Babies in the Bargain

by Victoria Pade

  Kira did, thinking that no man should be allowed to look that good in a plain pair of jeans and a white T-shirt, and that if she ended up having to turn around and leave him again it was going to be even harder than it had been the day before.

  From the entryway inside, Kira glanced around in search of the twins and Betty, but she didn’t see or hear anything that gave her a clue as to where they were.

  “Betty took the girls to the park. You just missed them,” Cutty said, guessing what she was looking for.

  “Good,” Kira said. “Then we can talk.”

  Cutty motioned with his cane toward the living room and Kira went ahead of him, keeping her fingers crossed that she hadn’t made a mistake by coming here and thinking that maybe Kit had been as right about doing this over the phone as Kira hoped her friend had been about everything else.

  But it was too late now and so all she could do was go through with what she’d come for.

  Nervous, though, she began to pick up the few toys that were on the floor.

  “I thought you came to talk?” Cutty said from behind her.

  Kira dropped the toys into the toy box and turned back to find him still standing, his weight braced on the cane, watching her.

  Now or never…

  “I did.”

  “What do you want to talk about?”

  Kira screwed up her courage and said, “I need to know if I misunderstood what you said to me yesterday morning.”

  Cutty’s frown was dark and intense. “I thought I made myself pretty clear. I asked you to stay. You said no.”

  And obviously he wasn’t only confused the way he had been at the time. He was angry now, as well.

  “What you said about my staying wasn’t altogether clear, either. But maybe we can get into that after you explain the rest of what you said.”

  “The rest?”

  Kira took a deep, fortifying breath. “This is what I thought you were saying to me—” She went on to tell him the way she’d taken what he’d said. Honestly. Openly. Sparing nothing, including the depth of her own insecurities when it came to being compared to her sister and the need that had been ingrained in her to do everything she could to be as good, to excel.

  The longer she talked the more Cutty’s expression and stance relaxed until, by the time she was finished, his eyebrows were arched in disbelief.

  “You are so far off the mark,” he said then in regards to what she believed he’d been telling her the previous day. “I know Ad told you how things were between Marla and me—he confessed that last night. He said he did it because he knew I’d never tell you myself and he was right. I wouldn’t have. But not because it isn’t all true. I won’t say anything against Marla because she’s gone and everything that happened, everything she was and did, is over. Nothing can be served by rehashing it. Plus she needed so badly for people to think of her the way they did—the way they do—I couldn’t ruin that for her when she was alive and I can’t do it to her memory, either.”

  Kira had to admire his loyalty even if it had tweaked those insecurities of hers. But she still needed to know just how true what Ad had said was. “So the marriage wasn’t all Betty and everyone else around here believes it was?”

  “Had Marla not turned up pregnant we probably wouldn’t have even dated another month, Kira. We were just teenagers. No, the marriage that came out of that wasn’t what people think it was. When you first showed up here and offered to help out, all I could think was that you were bound to be like Marla and I couldn’t get into that again. So your friend was right—I was thrilled to figure out that the biggest part of you is different from Marla. I was glad that you were willing to overlook a few things to go to the game and the party and the awards ceremony with me. And the fact that you were playing with the twins when I expected you to be working like mad to make everything perfect before Betty came back? That’s what made me realize I wanted you to stay.”

  Relief washed through Kira so thoroughly she almost felt weak. But at the same time there was that stay part again and she still didn’t know what, exactly, he had in mind.

  “Now explain what you mean when you say that you want me to stay,” she said more bravely.

  A slow, sexy smile brightened his features and he used the head of his cane to hook her upper arm and pull her to stand close in front of him.

  “I really didn’t make myself clear yesterday, did I?” he said. “Stay means I want you to move to Northbridge and marry me. It means I want you to be Mel and Mandy’s mom, and I want to have a couple more kids with you. It means I want to spend every day for the rest of my life with you. It means—” he was suddenly giving special enunciation to each word “—that I’m so in love with you that I’m damn near giddy.”

  It was Kira’s turn to smile. “And you can live with your whole town probably thinking you’ve traded down?”

  “They’re all going to love you as much as I do,” Cutty assured. “And one way or another, the only thing I care about is you saying a big fat yes to being my wife.”

  There was one more thing Kira had thought about when she’d considered the possibility of a future with Cutty and she thought she had to say it now. But she was reluctant to and it must have shown on her face because he said, “What? You’re going to say no?”

