“Amy?”
Dazed, she stopped for a moment and looked up at him. “Something wrong?”
Connor found the sound of her voice reassuring. The smile he gave her in response went from his lips to his eyes and down into his very soul. A soul he now offered to her.
“No, nothing’s wrong. Nothing at all.” As far as he was concerned, everything was right between them, as well as right with the world.
A fire burned within him as he covered her with hot, hungry kisses. He worked his way from one end of her body to the other, branding all of her and making Amy indelibly his for as long as they both lived.
He wanted to bring her as much pleasure as he could because just being with her brought him a feeling of indescribable well-being.
Using his hands, his lips, his tongue, Connor expertly brought her to one climax, then another.
Each time she cried his name, it fed his desire to bring her up again and he did. Did it several times over until she all but sank back into his bed, on the very fringe of exhaustion.
Satisfied that he had pleasured her as much as he possibly could, Connor drew himself up slowly over the length of her body until his eyes were just above hers, his body covering hers.
Bringing his mouth down on hers again, he entered her, sealing their bodies together.
Passion rushed through his veins as he began to move his hips. He could tell that each movement fueled her desire as well as his own.
He found himself going faster every fraction of a moment until the tempo turned from a slow dance to a race undertaken at breakneck speed.
Locked in each other’s arms, they continued the race to the very top of the summit, then plunged down together amid a shower of sparks that had caused desire to burst into flames.
Enraptured, Amy had to bite down on her lip to keep from crying out his name. She didn’t want to wake the baby—or risk being heard by the housekeeper. But inside of her, everything was shouting for joy. What she was feeling was nothing short of spectacular, and the sensation had created a feeling that was so incredibly special, it made tears spring to her eyes.
Tears that left their imprint on Connor.
Concerned, he raised himself up on his elbow and peered down into her face, searching for answers to questions that were only half-formed.
“Amy?”
Dizzy, her head spinning, she struggled to focus on the sound of his voice. Everything else was a million miles away. “Hmm?”
“Amy, did I hurt you?” Connor asked, really concerned now that he had.
Her eyes were closed. Opening them, she raised her hand and pressed her index finger against Connor’s lips, silencing him.
“Shh. I might have died and gone to heaven, so I can’t give you a complete answer yet,” she replied.
Sincerely worried now and wondering if she had become delirious, Connor tried again. “Amy, I don’t think that I understand—”
Amy smiled, still clinging for all she was worth to the out-of-body feeling she had just experienced. “Connor,” she whispered, “you’re talking through the most wonderful experience of my life.”
He was doing his best to understand what she was telling him. “Then you’re okay?” he asked her uncertainly.
“Oh, I am so much better than okay,” she told him, struggling not to giggle.
Amy’s smile was radiant as she looked up at him again, and then, without warning, she pulled his face down to hers and kissed him.
It was a long, languid kiss, filled with feeling and ending with a heartfelt, happy sigh.
“But you were crying,” Connor pointed out, thoroughly confused.
“Tears of joy, Connor,” she said. “Those were tears of joy.”
Connor shook his head. “I am never going to understand that,” he said, unable to reconcile the two feelings. Just how could someone be happy and yet be crying at the same time? It made absolutely no sense to him.
“That’s okay,” Amy murmured. “You don’t have to.”
Utterly contented, she curled her body into his, wanting to live in the moment for as long as she possibly could.
“I never knew it could be like this,” she confessed, then added, in case he hadn’t figured it out, “It was pretty amazing.”
Connor’s arm tightened around her and he pulled her closer to him. Kissing the top of her head, he felt an overwhelming wave of affection totally drenching him.
“And you are pretty amazing yourself,” Connor told her.
She raised her head so she could look up at him. “Me?”
“Don’t see anybody else here with me,” he said. “Of course you. You are a beautiful, amazing woman and it’s about time that you realized it.” He punctuated each sentence with a kiss.
Her eyes were smiling at him as she said, “You don’t need to make me feel good.”
“No, I don’t,” he agreed. “But I do like telling the truth and that’s what I just did. I told you the truth. You are amazing.”
Amy couldn’t bring herself to believe that. “But—” she began to protest.
This time, he was the one who placed his finger against her lips.
“No ‘but.’ You are an amazing, beautiful woman. End of story. On second thought,” he said, reconsidering, “not end of story.” He enfolded her even more tightly in his arms. “Beginning of story.”
She didn’t understand what he was trying to tell her. Or maybe she was afraid to. She’d already had too many hopes dashed.
“Beginning?” Amy questioned.
“Beginning,” Connor repeated.
Her breath caught in her throat as warm sensations bathed her all over again. He made her feel wanted, something she’d never once felt with Clay. He’d made sure of that.
“Does that mean you want to make love with me?” she asked hopefully.
Connor grinned broadly, tickled by her innocence. “What do you think?”
