by Tami Hoag
“Would you mind if I have a little talk with Jeff?”
“You?” Kelsie asked skeptically as she pulled back enough to look up at him.
Alex tried to smile. “I know he hasn’t exactly welcomed me with open arms, but I’d like to give it a shot.”
He almost chickened out when he reached the door of Jeffrey’s room. What did he know about kids? You used to be one, didn’t you, he asked himself. His own father had taken him to more ball games and hockey games than he could remember. All he had to do was imagine how he would have felt if his dad had backed out on one of those special outings and brushed him off without a second thought.
Jeffrey was facedown on the bed, hiccuping and sniffling. Alec took a deep breath to steady his nerves, then sat down beside the boy.
“Tough break about that basketball game,” he said, tugging methodically on his earlobe.
Jeffrey peered up at him with one bleary brown eye. “What’s it to you?”
Alec shrugged. “I was just thinking. When I was about your age, my dad promised he’d take me with him to Lake Mille Lac for the opening of the fishing season. I don’t think I talked about anything else for a month beforehand. I would have felt awful if he hadn’t kept that promise.”
Kelsie’s son pressed his head back down on his forearm. “My dad hates me.”
He sounded so forlorn, it nearly broke Alec’s heart. It was hard to remember he was the same little ruffian that had regarded him with such disdain. Now Jeffrey was a little boy who’d had his dreams shattered, who felt deserted and unwanted by the most important man in his life. Alec wondered if Jack Connors had any idea what he’d done.
“Maybe he just doesn’t know what’s important, Jeff.” It was difficult for Alex to imagine that the man even had a brain. The guy had let Kelsie and two beautiful children go. He was probably more deserving of pity than anything else.
He gave his head a shake and cleared his throat, glancing around the room at the posters of sports celebrities, several hockey players among them. Here goes my dream date, he thought to himself, not nearly as disappointed as he might have been.
“I know you’re a big hockey fan,” he said to Jeff. “I happened to get my hands on tickets to the Stars-Bruins game tonight. Your mom said she’d go with me, but I don’t think she really wants to. Besides, it’d be more fun with another guy along…. You interested?”
Jeffrey raised his head and turned to give Alec a long, suspicious look.
“I’d really like it if you went with me,” Alec said, surprised at how much he meant it.
“You mean it?” Jeff asked hesitantly.
Alex gave the boy his most sincere look. “I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t mean it, Jeff.”
The boy dodged the man’s gaze as he sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed. “I haven’t been very nice to you.”
“I don’t have anything against starting over,” Alec said, offering his hand. There was only a second’s hesitation before it was met by a smaller, chubbier one.
“Go get washed up,” Alec said with a wink and a grin. “We can still make the opening face-off.”
Jeffrey dashed for the door, pausing when he reached it and turning back toward Alec. “Did you catch anything on that fishing trip?”
Alec’s grin widened in remembrance. “A couple of bullheads and a major league case of poison ivy. It was the best time I ever had.”
Kelsie woke up on the couch at eleven o’clock with the television rumbling in the corner and the lamp turned on low on the end table. She felt as if she’d been sleeping for years. The three cats sat in a row on the floor, staring up at her. They weren’t allowed on the good furniture.
Trying to shake the cobwebs from her head, Kelsie sat up, rubbing her eyes. She shooed the cats away. “You know I hate it when you guys stare at me,” she complained. “It gives me the creeps.”
The cats trotted away with their tails in the air.
The hockey game would be over by now, she thought. Alec and Jeff should be on their way home. She wondered how the evening had gone. Alec had no experience with kids, and Jeffrey could be a pistol. They had probably killed each other. She’d been shocked that her son had agreed to go with Alec. She’d been shocked that Alec had offered to take the boy.
That’s the kind of thing knights do, Kelsie, she told herself, rubbing her hands up and down her arms to get her circulation going. A girl could get used to being rescued by him. But it wouldn’t be a good idea, a weak voice cautioned her from somewhere in the back of her mind.