  “I have just one condition,” she ventured. “But it’s a huge one.”

  “Let’s hear it?”

  “The whole time I was here I just kept thinking that this is Marla’s house, that everything in it is Marla’s.”

  “And you don’t want to live in Marla’s house with Marla’s things,” Cutty guessed.

  Kira grimaced. “I’m sorry. I know this is your home, too, and they’re your things, too. But—”

  Cutty chuckled slightly. “Gone!”

  “Me? Or the house and the things?”

  “Not you. The house and the things. You’re more important to me than all of it. I think we should start fresh. Although I will have to keep Mel and Mandy,” he joked.

  Kira laughed as even more relief flooded her. “I wouldn’t give them up for anything.”

  “So where’s the big fat yes to marrying me?”

  “Big fat yes!” she repeated with enthusiasm.

  Cutty pulled her the rest of the way into his arms then and kissed her a kiss that initially just seemed to put a stamp on the deal.

  But it took only a few moments for the kiss to become more than that. To rekindle what they’d shared after Cutty’s birthday party and ignite a desire hotter than the sun.

  Cutty stopped then and glanced at the clock on the fireplace mantel. “Hmm. You know, we might have half an hour yet to ourselves.”

  Kira knew what was going through his mind and she merely smiled.

  But apparently it was enough consent for Cutty because without another word he took her hand and led her through the kitchen and out the back door, all the way to the garage apartment where Kira had stripped and remade the bed before she’d left for Denver.

  With time limited, they didn’t waste any of it.

  Clothes were shed as mouths clung and then Cutty laid Kira back on the mattress where a passion even greater than what they’d shared before erupted.

  There were no inhibitions. There was no timidity. Hands explored and aroused. Lips parted and tongues teased and tormented and claimed each other. Bodies came together in one graceful motion and moved like the rhythm of ship and sea to reach an all-new height, to find a glorious, unguarded ecstasy that left them breathlessly holding each other as Cutty rolled them to their sides and pressed tender lips to the top of her head.

  “It’s a good thing you said yes or I think I’d just keep you prisoner out here for the rest of your life,” he said after a moment, his voice raspy with the remnants of lovemaking so divine Kira felt as if she were floating on air.

  “What would I be? Your love-slave?” she asked.

  He grinned a satiated grin. “Love-slave,” he repeated as if trying out the so
und of it. “I like that.”

  “But think of the scandal when, one day, Betty happened upon me handcuffed to the bed. Small Town Cop Keeps Microbiologist For His Own Personal Pleasure,” Kira said as if reciting a headline.

  “You’d have sympathy in your favor, though, and the whole town would make you its new idol.”

  Kira laughed, realizing just how unimportant that seemed now, in Cutty’s arms, knowing he was hers. “That’s okay. I think being your wife will be enough for me.”

  He reared back to look into her eyes and his expression surprised her because it seemed that her simple comment had genuinely moved him.

  “I hope so,” he said softly.

  Kira pressed one palm to the side of that face she knew she’d never tire of and kissed him. “I love you, Cutty,” she said then, her own full heart echoing in her voice.

  “I love you, too. More than I even knew until you walked out of here yesterday. Don’t ever do that again.”

  “You’re going to have to get a court order if you want to get rid of me,” she told him.

  Commotion from inside the house then let them know Betty was back with the twins.

  “We should get up and get dressed before she catches us,” Kira said.

  Cutty grinned. “Yeah, I suppose we should,” he agreed as he kissed her one more time.

  Then they both made quick work of dressing and finger-combing hair and making sure all evidence of how they’d spent that half hour was concealed.

  But regardless of how concealed it was, Kira carried with her the warm glow left by that and by the knowledge that she’d finally found her own heart’s true desire. Her own heart’s true love. That she’d found it in Cutty.

  And that along with him came two beautiful babies she couldn’t have loved more if she’d given birth to them herself.

  Two beautiful babies who were just a wonderful bonus to make her life complete.

  ISBN: 978-1-4592-2937-2

  BABIES IN THE BARGAIN

  Copyright © 2004 by Victoria Pade

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the editorial office, Silhouette Books, 233 Broadway, New York, NY 10279 U.S.A.

  All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.

  This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

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  *A Ranching Family

  †Baby Times Three

  **Northbridge Nuptials