. She didn’t know what he meant until he showed her, guiding her up against his chest and then cupping his hands around her bottom. “Let me love you this way.”
What way? she wondered, panicked but unable to resist as he urged her higher yet, up to his mouth. He slid his tongue between her legs and she let out a cry of shock.
“Stay with me, Allison.” He kissed her again, and again, deeper. Her hands gripped the headboard so hard they hurt. Her hips wanted to move, but he held them too tightly. His lips did wicked things to her, his tongue…She shook, trying to withstand the pressure, trying not to explode into a million pieces, trying to remain in control of herself.
Trying but failing. She felt herself convulsing, tumbling down into a vortex of hot, throbbing sensation. Jamie had caused this conflagration, this eruption, this indescribable pleasure. He’d seduced her. All she’d done was given him her heart and soul, and now look at her. She was nothing but love, nothing but trembling emotion.
Sighing brokenly, she collapsed on top of him. She barely felt him nudging her shoulders, rearranging her down over him, easing her legs apart around him—but she felt his entry, deep and possessive. And then she was burning again, exploding, succumbing to ecstasy. This time he was with her all the way.
“IF WE DO THIS AGAIN, I really will die,” she said a long time later.
“It wouldn’t be the worst way in the world to die,” he said, sounding as weak and happy as she felt.
The sheets.lay tangled around their bodies. Jamie occupied a surprisingly large portion of the bed, his long legs and arms everywhere around her, his chest cushioning her, his chin resting against the crown of her head.
“I still don’t know how this happened,” she muttered. “I swore to myself that it wouldn’t.”
“Well, now that it did, what are you going to do about it?” The question was not accusing but curious.
Allison knew damned well what she was going to do: love him and love his little daughter, hope that somehow he would be able to work out his situation—and that whatever solution he came up with would have room for her in it.
But she couldn’t tell him that. “I’m not sure,” she hedged. “I think we should check Samantha. And then I’d like to wash up a bit.”
“Good idea.” He shoved himself off the bed, moving a bit less vigorously than usual. No doubt their activities of the last few hours had left him, like her, aching in muscles and joints he’d forgotten he had. He strolled over to the dresser, tugged open a door and pulled out the gray T-shirt he’d lent her the last time she was in this room. “You can borrow this,” he offered, tossing the shirt to her. “It looks better on you than me.” He returned to the dresser and pulled out a pair of sweatpants, which he donned.
Allison ordered herself not to grieve over losing her spectacular view of his anatomy. As a nurse, she saw bodies in various states of undress quite often—mostly female bodies, but she’d had enough training to be able to work the emergency room and the general wards when the need arose. At Arlington Memorial, bodies were a clinical concept. They were the homes of human beings who had come to be healed, and Allison helped to repair the bodies while caring for the humans living inside them.
Bodies at the hospital were not sexual. They were not gorgeous enough to make a woman’s mind turn to mush. They were not a magnificent assemblage of parts, each one chanting “I’m male and I want you,” the way Jamie’s did.
She put on his shirt and swung her legs over the side of the mattress. Jamie walked back to the bed and grasped her hands, hauling her to her feet. He released one hand and clasped the other more tightly. As if he couldn’t resist, he leaned over and kissed her brow. “Let’s go.”
They left the bedroom. The silence in the hall could mean that Samantha was still asleep—or it could mean trouble. Allison unconsciously moved a little faster, hurrying Jamie along.
In the crib, Samantha was sound asleep, snoring serenely. “She looks good,” Allison said in a muted tone after a quick visual inspection. The baby’s complexion was a healthy pink and her hair was no longer stringy with sweat No dried mucus crusted her nose or eyes. A few fingers were jammed into her mouth.
“I love it when she’s asleep,” Jamie admitted, also keeping his voice down. At Allison’s reproachful scowl, he grinned. “Just being honest When she’s asleep, it’s like the whole world’s at peace. When she’s awake—” his grin widened “—it can seem like I’ve taken a detour and wound up in the middle of a revolution.”
“I think you and she are on the same side of the war,” Allison returned. “You’re supposed to be allies.”
“Tell her that,” he protested. “I’m ready to sign a truce. She’s not. Every time I think we’ve achieved détente, she stirs things up.”
“Learn to practice peace,” Allison advised. She studied the baby for a moment longer, then turned. “I think she’ll be all right for the time it’ll take us to shower.”
“We could save time by showering together,” he suggested, his eyes twinkling mischievously.
If they showered together, she doubted they would save time. Quite the contrary. But she wasn’t about to reject his offer. “Only if you wash my back,” she said.
He led her out of the nursery and back down the hall to his bedroom. “I’ll wash your back and your front. You’ll feel cleaner than you’ve ever felt before.”
She laughed. “That would depend on your definition of clean.”
He wiggled his eyebrows lecherously, which told her all she needed to know about his definition of clean. Still holding her hand, he ushered her through the master bedroom and into the bathroom. Seeing the glass wall, she hesitated.
