by Peggy Webb
In fact, she was so tired that she began to nod off as soon as their plane reached cruising altitude.
“Would you please bring a blanket and pillow,” Matt told the flight attendant.
Instead of handing them to Sandi, he insisted on tucking her in.
“Thank you,” she said. “You’re really very sweet.”
“That will do for starters.”
She tingled in delicious ways and hoped he didn’t notice. It was getting harder and harder to maintain a noncommittal stance with Matt. For one thing, he was doing everything possible to meet all her needs without asking a single thing in return. Not even a kiss.
For another, having him around to help secure her adopted daughter, plus make way for her unborn child, was such a relief, she was sorely tempted to say yes to him on that basis alone.
She leaned her head against the window and closed her eyes.
“Why don’t you lean this way? My shoulder would be much more comfortable.”
She started to say no, but the flight to China would be very long and she was extremely grateful for his company.
“Thank you,” she said.
When she leaned into him and he put his arm around her, it felt exactly right.
He bent down and kissed the top of her head. “Just rest,” he said. “We have a long journey ahead.”
She sighed once, then gave herself over to sleep.
Holding her in his arms, Matt owned the universe. He would do anything for her, including protect her from his own impatient passion. Over the last few weeks he’d fought a mighty battle to keep from using sex to persuade her to be his wife.
Sandi’s blood ran hot, and when you combined that with her loving heart, it made her vulnerable.
Matt considered himself an honorable man. He wanted Sandi to come to him out of love, not out of the heat of the moment. If that made him old-fashioned, so be it.
On the upside of all this restraint, he was constantly on fire with anticipation. Nothing is sweeter than love long denied. He’d read that somewhere. Probably in one of his mother’s books.
He smiled thinking of Lucy. She and her sister Fox had done the job in Paris. They’d found Sandi’s mother living not far from Ben and Lucy’s apartment.
In another stroke of good luck, Meredith Wentworth Perkins Santiago Garber Martin Levalier was between husbands. Or as she put it, “Honey, I can’t get another man without a face-lift, and if I get another face-lift my ears will be on top of my head.”
She wasn’t what Matt had expected, especially after he was so blunt with her.
“Time is of the essence here, so I’ll be perfectly frank,” he’d said. “Your daughter is pregnant with my child, but she won’t marry me because she expects every person in her life to abandon her. She actually thinks your leaving her was all her fault. She believes no one can love her because she’s unlovable.”
“My God, Sandi’s beautiful, resourceful, independent. She didn’t need me. I was an awful parent. I did her a service getting out of her life.”
“That’s not the way I see it.”
Sandi shifted in her sleep and the blanket slid off her lap. Careful not to wake her, Matt picked it up and tucked it tenderly around her shoulders. Then, holding one arm around the woman he loved and one hand protectively over his baby, he prayed that everything would turn out the way it should.
They had rooms with connecting doors. “Just knock if you need me,” Matt had said.
Sandi didn’t want to need him, but nothing felt more isolated than being alone in a bed in a strange city half a world away from home where you didn’t understand the language, the people and the culture. Sandi was exhausted. All day they’d had to depend on strangers to interpret for them and lead them through the maze they called a city.
Getting a Chinese girl wasn’t as easy as presenting yourself and saying, “I’ve come for my child.” No. You had to bribe your way through a seemingly endless line of officious-looking people.
Thank God, Matt had been there to deal with that. She didn’t know what she would have done without him.
Her feet felt like sausages. She rolled to her side trying to get comfortable. When that didn’t work, she tried propping up on a pillow. It looked as if steam-rollers had run over it. It wouldn’t prop up an ant, let alone her burgeoning belly.
“What’s the use?”
Throwing pride out the window and caution to the winds, she knocked on the connecting door. Matt opened it so quickly she wondered if he’d been standing on the other side listening to her toss and turn. She wouldn’t be surprised.
“Hello,” she said, suddenly shy. She hadn’t thought to put on her robe, and she was still wearing the sheer gowns she loved. Not that she had anything to hide. And certainly not that she was enticing. Good grief, she looked like a pregnant hippo.
“Hello, yourself.”
He smiled, and she felt better already. “I can’t sleep.”
“Neither can I. Why don’t we be awake together?”
God, she loved him, making it seem as if sleeping together had been his idea instead of hers.
“Okay,” she said, and he took her hand and led her to his bed.
She thought about lying on her side of the bed, then giggled at the idea. It was a little late for primness.
“What’s so funny?” he said.
“Nothing. I giggle a lot.”
“It’s a lovely sound.”
“What a nice thing to say. You’re really a very sweet man, Matt Coltrane.”
“Better not pin any medals on me yet. Sweet is not what I’m feeling right now.”
He was looking at her like a man starved, and she responded with her whole body. Good heavens, she hadn’t known a pregnant woman could feel like a shameless vixen.
She scooted toward her side of the bed and plumped up her pillow.
“Yours is bigger,” she said.
