The walls of his room were unfinished. A coil of electrical wire sat on a drywall compound bucket that stood in the corner. There were no curtains at his windows. He’d removed the closet doors, and they were currently in his shop waiting to be planed and refinished.
The floors were a wonderful random-width oak under years of dull, dark varnish. Sanding them down, sealing them clear, was down on the list of projects—far down.
The bed had been an impulse buy. The old iron headboard with its slim, straight bars had appealed to him. But he’d yet to think about linens, and habitually tossed a mismatched quilt over the sheets and considered the job done.
It wouldn’t be what she was used to. Trying to see it through her eyes, Brody winced. “Not exactly the Taj Mahal.”
“Another work in progress.” She roamed the room, grateful to have a minute to settle the nerves she hadn’t expected to feel. “It’s a lovely space.” She ran her fingers over the low windowsill he’d stripped down to its natural pine. “I know potential when I see it,” she said, and turned back to him.
“I wanted to finish Jack’s room first. Then it made more sense to work on the kitchen and the living areas. I don’t do anything but sleep here. Up till now.”
A quick thrill spurted through her. She was the first woman he’d brought to this room, to this bed. “It’s going to be lovely.” She walked to him as she spoke, every pulse point hammering. “Will you use the fireplace in here?”
“I use it now. It’s a good heat source. I thought about putting in an insert, for efficiency, but…” What the hell was he doing? Talking about heat sources and inserts when he had the most beautiful woman in the world in his bedroom?
“It wouldn’t be as charming,” she finished, and with her eyes on his began unbuttoning his shirt.
“No. Do you want me to start a fire?”
“Later. Yes, I think that would be lovely, later. But for now, I have a feeling we can generate enough heat on our own.”
“Kate.” He curled his fingers around her wrists, and wondered that the need pumping through him didn’t burn through the tips and singe her flesh. “If I fumble a little, blame it on this, okay?” He turned his injured hand.
He was nervous, too, she realized. Good. That put them back on even ground. “I bet a man as clever with his hands as you can manage a zipper, no matter what the handicap.” She turned, lifted her hair. “Why don’t we see?”
“Yeah. Why don’t we?”
He drew it down slowly, exposing pale gold skin inch by inch. The curve of her neck and shoulder enticed him, so he lowered his head, brushed his lips just there. When she shivered, arched, he indulged himself, nibbling along her spine, her shoulder blades.
When he turned her to face him, her breath had already quickened.
His mouth cruised over hers, a long, luxurious savoring that liquefied the bones. And while he savored, his hands roamed lightly over her face, into her hair, down her back as if she were some exotic delicacy to be enjoyed slowly. Thoroughly.
She’d expected a repeat of the blast of passion that had exploded between them in her mother’s kitchen. And was undone by the tenderness.
“Tell me…” He nibbled his way across her jaw. “If there’s something you don’t like.”
Her head fell back, inviting him to explore the exposed line of her throat. “I don’t think that’s going to be an issue.”
His hands, strong, patient, skimmed up her sides to the shoulders of her dress. “I’ve imagined touching you. Driven myself crazy imagining it.”
“You’re doing a pretty good job of driving me crazy now.” She pushed the flannel shirt aside, reached out to tug the thermal shirt he wore beneath it out of the waistband of his jeans, sliding over the hard muscles of his stomach.
But he eased her back. It had been a long time since he’d been with a woman. He had no intention of rushing it.
He brought her hands to his lips, kissed her fingers, her palms. And felt her pulse leap, then go thick.
“Let me do this,” he murmured. He nudged the dress from her shoulders, watched it slide down her body to the floor.
She was so slender, so finely built a man could forget those tensile muscles beneath all that silky gold-dust skin. Her curves were subtle—a sleek female elegance that fascinated and demanded his touch.
Her breath snagged in her throat when he skimmed his fingertips along the curve of her breast, along the lace edging of her bra, then under it as if memorizing shape and texture. The hard pad of callus brushed her nipple and turned her knees to jelly.
Intrigued by her tremble, he shifted his gaze back to her face, watched her as his hands roamed down her torso, along her hips, stroked up her thighs.
“I think about your legs a lot,” he told her, and flirted his fingertips along the top of her stocking. “Ballerina legs, you know?”
“Just don’t pay any attention to my feet. Dancers have incredibly unattractive feet.”
“Strong,” he corrected. “Strong’s really sexy to me. Maybe you can show me some of the things you can do later, like you did for Rod that day. I nearly swallowed my tongue.”
Though she laughed, her hands were far from steady when she drew the shirt over his head, let her own fingers explore that tough wall of muscle.
“Sure. I can do even more interesting things.”
