by Robin Wells
“Sure you will.” In the bright sunlight, her eyes were as blue as the sky. “I have faith in you.”
The words did something dangerously tender to his heart. He gazed at her, and their eyes locked. Time hung in the air, suddenly unimportant.
Jenny reached for the bottle of sunblock. Rachel pulled it away from her, then nervously scrambled to her feet. “I’d better get this baby some milk before she tries to drink the sunblock.” She scooped up the child and fastened her into the high chair Nick had brought out earlier. “If you’ll watch her, I’ll bring out lunch.”
“What’s Jenny having?”
“Puréed carrots.”
Making a face, Nick looked down at the baby as Rachel left. “You need to grow some more teeth, kiddo, so you can graduate to the good stuff.”
Jenny somberly regarded him for a long moment, and then her mouth curved into an expression that might have been a slight smile. Just as quickly as it appeared, it was gone. But Nick’s heart soared in a way it hadn’t done in years.
He leaned forward. “Hey, kiddo, did you just smile at me?”
The baby stuck her fist in her mouth and stared. She didn’t repeat the performance, but at least she wasn’t crying.
“I think she smiled at me!” Nick proudly announced when Rachel returned.
“That’s great.” Smiling warmly, Rachel set the tray on the patio table and turned to the baby. “Are you making friends with your daddy?” she asked, reaching forward to tousle Jenny’s curly blond hair.
Daddy. The word hit him like a pipe bomb. It was emotionally loaded, psychologically explosive.
He knew it was irrational, but something about it scared him to death. Fatherhood was serious business—as grim and serious as his own father had been.
“Ben was her daddy.” Nick’s voice came out unusually low and gruff. “I can’t ever take his place, and I don’t want to pretend I can.”
Surprise flickered across Rachel’s face. She gazed at him searchingly. “Well, then, what do you want Jenny to call you?”
Hell, he hadn’t thought of that. He shifted his stance and rubbed a hand across his bare chest. “I’m her uncle, so Uncle Nick, I guess.”
Concern etched lines around Rachel’s eyes. She looked as if she were about to say something, then evidently changed her mind. Nick didn’t press her. He had a feeling he wouldn’t agree with her thoughts on the subject.
He watched her tie a yellow Big Bird bib around the child’s neck, then sit down on the opposite side of Jenny.
“Ready to try some carrots?” Rachel asked. The baby gurgled gleefully, and Rachel spooned a mouthful of orange mush into the child’s mouth.
Jenny’s eyes grew round as blue moons at the taste of the new food. Her nose wrinkled and her forehead puckered.
“Look at that face! She looks like a troll doll.” Nick leaned forward and grinned. “So what do you think, Jenny? Do you like carrots or not?”
As if in response. Jenny spewed orange goo all over Nick’s bare chest
Nick reflexively jerked back. The baby burst into a fit of orange-mouthed giggles.
She was smiling at him. Jenny was looking straight at him, and indisputably smiling.
He glanced at Rachel. “Do you see that?”
Rachel nodded, her eyes soft and shining.
It was a miraculous feeling, making the baby laugh. Nick couldn’t wait to do it again.
He stared down at his chest, feigning an expression of stupefied surprise. Jenny laughed all the harder. He viewed her in wide-eyed alarm, then donned the manner of a snobbish maitre d’. “Was zee dish not to mademoiselle’s liking?”
A fresh round of giggles greeted his performance.
“Here at Château de BéBé, we maintain only zee highest standards. If mademoiselle doesn’t like zee carrots, why, zee carrots shall disappear. Voilà.” He placed a paper napkin on top of the bowl of carrots on her tray.
Grinning with delight, Jenny tugged the napkin away.
“Oh, no no no no no,” Nick said, still speaking in the pompous accent. “Zee offending carrots must go.” Once more he covered the bowl. Once more Jenny snatched at the napkin, delighted at this unexpected game of hide-and-seek.
