Tender Loving Care (9 page)

His hands wandered through her hair. The silky strands were all wind-rumpled; her cheeks had the slightest coat of salt, and her lips tasted sweet, far too sweet. Her tongue flicked between them, and he thought with despair,
More sass. Now how am I supposed to stay mad at you, Zoe…

Her arms curled around his neck, and he knew the exact moment she went up on tiptoe; her slim thighs pressed against his for balance at the exact same time the blood surged through his veins like whitewater rapids. The slight but deliberate rotation of her pelvis against him was unmistakable. Her hand climbed back down from his neck, and her fingertips drew lines down his spine, little teasing lines that ended brazenly on his rear end. The little witch was pressing. There wasn’t a chance in hell he could be seen in public for the next twenty minutes.

He broke off the kiss only because there was a damn good chance she was going to be naked in three seconds flat in front of all Puget Sound if he didn’t. He glanced up swiftly, but the kids were now a good distance from the water, climbing and sliding down a miniature sand dune. Still, kids and water were always a potentially dangerous combination, and he forced his pulse to climb down from the sky. His eyes flickered back to Zoe. “You realize what’s going to happen to you when they’re asleep, don’t you?”

“I have a fairly good idea.”

“You don’t have
any
idea,” he corrected gruffly.

She nodded agreeably, but her eyes were dancing. “I guess I don’t have any idea.”

“Your jeans—I’m going to have a particularly good time peeling off those jeans of yours.”

“Yes.”

“And I’m going to kiss you. Starting with your toes. Working up to the backs of your knees. I’m going to kiss your thighs. And you know what I’m going to do to you then?” He brushed a strand of hair from her cheek possessively. He suddenly understood her fascination with the sea. Her eyes were like the sea, fathomless, silver-green, lonely sometimes, dancing with exhilaration sometimes, secretive sometimes. Her eyes were secretive now, filled with a woman’s secrets, elusive, compelling, disturbing. “Why aren’t you fighting me?” he whispered.

“Would it do any good?”

“None at all.”

The wisp of a smile didn’t quite reach her eyes. “I came to that same conclusion. Would you like to hear me say that I want you, Rafe? Because I do. And that I love you? Because I think I fell just a little bit in love with you as far back as a wedding six years ago.”

Her words might have satisfied him yesterday. “I want you to see that there’s nothing we can’t work out. But that solutions that start with two are best. With you and me. With being honest about what we have.”

She said nothing, just offered him a smile.

“Zoe?”

The children bounded up, and there wasn’t a prayer on earth he could get his answer after that.

She gave him back rubs most evenings. He needed them. One night he made brownies—he claimed it was his one baking specialty and it was, but she’d never seen a kitchen so completely destroyed at the end of the little project.

“I’ll clean it up,” he promised. “You weren’t supposed to come in here until I was finished.”

“What did you do, mix them on the floor?” She grabbed the dishcloth and started filling the sink with sudsy water.

He got out a sponge mop and attacked the chocolate-spattered floor. “No criticism of the cook allowed until his product’s been tasted.”

“I can’t taste them,” she said swiftly. “I’m sure they’re terrific, Rafe, but I can’t.”

“Why?”

“Because I have this thing about brownies.”

“I know that. You crazy woman, why on earth do you think I made them?”

She shook her head firmly. “If I could stop at one—but the thing is, I’ve never had the strength of will to stop at one. And they go straight here, Rafe.” She clapped her hands ruefully on her hips.

His frown looked dead serious as he rinsed out the mop and put it away. “Where do they go?”

“To my—”

“Show me exactly.”

“Behave,”
she said in the ominous tone of a schoolmarm.

“You’ve got room for one brownie here. And another one here. And if we unbutton your jeans—”

“We?”

He popped a chunk of brownie between her lips. “Besides, I know an excellent way to work off calories. Chew fast, sweet. You’re going to like this exercise program.”

Zoe toyed with a pencil and stared unseeing at the stack of papers on her lap. Feet propped on the desk, she had a report to do that was going to be finished by lunch if it killed her. A staff meeting was scheduled for one; she had to concentrate.

Only she couldn’t think. They were nearing the end of the second week in Washington. At the end of three weeks, Rafe’s leave would be over and he would have to return to Montana. They had to decide what to do about the children.

