by Cathie Linz
He gave the same attention to detail to each inch of creamy skin he revealed as he removed every stitch of her clothing. First he grazed her with the merest brush of his fingertips. Then he repeated his explorations with his bold mouth and seductive tongue—moving from the enticing warmth at the base of her throat, down over her creamy breasts. He skimmed her navel before shifting his attentions even lower. There he paused to spread his heated message of impassioned need.
At the first forbidden contact, she gasped at the bolt of ecstasy that shot through her with that hot, wet touch.
Lifting his head, he gave her a devilish smile. “Ah, you like that, hmm?”
Tethering her with his arm across her waist, he resumed his most intimate of kisses.
Needing to hold onto something as hard-edged pleasure clenched its delicate hold on her, Brett grasped the rungs of the bed’s brass headboard. The cold metal contrasted with the fiery shivers that had her bucking beneath him. Squeezing her eyes closed, she shattered into a million pieces, hazily thinking she’d never felt such pleasure in her entire life, only to have him repeat his creative seduction. Seconds later, she convulsed around his teasing fingers as he kissed his way back up her body.
Abandoning the anchor of the headboard, she blindly reached for him.
Unable to hold back a moment longer, Michael levered himself into readiness before slowly burying himself deep within her. He groaned in ecstasy as he felt the rippling bliss of her inner muscles clenching around him. Rocking against her, his well-intentioned slow seduction became a rapid surge of motion that ended in his climax and her smile of utter satisfaction.
When Michael finally returned to this planet, the first thing he saw was the Rom box, sitting on top of his dresser across from the bed, the metal glowing in the darkness.
Turning her head, Brett noticed it, too.
“I guess that box worked like a charm after all,” he murmured.
Nine
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Brett said.
“Nothing. Forget it.”
“No way.” She sat up in bed, forgetting for a moment that she wasn’t wearing anything before belatedly making a hasty grab for the top sheet and tucking it under her arms as she turned to face Michael. “I thought you said that Rom box was missing.”
“I thought it was.”
“Then how did it get on your dresser?”
“I don’t know.”
“That box seems to be very mysterious,” she noted suspiciously. “Now that I think about it, I seem to recall your dad saying something.” Pausing, Brett concentrated. “I remember now. When you first told him we were married, he said something about the box being responsible. Why would he think that?”
Michael could tell by the look on her face that she wasn’t going to let this subject go until she got some answers.
Sighing, he put an arm around her and tugged her closer. At least he could hold her while telling her about the supposedly magical Rom box. “Now don’t laugh, but family legend has it that the box has a love charm cast on it.”
Brett wasn’t laughing. Instead a chill ran up her bare spine as it occurred to her that a love charm actually might explain quite a lot. It might explain why a man like Michael, who’d been skillful at avoiding what he’d apparently once described as the “chains of matrimony” had suddenly changed his mind and decided to get married. to save a foundling child abandoned in his building. Since Brett often thought with her heart instead of her head, this behavior wasn’t all that out of place for her. But’ from what she knew of Michael and his past, it was not a behavioral trademark of his.
Was it possible that Michael hadn’t acted out of his own free will, but had been “charmed” into marrying her?
“What exactly is this love charm supposed to do?”
“Supposedly you’ll ‘find love where you look for it.”
“Look for it how?”
“Well, the legend claims that you’ll find love with the first person of the opposite sex you see after opening the box.”
“And you opened that box while I was at your place fixing your oven that first day,” she said slowly.
“And it works like a charm now.”
“The box or the oven?”
“I was referring to the oven. I don’t believe in magic,” Michael declared.
“Your father certainly believes in it. He thinks that’s why we got married.”
“What does it matter what my father thinks?”
“It matters because you were raised by your father. Some of his beliefs are bound to have rubbed off on you, whether you want to admit it or not,” she said, her mind racing a mile a minute.
She supposed the sensible thing to do would be to shrug the legend off as nothing more than a Gypsy superstition. But what if there was something to the story? Brett certainly hadn’t experienced much magic in her own life, so she was no expert in such matters. After all, who would have thought that cinnamon rolls would arouse a man? It was true that facts could be stranger than fiction.
Great, she thought to herself. Michael made love to me because of cinnamon rolls and married me because of a Gypsy curse. I’m really batting a thousand here.
Now that she thought about it, some pretty strange things had been happening lately—like those black silk boxer shorts showing up under the Christmas tree. Or what about Michael’s sudden development of “baby” skills, when by his own admission they’d always screamed around him before? And then there was the way she felt when Michael even so much as looked at her.she’d used the term “magical” in her own mind a number of times. Was it really so strange to think she and Michael had been “charmed”?
Well, okay, so it was a little unusual. Not exactly your run of the mill experience. She could just see herself asking Father Lynden for advice. “You see, there’s this Gypsy love charm that’s been cast on me.”
Yeah, right.
