by Penny Jordan
Shaken by the reliance and trust her statement represented, he wanted to pull her into his arms and assure her he’d always be here, but she was already pulling away from him. She had been waiting for this a long time and he could see she was both eager and filled with trepidation. Not knowing her brother or how this would go for her filled him with his own anxiety, wanting to shield her yet knowing he had to let whatever happened happen. He could only accompany her outside where the sound of the chopper blades faded to desultory pulses.
Walking out a side door, they stood on the steps, Adara’s fingernails digging into his biceps as she gripped his arm.
They watched Nic Marcussen help a woman with crutches from the helicopter. Rowan Davidson was vaguely familiar to him as a moderately famous child actress who’d had a flirtation with notoriety among the euro-trash social elite. She seemed surprisingly down to earth now as she spun with lithe grace on one foot, accepting her second crutch while trying to take a bag from her husband at the same time.
Nic shouldered the bag’s strap and reached back into the chopper for one more thing: an infant carrier.
As the couple made their way across the lawn toward them, Gideon felt the slicing gaze of the media magnate take his measure.
It wasn’t often that Gideon met a man he considered his equal. Standing on the man’s stoop didn’t exactly put him on an even playing field and he might have been more uncomfortable with that if a severe expression of anguish hadn’t twisted Nic’s expression when he transferred his gaze to Adara.
Her tense profile barely contained the emotions Gideon sensed rising off her as viscerally as if they were his own. Everything in him wanted to pull her close and screen her from what was obviously a very painful moment. But he had to stand helplessly waiting out the silence as Nic paused at the bottom of the steps and the siblings were held in a type of stasis, staring at each other.
Like a burst of rainbows into a rainy afternoon, Rowan smiled and stepped forward. “We’re so glad you came,” she said in a warm Irish accent. Hitching up the steps on her crutches, she embraced Adara with one arm, kissing her cheek. “I’m Rowan. It’s my fault we’re late. And you’re Gideon?”
She hopped over to hug him as if they were long-lost relatives, and for once Gideon didn’t take offense at an unexpected familiarity, accepting her kiss on his cheek, still focused on his wife who seemed to be in a kind of trance.
Slowly Nic set down the baby carrier and let the bag slide off his shoulder on his other side. He took a step forward and Adara tipped forward off the stoop, landing in the open arms of her brother. It was beautiful and heartrending, the reunion so intense it could only be the result of long, intense suffering apart.
“We should give them a minute,” Rowan said huskily, her eyes visibly wet as she dragged her gaze from the pair. “Would you be an absolute hero and bring Evie into the house for me?”
Gideon didn’t like leaving Adara, but followed Rowan to the kitchen where she began preparing a bottle. The baby craned her neck and followed Rowan with her Oriental eyes, beginning to strain against the confines of her seat, whimpering with impatience.
“I know, you’re completely out of sorts, aren’t you?” Rowan murmured as she released the baby while the bottle warmed. Cuddling the infant, she nuzzled her cheek and patted her back, soothing the fussing girl.
“We were supposed to be here all summer just enjoying being a family,” she said to Gideon. “Then it came up that I could have a few pins taken out of my leg. I wanted to put it off, but Nic said no, he could handle Evie for a couple of nights while I was in hospital. But Evie decided to cut a tooth and bellow nonstop. He didn’t get a wink of sleep. Then he found out Adara had come looking for him. He didn’t know which way to turn. Here, do you mind?” she said as a ping sounded from the cylindrical bottle warmer.
She held out the infant and Gideon had no choice but to take her so Rowan could retrieve the baby’s bottle.
He held the sturdy little girl’s rib cage between his palms. Her dangling legs wriggled and her tiny hands scratch-tickled his forearms while her doll’s face craned to keep Rowan in view. She was the smallest, most fragile creature he’d ever held and fear that he’d break her made him want to hurriedly hand her back, but Rowan was occupied tipping the bottle to spray milk on her wrist then licking it off.
“I’ve used crutches so many times I can do a full tea service on them without spilling, but I haven’t mastered juggling a baby. Yet.” She smiled cheekily and hopped over to him. “Just rest her in the crook of your arm and—yes, I know you want that. You’re hungry, aren’t you? Uncle’s going to feed you.”
No, I’m not, Gideon thought, but found himself with a weight of soft warmth snuggled onto his forearm. As little Evie got the nipple in her mouth and relaxed, he did too. Her charcoal eyes gazed up at him trustingly and he felt a tug near his heart. Her foot tapped lightly onto his breastbone while she swallowed and breathed heavily with audible greediness. He felt like a superhero, making sure she wasn’t going hungry.
“Shall we sit outside? I hope you’ve been comfortable here?” Rowan led him out of the kitchen to the patio.
“Very,” he assured her, sincere. “You’ll have to let us return the hospitality when our cruise ship launches next year. Now, how do we do this? Do you want to sit and take her—?”
A noise inside the house snapped Rowan’s head around like a guard dog hearing a footstep. “That was Adara into the ladies’ room. I’ll just— Do you mind? I want to make sure Nic...” She was good on crutches, swooping away like a gull, a telling thread of concern in her tone as she disappeared into the house.
