A Mother's Love (7 page)

“Thank you.” He lifted her hand, kissed her fingers. “I hated it, too.”

“Was she the love of your life?”

“I thought so at the time. How about you? Who was the love of your life?”

She wiggled her foot and he wondered if she realized it. “Oh, I haven't really chosen very well. Africa always told me that. Both times I fell for a bad boy. Like you.”

He spluttered. “I'm not a bad boy! I'm an engineer.”

“You play Celtic fiddle.”

“So?”

“And you look like—”

He grinned. “Like?”

“This was actually supposed to be about me, wasn't it?”

“Ah, I forgot. Yes, the loves of your life. Bad boys and bad judgment.”

She sighed. “Not even worth it. I learned my lesson.”

“Oh, no you don't. You can't get off the hook that easily. I want the chance to be outraged on your behalf.”

A small laugh fell from her lips. “Okay, okay. Robert was my college beau. He loved motorcycles and rock climbing and we had a great…um…time. He broke our engagement on my birthday, and I never heard another word from him ever again.”

“Bastard!”

Kyra grinned. “The other engagement was a couple of years ago. He was a pilot. Very handsome, very charming. He started coming to Yogariffic with a flight attendant girlfriend and came back on his own. We were together for three years. It turned out he had a girl in every port, as they say. One of them called me. It was pretty embarrassing.”

He cuddled her close. “I'm not a jerk like those guys.”

“How can I possibly know that, though? It wasn't as if the other two told me so.”

He thought about that for a long while, watching stars dance on the dark water. “When I think of Maeve, my ex-fiancée, I think about how she spoke of travel. She loved to
travel, go far away, and she was so independent that she didn't really didn't need anyone else.” Rubbing his head along the crown of her head, he said, “I knew she would never stay in a little Welsh town and have babies with me. She didn't, but I did.”

“So are you saying I probably knew at the start?”

“There were things you knew from the start that you chose to overlook. That's what we do.”

“Why?”

“To fall in love,” he said. “That's what we're all trying to do. Connect. Find that special person.”

“And yet, look how often we're wrong!”

He nodded. A ripple of nervousness moved through his gut, and he knew he was going to do it. Suggest it. He cleared his throat, playing with her fingers.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

“I am.” He raised his head and looked at her pixie face. Her clear eyes. “Maybe the trick is to make a different kind of connection. One that isn't based in emotion but in reason.”

She inclined her head, undaunted. “Like arranged marriages?”

“Exactly.” He paused then. “What if we, for example, married to give that baby a sweet life? A solid life.”

He felt her body go utterly still. “For example? Or is that a real suggestion?”

“Would it be so odd?”

“I don't know.” She pursed her lips, and in that moment he saw the levelheaded businesswoman who had built an empire. “No,” she said finally. “If it's an arrangement made in the same way as any other kind of partnership, with clear parameters and requirements, it wouldn't be odd. There
is…a certain chemistry between us. And you're a man of reason.”

There was a war between his reasonable side, which said this was all exactly as it should be, and his emotional, Celtic side, which said it was much too cold and rational. “Shall we consider it, then? Talk it out?”

“Yes,” she said. “You would have to come to Denver, because I can't leave my business.”

“I would imagine they build bridges there. I'd like to get back to roadworks.”

Kyra laughed. “Oh, believe me, the I-25 corridor is one big construction zone!”

“For myself,” he said, “I would not like it to be a false marriage. I would insist that we honor a vow of fidelity and commitment.”

She swallowed. “That would be fine with me.” She inclined her head. “And I would like another child.”

“Of course.” His chest hurt with it.

As their eyes met, the air grew suddenly thick between them, buzzing with possibilities. A soaring sense of happiness burst in him, and he kissed her knuckles. “Shall we agree to marry, then?”

Kyra's eyes closed, and he saw that she struggled with emotion. After a moment, she opened them and straightened her spine. “Yes,” she said firmly. “I think it will be a good partnership.”

Suddenly the narrowing world of his life expanded, widened, looked as fruitful as anything he'd ever dreamed, and he knew that, at least from his own side, he was in love with her. It didn't matter, though. The deal would be made from a much more logical place, built like a bridge between a man and a woman who would each honor their agreements.