They both quivered when he lifted her and laid her on the bed.
If it had been a dance, she’d have called it a waltz. Slow, circling steps in a match rhythm. The kiss was long and deep, warming the body from the inside out. She sighed into it, into him, and her arms encircled.
This, she thought, dreaming, this was something—someone—she wanted to hold. Love was a quiet miracle that bloomed in her like a rose. And loving, she would give.
Then his mouth was on the curve of her breast, rubbing along that edge of lace. Arousing, inciting, and bringing the first licks of heat toward the warmth. She moaned as his tongue slid over that swell of flesh, teasing the point then tugging on it through the thin barrier of lace. Her hips arched, and her fingers dug into his.
Waltz became tango, slow and hotly sexual.
His mind was full of her, the scents, the textures, the sounds. All of it, all of her seemed to whirl inside his brain, making him dizzy and drunk. She was carved clean as a statue, the long, hot length of her beautifully erotic. He wanted to touch, to taste everything. All of her.
Absorbed with her, he did as he pleased while she rose and rolled and shuddered with him. And when he took her up the first time, when that lovely body tensed and her breath came and went on a sob, the thrill of it coursed through him like a drug.
More and still more. A little greedier, a little faster. He tugged away those barriers of lace. Now he wanted only flesh. Hot and wet and soft.
She matched him, step for step, rising to him, opening herself. Her mouth found his as they rolled over the quilt, diving heedlessly into the kiss while her hands pleased them both.
As desperation increased, she tugged open the button of his jeans, dragged them impatiently down his hips. “Oh, I love your body. I love what you do to mine. Hurry, hurry. I want—”
Her system erupted; her mind blanked. Even as she went limp, his fingers continued to stroke her. “I want to do more.”
He used his mouth. Sliding down her, breast, torso, belly. She began to move again. And then to writhe while pleasure and need pounded together inside her. Her eyes were blind, her body quaking when he rose over her.
With his heart hammering, and his mind crowded with her, he filled her with one long stroke. With a low sound of pleasure he held himself there, sustaining the moment, letting the thrill of it batter his system.
Her hips lifted, then fell away to draw him with her. Beat for beat they moved together, eyes locked, breath tangled and ragged. Her hands groped for his, gripped. The slide of flesh to flesh, slow and silky, the pulse of heart to heart, solid and real.
And when the wave rose up to swamp them both, he lowered his mouth to hers and completed the joining.
She lay limp as melted wax, eyes closed, lips curved and enjoyed the sensation of Brody collapsed on top of her. His heart continued to knock—hard, fast raps—that told her his system had been as delightfully assaulted as hers.
It had been a wonderful way to discover they were compatible in bed.
It was so fascinating to be in love. Really in love. Not like the couple of times she’d been enchanted with the idea of love. This was so unexpected. So intense.
She drew a long, satisfied breath and told herself she’d give the matter—and the consequences of it—a great deal of careful thought later. For the moment, she was going to enjoy it. And him.
No one had ever made her feel quite like this. No one had ever opened her up to so many feelings. Fate, she thought. He was hers. She’d known in some secret place inside her, the first instant she’d seen him.
And she was going to make certain he understood, when the time was right, that she was his.
She’d found him, she thought, utterly content as she stroked his back. And she was keeping him.
“For a man who claims to be out of practice, you certainly held your own.”
He was trying to decide if he had any brain cells left, and if so, when they would begin to work again. He managed a grunt. That response seemed to amuse her, as she laughed and locked her arms around him.
He managed to find the energy to turn his head, found his face buried in her hair and decided that was a fine place to be. “Want me to move?”
“No.”
“Good. Just give me an elbow if I start to snore.”
“O’Connell.”
“Just kidding.” He lifted his head, levered some of his weight off her and onto his elbows. The green of his eyes was blurry with satisfaction. “You’re incredible to look at.”
“So are you.” She lifted a hand to play with his hair. Not really blond, she thought idly. Not really brown. But a wonderful mix of tones and textures. Like the man himself.
“You know, I wanted you here from the first time I saw you.” She lifted her head just enough to bite lightly at his jaw. “Total lust at first sight—that’s not usual for me.”
“I had pretty much the same reaction. You jump-started parts of my system that had been on idle for a long time. Ticked me off.”
“I know.” She grinned. “I kind of liked it—the way you’d get all scowly and turned on at the same time. Very sexy. Very challenging.”
“Well, you got me where you wanted.” He lowered his head to give her a quick, nipping kiss. “Thanks.”
“Oh, my pleasure.”
“And since I’m here…” He moved his lips to the side of her throat, nuzzled.
