Loving You Always (19 page)

About a Year Later…

K
erris was having that dream again. The one where Walsh traversed the lines of her body, skimming across the subtle curves with his hands. His wicked fingers kneaded her breasts, and he worshipped her dips and crevices with his mouth. His palms caressed the skin of her inner thighs, working their way toward the pulsing center of her body.

The slide of skin against skin teased her from the murky half consciousness of sleep. Walsh pressed her knees back, capturing her eyes with his and opening her like a flower to him. Such a sweet invasion, a push into her soul. Her body clung to him, begrudging him every withdrawal. Welcoming every thrust.

Walsh laced his fingers with hers and pushed their hands above their heads, dropping his head beside hers on the pillow, lavishing kisses down her cheeks, leaving breath-wrapped words in her ear.

“Baby, you’re everything.”

Kerris arched up, luring him deeper into her body until there wasn’t even room for light or sound between them. Joined at the center. Joined at the heart. A fusion of flesh and soul. It was too much, a chaos of irresistible sensation reducing her to the basest response. Gasps. Grunts. Tears watering their kisses. Walsh licked into the corners of her mouth. He dragged one hand over the slope of her shoulder and the curve of her waist and gripped her thigh.

“Oh, God, Walsh, it hurts to love like this. So sweet it hurts.”

Like a sugar-tipped shard of glass piercing her heart. Every time.

His words, his love, stole her breath and her thoughts until there was nothing but her body offering him everything. Nothing but shudders and screams and the cries he swallowed and the love they made. She captured her bottom lip between her teeth, eyes clenched, nails digging into his shoulders.

It was like swimming into a violent current, beautifully imperiled, but perfectly safe. They shared tremors. They shuddered and trembled against each other until they both lay still. Until they both lay sated.

“Good morning.” Walsh grinned, kissing her collarbone. “Merry Christmas.”

“Was that my first Christmas present?” Kerris asked, voice husky and hoarse with pleasure.

“First? Greedy woman, after that, you shouldn’t need anything else.”

She laughed the full-throated laugh she saved for these intimate times, saved for him.

“I know you too well, Walsh Bennett, to think early-morning sex is the only thing I’ll be getting from you for Christmas. I’d be fine with that, though. It was pretty incredible.”

“I aim to please. You’re right, though. There are other gifts. I am determined to spoil you even if we have to come to blows over it.”

“Doesn’t that kind of defeat the purpose?” She laughed, reaching up to dig her fingers into the dark hair curling at his neck.

“Not if coming to blows means I get to spank you.”

She rose, pulling herself up to straddle him. She clutched the sheet around her shoulders against the chilly morning air for a moment before letting it drop and grinning when his eyes crawled over her nakedness.

“Yes, please.”

“Baby, you know what it does to me when you say please.”

She did. Her second Christmas gift was very much like the first.

An hour later, Kerris tightened the belt on her kimono, grinning at her reflection in the mirror, her amber eyes glinting with anticipation.

“Walsh!” She raised her voice to be heard over the shower, jumping up onto the marbled countertop, pressing her back to the mirror and allowing her feet to dangle over the side.

“Huh?” He turned off the shower and stepped out to drape a fluffy towel around his hips. “What’s up, baby?”

“I know we said we’d exchange gifts when everyone else got here.” She bit her lip to hide a secret smile. “But I have one gift I want to give you alone. Just us.”

“Is this better than the gift you just gave me in the shower?” He slanted her a wicked, reminiscent smile. Leaning against the counter, he tugged on one of her toes.

“Um, yeah,” she said, amazed she could still blush after the last year with this sensual creature she’d married.

She reached into the bathroom counter drawer, pulling out a black box with a silver bow. She proffered it with a shy smile. He leaned forward to take it, kissing her with gentle hunger, still holding the waiting gift.

“Walsh,” she said against his searching mouth. “We’ll never be ready for our guests if you don’t stop and open your gift.”

“It’s just our family.” He pulled her bottom lip between his teeth, his hand cupping her breast and plucking at her nipple.

Her body didn’t care that they’d had sex twice this morning. Heat flooded the center of her as she pressed into the fingers sliding down her waist, between her legs.

Oh, God, focus.

“Walsh, we can’t.”

“They’ll understand, baby. We’re newlyweds.”

