Davey's sucking thumb drifted toward his mouth as he gravely pondered this latest development. At the last instant his newly honed big-boy reflexes kicked in and he jerked his thumb away from his face. This time when his mother offered him a napkin, he jammed it in his collar himself, carefully fanning it over his shirt exactly as his dad had done.
Sunny chewed back a grin. "I'll go get your juice." She looked forward to the MacLeods' weekly visits. To her they represented the ideal family, straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting. Emily and Jim were obviously good parents, patient and loving, and just as obviously devoted to each other. They practically oozed family harmony. Not that Sunny was naive. She assumed that the MacLeods, like all couples, had their occasional marital tiffs and moments of frustration in raising their rambunctious son, but observing them week after week, year after year, she couldn't help thinking of them as the quintessential happy family.
Being around the MacLeods always boosted Sunny's spirits, but it also made her wistful. This young family represented the very goals and dreams that had eluded Sunny herself for so long. Every time she saw Emily MacLeod hug her son or even wipe his face, with that doting, maternal smile she reserved just for him, Sunny's eyes stung. Her empty arms ached for a warm little body to cuddle.
Would she ever know that kind of fulfillment? Was the simple joy of having a husband and children too much to ask for?
Perhaps Kirk was right. Perhaps she'd gone about attaining her goal the wrong way. She'd installed herself in a dead-end job in her sleepy hometown, passively waiting for some faceless knight in shining armor to discover her and sweep her off her feet. Meanwhile she'd done little to enrich her life, to "fulfill her potential," in Kirk's words, to make herself into the kind of intriguing damsel who could not only catch the knight's eye, but keep his interest over the long haul.
She and Kirk had seen each other several times in the eleven days since their picnic at the university. They'd spent a Wednesday evening at Hunter's comedy club, Stitches. There they'd enjoyed scrumptious pan pizzas and a string of amateur comics that included Hunter's wife, Raven, who regaled them with a hilarious routine about pregnancy and morning sickness. A few days later Kirk and Sunny had spent a leisurely afternoon wandering around Chinatown and Little Italy in downtown Manhattan. And just last Tuesday he'd taken her to Island Park, where they'd rented a motorboat to fish for fluke.
Sunny returned to the MacLeods' table with Davey's juice and syrup, then moved on to the smoking section to pour coffee for a party of six hefty high-school football jocks who had managed to squeeze into a booth. Behind her she heard Fran, the hostess, say, "Just the two of you? Smoking or nonsmoking?"
A familiar deep voice answered, "We can't stay. We just popped in to say hi to someone."
Sunny wheeled around to see Kirk standing near the entrance, wearing a white polo shirt and khaki shorts. In his arms was a squirming towheaded toddler, craning his little neck to get a better look at the dessert case.
Sunny's heart thumped hard, nearly knocking her off balance.
Ian.
This had to be Kirk's little boy. Her assumption was confirmed when the child strained toward the beguiling array of desserts, crying, "Okkie! Da, okkie!"
"Yes, I see the cookies, Ian. And cakes and pies and—"
"Wan' okkie!"
Trying to hush his son, Kirk scanned the room for Sunny, casting her an apologetic smile when he spotted her. As if Ian were the first loud, cookie-crazed toddler Wafflemania had ever seen!
Sunny slipped her order pad into her pocket and smoothed the short skirt of her blindingly pink uniform as she made her way toward them. Since he'd come home, Kirk had never seen her here at the diner, in the tacky outfit she was obliged to wear, right down to the shiny support hose and white Reeboks. She was embarrassed to have him see her like this, and angry at herself for being embarrassed.
As she joined them, Kirk's crystal-blue eyes glowed with affection—and something else. Nervous anticipation perhaps. He didn't kiss Sunny hello, as was his custom, but swiveled his body in an attempt to divert his son's attention from the goodies. It didn't work.
"Ian," Kirk said, "I have someone I want you to meet." He ruffled the child's pale hair, urging him to acknowledge Sunny. Ian didn't even glance at her, his attention riveted to the brightly lit dessert case.
"Okkie!" The demand was now a frustrated whine. "Da! Okkie!"
"You'd think he was starving," Kirk said. "You'd never know he just scarfed down an adult-size slice of pizza."
