Almost Paradise

by Chris Keniston

  Inside, Angela set her keys on the hall table and walked straight to the kitchen. Billy followed a step behind and once again wondered. Could he?

  Intent on his own musings, he didn’t notice Angela stop short and turn to ask a question. He had to grab her arms to stop her from falling over on impact. “Oh, sorry.”

  “No, it’s my fault.” Standing close enough for him to feel her breath on his chest, she looked up at him. “I…uh, remembered I forgot my…uh, purse in your…car.”

  “Right. Sorry.” He meant to let go, to step back, but instead he’d gotten lost in the depths of deep brown eyes that had turned dark as ebony. Leaning forward, he tilted his head and his lips touched hers. A gentle caress. Not hungry, not desperate, not searing. But when her arms wound around his neck, the want, the need, the desire hit him with the force of a speeding Humvee.

  Sensations he’d forgotten existed hummed to every nerve ending. Her lips, soft and tender, touched, teased, and tempted. His arms wound around her waist and pulled her more tightly against him. Fingers from her one hand grazed his neck while her other hand ran along his back and slid into the edge of his slacks. All the blood in his veins surged south. This time he was most definitely kissing her back. But if he didn’t slow things down, and fast, they’d be making babies on her kitchen floor. And with her cool fingers against his hot skin, taking her here and now in the front hall was looking better and better.

  Her hip swayed against him, his jeans grew tighter, and warning sirens went off in his head. This was all wrong. There would be fumbling and awkwardness and shock if he let things progress. But damn how he wanted. He hadn’t wanted like this since before… Damn.

  “Angela.” Easing away, he kissed the edge of her mouth, her cheek, then heaved in a lungful of air. “I’m sorry.”

  Her forehead against his chest, he felt her suck in an equally staggering breath. “I’m only sorry you stopped.”

  Not sure of the safest place to put his hands while she remained flattened against him, he settled for her waist and then used every strand of self-control he had to keep them still.

  “Why didn’t you do that last time?” she mumbled into his shirt.

  “Last time?”

  “The night you brought me home from Kara’s. I kissed you, and you didn’t kiss me back. You pushed me away.”

  “I told you. You’d been drinking. Weren’t yourself.”

  Backing up until she could easily look up at him, she paused a moment to study him. “I know, but I thought that was just an excuse. That you didn’t want me.”

  “Despite the reputation sailors have, I knew too well that night it was the margaritas talking. Not you.”

  A soft smile tipped her lips. “You mean the margaritas kissing.”

  “Whatever.”

  “So, you really were being noble?” Her hands fell to his waist so they looked like a couple of awkward teens at their first dance.

  “You surprised me.” Shocked the hell out of him was more like it.

  “Let me see if I have the facts straight. You do like kissing me?”

  Too much. He closed his eyes and nodded.

  “So if I were to do it again.” She inched forward into his personal space.

  “I don’t think we should.”

  Her arms wound their way around his neck again. “Why not?”

  He took a step back. “Let’s talk.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Talk? What man wanted to talk after a kiss like that?

  Billy motioned toward the sofa, and Angela made her way to sit down with him taking the spot beside her. At least he hadn’t sat across the room.

  Leaning forward, fingers laced together, he rested his arms on his thighs. “You are by far the best kisser on the planet.”

  That was not what she’d expected to hear. “Thank you?”

  He tipped his head to glance at her. “Is that a question?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well.” His lips twitched with repressed laughter. “You’re welcome anyhow.”

  “I’m not sure I get the joke.”

  “No joke. But, I’ve been thinking.” All traces of laughter gone, he looked down at his hands. “About this sperm donor.”

  What little air was left in her lungs whooshed out in a dizzying breath. Could it be?

  “Maybe we could—”

  “Yes.”

  His head shot up, his eyes locked on hers.

  “You don’t know what I was going to say.”

  “Sorry.” Folding her hands on her lap, she tried not to squirm. But now she was excited for a totally different reason than she had been just a few short minutes ago. “Go on.”

  “When you were looking for a husband, a family man, I couldn’t help you.” He shook his head. “Can’t help you. I can’t give you the future you want.”

  She bit back the urge to shout “Why?”

  “But if all you want is a baby, a sperm donor…”

  That is what she’d decided. A sperm donor. She forced her head to bob in reply.

  “Well, then I’d like to help.” Something in his eyes told her offering even that much was as hard for him as accepting only that had been difficult for her. But right now it was more than she could have hoped for.

  Except, he wouldn’t be an anonymous number in a test tube. She’d know he was the father. “How…I mean…what about after?”

  “I’ll be here for you. I’ll help any way I can. I’ll be Uncle Billy. No one else will know. This way when that man you’ve been waiting for comes along, you can have the family you’ve always wanted. The husband you deserve.”

  Her mind scrambled to process all the options and implications, but she couldn’t get past this could be her best shot at a baby. “Okay.”

  “Okay?”

  She nodded. “You’re sure?”

  No. But she nodded again anyway.

  He nodded back, his gaze steady on hers. She had a feeling she was undergoing some sort of human lie detector and straightened her back.