“There is one more thing,” she said and stood, holding out her hand.

“What would that be, my lovely?”

“We should test our physical compatibility.”

“That,” he said, standing up with a dry throat, “can certainly be arranged.”

T
HEY WENT INSIDE AND
checked on Merry, who was absolutely conked out, exhausted by her long crying spell. “Good exercise, all that crying,” Dylan said, reaching in to adjust the blanket.

“She's so precious,” Kyra said.

“Yes.” He took her hand, inclined his head. “For her sake, I think we should explore this last bit of compatibility.”

“I didn't ask if you have protection,” Kyra said.

“A smart man is always prepared,” he said with a rakish, devilishly sexy grin, and Kyra felt little explosions of desire burst all over her flesh once again.

He led her into a spare bedroom furnished with a small double bed and a chest of drawers and a window spilling thin white light into the room. He pulled back the blankets on the bed and kicked off his shoes, while she stood there, suddenly realizing she had not showered all day and probably smelled of baby and weariness and all sorts of things. “Maybe I should shower!” she whispered.

He came around the bed to her, put his hands on her shoulders and kissed her. “I doubt it.”

Just the nearness of him made her knees feel jointless, her hips soft, as if her legs would collapse beneath her and open just for him. That soft scent of rain, fresh and heady, filled
her sinuses, and her mouth opened beneath his to accept the graceful, clever sweep of his tongue, which invited her own to waltz. And there they stood for long moments, kissing and kissing, bodies barely touching. His hands moved over her shoulders, up her neck to her skull, and she loved the tenderness in the way he cupped her head, tilting it backward to give him access to her throat. His mouth moved exquisitely down her neck, over her collarbones, and she had to grab his shoulders to keep from swaying.

“Let's take off our shirts,” she whispered. “Just that for now.”

He raised his head, nostrils flaring, and nodded. He began to unbutton his shirt, and she reached for the hem of her T-shirt and skimmed it over her head, then without fanfare reached around and unhooked her bra. He let his shirt fall to the floor.

His chest and shoulders were beautiful, not too muscular but nicely rounded, firm. Scattered hair from nipple to nipple, a lean belly she brushed with her palm. As if he understood she needed to lead, he stood there allowing her brushing exploration over his torso.

But as she explored with her hands, he devoured her with his eyes and spoke softly, the accent deepening, his voice going darkly husky. “You've have beautiful breasts. Such dark nipples. I have been thinking a lot about how they might taste.”

She pulled his hands up to the aching flesh. “Taste away.”

He sat on the bed and pulled her into his lap, putting her breasts at a level he could fully appreciate. His hands lifted her, and meditatively he stroked circles around the flesh, arousing her even more, and his thumbs rubbed over the vividly aroused tips. “Beautiful,” he said, and Kyra, straddling
him, pressed their clothed parts closer together. He made a low groaning noise and bent his head to take her into his mouth.

An explosion of sensation burst through her, and she arched into the heat and pleasure of that hot mouth, that slippery tongue, the elegant rub of his lightly nipping teeth. A depth of sensation built between her legs, almost too much, and she pulled away, shocked that she might come before she even had her clothes off.

But Dylan laughed softly and pulled her back to him. “You have very sensitive breasts, do you?” He captured her wrists in one hand and pulled her hands behind her and at the same time bent his head to her nipples, moving between them, one hand and his mouth playing both of them at the same time. Between her legs was the thrusting heat of his erection beneath her own sex, and the writhing moved them back and forth and she was so afraid, so delirious—

He halted and looked up at her. Even in the pale moonlight she could see the color of his vividly blue eyes. “Shall we take off the rest of our clothes?” he said with a ragged edge.

Kyra stood up and skimmed out of her skirt, her panties, and tossed them aside, watching greedily as he shed his jeans, his briefs, and then tumbled her onto the bed. “Not yet,” she said. “I need to see you.”

“All right, I suppose you should know what you're getting.”

She laughed as he turned over on his back and she knelt beside him, admiring his body.

