It didn’t matter. Their passion buffered them from the outside world. Alone, they made their own rules as only two nameless human beings strongly attracted to each other could.
He stood naked before her, his manhood proud and erect, his skin smooth over finely toned muscles. He came to her and eased her back on the bed. Kneeling over her for several seconds, he let his gaze rove slowly up her body until he reached her eyes.
His kisses were deep and sensual as his hands relished the feel of her, finding her most sensitive spots. Then he lowered his head to deliver little sipping kisses to those places. Meghan’s mind and body were frantic with excitement. She writhed and twisted seductively under him. She kissed and gently nibbled as much of him as she could reach, frustrated at only being able to get to his face, neck, shoulders and arms.
Gradually, she rolled him off her and onto his back. She straddled his hips with her legs and proceeded to pleasure him in every way she knew and in some ways she’d only read about. The rumbling in his chest was like that of a large, fierce cat purring with contentment.
When his hands rose to return the pleasure, Meghan pinned them loosely above his head. With her face close to his, she looked into eyes flaming with passion.
“Please,” she whispered, her lips brushing his. “Please, just let me give this to you.”
“If you give me any more, I’ll explode. Besides, I can’t remember enjoying the feel of a woman more than I do you. Your skin is incredibly soft,” he said, his voice strained.
She teased him with an erotic wiggle, causing their damp bodies to tense with the need for release. His breathing was rapid and ragged, and he quivered at her every touch. Meghan found his responses rather heady. She enjoyed delighting him and could tell he was pleased with her.
She allowed him partial entry to her ultimate softness, playfully testing the feel of his swollen masculinity with her muscles. The look of surprise he flashed at her vanished rapidly, replaced by a look full of pure deviltry.
Taking her firmly in his arms, he flipped her onto her back and grinned down at her menacingly.
“You beautiful little witch,” he said, then thrust himself home, filling her completely. “Two can play that game.”
“You didn’t like it?” she asked innocently, knowing he had. Then she grinned at him daringly.
“You know I did. But you were enjoying yourself too much at my benefit.” He chuckled dangerously. “Now we’ll see if you can take it as well as you dish it out.”
Very deliberately, he aroused her to a state of wild excitement, teasing and tempting until she was frantic. He took mercy on her only when he could no longer control himself. He thrust deeply, sending them both into oblivion.
He held her close as she trembled in the aftermath, as his own tremors of desire slowly subsided. Their breathing gradually regulated itself, and their heart beats slowed to normal as their satiated bodies relaxed.
Leaving her, he slid to one side, but kept her close in his arms.
“Are you all right, darlin’?” he murmured, placing a tender kiss on her temple.
She nodded, too spent to speak.
He pressed another kiss to the corner of her eye and was surprised to taste the salty wetness of her tears. Up on one elbow instantly, he looked into the limpid pools of green.
“Did I hurt you?” he asked, deeply concerned.
She shook her head as the tears fell more freely.
“What’s wrong, darlin’? Can you tell me?” His deep voice rumbled solicitously.
“I … I think you’re the … the most wonderful man I’ve ever met,” Meghan told him sincerely.
He bussed her on the nose and grinned.
“Well, with you being such an excellent judge of character, you’re probably right. But it’s definitely not worth crying about,” he said, lying down again and throwing his leg over hers. “Once you really get to know me, you’ll have to think of a better word than just wonderful.” He chuckled deep in his chest.
Meghan’s heart soared at the pleasing sound. She could listen to his deep voice and his good-natured laughter forever. She could stay warm and safe in his arms for the rest of time. Why couldn’t things be different for them? she asked herself, her soul melancholy. Then she recalled her original purpose for being there. Her baby. Somewhere along the way she had totally forgotten about the baby. The man had completely consumed her every thought. She had been concentrating only on making love to this gentle giant. Making love? No. What they’d shared had been fantastic sex. People didn’t fall in love in an hour. He would go back to Texas, and she would go on with her life. He’d forget her, and she would remember this as the night she tried to get pregnant by a wonderful man.