Her smile rose from her lips into her eyes. “I think we should stop talking and get to it before the baby wakes up.”
Connor said nothing in reply. His lips were far too busy with hers.
* * *
THE SECOND TIME was even better than the first. She didn’t think that it was humanly possible, but it was. Connor was such a gentle, incredibly considerate lover, she thought that she might have imagined what had happened the first time around.
But when he behaved in the same manner the second time, Amy realized that this was the way Connor really was: a gentle, kind lover who knew how to make her heart—and every other part of her—sing.
And that somehow, for whatever reason, she had turned out to be very, very lucky to have someone like Connor in her life.
He made her feel safe and protected.
And very, very happy.
She knew that she couldn’t expect this to go on forever, that this was just an interlude in her life, a beautiful, beautiful interlude, but still temporary nonetheless.
She’d had enough disappointments in her life to know that she couldn’t set her heart on anything. Happily-ever-after was for other women, but not for her. Clay had proved that to her over and over again. She had kept hoping he’d change and mentally she’d given him chance after chance to do so—and he never once did. She was the problem, not him, he’d told her more than once.
So, thinking that she had finally found the man of her dreams was incredibly naive and foolish, and she told herself that she really knew better than that.
It was just her heart that secretly hoped she was right, that somehow, she and Connor not only were meant to be together, but really would be together until the end of their days.
Right, she thought, silently mocking herself. And the first moment she breathed anything close to that to him, Connor would suddenly tell her,
albeit politely, that she and Jamie had overstayed their welcome.
And right after that, he would run for the hills as quickly as he could.
But all that was later. And right now, she had this, an incredible experience to hold in her heart and relive until it was completely frayed and in tatters.
* * *
AMY DIDN’T REMEMBER falling asleep.
She’d had so much on her mind, she was certain she would keep herself up until dawn finally pushed its way into the room. But she must have fallen asleep because the next thing she knew, she was opening her eyes and waking up.
And finding that she was alone in Connor’s bed.
Puzzled and confused, Amy sat up and looked around, but Connor was nowhere in the room.
She thought for a moment that he might have needed to use the bathroom, but the bathroom door was wide-open and there was no light coming from it.
He wasn’t there.
“Good job, Amy,” she murmured under her breath. “You managed to actually make the man flee his own bed just to get away from you.”
Why else would he be gone?
Amy sighed as she dragged her hand through her hair. She knew what she and Connor had wasn’t destined to go on forever, but she’d actually thought it would last longer than just the span of one night.
Not even a whole night, at that.
Well, there was no use mourning the demise of something that never was, Amy told herself, refusing to let her emotions get the better of her.
Getting out of bed, Amy quickly collected her clothes from the floor. She put them on as fast as she could, wanting to slip out of Connor’s room before Rita showed up in the hall for some reason and saw her. Explaining why she was leaving Connor’s room in the middle of the night would be very awkward.
Stop thinking about yourself. You have a son to take care of, remember? Amy upbraided herself.
Jamie only slept a few hours at a clip and this was way longer than he normally slept. For some reason, tonight he hadn’t cried and woken her up—
What if he had cried and she’d just slept through it? she suddenly thought. What kind of a mother ignored her own baby because she was exhausted after making love for half the night?
A bad one, Amy silently said, answering her own rhetorical question.
Nothing should come before Jamie, she told herself angrily.
Opening the bedroom door slowly, she looked around to make sure she was alone. Relieved, she slipped out and closed the door behind her.
With her heart lodged in her throat, Amy hurried down the hall past her own room until she reached Jamie’s. She had no idea what she expected to find once she went in, but she was hoping for the best.
Turning the doorknob very slowly in case he was still asleep, she eased the door open and peered into the bedroom.
What she saw made her mouth drop open.
Connor was there, sitting in the rocking chair he’d moved into the room for her when they’d brought the crib in. He was holding Jamie in his arms, and from his body language, he had apparently just rocked the baby to sleep.
As if sensing her presence, Connor looked over his shoulder in her direction.
“Go back to bed,” he told her in a whisper. “I have this.”
What he had, Amy thought as she watched him, was her heart—utterly and completely.
Chapter Seventeen
Amy would have been the first to admit that over the last few years, she had come to expect the worst to happen. To wait for it to rise up and engulf her, wrapping up her heart in despair.
But even though now part of her still held her breath, bracing herself for things to go wrong, they didn’t. Instead, amazingly, things just kept improving. Each day that dawned somehow seemed to be even better than the last.
There were evenings when she was secretly afraid to go to sleep, fearing that when she woke up in the morning, she would find that it had all been just a dream. A wonderful, wonderful dream that, like all dreams, had come to an end.
But it didn’t end.
It continued. Continued being gratifyingly magnificent.