She felt as if the entire world could see them. Well, of course that wasn’t true—but the trees could. So could birds and squirrels. That huge monarch butterfly gliding above a cluster of flowering clover could peek through the glass and see Jamie loosening the drawstring of his sweatpants and letting them drop to the floor. Fluttering its wings, it could aim its antenna at Allison as Jamie lifted the T-shirt over her head. Through the glass, the butterfly could feast on the sight of two naked lovers approaching the shower.
“This isn’t exactly private,” she murmured.
He misunderstood her. “If you want me to leave, I will.”
“No—I mean, the glass wall. Anyone outside could look in and see us.”
“Well…yeah. But I wouldn’t worry about it. There’s nobody outside.”
“What will you do when Samantha is old enough to play out there?” she asked. “You won’t be able to shower if she’s sitting and making a clover chain on that log over there.” Allison pointed to a pine tree knocked horizontal at the edge of the woods.
Jamie paused before reaching for the faucets and turning on the water. “Hmm,” he grunted.
Allison wondered whether the idea of Samantha’s growing old enough to go outside had ever crossed his mind. Did he actually think she was going to remain an infant forever? Had he considered that once she reached a certain age, her father’s nude body should not be on display through a glass wall?
What would he do when she reached that age? Replace the wall? Hang an opaque curtain over the glass? Refuse to take showers?
There was one other possibility, of course—but it was a possibility A
llison couldn’t bear to consider. She stepped into the tub, leaning on his steadying hand, and then moved beneath the rush of warm water. He stepped in behind her, and after a minute she felt him rubbing a spice-scented bar of soap between her shoulder blades in such a soothing swirl of lather that she decided she wouldn’t permit herself to consider the other possibility at all.
She was in love with this man. She simply refused to consider that he might give his daughter up.
“I’VE FOUND the mother,” Detective John Russo said.
It was Monday morning, but Jamie’s thoughts were still firmly lodged in the recent past, a weekend so sublime he felt the heavens—and his perfectly proportioned Botticelli angel—must have decided to forgive him for his sins, after all. Otherwise he would have been suffering right now, not walking around humming and grinning like a dope and feeling like the luckiest man in the world.
Samantha wasn’t suffering, either. The antibiotic seemed to have triumphed over whatever bug had caused her ear infection. She was back to ingesting formula in one end and expelling it out the other without missing a beat. She was back to grabbing his nose and whining and belching like a longshoreman and threatening his keyboard with her rambunctious limbs. Perhaps Jamie was imposing his own feelings on her, but she seemed truly glad that Allison was once again back in the McCoy world.
The three of them had gone out for lunch on Saturday. From the gourmet sandwich shop where they’d eaten, they’d driven to Allison’s house to see how Allison’s grandmother was faring. The elderly woman had instantly taken to Samantha. “Sammy, I’m Grammy,” she repeated over and over, as if she were reciting a Dr. Seuss poem. “Your dad is a bum, but he’s a very nice bum.”
While Allison’s grandmother was simultaneously complimenting and insulting him, Allison was fussing over her grandmother. She fetched her grandmother’s cane and escorted her into the backyard, where the elderly woman and the young child could sit in the shade of a crab apple tree beside the flower garden, which Grammy told him Allison had planted and tended herself.
Saturday evening, for want of a baby-sitter, Jamie brought Allison, Samantha and a shopping bag packed with containers of take-out Chinese food back to his house, where he and Allison dined on the porch. Then they retired to the den to watch a rented video of It Happened One Night, which Allison insisted was a romance but Jamie knew was really about superguy Clark Gable getting the better of Claudette Colbert.
And then they went to bed, where they made love as if it were the first time and they had to discover each other all over again.
Now Monday morning had arrived. He’d spent the past few hours guzzling coffee, engaging in a surprisingly fruitful telephone conversation with his old boss at the Arlington Gazette and getting started on a new column. He didn’t want to think about Luanne Pierson—or Luanne Hackett or Luanne Eldridge or whatever name the woman was going by these days. He didn’t want to think about all the crapola currently jamming up his life. He didn’t want to think about child abandonment, police investigations and custody battles. He wanted only to think about Allison Winslow and sex and the way she and he and Sammy all got along so well.
“You’ve found Luanne?” he asked into the phone, trying to force some enthusiasm into his voice.
At the other end of the line, Russo didn’t bother to sound enthusiastic. “You could say she found me, actually.”
“You mean she contacted you?”
“Her husband did. Hugh Pierson.”
Oh, God. Her husband was after Jamie. “Do you happen to know if he has a permit to carry a concealed weapon?” he asked Russo, figuring there was no harm in expecting the worst. In all ignorance, he’d slept with Hugh Pierson’s wife last September. Hugh Pierson was rich. Hell, Hugh Pierson didn’t have to carry a weapon. He could probably afford the best hit man in New England.
“Concealed weapons aren’t your problem,” Russo returned.
“Oh.” Jamie was hardly reassured. “What’s my problem, then?”
“According to Hugh Pierson, Luanne wants the baby back,” Russo informed him.
Jamie’s stomach lurched. He gripped the phone in one bloodless fist; his other hand clung to the arm of his desk chair. Five feet from his desk, Samantha was strapped into her state-of-the-art stroller, which Jamie had found could also serve as a baby seat. Its versatility wasn’t surprising, given how much he had paid for it.