Kerris slid down the counter, putting a few inches between them.

“That’s what you said the last time we invited your father over for dinner. He was expecting a home-cooked meal and ended up with sandwiches. Not to mention, he
heard
us up here. I was mortified.”

Walsh barked a quick laugh. “That’s what he gets for using his old key.”

“That won’t happen today. Everything will be ready and on the table when they arrive. Now open the gift.”

“Okay, okay.” Walsh slid up onto the counter beside her, carefully removing the silver bow. Inside was a clear plastic case. And inside the clear plastic case was…

“This is a pregnancy test.” He sketched a frown with his dark brows.

“Wow, you’re as smart as they say you are.”

“And there’re two lines. That means…”

“That means the world better watch out, because Walsh Bennett has procreated.” She laughed, unable to contain the joy spilling from her eyes and the smile she refused to hold back any longer.

Walsh jerked Kerris over onto his lap, crushing her against him. He rocked her back and forth, eyes closed, head buried in her hair.

“Walsh?” Kerris faltered a little. “I thought you’d be jumping around and screaming from the rooftop. Are you not…are you okay with it?”

“Yeah,” he said, his voice husky with emotion. He blinked away tears. “Sorry, I’m such a wuss. I just didn’t think I could be any happier.”

She leaned away from him, studying the moisture in his eyes with a small smile. She reached up to cup his firm, still-stubbled jaw, forcing him to look into her eyes.

“Don’t worry. I cried, too. I’ve had some time to get used to it.”

“How long have you known? When did you take the test?”

“Last week.” She kissed his chin. “It’s been hard keeping it from you, but I knew it would be the perfect Christmas gift, so I saved it.”

“Kerris, we haven’t been married long. Are you sure you’re okay with it? I don’t want you to feel pressured—”

“Walsh, I couldn’t be happier.”

“Me either,” he said without hesitation. His proud grin faltered, concern still in his eyes when he looked at her. “Are you okay about…I mean, Amalie.”

Even now her baby girl’s name pricked Kerris’s heart, though less each day. Amalie would always be her first child. She might always mourn her in small ways on unexpected days, but this joy sat right alongside that pain as a comfort; as a reminder of life moving forward and getting better.

“I will never forget her, but I look at it like this.” Kerris touched her stomach, a smile dawning slowly on her face. “Our kids are lucky because they’ll have a big sister up there looking after them their whole lives.”

Walsh leaned in and dropped a kiss on the one tear that slipped down her cheek and watered her smile.

“That’s right, baby. They will.”

They sat there on the counter, dreaming about the little life already growing inside of her, punctuating the hollow silence in the bathroom with husky laughs and whispers. Kerris allowed them to bask in the glow for as long as she could before she reminded him that she still had work to do. Kerris hastily dressed so she could head downstairs. She shook her head, smiling at Walsh sitting on the bed, one pant leg on, one off, staring down at the two stripes declaring him a daddy.

“Walsh, stay out of that stuffing.” Kerris opened the oven to check the turkey, flashing him a mock frown.

“You know what they say about idle hands.” Walsh pressed his chest to her back, sandwiching her between his body and the stove.

“Could these hands”—Kerris turned around and shifted his hands from her hips—“set the table for me? Everyone’ll be here soon, and I still have a few things to do.”

“When will we get some help around here? You know, a maid, a cook.”

“You’re looking at ’em, buddy.” She sampled the broth boiling on the stovetop, offering him an impish grin. “I want to do things for us for as long as I can. I want to make this a home and take care of you. I don’t need someone else doing it.”

“Kerris,” he said, his face sobering. “I’m serious. Especially, now that you’re pregnant, I don’t want you handling things by yourself.”

“What else will I do?”

“Well, between the work you’ve started doing with the foundation, the Riverstone Collection, and running Déjà Vu long distance—”

“I would hardly call scouring the city every once in a while for stuff I can send back to Rivermont ‘running’ Déjà Vu.” Kerris popped a sweet potato pie in the oven. “Thank God Mer has help now. I feel so guilty sometimes leaving her and Mama Jess handling everything without me.”

“We’ll have to postpone that trip to Kenya.” Walsh looked over his shoulder from the dining room. He pulled the china from the hutch.

