Tea and Destiny

by Sherryl Woods

  A setup like this called for a spectacular meal. Tracy, however, was a little shaky when it came to cooking. He could hardly wait to see what she’d left in the oven. He opened the door, leaned down and peered in. Some sort of chicken dish was simmering at the low temperature. It smelled and looked superb. Startled, he stood and looked around, chuckling when he saw the empty boxes from a gourmet grocery store. In front of the microwave he found vegetables and rice, and in the refrigerator there were bowls heaped with strawberries beside a pitcher of cream. Instead of wine, there was a chilled bottle of sparkling cider. It appeared they’d thought of everything. All this effort removed any uncertainty he might have had about how the kids would feel about a closer, more permanent involvement between him and Ann.

  If they’d gone to this much trouble, the least he could do was cooperate. He took a hurried shower, found a pair of decent slacks among the jeans he’d brought with him and a pinstriped shirt. He looked at the sports jacket hanging in the closet and shrugged. What the hell! He might as well go all out. Annie had never seen him dressed in anything more formal than jeans. Not since Liz and Todd’s wedding, anyway. It hadn’t made much of an impression on her then, but maybe now it would be just the thing to throw her off balance and into his arms.

  When he was ready, he went back to the kitchen, chose a classical piece from the iPod, lit the candles, dimmed the lights and poured himself a glass of cider. Then he settled back to wait. As the minutes ticked by, his nerves stretched so taut he was afraid they’d snap. It was after six when he finally heard her car pull into the driveway. Feeling like a teenager on prom night, he stood and faced the door.

  Ann stepped through the door and without even looking around, flipped on the lights. Hank took one look at her expression and his spirits fell. She didn’t seem surprised. She didn’t seem pleased. She looked as though someone had dealt a blow to her midsection from which she was still reeling.

  “Annie,” he said softly, taking a tentative step toward her. She looked toward him, her eyes finally focusing on his face. There was so much hurt there. Her cheeks were streaked with tears. “Annie love, what’s happened? Are you okay?”

  He folded his arms around her and felt a shudder sweep through her. “Please, sweetheart, you’re scaring me. What’s wrong?”

  Her arms crept around his waist and she clung to him, sobbing as though her heart had broken. Hank felt something tear loose inside him as he held her. “It’s okay,” he murmured, rubbing his hands up and down her back as if to ward off a chill. “Shh. It’s okay.”

  “No,” she said, her voice ragged from all the tears she’d shed.

  “Then tell me. Let me help.”

  “It’s Melissa.”

  Hank’s heart began to hammer harder. Melissa, dear God, if anything had happened to their baby, if Tracy had had an accident…

  “What…” he began and realized that his own throat was so thick with emotion he could barely speak.

  “They called.”

  “Who called?” he demanded, his fingers digging into her arms. “Dammit, Ann, is she hurt? What?”

  “They want to take her away from me.”

  Chapter 14

  “Take her away?” Hank repeated in a daze. There was a huge knot in the pit of his stomach. He kept remembering the warm, tender feelings that crept over him whenever Melissa held out her chubby little arms for a hug, whenever she stared at him with those huge, innocent blue eyes. The unexpected power of those emotions had held him captive for weeks now.

  “What does that mean?” he asked, studying the agonized expression in Ann’s eyes and feeling his own chest constrict in pain. “Can they do that? Can they just come in here and take her?”

  “They can do whatever they want,” Ann said wearily. “She’s a ward of the state. I’m just her foster mother.”

  “But why would they take her away? Can’t they see how traumatic it would be for a three-year-old to be uprooted again? Explain it to them. You’re more than just a foster mother. You’re a psychologist. Surely they’ll listen.”

  “It’s not that simple. The mother has finally relinquished custody, which makes Melissa eligible for adoption.” Ann’s bleak, uncommonly submissive tone only heightened his dismay. Her eyes were luminous with tears. “There’s this couple, Hank. They want her.” Though she was trying to sound so brave, her voice broke, carving a jagged path through his heart. “They want to adopt my baby and the state thinks it would be best for Melissa to have two parents. How can I argue?”