Would Hugh Pierson’s wife have paid so much for a stroller? Jamie wondered irritably. Did it matter? What mattered was whether she was going to fight to get Samantha back—and what Jamie would do if she did.
Silence crackled along the wire. Jamie realized that Russo wasn’t going to say anything more, not unless Jamie jump-started the conversation. “Not that I’m committing, one way or the other,” he ventured, “but can she do that?”
“She’s the birth mother. And then there’s another thing,” Russo added. “Hugh Pierson says he’s the father.”
This time it was Jamie’s heart that lurched, slamming into his rib cage so hard he could almost feel the bones bruise from the impact. He took a deep breath, and another, not at all sure why this news was getting him so worked up. He was confused, certainly. He was confused to the point of mild dizziness. But much to his surprise, he was also angry.
Shouldn’t he be relieved? If he wasn’t Samantha’s father, no one could fault him for turning the baby over to the Piersons. He could deliver Samantha back to her true parents and resume his bachelor life of fun and frolic, all the while being viewed as a hero for taking such good care of Samantha. He’d fed her, mopped up after her, stayed awake nights with her, rushed her to the hospital and nursed her through an ear infection, with Allison’s help.
Another silver lining: Allison couldn’t condemn him for returning Samantha to the Piersons if they were Samantha’s blood parents. She couldn’t accuse him of being immoral or irresponsible. What could be more responsible than reuniting a child with her parents?
On the other hand, what could be more irresponsible than abandoning a baby on a stranger’s back porch? “Given that Luanne dumped the baby and ran away, can she take the baby back? I mean, legally, does she have a shot?” Jamie asked, amazed at how tense he was about Russo’s answer.
“I’d have to run that by Youth Services and the D.A.’s office,” Russo told him. “I don’t know if she’s a fit mother. The husband told me she’s hired a hotshot lawyer to represent her. I can imagine this is going to be one of those lawyers you don’t want to tangle with, what with the family connections and all. All of which may be academic.”
“Why?”
“As I said, Pierson claims the baby’s his. He didn’t abandon it. He says ever since he found out what his wife did, he’s been trying to locate the child.”
“He couldn’t have been trying too hard,” Jamie muttered.
Russo ignored the jibe. “No court is going to deprive a loving father of his baby.”
“A loving father?” Jamie erupted. Later he would figure out why he was so irritated by the notion of handing Samantha over to the Piersons. “What kind of loving father lets his wife ditch her baby and take off?”
“The kind of father who was estranged from his wife and didn’t know she was pregnant. I’m just telling you what’s going on, Mr. McCoy. Pierson wants the baby.”
“Okay.” Jamie glanced at the stroller. Samantha stared at him from her semireclining position, her eyes as round as silvery gray marbles. Meeting her luminous gaze caused his heart to slam into his ribs again. “Just theoretically,” he said, “and I’m only asking out of curiosity, but what if I refused to give the baby back?”
Russo didn’t reply immediately. “Well, if you wanted to keep custody of the baby, the first thing you’d have to do is get yourself an attorney as good as the one they’ve got. The next thing you’d have to do is take a blood test to establish paternity.”
“You mean if I don’t take a blood test, the court might simply assume that Pierson is the father?
”
“They might. Especially given that nobody’s arguing that Pierson’s wife is the mother.”
Jamie took another deep breath. It didn’t clear the rubble from his brain, which felt as if it had been carpet bombed. “What’s Pierson planning to do in the meantime?”
“I don’t know. He said he had to confer with his lawyer and then he’d discuss terms.”
“Terms? He wants to discuss terms with us? His wife committed a crime! He’s harboring a fugitive!”
“She isn’t a fugitive unless she’s running from the police. Which she isn’t. Yet.”
“She left her kid on my back porch. What kind of a mother is that?”
Again Russo paused before responding. He seemed to like to consider his words from every angle before he voiced them. “There are two possible answers to that,” he said. “First answer, she was distraught. Postpartum depression. She wasn’t thinking. She regretted it the instant she did it. I have the feeling this is the tack Pierson intends to take.”
Great. A postpartum mother. If Jamie was a judge, he’d be sympathetic. “What’s the other answer?” he asked with trepidation.
“The other answer is, it has nothing to do with her. Pierson is the one who wants the baby. If that’s the way they decide to play it, you can fight them by taking a blood test and establishing your paternity. If, in fact, the baby is yours. If she isn’t, you lose big.”
“And if I don’t take the blood test?”
“The court will probably assume in favor of Pierson. They like intact families.”
Jamie swiveled in his chair to look at Sam again. She was stretching her cheeks to accommodate as many fingers as she could cram into her mouth, and she was making moist little grunts. She was probably fouling her diaper. As soon as he got off the phone with Russo, he’d be hauling her off to the bathroom to hose down her butt.
He wasn’t cut out for this. Washing soiled infant butts had never been his life’s goal. If he didn’t fight Pierson, didn’t take the blood test, didn’t hire a lawyer, this whole thing would be over. No more sleepless nights, no more panic about baby-sitters, no more walking around with splatters of baby barf on his shirts.
Father Found Page 21
