“Yes, we agreed to the divorce, and we agreed to share custody of Eliott. But you said I could keep him with me for the first year. Have you changed your mind?”
“I’ve changed my mind about a lot of things,” he told her.
Tears of disappointment and anger filled her eyes. Had all of Adam’s kindness, all his loving concern, all his possessive protectiveness been a lie? Did he want a divorce immediately? Did he want to begin the joint custody right now? Was that why he’d insisted on hiring a nurse?
“I should have known,” she said softly, and swallowed her tears.
He turned and saw her pale face, her trembling chin, the teardrops clinging to her lashes. “Blythe... babe... what’s wrong? What did I say to upset you?” He gently grasped her shoulders.
She glared at him as tears trickled down her cheeks. “Don’t be nice to me. Don’t you dare be nice to me! You want a divorce? Well, give me the damn papers to sign. I’ll give you your divorce. But you are not going to take Elliott. Not now. Not even if you have a dozen nurses to take care of him. You promised me that I could keep him the first year. We had a bargain.”
Adam grinned, his heart swelling with hope. Dear God, he had tried to figure out a way to approach this subject, to tell her that he planned to break their agreement. He’d been so afraid she wouldn’t want to stay married to him, and now here she was practically throwing a fit because she thought he wanted a divorce immediately.
He tightened his hold on her shoulders. “I’m never going to take Elliott away from you. That’s a promise.”
She gazed directly into his black eyes and wasn’t sure if she could believe what she saw. “Are you saying that you don’t want joint custody anymore?”
“I’m saying that...” If she took offense at what he was about to say, he’d have to deal with it later. He was who he was, and he couldn’t go about this differently. He damn well didn’t want to give her a choice in the matter. “There isn’t going to be a divorce. I’m not letting you go. Even if you think we can’t make our marriage work, I’m going to prove to you that we can. Elliott doesn’t need to live with his father part of the time and his mother part of the time. He needs to grow up in a home where his parents are together.”
Blythe stared at Adam for several seconds, then blinked away her tears. “You want us to stay married for Elliott?” This was what she’d been afraid might happen if she ever gave Adam any encouragement. But she didn’t want to remain married to a man for the sake of their child. She wanted, she needed—no, she had to have his love.
“Elliott doesn’t need parents trying to live together, trying to make a marriage work, when they don’t love each other.” She cupped Adam’s cheek with her hand. “No matter how hard we tried, it just wouldn’t work.”
“Even if you don’t love me now, you might learn to love me. Eventually.” Releasing her shoulder, he covered her hand with his. “I know I’m not your ideal man, but I’ll try my best not to drive you crazy with my unacceptable behavior. And we have a lot more in common than either of us realized. Not to mention Elliott.”
He eased his hand around to grasp the back of her neck. Drawing her mouth up to his, he sighed against her lips. “And the sex between us is incredible,” he said. “That’s more than a lot of couples have.”
She was tempted, so very, very tempted. “Oh, Adam.” She kissed him. light. Sweet. Quick. “How could we spend the rest of our lives together without love?”
“You don’t think there’s any way you could ever love me?” he asked.
She saw the look in his eyes again, that unbelievable look that made her stomach flutter and her heart fill with hope. “Me, love you? Oh, Adam.”
He released her and turned his back, stumping his shoulders. “Yeah, I guess it’s too much to hope that you could ever love me the way I love you.”
“What?” Despite the achy pull of her stitches, she scooted over to him, wrapped her arms around his waist, and laid her head on his back. “Would you repeat that, please?”
He tensed, his body going completely rigid. “Yeah, it was pretty stupid of me, wasn’t it, to go and fall in love with you, when I knew how you felt about—”
“But I do love you, Adam,” she said, her face pressed against his back. “I started falling in love with you not long after we got married.”
He whipped around, took her in his arms and stared into her moist hazel eyes. “You love me?”
“Yes, I love you, you big dope.” She smiled through her tears. “I can’t believe you hadn’t already figured it out. I mean, every time you touch me, I fall to pieces.”
“I thought it was just sex,” he said. “On both our parts. Wild, wonderful and fabulous, but just sex. At least, I kept telling myself that’s all it was.”
“When did you realize it was more than sex...that it was love?”
“God, woman, if you hadn’t just had a baby, just had surgery, I’d make love to you all day and night.” He slipped his arms beneath her, lifted her gently and set her down in the middle of the bed, placing her back against the pillows. He cupped her face with his hands. “I told Craig, right before Elliott was born, that I loved you, but I’d figured it out weeks ago. The day Joy had to rush you to the hospital. For a little while there, I was afraid I might lose you. The truth hit me like a ton of bricks. My life wouldn’t be worth a damn without you, babe.”
