by Helm, Nicole
He dipped his index finger under the hem of her shirt and dragged the material upward, trailing the point of his finger up the center of her stomach, then chest.
“Right...there,” he said when it was finally visible.
One fingertip, a gentle graze, and she thought she might vibrate until she fell apart. She understood what he meant now, after the kiss this morning. Because wanting to remember had been driving her crazy, but she was beginning to think knowing might actually be worse.
In the best possible way.
“I guess that’s something,” she said.
“And,” he continued, his voice low and smooth, “I remember that you smelled like your soap. The owl one.”
“That’s lemon verbena.”
His mouth curved, and she thought that could be her new addiction. To watch his lips take that slow, meaningful upward curve. Never a flash, never a grin, just an easy slide into a smile.
“Right. Lemon verbena.” His finger was still holding her shirt up, the tip of it pressed against the small birthmark.
Everything centered there. Her heartbeat, the shivering feeling under her skin, the heat. All of it pulsing where his one fingertip pressed, and she could hardly get in a decent breath, or let out one. Because everything had shrunk down to this.
One by one, the rest of his fingertips touched down just below her breast, and he used both hands to pull the shirt over her head. He slid his fingertips down her arms, then up her sides, and his eyes drank her in as if every inch of her mattered.
Something inside her shook at that, but she ignored it and stepped closer to him, taking his shirt off exactly the same way he’d removed hers—letting her fingertips graze as much of his skin as she could, taking her time over the dips and ridges of muscle. Slow. Deliberate.
When she managed to drag her gaze from his deliciously honed upper body, those dark eyes met hers with a fierceness and intensity that made her think of something exploding. A small blaze cracking at once into engulfing inferno.
Before she’d realized what was happening, their mouths were fused. Desperately. The kiss was fierce, like it was everything they were capable of together. Holding on to each other, drowning in each other. His fingers tangled in her hair, hers pressed into his shoulders, each hanging on tighter than they had any right to.
They had no rights to each other, but she couldn’t help feeling as though Charlie were hers. Mine. Brought to her by some magic of fortune—a fortune she’d spent most of her life certain had overlooked her.
Until goats. Until this baby. Until Charlie.
Gratitude and fear and hope and absolute desperation swamped her so hard she had to break the kiss simply to breathe, but he pressed his forehead to hers, his hands bracketing her cheeks, his fingers still tangled in her hair, that dark gaze overwhelmingly sure.
Half of her was desperate to stop, to bolt, but half of her thought it would kill her to step away. His gaze held hers, a considering, thoughtful, slow and weighted study.
Like if he looked hard enough, he could unwind every piece of her. See into everything.
That word—everything—landed heavy in her gut. So hard, so out of the blue she had to hold on to him to keep upright.
She could never let him see everything. She knew where that would lead. No matter how many sweet words he gave her now, when he actually knew...
He couldn’t know. Ever. She didn’t share her past with people, because those first few times before she’d been clean for good—for good—she saw the way people’s estimation of her changed. Even nice people. Even people she’d thought were safe.
She’d never planned to tell Charlie all the details of her past, but it was clear she couldn’t tell him anything. Not really. He could never know the things she’d done, the mistakes she’d made. How many times it had taken her to get it right.
It would change everything. He wouldn’t look at her like this. He wouldn’t ever step back when she needed him to. He wouldn’t look at her like she was a wonder, because he would certainly know she wasn’t.
She was screwed up. Broken. No, not anymore. She was here, wasn’t she? She was here. And she had to keep not being screwed up, for their child.
Oh God. No, he couldn’t know. It would forever condemn her to being less in his eyes, not just as a person, but as a parent, and she couldn’t do it. No matter what they did here, he was a part of her life. Her child’s life. Not someone she could cast off as she’d tried to cast off her family.
He would always be there. The father of her child.
She couldn’t possibly survive knowing he would look at her like her family looked at her. That he might not trust her, that he might always wonder if she was truly strong enough to be a mother.
“Did you change your mind?” he asked gently. Too gently. Like she was fragile, and worthy of not being broken. Like he cared, like he would fix whatever was wrong. Like he could fix anything.
But she didn’t want a fixer. Or anyone who thought she needed fixing. She wanted that moment when he’d touched her like she was everything. She would rise to that everything. She would mold herself into the woman she’d need to be.
“No.” She wanted this. She wanted him. She wanted that feeling he gave her, and she was beginning to realize she’d hide a lot of things, agree to a lot of things, if it allowed those feelings to grow. “Consider this our finger snap,” she said, brushing her lips across his jaw.
“Finger...?”
She snapped her fingers, like he had when he was talking about interoffice attraction, and he huffed out a laugh. “Ah.”
But then he lowered his mouth to hers, pulled her closer, until they were skin to skin, until nothing existed except whatever it was that leaped between them.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
THERE WERE PROBABLY better ways to go about doing this. Better options, better roads to take at this particular juncture.