They had to decide what to do about the two of them as well.

For two weeks, they’d tucked the kids into bed and then played. For two weeks, Zoe had had a lover of a kind she could never possibly find again. For two weeks, she’d slept, breathed, imbibed being in love with him. For two weeks, she’d been able to feel herself growing stronger and stronger as a woman, and that was the exact draw of Rafe, the exact reason why she’d never been able to say no to him.

She was a passionate lady with a right to express her feelings. She had a right to feel good about herself. To feel whole. To feel wanted for herself. Rafe had ingrained all of those feelings in her until a new Zoe had taken shape, a woman who was not afraid of children, a woman who was not afraid she was less than adequate, a woman who finally felt ready to let good healthy scars heal over the old wounds, and go on.

She’d fallen in love with a man and two children over the weeks they’d been together. The pencil broke in her hands, and she stared at it, distressed. She’d been living with a rash of secret maybes for days. Maybe the four of them could make it work. Maybe she no longer needed a contract signed in blood. Maybe Rafe’s feelings for her had nothing to do with wanting a caretaker for the kids.

Unfortunately, she was less and less sure of his feelings for the boys. She knew—dammit, she
knew
he loved them. He wasn’t a selfish man, but he kept making little comments to the effect that she shouldn’t jump to the conclusion that he was ready to handle them. He claimed he couldn’t. He claimed he wanted a lifestyle built around two, not four.

She’d kept thinking time would change his mind. Six weeks might not be enough time, but it was all they had. The situation was complicated by their work, which forced them to live in different states. How would they solve that problem?

But there was no solution at all if Rafe really didn’t want the kids. She couldn’t desert them. Her doubts about being a good mother were still strong, but not like before. How could she possibly choose between the only man who’d ever really mattered to her and the children, who had no one but Rafe and her?

Guilt racked her like pain. She was the one who’d put them all in a position of emotional risk. If she’d been less selfish, none of this would have happened. If Rafe had been less than Rafe, if she’d needed him less, if she could have loved him less, if she’d never let that first kiss happen, if she’d never…a thousand guilts pounded in her head. She couldn’t seem to live with any of them.

A phone jangled in the next office, and she’d swung her feet off the desk before she heard Sandy’s bright voice answering it.

“Zoe?”

Dragging a hand through her hair, she picked up her receiver.

“Zoe. Parker’s sick. Come home, would you?”

She was home within twenty minutes. As she burst through the door, she wasn’t absolutely sure who looked sicker, Parker or Rafe. Wrapped in Rafe’s arms, the little boy clutched his blanket; his eyes were teary and his complexion so white her heart turned over. But Rafe—until now she’d never seen him less than cool in an emotional crisis. His face was drained to ash color, his eyes were frantic and his hair looked as though he’d run his hands through it a thousand times. As he paced the room with Parker, Aaron trailed after the two of them like a forlorn waif.

“He was fine this morning,” she said swiftly.

“His fever’s a hundred and one! He was perfectly okay, and then all of a sudden—”

“I’ll call a doctor.”

“We’re not
calling
a doctor. We’re
going
to a doctor.”

“Yes.”

“Or a hospital. Dammit, where’s the closest hospital?”

In every problem with the kids, she’d been the one to panic and he’d been the rock. For that reason alone, she strove for patience as Rafe strode through a crowded doctor’s office and tried to bully the nurse into scheduling Parker as an emergency. Not that a far too warm Parker wasn’t downright miserable, but there was a child with a broken leg and another little one with a cut on her arm that obviously needed stitching.

And Dr. Thornby’s examining room barely held two, much less four. Zoe took the only chair, with Aaron on her lap. Rafe stood beside her, his hands crammed in his pockets, while the young doctor bent over an irritable Parker. Rafe had taken one look at Thornby and decided he didn’t like the town’s only pediatrician.

“He’s too damn young,” Rafe mouthed to Zoe.

“For heaven’s sake, would you give him a chance?” she mouthed back.

“If you put that stick in my mouth, I’m going to throw up all over you,” Parker warned the doctor. “I hate doctors, and so does my brother.”

“See, the kids don’t even like him,” Rafe mouthed to Zoe. “I think he’s a quack.”

“Rafe.” This time Zoe spoke aloud. She stood up, still holding Aaron, and handed him to Rafe. “Sit,” she ordered him firmly, received a look of shocked surprise and wandered over to Parker.

