“Is falconry one of those pleasures?”
“Yes,” he answered, but at the moment he was thinking of other pleasures too long unfulfilled. He slid his arm around her shoulders, and after a moment or two she leaned her head back against it.
“You know, I gave up earlier,” he said.
“On what?”
“On us. It didn’t seem like we were getting anyplace.”
“You mean with, um, kissing.”
“Right.”
“The first time at my house or the second time here?” Her head swiveled toward him.
“Both. I didn’t think it was in the cards.”
“At my house I thought you couldn’t wait to get home to the hawks.”
“That,” he said succinctly, “wasn’t necessarily true. Especially after we kissed.”
She turned back around again. He caressed her shoulder through her sweater.
When she didn’t speak, he said, “I think I want to do it again.”
“You didn’t do it in the first place,” she pointed out. “I kissed you. And here Billy Wayne phoned before I could even pucker up.”
“Any chance you might make another attempt?” he asked hopefully.
“No,” she said, her tone light. “It’s your turn.”
He bent slightly toward her and slid his free hand up the side of her neck. She looked up at him through her lashes. He saw uncertainty in her eyes and liking, and underlying all of that was something that he couldn’t quite peg. Courage? Defiance, perhaps?
He supposed it did take courage to leave a relationship as she recently had done, and certainly she was defying society’s expectations when she’d come here to make a go of her pregnancy all alone. But she wasn’t alone anymore. She had him.
Just how true this was hit him like a ton of bricks. She had him. He wasn’t going to hurt her the way that jerk of a fiancé had, nor was he going to back off. His heart twisted at the thought of what the guy had done to Dana. She hadn’t deserved such treatment.
He kissed her cheek before angling her head so he could reach her lips. She leaned into him, and he felt the relaxing of tension in her body as he pulled her close. He deepened the kiss, teasing her with a lazy sweep of his tongue. She let out a little sigh, or was it a moan? Her hands moved across his chest, her fingers light, paused briefly at his nipples and continued up and around his neck.
Desire flared, and he felt himself growing hard. This woman knew how to kiss; she was practiced and experienced and so was he. He knew he should stop—she was pregnant with another man’s child—but at the moment his brain didn’t seem to be working properly. Other parts of him certainly were—his lips, which fit so neatly with hers, and his tongue, which dared to explore the warm sweetness of her mouth, and his hands—
His hands, which wouldn’t stay put. As she eased down against the floor, they moved naturally up under her sweater. Lost in sensation as he was, he still managed to restrain himself for a few moments, but his restraint was overruled by lust. It didn’t help that she was pressing against him, sliding her leg between his.
He reluctantly stopped kissing her. “Dana? Should we be doing this?”
“Why not?” she murmured against his neck. “Why on earth shouldn’t we?”
“Because,” he started to say, but then she silenced him by placing her mouth over his. If there was any doubt, it faded when she guided his hand up to her breast. He felt the roundness of her belly—how could he not?—but somehow it only made her more desirable. His fingers cupped her breast, his thumb circled her nipple, and she opened her mouth even wider. His desire for her went beyond the usual, beyond sex. For the first time since Lindsay died, he wanted to know a woman, heart, mind and soul. And not just any woman. This woman.
He feathered a chain of kisses down the side of her neck, inhaled the musky woman-scent of her from the hollow in her throat, pushed aside the vee neck of her sweater and kissed the pulse throbbing there. Her breathing was hot in his ear, and he felt his own breath coming in sharp pants. She pressed closer, whispering his name.
She slid her hand inside his shirt, and it rested warm against the hair on his chest. If they were skin to skin, body to body, nothing would be between them.
But something was. He felt a slight jab to his midsection and, stunned, he fell away. Dana’s eyes, a complex range of blues, widened in alarm.
“Was that—”
“The baby. It kicked,” she said. She sounded breathless, whether because of him or because the baby’s kicking hurt, he couldn’t say.