But Charlie couldn’t think of any of them. All he could think of was the soft press of her skin against him, under his palms. Everywhere he touched, she was soft and smooth and warm and inviting, and half covered in inky colorful swirls.
It didn’t detract from her beauty in the least. The tattoos seemed to be part of her, entities she’d been born with. The sun that shone from her shoulder across the bright blue sky and birds and vibrant white of clouds below. The rainbow of curling lines on her leg. Bursts of color and beauty. Surely this woman who made the reasonable, rational part of his brain roll over and die was a mythical creature.
She smelled like no woman had ever smelled, felt like no woman had ever felt, and where was reason when he was drowning in something bigger than himself? Why would he want to find it?
She pulled away, just a fraction, but it wasn’t like a few minutes ago when she’d stilled and looked at him with a kind of frantic worry, before her gaze had held his and she’d calmed. Relaxed.
As if he was the answer to something she’d been searching for. “Come with me,” she said, taking one of his hands and interlocking their fingers. She pulled him deeper into the cottage, to a heavy old door that looked original to the aging house around him.
She stepped into the room, smaller than even the bedroom in his apartment, filled almost entirely by a large bed—unmade, mismatched sheets and quilts, a few random items of clothing littering the surface.
It could have been littered with porcupines and it would have looked inviting. As long as she was the one leading him onto it.
She’d slipped out of her shoes in the kitchen, and he toed off his while she shoved half the blankets off the bed and onto the floor. He didn’t even cringe at the careless, sloppy move.
She must have cast some kind of spell on him. One he would willingly be swayed by—over and over again. Because he’d never felt this restless kind of want. Never been bu
oyed by feeling or emotion or needing something this badly. It was new and so bright and vibrant he wanted to follow wherever it would lead.
It felt imperative to get on that bed, to have her beneath him or over him, just near him—touching as much of him that could be touched. She must have had the same thought, because they scrambled onto the bed together, reaching for each other’s pants and working to get them off, laughing when their limbs got tangled in the effort.
“Okay, you get your pants off, I’ll get mine,” she said, her voice as breathless as her laugh, her smile as beautiful as anything he’d ever seen.
And so he did as she instructed and divested himself of his jeans and boxers as quickly as humanly possible, turning to her just as she was kicking off her pants.
She rolled to him, mouth curved into that smile that spoke of some joy he’d never found—in all his life—but then there it was. As if it was something he’d been searching for.
As if she was.
He ran his fingers through her tangled mess of blond hair. “How are you so perfect?” Every place the sun had marked her skin, every place she was pale, every place that featured swirled color and pictures. Every part of her—perfect.
She stilled for a moment, and he thought he’d done something wrong, but then she all but melted into him. Her body, her mouth, and there were no answers for such an abstract question, but it didn’t matter.
Because she was, and she was in the circle of his arms, moving against him, until he rolled her over onto her back, leveraging himself above her. She arched against him, and everything centered to where they would meet. Where he would lose himself in her. He’d never been one for losing, but this would be a lot like winning too.
He traced the curve of her shoulders, the gentle weight of her breasts, trying to memorize every inch of her, torturing himself by resisting the way she arched against him, resisting the inevitable until it would become irresistible.
He wanted to stretch these moments out until they felt like hours, days, forever. He didn’t know who this idiotic voice in his head was, but he kind of liked it. He liked not feeling like Upstanding Charlie Wainwright, Former Vice President of National Accounts, for once in his life. He was just a guy, totally, stupidly enamored of this woman.
He smiled as his hands trailed over her body, he couldn’t help it. Who knew it could be possible, let alone feel amazing, to do something so completely out of character. Of course, sex was involved, so probably a lot of people knew that particular change. And she was smiling up at him, and that was as intoxicating as the smoothness of her skin, the warmth of her below him, moving against him, trying to egg him on.
He kept touching her, because she was infinitely touchable, her scent—that lemon verbena—everywhere, and he wanted it to always be everywhere.
His hands reached her stomach and they stilled there, because the reason they were even together just then was what grew inside there. He rested his palm on her belly, surprised by all the different ways and places this could fell him all over again.
A child. His.
She rested her hand on top of his, the warmth of it spreading through him differently than her nakedness underneath him did.
Their child.
Their eyes locked, and he lifted her hand from where it covered his to his mouth, turning it over and pressing a kiss to her palm—hoping the kiss vibrated through her the way it did him. Then he kissed her belly, and up. To her shoulder, her neck, her jaw, and then to the soft sigh of her mouth.
Slowly, with more patience and presence than he’d ever wanted, let alone had, he slid inside the heat of her, drowning in how right it felt to be joined just this way.
What had started in a blast of heat softened into something else entirely. Slow. Deliberate. Something like a promise, though he didn’t have a clue what it held.