“What’s your earliest childhood memory?” he asked drowsily. “How old were you?”
“Ah … the first really clear memory I have is of my first day of school. I was six. The others are a little fuzzy. Why?” she asked with a confused frown, wondering what her memories had to do with the moment.
“You can start there,” he murmured, cuddling closer. “I want to know all about you.”
“Hmm …” Meghan hummed thoughtfully. He’d be asleep soon. What harm was there in telling him a bedtime story? She wanted him to know her; she wanted to know him. If only things could have been different. … “I went to a private school, so it was my first experience wearing a uniform. The nuns lined us up in the school yard according to our grade levels. I remember my brother leaving me in line and going off to join his own class. I was so scared. Then a huge dog came bouncing across the playground, right at me,” she said, recalling her fear. “I dropped my brown lunch sack and started to scream. The dog ran up and snatched my lunch bag and then ran off. I cried for my brother, but his class had already gone in. It was a terrible morning, but the next thing I remember is eating lunch with my brother. We shared his …” There was a gentle snore in Meghan’s right ear. “After school I roamed the streets of Boston with my father’s shotgun, looking for that dog. When I found him, I demanded that he return my lunch or pay the price. …”
Michael had fallen asleep. Meghan waited for his breathing to deepen, and when she knew he was in a sound sleep, she slowly, carefully slipped out of his embrace. Coming around to his side of the bed to retrieve her underwear, she watched him for several seconds. Impulsively, she bent to kiss his forehead. His long, black lashes fanned out over his cheekbones endearingly. She lightly touched his rumpled hair, kissed him again, and whispered, “Thank you.”
Three
LATE OCTOBER IN New York was dreary, rainy, and cold. However, the trees in Central Park were changing colors, and there was a crispness in the air that Meghan associated with the happy Halloweens of her childhood. She always made several trips to the Park in the fall just to view the magnificent foliage. On display were her colors—the greens, yellows, browns, and reds. This was her season. The whole world changed to compliment her. She walked along the footpath, shuffling her feet through the leaves that had fallen to the ground.
Ambiguity was the emotion of the month. Not toward the baby, of course, but toward herself. She recalled the night of the baby’s conception. She’d lain awake for hours, wondering if she’d be able to move on to phase two. Wondering about the man who could be the father of her child. Every time she thought of him, she was flooded with a feeling of regret. Why couldn’t he have been a New Yorker? Why couldn’t they have met under more normal circumstances?
When Lucy had called early the next day to check on her, Meghan told her the entire story.
“You know,” Meghan confided, “it all made so much sense. It still does, but I … I don’t know. I … I feel sort of guilty for some reason.”
“Maybe you’re feeling a little like a cheap pickup,” Lucy offered helpfully, a teasing tone in her voice.
“Well, I definitely couldn’t look the man straight in the eye again,” she admitted. “But it’s more than just that. I feel like a thief. Like I stole something f
rom him.”
“Don’t worry about it, Meghan. What’s done is done. You’ll never see the man again, and it’s highly unlikely that he’d take you to court over a mere four hundred million missing sperm,” Lucy assured her, still amused.
“For a doctor, you make up the sickest jokes I’ve ever heard, Lucy,” Meghan quipped, ending their conversation.
It seemed as though she’d known Lucy forever, but in actuality it had been only ten years. They had been freshmen at Harvard together. Two more unlikely people to become such close friends never existed. They were complete and total opposites.
Lucy’s parents had paid her way through college and then medical school. Meghan had earned scholarships, taken out loans, and worked her way through till she graduated from law school. Lucy was blond, blue eyed, and petite. Meghan was red haired, green eyed, and tall. Lucy chose to join a group of doctors who managed a “pay as you may” prenatal and obstetrics clinic in Hoboken because she “wasn’t in medicine for the money.” She’d married a truly nice antique dealer and had given birth to a son who was now two-and-a-half years old. Meghan, on the other hand, had become a clever but equitable corporate attorney with the distinguished firm of Alderman, Darkwell & Gibbs. Financial security was one of her prime objectives, taking second place only to her desire to have her own family someday.