She bent to kiss him. Her body felt as it had beneath the tree, as if there were light filling every pore, and the source was her connection with this sexy, logical, unbelievable man.

He gathered her close as they kissed and touched her breasts and her belly and slid fingers between her thighs to coax and tease, before he tore open the condom with his teeth. Kyra took it from him and rolled it into place, and then he was over her, braced and not too overpowering and not too small but just exactly right, and nudged between her thighs and then, with a single, vivid thrust, came inside.

Kyra gasped, grabbing him close, and they simply held there for a minute, adjusting. His breath was ragged as he kissed her, and she raised her hips to meet him, and then there was no stopping. They rocked together in a fluid and ancient rhythm, rocking and rocking and grasping each other closer and closer until she said, “I can't wait!” and he said, “Go, go, go,” and they tumbled all at once into orgasm, a rare and strange thing—and, even more rare, it seemed that the moon itself fell into the room, surrounding them with pale light.

In her heart, in her mind, she cried,
I love you!
But that would be insane to say she loved a man she had only just met, so she pressed her face into his shoulder and kissed his neck and wrapped him as close as she dared.

 

D
YLAN SLOWLY CAME
back to his body, feeling the fit of Kyra around him as if they'd been cut from one lump of clay and only now rejoined.
Soul mate,
his heart said.

Silly,
said his mind.

Her mouth, moist and generous, moved on his neck, his shoulder. He nuzzled her ear and swore softly. “If we were any more compatible, I'm afraid I'd have to get heart pills.”

She laughed. “If we were any more compatible, I'd have to just live in my skin and give up the world entirely.” She shifted a little, and he took the hint, sliding off to the side
but, unwilling to let her go entirely, pulling her legs around him tightly. With clear eyes, she said more soberly, “Seriously, Dylan, you're a wonderful lover.”

“So are you,” he said, his voice more growling than he expected. “Do we have a deal, then?”

“Yes,” she whispered. “Absolutely.” Her eyes drifted closed. “Good grief, I am so tired!”

“Me, too.”

“I don't always smell of baby,” she said, her voice showing the signs of a woman who would be carted away any second.

“You will now,” he said and chuckled, tucking her close.

“Hmm?”

“Never mind,” he said, cradling her and pulling the covers up over their bodies. “Go to sleep, my lovely.”

In the darkness he lay in a sweet haze, thinking of Merry in the other room and Kyra in the future and a thousand hopes he'd put aside for lack of belief they'd ever come true. Into her sleeping brain he whispered the words he would not say when she was awake. “I love you, Kyra Tierney.” He didn't care if he was insane or if it was too fast or any of those other things. He loved her.

 

A
T
5:49
A.M. ON A
Wednesday morning in early May, Kyra Tierney's life straightened itself out as if a giant hand had shaken it all out and smoothed the wrinkles.

At 5:32 she was sleeping—or beginning to swim from the depths of the ocean where she had been sleeping like a woman drugged. She had a sense of having been cradled all night long, and even in her half-stirring state she was aware of the scent of Dylan Jones, the breezy, salty smell of the sea that came from him in waves.

Her exhaustion had been true and deep, and now she stirred one toe at a time, then fingers, only surfacing all at once in a rush when she realized that she was entirely naked. She sat up, confused. Through the window was the faint opalescence of the sea glowing against the sky, and she could just make out the time on the clock. Early.

But she was alone in the bed, her clothes scattered around the floor like confetti, and for one long minute she let the night rush through her, making love to Dylan, so brilliantly.

And he had
proposed
.

Airless, she fell back on the pillows, a hand to her ribs. They'd made an agreement, a very civilized and equitable agreement with Merry at the center of it. Partnership, sensibility and even a test for sexual compatibility.

Boy, were they ever compatible!

But therein lay the trouble. She was in love with him. Crazy in love. Can't-breathe-in-his-presence love. How could she make a civilized agreement knowing that her heart was so completely engaged and his was not? How could either of them be happy under such circumstances?