“You’re awfully quiet,” Michael noted in concern, having learned from experience that when Brett got quiet it was time to get worried.
“Let’s just say that I think this family legend of yours might explain a lot of what’s happened in our relationship.”
“Like what?”
“Like this inflammatory thing between us.”
“This inflammatory thing?” he murmured huskily, taking her hand and placing it around his throbbing arousal.
In a fiery instant, Brett’s thoughts and worries went up in smoke. So did Michael, as she caressed him with sultry enchantment.
After they’d made love, and while they lay exhausted in each other’s arms, Brett couldn’t help brooding about the niggling possibility that something was going on here.
She didn’t realize she’d spoken her words aloud until Michael murmured, “Nothing’s going on. Not until I get some energy back. Maybe then…”
“I was talking about the love spell,” she said.
“I told you I don’t believe in that stuff.”
“Yeah, well, the power of suggestion is an incredible thing. People who claim they don’t believe in voodoo can still can be affected by spells simply by the power of suggestion. Believe me, after all the psychology courses I’ve had, I know how powerful the mind can be.”
“So what are you saying? That I didn’t marry you of my own free will?”
“You have to admit that our…relationship hasn’t exactly been a normal one.”
“Just because there’s an intense physical attraction between us, that doesn’t mean anything else is going on…What?” he said, seeing the look on her face.
“I think I hear Hope crying.” Tossing aside the covers, Brett grabbed the nearest piece of clothing at hand—his white shirt—and pulled it around her. “I’ll just go check on her. No, don’t get up. I’ll take care of this.”
She hurried out of the room, biting her lower lip to keep from crying. What she considered to be love, Michael considered to be “an intense physical attraction” and nothing else. Even after
they’d made love. Well, she’d made love to him. He’d apparently just had sex with her.
In the bedroom she shared with Hope, Brett stared down at the sleeping infant, smoothing the little girl’s silky head with her trembling fingers and willing the tears not to fall.
“Why can’t you just be satisfied with the way things are?” Brett remembered one of her foster parents asking her. “Why do you always have to want something more?”
Right now the “something more” Brett wanted was Michael’s love.
“It is good luck to serve pork on New Year’s Day,” Konrad was telling Brett the next afternoon as they sat down to a dinner of pork roast, boiled new potatoes and asparagus at Michael’s parents’ house.
“Good luck, but bad for the arteries,” was his mother’s annual reply.
But Michael’s attention wasn’t on his parents’ fond bickering, it was on Brett. While Brett had been outwardly cheerful since they’d arrived, he sensed her pulling away from him, focusing her attention on Hope and practically ignoring him. It was the damn box’s fault!
Michael knew it would do no good enlisting his parents’ help. His father was convinced Rom magic had brought Michael and Brett together, that theirs was a love match helped along by a powerful dose of a centuries-old love spell. Michael wished he’d never mentioned the stupid box to Brett. He’d certainly never expected her to take the family legend so seriously. Did she honestly think any power of suggestion was strong enough to make him marry her if he hadn’t wanted to?
Michael’s exact reasons for marrying Brett weren’t ones he cared to dwell on at the moment, however. Instead, he preferred to focus on the erotic memories of making love to Brett and her incredible response. He wasn’t going to have her pull away from him now. He’d prove to her how much he wanted her. After all, he’d never courted her, had never even dated her before they’d gotten married. Perhaps he’d been too businesslike and practical at first.
But there was no need for that now. He had plenty of romance in his soul; he had Rom blood for God’s sake. No one else was as romantic as the Rom, particularly a Hungarian Rom. He’d show her how much he wanted her, starting tonight.
As they got ready for bed that night, Brett considered telling Michael she would be sleeping in her own bed, before deciding it was no good cutting off her nose to spite her face. If chemistry was all he felt, she’d stop wishing for the moon and settle for what she had. It wasn’t as if what they’d shared last night hadn’t been downright awesome. Maybe love would grow…
Damn, it was hard for her to give up hope. It seemed to have become second nature to her.
Today’s newly fallen snow, combined with its being the first day of the new year, had gotten her to thinking about new beginnings, about possibilities. But it was a future filled with land mines, and fraught with emotional danger. Brett had always been able to say goodbye before, to let go as those she cared about moved on. She didn’t know if she’d be able to do that with Michael. If there came a time when he realized how impulsively he’d entered into this marriage, and he decided he wanted more—wanted children of his own—Brett didn’t know if she’d have the strength to let him go. And she hated that weakness in herself.
Michael ended up taking matters into his own handsby moving her clothes to his closet while she dashed down to the basement to bring up a load of wash she’d left in the dryer. She came back upstairs to find him taking the final armload of her stuff into “their” room.
“I set up the baby monitor my folks gave us for Christmas in here too, on the bedside table, so you’d be able to hear Hope if she cries in the night,” Michael told Brett, looking at her with such a look of expectant pleasure that she didn’t have the heart to reprimand him for not asking her about the move first. After all, they were husband and wife now.
