Rumor Has It

by Tami Hoag

  Doing it right? he wondered. If she got any better at it, he was going to be in a lot of trouble. “We shouldn't make love again.” Even as he said the words he was hoping she would disagree with him.

  “Shouldn't we?” She looked so innocent—too innocent to be believed, he told himself. “Okay, but would you give me another kiss?”

  He obliged her without hesitation. The heat was instantaneous, burning away any good intentions he'd had. She tasted too sweet, was too willing. Without taking his mouth from hers, Nick shucked his pants. He was sliding down into the tub behind Katie before she knew what was happening.

  “Nick! What are you doing?” She squealed as water sloshed and lapped at the rim of the tub. She had enjoyed teasing him a little, but she had thought he would wait until she'd gotten out of the tub to further their amorous activities.

  “It's part of the breakfast- in- the- tub special,” he said, sliding his arms around her as his long legs stretched out on either side of her. His hands found her soap- slick breasts and began massaging them. He nipped at her earlobe. “The cook gets to have his way with you after the main course.”

  “Is that an old Italian custom?” she asked, gasping as he lifted her, then closing her eyes and sighing as he eased her down on him. She leaned back into him, loving the feel of having him deep inside her.

  “No.” He grazed her shoulder with his teeth. “It's a new Nick and Katie custom.”

  Breathlessly she said, “There's nothing quite as exciting as a new custom.”

  “Hear, hear.”

  EIGHT

  AS SPRING WARMED into summer, Katie found her days pleasantly filled to capacity. She and Maggie had more than enough business to keep them busy. What spare time she had was devoted to helping Nick around the restaurant or helping out at the Drewes mansion, where the renovation was nearing completion. Evenings were spent with Nick, when he wasn't working at Hepplewhite's.

  Katie was surprised and pleased to find they had many common interests. Even though he had spent his entire life in cities that were fast paced and exciting, Nick seemed to enjoy quieter pursuits. He liked movies—especially murder mysteries spiced with romance—and popcorn with no butter but lots of salt. He liked relaxing with a good book, a glass of wine, and soft music in the background. He liked lying in bed with Katie in his arms, sharing quiet talk and gentle love-making.

  She found herself more and more in love with Nick. It was a fascinating experience, one she never had had or expected to have. The world seemed a bright and wonderful place. Her senses seemed more acute—colors were more vibrant, sounds clearer, tastes more delightful. She never had really believed love could change a person's perceptions so, but she believed it now. She had to laugh at herself for behaving as if she were a star-struck girl. It was very unlike her, but she reveled in every minute of it.

  There were moments when she caught herself thinking it was too good to be true. Every so often questions about the future would creep into her mind. Where was her romance with Nick headed? She had stepped off the cautious path she had guided her life along for the last few years. Where was she now—on the road to happiness or heart ache?

  How long would it take before Nick realized she was holding him back from having everything he wanted? While he seemed content with the quiet evenings they were spending together, how long would it be before he grew restless and began longing for a woman who could be as active as he was capable of being, a woman he could go dancing with, a woman he could wrestle with in bed instead of one he had to be careful with? How long would it be before he would want a woman he could plan a family with?

  More often than not Katie pushed the questions away without even attempting to answer them. It made her furious to have doubts infringe on her happiness with Nick. She deserved to have this time with him. She deserved to have him love her. And she refused to let black thoughts about the future ruin her mood.

  Katie felt herself blossom as her friendship with Nick deepened and strengthened with their love. She felt relaxed and happy with him. They talked about everything from Broadway musicals to the beauty of the Blue Ridge Mountains. And they teased each other constantly about their respective accents and regional differences.

  Many evenings they took slow, relaxing walks, admiring people's gardens, enjoying small talk and the warm weather. They often stopped to chat with people who were out tending their lawns or sitting on their porches. He had an insatiable curiosity about his new neighbors.