She sighed and tried to comb her fingers through her hair. She was too tired to listen to dire warnings from her psyche. Not tonight, she told the little voice, hoping she could dredge up the energy to make a pot of coffee.
The sound of a car turning into her driveway gave her the incentive to get off the couch and walk to the front door. She swung the door back, her eyes widening at the sight of Alec carrying a sleeping Jeffrey toward her.
In that instant Kelsie fell deeply, irrevocably in love with him. Or perhaps it just suddenly hit her that she’d been in love with him for some time and simply hadn’t recognized the feeling for what it was. Either way, the realization left her feeling exhilarated and frightened all at once, like the gravity-defying rides at the state fair had.
Never uttering a word, she followed Alec to Jeffrey’s room and watched as he eased her son down onto his bed, slipped off the boy’s sneakers, and covered him with a quilt. Only after they had retreated to the hall did either one speak.
“I never saw anyone sleep so soundly,” Alec whispered. “He was out before we got to the parking lot exit and never moved a muscle the whole way home.”
Kelsie smiled. “He’s like that. He’ll be out now until breakfast tomorrow. You’d never believe he had insomnia as a baby. Thanks for taking him, Alec. It really meant a lot to Jeffrey.” And to me, she added silently.
“What are knights for?” He shrugged. “Taking little boys to hockey games is on the list a few notches below carrying damsels across crocodile-infested moats.”
“So who won?” she asked, leaning into Alec as he slipped his arm around her waist.
“Boston. Five to four in overtime.”
“Too bad.”
He shook his head. The evening wasn’t going exactly the way he’d dreamed, but he couldn’t honestly say he felt like complaining. He had genuinely enjoyed taking Kelsie’s son to the game. He had to laugh at himself—the confirmed bachelor playing father and liking it. “We had a great time.”
Kelsie stopped and smiled up at him. “Did you really?”
“We did,” he assured her, his dimples creasing his cheeks as he looked down at her. With a little imagination and a few props, she might have looked like a bag lady. Her hair was a mess, her makeup long gone. She wore a pair of light gray sweat pants and a baggy red top that buttoned down the front and looked like half of a matched set of thermal underwear. Wool socks bagged around her ankles. Alec thought she looked like an angel. “Did we wake you?”
She shook her head. “I was about to make some coffee. Want some?”
“No,” he answered, steering her toward the couch. “I want you.”
Kelsie’s eyes widened, but she said nothing. They had been headed toward this for a long time, she thought, perhaps from the day they’d met. For it to happen tonight, when she’d discovered she was in love with him, seemed right.
Alec sat them both down and took Kelsie into his arms for a long series of deep, drugging kisses. His mouth took complete yet gentle command of hers. Her surrender was unconditional. She sighed as his tongue slid over hers, and she drank in the warm taste of him. Her hands came up to cradle his face, her fingers gliding back into the dark silk of his hair and down to the strong muscles of the back of his neck. It seemed as though they kissed for hours, never rushing as they sampled the tastes and textures of each other’s mouth as they adjusted angles and degrees of pressure.
When Alec finally eased
her away from him, he looked into her eyes and very deliberately raised his hands to the top button of her jersey. He had to see her, touch her, taste her. Kelsie made no move to stop him. She sat patiently with her hands in lap, her soft blue eyes on his as his fingers freed one button then another. Finally he pushed the garment open, his breath catching in his throat as he bared her breasts.
They were lovely, small but full and proud, with dusky brown nipples that had hardened and jutted forward, begging for his touch. Mesmerized, he stroked his fingertips down the sides of the soft globes, thinking he could feel them swell and tighten with desire as his own body swelled and tightened. His thumbs caressed the center buds, hardly touching them at first, increasing the pressure until he was rubbing them over and over.
Kelsie’s head fell back as she gasped for air. It had been so long since she had been touched by a man, and then, never like this, with such exquisite care and attention and patience. She loved Alec. Giving herself to him was her way of wholly accepting that knowledge. She wanted to give him pleasure but had never dreamed of being given so much pleasure in return. When he leaned forward and touched her breast with his lips, she thought she would go mad. When he took the tip of her breast into his mouth and began to suck, she was certain she had.
