A Daring Proposition

by Jennifer Greene

  “I was. It wasn’t real until then. Not for me.”

  Very gently, he raised her arms and laced them around his neck. His body was slippery when he molded her to him, and the stream of water on her back beat a rhythmic, sensual tattoo. The blood rushing through her veins remembered the wonder of the night before; the erratic pulse in her throat remembered years before. She raised her face instinctively to his, pleading with him. His lips dipped on hers, savoring the softness she offered, and desperately she clung, holding on as his kiss deepened in fire, arching her throat back. She had the crazy sensation that she would drown if he let her go, that last night would disappear and the fear consume her as it always had.

  But he did not let her go. There was no patient, slow lovemaking this time. His hands had their own fever, which he transferred to her flesh wherever he touched; his mouth was hungry for the taste and feel of her. She could not breathe, suddenly, could not get enough of his warm, slippery skin against hers, could not bear the slow, insidious curl of need inside her, so raw, so sweet, so fierce.

  She had only a vague memory of getting out of the shower, of being dried and then cradled in a towel. She remembered being pressed into cool sheets by the weight of his body; remembered the husky growl in his throat when she touched him…and kept on touching him. He had demanded nothing of her the night before, but now, she felt he was demanding everything—her body and soul. And she had it to give; he made it so easy. She cried out when his body blended with hers, not in pain but in the unbelievable joy of it. It was impossible to believe there could be anything wrong when his arms were around her. He was all tenderness again when it was over, murmuring endearments, soothing her trembling with soft kisses and velvet strokes.

  For long minutes of silence, his arms enclosed her, protecting her. At last her heartbeat returned to normal, and she gazed up at his face, trying to read what he was feeling. He looked sleepy with his eyes half-shuttered, but he had a knack for keeping secrets, and suddenly she knew she could not just let it be. “Brian? Why did you make love to me?”

  His eyes flickered open, then traveled over her body from head to toe, returning playfully to her eyes. “How much detail do you want in that answer?” he teased, his voice husky.

  She shook her head, unhappy with his banter. “You never wanted me before,” she said softly.

  “I wanted you from the first moment I saw you in my office with your hair loose and your glasses off. I wanted you even more—desperately—that night at your house when I saw you standing in that white robe of yours against the firelight.”

  She gave him a startled look, then got out of bed.

  “You couldn’t have,” she said stiffly as she bent to find clothes in the drawers. “You made it very clear that you couldn’t care less!”

  Brian leaned back against the pillows, studying her. She could feel him watching as she slipped on a pair of panties and then more quickly drew on a summery shift of emerald-green. “I had no intention of breaking faith with you then, Red, if that’s what you’re asking,” he said quietly, the teasing note disappearing from his voice. “The opposite was true. I wanted a wife I could live with on my terms, and I was too eager to believe I had found one to push for something you so clearly didn’t want. That was what you had in mind, wasn’t it? For me to take care of all physical needs outside of this marriage of ours?”

  She turned uncertainly. “Yes, that was what I had in mind,” she said defensively, staring with an odd feeling of lifelessness at the golden skin of his shoulders, naked above the carelessly tossed sheet. But when her gaze moved up a few inches, he caught her look and held it with his own. The starkness of honesty was suddenly there, in the charcoal depths of his eyes.

  “You weren’t who you said you were. That shell of protection you built around yourself was just that—a shell. Someone, sometime, was going to break through it, hopefully before you’d built up too many more layers. By all rights it should have been a man you loved, a man you intended and really wanted to spend your life with. By all rights,” he repeated almost harshly, “it should not have been me.”

  “Brian…” she said unhappily.

