Harlequin Superromance January 2014 - Bundle 1 of 2: Everywhere She GoesA Promise for the BabyThat Summer at the Shore

by Janice Kay Johnson

Her head lifted to follow him when he pulled away from her mouth. Her moan was intermingled with frustration and hunger for completion.

  “I wonder if it will work with the other ear.” He kissed a path along her jaw. Involuntarily, when he licked the edge of her other ear, she gripped his shoulder and cock again, and he chuckled with satisfaction.

  This time, she got her revenge by tickling his balls with her fingernails. Satisfaction flooded her when he stilled in his ministrations and groaned. Loudly. But as with all revenges, this one left her unfulfilled. Karl was still not inside her. She pushed at his shoulder in frustration. In response, he rolled onto his back, pulling her with him so that their positions were reversed.

  Before she could accustom herself to their new arrangement, he was using one hand to guide her hips to where his other hand held his cock, keeping her hovering just above him. When she shifted to—finally—have him inside her, he raised his eyebrow at her and shook his head. Then he moved his hand from her hip to her wet folds of skin. One finger slid in and then two.

  Her arms shook with pleasure before she steadied herself.

  “I like to be in charge,” he said with satisfaction.

  “And I’m not going to let you.”

  She said the words, but didn’t have the inclination to do more than reposition herself so that his fingers hit a spot to make her moan. His fingers lingered there as her body tensed around him. When he pulled his fingers out from her, her hips curled to follow them, bringing her close enough to graze against his erection.

  “That’s what makes it so fun,” he said before lifting his hips and filling her.

  She whimpered with pleasure as her body wrapped around him. Neither of them moved for several heartbeats as they enjoyed the feeling of connection. Then Karl began to lift his hips and Vivian lowered hers until they found a rhythm. His hands found her breasts again, fondling and kissing as they moved together. She clutched his shoulders, bracing herself above him and leveraging herself down so that she felt the entire length of him as he slid in and out of her. The tip of his cock would nearly withdraw and then push back into her. She clenched around him. Their cries and grunts mingled together, echoing off the walls. Their smells blended, filling the room.

  She leaned over to lick his neck and then, irrevocably joined together, she found his mouth. They kissed and came in unison.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  WITH VIVIAN TUCKED against him, her butt cradled by his curled legs and his fingers absently stroking her breasts, Karl realized what he had forgotten to do. With some regret, he dragged his hand away from her breasts and lifted her hair off her neck.

  “There you are.” He drew his chest away from its comfortable resting spot against Vivian’s back and allowed his fingers to bump along the nubs of her neck bones. Spent and satiated, he still felt the anticipation of her presence in his life.

  He rolled her onto her stomach and she responded with a drowsy, “Hmm?”

  “The bones along the line of your spine.” He leaned in to kiss one. “Since I woke you that morning to inform you of our marriage—” he was willing to broach the subject again because she couldn’t go back in time and undo the night they had just spent together “—I’ve dreamed of putting my lips to each bone of your spine and kissing my way to the small of your back.”

  “Better enjoy it while you can.” She sounded both smiling and sleepy. “In a couple of months I won’t be able to sleep on my stomach and then you’ll have to wait until after the baby is born.”

  He hoped she was too tired to feel his lips still against the last and largest of her cervical vertebrae. The baby was still unbelievable to him. The woman lying against him was carrying his child—their child. She would give birth and he would have a little stranger to nurture into a responsible adult. Knowing this—having his mother and Greta lecture him on his responsibilities regarding the child—was not the same thing as lying in his bed with his wife in his arms, able to reach around and feel the slightly thickening waist that covered their child.

  Not the same thing at all.

