She took a deep breath. Did she have the courage to stop circumventing her real dream of being in love again? Should she be seeking love first-with West, the only man she trusted and wanted-and pray that the child naturally followed? What if she were wrong? And what if loving West turned out to be not enough for her?
“Well, would you look at that?” Rome said, touching her shoulder and waving his hand in the direction of the door. Jerked out of her troublesome thoughts, Annie focused on her surroundings, and what she saw made her mouth drop open.
As West wove his way through the tables, the maitre d’ close on his heels protesting that babies weren’t allowed in the Café Lauree, he saw Annie’s change of expression. She was seated very close to Rome on the curved padded seat, the two of them cozy, and she didn’t look happy to see him.
Well, fine. West hadn’t had that great a time himself this evening, pacing back and forth wearing a permanent path in his carpet while Teddy played happily in his playpen. He had finally admitted to himself he’d made a mistake switching dates on Annie. A huge mistake.
All he could think about was Annie in Rome’s arms. He had sent a woman he desperately wanted off with someone perfectly capable of sweeping her off her feet. He knew Rome was lonely—and he knew Annie was vulnerable. What he didn’t know—and what was killing him—was, would that combination end them up in bed together the first time she’d met him?
He hadn’t been able to wait around until tomorrow to find out. All his life he’d pursued his dreams, and now his dream was having Annie for his own. It might be a dream he could never have, but he’d be damned if he was going to be the one to push her into another man’s arms. So he’d grabbed up Teddy, thankful the child had still been awake, and come here to make a spectacle of himself, risking everything he’d worked for if people asked real questions, just in the name of.what? Ruining Annie’s dream?
He’d lost his mind.
But he wasn’t leaving.
Reaching Annie’s table, feeling hopeful and crazy at the same time, West held Teddy well away, snuffed out the candle on the table, and then handed the baby to her. “Teddy missed you,” he said.
Teddy took one look at Rome and, just like earlier in the house, burst into a loud wail that would have had everyone in the place’s head turning, had they all not been already captivated by the scene.
“Poor baby,” Annie crooned. “Are you having a rough evening?”
West suppressed his grin.
“Really, sir,” the maitre d’ broke in stiffly from behind West. “We do not have the facilities for children. And you aren’t wearing a tie. We insist on a tie. You’ll have to go.”
“That’s all right, Nigel,” Annie told her aunt’s new friend, cradling Teddy to her. “We’re leaving.”
“We are?” Rome asked.
“We are?” West said. He hadn’t even had to beg.
“Of course. Teddy so obviously needs me.” Rising, Annie handed the baby back to West as she picked up her purse and smiled at Rome. “I’m sorry about this. Thank you for escorting me. I really enjoyed myself.”
“That much?” West asked.
She turned to West and gave him a long once-over. “That much and more.” Especially, she’d enjoyed learning her aunt’s lesson.
Rome looked from Annie to West, his dark eyes speculative, and then, for the first time since he’d arrived that evening, he actually grinned. “Oh. I see how it is.”
“How what is?” West asked.
“Sirs, really,” the maitre d’ piped in, sensing no movement toward the door. “I need that baby off the premises. You wouldn’t want me to contact authorities, would you?”
Rome grinned again and started laughing. “No, we wouldn’t want you to have to do that.” Shaking his dark head in total amusement, he said goodbye. “Call me when you find out how this turns out,” he said as he left them.
“We will,” Annie called sweetly. She’d seen through West’s story the second the happy-looking Teddy had spotted Rome and let out a squall. West had been counting on him not liking Rome as a cover, so he could break things up. It had been West who’d had second thoughts about her being out and begun to suffer.
Knowing that West felt that deeply for her gave her courage to try it West’s way—at least the way Aunt Gigi had read it in his book. Instead of a baby, Annie decided, she would go after love. West’s love. And if her love for him was powerful and real enough, maybe, just maybe, it could melt the reserve in West’s heart and change him so that he would trust her not to leave him. She didn’t fear a forever with him—unless he failed to love her. A baby remained a dream in her heart, but she knew she no longer wanted that child unless it had West and forever attached to it.
And if he trusted her, she hoped he would give her that baby. But she would never know unless she gave love a chance without any expectations. She’d never know unless she chanced getting hurt again.
Tonight, with West.
By the time the two of them stopped at a QuikShop store so Annie could dash inside for what she termed “supplies” and then got home, Teddy was sound asleep.
“So confess, West,” Annie said as West put the baby down in his padded playpen. “Was Teddy having the rough evening—or were you?” Collapsing on the sofa, Annie kicked off her shoes, curled her legs up underneath her, and patted the seat next to her.
“Caught me. I got to thinking about Rome,” he said, sitting next to her, “and I decided I was wrong to set him up.” And jealous as hell, he added silently.
“Rome was safe,” Annie told him. “I spent the whole evening comparing him to you.” She took a deep breath. She could still feel it, this desire entwining her with West, an attraction that had started and grown since she’d first set eyes on him. “More happened tonight than just Aunt Gigi’s success. She told me something interesting, West—that she owes all her success to you. She said I should examine my real dream, just like you say to in the book.”