Her laughing response turned to a gasp as she felt him harden inside her. Begin to move inside her.
“Hope you don’t mind. I’ve got a lot of lost time to make up for.”
“No.” Her body woke, and pulsed. “Be my guest.”
It wasn’t easy, Brody discovered, to have a relationship—at least the physical part of it—with a woman when you had a child. Not that he’d change anything, but it took considerable ingenuity to juggle the demands of the man and the demands of the father.
He was grateful that Kate seemed to enjoy Jack, and didn’t appear to resent spending time with him, or the time Brody devoted to him. The fact was, if she hadn’t accepted the boundaries and responsibilities that went along with Jack, there wouldn’t have been a relationship—physical or otherwise—to explore for long.
He guessed he was having an affair. That was a first. He’d never considered his relationship with Connie as an affair. Kids didn’t have affairs at twenty-one. They had romances. He had to remind himself not to romanticize his situation with Kate.
They liked each other, they wanted each other, they enjoyed each other. Neither of them had indicated anything more than warm feelings, and lust. And that was for the best, he decided.
He was, first and last, a father. He didn’t imagine most young women—career women with dozens of options ahead of them—generally chose to settle down with a man and his six-year-old son.
In any case, he wasn’t looking for anything more than what there was. If he had been, he’d have to start tackling the problem of changes, adjustments and compromises for all three of them. That was bound to be messy.
Certainly a grown man was entitled to a simple affair with a like-minded woman without crowding it in with plans for a future.
Everybody was happy this way.
He stepped back, lowering his nail gun to examine the trim he’d just finished on Kate’s office. It was a rich, elegant look, he decided. Classy. And it suited the woman.
He wondered where she was, what she was doing. And if they could manage to steal an hour alone before he had to go home and tackle the dinosaur poster Jack had to do for a school project.
Sex, carpentry and first grade, he thought as he moved over to start trimming the window. A man never knew what kind of mix was going to stir up his life.
“He’ll love this.” Kate examined the fierce, snapping jaws of the plastic predator.
“Dinosaurs are a no-fail choice.” Annie rearranged toys that didn’t need rearranging, and slid her gaze toward Kate. “That Jack O’Connell’s as cute as they come.”
“Mmm.”
“His father’s not shabby, either.”
“No, they both ring the bell on the cute scale. And yes, we’re still seeing each other.”
“I didn’t say a word.” Annie folded her lips. “I never pry.”
“No, you just poke.” She tucked the dinosaur under her arm. “That’s what I love about you. Now, I’m going to go back and say hi to Mama before I go.”
“Want me to wrap that beast up for you?”
“No. Wrapped it’s a gift. Unwrapped I can sneak it in as a research tool for his school project.”
“You always were a smart one, Katie.”
Smart enough Katie thought, to know what she wanted and how to get it. It had been two weeks since she’d made love with Brody for the first time. Since then they’d had one other evening alone and a handful of hours here and there.
She wanted a lot more than that.
They’d taken Jack to the movies, shared a few meals as a trio, and had engaged in the mother of all snowball battles the previous Saturday when a solid foot of snow had fallen.
She wanted a lot more than that as far as Jack was concerned, too.
She knocked on her mother’s office door, poked her head in.
Natasha was at her desk, her hair scooped up and the phone at her ear. She curved her finger in a come-ahead gesture. “Yes, thank you. I’ll expect delivery next week.”
She tapped a few keys at her computer, hung up and sighed. “Perfect timing,” she told Kate. “I need a cup of tea and a conversation that doesn’t involve dolls.”
“Happy to oblige. I’ll even make the tea.” Kate set the dinosaur on her mother’s desk before turning to the teapot.
Natasha eyed the toy, then her daughter. “For Jack?”
“Mmm. He has a school project. I figured this might earn him some extra points, and be fun.”
“He’s a delightful little boy.”
“Yes, I think so.” Kate poured the hot water into cups. “Brody’s done a wonderful job with him—though he had terrific material to work with.”
“Yes, I agree. Still, it’s never easy to raise a child alone.”
“I don’t intend for him to finish the job alone.” Kate set her mother’s cup on the desk, sat down with her own. “I’m in love with Brody, Mama, and I’m going to marry him.”
“Oh, Kate!” Tears flooded Natasha’s eyes even as she leaped up to embrace her daughter. “This is wonderful. I’m so happy for you. For all of us. My baby’s getting married.”
She crouched down to kiss both of Kate’s cheeks. “You’ll be the most beautiful bride. Have you set the date? We’ll have so much planning to do. Wait until we tell your father.”
“Wait, wait, wait.” Laughing, Kate set her tea aside to grab Natasha’s hand. “We haven’t set a date, because I haven’t convinced him to ask me yet.”
