by Janet Dailey
“That’s one of the benefits of having a son. We’ll always have you outnumbered,” he warned. “Speaking of numbers, I have something to give you.”
Releasing her, he stretched out a leg and reached inside his pants pocket. She caught a gleam of shiny metal as he reached for her left hand.
“Numbers equals digits equals fingers,” Slater explained his word association and slipped an engagement ring on her finger. “A sapphire—to match your eyes.”
“It’s beautiful.” Dawn stared at it, adequate words escaping her, but the brilliant shimmer in her blue eyes rivaled the deep color of the sparkling stone when she finally looked at him.
“I remembered that Simpson had given you a diamond and I didn’t want to follow in his footsteps,” he admitted.
Dawn wished he hadn’t mentioned him. It tarnished some of the joy in the moment, but she couldn’t block the memory of him out of her life. It was time both of them began treating his name as belonging to a mutual acquaintance.
“He always followed in yours,” Dawn corrected him.
“I’m glad you quit wearing his rings,” he said.
Before she could explain that she had sold them, Randy chose that moment to clump loudly down the steps. He halted on the last one and called, “Is it safe to come down?’ This time he gave them forewarning before bursting into the room.
“It’s safe,” Slater chuckled.
He bounded jauntily into the room, his gaze darting from one to the other. “Well? What did she say?”
“Take a look.” Slater lifted her left hand for Randy’s inspection of the engagement ring.
“Great! Now that we’ve got that out of the way, what’s for supper?” His hunger took precedence over any prolonged celebration of their engagement.
The abrupt change of subject startled a laugh from her. “Oh, Randy,” she declared in amusement.
“Well?” The challenging inflection of his voice made it a defensive word. “You told me to get cleaned up for supper, so what are we going to eat—and when? I’m starving.”
“You’re always starving,” Dawn insisted with an indulgent look.
“He takes after me,” Slater murmured and bit at the lobe of her ear. “I’m hungry, too.” But the growling sound of his voice spoke of an appetite that had nothing to do with food.
A response to that was impossible with Randy listening in, so Dawn attempted to deal with her son first. “I haven’t started anything for supper so you have your choice of hamburger—or hamburger.”
“That’s a lot of choice,” Slater laughed. “How are we supposed to make up our minds?”
“Let’s have hamburgers,” she suggested with a laugh.
“How long’s it going to take?” Randy asked.
“If I had two handsome helpers, I bet supper would be on the table in half an hour. How hungry are you?” Dawn challenged.
It looked as if Randy’s appetite was fading, but Slater rolled to his feet and clamped a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “You’ve got your two volunteers.”
She stood up. “The kitchen is that way.” She pointed to the hallway behind them. Slater turned Randy around and marched him toward it while Dawn brought up the rear.
“What do you want us to do?” Slater asked.
“Randy can set the table and you—” she opened the refrigerator and tossed him the packet of hamburger, “—can grill the hamburgers.”
“What are you going to do?” Randy protested what he saw as an unfair division of labor.
“I’m going to put the frozen french fries in the oven and make a salad,” she said and took a head of lettuce out of the refrigerator’s vegetable bin.
Slater exchanged a glance with Randy. “She’s a regular general handing out orders.” He slid her a look as he formed the hamburger into patties. “Do I have your permission to wear the pants in our family?”
Pausing by the stove where Slater was working, Dawn turned the oven on to heat. Her arm brushed slightly against his, attracting his downward sideglance.
“You can wear the pants.” She saucily gave him permission.
Before she could elude the retaliation she expected, he hooked an arm around her waist and hugged her to his side. He bent his head near her ear. She tipped her cheek up to him, expecting a kiss.
Instead, Slater murmured, for her hearing alone, “I don’t care who wears the pants as long as neither one of us wears them to bed.” As he let his hand fall from her waist, he playfully pinched her bottom.
“Ouch!” But she was laughing as she quickly backed away from him.