If there was one thing that was worrying West about having written that book, it was that people were putting a lot of bizarre interpretations on what was in it, like Marcia thinking he’d implied it was okay to abandon her baby. “What precisely did Gigi say I said about real dreams in the book?”
“That what I really want is probably what I fear having the most.”
“Oh.” He gave Annie a strange look. “So what do you fear the most, Annie?”
“Love.” Now that she’d admitted it, she wanted to get everything out, so she spoke in a rush. “I’m afraid I’ll fall in love and get hurt all over again. After Gigi said that, I realized that’s why I was so adamant about having a baby alone. It wasn’t interference from the father, it was being tied again to a man who didn’t love me.”
“Oh, hell, Annie,” West uttered. She was tearing him apart.
“And since we seem to have these…feelings. passing back and forth between us like electric currents, I thought I could go ahead and change my dream to pursuing real, true love—with you.” Only with you. “That is, if you’re willing. And if it’s real, true love we end up feeling, maybe the rest about the baby will just fall into place, eventually.”
“I can’t promise you that ever, Annie.”
“I know.” She reached up and stroked her fingers down the side of his clean-shaven cheek and let them rest on his shoulder. “But at least we would have tried. And if it turns out there is love between us, I think we’ll end up happy with whatever happens, don’t you?”
West didn’t know. He wasn’t sure he believed in love, and that was part of the problem of having a child. “You really believe in that kind of love, Annie?”
“Oh, yes,” she said, nodding solemnly. “I have to, West—or what’s the sense of existing?” Her hand moved from his shoulder down his chest, more slowly than West had imagined possible, until she reached his belt, where her fingers lingered. Just when he thought he couldn’t stand the torment a second longer, Annie dropped her hand to the couch pillow.
>
“Real love does exist, West, and it’s the kind I want—the kind that shines in your eyes when you look at your spouse. The kind that makes everyone else envious, because they know how hard it is to find and keep. The kind where there’s a connection of the hearts.”
West had only seen that kind once, when his brother Matthew had looked at his wife during the marriage ceremony. “So you think we could feel that?”
“We aren’t going to ever find out unless we try.” Annie’s smile looked dazzlingly bright to West. “Unless, of course, you don’t want me.”
“If that’s a joke…” he said, wrapping his arms around her and lifting her onto his lap, where she could feel the evidence of just how much he did want her. “It’s a damned poor one.”
He kissed her, his tongue flickering against hers until Annie felt senseless with delight—but not so much that she couldn’t pluck free his buttons. Her hand slipped under his shirt and she touched him, explored him, feeling like she was finally free to play with a gift that had been dangled in front of her eyes for days.
Long days.
West continued to kiss her while freeing the pearl buttons on the front of her dress that had kept him hot and bothered the whole time she’d been out with Rome. The lacy piece that covered her cleavage turned out to be a camisole with lace straps.
He loved lace.
Teddy sighed in his sleep, and the noise was like an explosion in the otherwise still room. Annie pulled back, drawing in a deep breath.
“Upstairs,” she whispered. “We can’t do anything right here,” she said, indicating the baby with a sideways sweep of her head. Her hair fell over one shoulder. Seeing it, desire propelled him to his feet, and he watched as Annie quickly checked Teddy in the soft lamplight to make sure he was sound asleep. He was. Then she stopped by her purse and lifted out one of the foil-wrapped condoms she bought earlier at the QuikShop. Silently she walked over to him, picked up his hand, and folded his fingers over it. “It’s my promise to you that I won’t ask you for more than you can give me,” she said, smiling up at him.
West didn’t know what to say. Annie would voluntarily give up her most heartfelt desire—for him—and that was more than anyone had ever offered him. He could deny his need for her until hell froze over, but if he didn’t at least try a relationship with her, he knew he would forever feel like he’d missed a chance at happiness.
But still, he worried about her. “Will my love be enough for you, Annie?”
Annie smiled at him from the bottom of her heart. “If it’s real love, West, I believe it will.” She batted him gently on the arm, rushed ahead of him and laughed delightedly. “Now hurry up with that thing before I start thinking you’re all talk and no action.”
“Which thing?” he joked, and then pretended to chase her up the stairs. When they reached the top he caught her around the waist and lifted her up in the air, covering her mouth with his again.
His very size made her feel safe with him, cherished. Annie curled her arms around his neck and returned his kiss. As his tongue probed her mouth, her insides dissolved and she pressed her breasts harder against his chest, needing to assuage the aching want in them. He let her slide down his body until her feet hit the ground in a move that left her panting with need. As if by mutual consent, they both began to strip off their clothes.
Annie, her lips swollen from his kisses and her hazel eyes lit with an inner fire, was every bit as beautiful as West had imagined wearing nothing but her camisole and matching lace panties.
“I am one lucky man,” he uttered.
“What’s luck got to do with it?” Annie’s eyes twinkled as she gazed at West in his dark blue boxer shorts and no shirt. He was magnificent, with shoulders and arms and rippling muscles. “I hope I’m one of your dreams you made come true.”