  He still didn’t know what to do with himself or with the woman in his arms. Providing money for a child’s care was one thing. Being a husband and a father was another. Could they build a family out of a one-night stand? Not a family in the sense of being related to each other—there was no escaping the connections his mother would draw on the family tree in his great-grandmother’s Bible. Could they be a family together in its most elemental sense? When Vivian was pissing him off beyond all sense of imagination, could he still look at her and be thankful she was in his life? Could a random night in Vegas lead to a relationship he could rely on to be supportive, no matter what else was happening in the world?

  Karl didn’t take his responsibilities lightly, but could Vivian be more than just a responsibility? Could their relationship be a joy?

  And could he find this joy with a woman who’d nearly and with forethought committed a felony? He understood her reasons, he just wasn’t sure he accepted them yet or that they fit into his understanding of how the world should be.

  “Listening to you think is exhausting.”

  Lying in bed, his body heavy with sexual satisfaction and a woman in his arms, was not the time to be having these thoughts. He probably should have resolved them before bringing Vivian back to his apartment with sex in mind.

  But she was here, and he had missed her presence so he shifted in the bed until he was embracing her again. His lips grazed the sensitive skin at the back of her ear. “You can’t hear me think.”

  She clasped his hands in hers against her chest and said, “Go to sleep so we can do this again in the morning.”

  That was the most sensible thing he’d heard all day.

  * * *

  WHEN HE WOKE up for the second time that morning, the winter sun was streaming into his windows and Vivian was missing from his bed. He pulled on the boxers that she had found so silly, ran his hands through his hair and stumbled into the kitchen. Vivian was in her panties and his T-shirt, sitting at the bar drinking coffee and playing basketball with Xìnyùn.

  “I made plenty of coffee, and I can make breakfast, too,” she said simply. He wasn’t able to judge the expression on her face.

  “I’d rather take you back to bed and eat breakfast later.”

  “I have to be at work soon. Plus I have to go—” she paused “—back to your mom’s to shower and change.” Her lips curled up in a smile and the strange look on her face disappeared. “I don’t think I can work the register in my opera dress.”

  “No, I don’t suppose you can,” he said in the strangest morning-after conversation he’d ever had. She was his wife, pregnant with his child, and he was going to drive her to his mother’s house where she lived.

  He noticed she hadn’t called his mom’s house home. Even with a place to live, Vivian was still adrift. Her moorings at his mother’s were tenuous, at best. He opened his mouth to suggest she return to his apartment, but said instead, “I’ll find you a pair of sweats.”

  Such a hollow offer, but were he to ask her to move back in, where would she sleep? Either of them crossing the expanse of his living room seeking sex was ridiculous. Yet the thought of her moving into his apartment and into his bedroom was uncomfortable in a different way. If he were to stand outside himself and watch their relationship unfold it would be like watching a movie run backward—child, marriage, moving in, first fight, sex. He wasn’t sure the courtship had reached its beginning and was ready to move forward instead of in reverse.

  Which hadn’t stopped him from undressing her last night instead of driving her back to Archer Heights. He was a fool for her, and that knowledge was scarier than the child she was carrying.

  The bird chirped, “Hit me,” and hopped back and forth on his perch.

  She nodded. Vivian c
ouldn’t know what he was thinking, but he felt as if her nod was for more than just the offer of clothes to wear home.

  “You’re still reading the Melville stories,” she said.

  The book was on the bar, the bookmark not much farther in than when Vivian had left.

  When he’d kicked her out. He should be more honest with himself.

  “Between exercising your bird—”

  “It’s my dad’s bird.”

  “Your bird, work and visiting Healthy Food for dinner every night, I’ve not had much time to read.” He picked up the book and flipped through it. “I wanted to reread ‘Billy Budd, Sailor,’ which I read when I was in law school. I should’ve skipped the other stories.”

  “You’re not a man to skip to the good parts.”

  “No.” He gave her a wry smile. “About the good parts...I’m not going to ask you to move back in. It’s...”

  Karl honestly didn’t know how he wanted to finish that sentence. He’d never worried before about a woman’s expectations after one night of sex, but he’d never had a night of sex with his pregnant wife before, either. The rules—as he understood them—for sex with your wife didn’t apply in this case.