"Then this sounds like a good time for dessert." Sunny scooted behind the counter, then paused in the process of opening the case. "If it's all right with Daddy?"
"It's all right with Daddy." Kirk chuckled.
Ian watched, transfixed, as Sunny slid out the tray of assorted jumbo cookies. "Which one would you like?" she asked the toddler.
His finger shot toward a cookie studded with colorful M&M's.
"Good choice. That's my favorite, too." Sunny handed it to him along with a paper napkin.
"Say 'thank you,'" Kirk instructed.
Crumbs sprayed from Ian's mouth as he parroted, "Ank-oo."
"You're very welcome."
Kirk mouthed his own thanks as she returned the cookies to the case. "This nice lady is named Sunny," he told the boy. "She's a friend of mine."
Ian stared at Sunny as he gnawed on his prize.
She said, "I hope you and I will be friends, too, Ian."
Sunny's boss, Mike, from his perch on a stool behind the cash register, caught her eye and jerked his head toward the busy dining room.
"Yeah, yeah," she muttered.
"I didn't mean to get you in trouble," Kirk said.
"Oh, don't worry about that old blowhard. He's all bark." Unable to help herself, Sunny reached out to stroke Ian's warm little back through his Disneyland T-shirt—and was blindsided by a wave of maternal longing so intense it stole her breath. Dropping her hand, she averted her face for a moment, pretending to check on her customers.
She could give this darling little boy a half brother or sister. Maybe a whole passel of them. The thought ambushed her from out of nowhere. She shouldn't be thinking along those lines. It was premature.
But once planted, the idea stuck like a burr. She imagined herself growing round with Kirk's child, imagined a pregnant belly straining her snug polyester uniform.
"What's so funny?" Kirk asked.
She shook her head, chucking. "Nothing. I'm just so happy to meet this little cookie snatcher." She tugged playfully on Ian's ear, coaxing a giggle out of him. Now it was her turn to mouth a heartfelt thank-you to Kirk.
His tender smile told her that no thanks were necessary, that the meeting had been overdue.
"Well." He addressed his son. "Are you going to get crumbs all over the back seat of the car?"
Ian nodded vigorously.
"Hey, that's his job," Sunny said, giving the boy's back one last loving pat. "Thank you for coming by to meet me, Ian. You made my day much brighter."
"We also came by to ask you to dinner," Kirk said.
"Dinner?"
"Tonight. I'm making spaghetti."
"'Agetti!" Ian squealed in delight.
"Larsen the Younger's personal favorite," Kirk revealed. "And a good thing, too, because it's something Larsen the Elder can actually throw together without messing up too badly."
"I'll bring the ice cream," Sunny said.
"I-keam!" Ian hollered.
She cocked her head at him. "You have a real sweet tooth, don't you, big fella?"
Ian poked his fingers into his mouth—searching for the sweet tooth, she assumed.
Kirk glanced toward the cash register. "Your boss is turning an alarming shade of purple. We'd better let you get back to work before he detonates." Backing toward the doorway, he tossed Sunny a brisk wave, which Ian imitated. "Six o'clock. Make it chocolate chip."
* * *
Chapter 4
«^»
Kirk finish
ed drying the huge spaghetti pot, part of a set of steel cookware Linda had received at her bridal shower. He tossed the damp dish towel on the countertop as Sunny appeared in the kitchen doorway, thumb raised and sporting a triumphant grin. "Asleep already?" he asked.
"What can I tell you? I've got the touch. Ian was out like a light halfway through 'Scarborough Fair.'"
"You sang him to sleep? You?"
One reddish-brown eyebrow lifted. "Your point being?"
"Has your singing voice by any chance, um, undergone some drastic change during the past twelve years?"
"All right, that's it." She snatched up the dish towel he'd abandoned and twirled it menacingly. "Now things are gonna start getting ugly."
Kirk backed up toward the butcher-block island, chuckling as Sunny advanced on him. "Truth hurts, does it?"
"For your information, Larsen the Younger thinks I have a lovely, lilting voice."
Kirk failed to restrain a bark of laughter. "Did you consider that lapsing into unconsciousness might have been a self-protective mechanism? A way to preserve the poor kid's abused eardrums?"