So he just moved with her, letting the pressure and those feelings he couldn’t name build. Letting everything that didn’t make an inch of sense happen, because nothing about him and Meg made much sense, but it was happening.
It was the best thing to happen to him in a very long time. It was that thought he held on to as they fell over the edge together.
* * *
MEG HAD CRIED after sex before, but it had always been regret crying. Why did I do that? crying. The tears currently burning her eyes as she attempted to blink them back had nothing to do with those feelings.
She wasn’t even sad. She was awed. That something could feel good and important and big, and at the same time be scary as all get-out. But when it was over, she didn’t want to run. She wanted to wallow in it for a very long time.
His arm, which was curled around her shoulders, pulled her closer, and she leaned her forehead into the crook of his neck, slowing her breathing until it was in time with his.
She wasn’t exactly sure what had happened—or why. Or rather, if it had happened only because the life they’d created carried so much weight between them, but sex had never been like that for her before. Not sweet and slow, not drowning kisses and reverent touches. Not a slow build to amazing release.
What had just happened with Charlie was a revelation, and she wasn’t even bothered that talking about her parents and how they made her feel had started it. She didn’t feel destructive or defeated, because it had been beautiful.
For the first time, she allowed herself to hope. To hope that she and Charlie could create something beautiful between them. She allowed herself to hope that things happened for a reason, and they’d come together as much to create a life as to build one together.
Way to get ahead of yourself, Meg.
Yeah, she really needed to tone that down. It wasn’t out of the question; she just needed to rein herself in. They needed to build a really solid foundation. So that nothing could crumble and fall apart. If she was going to build something with Charlie, it was imperative that things last for as long as it was the best thing for Seedling.
Which meant she also needed to make sure she eradicated any pieces of her life that might allow Charlie to find out who she’d been, and what she’d done, and how many times she’d failed.
She’d done that mostly already. Moving out here into the country, building a whole new life with whole new people. She’d have to make sure there were no loose ends. She could do that.
Charlie’s hand came to rest on her stomach, and she wasn’t sure if that should bother her or not, on an intellectual level or even a vain one, but mostly it made her feel mushy and wonderful, and that he had so much potential to be a good father.
That, above all—except maybe her being a good mother—was what she wanted for the baby they’d created. Parents who would care. Who would put the child’s needs first. Who would never, ever use a life as a pawn.
“When’s your next doctor’s appointment?” he asked, his voice low and sleepy.
“Oh, end of the month. I’ll be ten weeks and they do a viability ultrasound thing.” She hated that word. Viability. Everything about this baby was viable, thank you very much.
“Viability? That sounds terrifying.”
Meg smiled and snuggled closer, every part of her vibrating with this hope thing. It seemed no matter how different they were on the surface, they were very much alike where it counted.
“I know. But we’ll be able to see Seedling. An actual picture.”
His arms tightened around her, and it didn’t even occur to her that she’d used the word we until he pressed a meaningful kiss to her temple.
“I have the date and time written down on a card on the fridge. It’s not until eleven that day, which means I’ll be insufferable with nerves and angst all morning.”
“Hmm.” His finger trailed up her leg, from knee to hip, until she shivered. “Well, I’ll just have to distract you.”
“I could probably deal wi
th that,” she said, grinning at him. She rested her palm against his short beard. “So, is this a fashion statement or some kind of unemployed protest?”
“I’m not unemployed,” he replied with enough of an indignant tone to make it funny instead of defensive.
“We should probably talk hours. Payment. I’m your boss now, after all.”
In an easy move, he had her pinned again, looming over her. She liked that. A lot.
“I am your peon, Ms. Carmichael.”
She grinned at him, at the flash of humor, at this side of Charlie she never would have guessed if she’d been forced to decide based on her first impression. That he could be funny and sweet and genuine.
“You could stay,” she whispered, feeling the weight of it. She was asking him for something, and a rejection would...
Oh, crap, it would really hurt. She thought she’d been chasing those feelings of importance, of being valuable, worthy, but maybe she’d been setting herself up for failure.
No. No. Because failure wasn’t allowed anymore.
“I’ll stay,” he murmured, dropping a kiss to her forehead.
Tears welled up again, but she blinked them back with a smile on her face.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
THERE WAS A GOAT standing on Meg’s head. It was such a bizarre thing Charlie didn’t even know what to say in greeting.
“Now, Ziti, you’ll get your turn for treats. Being a little butt isn’t going to change that.”
“You...talk to your goats?”
Her head whipped around to face him, and the goat neighed irritably. But it did not remove its paws or hooves or whatever from the top of Meg’s head. “Charlie! Jeez. You scared me. I thought you were still asleep.”
“Sorry,” he said, hesitantly stepping toward the goat. “Can I help? Are you stuck?”