After a few more rounds, Nick pretended to surrender. “Perhaps I made zee colossal boo-boo. It seems as if mademoiselle would like zee carrots to remain after all. I will leave them for mademoiselle’s future dining pleasure. In the meantime, I’d better get cleaned up.” Reaching across the table, Nick picked up one of the loaded water pistols. Making a face like Stan Laurel, he aimed it at his chest and squirted.
Jenny banged her high chair tray in merriment. Rachel laughed, too.
“Well, at least I’ve figured out how to win her over,” Nick remarked.
“Continually dribble smooshed carrots?” Rachel asked.
Nick grinned. “That wasn’t exactly what I meant.”
“Become a fashion trendsetter and start a line of chest hair accessories?”
Nick laughed aloud. “That wasn’t what I had in mind, either, but it’s an original idea.”
“Hmm. Maybe you were thinking of opening a restaurant that specializes in wearable cuisine?”
Nick had forgotten how much he missed this—the humorous back-and-forth banter, the way Rachel could not only enjoy his silly pranks, but could make him laugh in return. He sometimes used to feel as if they were a private comedy team, completely in sync, playing to an audience of only themselves.
And to Jenny, now, too, Nick thought, gazing at the giggling baby. She couldn’t understand the exchange, but she seemed completely willing to join in all the same. Grinning like a gap-toothed monkey, she clumsily slapped at her tray and cooed.
Nick grinned. “I was going to say that Jenny only seems to like me when I’m making a complete fool of myself.”
“Well, of course,” Rachel teased. “What female can resist a man who’s making a fool of himself on her behalf?”
“Is that the secret?” Nick smacked his forehead with the palm of his hand. “In that case...” Crossing his eyes, Nick comically toppled out of his chair.
Rachel laughed, and Jenny did, too.
There was something golden about the moment, something rich and real and rare that made Nick wish he could somehow package this slice of time and keep it forever. He didn’t know what, exactly, made it seem so right. Probably not any one thing. Like a favorite dish, it was probably a blending of all the right ingredients—me sunshine, the baby’s smile, the laughter and...Rachel.
Most definitely Rachel. Good Lord, but he’d missed her. He hadn’t allowed himself to admit it, not until this moment. But he had. He’d missed her. More than he was comfortable acknowledging.
He looked at her as he picked himself up and reseated himself in the chair. The sun was behind her, forming a golden aureola around her, highlighting golden streaks in her hair, backlighting her like a halo. She looked like an angel—a blue-eyed, soft-smiling angel. “You know, I could make a fool of myself over you pretty easily,” he found himself saying.
Rachel’s eyes widened. Awareness crackled in the air between them. And for a moment, everything seemed on the verge of changing.
And then Rachel grabbed the second pistol from the table. “You want to make a fool of yourself? Here, let me help.” With a mischievous grin, she aimed and fired, hitting him squarely on the side of the head.
“Hey, two can play at this game.” Nick snatched up his gun and took aim at Rachel, simultaneously relieved and disappointed that the golden moment had passed.
To Jenny’s complete delight, the water fight escalated until both adults were drenched and dripping. A brief truce was called so that lunch could be consumed, then the battle resumed in the wading pool, with Jenny in the middle. Water guns gave way to beach balls and toy boats and floating plastic fish, but Jenny’s favorite activity was splashing Nick. Each splash elicited a pratfall, a silly expression or some other comical reaction.
Rachel sat
in the pool with the baby and laughed until she was holding her sides.
“We’d better dry Jenny off and let her take a nap, or she’s going to be awfully cranky this evening,” Rachel finally said.
“Okay,” Nick agreed, kneeling on the grass and leaning over the edge of the pool. “I’m running out of fresh material, anyway.”
Rachel laughed. “It didn’t look like it. You seemed to know the moves of all Three Stooges.”
Rachel stood up in the water, the T-shirt clinging to her. The wet fabric was translucent, revealing the swimsuit underneath. The damp cotton clung to her breasts, molded to her flat stomach and cupped her derriere. When she bent to lift the baby from the pool, a hard rush of arousal pulsed through him.