“Hey, I’ve been wondering.” Randy frowned as he circled the table, dispensing plates at the three place settings. “Where are we going to live after you two get married?”
Dawn had been riding so high on her newfound happiness that she hadn’t thought about such details. “The house, we just bought it.” She hated the idea of moving out of it when they had barely settled in.
“Considering that I have only a one-bedroom apartment, I think we would all be more comfortable if I moved in here.” Slater eliminated her concern.
“Well, when are you going to get married?” Randy asked.
“As soon as possible.” Both answered the question simultaneously, then looked at each other and laughed at their mutual haste.
“We’ll probably get married the end of the week,” Slater was more specific. “I should be able to arrange to get away from the business for a couple of days. That, combined with the weekend, should enable us to take a short honeymoon.” He looked at Dawn, silently seeking her approval of his plan. “I thought we could go away on my boat.”
“I’d like that,” she nodded, her face beaming with a smile because they had once spent so much of their time together on his old boat.
“Can I come, too?” Randy thought it sounded like fun.
“Absolutely not,” Slater laughed. “The three of us will go out for a weekend after your mother and I have our honeymoon. How’s that?”
“Since I don’t have any choice, I guess it has to be okay,” he declared with a dismal shrug of his shoulders. “The table’s all set. I’m done.”
“I don’t see the salt and pepper,” Dawn noticed. “What about ketchup and mustard? All those things are part of setting the table.”
“Aw, Mom,” Randy grumbled, but added the missing items to the table.
Less than half an hour after the three of them converged on the kitchen, they were sitting down to the meal. When Randy reached for his third hamburger, Slater eyed him skeptically then glanced at Dawn.
“Does he always eat like that or haven’t you fed him the last couple of days?” he asked, more to tease Randy than anything else.
She just smiled. “Wait until you find out how expensive it is to feed a growing boy.” Once that hadn’t been of any concern to her until she had to start managing on a limited budget. With the food on her plate gone, Dawn stood up to carry it to the sink. “Coffee?”
“Sounds good,” Slater nodded.
“Do I have to help with dishes?” Randy wanted to know.
“Not tonight,” Dawn told him as she set her plate in the sink and took down two cups from the cupboard.
“Then is it all right if I go over to Gramps’?” he asked, already pushing his chair back from the table. “We’re making a table.”
“What about your hamburger?” Slater glanced at the sandwich Randy had just taken with only one bite gone from it.
“Oh, I’ll eat it on the way,” he said, unconcerned.
“You can go,” Dawn excused him from the table. He grabbed up the sandwich and bolted for the door. “Don’t forget to be home before dark!” she called after him. There was a wry shake of her head as she carried the filled coffee cups to the table. “He eats and never stops; he runs and never walks.”
“All I can say is—” Slater waited until she had set the cups on the table, then grabbed her hand and pulled her onto his lap, “—alone at last.”
&n
bsp; “I thought you wanted coffee.” She linked her hands behind his neck and settled comfortably against his chest. Her finger felt pleasantly heavy with the weight of her engagement ring.
“To tell you the truth—” he ran his hand up her thigh and over her hip to her waist, “—that isn’t what I’m thirsty for.”
The driving pressure of his kiss drank deeply from her lips. It ignited a ground swell of desire that flamed through her veins. The completeness of her love was almost shattering to behold. The heat surged through her limbs, melting bones and flesh. His roaming hand cupped itself to the underswell of her breast, his thumb stroking the tip in heady stimulation, her thin blouse holding back none of the delicious sensations.
With a bang of the screen door, Randy charged into the house and came to a sliding stop. “Whoops!” His ears reddened at the sight of them.
“I thought you went to your grandparents’,” Slater said with a trace of exasperation, but continued to hold Dawn on his lap.
“I did—I am,” Randy was flustered. “I just came back to see if it was all right for me to tell them that you’re getting married.”