  Hands unfolded, he dropped his gaze to his leg, then back to her. “Feel free to smack me if I’ve got this wrong, but I’m guessing from that last kiss, you wouldn’t object to going about this the old-fashioned way.”

  She hoped he couldn’t see her holding her breath. How could she say no? Everything about him felt so right. The gentle way his strong arms held her, cocooned her. His kiss, the firmly sweet press of his lips to hers. Dear Father in heaven above, could he want her as much as she wanted him? She managed to move her head from side to side.

  Again he watched her with a laserlike scrutiny. “Was that no you don’t object, or no you don’t want to do this?”

  Clearing her throat, she pushed out the words. “I don’t object.”

  With a nod he turned his focus back to his leg. The quiet lingered. She didn’t know what to do. What to say. When she couldn’t take the stillness anymore, she dared move her hand to cover his.

  It took a few seconds for Billy to react to the gesture. When he finally did look up, their gazes met and held. She wanted so badly to understand the emotions and thoughts swimming behind those dark eyes.

  His hand turned and fingers twined with hers. With the slightest dip of his chin, she could tell a decision had been made and almost cried when his fingers slid away from hers.

  “When the time is right, there are some things you should know—should see—before…” He sucked in a chest-expanding breath. “You may want to reconsider.”

  He bent over, moved his hands at a spot below his knee. Moments later, before her mind could completely process what she’d been watching, his prosthesis leaned beside him, the protective sock on top, and his gaze had latched again onto hers, his eyes vacant, patiently waiting.

  Now what? Did she dare look? Touch? What did he expect from her? Want from her?

  She couldn’t swear to it in a court of law, but she was pretty sure he didn’t even blink waiting for her reaction. As the long, slow-mov
ing seconds passed, she allowed her gaze to shift away, drift to the mechanical limb resting along the couch, then back to his face. “Does it hurt?” she asked tentatively.

  “My leg or wearing the prosthesis?” She wasn’t sure, but she thought she spotted a flicker of relief in his eyes. A slight relaxing of his shoulders.

  “Both, I guess.”

  “Sometimes my mind thinks my foot is still there. I’ll feel a pain or an itch where I know I can’t. But I do. It’s not as often as it used to be. I’ll rub or scratch another part of my leg, or even massaging my good leg will help.”

  “I’ve seen you rubbing your…injured leg. I guess I just assumed it was because you were tired.”

  He smiled at her hesitation. “In a way you’re right. After a while most often phantom feelings tend to surface at times when an amputee is overtired or stressed.”

  Amputee. Not handicapped. An amputee.

  “At first it was damn hard,” he continued. “The initial shock after waking up and learning I only had one leg was beyond overwhelming. Then the doctors kept repeating how lucky I was that the amputation was below the knee. And all I could come back with is ‘are you effing crazy?’” He pushed off the sofa and stood on one leg, hopped around to face her, and bent his knee. “Now I know they were right. In the grand scheme of things, this is why most people don’t recognize I’ve lost a leg. Still having my knee gives me…”

  His words were lost on her. On one leg he kept his balance better than she did with two. Not a wobble, not a tilt. Nothing. He stood straight and strong. “How do you do that?”

  “Bend my knee?”

  “Stand so sure.”

  He retook his seat beside her. “Hard work.

  Lots of it. After cussing out every doctor and therapist and announcing to the world they were all idiots if they thought my life would ever be normal, I eventually got with the program.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I gave my doctors, the staff, the rehab people hell. But I had a guy in the bed next to mine at Walter Reed. He had a girl. Not his wife. One of those who promised to wait. She’d come every day to see him. They’d laugh and joke and pretend nothing had changed. Then one day she came while he was in rehab still, and we got to talking. I asked her how much longer she was going to stick around.

  “At first she played dumb and said she only had an hour but would be back again later. I called her on it. Asked her how long before she moved on with her life and got a real man. Raw fury stared back at me. She wasn’t playing at anything. She let me have it. ‘You’re not saying that stupid shit to Michael are you?’ I could hear the venom in her voice. ‘So help me God, if you say anything to screw him up any more than the navy has, I will kick your self-pitying ass into the next millennium.’

  “I realized they weren’t pretending. She was happy he was home. Delighted. She loved him. Didn’t care about his leg. I honestly think if he’d come back without both legs she would have still been happy to have him back. Up until then everyone had been tiptoeing around me. She was the first person to yell at me since before the accident. Once I got over being damn mad, it felt damn good. That was the turning point for me. I worked harder and harder. Sometimes too hard. Had a few issues along the way when I got the interim prosthesis, but I found the right pace and kept pushing.”

  “How long did that take?”

  “The wound itself took several weeks. I was lucky, I never had any of the complications some of the guys had with infections and additional surgeries. There were also months of rehab. An amputee has to relearn how to do things with one leg or one hand.”

  “One hand?”

  “If I’m holding onto something with one hand, that leaves me only one to button a shirt or pull up my pants. My naval career choice required I be in top physical shape, so I didn’t need as much time to build upper body strength. But even the SEALs don’t train to stand on one leg.”