Both women were true to their parentage. Lucy vacillated from benign optimism to fatalistic doom, depending on the situation, while Meghan, sharp-witted and hot-tempered, doggedly held to her initial reactions. Except in this case.
She felt innocent of any wrongdoing to the man, but guilty too. She hoped he never set foot in New York again, but she wanted to see him. Her greatest desire was to be pregnant, but she’d never repeat that night.
Two weeks later when the twenty-eight day cycle she’d been able to schedule vacations by didn’t come to an end, she knew her fate was sealed. There was no turning back. By then her guilt had manifested itself. It was moral guilt. If her pregnancy had been an accident, she could have been guileless in her joy. As it was, her calculated intent marred her enthusiasm and heavied her heart with shame.
Now she was over three and a half months into her pregnancy, and for short periods of time she could still put the whole incident out of her mind. Aside from the tenderness in her breasts, occasional short bouts of nausea, constant fatigue, and rare episodes of dizziness if she got up too fast, there was no evidence to tell anyone, including herself, that she was going to have a baby.
She was handling the situation at the office very well, she thought self-indulgently. Although her blouses were a little tighter than usual, it wasn’t noticeable to the uninformed eye. Her business outfits still fit perfectly over her slim hips and essentially flat abdomen. Thank God for physical fitness!
Her secretary, Greta, had cast a peculiar look at her when she’d found the box of saltine crackers in her desk drawer. So Meghan had covered up her symptoms of nausea by explaining that the crackers were just a low-calorie snack for late-afternoon attacks of the munchies.
When she’d lunged for Henry Alderman’s desk to keep herself upright during a dizzy spell, she had confided to him about the anemia Lucy was treating her for. That excuse had worked well to explain her pallor and fatigue, and headed her list of reasons for a yearlong leave of absence from the firm.
“Are you sure it’s going to take that long to get back on your feet?” Henry Alderman had asked, none too pleased with her request. “Couldn’t you just take six months or so and come back to a lighter load?”
“Actually, that’s my plan, Henry. I thought I’d take six months to recoup and build up my strength, and then maybe do some pro bono work down at Legal Aid for a few months. Just a few cases, you know, to freshen up my skills and mind. A change of pace, so that when I come back. I’ll be ready and more than eager to get back to corporate law again.”
“When’s all this supposed to happen?”
“Well, I wanted to give you plenty of notice. Enough time to break in a couple of extra paralegals. I thought maybe mid-December. The holidays are generally a slow time. Business doesn’t usually pick up again until February. By then you’ll have forgotten all about me, except for my name on the door,” she had said, grinning at him infectiously.
“Never,” he had retorted, affection shining in his eyes. “Just get well and get yourself back here before the whole place falls down around me.”
Everything had been going according to plan, until she’d made a weekend trip to Boston. Contrary to her hope that her father would react calmly, he had seethed at the news that any man would defile his beautiful young daughter.
“I’ll kill the bastard with my bare hands,” he roared, his normally pale skin ruddy with anger.
Meghan sighed wearily. She almost wished she hadn’t started any of this in the first place, until her hand fell to the small mound of her abdomen.
“Look, Pop. None of this is his fault. I’m a grown woman. I knew the risks, and I’m responsible for my own actions.” Seeing the disappointment and disapproval in her father’s eyes, she added more gently, “No one is pure and innocent forever, Pop. I’m sorry if I’ve hurt you.”
“Sounds to me like she’s taken on the morals of an alley cat now that she’s living in the big city,” her brother Donald had commented.
“Shut your mouth,” Sean Shay had ordered his son, his attention still on Meghan. “Will the father do the right thing?” he questioned.
The fact that the father didn’t know and that she had no intentions of telling him went over like a lead balloon as well.