  “I like to talk to everybody I meet here just so I can listen to their accent,” Nick commented as they strolled one evening. On his right side he held Watch's leash. His left hand held Katie's, but he dropped it often so he could express himself more fully.

  “Accent?” Katie arched a brow. “Isn't that exactly what a Yankee would say. Does it ever occur to Northerners that y'all are the ones with the accent?”

  “Yawl, yawl,” Nick said in an exaggerated drawl. He shot Katie a teasing grin. “What's yawl?”

  Katie gave him a saccharine smile. “It's a two-masted sailing vessel, but why would you ask? Oh, forgive me, I forgot, there isn't anything you people from New Jersey don't find fascinating to talk about. It's no wonder y'all talk so fast; you never run out of things to say.”

  “Are you saying I talk too much?” he questioned indignantly, stopping on the sidewalk and turning to face Katie with a fierce expression that was as phony as a three- dollar bill. He held one hand on his hip and gestured with the other. “Is that what you're saying to me—that I talk too much?”

  Grabbing Nick's hands, Katie raised up on tiptoe. Holding his hands still was almost as effective in getting him to stop talking as taping his mouth shut. “Shut up and kiss me, Yankee,” she said in a smoky tone of voice that drove Nick wild.

  He pressed his lips to hers for a quick kiss that turned into a leisurely kiss, as hot and slow as a Southern summer night. She brushed against him, her fingers playing with his hair where it curled against the back of his neck as his tongue curled around hers. Their bodies lingered against each other as their lips broke contact reluctantly.

  Katie's voice was a low, seductive purr when she spoke. “By chance, we happen to be right outside my house. Shall we go in and discuss our regional dissimilarities further?”

  “I think I'd rather discuss our anatomical dissimilarities, if it's all the same to you.”

  “It's not all the same,” she pointed out with a saucy grin, more than a little aroused by the smoldering fires in his dark eyes. “That's what makes it fun.”

  With a devilish chuckle, he started to turn toward the house but stopped. Standing stock-still on the sidewalk no more than three feet from Watch were two little girls. The older was perhaps five. She wore a gingham sundress and held the hand of a chubby toddler dressed in a sunsuit. Both had bright red hair, and blue eyes that were opened wide as they stared at the panting wolf hound.

  They were adorable, Nick thought as he knelt down, but then, he was a sucker for little girls. If he ever had daughters of his own, they were going to get away with murder. He stroked the dog absently and smiled at the little girls. “Hi there. Are you ladies lost?”

  The older girl shook her head. She pointed to the house next door to Katie's. “Our grandma lives there. That sure is a big dog.”

  “He's big all right,” Nick said. As if on cue, Watch turned and licked his cheek. “But he's real friendly.”

  The baby's face split into a cherubic grin. She giggled and pointed at the dog. “Puppy.”

  Nick laughed. They were priceless. The older one had her hair up in an off- center ponytail and carried a big green purse she undoubtedly had borrowed from her grandmother. The little one wore yellow rabbit barrettes in her fine hair and pink Popsicle stains on her face.

  “He's a nice puppy. Would you like to pet him?” he asked. As they nodded hesitantly, Nick glanced over his shoulder to get Katie's permission. He had expected to see her smiling, as delighted by the two urchins as he was. What
he saw was a pale face and a pair of gray eyes so filled with despair, it was like taking a punch in the gut to see them. “Katie?” he asked gently, “is it okay for them to pet the dog?”

  Willing her lips to turn up in a smile, Katie choked down the lump in her throat and tried to sound normal. “Of course. Watch loves children.”

  And so did Nick. He looked so natural with the little girls, so at ease. She envied him. It was a trait she had never possessed, because she had never spent any time around small children. It was a trait she would never cultivate now, because to give herself that freely to other people's children was like tearing out bits of her heart and giving them away. Obviously it wasn't the same for Nick. What a wonderful father he would make someday—someday, for some other woman's children, she thought.

