by Annie O'Neil
The corners of his mouth twitched. Amused or irked? It was difficult to gauge his true feelings. Kirri threw tact to the wayside and decided to do what she always did. Put the facts on the table and see what happened.
“Look. I fancied you from the moment I saw you, and it seems maybe you fancied me a little bit, too. But I’m not a relationship girl, and I doubt you’re a fling kind of guy, so it’s probably best if we nip this in the bud.”
The corners of Ty’s mouth tipped down. “It’s not you—”
“I know.” Kirri waved her hands. She knew the speech because she’d given it enough.
My work is my life. I’m not in the right place right now. You deserve someone who can give you the life you deserve.
“Why don’t we go up onto that porch of yours and wait for the taxi you’re just about to call me?”
At long last that broad, relaxed smile of his peeled his lips apart. “Compromise?”
“Depends. What kind of compromise?”
“We have a drink on the patio. Talk it out.”
“I thought big roughty-toughty men like you didn’t like to talk things out?”
“You think I’m roughty-toughty?”
“You built a birdbox, didn’t you?”
He looked up at the house in front of them. “I rebuilt this house...”
“Well, then. Sounds like we have a good starting point.”
* * *
“Here you are. Hot tea, as ordered.”
Ty handed Kirri the steaming mug, then sat on the brightly cushioned chair next to her.
“And the taxi?”
“I’m more than happy to drive you home. Remember Lulu’s staying at her aunt’s, so I’m happy to be of service.”
More time in an enclosed space with her when he was still buzzing with lust? What was he thinking?
Kirri shook her head. “I think going home on my own would be wise.”
Ty nodded, pulled out his phone and tapped a few buttons. “It should be here in forty-five minutes to an hour.”
She raised her eyebrows.
“There was a baseball game tonight and traffic’s a bit heavy.”
“Ah.” She stared at her tea as if it were a crystal ball that could magic up a taxi straight away.
They sipped their beverages for a few awkward moments.
She’d been straight up with him, so he might as well do the same with her. “You know that attraction thing you were talking about?”
She nodded as she lifted the mug up to her lips, disguising her expression.
“Well, you were right. It went both ways.”
Kirri sat up a bit higher in her chair. “Go on.”
There was a playful note to her voice, but he knew it was time for honesty. “I’ve been wondering from the day we met what it would be like to kiss you.”
“You found out the other day on the roof.”
“I know. And it made me want more.”
“You’ve got a funny of showing it. Not that I’m all that brilliant at personal relations myself,” she added hastily.
He laughed softly, rubbing his thumb along the back of her hand. “I suppose the thing is I haven’t wondered anything about kissing anyone in a long, long time.”
Kirri nodded, then gave him a nervous grin. “You’re very good at it, if you don’t mind me saying.”
He gave the back of his head a scrub, his eyes traveling the length of the porch as he did so. “Can I be honest with you?”
“Please.”
“The truth is, when it comes to you I want to do a whole lot more than kissing. And that’s something I haven’t done since Gemma passed.”
She lifted her eyebrows but said nothing.
“Up until the moment I pulled into the drive my plan was to carry you into the house and tease every thread of fabric off of your body—to do my damnedest to make you feel as hot and bothered as you make me feel.”
It was a huge admission and, surprisingly, he felt a weight lift off his chest as the words found purchase in another one of Kirri’s beautiful smiles.
“What stopped you?”
“Seeing the house.”
Kirri gave his hand a soft squeeze but said nothing. She was giving him the time and space to tell his story at his own pace.
“We used to drive past this house all the time, Gemma and I. It was old and crumbling to bits. A lot like my parents’ house was when they bought it. Neither of us could bear to see it fall into ruin, so we set our hearts on buying it one day. Well, one day never came, because cancer came first and swallowed up our lives. Her life anyway. I was so angry when she was taken. She had less than a year with Lulu. Not anywhere near long enough for Lulu to remember her. But she sacrificed herself so that Lulu could have a rich, full life. I swore then and there that my neonatology practice would change.”
“Ah...” Kirri tapped the side of her head. “I wondered what it was.”
“What?”
“The thing that gave you the guts to do surgeries others don’t.”
A hit of gratitude exploded in his chest. He was glad she saw it that way. “Most folk call it insanity.”
“Somebody has to be the pioneer.” She put on a television announcer voice and intoned, “He’s the surgeon who will go where no man’s gone before... Or woman,” she finished off brightly, then tucked her feet under her on the rocking chair seat.
Her expression was bereft of any judgement, just held interest.
“And if that courage is motivated by something emotional I think it clarifies the mission,” she said.
Her choice of words piqued his interest. “What do you mean by ‘mission’?”
“Well, you’ll take calculated risks other people wouldn’t dare to because you don’t want anyone else to experience the sort of loss you have.” She shook her head. “The way I see it, if a surgeon can do something about a problem—fix it—they should. You do that. Anyone who says otherwise is using common sense as a camouflage for their own fear.”