“It kicked me,” he said. He felt wonder mingled with annoyance. He certainly wasn’t in a mood for lovemaking anymore.
“I’m sure it didn’t mean to,” Dana reasoned.
“Well, it certainly knocked me down. So to speak.”
Dana looked at him. She blinked. “You look so…so disappointed.”
“I am.” But he felt his lips curving into a grin. He didn’t think he was the only disappointed one. She seemed as perplexed as he was.
“I guess little whozit doesn’t want his mommy to fool around.”
“I don’t think the baby knows what’s going on out here,” she said reasonably.
He had to laugh. “Come on, Dana, I was only joking. Don’t take everything I say so seriously.”
“I guess I’d better remember that,” she said.
“You’re doing it again! I’m only making light of a moment that has no parallel in my experience. I’ve never tried to make love to a pregnant woman before.”
“We weren’t exactly making love. We were only kissing.”
“A little more than that,” he reminded her, his eyes involuntarily dropping to her breasts.
She moved slightly away. “I, um, well, I liked it.”
“I gathered that. So did I.”
“Do you want to resume where we left off? Or is that the end of it?” She looked so funny, so comical in that moment that he couldn’t help laughing, at which she seemed crestfallen.
“What is this, twenty questions?” Then, seeing that she wasn’t trying to be funny, he sobered. “As it happens, I think that’s enough for tonight.”
“It really turns you off, doesn’t it? That I’m pregnant?” she said quietly.
He let out a long exhalation of breath and leaned back on the couch pillow. “No, it doesn’t. But when little whozit—”
“Please stop calling my baby ‘little whozit.’ I’ve chosen names. If it’s a boy, it will be named Blaine, after my favorite uncle. If it’s a girl, her name will be Rosemary. It was my grandmother’s name.”
“Well, when little Blaine or Rosemary aimed a dropkick at my navel, that quelled any lusty feelings I was having at that moment. It also sparked my curiosity. Does it hurt?”
She tipped her head to one side, assessing him. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”
“Of course I am,” he said. He couldn’t imagine something inside him pushing and shoving like that.
“No, it doesn’t hurt. I think they do it to make more room. I can feel it, but there’s no pain.”
“And does it go on for the whole nine months?”
“You start feeling the baby move when you’re about four or five months along. I felt my baby move on the day that I quit—” She stopped abruptly, paled and regained her composure. He thought she must have felt it move again. “I first felt it on the day I quit my job,” she said more carefully.
“You quit? I thought maybe you were on a leave of absence.”
He’d wondered about her, how she managed to pay her bills, if she would be going back to Chicago after the baby was born.
“I quit,” she confirmed.
“It takes a lot of guts to quit a job when you’re pregnant. Unless you have a healthy trust fund, that is.”
“I thought it over carefully. I have some money.”
“But not from the baby’s father,” he said.
“Not from him. Look, I really don’t like talking about it.” She
edged away, turned on her side and pillowed her head on her arm.
“Okay,” he said affably. He knew it had been a miserable period in her life, so he wasn’t at all surprised she preferred not to discuss it. He wondered where she got her money. It’s not as if she lived an elaborate lifestyle here, though. Maybe she didn’t need much.
When he looked down at her, she had closed her eyes.
He glanced at the clock. It was nearly midnight. “I think I’d better run you home.”
But Dana was fast asleep, looking unfathomably mysterious and womanly as she lay there, a slight flush on her cheeks, a tiny smile gracing her lips.
He didn’t have the heart to wake her up, so he stretched out beside her. He watched her as she slept, one arm tucked under her hand and the other curved around her abdomen. The fabric of her sweater was pulled so tautly over the rise of the baby that he thought that if he watched carefully, he might see little Blaine or Rosemary kick again.
But he fell asleep before he saw anything.