  It wasn't difficult for Katie to hold her tears out of sight behind her eyes. She had done it many times before. The mask of polite interest slipped into place automatically, if a little late.

  She knelt down beside Nick and helped him show the little girls all of Watch's favorite places to get scratched. Then she excused herself and went to the house, hoping Nick would linger outside long enough for her to push her feelings into the little box she usually kept them locked in deep inside her. If she was very, very lucky, he wouldn't ask any questions.

  She was in the kitchen pouring lemonade from a sweating pitcher into iced glasses when he came in. She heard the door close, heard his footsteps on the heart- pine floor of the living room. He stopped at the entrance to the kitchen. She could feel his gaze on her.

  “Is it really so difficult for you?” he asked.

  The urge to cry crashed into her like a tidal wave. Katie swore under her breath. She never dissolved into tears in front of people—never. The problem was, the scene on the sidewalk had taken her by surprise. Old feelings of hurt had surged to the surface before she'd had a chance to stop them. Now Nick was offering her an outlet for those feelings, but one of her greatest fears had been that once she started to let those feelings out, they would never stop, they would pour out in a flood tide and drown her.

  Very deliberately she raised her glass to her lips and took a sip of the cold drink, letting it wash down her hot, dry throat. When she spoke she sounded in control. “Sometimes.”

  He didn't understand. He was trying, but Katie could see he didn't understand. She could have explained it to him in the concise, clinical way of a psychologist. She could have told him that the ideal process for the successful resolution of feelings toward infertility were not unlike the stages toward acceptance of death. She could have explained that while most of the time she felt as if she had completely accepted her fate, she sometimes fell back into the anger stage because she was a goal- oriented person who was being denied a life goal. She could have explained that she often didn't feel entitled to her sense of loss because she had willingly chosen to participate in a dangerous sport and felt she had to accept the consequences. She could have explained, but she didn't want to.

  How could she expect him to understand the kind of loss she had suffered? How could she possibly make him understand the hollow feeling she got knowing she would never experience pregnancy, would never know what it was to feel her child grow inside her, to give it life, to nurse it at her breast. How could he feel any of her emotions? He was a man. He couldn't feel the loss of a privilege that had never been his.

  Nick hated it when she shut him out. He could feel her going inside her emotional isolation booth and vowed to stick his foot in the door before she could close it.

  “Katie,” he said, reaching out to her, “talk to me. Help me understand what you're feeling. Don't shut me out.”

  She moved to look out the window above the sink, effectively dodging contact with him, but she didn't voice an objection when he stepped behind her and corralled her against the counter with an arm on either side of her. She sighed and resigned herself to giving him as brief an explanation as he would accept.

  “After my mother left us, I used to lie awake nights thinking about the children I would have when I grew up, and what a wonderful mother I'd be. It will never happen to me, Nick. It hurts.”

  The intensity of the hurt had taken her by surprise. It always stung a little to encounter children—she expected it. But it had been years since the pain had been as sharp as when she'd looked down at Nick and those two darling little redheads. Weeks ago she had seen him with Zoe's little daughter in his arms. What she'd felt then had been nothing in comparison. The difference, she realized, was that she hadn't been in love with him then.

  It hurt him too. It cut at Nick's heart to see Katie in pain. He knew how full of love she was. She could be cool and aloof, but he knew that behind her shield was a woman who was perhaps too sensitive, too easily hurt. Glimpses of the vulnerable side of Katie never failed to bring out his protective instincts, never failed to make him love her more. He wrapped his arms around her and drew her back against his body.

  “It's not an all or nothing proposition,” he said softly, following her gaze as she stared out the window. Watch rolled on his back in the grass with an enormous rawhide bone in his mouth. “Adoption is a perfectly good alternative.”

  “Not for me.”

  “Why not?”

  Why not? Because she didn't want to be a single parent, and what man was going to want someone else's children when he was perfectly capable of fathering his own? Why not? Because what she knew of the process seemed so cold, analytical, and businesslike. It reminded her too much of people coming to the farm to buy foals— weeding through the crop, looking for what characteristics were important to them. The whole procedure made her question her own reasons for wanting to become a parent in the first place.

