3, 2, 1...Married!

by Sharon Sala

  But the moment’s hold and the thoughts it was generating were not very easy to disentangle. He found himself wanting her more than just a little.

  Leaning forward over the small table, he brushed a strand of her hair away from her cheek, lightly skimming his fingertips along her skin. He’d been watching it sway for most of the meal. “You’re lucky that didn’t get any sauce on it.”

  The battle was lost and so was he.

  His feelings had been asleep for over fifteen months. Funny, he would have thought that when their time came, they would have unfurled slowly, as if they and he were waking up from a long hibernation. Instead, they jerked up, wide-awake and at attention, as if in response to an alarm that had been sounded.

  An alarm named K.C.

  Hardly realizing what he was doing until a moment after he was already doing it, Bailey inclined his head toward K.C.’s and brushed his lips against hers.

  Just like in the movies, K.C. thought, her heart hammering wildly.

  And, just like in the movies, credits would be rolling across the screen all too soon, signaling an ending to the film. If she kept that in mind, she told herself, desperately trying to hang on to reality, then she couldn’t get carried away by the fact that the man’s mouth tasted of dark, forbidden things that made her head swirl and something deep inside her cry out for more.

  In theory, her thoughts were sound, but in practice they held up like a tissue in raging flood waters. It broke apart and disappeared an instant into the kiss.

  K.C. was only marginally aware of dropping the fork she’d been holding. Or maybe the fork had been on the table all along and she’d knocked it off as she leaned into this rhapsody disguised as a kiss that was playing along her lips.

  She wasn’t sure.

  Wasn’t sure of anything right now. Certain only that whatever was happening was drawing her in until everything else around her was being reduced to a minuscule pinprick. A little like the one and only time she’d fainted as a teenager. But that had been caused by the flu and had been a frightening experience.

  This was no flu.

  Awestruck, K.C. felt absolutely wonderful and on the verge of bursting into song, possibly even in another language.

  It felt as if there were exotic wine being pumped through his veins instead of blood. The thought came to Bailey from nowhere, disappearing just as quickly. Leaving behind an indelible mark. Just like she was.

  Threading his fingers through her hair, curving them around the back of her head, Bailey brought her mouth even closer to his. He deepened the kiss, losing himself in it even before he did so. He’d never liked not knowing his way.

  This time, it didn’t matter.

  All that mattered was kissing her. And feeling alive again for the first time in a century.

  “Dad-dee! Come!”

  The small, high-pitched command burst upon them with the suddenness of a squall. Like drowning victims drawn from the water at the last moment before the sea claimed them, K.C. and Bailey gasped as they sprang apart. Dazed with touches of bewildered guilt, they looked at the child they had both momentarily forgotten.

  Clad in one-piece turquoise pajamas complete with feet and dragging a matching turquoise Mr. Fuzzy-Foo with him, Bobby was standing in the dining room doorway, a wide, triumphant grin splitting his round little face.

  K.C. stifled a laugh. The boy looked so very proud of himself. “Looks like we’re not alone.”

  Bailey was already on his feet, crossing to his son. He’d left him sound asleep in his bed. In any event, Bobby had been safe in his crib.

  Apparently the word safe no longer applied. “How did you get out of your crib?”

  In reply, Bobby laughed gleefully, utterly delighted with himself. Raising his chin up, he patted his chest emulating, K.C. surmised, a cartoon character he’d witnessed. “Bobb-bee beeg boy.”

  “You may have to change that to Bobby Houdini,” K.C. observed, tongue-in-cheek. By the surprised look on Bailey’s face, she guessed that this was the first time Bobby had executed his escape trick. “How high do you have the railings?”

  “They’re up all the way.” Worried that Bobby might fall out, Bailey had made certain that he’d extended the bars on either side to their maximum length. Obviously that was no longer enough.

  Time marches on, K.C. mused. She ruffled Bobby’s hair. Dark, like his father’s, she couldn’t help wondering if Bailey’s felt just as silken to the touch. “My guess is that somebody should be in the market for a junior bed right about now.”