“I beg your pardon?”
She felt hot from head to toe. “Pillow. Your pillow is fluffier.”
“I see.”
Thank goodness he didn’t laugh. She closed her eyes and covered a big yawn.
“Isn’t it funny how you can sleep better when somebody else is in the bed,” she said.
“Astonishing is the word I’d choose. I thought being alone was the ideal state until I met you.”
“Hmm. You’re so…”
She fell asleep in midsentence.
Matt propped himself on his elbow and watched her sleep until he could hardly hold his eyes open. Then very carefully he wrapped his arms around her and pressed his face into her soft shoulder.
This, he thought. This is the ideal state.
Sandi dreamed she was in the middle of the ocean surrounded by sharks. Desperately she searched the horizon, but there was no one in sight, no one to come to her rescue. She would drown all alone, unless the sharks got her first.
She startled out of sleep, panicked, then felt the comforting presence of Matt’s warm, solid body.
“Sandi?” His voice was sleepy, sexy, his arousal instant. “Are you okay?”
“Oh, Matt.”
She’d never needed another human being as much in her life. The instant she pressed into him she changed from scared to excited. Extremely excited. Beyond control, actually.
Shifting so the fit would be right, she slid her hands between the sheets and guided him toward her hot, shameless body.
“Sandi?”
“Please…” she whispered, and suddenly there was heaven. Their joining was so beautiful, so right it made her cry.
“Am I hurting you?”
“No. Please, don’t go.” She pulled him back down and pressed his head against her breasts. “Just don’t go, that’s all.”
“Never,” he said, then took an engorged nipple and began to suckle. He was so tender it broke her heart, so wonderful it thrilled her soul, so magical it transformed her body.
She was no longer awkward in her advancing pregnancy but the mo
st desirable woman in the world. She was a geisha trained in the arts of pleasure, a sought-after courtesan renowned for her unbridled passion and inventive ways.
In the rich dark warmth of the room redolent of the exotic scents of sandalwood and ginger, Matt explored her like an archaeologist uncovering a lost city of gold.
He touched every part of her, exposing her nerve endings and excavating her emotions. As tidal waves of pleasure ripped through her, she knew what it felt like to be loved. Finally she knew.
Theirs was not merely a bonding of bodies, but a melding of souls. True love needed no words. It needed only this paradise.
She arched high to meet him, and he slid a pillow under her back to give him easier access to that deep, secret place that no man had ever touched. That no man would ever touch except Matthew Coltrane. The man she loved. The man she would love forever.
She woke up late in the morning, and Matt was fully dressed, sitting in a straight-backed chair watching her.
“Good morning, sleepyhead.”
He smiled, and it was the most beautiful sight in the world. She felt wonderful. She felt like Scarlett O’Hara after Rhett Butler finally stormed her chaste bedroom and gave her a night to remember.
Flushed, Sandi threw back the covers. “Good heavens, we’re going to be late.”
“No. I went down and took care of a few things while you were sleeping.”
“Greased a few more palms?”
“Yes.”
“I’m glad I didn’t have to go through that. Thank you, Matt.”
“You’re more than welcome.” That smile again. “For everything.”
Oh, Lord, if he mentioned last night she was going to die. She couldn’t think about that right now. Last night she’d thought she’d glimpsed forever, but in the cold light of day with a cacophony of foreign sounds outside her window and legal red tape a mile long between her and her adopted daughter, she couldn’t see beyond the next moment.
“I left a note in case you woke up while I was gone. I’m glad you slept. You need the rest.”
“I feel much better today.” She blushed again. Lord, she felt like a bride. “I guess I’d better get dressed.”
“Take your time. I’ll go down and get us some food. That way, you don’t have to leave the hotel until three o’clock unless you want to.”
“Three o’clock?”
“That’s when we see our daughter.”
He slipped out of the room as quietly as a shadow while Sandi sat on the bed hugging her knees and loving him with all her heart. She stayed that way for a long time, reveling in the ripeness of her body and the richness of being loved.
She took a leisurely bath, then dressed and was combing her hair when she heard the knock.
“Matt?” Why was he knocking? Had he forgotten his key.
“No,” a female voice said. “Not Matt.”
Sandi stood riveted, her hand over her throat.
“Sandi.” The knock again. “Aren’t you going to let me in?”
Slowly she opened the door. “Mother?”
“Yes, Sandi. It’s your mother, better late than never, I hope.”
“But how? Why?”
“Matt found me and told me a few truths I needed to know, then paid for my ticket here. May I come in?”
Still stunned, Sandi led this almost-stranger into her bedroom then sat with her hands folded and her ankles crossed as if she were six years old, still waiting for her mother’s approval.
“Sandi, I’m a frivolous woman who has lived a selfish life, but there has not been a moment in all these years that I didn’t love you.”
“You left me.”
“You were always independent, just like your father. And I thought you’d be better off without me.”
“How could you think that? You’re my mother.”