He snorted in bemusement, thinking that Nic Marcussen seemed the least likely man in the universe to require a mother hen for a wife, but apparently he had one.
While Gideon was literally left holding the baby.
He looked down at the girl, surprised to see how much of the bottle she’d drained. As her bright gaze caught his, Evie broke away from the teat to give him an ear-to-ear milky grin of joy and gratitude and trust.
A laugh curled upward from deep in his chest, surprising him with how instant and genuine his humor was. Little minx. They learned early how to disarm a man, didn’t they? He was in very real danger of falling in love at first sight.
* * *
Adara wiped at her still-leaking eyes and tried to pull herself together so Gideon wouldn’t worry. He had been right. It was okay. Nico was and always had been her big brother in every way that counted. Nevertheless, her heart was cracking open under the pressure of deep feeling. She desperately craved the arms of her husband to cushion her from the sensation of rawness.
As she went in search of him outside, she saw him settling into a chair at the patio table, his back to her. Biting her lips together, she tried not to burst into happy tears as she stepped through the door and moved to his side—
—where she found him holding a baby, smiling indulgently at the infant as if the tot was the most precious thing in the world.
The kick of pain blindsided her. For a second she was paralyzed by the crash back to the reality of their imperfect life, winded so much she wasn’t able to move, let alone retreat, before Gideon glanced up and saw the devastated expression on her face.
If he’d been caught with Lexi in flagrante delicto, he couldn’t have looked more culpable. It wouldn’t have hurt this badly.
“She’s on crutches. The baby was hungry. I couldn’t say no,” he defended quickly while his arm moved in the most subtly protective way to draw the baby closer to his chest. In the way of a natural father sheltering his young.
At the same time, his free hand shot out to take Adara’s arm in an unbreakable grip.
“You look like you’re going to fall down. Sit.” He half rose, used one foot to angle a chair for her and maneuvered her into it.
Adara’s legs gave out as she sank into the chair. She buried her face in her hands and frantically reminded herself that her emotions were pushed to the very edge of endurance right now. The bigger picture here wasn’t that he was stealing an opportunity to cuddle a baby because she couldn’t give him one. He was getting to know their niece.
Longing rose in her as she made that connection and a different, more tender kind of emotion filled her, sweet with the layers of reunion with family that had driven her here in the first place. She lifted her head and held out her hands.
“Can I hold her? Please?”
“Of course.” He transferred the baby’s weight into her arms and Adara nearly dissolved into a puddle of maternal love. “Her name’s Evie. Adara, I wasn’t—”
She shook her head.
His hand came up to the side of her neck, trapping her hair against her nape as he forced her to look at him and said in a fierce whisper. “I wasn’t trying to hurt you.”
“I know. It’s okay,” she assured him, rubbing her cheek on the hardness of his wrist. “I just wasn’t expecting it, that’s all. I’m not mad.”
He cupped the side of her face and leaned across to kiss her once, hard. “You scared me. I thought I was going to lose you.”
She had to consciously remember to hold on to the baby while her limbs softened and her heart shifted in her chest. Every time she thought they didn’t have a hope in the world of making something of their marriage, he said something like that and completely enchanted her.
Voices made them break their intense stare into each other’s eyes.
“I’m not being a grouch,” her brother growled as he emerged from the house carrying his wife in the cradle of his arms. “But you were discharged early because you promised to keep it elevated, so I think you should do that, don’t you?”
Gideon moved to pull out a chair so Rowan could slide down onto it, then he offered a hand to Nico. “Gideon.”
“Nic,” her brother said, completely pulled together after his tearful reassurances to her a few minutes ago. He’d never stopped caring or worrying about her all this time, just as she had for him. She was loved, was worth loving. It was a startling adjustment, like learning she wasn’t an ugly duckling but a full-fledged swan.
Could Gideon see the change in her?
He wore a mask of subtle tension as he took his seat. No one else seemed to notice. Nic opened wine and Rowan stole the empty bottle of milk from her baby and handed Adara a burping towel.
When Nic set a glass of sparkling white before her, he smiled indulgently at Adara’s attempt to pat a belch out of his daughter. “Looks like you know what you’re doing. Do you have children?”
The canyon of inadequacy yawned before her, but Gideon squeezed her thigh and spoke with a neutrality she couldn’t manage. “We’ve tried,” he said simply. “It hasn’t worked out.”
“I’m sorry,” Nic said with a grimace that spoke of a man wanting to kick himself for saying the wrong thing, but he couldn’t have known.
“Not being able to get pregnant seemed like a horrible tragedy for me at first,” Rowan said conversationally. “But we wouldn’t have Evie otherwise and we can’t imagine life without her. We’re so smitten, we’re like the only two people to ever have a baby, aren’t we, Nic?”
“It’s true,” he admitted unabashedly while he settled into his own chair and absently eased Rowan’s bandaged leg to balance across his thigh. His hand caressed her ankle, their body language speaking of utter relaxation and familiarity with each other. “I don’t know what I did to deserve such good fortune.”