  “I thought I had a few months’ grace before that happened.” Holding him, Bailey nuzzled his son. “You’re growing up too fast, kid.” His accomplishment a thing of the past, Bobby was already reaching for K.C. with a determined expression on his face. “Too fast,” Bailey repeated with a laugh.

  Unable to resist, and a little shaken by what had just happened at the table with Bobby’s father, K.C. took Bobby from Bailey’s arms. She pretended to look at him sternly, but couldn’t quite pull it off. “Isn’t it past your bedtime, big guy?”

  Bobby firmly shook his head, the wide smile now turned down into a frown. “No bed.”

  She laughed at the reply, glancing toward Bailey. “I see he’s going to segue into the terrible twos very smoothly.”

  Bailey winced at the suggestion. He was having enough trouble just holding his own as it was. He didn’t want to think about it getting any worse. “I thought that was just a myth.”

  Balancing the boy on her hip, K.C. feathered her fingers through his thick hair as she smiled at him. He responded by wrapping his arms around her neck. K.C. felt herself losing her heart. Was that twice in one evening? The question echoed in her mind before she firmly pushed it aside.

  “Myths always have at least a germ of truth to them—” She glanced at Bailey. “Like Santa Claus.”

  “Santa Claus is a myth?” Bailey pretended to look so aghast, she had to laugh.

  “No.” She struggled to keep a straight face. “Actually, only Mrs. Claus is. They had to invent her because, what with Santa living with all those elves up there at the North Pole, people were beginning to talk.” Inclining her head toward him, she confided, “I mean, how long does it really take to build a doll house anyway?”

  The scent of her hair came to him just then, scrambling his brain just enough to make Bailey pause before answering, trying to collect his thoughts. “You would be surprised.”

  He liked her, he thought. Liked the easy way she returned his banter, liked the way she held his son as if the boy were something precious and not just a burden to transfer from one place to another.

  Liked too, the way she threatened to permanently singe his socks when she kissed him.

  Looking at her, Bailey made his decision. The hell with once burnt, twice leery. This was a woman worth taking a risk on. A woman he really wanted to get to know better.

  Very gently, he took Bobby back into his arms. Bobby looked somewhat disgruntled about giving up his new playmate. “If you’ll excuse me, I’ll just put my escape artist to bed.”

  Wriggling, Bobby loudly declared his terms for surrender. “Sto-wee, sto-wee.”

  Bailey suppressed a sigh. It looked as if it were going to be a very long night and not shaping up exactly as he’d hoped.

  K.C. laid a hand on Bailey’s shoulder, stopping him before he left the room. Bobby took the opportunity to wrap his arms around her arm and hold on for dear life. “I can read a story to him if you like.”

  Bailey looked down at the near-death grip his son had on his date.

  “It looks as if you might not have a choice,” he quipped. “But really, you don’t have to—if you don’t mind waiting until I read one to him.” He had visions of her leaving before he was finished.

  “I don’t mind, but I hate being inactive.” She gestured at the room behind her. “The alternative to my reading to Bobby is for me to start organizing your toys.”

  He didn’t doubt that she’d make good
on her threat, he thought, looking into her eyes. Though it didn’t look it, he actually had a system as far as knowing where the toys were.

  Bailey picked the more attractive proposition. “You can read a story.”

  This way, he figured, everyone won.

  Chapter 6

  “And they lived happily ever after.”

  Closing the book softly, K.C. looked over toward Bobby.

  Success!

  Closing one hand into a fist, she pulled it down quickly in a universal sign of silent victory. It appeared that Bobby had finally lost the ongoing battle he’d been waging with his eyelids. They didn’t pop open the way they had at the end of the other three stories she had read to him.

  The tireless child was finally tired and asleep.

  Engulfed in a sense of triumph, K.C. shifted her eyes over toward Bailey. Since she’d offered him a reprieve, she’d fully expected Bailey to have taken the opportunity to leave his son’s bedroom once she had begun reading the first story. To her surprise, and maybe, yes, just a touch of pleasure, he had remained, listening almost as attentively as Bobby had while she read one Hans Christian Andersen tale after another until her audience had finally drifted away.

