Tempting Taine (20 page)

She tried to pull her foot away, but it was firmly in his grasp.
 
"No, don't."
 
She could hardly speak for laughing.

"Come and join me."

"Okay, okay.
 
You win."

He let go of her foot and pulled her down on to the rug beside him.
 
"You're a very sexy woman, Verity Samuels.
 
See what you do to me?"
 
He guided her hand to the front of his trousers.

Mmm
, rock hard.
 
Miraculously, her weariness lifted.
 
It was all she could do not to lick her lips.
 
She wanted him.
 
He clearly wanted her.
 
Surely one more time would not be such a bad thing?
 
For old times' sake?

No, that would be a lie.
 
She wanted him for now, for her present, not just for her past.

He had never stopped wanting her, but she had never stopped loving him.
 
Even when she had hated him, she had loved him in equal measure.
 
That was why no other man had ever broken past her defenses.
 
She had given her heart away long ago.

There was no will in her to resist him any longer.
 
She rose on to her elbows and pressed her mouth against his in a kiss.
 
"Make love to me, Taine," she murmured when she lifted her head again.

He kept still.
 
"Are you sure you want this?"

"As sure as I have been of anything."

"You won't regret it."

No, she would not waste a crumb of regret on making love with Taine.
 
If these stolen moments were all that she could take from him, then she would take every one of them with joy.

The fire was warm and the rug soft.
 
Taine pulled off his own clothes and then undressed her tenderly, taking his time over every piece of clothing, stroking each bit of bare skin that he uncovered.
 
"You are so beautiful," he breathed, when she was finally naked and lying beneath him on the rug.
 
"Even more beautiful than you used to be.
 
Now you are all woman."

The intensity of his gaze unnerved her.
 
"My body is not what it used to be after having Aroha."

He traced the shape of one breast with his fingertips.
 
"No, your breasts are softer and rounder.
 
But your belly is just as flat and your thighs just as strong."
 
He moved his hand lower to stroke her stomach and then between her legs.

She let her legs fall open so he could touch her where she ached to be touched.

"And your pussy is just as wet."

He moved over her, covering her body with his.
 
His erection jutted into her belly as he kissed her mouth, her chin, her neck, her breasts, until she could take no more of his torture.

She wriggled back on the rug, moving so that he rested between her legs instead,
the
tip of it pushing at the entrance to her pussy.
 
"Make love to me."

One smooth thrust, and he was inside her.
 
She gasped as he filled her as she longed to
be filled
, stroking her inside until she could take no more.

And still
he continued, building her to a fever pitch of desire and need.

Her orgasm built deep within her until she could stave it off no longer.
 
She buried her cry in his shoulder as she came so hard that her back arched right off the ground.

Another stroke and he joined her, his face contorted as if in pain at the intensity of his pleasure.

When it was over and their breathing had returned to normal, he rolled off her and took her into his arms.
 
"Come share my bed.
 
Sleep in my arms tonight."

"No, I can't."
 
She wrenched herself away and gathered up her clothes.
 
"If Aroha wakes in the night, I need to be there for her.
 
I don't want her to be scared and wondering where I am, or wandering around in dark looking for me."

He
didn't
look happy, but he accepted her refusal with a good grace.
 
"Good night, Verity."
 
His words were a caress and they stayed with her all through the night.

Chapter 9

Aroha's
bottom lip trembled when it came time to say goodbye at the end of the weekend.
 
The sight of it tore Taine's heart in two.
 
How he longed to grab her to his heart and hold her there forever.
 

"Why can't you come back with us to my house?" she demanded of him.
 
"That's what a real dad would do."

Shuttling Aroha between houses was going to be more difficult that he had envisaged.
 
He hated to say goodbye to her, even for a few days.
 
He'd
lost so much of her childhood already.
 
Each moment that
was left
was precious to him.
 

Beside him, Verity sighed.
 
"Your father lives in this house, Aroha.
 
You know that.
 
Now be a big girl and go get your coat."

"I don't want to get my coat," she muttered under her breath as she stomped up the stairs in her gumboots.

His own father had wheeled himself out into the foyer to see them off.
 
"She's a handful, that one is," he said with a wheezy chuckle, as he watched her kick each stair on her way up.
 
"Just as stubborn as you used to be."

"I'll see you both next
weekend
.
 
Or can I come over one evening this week?"
 
He hated the way he sounded, like a dog begging for a bone.
 
When it came to the two women in his life, he
wasn't
too proud to beg if he had to.

He saw Verity hesitate.