“But—”
“I’m certain a man like Brody—he’s really a traditional guy under it all—wants to do the asking. All I have to do is give him a nudge to the next stage so he’ll ask, then we can get on with it.”
As worry strangled the excitement, Natasha sat back on her heels. “Katie. Brody isn’t a project that has stages.”
“I didn’t mean it exactly like that. But still, Mama, relationships have stages, don’t they? And people in them work through those stages.”
“Darling.” Natasha straightened, sat on the corner of her desk. “I’ve always applauded your logic, your practicality and your sheer determination to earn a goal. But love, marriage, family—these things don’t always run on logic. In fact, they rarely do.”
“Mama, I love him,” Katie said simply, and tears swam into her mother’s eyes again.
“Yes, I know you do. I’ve seen it. And believe me, if you want him, I want him for you. But—”
“I want to be Jack’s mother.” Now Kate’s voice thickened. “I didn’t know I’d want that so much. At first he was just a delightful little boy, as you said. I enjoyed him, but I enjoy children. Mama, I’m falling in love with him. I’m just falling head over heels for that little boy.”
Natasha picked up the dinosaur, smiled as she turned it in her hands. “I know what it is to fall in love with a child who didn’t come from you. One who walks into your life already formed and makes such a difference in your life. I don’t question that you would love him as your own, Katie.”
“Then why are you worried?”
“Because you’re my baby,” Natasha said as she set the toy aside. “I don’t want you to be hurt. You’re ready to open your heart and your life. But that doesn’t mean Brody is.”
“He cares for me.” She was sure of it. She couldn’t be mistaken. But the worry niggled at her. “He’s just cautious.”
“He’s a good man, and I have no doubt he cares for and about you. But, Katie, you don’t say he loves you.”
“I don’t know if he does.” Frustrated, Kate got to her feet. “Or if he loves me, if he knows it himself. That’s why I’m trying to be patient. I’m trying to be practical. But, Mama, I ache.”
“Baby.” Murmuring, Natasha drew Kate into her arms, stroked her hair. “Love isn’t tidy. It won’t be, not even for you.”
“I can be patient. For a little while,” she added on a watery laugh. “I’m going to make it work.” She closed her eyes tight. “I can make it work.”
It was hard not to go over to the job site. She’d had to stop herself a half a dozen times from strolling over and seeing the progress. And seeing Brody. She made it easier on herself by spending part of the afternoon making and receiving calls in response to the ad she’d taken for her school.
The Kimball School of Dance would open in April, and she already had six potential students. There was an interview scheduled for the following week for an article in the local paper. That, she was sure, would generate more interest, more calls, more students.
A few more weeks, she thought as she pulled up behind Brody’s truck in his driveway, and a new phase of her professional life would begin. She didn’t intend for the next phase of her personal life to lag far behind.
He came to the door in his bare feet and smelling of crayons. The fact that she could find that both sexy and endearing in a grown man showed her just how far gone she was already.
“Hi. Sorry to drop by unannounced, but I have something for Jack.”
“No, that’s okay.” He wiped at the magic marker staining his fingertips. “We’re just in the middle… In the kitchen,” he said, gesturing. “But it isn’t pretty.”
“The process of school projects rarely is.”
It surprised him that she’d remembered the project. Had he talked about it too much? Brody wondered as he followed her back to the kitchen. He was pretty sure he’d only mentioned it—maybe moaned a little—in passing.
She stepped into the kitchen ahead of him. Surveyed the scene.
Jack was kneeling on a chair at the kitchen table, hunkered over a sheet of poster board and busily applying his crayon to the inside of an outline that resembled a large pig—as seen by Salvador Dalí.
Several picture books on dinosaurs were open on the table, along with illustrations probably printed off the computer. There was a scatter of plastic and rubber toys as well, and a forest of crayons, markers, pencils.
A pair of work boots and a pair of child’s sneakers were kicked into a corner. A large pitcher half full of some violently red liquid sat on the counter. As Jack’s mouth was liberally stained the same color, Kate assumed it was a beverage and not paint.
As she stepped in, her shoe stuck to the floor, then released with a little sucking sound.
“We just had a little accident with Kool-Aid,” Brody explained when she glanced down. “I guess I missed a couple spots on the cleanup.”
“Hi, Kate.” Jack looked up and bounced. “I’m making dinosaurs.”
“So I see. And what kind is this?”
“It’s a Stag-e-o-saurous. See? Here he is in the book. Me and Dad, we don’t draw very good.”
“But you color really well,” she said, admiring the bright green head on his current drawing.
