He stood up and gathered her into his arms. “Then you have to wait. Don’t file those papers, Janie. Please.”
Engulfed by the pure masculine scent of him, surrounded by his heat and his strength, she couldn’t have refused him anything at all.
“I’ll wait,” she said at last. “For whatever good it will do, I’ll wait.”
If there was any shred of hope at all for the three of them to be together always, she would cling to it.
* * *
In the middle of March, Jane had a call from the principal of her school. The teacher who’d taken over her classes was ill. The principal wanted to know if there was any chance that Jane could come back to finish out the school year.
“Of course,” she said eagerly. Staying home was driving her batty. Davey didn’t need her attention every second. And if she was going to be a single working mom, the sooner she set the pattern for it, the better. “When do you need me?”
“Monday will be fine.”
“Thank you. I’ll be looking forward to it,” Jane said. Only after she’d hung up did she realize that in accepting the job, she was conceding that she would never leave home to join Mike.
Donna stopped by later that afternoon. “I hear you’re coming back to work on Monday.”
“The grapevine in that school always was remarkable.”
“What’s Mike going to say about it?”
“Mike doesn’t have anything to do with it. He’s in California. I’m here. I always intended to go back to work. This is just a little sooner than I planned.”
“But you still haven’t filed for divorce and neither has he. Shouldn’t you talk this over?”
“No. It’s only a matter of time. We talk almost every day but nothing’s really changed. He keeps holding me to the promise I made before he left, that I wouldn’t file for a divorce until we agreed that there was no chance we could make it work.”
“Is he coming back any time soon?”
“He hasn’t mentioned it and I haven’t asked.”
“Do you miss him?”
Jane sighed. “My heart breaks every time I hear his voice. I want him here with me more than anything in the world. And I know it’s crazy, but I think Davey misses him, too. He’s been fussier since Mike left, as if he knows he’s lost someone important.”
Donna regarded her sympathetically. “I hate this. I really do. You two belong together.”
“I always thought so,” Jane agreed. “But maybe Fate had something else in mind.”
Jane went back to work the following Monday and quickly settled back into a routine that had once been as familiar to her as breathing. Because it was such a small school, she already knew many of the kids in her class. The substitute teacher’s gradebook and detailed progress reports on each student filled in what she didn’t know.
By the end of the first week, she felt as if she’d put her life in order and resigned herself to the idea that Mike would never be a part of it. She even dropped by Annie’s Baby Boutique after school on Friday just as she had before she’d gotten pregnant with Davey. Now, though, she could shop to her heart’s content for her own child.
At home, the minute she stepped inside, she sensed that something was different even before she spotted the pile of suitcases in the hallway. Her heart slammed against her chest, then began an unsteady rhythm.
“Mike?” She hurried down the hall toward the nursery, knowing instinctively that was where he would be. “Mike?”
He was in the rocker with the baby in his arms. The sight of the two of them made her breath catch in her throat.
He glanced up. “Hey, pipe down, will you? I’ve just gotten him settled down.”
“And what have you done with the baby-sitter?”
“Sent her home. The kid and I don’t need any help.”
She grinned at him. “Is that so? Did she, by any chance, feed and change him before she left?”
“Of course.”
“No wonder you’re so confident, then.” He did look confident, too. He also stared at her as if he couldn’t wait to devour her. She felt the heat of that look all the way across the room.
Finally she dared to ask, “How long will you be here?”
His gaze locked with hers. “For good.”
This time she was pretty sure she stopped breathing altogether. “For good?” she repeated in a shaky voice. “Why? How?”
“Later,” he said. “Right now, how about getting over here and giving your husband a proper welcome-home kiss?”
Dazed, Jane crossed the room and bent down to brush a quick kiss across his brow.
He scowled at her. “You call that a proper kiss?”
She grinned. “That’s exactly what I call it—very, very proper.”
“Then I guess what I’m after is something else entirely.” He reached up and curved his hand around her neck and drew her back down. When their lips were barely a hairbreadth apart, he paused. “I love you, Janie.”
And then he kissed her and there was nothing the least bit proper about it. In fact, the kiss devoured, sending heat and need flooding through her. When he finally released her, she frowned at him.
“You’d better have meant it,” she said.
“Meant what?”
“You’d better be staying for good, because I’d have to slug you if you were kidding around.”
“No kidding,” he vowed. “In fact, I think I’ll just put Davey here in his crib so I can take his mommy to her bed and prove just exactly how serious I am.”
The minute he had their son settled in for his nap, he turned and the fire in his eyes set off butterflies in Jane’s stomach. When he swept her into his arms and headed across the hall to her room, she pushed aside every last reservation she had and let the sensation of being in his arms overwhelm her.
Explanations, everything could wait until later, she thought as she gave herself up to the tender glide of his hand over her flesh. His caresses, the heavenly feel of his mouth on her breasts,
