by Mary Brady
She was lovely. She had always been lovely. Perhaps he was a coconut head after all.
She put her glass on the table and moved over closer to him. “I might be wrong about Brianna.”
“What does that mean?” He refused to give himself any answers to that question.
“I’ve always gone on what I knew, what the doctor said and Brianna being on the low end of birth weight, like a premature baby.” She scooted closer and took both his hands in hers. “But since you’ve been here, I’ve started paying attention to the portraits in Morrison and Morrison’s conference room. I think your uncle has Brianna’s eyes. She does not have Micky’s eyes. As she grows older, her nose is starting to pinch in a bit, like yours. When she and you are desolate, you share the same expression.”
He didn’t say anything. His heart beat faster just thinking about what having a child with Delainey would mean. When he had thought about it in Pirate’s Roost that night Brianna disappeared, the speculation had been his alone and hadn’t really had much credence.
“All of these things may be true,” she continued. “Or I could have made them all up in my head. I wish I knew. I wish I could keep my mouth shut and leave things alone, but I can’t. If she’s yours, you deserve to know. If she is not—”
She looked up at him. “I am so sorry to have even brought it up and made you think there is a possibility you have a daughter. I thought I knew. I was positive about her not being yours.” She dipped her chin. “I’m sorry.”
“Even if she is mine, I don’t—”
“No.” She put a soft hand on his cheek. “Don’t promise anything until we know for sure. I could be totally off base, completely wrong, and you shouldn’t make any decision without all the facts. I think we should get a DNA test to see if you’re Brianna’s father.”
He didn’t say anything. He didn’t know what to say. It had been one thing when he had thought the child might be his and he did not know her. It was a totally different thing for Delainey to think it might be a possibility, and now that he had seen what a great kid Brianna was, it was hard to contemplate her being his. If she turned out to be someone else’s child, would it be harder than to go on speculating?
“We don’t have to decide anything right away. I’d like her to know her father. Hunter, if you’re her father, I’d like her to get a chance to know you while you’re still so close by.”
Except he didn’t plan to be close by any longer than he had to be.
“The most unfair thing about all this, Hunter, is what I’m doing to you right now. You’re torn and you like Brianna. She’d be a great daughter to have.”
“She would.”
“We’d make no demands on you, but I feel as if I’m dangling her in front of you and if she isn’t yours, she’ll be yanked away. She would go from maybe being yours to definitely being somebody else’s, but I don’t know how to do this any other way. I’m sorry, so sorry.”
She swung her legs over the edge of the couch and leaped to her feet. When she raced across the condo toward her coat and then the exit, he followed.
“Are you sober enough to drive?” he asked as she slipped on her boots.
“On one drink? I think I’m better than that.”
“Are you sober enough to drive?” he repeated so she couldn’t evade.
She turned her nose up at him. “I am sober enough to drive.”
He accompanied her down the stairs and when he would have gone outside with her, she pointed at his stockinged feet.
He pulled her to him and placed a small kiss on her mouth. Then he watched her walk across the parking lot and climb into her car. She sat there and didn’t drive away. She didn’t deserve any of this. She deserved a man who loved her, who loved her daughter, who loved life in this funky New England town.
* * *
DELAINEY SHIVERED AS she sat in her car debating where to go. Brianna had fallen fast asleep in Dora and Christina had convinced Delainey to leave her. The two of them would have so much fun when they woke up, her sister had said. They’d eat pastry and Delainey could join them for more painting when she finally dragged herself out of bed.
“Go home and sleep late in the morning” was Christina’s idea for her. The last thing Delainey wanted in the world was to have nothing to get up for. That would be what it would be like to wake up without her daughter, without the chance of Hunter ever being in her life.
How had she gone from living her life reasonably happily without Hunter to wondering if she would ever truly be happy again? The best-case scenario might be he was a friend who lived half a continent away. The worst-case scenario for her would be their daughter would go away, putting that half a continent between them, leaving her mother a broken wreck.
She tried over and over to find the bright side of all this. Her daughter gone. Hunter back in her life long enough to rekindle all the feelings she’d ever had for him. She didn’t know if she even cared about her job or her future anymore.
She looked up to see Hunter standing outside her car with his arms crossed over his chest, staring in at her.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
HUNTER HAD THOUGHT as soon as he’d slipped on his shoes that he might be an idiot. Now that he was standing next to Delainey’s car in the cold wind, looking in at her as she stared out at him, he was even more convinced. She looked so beautiful and so frightened, and he was out of his mind.
Delainey represented everything small town, everything he thought he didn’t want, but he opened her car door and reached a hand in to her. She took hold and they walked back up to his condo hand in hand.
They didn’t stop in the living room but headed straight to his bedroom. In the doorway, she tugged his hand to stop them from entering.
“What’s this?” She pointed at the messy bed.
“What? I didn’t make my bed? What’s it to you, Miss Neatnik?”
