Mommy Said Goodbye
Page 23
“That’s not it.” Not even close.
She turned wide, shimmering eyes toward him. “Then what is it you want to say?”
He swallowed, his throat dry. “I’m trying to figure out a way to ask if moving might be something you’d consider.”
“Moving?” The echo, the question, was a mere breath.
He was doing this badly. “I don’t expect an instant answer. I shouldn’t even be asking you. I should invite you to dinner, romance you, wait a few weeks before I suggest you disrupt your life and your son’s.”
“Disrupt?” She stared.
“You’ve got a job you love, Malcolm has friends. Moving is hard for kids. He doesn’t need to start over. And you sure don’t.” Craig felt sick. Why on earth would she marry him? She’d be giving up so much more than she gained.
She blinked. “Are you suggesting that Malcolm and I move, too?”
He tried to smile at her. “In my incredibly clumsy way, I’m asking you to marry me.”
For a moment, she simply didn’t react. Then, in a voice that didn’t sound like hers, she said, “Are you thinking that the kids need a mother? I’ve become fond of Brett, but…”
He reached out, pulled her into his arms and kissed her. He should have done this ten minutes ago, instead of talking in circles.
For a moment she was stiff. Then, with a tiny sob, she melted against him and wrapped her arms around his neck. Craig kissed her with all the hunger he’d suppressed for months now, with the desperation of a man who had never expected to be able to act on need that had become part of him. It flared now, the ache sharpening.
Her lips were luscious, soft. The inside of her mouth tasted of mint and coffee and Robin. He wanted to take this slowly; not to scare her with what was, after all, a first kiss. But desire and sheer urgency poured through him, robbing him of restraint and even reason. She was in his arms at last, she was kissing him back. Robin made small, throaty sounds, whimpered when he wrenched his mouth from hers long enough to rain kisses down her throat.
“I love you,” he said raggedly, and captured her mouth again.
The next time he surfaced they were lying on the couch, his weight pressing her into the cushions. Her sweater was twisted and up around her breasts, exposing her pale belly and the bottom edges of a purple bra. He stroked her smooth skin and said, voice thick, “I don’t want a mother for my kids. I want you.”
Tears filled her eyes, and her mouth trembled. She whispered his name.
Fear stopped his heart. She didn’t feel the same. She’d kissed him as if tomorrow didn’t exist because…oh, hell, because she wanted him.
But she didn’t love him.
“Don’t say it.” He covered her mouth with his. His kiss was deep, frantic, hopeless. The salty taste of her tears made him groan and lift his head. “Oh, God, I’m sorry.”
Unbelievably, she was smiling through the tears, sniffing, then laughing. “I love you. Is that what I can’t say?”
He lifted a shaking hand and wiped tears from her upper lip. “If you love me, why are you crying?”
“Because I’m happy.” She wriggled her arm free from beneath him and stroked his cheek. “Because I was so scared that you were going to leave, and I’d never see you again.”
“You had to have known how I felt.” He’d cracked often enough, despite his noblest intentions.
“Sometimes I did think—” Her cheeks pink, she broke off. “And then I’d decide you were just being friendly. Or that you were, well, maybe a little attracted to me just because I’m the only woman who was being nice to you.”
He feathered a kiss across her mouth. “You,” he murmured, “are the only woman who ever looked past the newspaper headlines. The only one with the compassion and guts to intercede to help a kid headed for trouble. Is that why I want to kiss you?” He did so, sucking gently on her lower lip, watching her lashes flutter down, her head tilt back, hearing her sigh of pleasure. “Is that why I want to be inside you so desperately I couldn’t even let myself kiss you?” He kissed her neck, inhaling her scent. “Hell, no,” he finished, voice deep and even harsh. “Is that why I love you so much, I dread the days when I won’t see you? Yeah. Partly. It’s who you are, Robin McKinnon.”
“I’m…I’m no saint. I reached out to Brett because I felt guilty for losing touch with him, not because I put on my cloak to save every child in distress.”
“Maybe.” He smiled at her, letting her see everything he’d hidden. “But I’m betting you put on your cloak and try.”
“I…”
“Don’t argue.” He nipped her earlobe. “We can put off moving until summer if that will be easier for you.”
She shook her head, her eyes shimmering again. “But I’d see your face when we go somewhere and people stare. That closed look. Your eyes getting flinty and your mouth—” she touched his lips with her fingertips “—hard. You’re so remote I can feel you willing yourself elsewhere. And that won’t change, will it? People will keep staring. And they might try to say they’re sorry, and you’re such a nice man you’ll tell them it’s okay, only it’s not.” She sounded fierce. “It’s not.”
A barrier he’d erected to protect himself crumbled in that instant, boulders dissolving into piles of sand and grit. Until now, he hadn’t known how far inside he’d burrowed, how thick his wall had become just so he could make it through each day.
Closing his eyes, Craig rested his forehead against hers. “Yeah,” he said, “it is. Thanks to you, now it is.”
She kissed him, her face wet with tears again, her lips soft, her arms tight. He sank into the kiss, into her, as if he’d found heaven on earth. And in that moment, he knew: the gates of purgatory had sprung open and he’d walked through them.
When at last he lifted his mouth from hers and they looked at each other again, she said with absolute certainty, “I’ll give my notice tomorrow. They can use a sub if they haven’t found a replacement by the end of Christmas break. We move as a family.”
Humbled, he said, “You don’t want to talk to Malcolm first?”
“He needs a real father, and a brother and a sister. He may not know it, but he does.” She smiled, her face radiant with happiness and that amazing certainty. “He’d miss Brett, you know.”
“Brett worships you.” His lips teased hers. “The kids don’t know I’m asking you to marry me. I can hardly wait to tell them.”
She moaned, her neck arching for his mouth, her breasts pressing against his chest. “As in—” she sounded breathless “—you want to go tell them right now?”
His rejoinder was succinct and would have insulted his children deeply. But it seemed to please her, because she laughed, a throaty, sensuous sound. “Oh, good,” she whispered, just before he pulled her sweater over her head.
He looked down at this extraordinary woman, creamy skin and rich brown eyes and shimmering hair spilling over the couch, breasts swelling above deep violet satin, and he knew: freedom was the least of his rewards.
This woman, who would be his wife, was the greatest prize.
ISBN: 978-1-4268-8673-7
MOMMY SAID GOODBYE
Copyright © 2004 by Janice Kay Johnson.
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