  He shook his head, denying her interruption. “I didn’t forget about those rights, Leigh. But I deliberately put them aside. I wanted you, and I was certain I could reach you last night. More important than any of that was that I wouldn’t hurt you, and when I started to think about the wrong kind of man getting hold of you again, Leigh, I couldn’t stand the thought of adding to the scars you already had. Whether you believe it or not, it wasn’t for myself that I made love to you last night…at least in the beginning,” he admitted with just a touch of dryness in his voice. “But once you took fire…” He smiled at the sudden flush that softened her cheeks. “And I have to confess that good intentions had nothing to do with this morning. You just looked so damned beautiful lying in that bed with your hair all tumbled and toast crumbs on your breasts.”

  “I…” But she hadn’t anything to say. She just watched as he drew back the sheet and stood up, his sleek, tanned body totally natural in nakedness.

  His tone was brisk when he spoke again. “I’d like to regret breaking a promise, Leigh, but I don’t. And if you want to go back to the old arrangement, I will. It’s up to you entirely whether you want to share a bed. I won’t force you, and I won’t play any seduction games.”

  He faced her, waiting. Her answer came out easily before she even thought. “Brian, I love you,” she said simply.

  She thought she saw a strange flicker in his eyes before he put on his neutral mask. He picked up the towel from the floor and draped it around his waist, then approached her, brushing back her hair and resting his palms on both sides of her neck. “You don’t have to say that, Leigh. And I won’t hold you to it. You’re feeling good about yourself. You’ve become a whole woman, and I was around for the transition. There’s no harm in calling it love for now, but you won’t call it that later.” His brows were furrowed together, but his mouth curved in a smile. “Shall we just let it be?”

  She felt a lump in her throat almost like clotted tears. “Is that what you want?” she asked quietly.

  “The reason we’re talking is to determine what you want,” he said sharply.

  But was it? she wondered.

  Don’t bring love into it, was what she understood him to be telling her. Don’t love me, because I don’t love you. Actually, it was what she’d expected from him; he had never lied to her about his feelings. She took a breath and managed to look up at him with a bright smile that masked her inner pain. “That’s rather a major decision to make on the spur of the moment. I mean, one single night isn’t proof that you don’t snore, or steal all the covers in the early part of the morning, or—”

  Swiftly, his lips covered hers, and she responded, feeling as soft as buttercups inside, relieved to have answered him the way he evidently wanted, lightly. Inside, she thought fleetingly that perhaps in time… But she didn’t have much time to look her best for him. All too soon, her figure would be gone as the child within her grew; and even now, three and a half months pregnant, she was a long way from the svelte women he had been photographed with in the past.

  ***

  “Lord, you weigh a ton!”

  “Just put me down then,” Leigh protested. She was hoisted on Brian’s shoulders as they trudged back to the condominium from the beach. The sun had set hours ago, and it was just that many hours since they had started walking. In the beginning, Leigh had been conscious of her sore foot, but not so much that she would forgo this outing on the beach with her husband: the sunset, the moonlit stroll. By the time she was unable to avoid limping, they were far from home…too far for her to make it back on her own, as Brian had realized all too rapidly. “Just put me down,” she repeated.

  “No. There’s a slim chance that I could learn to like suffering.”

  She chuckled, glancing up. All day they had ridden along the coast, stopping to rest or snack as it
suited them. All day there had been wind and blustery skies, but that had changed early in the evening. The moonlight was bright, reflecting silver on the long stretches of sand. A black ocean was indistinguishable from the night sky except for the flashes of white-tipped waves. The sound of the surf seemed eternal, coming from all around the blackness, hypnotic and romantic. They had stopped more than once for a kiss, occasionally for more than a kiss.

  A short while later, they reached the condominium. Brian’s arms reached up, grasped her waist, and she was rather unceremoniously hauled over his head and placed on the doorstep. He flexed his shoulders in exaggerated complaint, and she opened the door with a smile, hobbling in ahead of him.

  “So you think I’ve gained a little weight lately?” she asked teasingly.

  “A little?”

  “Don’t you think you’re making an awful lot out of a hundred and fifteen pounds? If you think of it in terms of carrying at least two of us…”

  “Want anything?” He wandered to the bar, switching on the recessed lighting as he did so. “And what’s that supposed to mean— ‘At least two’?”