She punched him on the arm. “You haven’t even been in here since I left.”
“Have so.”
“And what, you turned and walked back out?”
He shrugged his shoulders and grinned at her, feeling a bit like a new college grad. “So what do you want from me?”
She tugged downward on his hand until he brought his lips to hers. So quickly, he found himself devouring her mouth, reaching inside to taste her. Then he freed his hand and wrapped his arms around her, pulling her to him until their bodies molded together.
Her smell filled his head until he felt as if he were under the surface of a pool of warm water, but it was such a sweet drowning. She made him want her faster than any other woman.
When she stood on her tiptoes, he lifted her until she was suspended, feet dangling a few inches from the floor. She laughed a joyous laugh as he walked them to the bed and shrieked when he picked her up and tossed her on the pile of creased sheets.
She laughed some more and kicked her boots off.
He shed his shoes and crawled onto the bed beside her. “Laughter isn’t exactly what I’m going for, but it’ll do.”
He reached for her around her waist and rolled her under him just to hear her cry out with the same joy he felt. When she obliged, he took her mouth with his, hungry to taste all of her. He kissed her face, her eyes, her ears, her hair and then down her neck. He inched his body down hers and his lips down her neck into the V of her sweater and blouse and slid his tongue in between the mounds of her breasts.
Her harsh groan made him want to rip their clothes off and have her quickly and completely, but he made himself back off. He wanted to make sure they wrung every bit of pleasure possible from this.
He lifted off her and moved onto his side. Her eyes looked silver-gray in the light from the bedside lamp. The silver followed him and she smiled at him, threading her fingers into his hair. When she made an air kiss at him with
her lips puckered, he reached for the tail of her sweater. “There is nothing sexy to be done with this...thing.” He slipped the sweater over her head and tossed it toward the chair in the corner.
She lay languidly against the disheveled sheets, eyes half closed as if she didn’t care, taunting him in the light spill of lamp, looking as lovely as he’d ever seen her. Her white blouse hugged her slender body with the hem disappearing into her jeans. Tantalizing. Tormenting.
He smiled and reached for the top button and loosened it from the buttonhole.
“This is better,” he said, pressing open the loosened flaps of material, making sure the backs of his fingers brushed the bare soft skin of her breasts. Her breath quickened and he smiled. He couldn’t think of anything that could have possibly pleased him more.
Moving down to the next button, he unfastened it, again pressing her blouse open and planting kisses. Down, down until he’d undone all buttons to expose the beautiful smooth skin of her flat belly where he kissed and licked. There was so much to love about her body and he intended to love all of it.
He pulled the tail of the shirt from the waistband of her jeans and pressed his palm flat on her belly. Holding her gaze, he slid his hand downward until his fingers dipped under her waistband, eliciting yet another groan. Then he reached deeper until he could feel the silk between her legs and deeper yet, he stroked her. Her eyes opened wider and her lips curved.
She raised her hips to meet his hand, and when he withdrew his hand, her expression grew bleak. When he undid the button of her jeans and then her zipper, she smiled and nodded.
Hot, so hot she nearly unwound him, but he held on. He leaned in and kissed her again, dipping his tongue into her mouth. She moved against him until he knew he needed to be naked against her.
He broke the kiss and pushed her jeans and panties off. She shrugged off her blouse and bra and lay with one arm bent, the back of her hand against her cheek. He stood to pull off his clothes and when he lay back down beside her, she was holding a fistful of condoms.
“Hunter, I’m so glad I stayed.” She let the handful of condoms scatter on the bed.
He couldn’t stop the grin that spread across his face. She tore open a package and rolled the condom down with both hands ever so slowly until he stopped her. “You’re driving me crazy.” He finished the task for her.
She lay back on the bed and brought him down on her.
The feeling of being one with Delainey, the sensation of her so alive around him, drove him quickly to the edge, and he held himself in check until she called out his name. When she pulsed around him, he let himself go, his powerful feelings taking him to the place only Delainey had ever taken him.
His heart felt true happiness.
After a while, as they lay clinging to each other, their breaths long and smooth, she said in an almost melancholy voice, “Hunter, you make me feel good. So very good.”
“Have you ever been anybody’s island of sanity?”
“Is that what I am to you? Sanity?”
“Hmm. Doesn’t quite sound right,” he said as he moved his hand from where it rested on her neck to the silky slope of her butt and down again to her thigh.
He rolled them onto their sides and stroked her breast. “Ah, sanity,” she said as she threaded her fingers into his hair.
He was rock hard again, and he wondered as he took her again if he would ever get enough of her.
After they had collapsed in a heap of exhaustion and recovered a second time, he got up and reluctantly walked away from her as he went to the bathroom.
He was afraid leaving the bed would break the spell, especially when she got up and padded to the bathroom after he did. A few moments later when she came out, her lithe body almost glided toward him and instead of gathering her clothing, she climbed in bed and pressed her cooled body to his.