  She nodded. It made sense. Her mind drifted back to how challenged she’d been those few weeks when she’d sprained her ankle. Trying to maneuver the crutches and carry dinner back to the chair had been an exercise in futility. She’d finally given up and eaten standing at the kitchen counter.

  “Once you get a prosthesis, there’s a completely new set of issues. My leg had to fit into a socket so there is a lot of medical molding that goes on over the weeks and months, even after you get the first prosthesis. Once I got the temporary prosthesis I had to deal with pushing too hard and getting sores and blisters. That’s where I learned to take it easier. Work on my upper body strength and balance without stressing the residual limb.

  “After six months I moved on to Savannah.” “You didn’t come home to Kona?”

  His free hand began rubbing slow circles just above the knee on his good leg. “Not at first.”

  “Is it hurting now?” With her right hand she pointed to his injured leg. “A little.”

  “May I?”

  He nodded.

  Carefully she slipped her hand out from his hold and ran it along his shorts, stopping at the skin just above his knee. Sideways she cast a quick glance in his direction, searching for any negative reactions. His face a blank slate, his dark eyes remained focused on her.

  Palm across his knee, she rubbed and soothed. Her thumb moving in swirling motions. Slowly easing back on the pressure, her fingers trailed further past his knee to the flesh below. When she reached the defined scars, she tilted her head to better see Billy’s face, seeking his approval to touch. To share. But she saw nothing in his still-steady gaze.

  “Will it hurt?”

  “Are you sure you want to?”

  There were a lot of things she didn’t know right now. Feelings and fears had been dancing and battling within her for weeks. But at this moment, nothing was more important to her than understanding this man’s world. “I’m sure.”

  “No. It won’t hurt if you want to touch.”

  Shifting onto her left hip, Angela tucked her legs behind her and leaned forward. Assured she wouldn’t hurt him, she moved her hand forward without any of the hesitation she might have expected. With light, soothing circles, her fingers skimmed the exposed flesh. No longer worried about his reaction, she brushed over the scarred tissue, paused, her fingertips tracing every line.

  How this must have hurt. Her mind wandered to images of Billy in a hospital. Of a bitter sailor angry at the world. She wondered if she could have come this far in only three years. Could she have come this far at all?

  “Do you take the prosthesis off often?”

  “No. I wear it from the time I wake up until I go to bed.”

  She nodded. He’d told her the other day he didn’t sleep with it.

  “I take it off to shower as well.”

  “Which is why you can stand on one leg.” He nodded and she gave his knee one last stroke before leaning back beside him. “Thank you.”

  “Thank you?”

  “For sharing. Helping me understand. Or at least try to.”

  A smile worked its way across his face at the same moment his arm hooked around her shoulder, pulling her close for a quick kiss on the temple, then releasing his hold on her all too soon. “You’re something else. You know that?”

  “Why?”

  “Not many women can do what you just did and not lose their supper.”

  “I didn’t do anything.”

  “Oh, yes you did.” He folded her hand under his and gently squeezed.

  The whirlwind day could have been any two people visiting paradise. But what had just passed between them was something special, something private. A glimpse into how his real world worked. His struggles with ordinary things. Ordinary. “Is there something I should know about how your leg affects…other things?”

  Lifting his eyes from their still-joined hands,

  Billy’s brow curved in question. “Other things?” “Well. One thing. Sex.”

  * * *

  The suddenly wide-eyed look of surprise on An
gela’s face at her own words would have been enough to make Billy roar with laughter if he weren’t sure that would only embarrass her more. Instead, he bit back a smile. “All the parts still work.”

  The expected rosy blush rose up Angela’s neck to her cheeks. “I didn’t mean that. I meant is there something special I need to know about…you know…”

  “Positions?” Now he was just having fun watching the flush on her cheeks darken.

  “Uh, maybe, yeah.”

  Letting go of her hand, he leaned into the sofa, placing what he hoped was a comfortable distance between them for this conversation. “Obviously on my back isn’t a problem. I can be on my knees the same as anyone. Not having a foot can mess with balance, but amputees have superior upper body strength. It’s been a long time since I fell out of bed.”

  “Oh.” She dipped her chin and he fought the urge to reach out a finger and tip it back up. She was too darn cute.

  “I can’t,” she added softly.

  This time he shifted to look at her more closely.

  Her head tilted up, her cheeks still tinged with pink. “I can’t drive or take baths for two weeks. And I can’t have intercourse either. Not until the doctor gives the okay.”

  “Ah. Then I guess falling out of bed won’t be a problem for anyone tonight.” As he’d hoped, that brought a smile to her face, and the tension building in her shoulders eased. Now he needed time to figure out what the hell he had just gotten himself into. “Why don’t we table any more questions for another day?”

  Angela bobbed her head and shifted forward in the seat. “Do you want to stay and watch a movie or something?”

  “No. It’s late, and it’s been a long day.” He reached over and grabbed his prosthesis. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Angela watching intently. “Do you have any plans for tomorrow night?”

  “No.”

  “My sister Ava is coming into town tomorrow for a day. Mom’s having a big barbecue. Everyone from the dive shop will be there. Later we can go somewhere and talk.”

  “Uh.” Her mouth hung open as though she wanted to say something more, but nothing came out.