She mugged outrage while giving the towel a sharp snap aimed at Kirk's midsection. Like a striking cobra, he caught the makeshift weapon and used it to reel her in, banding his arms around her before she had a chance to regroup.
Sunny's eyes sparkled with amusement. "You're still fast."
"One of the advantages of chasing after a toddler." Her breasts, tantalizingly soft and full under her short denim sundress, grazed his chest with each breath she took. He let one hand slide down her back. Slowly, deliberately, he caressed her bottom, his gaze locked with hers. Her lips parted fractionally. Her expressive eyes revealed her uncertainty.
That uncertainty wouldn't last long if Kirk had his way. He brushed his mouth over hers, and felt a little shudder flow through her. "I've missed this." Leaning back against the counter, he kissed her with greater urgency. "I've missed you. There was always a part of me no one else could touch."
She melted against him, slipped her arms around him, fitted her body to his as if she were made for him. It felt so good to hold her like this, so sweet and right, he thought he might drown in the perfection of it. That thought fled with all others as he tightened his hold, coaxing her mouth open under his, letting his tongue do what his body craved.
Sunny made a little sound, an imploring whimper, as she met his thrusting tongue with silky strokes of her own. Her fingers fisted in his shirt and she pressed even closer to him, moved her hips with restless sensuality. Kirk couldn't remember ever wanting a woman more. He imagined his tent-pole erection bursting through their clothing, imagined sinking into her welcoming heat in the next two seconds.
He broke the kiss with a growled oath.
"We—we better slow down." Sunny sounded winded. She leaned a little away from him, drawing Kirk's gaze to the front of her dress, to the insistent thrust of her nipples under the pale indigo fabric. He rubbed his thumb over one stiff peak. Her breathing became even more agitated. Her smile was shaky. "That's not—not exactly what I meant by slowing down." She seized his wrist, but made no move to pull him away.
"Slowing down was your idea, not mine." Straightening from the butcher-block island, he captured both nipples between his thumbs and forefingers and gently squeezed them. "You'll have to leave if you want me to stop." Sunny's breasts used to be exquisitely sensitive. They still were, judging by her breathless response. Their lips barely touching, he whispered, "Don't do it."
"Don't what?" She moaned as his touch became bolder, more possessive.
"Don't leave."
The kiss that followed was different from before, more heartfelt than carnal, as if he were pouring his soul into her, saying with his body what he dared not put into words. Not yet.
It might have been a mere two weeks since Kirk had been reunited with Sunny at Charli and Grant's wedding, but there wasn't a doubt in his mind that he needed this warm, sweet, sexy woman in his life.
But did she need him? When she found out about him, as she eventually must, the answer was bound to be a resounding no.
How could it be anything else? She'd been up front with him since the beginning, shared her dreams and desires, the deepest yearnings of her heart. And how had he responded? By wooing her, encouraging her to open herself to him, while neatly avoiding the one critical revelation that would surely send her running in the opposite direction.
It was an intentional subterfuge on his part, a lie by omission. But a necessary one. With luck, by the time she found out, she'd be as in love with him as he already knew he was with her, and the truth would have lost its destructive power.
With luck.
They finally came up for air, ending the kiss.
"I feel like I'm eighteen again," she said with a laugh.
"You look like you're eighteen again." He stroked a finger down her warm cheek, now suffused with a pink glow.
She smirked. "Yeah, right. I stopped buying that kind of blatant flattery about the time the checkout boy at the supermarket stopped proofing me for beer. I'm thinking of paying him to start again."
"You're right," he said. "You don't look eighteen."
"Forget it. I'm not paying you, too."
"You're more beautiful now than you were back then. More womanly. More self-confident. It's in your tone of voice, the way you move." His hands drifted down her sides to lightly squeeze her hips. With a wicked grin he added, "Definitely in the way you move."
She recognized his sincerity. He could see it in the shy smile she offered in return.
"Remember Halloween?" he asked.