  If he wanted to hear deeper reasons, they were there as well. But Katie didn't offer them to him. In love with him or not, she was too used to keeping her own counsel to open up her innermost self for examination by Nick.

  She said simply, “It just isn't.”

  “That's not a reason, Katie, that's stubbornness. Lots of people adopt kids. It's an option to give you what you want—why won't you look at it?”

  Anger that had been simmering just under the surface bubbled up. She turned in his arms and tried to push him away. She didn't succeed, but he took the hint and stepped back. “I've had five years to look at it,” she said, glaring up at him. “I've lain awake nights looking at it. How long have you spent looking at it, five minutes?”

  The last thing he'd meant to do was add to her hurt, yet he'd done so with his careless advice. The evidence of his mistake shimmered in her eyes and trembled on her wide, soft mouth. He could have kicked himself. Hitching his hands to his hips he sighed in defeat. “I'm sorry. I shouldn't have—”

  “No, you shouldn't have,” she said. Abandoning her drink on the counter she walked stiffly past Nick to the bathroom and shut herself inside.

  She half expected him to be gone when she came back out nearly half an hour later. She had needed the time by herself to regain control, to raise her defensive shield of cool composure, to put all her feelings back into their compartments where they usually stayed. Maybe she had wanted Nick to take some time to think too. Maybe if he thought about the situation, he would opt out now.

  She wouldn't blame Nick. It wasn't his fault she couldn't give him a family. It didn't do any good to rail against fate either. She knew; she'd already wasted too much time doing that. But it was hard not to curse her fate. After everything that had happened, didn't she deserve some compensation? She loved Nick—deeply, selfishly, possessively. The last thing she wanted was to let him go.

  Methodically she went through her bedtime ritual of washing her face, brushing her teeth, combing out and braiding her waist- length hair. Phys ically and emotionally drained she undressed, dropping her clothes into the white wicker hamper. She slipped into the robe she kept on a hook beside the door, belting it snugly.

  Taking a deep breath to clam herself, Katie sank down o
nto the vanity chair and leaned her elbows on her knees. She was overreacting. The subject of children had blindsided her, and she automatically had turned defensive. Now she calmly made a mental list of her attributes, of the positive things she could bring to a relationship. She reviewed the bright side of her life—good friends, a business she had built and was extremely proud of.

  She couldn't have children and had decided against adoption after a great deal of soul-searching. It wasn't the end of the world. A fulfilling, meaningful life was not based on one's ability to reproduce. She would have to sit down with Nick and explain her feelings to him like the cool-headed, responsible adult she normally was. All she had to do now was hope he hadn't left after deciding she was a raving lunatic.

  Nick wasn't gone.

  Katie stepped from the bathroom to find her bedroom aglow with candlelight—a soft, honey-gold light that warmed the peach- colored walls to a rich melon hue. The shades had been drawn, the bedclothes turned down invitingly. The radio on the table beside her bed murmured a slow, romantic song. There was a single peach rose lying on her pillow. And there was Nick with his sincere dark gaze on her and his arms open wide.

  Feeling as if she had just received a reprieve, Katie walked into his embrace and fell even more deeply in love with him. Her lips trailed across his chest as her arms went around him, and tears of relief tried to force their way out from behind the barrier of her tightly closed lids.

  “I'm sorry,” she whispered, not quite certain what she was apologizing for—for flying off the handle, for leaving him alone, for not being able to have his children?

  Nick's hand slid over her hair as he held her close. “Shh, it's all right, kitten. I'm sorry too. We'll work it out.”

  We'll work it out. Katie had a feeling the statement meant something different to each of them. To her it meant she would be able to convince Nick she had made the only decision she could. To Nick it probably meant he thought he would be able to convince her to choose the alternative open to her.