Forcing his eyes away, Nick busied himself plucking the toys out of the pool, but he couldn’t keep from surreptitiously glancing at Rachel as she wrapped the child in a fluffy towel and carried her to the blanket on the lawn. Nick placed the dripping toys in a mesh bag and straightened as Rachel sat down, the baby on her lap, and reached for the diaper bag.
“What can I do to help?” Nick asked.
“Why don’t you go get a book from Jenny’s room while I change her? You can read her a story before her nap.”
Nick returned and settled beside Rachel on the blanket He could smell the herbal scent of her damp hair, the soft fragrance of perfume on her sun-warmed skin. Her thigh brushed his as she scooted over to make room for him. The warmth of her leg sent a rush of warmth through his veins.
Jenny clung to Rachel and eyed Nick warily.
“Don’t worry. I’m not going to try to pick you up,” he told the baby. “You can stay right there on Rachel’s lap while I read.” Nick held out the book. ‘“Once upon a time, there were three bears.”’ he began.
He could almost see Jenny relax in Rachel’s arms. By the time he’d finished reading the story, the baby’s eyes had closed.
Rachel rose and carried the baby to the portable crib on the deck. Nick followed, watching as she gently lay Jenny in it, arranging a light blanket on top of her. Rachel turned toward him, then folded her arms across her chest, rubbing her upper arms.
“Are you cold?” he asked.
“A little.” But it wasn’t the temperature that was giving her goose bumps. It was the way Nick was looking at her, as if she were a piece of chocolate that he was ready to gobble up. She was intensely aware of the fact that she was scantily clad and that he’d been gazing at her in a frankly appreciative way all day.
“Well, come back out in the sunshine and warm yourself up. I intend to catch a few rays myself.”
Rachel followed him to the blanket on the lawn. He sat down and patted a place beside him. It was the same place where they’d been sitting just moments ago, but without the baby, it now seemed entirely different.
Nick picked up a bottle of suntan lotion and began slathering it on his chest The way his biceps bunched and bulged each time he bent his elbows made Rachel’s mouth go dry. His stomach was as hard and flat as a marble slab, and his chest was covered with a thick mat of dark, masculine hair.
The coconut scent of the lotion filled her nostrils. She remembered smelling that scent on Nick before, one day when they’d gone hiking. She remembered inhaling it as he’d kissed her in the middle of the trail, remembered the erotic way it had crept into her senses, and remembered that afterward, she had smelled like it, too.
“Do you want some of this?”
She realized with a start that she was staring.
“You’re likely to burn without it.” He held out the suntan lotion.
She awkwardly accepted the bottle. “Thanks.”
He shot her a teasing smile as he worked the lotion into his shoulder. “You’re going to get some weird tan lines if you sunbathe with that shirt on.”
“Oh. Right.” Her insides quaking, Rachel nervously tugged the damp shirt over her head. She knew it provided virtually no cover, but it was unnerving all the same, undressing in front of Nick.
His gaze roamed over her, his eyes appreciative. “Wow. You look great in a swimsuit”
Rachel felt her face heat.
“Even better than I imagined.”
The thought of Nick imagining her in a swimsuit both thrilled and alarmed her. Keeping her head down, she poured a glob of suntan lotion into her palm. Her hand shook as she tried to apply it to her shoulder.
“You know, it’s odd that we never went swimming together out of all the times we dated.”
“It’s not all that odd, considering I don’t swim,” Rachel remarked.
Nick’s brows flew high. “You don’t know how?”
Oh, dear. Why had she brought the subject up? She’d always managed to divert him to some other activity whenever he’d suggested swimming two years ago. Why couldn’t she have done so now? “I know how. I just don’t do it.”
“Why not?”
It was embarrassing, admitting to a weakness like this. Especially in front of a man like Nick, who apparently wasn’t afraid of anything. Rachel shrugged. “When I was a child, I had a really bad asthma attack in the water. I nearly drowned. And ever since, I haven’t been able to bring myself to get in any water that’s over my head.”
“You never told me.”
Rachel shrugged. “There was never any reason to.” She squirted some lotion on her legs and bent over, busily rubbing it in. She could feel the heat of his gaze bearing down on her more intensely than the Arizona sun.