She draped her arms around his neck. “Do you think maybe we’ve been in love all along? I mean, even before we got married? Maybe even that first night we spent together, when I conceived Elliott?”
“Yeah, I figure it was love at first sight for both of us, and we let all our prejudices get in the way.” He leaned her into the pillows, kissing her slowly, lingering over each touch. “I’ll be crazy by the time the doctor gives us the okay to make love again.”
“Well, you’re very resourceful when it comes to figuring out how to get things accomplished.” She tiptoed her fingers down his chest, across his taut abdomen and across the crotch of his slacks.
His arousal strained upward against her hand. “Don’t tempt me, babe. Not until you can make good on that silent promise you just made, and not until I can love you the way you deserve to be loved.”
“That could be weeks and weeks.” She cuddled against him, sighing with happiness when he wrapped her tenderly in his arms.
“I won’t like having to wait, but I’ll manage somehow. If I can hold you in my arms and kiss you, and sleep by your side every night, and help you take care of our son, it will be enough for the time being.”
“You’re lying.” She laughed, the sound free and joyous. “But I love you for it.”
“And I love you, babe. I love you more than anything in this world.”
An hour later Nurse Hobart woke Mr. and Mrs. Wyatt, who had fallen asleep in each other’s arms.
“I’m so sorry to bother you,” she said. “But Elliott is hungry, and he’s making quite a fuss about it.”
Blythe unzipped her purple velvet caftan, released the catch on the cup of her nursing bra and held out her arms for Elliott. Nurse Hobart handed him to his mother, then left the room and closed the door behind her.
Adam sat up straight in the bed, placed his arms around Blythe and watched his son suck greedily at her breast. A feeling like none other he’d ever experienced settled over him. A sense of happiness so sweet he wanted to capture the moment and save it forever.
“We have it all, Adam,” Blythe said. “Everything that really matters.”
“Amen to that, babe.”
Epilogue
“The only thing I can compare a birthday party at the Wyatts’ to is a three-ring circus,” Joy Simpson said as she handed out Popsicles to the children running up and down the huge patio at the back of the elegant brick home Adam had built Blythe over eight years ago.
“Well, if they’d been sensible and stopped having children after the first two, the way we did, they wouldn’t have this problem,” Craig said.
“The
children aren’t a problem.” Blythe smiled at Craig, then readjusted her year-old daughter on her hip. “Our problem is Adam finding time to run Wyatt Construction while I operate two businesses and we make time to be good parents. Thank goodness Martha Jean can run Petals Plus on her own most of the time. And the kids love spending time with me at my Flower Garden Nursery.”
“I believe Joy and Craig think we have too many kids, babe. What do you think?” Adam held out his arms for his youngest child. “Come to Daddy, birthday girl.”
“Well, if Adam hadn’t had his heart set on having a daughter, we might have stopped after the boys.” Blythe handed Rachel Alana Wyatt to her father. “Toby and Max are a handful, like most twins, but when they were four, we decided to give it one more try.”
“Thank goodness you had Rachel.” Joy laughed. “Or y’all might have wound up with your own baseball team.”
Adam rubbed noses with his little girl. Rachel giggled, shaking her head, her black curls bouncing. She smiled at her daddy, two sets of sable brown eyes meeting.
“Yeah, if you’d had a girl first the way we did, you could have avoided having to send four kids through college.” Laughing, Craig Simpson slapped his best friend on the back. “Lucky for you you’re a damned millionaire.”
“Lucky for me I’ve got Blythe for their mother.” Adam draped his arm around his wife’s shoulders, pulling her against him as they watched their three rowdy sons running around in the backyard, chasing nine-year-old Missy Simpson, while her younger brother joined in the fun.
“Yeah, we’re both a couple of lucky guys,” Craig said. “Despite what we got stuck with. Beautiful, loving wives and healthy, happy children.”
“Oh, yeah. Just look what Joy and I got stuck with.” Blythe gazed up at her husband, her eyes filled with adoration. “A couple of old-fashioned, macho studs!”
All four adults laughed, each one silently thanking the Lord above for their many blessings.
ISBN : 978-1-4592-7135-7
THE TENDER TRAP
Copyright © 1997 by Beverly Beaver
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or m part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the editorial office, Silhouette Books, 300 East 42nd Street, New York, NY 10017 U.S.A.
All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.
This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
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