  “No, thanks. These pants are wet at the hems, Brian. I’m going to change.”

  “I am, too. It’s late.” He switched off the lighting again, and with an ice-filled drink in his hand followed her down the hall, hesitating at the doorway of the scarlet bedroom. “What do you mean— ‘at least two’?” he asked again impatiently.

  Leigh took a nightgown and robe into the bathroom. “My dad was a twin,” she called from there, “although my uncle died before I ever met him. And Dad’s dad was a twin, too, although I never met him either. It was hard enough getting together with my grandfather—he lived in San Francisco. Died a year after my dad did.” She emerged from the bathroom, her hair newly brushed and a powder-blue robe wrapped around her.

  “Leigh, why didn’t you mention the possibility of twins when you first came to my office?” He stood still, leaning against the doorjamb, very much the forbidding stranger she had first met many months ago. Mechanically, she moved to the pedestaled bed and slowly pulled down the scarlet cover in careful folds.

  “It’s not really all that likely,” she said placatingly. “A little more than for most people.”

  “You should have told me before we made our visit to the doctor.”

  She did not want to argue with him. She turned on a lamp and slipped in on the side of the monstrously huge bed, reaching for the book on the nightstand. “One or two or ten didn’t matter then,” she said in a deliberately soothing tone. “All that mattered was that together we could produce a healthy child, that what gifts I could give it through inheritance—”

  “Which twins are. An inherited trait.”

  She opened the book with a cross expression for him. “I meant important things—health, intelligence—”

  “There’s an additional risk to your life, isn’t there, with twins? Complications are more common. The pregnancy can be more difficult. Coping afterwards is obviously more difficult.”

  “Women rarely die in childbirth anymore,” she replied. “The birth of twins is often quicker and easier because the babies are smaller than average. I’m a very healthy lady, Brian.”

  “I can’t believe you would conceal the possibility of twins from me,” he said harshly.

  His accusing tone struck her as unreasonable, but deeper than that she felt a chill inside at the sudden breach between them. “Brian, if you’re angry because you feel that twins would be an additional burden on you, please don’t worry,” she said. “I knew from the beginning that children didn’t fit into your lifestyle. We both did. And I knew from the beginning, I think…that this marriage wouldn’t suit you forever. You want freedom, a peaceful home. That isn’t what a household with a baby is about. If you hadn’t already planned on leaving when the child was born—”

  “Who said anything about leaving?” he broke in. “For that matter, where did you come up with the notion that I don’t like children?” he said furiously. “Did you see me beat my nephews and nieces at Christmas?”

  “No,” she admitted, with a wary smile. “But that’s not the same thing as having a child around all the time, one you can’t escape from.” She hesitated. She had thought, all day, about the two of them. The more she loved him, the less she could accept his staying with her out of a sense of responsibility.

  He leaned over the bed, pulling back the covers from her lap. She clung stubbornly to the book in her hand. “Damn it,” he said wryly. “It’s not easy for you to give up an ounce of independence, is it? You’re so damned stubborn.”

  “I am not. You make it sound so… I just want you to understand that you don’t have to feel trapped.”

  He chuckled, the last of the chill in his expression softening. “Idiot, Red. Come on.” He took the book from her hands and switched off the light. “This mattress is too soft. Mine’s better, and it’ll be a lot easier to find you in the middle of the night, besides.”

  So she was sleeping with him? It certainly hadn’t felt like that a moment ago. Rather nervously, she slipped her legs over the side and stood up, glancing covertly at him. They were married; married people slept together. But they were hardly a typical married couple, and she didn’t have any idea what the rules were after the night before. “If you’re still angry,” she started hesitantly.

  “Furious,” he corrected lazily as he prodded her toward the doorway. “And if you have any other tidbits of medical information you’ve failed to pass on, you’d better do it now.”