Her best-loved brother, Connie, was the only one she told the whole truth to. She told him about that night and watched him turn pale with anger and fear.
“Good Lord, Meghan. Where were your brains?” he exploded angrily when she’d finished. “Not only is that the stupidest, most immature thing to do, but it’s also a hell of a way to get yourself killed. What an idiot!”
He had reluctantly admitted to understanding her need, but refused to condone her selfish attitude and what she had done. Meghan had left her childhood home in turmoil. She hadn’t deluded herself into thinking they’d be overjoyed, but she hadn’t been prepared for their condemnation.
Oh, she knew they’d come around and love the baby once it was born; after all, a Shay was a Shay, even under the worst circumstances. But knowing she had hurt and disappointed those she loved most only brought forth another tidal wave of culpability and disgrace.
Pulling her thoughts to earth, she left Central Park and made her way back to the office.
“Any messages, Greta?” she asked.
Greta, a gray-haired woman in her late forties, who was the motherly-type herself, and the most efficient secretary Meghan had worked with, smiled her greeting.
“Henry wants to see you before you leave for the day. Lucy called, but you don’t need to call her back. She’ll be over tonight,” Greta informed her, and then added, “and that woman called.”
“What woman?” Meghan asked, smiling at the way Greta had called her “that woman.”
“The foreign-speaking female you have in your home now,” she clarified indignantly. “I simply dread her calls. It takes forty-five minutes just to find out who she’s asking for.”
“Oh, it does not,” Meghan teased good-naturedly. “Her accent is thick, I’ll grant you that, but you should be able to tell by now that when a woman with a thick Polish accent calls this office—on my private line, no less—it’s more than likely Mrs. Belinski. What did she need, did she say?”
Greta gave her an obtuse look, and Meghan laughed and asked, “Anything else?”
With a negative shake of her head, Greta prepared to return to her work. Meghan let herself into her office and immediately picked up the receiver and punched out her home phone number.
Mrs. Belinski was the wonderful woman Meghan had hired to be her housekeeper. She was kind, friendly, and cheerful—not to mention the fact that she was
a terrific cook. As an added bonus, Mrs. Belinski loved babies and had three grandchildren of her own. A widow, she had agreed to a flexibility that the other applicants couldn’t guarantee.
“Yah? Home for Ms. Shay,” came across the line.
“Mrs. Belinski? Meghan here. I understand you called the office. Is anything wrong?” Meghan asked.
“Ms. Shay.” The voice was suddenly frantic. “They bring di bed of di baby and go. They not take di bed away ven I say.”
“That’s okay, Mrs. Belinski,” she said in a soothing voice. “I ordered a crib earlier this morning. I’m sorry I didn’t let you know it was coming.”
“Goot. Goot,” the older woman said, her tone back to normal. “You want I put away?”
“No. I’ll put it away when I get home. Thank you.”
Meghan got involved with working on several contracts, and the afternoon slipped by. It was nearly four-thirty before she recalled the message from Henry Alderman.
“Meghan,” Henry said in greeting as she entered his office. “I was just getting ready to call and see if you had forgotten me.”
“Never, Henry,” she replied calmly, although she had.
Henry Alderman was a tall, thin man. He was bald except for a thin fringe of gray hair around the base of his skull, which he kept neatly trimmed. He wore thick, horn-rimmed glasses and spoke in a deep raspy voice. Of all the senior partners in the firm, Meghan liked and respected Henry most. As a junior partner, it was almost a relief to have Henry as her immediate superior. He was a kind, sensitive, honest man, who encouraged those around him to be the same.
“I know you’ve got a load of work to do right now, but I have another case I’d like you to take on. Actually, it shouldn’t be too difficult. It’s a fairly cut-and-dried matter, but it’s up your alley and could prove to be a good source of future revenue,” Henry explained. “If you’re not up to it, Gibbs can take it, but I’d rather it got your special attention.”
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