Something told him she wasn’t talking about his surgeries anymore, but her own research.
“Want to talk about it?” he asked.
She laughed at his echo of her words. “I suppose fair is fair—but you haven’t really finished your story.”
He took a drink of his tea, then nodded. Fair was fair. “The truth is, it feels like I’ve gone through a sea-change in only a matter of days.”
“In what way?”
He traced a finger along her arm. “You arrived.”
She gave a self-effacing laugh. “That’s normally a signal for most men to run for the hills.”
He locked her in a serious gaze. “I doubt that. If I were a guessing man, I’d imagine it was the other way round.”
She feigned an air of indifference. “I’m just picky.”
When their eyes met, a bit of her bravura wilted.
“Too picky, maybe.”
Ty shook his head. There was no way he was going to let her take the fall for a step he didn’t know how to take. “Don’t do that. You deserve someone special, Kirri. Someone who can devote themselves to your happiness.”
The idea that it could be someone else kicked him in the gut. Real hard. Did he have it in him to take this risk? To try, at least?
Kirri’s cheeks had pinked up, but she was still shaking her head. “Everyone deserves full and complete love, but some of us take a lot longer to have room in their lives for it. And, of course...” she nodded at him “...some of us know just how high the bar really is and refuse to compromise.”
It was a generous thing to say. Acknowledging his wife like that. Especially when he’d all but thrown a bucket of ice on an evening that had been a very obvious prelude to lovemaking. Apart from which, being with Kirri didn’t feel like a compromise. It felt like a pri
ze at the end of a long race. A prize that deserved to be cherished.
Ty lifted his mug in a toast. “You are wise beyond your years, young woman.”
“Not so young, but I’ll take the compliment.”
She sniggered, but there was a hint of something he couldn’t identify in her expression as she looked away.
Then, abruptly, she put down her mug and said, “I can’t have children. That’s my thing.”
The hollowness and pain in her voice tore at his heart.
“I am so sorry.” He reached out to take her hand but she shook her head. She didn’t want comfort. Not for this.
Quickly, as if she’d made a deal with herself that she just had to blurt it out, she told him she had been born without a womb. MRKH syndrome. There had never been any chance she’d have a child. She’d found out when she was fifteen. The physical anomaly had colored her father’s view of her. Put yet more distance between her and her mother. Doubled her drive to be recognized for her medical achievements as much as her brother was for his.
Her research was the only thing that kept her emotionally afloat, because it filled all those empty hours she would have loved to fill with a family of her own. And now her brother was insisting she cease and desist. Said it was destroying her rather than building her up.
She admitted there might be some truth to that. Her honesty was humbling. And the fact she could never have a child of her own and yet had devoted her life to helping others who could was little short of miraculous. Most people in her position would have walked away.
“I imagine loads of people have asked you this, but have you ever thought of—?”
“Adopting?” she finished for him. “No.” She huffed out a sigh. “There was an ex... Andrew.” She traced her finger along her mug. “I knew he wanted children and stupidly held off telling him I couldn’t until it was too late.”
“Too late for what?”
“Too late for my heart not to break when he dumped me for precisely that reason. Too late for the accusation that I’d never be a good mother anyway not to dig in and take hold.”
Her voice sounded brittle with pain.
Ty’s jaw tightened. “What an ass.”
“Well...” She shrugged. “He wanted kids of his own. I couldn’t give them to him. It may seem closed-minded of him not to have considered having children through another route—adoption, fostering—but ultimately I kept something from him that I shouldn’t have. My deception came back and slapped me in the face.”
“You shouldn’t blame yourself for that.”
She hung her head and sighed. “It’s not like there’s anyone else to blame. I became the person he said I was. Work-obsessed. Emotionally unavailable. Freaked out by kids.”
“What? You were brilliant with Lulu and my sister’s children.”
Again she shrugged. It was still clearly a very raw subject.
She took a sip of her tea, then looked up at him. “I suppose the simple truth is I want what I can’t have. That is how life works sometimes, isn’t it? Wanting the one solitary thing you can’t ever have and destroying everything else in your life in pursuit of the impossible.”
Ty couldn’t have put it better himself. He’d done his best with Lulu, but he knew that without his family propping him up she wouldn’t be the well-rounded happy little girl she was today. His daughter was happy, but he knew she had the odd hit of envy for children who had mothers. A mother would love her in a way he never could because...well...because he was her father. No one could be both. No matter how hard they tried.
His brows tucked together as he took another long gulp of his hot drink. Did he want a wife? Someone to stand by his side and help him raise his daughter?
It was a question he had no capacity to answer in this exact moment, but he felt a closeness to Kirri he hadn’t felt with anyone in years, and her honesty moved him to be forthright with her about the here and now.