He didn't need to elaborate. Halloween night of their senior year had been memorable, to say the least. Amanda had thrown a wild costume party at her parents' swanky, sprawling home, attended by about a hundred kids. The consummate hostess even back then, Amanda had outdone herself with incredible food and over-the-top decorations, including yards of spiderweb netting, realistic black bats dangling from the ceiling, and even dry-ice fog. The exterior of the house was just as impressive, with colored lights, a score of candlelit jack-o'-lanterns marching up the porch steps, a front yard full of fake tombstones with humorous epitaphs, a skeleton hanging from a tree by a noose, and even a twenty-foot-high nylon ghost on the roof, lit from within and writhing on a column of pumped air.
The finished basement had been painstakingly converted into a "haunted house," partitioned into a string of small, dark rooms filled with a variety of exhibits, each more hilariously gruesome than the last. Amanda had drafted her closest pals to work the haunted house while the other partygoers filed through, to the accompaniment of recorded moans, shrieks and ghostly wails.
Sunny wore an all-black, skintight bodysuit and head covering adorned with multicolored fluorescent stars. The walls, floor and ceiling of her haunted room sported the same stars on a black background, the only illumination an ultraviolet black light that made the stars glow. Sunny positioned herself in a corner, blending invisibly into the matching background. As her friends passed through in small groups, staring wide-eyed at the room of glowing stars, oblivious to her presence, she leaped out of the corner to scare the snot out of them.
Kirk heard the resulting screams and giddy laughter from his post in the "execution chamber" several rooms away. There he was strapped into what passed for an electric chair, wearing dull prison clothes and a leather hood. He sat perfectly still in the dimly lit room, convincing those passing through that they were looking at a stuffed dummy. He liked to wait until someone jokingly addressed him before pressing the hidden button that activated the sparks and loud sizzling noises. Then all hell broke loose as he bucked violently against the leather restraining straps, howling like a banshee. His audience's reaction had been no less spirited. He was pretty sure Penny Bridgewater had wet herself.
"Which Halloween might that be?" Sunny teased. As if there could be any question.
"Well, I might be referring to the Halloween when you and
I were the last ones left in Amanda's haunted basement after everyone else went back upstairs for the costume contest." He slid his hands around her waist.
"Haunted basement?" She feigned confusion. "I'm sorry, I'm drawing a blank."
"Well then, allow me to jog your memory. You were dressed in a star-studded bodysuit, head to toe. I had on this fetching leather ensemble. A bit confining, perhaps."
"I adore men in leather."
"You came looking for me in the execution chamber. I was still strapped to the chair. Arms. Legs. Chest. Nasty-looking hood. Any of this ring a bell?"
"You know, I believe it's beginning to come back to me." Sunny cocked her head as if searching her memory. "Did this hood have tiny little eye slits so you could see?"
"Indeed it did, just like the eye slits in your black hood. I could just make you out in the dim light, this shadowy mass of stars moving into my very limited field of vision."
"I guess everybody forgot you were there."
"Everybody but you."
"Poor thing, tied down to that big, scary chair." Sunny played with the collar of his white polo shirt. "I felt so sorry for you."
"Not sorry enough to untie me, though, huh?"
A devilish little smile played around Sunny's mouth.
"I asked you to. I said, 'Sunny, would you please undo these straps?'"
"It was more like, 'Goddammit, what the hell are you waiting for? Get me out of this thing!'"
Kirk said, "Your memory's improving, I see. Do you remember that you just stood there, not saying a word?"
"I was thinking."
He trailed a fingertip up the long brass zipper that closed the front of her dress. "What were you thinking?"
"I was thinking about how … intriguing you looked, sitting there. A big, strong guy like you, completely at my mercy." She blinked up at him, coy and sultry at the same time. "That's the kind of thing that can give a girl ideas."
"Your first idea, as I recall, was to peel off that bodysuit. Slowly."
Kirk and Sunny had been having sex for two months at that point. They'd only managed a handful of assignations, usually in his bed when his parents were out of the house, and once, out of desperation, in the cramped interior of his twenty-year-old Jaguar. On this Halloween night he'd sat there, bound and helpless, gaping through the leather hood as his girlfriend pulled off her own hood, shook her short curls and proceeded to wriggle out of that sprayed-on outfit. Stunned, he'd asked what she was doing. She'd said nothing.
ONE EAGER BRIDE TO GO Page 4