“God, I’m glad I wrote that book,” he said, meaning it with all his heart as he pulled her against him again, lowering his mouth back down on hers. He was even a little glad Marcia’d had her lapse of sanity. If she hadn’t, he never would have met Annie. He’d never felt this intensity toward a woman before, like he wanted to savor every moment with her at the same time he wanted to devour and be devoured.
As quickly as possible.
They stayed where they were, within seconds caught up in an explosion of flames too hot to let them walk even a couple dozen feet to a bed. Running his hands over her lace-covered breasts and then under them, lifting them, caressing their hardened peaks through the thin material, West acquainted himself with their feel at the same time he gave her pleasure. She moaned and, with a gentle tug on his shoulders, brought him down to the thickly carpeted floor right there with her.
On the floor they kissed, touched and loved each other into a sweet oblivion, and by the time they were totally naked and West made real love to her, Annie was on the edge of ecstasy—and on the edge of falling in love.
Long minutes later, as she lay in West’s arms, she couldn’t help but think the two of them were perfect for each other and could have that romantic forever they both wanted—if her love could just melt the reserve around West’s heart. And if it couldn’t, she knew what she was feeling for him was going to be tested. For, more than ever now, she wanted a baby.
West’s baby.
9
So much time was taken up on Wednesday juggling
baby-watching, her work, and her court schedule, that the day had flown by without Annie seeing much of West. But Wednesday night, falling asleep in his arms after making love had been like finding the pot of gold at the end of Teddy’s rainbow, right there in the house—only better. Money never lasted. She really believed love could.
Yawning, she padded barefoot back to West’s bed Thursday morning after checking on Teddy in his playpen bed across the hall. He was still asleep. Since it was already daylight and she had only a few minutes until she had to get up anyway, she propped herself up in a sitting position against the pillow-lined headboard and looked down at the man she was ninety-nine percent certain she was in love with.
From when they’d fallen asleep holding each other, she knew West was naked underneath the sheet that half covered him. After studying him for a few seconds to make certain he was still asleep—he seemed to be—she grinned. Unable to resist, she stretched out her leg and used her bare toes to lift up the sheet, getting a good view of his private assets. Still grinning, she crept her other foot stealthily forward and let her toes tickle him to attention, sighing with contentment at the feel of his velvety soft, hot skin.
Before she had time to squeal, West flipped around, grabbed her hips, and slid her down onto her back. Leaning down, he kissed the inside of her thigh above her knee.
“Oh, West,” she said, melting inside. “We don’t have any time for this. I have an eight-thirty appointment.”
“Call and tell them something came up,” he said, moving slightly so her hand touched exactly what that something was.
“Something big, huh, West?” she asked, giggling and then gasping for breath as his mouth wandered higher on her sensitive inner thigh.
“And getting bigger,” he told her, reaching the bottom of the oversize T-shirt she had worn to bed. He lifted it and continued to kiss a line up her hipbone. “But still not too big for you to handle,” he added.
“I guess…I could…try to squeeze you in, then,” she said, finding it hard to breathe as he reached her breasts and lowered his mouth directly over one taut peak. “But it’s going to be hard.”
“I hope so,” he said, moving up to kiss her lips as he moved over her and ground his pelvis against hers. Annie’s whole body shuddered with anticipation and from that point on, time no longer seemed so important to her. Only West did. Very soon they were going to give Teddy back, and then it would be just the two of them. She had a feeling that she would know then whether or not West felt like she didthat she wanted them to be together forever.
So while she still could, she made love to him and tried not to
think about what Saturday would bring. But still the lovemaking was bittersweet, because when they dissolved against each other, finally satiated, the air was thick with her hope and his silence. He still hadn’t said how he felt about her or their relationship, and the clock was ticking toward the final hours.
Even though it wasn’t very loud, the phone jarred them both; Annie felt West physically startle. Groaning, he remained where he was on top of her because she held him there and reached out with one arm to grab the phone.
“It’s seven-thirty in the morning, you’re disturbing me, and this better be good,” he muttered into the phone without saying hello.
Annie could hear a masculine voice, and she tried to roll away so he could talk, but West held her where she was and shook his head, his eyes going darkly serious. “That’s a good one.” A long pause, and then dotted conversation. “Yeah, I am…Sure…Oh, no, I’ll go to them—it would be easier…Yeah, I’m positive. I know where that is. In about two hours. I’ll call you back in a few to get the address. ‘Bye.”
He hung up the phone and looked down at her. Annie thought she read a mixture of worry mixed with fear in his eyes. “Looks like you’re going to have to cancel your appointments this morning after all,” he said quietly. “That was the private detective. He just finished talking to Marcia’s mother in Baton Rouge. She says Marcia just got there last night and told them the baby was with friends. The poor woman was in shock to learn otherwise, and she hopes we can bring the baby.”
“I guess we’d better get moving then,” Annie said. All the lovely heat from West’s lovemaking was wasted as she went cold inside. Over the past week, no matter how much she’d tried to avoid getting involved, she’d grown fond of Teddy, and giving him back was going to be difficult. But she had West now, and she would get through it.
The One-Week Baby (Yours Truly) Page 11