“I’ve always been self-centered and flighty. I thought Mama would do a better job raising you than I would.”
They stared at each other a long time, mother and daughter finally in the same room. They might as well have been oceans apart.
“We’ll never know, will we, Mother?”
“No. The past is over and done with, but we still have the future. I’d like to be a good grandmother, if you’ll give me the chance.”
Sandi could say no. She’d survived the crucial childhood and teenage years without her mother. She could certainly survive adulthood without her.
“All right. It’s okay.” Meredith stood up. “Be safe, Sandi. And please know that whatever else I did, I always loved you.”
Drowning in a sea of emotions she couldn’t begin to sort out, Sandi watched her mother walk toward the door. Suddenly one clear thought popped up, a life jacket on which she could float.
“I love you, Mother.” Meredith started to cry, and Sandi embraced her then held on. “I want you to stay,” she whispered.
Matt fell in love at first sight. The little girl had a cap of shining black hair, two bright button eyes and the smile of an angel. He and Meredith stood back while Sandi knelt beside her new daughter, Kim Yong Ling.
“Hello, Kim. I’m your new mother.” Kim put her thumb in her mouth and stared. Sandi put one hand over the little girl’s heart, then took her tiny hand and held it over her own. “I love you, and soon you will love me. I’m going to take you home to America and love you the rest of your life.”
The tiny thumb popped out and the rosebud mouth formed her first English word. “Love,” she said, and Sandi wrapped her close and buried her face in the soft dark hair.
They stayed that way for a long while, and finally the little girl’s arms stole around Sandi’s neck. Sandi turned around and beamed at Matt.
“She likes me.”
“Who wouldn’t?” he said.
Sandi picked her daughter up and brought her over to Meredith and Matt.
“Kim, this is your grandmother.” Meredith stood there as if she didn’t know what to do, which didn’t surprise Matt. He was glad to have her there at all. Perhaps the rest would come in time.
Sandi took the child’s hand and patted her mother’s cheek, then suddenly she was standing in front of him and he felt as helpless as Meredith looked.
“This is your daddy.”
The baby’s angel smile released him. He picked her up and hugged her like an old pro. She smelled like sunshine and scented bathwater, and he wanted to cry.
“You’re going to love your daddy. He’s the most wonderful man in the world.”
The way Sandi said it made Matt think it just might be true.
“Hi, little angel,” he said.
“I thought we’d call her Kimberly Lucille, after your mother. Do you think she’ll mind?”
“Mind? She’ll call a press conference and brag to the whole world.”
“Kimberly Lucille Coltrane,” Sandi said. “That’s what I told them to put on the adoption papers. I listed the father as Matthew Coltrane.”
“And the mother?”
“Sandi Wentworth Coltrane,” she said.
And suddenly there was paradise.
The four-poster mahogany bed was back in O’Banyon Manor, and Matt was stretched out on it waiting for his wife. He smiled when he heard her footsteps.
“Matt?”
“Why is it so dark in here?”
She reached for the switch and he said, “Don’t turn on the lights. Come closer so I can look at you.”
“At us, you mean. We’re getting huge.”
“I have something for you.”
He threw aside the sheets and her eyes widened, then she began to smile.
“Kimmy Lu’s sound asleep,” she said.
“Good.”
Feeling like the hero in an X-rated movie, he got off the bed and slowly removed his wife’s gown. Then he handed her a wisp of lingerie no bigger than a sneeze.
“Put these on.”
With her hands over her abdomen she giggled. “We’ll look like a barrel.”
“You’ll
look like the sexiest woman in the world.”
She stepped into the naughty panties, and it was a while before he could pull himself together. At the rate he was going, he figured they’d have about seven children before they ever stopped for breath.
“Well?” She gave him a sassy, sexy smile. “How do I look?”
“Good enough to eat.”
He reached behind him for the red ribbons, the feather boa and the apricot oil. Sandi’s eyes flew to the bedside table. Sinful was still open to page l6l.
“I see you’ve been doing some more research.”
“Yes. Do you want me to tell you what I discovered?”
“Why don’t you show me?”
“My pleasure, Mrs. Coltrane.”
Matt lowered her to the bed where generations of his family had been conceived and born, where his own children would be conceived and born.
Then he tilted the bottle and oil pooled between her ripe breasts.
“Is this a long scene?” Sandi asked.
“A very long scene.”
He took the ribbons and the feather boa, and after the moon shadows had moved completely off the bed, Sandi said, “Remind me to thank your mother.”
“I already did.” He lay down beside his wife and fitted her tenderly in his embrace.
“You make me feel loved,” she whispered.
“I plan to see that you and all our children feel that way. Always.”
Then he closed his eyes and fell into a deep, dreamless sleep in the bosom of his family.
ISBN: 978-1-4592-3277-8
THE MONA LUCY
Copyright © 2003 by Peggy Webb
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, 300 East 42nd Street, New York, NY 10017 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.