  Vivian was wreaking havoc with his life and, instead of doing his duty to the child and being done with a sexual relationship with the mother, he wanted to share breakfast with her. He still hadn’t worked his way to sharing his life with her; breakfast was scary enough right now.

  “I never expected happily ever after. Not when you bought me that first drink, not when I waited for you in this building’s lobby and certainly not now.”

  That Vivian was understanding about it only made him feel worse. She would be perfect, except for the danger that waited in the wings of their relationship. Friendship was already more than he’d planned.

  Sex just complicated things further. It certainly complicated this morning after.

  Blessedly, Vivian changed the subject. “You have quite the collection of bookends.” When he only nodded, she continued. “And they’re all hidden away in your bedroom rather than for people to see.”

  That was the point. “They’re private.”

  “What made you start collecting bookends?”

  “My brother, Leon, gave me some for my birthday right before he died.”

  If Vivian had continued to ask questions, he might have dodged her curiosity with one-word answers. Since she just sipped her coffee, he continued. “Leon gave me the hockey players.” Their mom had given him an Encyclopedia Britannica and Leon had so proudly bought bookends to match it. At the time, the fake-gold-plated hockey players had seemed garish and beneath Karl’s teenaged dignity. Now, they were a reminder that families could be wiped out in an instant. “I took those with me to college and was the only person in my dorm with real bookends, as opposed to those bland metal ones. So people gave me more bookends.”

  “And now you have more ends than books.”

  “Yes.” Because she was Vivian, he offered her more information. “I have several boxes of bookends in storage. These are just my favorites.”

  “When Jelly Bean is born, I’m sure someone will make her baby booties into bookends.”

  “Baby booties, storks, naked babies sleeping with their butts in the air. If they make a baby-themed bookend, I’m sure someone will give it to me.”

  “I’d like to make sure I get you something unique.” She cocked her head and looked out the window, innocence blanking out all other emotions on her face. “Like bookends made with her umbilical cord or something.”

  Karl nearly spit out his coffee. “That was wicked.”

  Vivian’s sly smile broke into a full-out, self-satisfied grin. “Yeah, but you thought it was funny.” Then she stood up in her seat, leaned over the bar and kissed him on the mouth.

  And suddenly the morning wasn’t so awkward after all.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  THEY SAT IN companionable silence as Karl drove Vivian back to his mother’s house. Which was good, because Vivian had a lot on her mind.

  She’d meant what she said to Karl about not expecting happily ever after. It didn’t mean she didn’t want it, just that expecting it seemed a surefire way to get her heart broken. Plus, there hadn’t been any courtship in Las Vegas or when she invited herself to live in his apartment. Even if a traditional happy family was in her future, she didn’t want to miss out on the getting-to-know-you part of the relationship. Pregnant or not, she wanted to get a couple of dates out of the deal.

  If she went back in time and told her eighteen-year-old self—the one desperate to escape the unstable world her father lived in and thrived on—that she wouldn’t be pushing for absolute security at this point in her life, that younger self would smack her upside the head and call her crazy.

  And crazy she might be. But seeing Karl’s silliness last night made her wistful for a marriage based on more than a certificate and a baby. She wanted the trust that he’d shown her last night to underpin their entire relationship. No more doubts and no more suspicions. She wanted them to raise the baby in a home with two parents who loved and supported each other.

  It was the best and most unrealistic thing she could hope for.

  Up until that night in Vegas, Vivian hadn’t purposely avoided marriage, but she had been afraid to tie herself to another person whose potential impulsiveness could ruin both their lives. Karl’s impulsiveness—though she shared the blame for their situation—had changed her life completely. However, knowing him meant knowing that he took care of his responsibilities without question. If she was going to ask for the moon, she might as well ask for the stars, as well.