“Of course, you can tell them,” Dawn replied.
“Okay.” His mouth twitched in a hesitant smile as he backed to the door. “Bye.”
When the door had closed, Slater studied her wryly. “You know what’s going to happen in about ten minutes, don’t you?”
“What’s that?” She smoothed her hand over the slanting line of his jaw.
“Your mother is either going to call or come over so she can be the first to congratulate us.”
“You’re probably right.” Her mouth lifted in a crooked smile. “Pop will probably come over, too.”
“Which means they won’t leave until dark,” Slater concluded. “What’s Randy’s bedtime?”
“Eleven o’clock.”
An exaggerated groan came from his throat before he smothered it by kissing her fiercely. She felt his frustration and echoed it with her own. They’d been apart so long that he was impatient with anything that kept them apart any longer.
His tongue licked at her lips, sensuously going over their outline, then threading its way between them. She was filled with the taste of him, so heady and male. The buttons of her blouse were unfastened one by one, and his invading hand pushed the material aside to explore the bared flesh. There was an involuntary tightening of her stomach muscles at the touch of his hand.
A storm shower of kisses moistly covered her face, closing her eyes while Dawn trembled in the throes of growing passion. It stopped so Slater could view the prize he held in his lap. Through the slits of her lashes, she saw the pleased look in his heavily lidded eyes and took pleasure in her womanly shape.
Her back was arched slightly by the pressure of his arm as he bent his head to kiss the pouting tip of a breast, briefly taking it between his teeth and tracing its hardness with his tongue. Her hands tightened around his neck in instant reaction. A half-satisfied smile played with the corners of his mouth as he turned away to rub his cheek against hers, his breath stirring the hair near her ear.
“Are you sure you don’t want to change your mind about getting married on Friday?” he murmured against her skin. “The ceremony isn’t going to be up to your standards, you know.”
“What do you mean?” Dawn was too bemused by his kisses and caressing hands to devote her whole attention to what he was saying.
Talk seemed unnecessary at a time like this. Of course, that wasn’t all he was doing. His hands continued their roaming ways, stroking thigh and hipbone, sensually rubbing and familiarizing themselves with the shape of her.
“There won’t be time to make it a lavish affair with hundreds of guests. The wedding party will consist of you and me—and your parents, I suppose, as our witnesses. You’ll be lucky to find a wedding dress, let alone a trousseau. There won’t be tons of wedding gifts to open, nor a grand reception.” Slater continued rubbing his mouth over her cheek, not letting the conversation interfere with his loveplay. “Just a quickie marriage.”
“It sounds perfect.” She didn’t need to tell him that she’d been through all that. “I’ve become very fond of simple things.”
“Meaning me?” He took a tenderly punishing bite of her ear in revenge and Dawn wiggled at the peculiar blend of exquisite pleasure and pain his love-nip induced.
“You’re far from simple,” she insisted huskily. “As a matter of fact, I think you’re very complicated. It’s going to take me the rest of my life to figure you out.”
“Just so long as you remember it is for the rest of your life,” Slater murmured and rolled his mouth across her lips in a sealing kiss.
“I do.” Dawn lovingly trailed a finger over his tanned cheekbone down to his mouth, running it over its masculine firmness. “At this moment, Friday seems far away. But I know it’s going to be hectic getting the blood tests, applying for the license and arranging for a minister, not to mention finishing all the things I have to do here in the house—and moving your things in.”
“And me,” he added.
“And moving you in, too,” she smiled.
“You can always hire someone to do it for you instead of trying to do all this housework, unpacking, and moving yourself,” Slater pointed out.
“But I like doing it myself,” Dawn insisted.
“Right now it’s all a novelty to you, but you’ll get tired of it,” he predicted. Then his expression grew serious, his gaze narrowing to bore deeply. “What happens when the newness wears off, Dawn? You’re used to the excitement of big city life. What happens when this life become too tame and boring?”