“I truly did want to pick you up and carry you into this house.”
She blinked her surprise. “You don’t have to say that.”
He took her hand in his, looked her in the eye and said, “I wanted to. Honestly. You are a beautiful, intelligent, sensitive, incredible woman. But when we got here and I saw the house...”
He wasn’t sure he should go on, but if Kirri deserved anything it was honesty.
“I think the long and short of it is that the only woman I ever imagined carrying over that threshold was Gemma.”
“And I’m not Gemma.”
* * *
Saying the words felt like a knife in Kirri’s heart.
She should have known better. Pulled back sooner. Never left the lab. Or Australia.
She pulled her hand out of Ty’s and tucked her knees up under her chin, wrapping her arms around them so that she could look as small as she felt.
Just as she’d thought.
She wasn’t good enough.
Not for Ty.
Not for her brother, who wanted to pen her into a surgical corner.
And she hadn’t been enough for her father, who had barely acknowledged the fact she’d graduated from med school and made something of herself.
She’d never been enough for the boyfriend she’d known wanted a family one day either.
“I think we’d better check on that taxicab.”
“No. Kirri.” Ty took her hand back in his and held it. “You’ve got it wrong. I did think that. It was a wobble. A big one. But I didn’t waver for the reason you think.”
She tugged her hand free again. “What other reason could possibly exist that would make you refuse to enter your house with me when we had driven here for the express purpose of doing—you know—things?”
Ty raked a hand through his hair, then seemed to make a decision. He pulled her into his arms, then tipped her chin up so that she was looking him straight in the eye.
“I freaked because I could picture carrying you into that house. I could picture ripping your clothes off. I freaked because when I kiss you my entire body is alight with fire and I don’t ever want it to stop.”
She shook her head. This was definitely not the explanation she’d been expecting. “That’s a good thing, right?”
He tipped his head down to hers, his lips brushing against her mouth as he whispered, “I was scared. Scared right to my marrow. Because you make me feel like a brand-new man and that is one helluva change for a fellow to confront when he’s falling for a woman who can’t bowl for peanuts.”
What little remained of her smile faltered. And then she kissed him. Hard. As if her life depended on it.
He kissed her back with a matching intensity, so perhaps it did. It seemed to at this moment, and that was all that mattered.
Before she could wrap her head around what was happening, she felt one of Ty’s strong arms round her waist and the other shift under her buttocks. In one fluid move he lifted her up without a pause for breath. She wrapped her legs round his hips as he walked the pair of them through the front door.
It was a bold decision, and one she knew he wouldn’t be taking lightly.
The pounding of their heartbeats synchronized as the door slammed shut behind them.
They made it as far as the stairwell. From there on out it was take no prisoners. Everything that had been pent up in them from that electric first moment of connection was unleashed in a torrent of feverish kisses, erotic caresses and the most delicate of touches.
Her T-shirt was gone in a trice. Then his shirt. Her boots. His jeans. Shoes, panties, boxers, bra—all gone. So that soon enough there was nothing between them but heat and desire.
Ty was everything she’d hoped for in a man and then some. Gentle. Passionate. Completely immersed in sharing with her the most vulnerable and beautiful moments a man and woman could share together.
“I can�
��t get enough of you,” he moaned as he dropped soft, seductive kisses along the length of her throat, his tongue flicking out for a swift lick when he hit that sweet dip between her collar bones.
She could feel the strength of his desire against her thighs as she pressed toward him and more than anything she wanted to share with him the ultimate intimacy. This wasn’t sweet, slow lovemaking. This was carnal desire at its most divine apex.
She pushed him back so she could look into his face. “You’re sure you want this?”
She saw everything in his eyes that she felt in her heart. Certainty.
“More than anything.”
She parted her legs and groaned with pleasure as the tip of him, primed with desire, began to dip into the shallows of her essence.
Their groans of pleasure wove together above them as Ty pressed deeper, until in one swift, powerful move he was completely inside her. Never before had she felt so complete. It was as if they had been made for one another.
His rhythm fine-tuned itself to hers. She pressed her hips up to meet him as stroke by fluid stroke they reached a climax as one.
He shifted the pair of them so that they lay on their sides, legs and arms tangled together as Kirri relished the sensations still rippling through her body.
They stayed like that for a while, their breaths steadying, the warmth of their bodies binding them together as tightly as the emotional connection she felt to Ty.
He knew her darkest secret and he’d still made love to her. He’d taken a step into the unknown for her. She’d never felt more treasured in her life than she did at this precise moment.
“What do you say we head upstairs?”
The way he said it left little doubt as to what he had in mind.
“Are you sure? Maybe I should get back to my place so that I’m not here when Lulu gets home.”
He gave her a gentle smile and tucked a lock of stray hair behind her ear. “I think my mother and sisters knew what was happening before we did.”