"Wednesday," he suggested, before she had the chance to turn him down.
 
"I'll come over then."

Aroha launched herself down the stairs, coat in hand.
 
"
Yay
, dad is coming to see me on Wednesday."
 
She wrapped her arms around him and gave him a hug.
 
"That's what real dads do."

"I am definitely a real dad," he agreed.
 
"And I will definitely not miss our date."

After some initial coolness from Jessie Samuels, the Wednesday night date was a success.
 
Aroha showed him all the treasures in her room: a collection of ceramic cats, her pink party dress, her fairy costume, the picture that her teacher gave her a gold star for, and a host of other precious things.
 
Verity watched him warily but he took care not to put a foot wrong, and in the
end
the invitation was extended for him to come every week.

In return, Verity and Aroha came to his house each weekend.
 
Aroha watched the lambs grow up and join the rest of the flock out in the field, rode the pony, sat up behind him on the tractor, made mud pies in the garden, told stories to her grandpa and listened to his in return, and generally had a wonderful time.

Verity's mood was harder to capture.
 
She came to him willingly each night, but she would never stay.
 
After they had made love, she would make her excuses and creep back to her own bed.
 
Aroha never woke up in the night, never went wandering, but still Verity clung to the excuse to keep him at a distance.

As generous as she was with her body, there was something missing.
 
She was keeping most of herself locked away, hidden, where he could not reach her.
 

Ten years ago, they had shared every thought, every feeling.
 
All their hopes and dreams.
 
Well, until the end when Aroha had hidden her troubles from him to protect his dreams for him.

Nowadays, he never knew what she was thinking.
 
When he asked, she would brush him off with an inconsequential thought, a nothing.

God, how he hated it.
 
He wanted her back again the way she used to be.

He wanted her to love him again.

Verity thought nothing of it when an ambulance screamed up to the emergency department door.
 
She turned her head briefly to look out the window and saw a group of medics wheeling a trolley in haste into the ward.
 
The hospital covered a large region and there was always something happening.
 
Road accidents, farming incidents - a day on which there
wasn't
at least one emergency was a rarity.

She turned her head, made a brief wish that nobody had been badly hurt, and went back to her current patient - a young boy with
spina
bifida who needed help with his walking.
 
Working in a hospital in some ways made you immune to death and suffering
, she thought, as she helped the young lad move his twisted body in time to the music from her portable radio.
 

The sick and the injured surrounded her every day.
 
She had to guard her heart against getting too emotionally involved with her patients - she was there to help them heal, not to empathize overly with their pain and grief.
 
Too much empathy would not help them, and could well put her on a path to burnout.

Not until she walked out of the hospital door to go home and saw Taine's jeep in the emergency department parking lot that a little niggle of unease began to jab at her in the pit of her belly.
 
Old Mr. Hunter was getting pretty
old,
and last weekend he had tired easily and had had less enthusiasm for his exercises.
 
Maybe he
had been taken
ill, or had another stroke.

She ducked inside the hospital again, telling herself not to worry.
 
Most likely Taine had brought in one of his farmhands to patch up a cut, or something minor like that.
 
It
wouldn't
hurt to check on what was happening though.

The emergency room was quiet and empty.
 
The nurse behind the desk looked up from her computer with a perfunctory smile.
 
"Yes, can I help you?"

"My friend's car is in the car park just outside.
 
I just wanted to check whether it was his father.
 
He's been quite ill."

"We've only had one admitted this afternoon.
 
An elderly man who had a stroke."

"It wasn't Mr. Hunter, was it?"

The nurse tapped a few commands into her computer.
 
"Yes, that was the name.
 
Hunter."

A cold feeling settled on her chest.
 
"Where is he now?"

A few more taps.
 
"Ward seven."

She sucked in a breath.
 
That was the intensive care ward.
 
Poor Mr. Hunter must be in a bad way.

She hurried up to the ward and peeked into the patients' waiting area.
 
Sure enough, Taine was sitting there, his face drawn and haggard, as he interrogated a nurse.

She slipped in and sat next to him, threading her fingers into his for comfort.
 

The nurse nodded at her and continued speaking to Taine.
 
"I'm afraid this second stroke, on top on his first, has proven too much for him.
 
He is not likely to recover."

"So there is still a chance?"

The nurse shifted uncomfortably in her seat.
 
"To be honest, no.
 
He's
lost too much of his brain function.
 
He will never wake again.
 
If we keep him on life support, he might linger on in a coma for a few days, maybe even week, but no longer."