“Walsh, no.” Kerris stepped out of the kitchen and into the dining room, frowning and wiping her hands on a dishtowel. “Pregnant women can travel all the way up to the last trimester.”

“Not my pregnant woman, not to Kenya.” Walsh’s tone brooked no argument. “There’ll be plenty of time later.”

“I enjoyed our trip this summer so much,” she said. “We can squeeze in a quick trip in the next couple of months.”

“Ker, no,” he said, quiet and firm, not looking up from the place settings he was laying down.

“Walsh, but I—”

“No, babe.”

Kerris recognized his boardroom stare, and hoped he didn’t think she was fooled. She knew he couldn’t deny her anything she ever wanted, even though she never abused the fact.

She smiled with gamine persuasion, moving to answer the doorbell.

“We’ll talk about it later.”

“We will not—” Walsh cut himself off, shaking his head and smiling.

Kerris could already tell this pregnancy would be a tug of war between them. Her always wanting to press the limits, and him determined she’d get nowhere near the edge of them.

“Kerris!” Jo gave Kerris a tight hug and a kiss on the cheek before pulling back so they could give each other once-overs.

“Jo, you look amazing.”

And she did. Jo’s trademark chestnut angled bob had grown longer, the ends hanging like silk around her shoulders. Her model’s body seemed even fitter than the last time Kerris saw her. Her skin, smooth and creamy, glowed from the winter cold. Kerris didn’t know which designer had made the chocolate-colored leather dress Jo was wearing, but it seemed to have been sewn along the curves of her body like a layer of expensive skin.

“Jo, what I wouldn’t give to have a butt like that.” Kerris gave her own slim-for-now curves a quick glance.

Jo looked over her shoulder as if to check and make sure the junk was still beautifully in the trunk.

“We all get a little something.” Jo laughed, patting her own ass. “Or in my case, not so little. You look great, as always. New York is treating you fine.”

“I’m treating her fine.” Walsh strode into the foyer to hug Jo, too. “How’s it going, cuz?”

“Where’s Mama Jess?” Kerris looked back out into the street behind Jo.

Kerris saw Meredith and Mama Jess climbing the short flight of stairs up to their door, with Uncle James pulling up the rear. She had been ecstatic when they agreed to come to New York for Christmas. They were all staying with them in the town house for the next week, and Kerris could barely contain her excitement.

She was happiest of all when Martin Bennett arrived, gift bags in hand. Walsh hugged him. To see his father sitting at their table for Christmas dinner, laughing and at ease with the people who meant the most to them, swelled Kerris’s heart. The tenuous bond the two men had forged since Kristeene’s death had continued to deepen. Kristeene would be pleased.

They dug into dinner, the whole house humming with the sounds of cheerful reunion and Kerris’s holiday playlist. There were hugs all around with everyone dragging gifts out from under the huge tree Kerris had insisted on. They exchanged gifts with one another, bathed in the glow of the fire Walsh had lit. The peal of the doorbell barely carried over the buzz of their merriment and conversation.

“Could you get that, Jo?” Walsh leaned back on the couch with his arm around Kerris’s shoulder. “I’m too stuffed to move.”

“Lazy boy, you weren’t too stuffed to go back for your third helping five minutes ago.” Jo opened the door, and her mouth fell open when she saw who was on the doorstep. “Cam!”

Kerris stiffened in Walsh’s arms.

“Hey, sweetie.” Cam’s deep voice rumbled into the room. He pulled Jo off her feet and whirled her around twice. “It’s been forever. You look…damn, you look good, Jo.”

Kerris watched Jo lift her hand to her hair, smiling uncertainly into the sharp masculine beauty of Cam’s face.

“He knows I’m coming.” Cam grinned, reading the question on Jo’s face. “You don’t have to run for cover.”

Walsh walked into the foyer as if Cam showed up on their doorstep every day.

“I was hoping you’d actually show your ass up.” He extended his hand to Cam.

“When have I ever turned down food?” Cam offered his hand, but kept the guard over his smile.

Kerris glanced between the two men she loved so much and so differently. They seemed to be watching each other with wary gladness. Maybe they were ready to try.

“Did we move the party out here or something?” Kerris walked to the foyer, wading into the conversation. She shot a quick, exploratory glance her husband’s way, returning his slow smile with one of her own.