In the end, Brett’s number-one New Year’s resolution was to be happy with the miracles she had—a darling baby and a husband, both of whom she loved—and not worry how she got them or how she’d manage if she lost them.
The next few weeks sped by, hurried along by the fact that Brett started her class at Loyola as well as continuing her repairs on the building. She also had her hands full taking care of a very active Hope. And on those nights when they weren’t interrupted by the baby’s crying, Brett made love with her husband, enjoying the creativity of his lovemaking, but out of self-preservation, holding a part of herself—her heart—back.
As if sensing that, Michael had become a man with a mission. And that mission seemed to be to capture her heart.
She’d never seen Michael bent on seduction. He was more powerful than any Gypsy magic could be. He pursued her with a brooding intensity that was difficult if not impossible to resist.
Take today, for example. Some men sent roses. Not Michael. He had a heart-shaped box delivered, filled with…a dozen acorns.
She wondered if he was telling her she was a few acorns short of an oak tree, as in not fully compos mentis, when she found the note inside that said “To the Rom, acorns are tokens of desire.”
Brett fingered the paper, tracing the dramatic flare of Michael’s handwriting. This was the first note he’d ever written to her. The one that said “Buy milk and eggs,” which he’d left on the fridge hadn’t counted, in her view.
So Michael had moved from chemistry to desire. Was that an upward move? Or a linear one?
While Brett had protectively sequestered her heart away, her body had a mind of its own and enjoyed the fiery lovemaking she shared with Michael as if there were no tomorrow. In fact, they hadn’t talked much about the future…
The ringing phone interrupted her thoughts. “Hello?”
“I need you to come to my office today,” Michael said in a businesslike tone of voice. “Can you get here by one o’clock?”
“What’s this about?” she asked.
“Bring Hope.”
“Why? Is something wrong?”
“No. I just need you to stop by. Consider it your chance to check out Lorraine personally.”
Lorraine was his secretary, and Michael had mentioned her several times over the past few weeks. It was the first time he’d talked about his work. Actually he still hadn’t talked about his work as much as his secretary—who was the model of efficient perfection according to him. When Brett had casually asked, he hadn’t given her any physical details or even Lorraine’s age.
“I have better things to do than check out your secretary,” Brett told him. “That energy-efficient thermostat needs to be installed on the boiler.”
“I really need you to stop by,” Michael said in his most coaxing voice, the one that would convince a vegetarian to eat red meat.
She gave in. “All right, I’ll be there. But I can’t stay long.”
Brett dressed carefully. Actually, her choice of attire was limited, as all of her leggings and jeans seemed to have mysteriously disappeared into the wash. That’s what she got for taking Michael up on his offer to do the laundry. The wool tweed skirt she wore was nice and long for the cold weather outside. There wasn’t much snow left on the ground, so her hiking boots would do fine. An Irish fisherman’s sweater lent the outfit a funky look. She’d never make glamorous, so funky would have to do. She did remember to put on lipstick and earrings before she left the house, however.
Hope looked adorable in the denim overalls she wore under the snowsuit, which fit her a little better than it had the month before.
They got to Michael’s northside office a little after one, to find Lorraine had gone out to lunch.
“She’s sorry she missed you,” Michael said as he took Hope from Brett’s arms.
“Yeah, I’ll bet,” Brett muttered.
“But she promised her granddaughter she’d meet her for lunch.”
“Granddaughter?”
“Yeah, didn’t I tell you? Lorraine has four grandchildren. One is in college now.”
Brett relaxed a little. “Hope, this is where your daddy tracks down criminals,�
� she told the little girl as she undid her snowsuit.
“You make me sound like Batman,” Michael stated dryly.
“You two do share a similar dark personality.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“You’re welcome.” She wasn’t about to tell him that on him, dark and brooding looked good. “So what was so important that I had to come rushing down here? Is it that social worker? Has she contacted you or anything?”
“No. She stopped by my office before we were married, but I haven’t heard from her lately.”
“What! I didn’t know she’d come by to see you. Why didn’t you tell me this before?”
“Because I didn’t want to worry you.”
“And what else haven’t you told me in the name of not wanting to worry me?”
“Hmm, I can’t think of anything except for the fact that when you put your hands on your hips that way I want to rip your clothes off and make love to you, regardless of where we are. Right here, in my office, on my desk.”
“Stop that.” She picked up a file folder off his desk and started fanning her face with it. “Go on about the social worker.”
“She stopped by to ask me about the mystery baby, as she called her.” Michael juggled Hope on his hip as he spoke.
“She knows Hope is a girl?”
“She overheard that when she heard my friend from the police department talking to me. The woman reminded me of a bulldog. I think I’m going to have to create a paper trail to make her happy,” he muttered half under his breath.
“What do you mean a paper trail?”
“Create a paper trail for that imaginary friend of yours who left her baby with you.”
