It was the lazy, easy sound of his voice that made her tiptoe back into the bathroom, and there he was, waiting for her in the tub with those sexy dark eyes. “Yeah, I know,” he said gently. “We’ve been here a hundred hours already. And both of us need some just plain sleep, don’t we?”
“Yes-”
“But how about if you just dip in here for one more minute. I’ll give you a back rub.”
She hurtled back into the tub with splashing speed, making Justin laugh.
“You’re not just a little bit of a hedonist, are you?” he teased, but he wasn’t teasing as he nestled her between his bent legs and started working his hands on her neck and shoulders. Her eyelashes drooped as if they weighed five pounds each and her head bobbed forward. She groaned and kept on groaning.
And he kept rubbing and caressing and molding any last tension from her shoulders, but eventually she heard a different note in his voice. A quiet note. “What were you thinking, Win? When you were feeding the baby a few minutes ago, and you suddenly turned so serious?”
She’d been thinking that she finally believed him-that he really did want to marry her. It wasn’t a dream. It was real. All his plan-making for the baby tonight was proof. The way he treated Angel was another kind of proof, that he had strong, tender feelings for the baby and was already taking joy in being a father. But it was the two of them where she kept feeling this rain of wonder. They’d known each other so long…but until Angel had so accidentally slipped into her life, she’d had no idea that Justin had feelings for her.
Now she wondered how he’d fooled her for so long.
And how she’d fooled herself.
She closed her eyes, struggling to offer him a kind of honesty that she never had done before. “I was thinking…well, I almost don’t remember my mother. But I remember the morning when I woke up and she was gone. I was pretty young-but I knew I was alone. I remember feeling abandoned, feeling that there must be something terribly wrong with me that she’d left as if I were nothing. And as much as I’ve wanted a child, Justin, I think I was always afraid that I wouldn’t be a good mother. That that fatal flaw in me would show up. The thing that made me unlovable. And I worried that I could do that to a child.”
She watched his mouth work, as if he wanted to spill a dozen things to her. Instead he hesitated, and then he just listened. “And…?”
“And then I was watching you play with Angel. Be with her. The joy and fascination in your eyes.”
“Well, hell. There’s nothing surprising there. She could win a tear from a glass eye.”
She smiled softly. “I think so, too. That’s exactly how I feel with her. The joy. The fascination. No, I don’t know what I’m doing. But this huge feeling of love wells up, this bond to her that just seems bigger than I am. And I know I can be a good mom. I just know.”
“Aw, Win, I can’t believe you doubted yourself this way.”
“Well, I did. It’s hard to explain, but I doubted…that I could let go. I was angry when I was a kid. I think I always believed under the surface that it had to be my fault-something wrong with me-that made my mom take off. And I was afraid that something-wrong-in-me could affect my being a parent.”
“Winona. You’ll be the best parent this side of the Atlantic. And this side of the Pacific, too. You already are. Hell. I didn’t know you were worried about this…” He hesitated. “When you suddenly got so quiet, I thought maybe you’d found out something in the investigation of Angel’s mother-and you just hadn’t had a chance to tell me.”
“I’m finding out things every day. But nothing that’s helped me pin down where Angel came from, at least so far.”
“Then…you’re still worried about keeping her?”
“Yeah, I’m worried about that. Badly. And I’m going to keep worrying about that until we know for sure what’s going to happen to her. I can’t help it. Any more than I can help hoping that Angel ends up mine. Ours.” She turned in his arms. “But that’s not the reason I’m saying yes to you.”
“Yes to…?”
“I never gave you a clear-cut answer, did I? I mean…you’ve been making marriage and living plans at the speed of sound. And I know we’ve come together. I know we’ve both used the
She never got a chance to finish the thought before his mouth latched on to hers. The whole evening, she’d been waiting for this. The whole evening, he’d been seducing her with candles and saxophones and his burping techniques and his blowing bubbles on the baby’s tummy…and being in that tub, naked with him, because dark or not, he had to know darn well where her eyes were straying all this time.
She made a soft sound of longing, of want, that he sipped in during another slow, lazy, liquid kiss. His warm, slippery skin rubbed against her warm, slippery skin. His tummy rubbed her tummy. Breasts snugged against his chest, where his wiry dark chest hairs glistened and the orbs of his shoulders gleamed dark gold. His long, strong legs slid and rubbed against her slim, softer limbs. He was inside her before she could catch a breath, had her legs wrapped around his waist before she’d had time to consider whether this was even possible.
“We’re going to drown,” she feared.
“I already am drowning,” he said, and dived for another kiss, taking her tongue. His hands splayed, clasping her fanny, melding the two of them even closer together. Inside, she felt that secret, hot pulsing between them. On the outside, there was nothing but that womb of water, the magic of him, the stars on the water surface caused from the candlelight, the stars in her eyes caused from the look in his.
“I have no protection,” he remembered suddenly.
“Good,” she said.
Again, his mouth tipped in a slow, intimate grin. “If you think I mind if we make a baby, Win, you must be out of yours. I hope we have half a dozen. And I’m warning you now, my plan for the rest of the evening is to love you ’til the cows come home.”
“Good,” she said again.
“It’ll be two nights without sleep. We’ll both be basket cases tomorrow.”
“Good,” she said again.
“If you think-”
Holy moly, how the man could talk. She framed his face with her hands to pull him closer. Then flexed her thighs to wrap him closer in that way. He didn’t talk any more after that. Neither did she, although, tarnation, they made a horrible mess. Water splashed over the marble sides, onto the floor. Once they sank under and nearly drowned. He rolled with her on top, then maneuvered her right under the pulsing hot jets where the dark, silky water pulsed intimately on both of them, never separating from her for an instant, never losing rhythm, just spinning, spinning…
Spinning a magic spell, she thought helplessly, that she never wanted to wake up from. Somewhere that night, she lost all her inhibitions. The good ones. The important ones. The inhibitions that she’d cultivated so carefully her whole life because she was so absolutely sure that she needed them to survive. With him, everything was different. With him, she felt as abandoned as she’d ever imagined…
But in the most joyful of all ways.
“I love you, Winona Raye,” he whispered, just as he hurled them both over the last crest and tipped them into ecstasy.
The next day, as Winona was driving to lunch with Angel propped in the car seat next to her, she suddenly laughed out loud. All morning, memories from the night before had been rolling through her mind, making her buoyant and smiley all over again…but this time, her sense of humor was sparked for another reason.
Last night, she’d finally said yes to him. In fact, Winona suddenly remembered how many times she’d given Justin an opening to set a specific marriage date. Only he hadn’t.
For a man who’d been hustling her to the altar faster than the speed of light, it just struck her funny bone that he’d finally gotten what he wanted-and then forgotten to pin down the date.
Quickly Winona pulled into the one spare parking place in front of the Royal Diner, then scooped up Angel and all the baby paraphernalia it took to get the little one through a short lunch. “You know this place, now, don’t you, darlin’? And today we’re going to meet a friend.”
The minute they walked in, she spotted Pamela Miles, sitting in one of the front booths. “Darn it, I didn’t mean to be late, Pam. I hope I didn’t keep you waiting-”