Chapter Ten
Dana awoke to the glow of the fading embers in the fireplace and to Conn’s hand flung across her midsection. Through the windows with their undrawn curtains, she could see a gray dawn stealing over the landscape. She eased away from Conn and sat gazing down at his face for a moment. Even in sleep he exerted a powerful primal sexuality from which she’d been sidetracked by the fact that he had nurtured her while she had the flu.
Last night she had trembled beneath his touch, had melted in his arms. Had they gone too far?
Her doctor, who thought she was married because she had made her first appointment with him as Mrs. Cantrell, had not prohibited sex. In fact, he had urged her to express her sexuality with her husband throughout her pregnancy. Dana hadn’t clued Dr. Evans into the fact that there actually was no husband. It hadn’t seemed important when she was reeling from the breakup with Philip and trying to come to grips with the necessity of bearing and raising this baby all alone.
Now she wished she had paid more attention to her doctor’s discussion. Did expressing her sexuality include intercourse? She thought it probably did. But she had never entertained the possibility of a man’s wanting to make love to her while she was pregnant. And not just pregnant, but hugely pregnant.
She wanted Conn to make love to her. The thought, which had been lurking in the back of her mind for days, wouldn’t go away. When she had kissed him, she’d known that she didn’t want him to stop, no ifs, ands or buts about it. She wanted to feel his hands caressing her body, all of it, to feel the heat of his sex pressed against her belly, to know him in every way.
She immediately dismissed these thoughts as the strange meanderings of a pregnant woman’s mind. Imaginings that could never happen. Crazy, deluded longings.
Except that Conn had made no secret of the fact that he was powerfully attracted to her, pregnant or not.
If the baby had not kicked out at that precise moment, then what?
There was no doubt in her mind that they would have made love—wholly, completely and satisfyingly.
Conn’s lips twitched slightly, and he smiled in his sleep. Perhaps he, too, was dreaming of what might have happened. She smiled at this and, because she couldn’t resist touching him in that moment, she tipped a finger along the hairs on his arm. They were dark and curly, springing up under her touch. She pictured the pattern of dark hair on his chest, the tapering of it down his belly to the nest of curls below. She wanted to savor the scent of him, the taste of him, all of him.
Which meant that she was over her bout with the flu, really over it.
He shifted position and pillowed his head on one arm. He didn’t wake, and she supposed that was just as well. She needed time to think this over, time to integrate their relationship into her reality. Using the arm of the couch for support, she laboriously pulled herself to her feet and padded to the bathroom. She might be over the flu, all right, but she still felt a little shaky in the knees.
When Dana emerged from the bathroom, Conn’s eyes followed her as she made her way across the room.
“Good morning,” he said, his voice rough with sleep.
“Yes, it is,” she said. She glanced out the windows, where the rising sun was sending golden rays up and over the mesa. “I think I’ve overstayed my welcome.” She sat on the edge of the couch, mostly because it would have been too difficult to get down on the floor and up again.
“No, you haven’t,” Conn said. He yawned and raised himself to a sitting position. “If I’d known you were going to stay the night, I would have made sure you were more comfortable, instead of letting you sleep on the floor.” His hair was mussed, falling endearingly over one eye.
“I was fine,” she said, not saying that it had felt wonderful to be cradled in his arms all night.
“Dana,” he said, looking as if he were going to make some momentous pronouncement, but then his gaze came to rest on the mantel clock. He groaned. “I’m due to meet Billy Wayne in less than half an hour,” he said, scrambling to his feet.
“We’d better check on Oscar,” she said.
“You go take a look, and I’ll toss some cereal in a couple of bowls and—say, are you all right? Really, I mean?”
“Yes, Conn,” she said. She gazed up at him, wondering what he would say if he knew her lustful feelings at the moment.
His knuckles grazed her cheek. There was a tenderness in his eyes that she hadn’t noticed before, or perhaps she hadn’t been ready to see it.
“I’ll drive you home on the way to Shale Flats,” he said, and treated her to a pat on her derriere as she headed for the mews.
