At the doorway to the master suite, he paused. “Kelly?”
She heard an unfamiliar note of uncertainty in his voice and met his gaze. “What?”
“I want you to be happy here. I want us to be happy.”
He seemed to be imploring her to reassure him that their quick, impulsive marriage was moving onto more solid ground. Unfortunately, she had too many uncertainties herself to be able to say exactly what he clearly wanted to hear.
Instead she gazed across this threshold into a room she hadn’t seen before. In all of her previous visits she’d studiously avoided so much as a peek at a room that had seemed emotionally off-limits to her as Jordan’s friend, rather than his lover. She hadn’t wanted to see the bed to which he took other women but never her.
Now, she surveyed the dark furnishings that had been someone’s idea of a bachelor’s taste and opted for a touch of humor. “You could go a long way toward making that happen by getting rid of the fur bedspread and the waterbed.”
As she’d hoped, he grinned. “The fur’s not real.”
“No, but without it, you could probably raise the thermostat another ten degrees.”
“Too cold in here?”
“Not if you’re wrapped in that thing.”
He chuckled. “Okay, I get the message. Now, about the waterbed. Have you ever slept in one?”
“No.”
“Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it.”
“Jordan, I get seasick. You couldn’t even take me out on the creek in a rowboat, remember?”
He turned an interesting shade of green at the memory. “I’ll have it out of here in the morning,” he promised. “Of course, we should check to make absolutely sure it’s a problem.”
Kelly regarded the bed doubtfully, but there was such a gleam of pure anticipation in Jordan’s eyes that she kept her doubts to herself. “If you say so.”
She approached the king-size waterbed tentatively. There was something incredibly seductive about it, especially with that expanse of soft, fake fur spread across it. She sat down and tested her stomach as the bed shifted beneath her. The ebb and flow of the water was disconcerting, but not entirely unpleasant.
“Well?” Jordan asked, his expression hopeful.
“So far, so good,” she admitted.
“Mind if I join you?”
She eyed the bed nervously. “Not as long as you don’t fling yourself on the bed and set off a tidal wave.”
Clearly amused, he dropped down beside her. His weight set off another softly rolling wave.
“Ready for the next step?” he inquired.
“Which is?”
“Getting out of our clothes.”
She stood hastily and backed off a step. “I think I’ll do that on firm ground, thank you very much.”
“But you will be back?”
She gazed into worried blue eyes and sensed a deep concern for getting things off to the right start here in his home. “I will be back,” she promised, then amended, “Tonight.”
“And tomorrow?”
“Maybe we ought to take one night at a time,” she said, casting a suspicious look at the bed. “You might not even want me back in there tomorrow if this doesn’t go well.”
“Maybe not in this bed,” he agreed with a mischievous smile that reminded her of the Jordan of old. “But, like I told you before, this can be out of here first thing in the morning and one more to your liking in its place.”
His expression sobered. “I want you to make this your home, to make whatever changes are necessary to make you and Dani comfortable here.”
Kelly kept silent about her intention to see that this was their home for as brief a time as possible. Instead she inquired, “Can I get rid of the white carpet?”
“Every boring inch of it,” he agreed readily.
His response, indicating his distaste for it, surprised her. “Exactly whose idea was that?”
He sighed. “Rexanne’s.”
“I should have known. Obviously she wasn’t the maternal type.”
“Do you really want to waste time discussing my former fiancée?”
“Did you have something else in mind?” she asked, even though she could see perfectly well by the gleam in his eyes exactly what he was thinking.
“Getting you back into this bed would be a start.”
Kelly pushed aside the memory of all of the angry exchanges earlier in the day. She deliberately squashed any thoughts of that terrible moment when she’d realized that Jordan’s perception of their marriage hadn’t changed drastically from the moment he’d first gotten the idea into his head and pursued her with single-minded determination.
In fact, she suspended thinking at all, clinging only to the promise that they could work out the details and make their marriage a real one.
She stripped quickly out of her clothes and moved into the waiting circle of his arms, into the heat emanating from his body. She lost herself to the gentle movement of the bed and the swell of anticipation in her heart as his hands caressed and stroked until every inch of her was on fire, burning with need.
She welcomed him into her, lifting her hips to meet him, opening her mouth to his tongue, then gasping with the sweet, sweet shock of coming apart in his embrace.
Worries and fears didn’t vanish in that moment of surrender, but, for a time, they hardly seemed to matter at all. All that mattered was being close to Jordan, fulfilling the hunger that had been building inside her since she’d first discovered the chemistry that was possible between a man and a woman.
The rest would still be there in the morning. She could tackle the problems then with a clearer head and a lighter heart. Or so she told herself as she drifted off to sleep, still resting her head against Jordan’s chest, reassured by the steady rhythm of his heart and the unmistakable strength in the arms that held her tight.
* * *
Jordan thought the first