The fierce look of deep love he gave his wife and the tender way she returned it was almost too intimate to witness, but Adara found herself holding her breath as yearning filled her. I want that, she thought, but even though she felt Gideon’s fingers circle tenderly on the inside of her knee, she didn’t imagine for a minute she’d get it.
* * *
The penthouse seemed cavernous and chilly when they returned from Greece. It was after midnight when they arrived after what had been a long, quiet flight.
They’d been through a lot since meeting up at the end of her brother’s driveway, so she supposed it was natural they’d both withdraw a bit to digest it all, but the hint of tension and reserve Gideon was wearing bothered her.
They’d made love in the middle of the night and again first thing this morning. It had been wonderful as ever, but afterward, as they’d soaped each other in the shower, things had taken this turn into a brick wall.
Unable to get Gideon’s look of paternal tenderness toward Evie out of her mind, she’d pointed out how her brother and his wife made adoption look like the most natural thing in the world.
“They do,” he had agreed without inflection.
“It’s something to think about,” she had pressed ever so lightly. “Isn’t it?”
“Perhaps.”
So noncommittal.
Adara chewed her lip, completely open to the idea herself, but that meant staying married. Forever. To a man who didn’t appear as enthused by the idea of children as she was.
He was such an enigma. Returning to New York was a cold plunge into her old marriage to a workaholic who liked his space and only communicated when he had to—if the scene she entered when she left the powder room was anything to go by.
Paul, their chauffeur, was exiting Adara’s room where he would have left her luggage. Gideon was coming back to the living room from his own room, where he would have left his own. He swept his thumb across his smart phone as he gave Paul a rough schedule for the next few days, asking her absently, “Are you leaving early for the office with me tomorrow or do you want Paul to come back for you?”
Back to separate lives that revolved around their careers. She looked at her empty arms as she crossed them over her aching chest. “How early is early?”
He grimaced at the clock. “Six? The time change will have me up anyway.”
Her too. “That’s fine,” she said, then thought, Welcome back, Mrs. Complacent. She’d obviously forgotten her spine back in Greece.
Paul wished them a good night and left. Gideon came across to set the security panel, then looked down at her as she stifled a yawn.
“Straight to bed?” he asked.
A bristling sensation lifted in the region between her shoulder blades and the back of her neck. His question was one of the shorthand signals they’d developed in this detached marriage of theirs. He was letting her off the hook for sex.
She was exhausted. It shouldn’t bother her, but it left her feeling abandoned and without hope for their marriage, a family, or a love like her brother had found.
“Yes,” she said quietly, pulling on her cloak of polite endurance to hide how hurt she was. “It’s been a long day and tomorrow will be longer.” Smooth out all those rough edges, Adara. Make it seem as if you don’t have a heart to break.
“Your place or mine?”
“I—what?” She blinked at him, trying to quell the flutter of sensual excitement that woke in her blood. A little embarrassed by how quickly she could bloom back to life, she murmured, “I’m genuinely tired.”
Nevertheless, she seesawed with indecision, longing for the closeness she experienced in his arms, but fearful of how neglected she felt when he drew himself apart from her the way he had since meeting her brother.
“I’m freaking exhausted,” he admitted with heartfelt weariness, “but we’re not going back to separate bedrooms. Mine,” he said decisively, catching her hand to lead her there. “Don’t bother moving your clothes. The farther away the better.”
“Gideon.” She chuckled a little as she stumbled behind him, then was distracted by entering a room she’d rarely peeked into. It was scrupulously clean and not just from the housekeeper doing a thorough job in the
ir absence. Gideon was a tidy man. Living on boats forged that habit, he’d told her once. He didn’t like clutter. The decorator’s palette for the walls was unmarred by paintings or photos. The night table held only a phone dock that doubled as a bedside light.
He stepped into his closet to set his shoes on a shelf.
“You need to find a few days in the next week to come to Valparaiso with me,” he told her as he emerged, drawing his belt free as he spoke, then hanging it precisely alongside the rest.
“You’ve become very dictatorial in the last few days, do you realize that?” She wasn’t sure where the cheeky comment came from, but it blurted out even as her voice tightened along with her blood vessels. He was undressing, shedding his shirt without reserve to expose tanned planes of muscle.
“You used to be a pushover. I didn’t have to try very hard to get what I wanted. Now I do.”
“Does that bother you?” A pang in her lip made her realize she was biting down as she awaited his answer, habitually fearful of masculine disapproval.
He moved toward her, pants open to expose the narrow line of hair descending from his navel, feet bare, predatory with his tight abs and naked chest and sober expression. His nipples were pulled into tight points by the air-conditioned room.
She tensed against a rush of uncertainty and sexual admiration.
“You were thinking of leaving me because you weren’t getting what you wanted. That bothers me very much.” He cupped the side of her neck and his thumb pressed under her chin, gently tilting her face up. “We can’t meet each other’s needs if we don’t say what they are, so I’m pleased you’re telling me what you want. I’m telling you what I want. I like feeling you next to me and waking up to make love to you in the middle of the night. I need to travel and when I do, I want you to know that no one is in my bed except you.”
So he hadn’t completely left her, this man who so easily found his way to the deepest recesses of her soul. She swept her lashes down to hide how moved she was.