DANA INSISTED on taking Oscar back to the cabin with her.
“Why?” asked Conn. “He’s fine. Just fine. He’ll be fit to fly in a week or so from the looks of him.”
“I can keep an eye on him all day. You can’t.” To her it was simple; she was the best qualified to be the bird’s caretaker.
Conn hadn’t put up much of a fight, and now, back at her cabin, Oscar regarded her balefully from his cage, which Conn had set inside the lean-to behind the cabin where her father had kept his fly-fishing equipment. The owl seemed calm, and he sidled over to the side of his cage where she stood after Conn drove away.
“I’m not supposed to get attached to you. I promised,” she told the bird. He winked at her in a way that was almost human, as if to say, “Well, we both know you will, but that’s okay with me.” The owl then let out a howling shriek as if to dissuade her.
The cabin seemed empty without Conn. During the time he’d taken care of her, he had been a fixture around the place, and she had grown comfortable with him and around him. She missed looking over and watching him hard at work with his computer propped on his lap. She missed having someone to chat with, to eat meals with, to make love with—although she supposed that technically they had not quite made love. Little Blaine or Rosemary had taken care of that.
But she didn’t want to think of what might have been. Besides, she needed to phone Esther and give her a progress report on Oscar.
Esther sounded pleased to hear from her. “Dana, how are you this morning? And how is the owl?”
“He’s okay. Conn thinks he has a bruised wing, which isn’t very serious.”
“So is our resident falconer coming out of his shell, do you think? You seem mighty friendly with him.” Esther was clearly fishing.
“Conn? Well, we’re getting to know each other,” Dana said cautiously, knowing that whatever she said was likely to be reported widely by Esther, who was shaping up as the town gossip.
“That’s a good thing. He’s a nice guy. I can’t imagine why he prefers to keep all to himself like that. Or why you do, either, by the way. You could join the ladies’ club at my church or play bridge with my sister.”
“Conn is nice,” Dana murmured, not adding that she wasn’t interested in becoming more sociable.
“Well, I’ve got to get back to my book. The princess and the sheik
are having a big fight, and the duke asked her to marry him. I can’t wait to find out what happens.”
“Be sure to let me know,” Dana said charitably.
“You bet. ‘Bye, Dana.”
Dana chuckled as she clicked the phone off. Esther reminded her of Raymond, her friend from Chicago. He was a set designer, much in demand, but he loved gossip, too. She hadn’t talked to Raymond since she’d learned she was pregnant, knowing that if somehow he managed to figure it out, he’d spread the word so fast that she wouldn’t have a chance to get out of Chicago before word reached Philip. But now there would be no harm in talking to him.
She took the phone, which in the past week or so she had come to regard as her lifeline to the world she’d left behind, into the kitchen. When Raymond’s number rang at his studio, his assistant first told her that he was busy, but once Dana informed the man that Day Quinlan was calling, he scurried off to find his boss.
“Raymond, it’s me,” she said when Raymond answered.
“Day! Why, you little minx! How could you run off like that?” He sounded delighted to hear her voice.
“Sometimes you have to do what you have to do,” Dana said, smiling even as she resorted to a stock phrase.
“Yes, I know. Which is why I went to Acapulco last week.”
This statement made it easy to urge Raymond to report on his adventures in Mexico. He’d bought a leather coat there, and he’d found some delightful carved-wood furniture that he was having shipped to Chicago for his apartment redecorating project.
“You must come and see me, darling, when you get back,” he told her. “You are coming back, aren’t you?”
“Not just yet,” Dana said, hedging. At that moment the baby elbowed her in the ribs and rolled over. She wished she could share this major development in her life with Raymond. She knew he would be interested and supportive, but he also saw Philip at the health club several times a week, and with Raymond’s propensity for passing along interesting tidbits, she knew it wouldn’t be a good move to take him into her confidence.
“So where are you?” Raymond demanded.
Pregnant and Incognito Page 18
