Lilian Darcy – Daddy on Her Doorstep (страница 7)

It was so late.

So late, and he was beyond tired.

“They were boarded over when I first bought the house,” he told her, feeling lazy about speech, as well. His voice creaked a little. “There was some hideous death-trap gas thing in this one. I took it out and took a sledgehammer to the boards. That was a great moment, when I saw the tiling and hearth all still intact behind the mess.”

“Bet it was! I can imagine that hammer, too.” She smiled, and he wasn’t sure what she was thinking. “It was on my wish list, once, renovating an old house, but other things kept getting slotted in higher up.”

“May still happen. You never know. Life takes curves.”

He was getting sleepy. Really had been a long night. He’d only just gotten to sleep when the call had come from Gina Wilkins and her husband to say she was in active labor and they were heading to the hospital. Now it must be going on five.

He’d finished the chocolate. He put down the mug, but didn’t want to jump straight up and leave.

“Curves,” Claudia was saying. “It does.”

They both thought about that for a moment.

A long, sleepy moment, with the flames dancing before their eyes—maybe if he just closed his for a second—and the room so … deliciously … warm …

And dark.

And downy, tucked under his chin.

Soft comforter, felt just like his. He decided fuzzily that he must be in bed …

He was definitely asleep. Deeply and righteously asleep, not just dozing as Claudia had thought at first.

Thinking about life’s curves—like her parents’ bitter, drawn-out divorce when she was ten—she’d heard the subtle change in his breathing and in the stillness between them. She’d sat beside him for several minutes, thinking that at any moment he would startle out of sleep and mumble an apology and she would usher him to the door so they could both get to bed. She was starting to feel as if sleep might be a possibility for herself, at last.

The pine log on the fire had begun to burn too low and the room wasn’t so warm. Or maybe it was just because she’d been sitting so still, not sure whether to disturb Andy with her movement or leave him be. After a few more minutes, she’d eased herself off the couch, turned the lights low and gone to bring the spare comforter from the bed she had ready for Kelly.

She’d tucked it around her landlord—very important to remember, at that point, that he was her landlord—still expecting that the movement would waken him.

But no. She crouched uncomfortably beside the couch with her hand still on the puffy fabric she’d just spread across his body and studied his face and his breathing, and he was definitely still fast asleep.

Look at him, sighing into the comforter with the faintest of smiles on his face, the muscles around his jaw and eyes and cheeks so relaxed and smooth, his lashes all thick and dark on his cheeks!

He had freckles across that crooked nose.

She hadn’t noticed them before. They were faint and light and sprinkled like gold dust on his skin, adding to the outdoorsy impression he gave. There was even a freckle on his top lip, right near the corner of his motionless mouth.

I want to kiss him.

I want to reach out and shape his face in my hands. I want to put my mouth on to his and take the heat of it until it wakes him up. I want him to reach for me, too, and pull me down, and make room for me on the couch with the whole length of him. And just keep me there. And kiss me. Hold me. Till morning.

I want the contact. It’s been too long.

I want the connection.

I just want him.

A man.

Him.

It was her body talking, not her. Or it was her loneliness. Or her hormones. Or something. Something she had no control over. The thoughts didn’t even come in words, they came in a surge of need that seemed more powerful because of all the extra blood in her body.

Think about that, Claudia.

Pregnant women had fifty percent more blood. It was one of the reasons she was so warm, most of the time.

You ‘re pregnant, Claudia.

You have a baby due in a month.

The last thing you need is to feel like this.

About your landlord.

Your sexy, manly, capable, laid-back landlord.

She made a frustrated sound, and it seemed to make him stir. She was just about to whisper something to him about getting to bed—he could stay on the couch till morning, if he wanted, but she needed her room—when he reached out.

Was he still asleep?

His hand curved around the back of her head and pulled her closer. His eyes were still closed. His nose nudged forward. Where was the mouth he was looking for? Ahh …

His lips were so warm. She had to drag herself away. She had to! Or push him, or tell him, “Wake up, Andy. I’m not whoever you think I am.”

But none of that happened. She let him kiss her, her own mouth motionless while his lips coaxed her. He mumbled, “Mmm,” the sound coming from deep in his chest. He wanted a response. His dream self was growing frustrated that these soft lips beneath his weren’t answering the kiss.

How could she answer it?

How could she not?

He tasted chocolatey-sweet and delicious and male and perfect. She hadn’t been kissed for a year. She hadn’t been pleasurably kissed for two, because the year-ago man had been a total disaster and had lasted just one date, and Claudia Nelson did not do second dates when the first one hadn’t worked. It was inefficient, a waste of time.

She’d never been kissed like this, so slowly and dreamily and blindly.

She leaned deeper into the soft edge of the couch seat, and the only place to rest her arm was on his shoulder. She felt the baby move and settle, as if she … he? … felt at home inside her body, with all this give and relaxation. She felt a fullness deep inside her, an aching of muscles she hadn’t known were there.

Oh, his mouth! How could it make such a connection with the rest of her body? How could she feel so full and yet so deeply throbbing with need? Her body had changed so much. She felt ripe down to her bones and to the tips of her newly filled breasts. She was a prisoner in her own skin—a prisoner who never wanted to leave.

She leaned in closer, parted her lips and touched him with her tongue then went deeper. Her body was boneless and helpless. He groaned. He stroked the back of her neck, ran his fingers up into her hair, found the knot on top of her head and suddenly the fingers went still.

Totally still.

But only for a moment.

“Claudia,” he said, in a voice that was sleepy and gravelly and only very slightly surprised.

And then he went right on kissing her.

Chapter Four

Man.

You couldn’t think in such a situation. It took Andy several seconds of groping thought, while his whole body clamored with one very simple feeling, even to realize where he was, what time it must be, what he was doing here.

Claudia. Hot chocolate. Middle of the night. Deep asleep.

He’d been dreaming. Not about Laura, or some fantasy woman, or anyone in particular. Just about femaleness and all the things a man loved. Silky hair and skin, sweet musky scent, softness and warmth, curves and weight beneath his hands, the touch of caressing fingers.

Man!

He was sure that it was a dream, that this delicious kissing feeling wasn’t really happening, that it was all part of the cocoon of warmth that wrapped around him, the sense of peace and a good job done.

But when his dream hand reached up to run through dream hair that might have been blond or chestnut or black and he found that tight little bird’s-nest knot with hairpins in it, his dream self had suddenly jolted into knowing that this wasn’t a dream, after all.

This was Claudia.

But he still wasn’t really awake …

Okay, so it was Claudia, sexy Claudia.

Wonderful.