Connor worked on the ranch with Cole during the day, and at night, he would come home to her and Jamie. Home to do wonderfully normal, simple things. They’d have dinner, he’d play with the baby and then, after Jamie would fall asleep and Rita would retreat to her room, they would have their time together.
And every night, when they made love, it was as if it was a brand-new, exciting event. They discovered things about one another, about pleasuring one another, that made it all amazingly fresh for her.
Amy felt incredibly lucky and happier than she had ever been in her entire life.
The best part of it for her was that they were becoming a family—a real family. Amy couldn’t have been more thrilled about that, finding she and Jamie easily melded into the fold that comprised the McCullough clan. There was a sense of contentment in knowing she was not only accepted by Connor, she had been accepted by his whole family.
“Family life suits you,” Cody commented that Sunday afternoon as he, Cole and Cassidy’s husband, Will, sat in the living room after dinner was over, watching the gaggle of kids who made up the McCulloughs’ younger generation, while Amy, Cassidy, Devon and Stacy helped Rita clear the table and deal with the dirty dishes as well as the pots and pans.
“Not exactly a news flash,” Connor said as he picked up Jamie to quiet him because the boy was fussing. “Family life has always suited me.”
“What Cody is trying to say in his own ineloquent way,” Will explained, flashing a grin at his oldest brother-in-law, “is your own family life.”
“Yeah,” Cole agreed, adding his voice to the discussion. “Up until now, when you said ‘family’ that just meant you hanging out with us and our individual families.” He looked affectionately at his twins, who appeared to be engaged in some sort of a race, crawling toward the kitchen. He was quick to get in their way, thereby calling an end to it. “Ever since Amy got here with her son, things have changed.”
Connor snorted, waving a dismissive hand at the other men. “You guys have been drinking too much holiday cheer,” he told them. “You’re all hallucinating.”
“No, we’re not,” Will insisted. He’d been friends with all of them for a lot of years now and had been practically like a brother years before he had married into the family. “What we are is really glad for you.”
“Yeah,” Cole chimed in, herding his twins back toward the communal playpen in the center of the living room. “You deserve to be happy.”
“Not to mention just as sleepless as the rest of us,” Cody said, putting his daughter on his knee and bouncing her to entertain the toddler.
“Desserts are on the table,” Cassidy announced as she stood in the doorway, calling them back to the dining room. “Better get a move on and come back to the table before Rita gets insulted.”
“Wouldn’t want that,” Will agreed, sweeping his son into his arms in one smooth movement, bringing him along with him.
The others followed suit, picking up the babies—in Cole’s case, two of them—and heading toward the dining room.
As he carried Jamie and followed the others into the next room, Connor looked around. His brothers were right. He did feel different somehow. Happier. He felt as if he had his own family now and he intended to do everything in his power to keep it that way.
When the time was right, he was going to ask Amy to marry him.
Privately, he silently stressed. Although he loved his siblings and was close to them, he felt that a proposal wasn’t meant to be a three-ring event. He wanted Amy all to himself when he finally asked her that all-important question.
At least, that was his plan.
* * *
CHRISTMAS WA
S QUICKLY approaching and she was getting involved in planning the family meal with Rita. Amy was so excited and happy she felt she was going to burst.
In her estimation, everything was just getting more and more perfect, she thought late one evening as she lay in Connor’s arms.
But even with all this happiness around her, she was aware of one possible fly in the ointment.
A “fly” that could ruin everything.
“You’re frowning,” Connor noted as he looked down and saw the expression on her face.
“Am I?” she asked, her eyes widening innocently.
She could tell that she wasn’t fooling Connor. She really needed to work on maintaining a poker face. Every thought she had seemed to imprint itself on her face.
Crooking his finger under her chin, Connor tilted her head up until their eyes met.
“Yes, you are,” he told her. “Has my performance rating gone down?” he teased. “Because if it has, I can do better.” Running his hand slowly along the soft curves of her body, he began to show her.
Anticipation shimmered through her veins, raising her body temperature. “If you were any better, you’d be in the Smithsonian, preserved under glass to keep you safe from other women.”
He laughed. “You’re the only woman I’m interested in,” he told her. He pressed a kiss to her shoulder before growing serious. “But that still doesn’t explain why you’re frowning.”
Amy debated saying that he was imagining things, that she wasn’t frowning, just thinking. But she didn’t want to lie to Connor, not even a little white lie. She wanted him to feel that she had always been honest with him.
So, at the risk of shattering what had been, up until now, a beautiful evening, she told him the truth, confessing what was bothering her, what she couldn’t seem to bury or simply forget about.
“There’s been no word from Clay.”
Connor raised himself up on his elbow, silently studying her for a long moment before asking, “Do you want to hear from Clay?”
“Oh no,” she cried. “Not personally,” she said quickly, trying to make herself clear. “I meant that he hasn’t responded to Cash about the divorce papers. He hasn’t signed them and sent them back.”
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