She was a glorious creature—shapely legs, beautiful face, golden hair and eyes the color of the ocean on a stormy day, strong yet adorable, fierce yet soft. He was going to miss her more than ever when he left this time. He brushed her hair back and looked into her face. How long could she stay tonight? he wondered, but he didn’t really want to think about it. For right now he would cherish her.
She looked into his face and a smile curled her lips. “I’m on my own tonight. Brianna is sleeping at Christina’s. There’s no one at my house—if that’s what you’re wondering.”
“I was. It seems as though we are forever leaving each other.”
“I’m not going anywhere yet.” She pressed the pad of her thumb into the cleft in his chin. She had been doing that gesture since the twelfth grade. He should have kissed her then.
“Stay with me tonight. I remember how fine it was to wake up and find you in my bed in the morning. I’d like to do that.” He kissed her on the forehead. “Very much.”
She snuggled closer and mumbled something about coconut head.
He smiled and gathered her into his arms.
If there was ever a time in his life he felt like mourning, it was now. How could he change himself to be able to live in a place this small and isolated? Callista was going to be a minor footnote in his life from now on, but the changes Callista had made in him seemed important, at least where Delainey was concerned. It wasn’t as easy to trust anyone else, but that seemed to make Delainey more precious to him.
He put his chin on top of her head and squeezed her tighter. “Thanks for telling me how you felt about Brianna.”
“I was so not sure how you’d take it. I’m so not sure I should have said anything.”
“I need you to know, I’d be honored if Brianna was my daughter.”
She sighed. “I’m still no more convinced now than I’ve ever been. Hunter, she might not be your daughter at all. She probably is not yours, but if she is, I couldn’t live with your not knowing. I don’t want to mess up your life, but the only way to find out seemed to be to tell you.”
He chuckled. “Mess up my life. You couldn’t possibly mess up my life, at least no more than I have messed it up myself.”
“I’m sorry for my part.”
“I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you, no matter who the father is. I’m your friend. I could have been there for you, at least financially if nothing else.”
She lifted her face and smiled at him.
“We’re good. Brianna’s happiness is so much my life’s purpose I don’t have time to want much else.”
“What about law school?”
“I’ll get that done and hope there’s still a job for me here in Bailey’s Cove. If not, there are other law firms in Maine.” She shrugged one shoulder.
She wasn’t very convincing and then there was her mother. She was going to have hip-replacement surgery. Who would care for Brianna while Delainey attended law school was apparently up in the air.
“Now, let’s forget all that.” She put a hand on his cheek.
He leaned down and kissed her on her full, eager lips, drawing another growl from her when he dipped in his tongue, asking for more of her. She responded by reaching down for him, wrapping her fingers around him and making him feel as if nothing in the world mattered but the two of them and how good they could make each other feel.
When morning arrived bright and sunny, the beams of early dawn broke across the most beautiful sight. As the daylight fell across Delainey’s sleeping face, his heart wrenched in his chest and made him wonder if anything in his life was more real than this woman sleeping in his bed.
* * *
DELAINEY WATCHED IN disbelief as four employees gathered around Hunter. When he came down to the break room for coffee, Patty had insisted she make a fresh pot for him and Carol had brought out the pan of cinnamon rolls she had made this morning before work and insisted he have one. It could have even been the biggest one in the pan,
the one with the most frosting.
“So how does it feel to be worshipped?” she asked as she followed him back up to the second floor.
“Tasty.” He held up the cinnamon roll with a big bite out of it.
She couldn’t help but smile with fondness about the people she had worked with for so many years. “It might have taken them time to assimilate the facts and to figure out how much they needed to change their outlook. You are, after all, an outsider, but since they decided you threw yourself under the runaway bus instead of giving up Shamus and Connie, you gained hero status.”
He chuckled. “Small-town folks are easy to please.”
“Small-town folks are willing to be pleased by the simple things in life. That’s the difference between us and them.”
“Them being anyone outside the state of Maine?”
“Mostly. I am willing to concede there might be a folk or two out there who would be generally Maine-like, but ah-yuh, I think Bailey’s Cove harbors a larger degree of people who are content to be where they are and bereft when forced to give all this up.” She swept a hand out to include the whole of the town, the people, the traditions, the harbor, the snug setting with protective hills to their backs and the ocean to their front.
And you would so nicely fit in here, she thought as she turned her back to him and headed to her own office. A stab of loneliness struck her in the heart. Every time she walked away from Hunter seemed as though it might be her last.
He had told her he was looking for someone to replace him at Morrison and Morrison, someone who would think of the job as a stepping-stone. He’d get a contract from the person to stay until Delainey was ready to step into the position at the firm.
She had been grateful, but the feeling had been tempered by knowing when the new person came, Hunter would leave Bailey’s Cove perhaps for the last time.
In Chicago he’d finally find a woman who could make him happy, give him children and, most important, live deeply inland, where few people other than Morrisons had ever heard of Bailey’s Cove.