  She shook her head, smiling softly as they walked down the hall to his room. “There’s nothing.”

  “How I would like to believe you,” he said ironically, “but somehow, Red, you’ve been throwing me nothing but curveballs from the first time I laid eyes on you.”

  Without switching on the light, he moved ahead of her to draw down the spread and blankets. She slipped in, with her head toward the window as she heard him take off his clothes. In the darkness, she could feel it, an electrical charge, a rush, as if all day her blood had been sluggish and was suddenly racing. She felt an acute sense of shyness, mixed with anticipation.

  His weight depressed the mattress next to her. He leaned over her, his palm gently covering her violent heartbeat and then gliding up to her chin as he pressed a gentle kiss on her lips. “No, Red,” he whispered. “Tell that pulse of yours that one of us is new at this game.”

  “What?” She reached up, her fingertips tracing the line of his jaw, already mesmerized by the softness of his eyes in the dark.

  “You need your rest,” he said firmly. Gently, he removed her exploring fingers, curling her back to the mold of his chest, and settled in like a man seeking rest.

  It was…interesting, she thought vaguely, being rejected out of consideration. She pondered that for a while, and then she decided Brian knew a bit too much about women, whereas she knew disgracefully little about men.

  She turned toward him restlessly, slipping an arm around his waist and nestling her cheek in his shoulder. His chest was bare, his hair furry-soft on her smooth flesh above the nightgown. He wore pajama bottoms—in honor of that rest he said she needed? She slid a knee between his and relaxed, closing her eyes. The fit was perfect.

  “Leigh.”

  “Mmm.” She curled closer yet to the sudden change in his heartbeat, to the swell of hardness pressing against her stomach. He shifted. Gradually, she shifted with him, the feeling of being close to him inducing a lazy somnolence that was pleasing all in itself. Somewhat.

  “Red.”

  “Mmm.”

  His palm suddenly stroked up her arm to the hollow of her collarbone, and then his fingers splayed in the thickness of her hair with far too much tension for a man who was nearly asleep. “You’ve had much too little rest the last few days,” he whispered roughly.

  “True,” she whispered back obediently. “But I can’t seem to sleep just yet. Would you rather I moved to the other
bed, Brian?”

  He did not want her to move away. His body tensed in total rejection of that idea. He knew so much, her arrogant lover: how to break impregnable shells, how to bridge the strongest defenses…yet not enough, not that night, to turn down a lady who wanted to love him. And this time it wasn’t being loved that was on her mind, but learning to return the loving sensations he had brought to her.

  Her hands glided over muscle and bone, sinew and flesh. Her lips trailed, a little shyer, uncertain of his response. She was not a femme fatale and had no weapons against the kind of sexually experienced women he played with. She had only love. And yet he suddenly gave in, bending over her with restless, drugging kisses. It thrilled her to know that her hands had the power to make him lose that endless control of his.

  She could not seem to stop touching him. The feel of his hair, the way the flesh of his shoulders became pliant in her hands, the way his body took on heat when she reached between his thighs. And the way he looked at her when he surged over her, that instant before she knew he was going to take her…her arms raised, drawing him down to her, drawing him into that moist, silky darkness. It was Leigh’s nature to give and to reach out in loving; and now she could love totally, with no shadows of the past intruding.

  Chapter 15

  On the surface the cocktail party for Brian’s clients went very well. Leigh had made the drinks and canapés ahead of time and the condominium was spotless. She’d felt a surge of ambition right from the beginning, a need to have the meeting go well for Brian and a hope that she would have the chance to soothe a few troubled waters. Brian made no secret of not liking the Harrises. In fact, even before they got there, he’d made it clear that they could take his design or leave it; he had done all the compromising he intended to do. Feeling ultra-feminine in a water-colored dress that swirled to her knees and showed off her tan, Leigh knew the project meant more to him than he let on and acted accordingly.