  For the first time in her life, she wasn’t going to take the safe road. Or be nervous that she didn’t even know what the safe road was. She wasn’t going to settle for something subpar because she was afraid of falling off a cliff. She was on the hunt for perfect, whatever that might be.

  * * *

  VIVIAN SPENT THE next week learning about Polish Easter traditions. When they weren’t working, she and Susan cooked food for Sunday. There were the foods Vivian had expected—hard-boiled eggs, bread and ham—and the foods that surprised her, including making a cake in a lamb mold. Susan told Vivian to frost the cake, “so that you can learn and help my grandbaby when he’s old enough.”

  At Vivian’s apologies for the alien-looking monstrosity of a dessert, Susan showed her pictures of the last cake Karl had decorated. Vivian protested that Karl had frosted that cake as a teenager and she was thirty-four, but Susan waved her off. “He might have been younger than you when he frosted that cake, but he’d been frosting them for years. This is your first one.” Then her mother-in-law took a picture of Vivian’s creation, to add to her collection.

  Everything they did to prepare for Easter seemed to involve lambs. Vivian helped Susan shape softened butter into a lamb mold. The greeting cards Susan had mailed out on Monday had lambs on them and many of the linens were embroidered with lambs. Susan even brought home sugar formed into lamb shapes.

  Saturday morning and after a couple times practicing the word in front of a mirror, Vivian helped Susan pack a Śwęiconka basket. Into the basket went bits and pieces of each of the foods they would eat tomorrow, including enough hard-boiled eggs for each family member to have a good-size wedge of egg. Susan was going to take the entire basket to church so the food could be blessed.

  As they packed the basket, Susan explained the symbolism of each item. “This is for joy and abundance,” she said, as Vivian handed her the small ham Susan had purchased especially for the blessing. Susan tucked the ham next to the ball of cheese (though it wasn’t a cheese ball as Vivian recognized the term)—abundance (the ham) and moderation (the cheese) bundled together.

  Before Vivian handed over the bacon—the last of the three pork products that
went into the basket, all related to generosity and abundance of some kind, which Vivian found amusing though pigs probably found it less so—she asked her mother-in-law the question that had been on her mind since seeing Susan get into her car on Palm Sunday. “Does it bother you that I’m not Catholic?”

  Vivian hadn’t gone to any church services in the month she’d lived here. Since most of that month had been Lent, and Easter clearly meant more to the Mileks than an Easter egg hunt in the city park, Vivian felt as though her lack of religiosity was a bit of a scarlet letter on her chest. But, despite all the time they’d spent in the kitchen preparing food and now sitting around the table preparing a basket to take to church, Susan hadn’t mentioned Vivian’s lack of church attendance once.

  Honestly, Vivian had felt more pressure to go to a church service on a Sunday during a very brief stay in Provo, Utah, before her father had decided that he wasn’t cut out for fleecing people by preying on their religious beliefs. “It’s easy money, but a man’s got to have some standards,” he’d muttered to himself as they packed one night—quickly, so they could leave before dawn.

  Susan gestured, and Vivian handed over the bacon. Her mother-in-law packed it in silence, her brows furrowed. Vivian had given up expecting a response and was passing the little container of salt when Susan sat back in her chair. As soon as she started talking, Vivian put down the salt and listened.

  “Karl’s ex-wife, Jessica, was everything I wanted in a daughter-in-law. And she was everything I thought Karl wanted in a wife. She was Polish—from Milwaukee—and Catholic and as smart as he is.”

  Vivian ignored the unconscious insult; she wanted to hear what Susan had to say.

  “But they couldn’t make each other happy. They just expected too much out of each other. Karl doesn’t expect anything from you.” Vivian didn’t have to say anything about that insult because Susan realized what she’d just said and looked up in horror. “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. I meant Karl doesn’t know what to expect out of you, so he’s taking the time to get to know you, rather than his ideal of you. And it’s the flesh and blood person that’s going to make him happy, not the woman he thinks his wife should be like.”