  Most men would have been nodding out by now. Her brother-in-law usually fell asleep by the third page when he was reading to Gracie. Bailey really was a rare man, she mused.

  With a suppressed sigh, K.C. slowly rose to her feet and glanced at her watch. It had taken the better part of an hour and a half to get Bobby back to where he’d been when she’d arrived tonight. It was getting late, she thought. Maybe it was time she called it a night herself—before she was tempted to do something she might regret all too soon. Bailey had far too tempting a mouth to ignore indefinitely.

  It seemed that Bailey had begun to despair that Bobby was never going to fall asleep. Having K.C. around seemed to wire the boy even more than usual. Bailey knew the feeling.

  Crossing to her now from the window seat, he took the oversize book from her and placed it back on the crowded bookshelf. Toys weren’t the only thing in abundance within Bobby’s room. Apparently Bailey made frequent trips to the bookstore which resulted in more books for Bobby’s growing library.

  With his finger to his lips, he took K.C.’s hand and led her quietly from the room. Very softly, he eased Bobby’s door shut behind him.

  “Home free,” he whispered, then smiled, still holding her hand. “Thanks for doing that.”

  With very little effort, she could be coaxed into leaving her hand in his indefinitely. Which was why she made a point of dropping it. There was no sense in letting herself get carried away to places that didn’t exist except in fairy tales and the recesses of her mind.

  Striving to be casual while strange little eruptions were going on inside her, K.C. shrugged. “I love reading fairy tales.” Because looking at him in the dim hallway was suddenly generating far too intimate an atmosphere for her to successfully handle, she turned on her heel and walked back to the dining room. “Too bad life can’t imitate them.”

  Without asking, she began clearing the table. She needed to do something with her hands.

  “Actually, it probably does. At least the ones that were written by the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen.” Following her lead, he began picking up empty plates. “Have you ever read the originals?”

  Looking around, she found the dishwasher. But when she opened it to place the plates inside, she discovered that it was full of clean dishes Bailey had neglected to put away.

  “Those aren’t them?” Stacking her plates in the sink, she began unloading the dishwasher.

  “Those aren’t them. The real stories they wrote were more like science fiction of the time, written with an eye for an adult audience.” He thought of the couple he’d read. “They would have scared someone like Bobby into six months of insomnia.”

  Not knowing where the glasses belonged, K.C. lined them up on the counter. “So, even fairy tales don’t have fairy tale endings?”

  She hadn’t been kidding about not being able to remain inactive for long. The need for activity brought other thoughts to his mind that he knew were far too premature at the moment. He began to wonder if he made her nervous. The thought amused him. The last time he had made a woman nervous, he’d stuck a frog in front of Alice Meyers.

  “Those don’t, but that doesn’t mean you can’t keep on looking until you find the right kind of story, the right kind of ending.”

  She began opening cupboards, looking for the right spaces to stack the dishes. “Spoken like a man who’s a child at heart.”

  Still watching, Bailey leaned a hip against the edge of the counter. Was she going to wash the floor next? “Nothing wrong with that. Children see life through the eyes of innocence and simplicity. Nothing is hopeless and everything is possible.”

  It must have seemed like an incredible amount of optimism coming from someone over the age of fourteen, because she stopped stacking and looked at him over her shoulder. “You’re divorced, right?”

  Bailey knew what she was thinking. Divorce brought with it dual suitcases stuffed with cynicism and pessimism. He carried no such baggage with him. What his divorce had cost him was the loss of a certain amount of enthusiasm and hope.

  Nothing that wasn’t being replenished even as he stood here with her.

  “Divorced, yes, but I’m far from emotionally terminated.” Enough was enough, he thought, closing the last cupboard in front of her. “I didn’t ask you over to audition for the part of housekeeper.” Weaving his hand through hers, he led her into the living room, then turned to face her. “So, where were we?”