His tongue stroked the aching peak, his teeth grazed across it, his lips massaged it. Kelsie drove her fingers through his hair and cradled him there at her breast, never wanting him to stop. She lay back, arching into the delicious heat of his mouth, gasping when his hand closed over her aching femininity and he began to explore her through her clothing.
His fingers touched and teased until she could no longer stand the barrier of garments between her and his caresses. Desperate for more intimate contact, she reached down and plucked at the drawstring waist of her sweat pants, lifting her hips for Alec to pull them down.
“So pretty,” he whispered, pressing kisses along the fine line of downy blond hair that trailed over her tummy. His fingers slid into the nest of dark tawny curls between her thighs, wringing a soft moan from her as he parted the petals of feminine flesh and began his exploring anew.
Alec was amazed at his own patience. His body had been ready to take hers half an hour ago, and she was certainly ready for him, yet he was content to lay there, touching and teasing her and watching her sanity slip away. She would be wild in his arms, he thought, gritting his teeth at the surge in his loins as he imagined what their joining would feel like. Heaven—that was what he wanted to give her.
She chanted his name in a whisper-soft litany as his thumb found her most sensitive flesh and began stroking while he eased two fingers deep inside her.
“Alec!” she sobbed, writhing against his hand. “Alec, please!”
He stretched out on top of her, letting her feel his hardness through his jeans. He pressed against her, rocked against her as he kissed her deeply. “Are you on the pill, honey?”
“Yes,” she whispered, glad she had renewed her prescription as her hands clutched at the sweater he wore, trying to drag it up his back.
“Maybe we should go to your bedroom,” he suggested, nipping on her earlobe.
“No,” she said, trembling hands reaching for him. He growled low in his throat as her fingers slid inside his pants and she touched him for the first time. He was solid and hot and as ready for her as she was for him. “Now, Alec, please.”
How many times had he dreamed of hearing her say those words? Now he wasn’t only hearing them, he was going to live out the rest of his dream of making love to Kelsie. He reached down to shove his jeans out of their way, but his hands stilled on his waistband as a plaintive voice called out from several rooms away.
“Mom? Mom, I think I’m gonna be sick.”
All the passion suddenly went out of their groans. Kelsie pushed her hair out of her eyes and hastily began to rearrange her clothes. Alec sat up, half laughing half crying, cradling his head in his hands. Every inch of his body ached with frustrated desire. He felt like he’d been flogged from head to foot with a rubber hose.
“This is what I get for letting him have that last chili dog,” he muttered.
SEVEN
“OUCH! DAMN!” KELSIE snapped as she stuck herself in the eye with her mascara wand. Tears dragged a stream of black down her cheek.
“Damn!” the parrot mimicked.
With one eye Kelsie peered at her son in the doorway of the bathroom. “Jeffrey, get that bird off your head.”
“But you said I could take him out of the cage.”
“I didn’t say you could wear him for a hat,” she said, dabbing at her stinging eye with a wet wash cloth, dripping water onto her white silk robe.
The brilliant blue bird squawked and began chanting, “Love me, baby. Love me, baby. Love me, baby.”
“Pirate,” Kelsie said in a threatening tone. Hyacinth macaws weren’t great talkers to begin with, but this one’s vocabulary made Kelsie wish it were completely mute. The Humane Society had rescued him from a Mississippi River barge. What words and phrases the bird knew had been learned from sailors on a garbage scow.
Jeffrey and his pet made a hasty retreat. Kelsie returned to the mirror to start over on her makeup, calling out to her daughter, “Elizabeth! Did you find that black purse for me?”
Elizabeth appeared in the doorway and leaned against the jamb. “Yes, Mom. That’s the third time you’ve asked me.”
“Sorry.” Kelsie stared in the mirror, trying to decide if she had messed up her lipstick again or if her mouth was really that oddly shaped. Her stomach was dancing a jig.
“Why are you so nervous about this date? You’ve been seeing Mr. McKnight for a long time.”