“It won’t happen.” She didn’t even have to think about her answer.
She was very positive about it because she had experienced both kinds of life and knew the advantages and disadvantages of both. Now she knew precisely what she wanted.
“It better not.” His arms tightened around her, crushing her to his ribs while he roughly kissed her lips.
The roughness fled quickly as desire took hold and made it a moistly heated exchange. Her position in his lap became a dissatisfying one, too passive when she wanted to be an active participant in this embrace.
“Dawn!!” The sound of her name ended on a high, questioning note. She instantly recognized the voice as belonging to her mother, and she was calling from the living room. Neither had heard the front door open.
Quickly she catapulted herself off of Slater’s lap and began buttoning her blouse. “It’s mother,” she hissed needlessly, trying to put her clothes into some kind of order before she responded to the calling voice.
“So much for being alone,” he murmured dryly, and watched her frantic efforts with a trace of amusement. “It lasted just long enough for us to get hot and bothered—and not long enough to do anything about it.”
She flashed him a glance that held both amusement and a trace of embarrassment at his frank assessment. Another call came from the living room, and Dawn couldn’t delay answering any longer.
“We’re in the kitchen, Mother!” she called, and grabbed up some dishes to carry them to the sink. She threw a glance over her shoulder at Slater, still seated in the chair. “Aren’t you going to help?”
“I think it’s best if I stay seated,” he replied and chuckled at the faint blush that tinted her cheeks.
“Randy just told us the news.” Her mother started talking excitedly before she even walked into the kitchen. She beamed at both of them. “I’m so happy for you. Randy said the wedding was going to be Friday and I just knew that couldn’t be right, so I came over—”
“It’s going to be Friday,” Dawn inserted.
“But there’s so much to do beforehand,” her mother protested.
“Not really. It’s going to be a very simple ceremony—with just you and Pops—and Randy, of course,” she explained as she carried a cup of coffee to the table for her mother.
“Even at that, there’s still things to be d
one.” A little agitated, she sat down and began listing them, ticking them off her fingers as she thought of them. “An announcement has to be placed in the paper. And flowers to be ordered. Even if you don’t carry a bouquet, you’ll at least want a corsage. And a wedding cake; you’ll want a small one if nothing else.”
“Just a small one,” Dawn conceded, caught up in the snowball.
“And as for the reception afterward—” her mother began.
“We’ll have drinks on my boat after the ceremony,” Slater interrupted.
“And what will you wear? You’ll want to buy a new dress,” her mother continued. “And Randy—he’s outgrowing all his clothes.”
Turning his head, Slater glanced at Dawn. “What was that you said about ‘simple’?” he mocked the growing length of the list.
Chapter Nine
In sleep, Dawn lay on her stomach with her cheek burrowed into the pillow. Her hand felt its way across the bunk’s mattress to locate Slater, but the space beside her was empty. The information registered in her subconscious, prodding her awake.
Frowning sleepily, she turned her head and looked at the hollowed-out place where Slater had been sleeping. His head had left an impression in the pillow and the musky smell of him clung to the sheets.
Sunshine came through the portals, finishing the rousing process; Dawn rolled onto her back and pushed the copper hair away from her face as she listened intently for some sound of Slater moving about on the boat. When she heard his tuneless whistle, she smiled and pulled the light cover up, tucking it under her arms, conscious of the pleasantly rough sensation of cotton sheets against her naked skin.
A languid contentment seemed to have taken all the strength from her muscles, as well as any inclination to leave the bed where she had enjoyed so much loving last night. Her smile deepened at the satisfying memory of it. Just thinking about it produced a little quiver of excitement.
She hugged the cover more tightly across her breasts and glanced at the gold wedding band that had joined the sapphire engagement ring on her finger. “Mrs. MacBride,” Dawn murmured, liking the sound of it and feeling like a giddy schoolgirl for trying it out.