“You gotta stay inside the lines. That’s why we drew them really thick.”
“Very sensible.” She rested her chin on the top of his head and studied the poster.
She saw the light pencil marks where Brody had drawn straight lines for the lettering of the header. Jack had titled his piece A Parade Of Dinosaurs. She found it apt, as his drawings marched over the poster in a long squiggly dance.
“You’re doing such a good job, I don’t think you’re going to need the tool I brought along for you.”
“Is it a hammer?”
“Afraid not.” She reached into her bag, pulled it out. “It’s a deadly predator.”
“It’s a T-Rex! Look, Dad. They ate everybody.”
“Very scary,” Brody agreed and laid a hand on his son’s shoulder.
“Can I take it into school? ’Cause look, its arms and legs move and everything. His mouth goes chomp. Can I?”
“I think it’d be a good visual aid to your project, don’t you, Dad? And there’s this little booklet here that talks about how he lived, and when, and how he ate everybody.”
“Couldn’t hurt. Jack, aren’t you going to thank Kate?”
“Thanks, Kate.” Jack marched the dinosaur across the poster. “Thanks a lot. He’s really good.”
“You’re welcome a lot. How about a kiss?”
He grinned and covered his face with his hands. “Nuh-uh.”
“Okay, I’ll just kiss your dad.” She turned her head before Brody could react and closed her mouth firmly over his.
He avoided kissing her, touching her, when Jack was around. That, Kate decided, deliberately sliding her arms around Brody’s waist, would have to change.
Jack made gagging noises behind his hands. But he was watching carefully, and there was a funny fluttering in his stomach.
“A woman’s got to take her kisses where she finds them,” Kate stated, easing back while Brody stood flustered. “Now, my work is done, I have to go.”
“Aw, can’t you stay? You can help draw the dinosaurs. We’re going to have sloppy burgers for dinner.”
“As delightful as that is, I can’t. I have an appointment in town.” Which was true. But she thought the ambush—the drop-by, she corrected—would be more effective if she kept it brief and casual. “Maybe, this weekend if you’re not busy, we can go to the movies again.”
“All right!”
“I’ll see you tomorrow, Brody. No, no,” she said when he turned. “I know the way out. Get back to your dinosaurs.”
“Thanks for coming by,” he said, and said nothing else, not even when he heard her close the front door.
“Dad?”
“Hmm.”
“Do you like kissing Kate?”
“Yeah. I mean…” Okay, Brody thought, here we go. Because Jack was watching him carefully, he sat. “It’s kind of hard to explain, but when you get older… Most guys like kissing girls.”
“Just the pretty ones?”
“No, well, no. But girls you like.”
“And we like Kate, right?”
“Sure we do.” Brody breathed a sigh of relief that the discussion hadn’t deepened into some stickier area of sex education. Not yet, he thought. Not quite yet.
“Dad?”
“Yeah.”
“Are you going to marry Kate?”
“Am I—” His shock was no less than if Jack had suddenly kicked his chair out from under him. “Jeez, Jack, where did that come from?”
“’Cause you like her, and you like kissing her, and you don’t have a wife. Rod’s mom and dad, sometimes they kiss each other in the kitchen, too.”
“Not everybody…people kiss without getting married.” Oh, man. “Marriage is a really important thing. You should know somebody really well, and understand them, and like them.”
“You know Kate, and you like her.”
Brody distinctly felt a single line of sweat dribble down his spine. “Sure I do. Yeah. But I know a lot of people, Jacks.” Feeling trapped, Brody pushed away from the table and got down two clean glasses. “I don’t marry them. You need to love someone to marry them.”
“Don’t you love Kate?”
He opened his mouth, closed it again. Funny, he thought, how much tougher it was to lie to your son than it was to lie to yourself. The simplest answer was that he didn’t know. He wasn’t sure what was building inside him when it came to Kate Kimball.
“It’s complicated, Jack.”
“How come?”
Questions about sex, Brody decided, would have been easier after all. He set the glasses down, came back to sit. “I loved your mother. You know that, right?”
“Uh-huh. She was pretty, too. And you took care of each other and me until she had to go to heaven. I wish she didn’t have to go.”
“I know. Me, too. The thing is, Jack, after she had to go, it was really good for me to just concentrate on loving you. That worked really well for me. And we’ve done all right, haven’t we?”
“Yeah. We’re a team.”
“You bet we are.” Brody held out his hand so Jack could give him a high five. “Now let’s see what this team can do with dinosaurs.”
“Okay.” Jack picked up his crayon. His eyes darted up to his father’s face once. He liked that they were a team. But he liked to pretend that maybe Kate was part of the team, too.