“Listen, lovebug,” she told the boy, “I know you don’t feel good, but in this family we don’t talk about hating anyone. Ever. If we’re scared, we say we’re scared. Okay, monkey?”

The doctor shot her a wink. “Believe me, I’ve been through this before. Not to worry.” A few minutes later, he adjusted his stethoscope around his neck and said quietly to Zoe, “He has a little cold and a very mild ear infection—”

“Mild!”
Rafe snorted from the corner.

“—which I can treat with an antibiotic. It’ll clear up in a few days. I’ll give you a prescription for a nonaspirin fever reducer, too. Bring Parker back in a week for a checkup. He should be perfectly healthy by then. In fact, it’s my best guess he’ll be stomping around in three days.” He leaned over to pat Parker’s knee and then smiled at Zoe. “For the father, I prescribe two straight shots before dinner and an early bedtime.” He shook his head in disbelief. “Hasn’t he ever seen the child with a little cold before?”

Parker peered around the adult bodies to level fever-glazed eyes on his brother. “Did you hear that? Uncle Rafe has to have the shots.”

It was an hour before they were back home, because they had to stop at a drugstore for the prescriptions. By then, Zoe had high hopes Rafe would turn back into Rafe. Instead, she was ready to ship him off to the nearest asylum by the kids’ bedtime. She was as concerned as he was, but pacing around the house like a caged tiger was
not
helping. And trying to reason with a four-year-old about why he had to swallow terrible-tasting medicine was all very nice, but it went on for thirty minutes until Zoe tipped the tablespoon in Parker’s mouth and held his lips closed until he swallowed.

“That,”
Rafe said heavily, “was cruel.”

Zoe set a shot glass in front of him and went into the other room to get the kids into their pajamas. Aaron closed his eyes the minute his head hit the pillow, but Parker wasn’t about to sleep. “My ear hurts, and I can’t breathe when I lie down,” he complained.

“We’ll fix it so you don’t have to lie down,” she whispered back. Bringing in the rocker from the living room, she swaddled Parker in a light blanket and rocked him. When his cheek cuddled sleepily on her shoulder, she closed her eyes and felt love ache through her like a surprise.

She’d known feelings were growing inside her for the twins, but not like this. For three years, every time she’d seen a child, she’d thought of the children she couldn’t have. For three years, she’d held her chin high and told the whole damn world she didn’t care. She cared. She’d always cared, but the wonder was holding and loving Parker and not having an ounce of emotional baggage intrude on that. Parker was himself, not the children she couldn’t have, not other children, not the source of something that had cut up her life. He was just…Parker. A little boy who needed someone to love him.

A little boy she loved very much.

Barely a half hour passed before Rafe appeared in the doorway. On stocking feet, he edged toward the bed. Aaron never moved when Rafe adjusted his blanket, or even when he sat down at the foot of the bed near the rocker.

“Is he asleep?” he whispered, nodding at Parker.

“Yes.”

“What can I do?”

“Nothing, love.” The endearment slipped out.

His voice was as heavy as lead. “Zoe, it’s entirely my fault that he’s sick.” He leaned forward. In the darkness, his features were blurred and indistinct except for the dark orbs of his eyes. “I told you I took them to the park a few days ago. But I didn’t tell you it started to rain.”

“If you don’t stop this,” Zoe whispered patiently, “I’m going to call the doctor to get you a knock-out drug. Dammit, Rafe, can’t you remember getting a few sore throats and colds as a kid? And I’ve heard Janet say that Parker was prone to minor ear infections. The doctor said it was common and nothing to worry about. Getting wet never hurt anybody.”

He said nothing for a while, and then, “Do you want me to rock him?”

“I’m afraid to move him for fear he’ll wake up again.”

He nodded, then carefully eased himself down on the bed next to Aaron. Finally, he admitted in a whisper, “I can’t stand it, you know. Never could.”

“What?”

“Feeling helpless.”

At eleven she tried putting Parker back to bed, but he immediately woke and started whimpering. Rafe insisted on taking his turn in the rocker, and it was Zoe’s turn to lie down on the bed. Parker was asleep within seconds, and not long after that so was Rafe, his chin nestled on top of the child’s head.