  Hank tried to gather his composure, when what he felt like doing was bashing his fist into a wall or better yet into the face of whatever bureaucrat was making this heartless decision. Couldn’t they see that no one would ever be a better parent to Melissa than Annie?

  Right now, though, her vulnerability left him shaken. She needed him to be strong. She needed him to cling to for once. Now was no time for him to be falling apart or charging out of here and doing something rash. They needed to do some clear thinking. He didn’t know the ins and outs of state regulations, but surely there was a way to block this. Melissa was theirs. She loved them. They loved her. It was as simple—and as complex, apparently—as that.

  “We’ll fight it,” he said flatly. “There must be things we can do. We’ll apply to adopt her ourselves. Sit down, I’ll make you some tea and we can talk about it.”

  Obviously drained, Ann sank down in a chair, folded her arms on the table and lowered her head. His thoughts reeling, Hank put the teakettle on the stove and tried to calm down. His outrage at the injustice of this wouldn’t help now. He poured the tea finally and put the cup in front of her. “Drink it, Annie. It’ll make you feel better.”

  She lifted her head and managed a trembling grin. “Don’t tell me now you’ve finally become a convert.”

  “To what?” he said, staring at her blankly as he sank down in a chair across from her.

  “Tea.”

  “Annie, I don’t care what you drink. Personally, I could use a stiff shot of Scotch. The point is we have to make some decisions and I gather we don’t have a lot of time.”

  She shook her head wearily. “Not we, Hank. Me. I have to make the decisions. I appreciate your concern, but it’s my problem.”

  His heart hammering, Hank stood so fast his chair went spinning. It crashed into the counter. “Dammit, Annie, this isn’t just some friendly concern on my part. Don’t you think this matters to me, too? That little girl is mine just as much as if I’d fathered her.” He slammed the chair back against the table and leaned down until he was mere inches from her. She swallowed convulsively as he said with slow, furious emphasis, “I have tucked her into bed. I have read her stories. I’ve bandaged her cuts and kissed away her tears. Dammit, Annie, I love her, too!” He fought to hold back tears of rage and frustration.

  Looking stunned by his tirade, Ann simply stared at him. “You love her,” she whispered wonderingly, touching a finger to his cheek. Her voice shook.

  He hunkered down beside her and clasped her hands. “Of course I love her. What did you think?”

  “I don’t know. I guess I thought you’d just gotten used to her, to all of us.”

  “Annie, I love every crazy, troublesome, charming, infuriating person in this house and that includes you,” he said fervently, cupping her chin in his hand. “If I had my way, we’d be married by tomorrow morning and we’d adopt every one of those kids and maybe even add a couple more of our own.”

  “But you…you’ve always been so…” She threw up her hands. “You know, so single.”

  He grinned. “So alone. That’s what I’ve been, Annie. I’ve been on my own emotionally for so many years that I didn’t know what it could be like to have other people in my life, to share good times and bad times, to have someone waiting for me at the end of the day. I was scared to death to enjoy it, because I was so afraid that by morning it could all be gone. I’ve finally accepted the fact that real love doesn’t go away. It doesn’t vanis
h in a puff of smoke. Sometimes you might have to work a little to hang on to it and it’s not always magic and rainbows, but it’s the best thing we’re ever likely to have going for us. The tough times make the magic even more special and the rainbows even brighter.”

  Ann’s smile trembled tentatively on her lips before finally turning bright. She curved her hand over his and held it against her cheek. Tears slid down, pooling against their clasped fingers. “You can be downright eloquent when you try, Hank Riley.”

  He drew her palm to his lips and kissed it. “As long as I seem to be getting through to you at last, did I mention again that I want to marry you?”

  “You mentioned it, but once again you didn’t ask.”