Kelsie watched the blush creep into her pale cheeks. Why was she nervous? Because she and Alec had very nearly made love on the couch last night, and tonight smart money would bet he was going to make certain they didn’t have any interruptions, and now that she’d had a whole day to think about it, she was getting cold feet.
Elizabeth was watching her with amused blue eyes, calmly waiting for an answer.
“Because. Alec said he’s taking me somewhere very special for dinner and dancing, and I want everything to be perfect, that’s why.”
“Where’s he taking you?”
“It’s a surprise.”
“He’s sooo cute, Mom. Do you think he’s getting serious? Maybe he’s going to pop the question tonight! Maybe that’s why he’s taking you someplace special. Are you going to say yes?”
Kelsie leveled a stern look at her daughter. “I think you’re getting way ahead of the game. Alec and I have known each other only a few weeks, honey. We’re having a nice time together, but I wouldn’t start looking for a bridesmaid dress if I were you. I couldn’t honestly say either Alec or I are ready to get married again, and I don’t want you asking him about it either.”
“Mom! What do you take me for, some kind of geek?” Elizabeth asked, looking highly offended—a look that almost instantly transformed itself to one of excited conspiracy. “You’d say yes, wouldn’t you? He’s sooo cute!”
A scowl from Kelsie sent Elizabeth away giggling. Giving up on her makeup, she padded barefoot to her room to dress. One of the great advantages of selling Naughty Nighties lingerie was the huge discount she got on merchandise. Over the last few years Kelsie had not been able to splurge on anything other than necessities, but, because of her discount, she had accumulated a lot of nice underwear. When she hadn’t been able to treat herself in any other way, she had been able to go to her dresser and pull out something wonderfully silky and lacy and sexy to wear.
She surveyed what she’d laid out on the bed for this very special night, wondering what Alec would think when he saw it. Dropping her robe on a chair, she slipped into the brief black lace panties. The matching garter belt came next, followed by the sheer black stockings with the seam up the back. Finally she wiggled a snug, lacy black camisole on over her head, tugged it down into place, and took a look at hersel
f in the mirror above her dresser.
She looked as if she had a hell of a lot more experience than she did. Quelling the urge to tear the garments off and replace them with more ordinary versions, she turned away from the mirror, hoping Alec wouldn’t end up accusing her of false advertising.
She stepped into a black lace petticoat and fastened it, then she put her black velvet dress on and turned back to the mirror. It was her one really fancy dress, which she’d picked up at an after-Christmas sale the year before. The lines were simple: a snug bodice with a simple round neckline that revealed nothing, a gently gathered skirt that stood out a bit with its petticoat beneath. The one sexy feature of the dress was the back. The upper part was cut out and crisscrossed with two straps studded with rhinestones. The look was demure yet alluring. The rich black velvet invited one’s touch and turned Kelsie’s fair complexion to pearly cream.
She was just finishing tying a ribbon of black lace into her hair when she heard the doorbell ring.
“Hi, Alec.” Jeffrey greeted his new friend at the door with a high five.
Alec grinned. “Hi, sport. Nice hood ornament you’ve got there.”
“Jeffrey, I told you to get that bird off your head!” Kelsie yelled, hobbling into the room with one shoe on and one in her hand.
Pirate shrieked and stretched his wings out. “Hot mama, hot mama, hot mama!”
“I’ll have to agree with him there,” Alec said smoothly, his laser-blue gaze burning down from the top of her head to the tip of her one bare big toe.
Kelsie turned scarlet. That patented skin-searing look of his combined with his cat-that-got-the-canary smile was almost enough to send her running for cover. Her body’s response to him was so strong, so swift—and he was half a room away! What was going to happen when he got his hands on her?
Her massive attack of nerves automatically flipped her switch for inane prattle. She forced her eyes to focus on the parrot, still perched atop her son’s head as he reached up to feed it a palm nut. “Like most hyacinth macaws, he has a very limited vocabulary. We got him from the Humane Society. He had a severe vitamin deficiency and had lost a lot of his plumage due to—”