“What was it like, having asthma?”
“Scary,” Rachel admitted. “One moment I’d be fine, and the next I’d find it next to impossible to draw a breath. The worst part was not knowing when it would happen.”
“Wow, that must have been rough.”
“It was. I’m glad I outgrew it.”
“When was that?”
Rachel raised a shoulder. “I had my last attack at the age of twelve, but for years I lived in fear of having another one.”
“Do you ever worry about it now?”
Rachel grinned, trying for a flippant air. “No. I’m too busy worrying about other things.”
“Like what?”
Like the way you make my stomach flutter. Like the way I feel all hot and shivery inside every time you look at me like that. Like how delicious it feels, being here with you now, smelling your lotion-scented skin and looking at your very male, half-naked body.
“Like—like...” She searched desperately for something trivial to say, something that wouldn’t give away the direction of her thoughts. Her gaze fell on the bottle in her hand. “Like how I’m going to get this suntan lotion on my back.”
Nick flashed a devastating grin. “Well, that’s one worry I can take off your mind. Turn over and lie down.”
Oh, dear. Out of everything she could have said, why had she come up with that? Now she had no choice but to comply.
Rachel stretched out and rolled onto her stomach. The blanket was soft and sun heated, and the grass underneath it made a surprisingly plush mattress. Over her shoulder, she could see Nick pour the lotion into his hands and rub his palms together. Her body tightened in anticipation of his touch.
Nick didn’t fail to notice. “You’re tense.” His hands were large and strong, and the lotion was warm. He rubbed it on her shoulders, kneading the muscles, stroking his way down her shoulder blades. He lifted a strap of her red suit and rubbed the lotion under it, then repeated the action on the other side.
Pleasure rippled through her. He took his time, spreading the lotion slowly, languorously, deliberately—across her shoulders, down her spine, down to the deep dip at the bottom of her swimsuit, under the plunge of the armholes beside her breasts. Desire, hot and intense, coiled within her. She wasn’t sure when the lotion application became something more, but she was gradually aware that it had.
His hands slid down her body, stroking, massaging, caressing, inflaming. She felt helpless to stop it. She didn’t want to stop it. The hot coil inside her u
nwound and blossomed until it was a deep, throbbing ache.
“Rachel.” She felt his breath on her neck as he whispered her name. He stretched out beside her, still working his magic with one caressing hand. She opened her eyes to find his face inches from hers. His green eyes were heavy-lidded, dark and full of desire. She was dying for him to kiss her, yearning for it with all of her soul.
He claimed her lips gently, like a slow-motion, soft-focus scene from an old romantic movie. The kiss started out light, soft, feather-gentle, then rapidly gained momentum. The next thing she knew, they were hungrily clinging to each other, struggling to close all distance between them. Nick rolled on top of her, covering her with the delicious weight of his body, pressing the hard evidence of his desire intimately against her.
It was heaven. It was home. It was as if he’d never left.
Rachel clung to him, hurtling back in time. Her heart was right back where it had been when he’d left. Once again, she was ready to give herself to him, to tell him she loved him, to promise that she would be his forever.
But Nick didn’t want forever. Nick didn’t want love. Nick didn’t want commitment.
Nick didn’t want her, because those things were part and parcel of who she was and what she had to give.
The realization cut through the thick, drugging fog of desire like an intrusive beam of light.
“Nick,” she murmured.
His mouth slid across her cheek, heading toward her ear, toward the shivery, thrilling kisses she knew he would deliver there. She pushed against his chest. “Nick. I—we—can’t.”
He lifted up, then rolled onto the blanket beside her. The sudden absence of his weight, of his warmth made her want to cry. She gazed at him, her heart breaking as it had two years ago when the door had thudded closed behind him.
There was nothing to say that hadn’t been said before, nothing he didn’t know. She scrambled to her feet.
He caught her hand.
“I—I’d better go inside and change.” Pulling her hand free, she fled toward the house.
Distance seemed to be the only effective safeguard. Time had conferred no immunity to him. Even heartache had failed to cure her.