She heard the sound of his voice in the other room, rising and falling in that beautiful lilt, and below it the sound of nonsense baby noises. She picked up his shirt from the floor and tossed it on, buttoning it as she crept into the other room. At the sight that greeted her, her heart squeezed so hard it was as if a fist had it, and she had to take a moment to remember to breathe. Fresh blood and oxygen rushed back in, filling her heart and her throat, the pure, sweet gold of love.

For there was Dylan in a pair of jeans and nothing else, kneeling on the floor where he'd spread a blanket. On the blanket was a freshly diapered Merry, gurgling and cooing
and squeaking in response to his low, intimate conversation. He was dressing her, and by the look of the baby's damp head, she was freshly bathed.

“So you think I should just tell her, do you?” he said and waited for Merry to chortle back, her hands and feet going a thousand miles an hour.

Oh, Kyra thought, it didn't matter if he didn't love her the same way she loved him. She had plenty of love in her for both of them, and he loved Merry and he would be faithful and work hard and make love to her.

Tears sprang to her eyes. Wasn't that what real love was about anyway?

“Good morning,” she said quietly.

“Oh, ho!” Dylan cried. “Here's your mommy now! What say you, girl? Tell her you're sorry you made her so tired she slept clear through the night.”

“Did she sleep all night?” Kyra asked, padding closer.

“Da la la la da,” Merry said, her head turning in a gratifying way to see where Kyra was.

“Technically all night, since she didn't start fussing until 4:00 a.m.” His diamond-bright eyes fastened on her face. So early in the morning, his beard was heavy and grizzled. “How are you this fine morning?”

She nodded, a very small smile spilling over her lips. “Very well, thank you.” She brushed a hand over his chin, realizing as she did so that there was something about Dylan Jones that made her lose her lifelong shyness. “This is a very sexy look, I must say.”

He caught her hand and kissed the palm, then took a breath. “Merry and I, we have something to confess to you.”

Rocking back on her heels, she frowned. There was gravity in his face. “You changed your mind,” she said dully.

“Not exactly,” he said and propped Merry against his side, the length of her back against his arm, her happy-baby expression unmistakably a smile as she cooed toward Kyra.

“Wait,” she said and kissed Merry's nose. And then kissed Dylan, too. She took a breath and rocked back on her heels. “Okay, tell me the bad news.”

At 5:49 a.m., Dylan Jones—who was the most gorgeous, kind, honorable and, not to mention, sexy man she had ever met—said, “It's just that I think you should know the whole truth, Kyra. I would like to marry you and I would like to make the agreement we discussed, but I also think it's fair to tell you that—” He paused, looked at the baby, then back to Kyra. “Well, it's foolish and I have no way to make it sound less so, but I'm marrying you because I hope someday you'll find it in you to love me the way I love you now.”

All the little signs and signals she'd been noticing since she first laid eyes upon him, all those pointers that made him seem so familiar, dropped into place. She smiled slowly. “I see.”

He cleared his throat. Nervously.

Kyra laughed. She fell forward and kissed tiny baby toes and then Dylan's fingers and then she sat up and threw her arms around them both. “Too late. It already happened. I was coming in here to tell you that I wasn't sure we should get married under false pretenses.”

“You don't have to say that, Kyra.”

Kyra laughed. “You don't have to say that, Dylan. I want to marry you even if I love you more than you love me.”

Between them, Merry started to unmistakably cackle, her fingers in her mouth. “Um mum lum,” she said.

And they tumbled together sideways, the baby on Dylan's tummy. “We each have two lives to live,” she said, thinking
this, too, would be part of the tale they unwound for Merry as she grew—the extraordinary tale of how her mommy and her daddy in heaven brought together their very best friends to make a family for their daughter.

A tear rolled from her eye, and she looked up to see Dylan, too, was thinking of his best friend. “We'll never forget them,” he said.

“No,” Kyra agreed.

On Dylan's tummy, Merry did a tap dance of joy. “La alala,” she sang. “La la la la la la lah!”

There would be challenges, Kyra knew. Scary things and new things and things she didn't have sense enough to expect, but all she had to do was practice, day in, day out, loving them.

She kissed them both.