  He was standing close to her. She could feel that same unsettled feeling beginning all over again. The one that warned her she was about to go over the falls in a barrel made out of spun sugar.

  She wet her lips, unconsciously, he was sure. “Being interrupted by the youngest stunt man on record.”

  His eyes were on her lips as her tongue flicked over them again. Maybe she doing that to drive him crazy. If she was, she was succeeding. “And before then?”

  How could her heart have stopped and her pulse points all be throbbing at the same time? “I was commenting on your culinary skills.” The words came out in a bare whisper.

  She was nervous, he thought, charmed. Here she was, reducing him to the consistency of Jell-O left out in the sun and he was making her nervous.

  It gave him hope.

  He lightly feathered his fingers through her hair, exciting himself. “Seems to me that there was something in between.”

  She swallowed. Survivalist humor glinted in her eyes while she appeared blasé. “You mean the part where you were burning off my lips?”

  He wouldn’t have given himself that kind of credit. If anyone was burning anyone, it was her burning him. Making him burn for her. “That was probably the seasoning in the lasagna.”

  “I don’t think seasoning had anything to do with it—unless you’re being metaphorical.”

  Oh, how he wanted her. Bailey wondered what the chances were that Bobby would sleep through the rest of the night.

  “Right about now,” he whispered against her mouth, “I can hardly think straight enough to be coherent, but I can be anything you like—”

  With effort, she drew her head back, though she wanted nothing else but to kiss him again. But that would be a mistake. Opening her up to others.

  “How about patient?”

  He blinked, trying to focus. “All right,” he amended, beginning to follow her. “Almost anything.” But he saw that she was serious. The last thing he wanted to do was force himself on her. He blew out a breath. “Am I going too fast?”

  K.C. pressed her lips together, shaking her head slowly. Her eyes never left his. “Maybe I’m just too slow.”

  He laughed softly, playing with the same wayward strand of her hair before tucking it behind her ear.

  “Lady, there is nothing slow about you.” Since he kne
w that if he kept on touching her, he’d want more, Bailey shoved his hands into his front pockets and took a step back. “I’ll be honest with you, K.C. Bobby and I don’t get out very much. We keep each other pretty busy—and then there’re the toys.” He nodded behind him. “Not much space for socializing.” He smiled at her. “But Bobby seems to have taken a real shine to you.”

  This was her chance to back away. To say good-night and retreat. Why was she staying put? And why did she hear herself asking, “And his father?”

  A smile spread across his face.

  “His father knows better than to question his son’s judgment. After all, Bobby was the one who picked Gilroy out above the rest.”

  Confused, she shook her head. “Gilroy?”

  “Mr. Fuzzy-Foo.” He pointed to the toy. Bailey’s eyes washed over her slowly. “The boy knows a winner when he sees one.”

  K.C. could almost feel his eyes touching her. Warming her. She tried to steel herself off. There were places she didn’t want to revisit, no matter how inviting. “You’re putting a lot of responsibility on a little boy.”

  The truth of the matter was, even at eighteen months, Bobby was showing signs that his tastes were similar to his own, Bailey thought. He was looking forward to a long, full relationship with the boy.

  And wasn’t Bobby the one who had reached for K.C. first? “If you can’t have faith in your own flesh and blood, who can you trust?”

  “Maybe I had better call it a night.” She flushed slightly. “All that ‘heavy’ reading has worn me out more than I thought.”

  Bailey saw through the quip easily. “You don’t have to explain.”

  “It’s not that I didn’t enjoy tonight, I did. All of it,” she emphasized. K.C. heard herself admitting more than she’d intended on giving away about herself to a man who inexplicably felt too intimately close to be the stranger he was. “It’s just that I’m learning to take baby steps again.”

  She had a past. And wounds. Who didn’t? “Want to talk about it? I’m a great listener.” He pointed to the array of talking dolls he had designed. “It would be nice to hear a feminine voice without having to pull a string or press an elbow first.”