  “Then let me correct that at once. Will you marry me, Annie?” He gestured around the kitchen. “The kids went to all this trouble to set the scene. We wouldn’t want to waste it.”

  Ann’s heart began to beat so wildly she thought it would be impossible for her chest to contain it. For the first time she actually believed in Hank’s love. She’d actually seen the devastation in his eyes when she’d told him about Melissa. It had been every bit as shattering as her own. He wasn’t like the man who’d walked out of her life just because she was having a baby. Hank wasn’t afraid of problems. He wanted to face them with her. An unbelievable sense of joy and relief welled up inside her. He was offering her everything she’d ever wanted, everything she’d dreamed of and never dared to expect: love, companionship, strength and family.

  Marrying Hank would be a way out. Together they might be able to fight the state’s decision about Melissa and adopt her themselves. She wouldn’t have to give up her baby. The thought of losing Melissa had affected her more deeply than anything that had happened in the past. Though letting go of other foster children had never been easy, she’d always been able to get beyond the sharp tug of emotion to accept the decisions as being best for the child. But she’d never had Hank in her life before. She’d never felt that she, too, could offer a complete family. She had begun thinking of their relationship as permanent long before this moment and the prospect of losing Melissa had shaken the fantasy. Marrying Hank would allow her to keep it alive.

  But was that the only reason she was considering his proposal? If Hank had proposed tonight under any other circumstances, would she have said yes? She couldn’t be sure. Only a few days earlier she’d turned him down without hesitation. She almost laughed at the trap in which she’d caught herself. She finally knew without any lingering doubts that Hank was in love with her, was content with what they had found together. She even knew with blinding clarity that she was truly, deeply in love with him. But her motives in marrying him? They would be less than pure.

  “I can’t, Hank,” she whispered finally. “I can’t marry you. Not now.”

  She saw the astonishment register in his eyes, then the flash of hurt. “Why the hell not?”

  If she hadn’t been so miserable, she might have laughed at his purely masculine indignation. “Because it wouldn’t be fair.”

  “Fair to whom? I love you. There’s no doubt about that, right?”

  She nodded, believing at last that it was true.

  “And you love me? Or am I being too arrogant in assuming that?”

  “No. I do,” she admitted openly for the first time.

  “And it could solve the problem with Melissa?”

  “It might.”

  “Then could you explain for the benefit of my apparently simple brain why we can’t get married.”

  “What if the only reason we’re doing it is because of Melissa?”

  “Didn’t you hear a word I just said? We’re in love, Annie. We’ve admitted it. No more hiding from it. People who are in love get married. They have families. They live happily ever after. It’s the thing to do.”

  She sighed. “I know. It’s the timing.”

  “That is the craziest, most ridiculous, dumbest bit of reasoning I have ever heard in my life,” he said, dropping her hands and pacing around the kitchen, bumping into things and knocking them aside until it looked as though a war had been waged in the middle of the room.

  “Hank, sit down,” she said, deciding she’d better calm him down before he started breaking things.

  “I don’t want to sit. I want to break things,” he said, voicing her fears. As if to demonstrate, he picked up a glass and hurled it across the room. It shattered against the wall. Apparently satisfied with the minimal expression of violence, he calmly walked over and cleaned it up, while Ann just stared at him.

  “Feel better?” she said finally.

  He dropped the shards of glass into the trash and regarded her sheepishly. “Frankly, no.”

  “Good. Then you won’t bother to break anything else, will you?”

  “Don’t count on it.”

  An untimely chuckle emerged from somewhere deep inside her. He scowled ferociously. “I’m sorry,” she said at once.

  “Annie, what are we going to do about this?”

  “We’ll think about it. I’m sure with two well-educated brains between us we can come up with a rational decision.”

  “Maybe that’s the problem,” he said, suddenly looming over her, his expression fierce. “Maybe we’ve been too rational about this for too long. Maybe it’s time we just acted.”

  Something about the hungry, determined look in his eyes made her pulse leap and then race wildly. “What do you mean?”

  “This,” he said, pulling her up and slanting his mouth over hers. His lips were hard and demanding, his tongue persuasive. He backed her against the kitchen counter and pinned her there, his body pressed tight against hers. Ann moaned a halfhearted protest, but it was swallowed by yet another marauding kiss as his hands set her body on fire and melted the last of her resistance. His arousal hard against her set off a sweet ache that grew in intensity until it reached an almost unbearable tension.

  Hank slid a hand beneath her skirt, running his fingers along her thigh until he reached the moist heat at the apex. Ann felt the room spin crazily as sensations raced through her. Raw, urgent need sprang to life, tearing away the last shred of sanity. She began frantically working at the buttons on his shirt. Why had he worn the damnable thing tonight of all nights, when she needed to be able to slide his shirt away in one easy movement? When she needed so very badly to touch the rippling muscles beneath? Finally she freed the shirt from his pants. She ran her hands over his chest, then pressed kisses on the heated flesh, finally finding the masculine nipple that was flat and already hard with arousal. She felt Hank tremble as she circled that nipple with her tongue again and again.

  The pain that she’d felt when she’d heard that Melissa might be taken away began to ease, lost for the moment in other sensations, the way his flesh came alive beneath her fingers, the warm, musky scent of him.

  “Not here, sweetheart,” she heard Hank murmur as he slid an arm beneath her knees and lifted her off the floor. When they reached her room, he set her slowly back on her feet, then reached behind her to lock the door and flip on the light.

  The trip through the house had restored some of Ann’s sanity. “Hank, this is crazy. There are six children in this house.”

  “Not at the moment.”

  “Where are they?”

  “Out.”

  “Out where?” she said, then lost track of the question’s importance as his lips found an especially sensitive spot behind her knee.

  “Oh, my,” she gasped softly, her eyes widening.

  “That’s good?”

  “Very good.”

  “How about here?”

  “Hmm.”

  “And here?”

  She giggled and he laughed. “Not so good there,” he said. “Okay, how about here?”

  Here was…incredible, she thought with another gasp of pleasure. The laughter died and the loving became very serious indeed. Here, in his arms, she had no more doubts. Here she forgot about the past, stopped worrying about the futu
re and lived only for the present.

  She found herself letting go, allowing her body to soar, relinquishing her hard-won control without fear. Hank would never harm her. He would never take her anyplace he wouldn’t go himself. And, as she felt him explode deep inside her, she believed with all her heart that he would never leave her, that their love could see them through anything. That faith sent her over the edge and, clinging tightly to him, she cried out his name in joyous surrender.

  Hank propped himself up on his elbow and studied the woman lying next to him. Her cheeks were still flushed, her dark hair damp and feathered around her face. The tips of her breasts were rose-hued and puckered in the chilly air. She was so beautiful, with a radiance that began inside and left her glowing. Her skin was as smooth as ivory. Her lips had the power to tempt him beyond reason. Her slightest touch could heat his body in a way that drove him to distraction. His heart was filled to bursting with the sheer wonder of loving her.

  He watched the steady rise and fall of her chest, heard the slight catch in her breath, the gentle sigh.

  Her eyes still closed, a smile playing about her still-swollen lips, she said quietly, “This won’t solve our problem, you know.”

  “If you think that, then you haven’t been listening.”

  “Listening?” Her smile grew. “Is this your way of conversing?”

  “Can you think of any more intimate form of communication?”

  “No, but some people think words cover more ground and offer more clarity.”

  He shook his head. “Then they’ve never experienced the language of love.” He gently cupped her breast as he gazed into her eyes, his thumb insistently grazing the sensitive peak. “What am I saying now?”

  When the color rose in her cheeks and she tried to look away, he tilted her chin up until she was forced to face him.

  “I’m saying I love you.” He smoothed his hand over the curve of her hip. “And now?”