The Black Sheep’s Baby Read online

  No-not a child. There was nothing remotely childlike about the way her heart banged against her calm exterior shell, or the thirsty feeling at the back of her throat that wouldn’t go away when she swallowed. Next, she thought when he had tugged off her jacket and hung it beside his, he will put his arms around me…hold me.

  There was nothing childlike, either, in the disappointment she felt when he didn’t.

  “Come on in here-in the kitchen.” His voice bewildered her. There was so much tenderness in it. It felt like arms around her, yet, except for that one small caress on her cheek, and the pulling and tugging as he helped her out of her wet clothes, he didn’t touch her.

  In the kitchen, he selected a chair and turned it half around, sideways to the table, then gruffly ordered her to sit. Incredibly, Devon did as she was told. Devon O’Rourke-who never took orders from any man-unless he happened to have the words The Honorable in front of his name.

  Silently, she watched Eric pull out another chair and set it facing hers. Then he sat down and, one by one, tugged off her boots. Numbness of another kind held her motionless and barely breathing as he lifted her feet into his lap, peeled away her layers of socks and began gently to massage them.

  Pain made her gasp; reflexively, she pulled away. Eric brought her feet back to his lap. “They’re gonna hurt a little.” His voice was a growl. “But I think we’ll let you keep ’em.”

  Devon tore her mesmerized gaze from his gaunt, beard-stubbled face and blinked her feet into focus. They looked ugly to her-bluish-white with purple toes-and unbelievably vulnerable, half swallowed by those lean, long-boned hands. The image wavered. Her memory overlaid it with another-those same big hands cradling an infant’s tiny red-gold head.

  Her stomach growled, and Eric chuckled-a sound like the one she’d heard his father make. “Should have listened to me,” he said. Her eyes flicked upward almost guiltily to collide with his. Warm as brandy, they seemed much nearer to hers than they ought to have been. “Should have eaten breakfast.”

  Her lips parted to answer him, although she didn’t know with what words. His eyes seemed to shimmer and move closer.

  “Eric Lanagan!”

  Devon straightened with a start. Lucy came bustling into the kitchen in her energetic way, the baby’s head bobbing against her shoulder. She halted and glared over it at her son. “Did I just hear what I thought I heard? You’ve been out all morning without breakfast? Look at the both of you-soaking wet and half-frozen-it’ll be a miracle if you don’t catch pneumonia-and at Christmastime, too. I think the two of you lack good sense.”

  Eric’s eyes found Devon’s. They gleamed with amusement as he mouthed the words, “Treats me like I’m five.”

  “Well, sometimes you act like it,” Lucy snapped.

  Devon gasped in amazement and Eric exclaimed with a pained grimace, “Ma, how do you do that?”

  “You think I can’t read lips?” She gave her son a look of smugly maternal omniscience.

  Devon’s chest hummed with a warm little burr of amusement. She was beginning to look forward to the casual, sometimes bantering interplay between Eric and his parents, so different from the way things were in her own family.

  “I’m going to heat up some soup,” Lucy announced, expertly shifting Emily into the crook of one arm as she began to turn on burners and bang kettles. “Devon, you-” she paused to throw her a no-arguments look over one shoulder “-go upstairs and take a nice long hot shower and get into something warm. You-” she transferred the glare to Eric “-just as well go upstairs, too, and put on some dry clothes. No sense in you taking your shower until you’ve pulled Devon’s car out of that ditch, which you’d better do today, before the snowplow comes by and buries it even deeper. But after you’ve got something hot in your stomach.”

  “You want me to take the baby while you-”

  “Hah-I’ve fixed many a meal one-handed with a baby on my hip, young man. Go on, now-get.” She jerked her head toward the door to the hallway and the stairs beyond, as a wing of nut-brown hair slid forward across her cheek to cover her smile.

  Eric shot back a smart-mouthed “Yes, ma’am” as he placed Devon’s feet on the floor. They exchanged looks as they both rose. Devon opened her mouth, but it was Eric who spoke.

  “Oh-Mom. Devon says she’d like to take you up on your invitation to spend Christmas with us-if that’s okay.” His voice was bland, so devoid of expression, in fact, that she threw him a questioning look. His profile gave her no reply.

  “I’m glad you decided to stay was all,” Lucy said. Her smile was serene, as if, Devon thought, the decision had never been in doubt.

  Chapter 11

  “Y our parents are something else,” Devon said without turning from the window. She felt such a heaviness inside-strange that her voice should sound so light.

  “Yeah, they are.” And even above the sound of water running in the kitchen sink, she couldn’t mistake the note of affection in Eric’s voice.

  It was the next morning-December 23, two days before Christmas-and she was standing with her arms folded across her waist, watching Mike and Lucy’s early model four-wheel-drive SUV lumber down the lane, dragging a feathery plume of exhaust behind it. She watched it fishtail slightly-an almost jaunty little wiggle-as it turned onto the paved road. It was a beautiful, sparkly cold morning; the snowplow had been by earlier, and the sand truck after that. Mike and Lucy had gone shopping; the roads, they’d been told, were clear all the way to Sioux City.

  Devon shifted her gaze to her rental car, which was parked in the driveway, still lumpy with snow and looking somehow forlorn, but otherwise none the worse for having spent a day and a half in a drift-filled ditch. Eric had checked it over and pronounced it driveable.

  The roads are clear, she thought. I have my car. I can leave if I want to. Strangely, the realization failed to cheer her.

  Yesterday afternoon while Eric was pulling the Town Car out of the snowdrifts, Devon had been on her cell phone to her office in sunny L.A., delegating and postponing meetings and other responsibilities-she was assured that her presence at her firm’s annual Christmas party had been missed-and to her parents in Canoga Park, explaining to them why she wouldn’t be spending Christmas Eve with them this year. They’d expressed regret, of course. Now, remembering her parents’ voices, subdued, emotionless, she felt this heaviness inside.

  I love my parents. I do.

  But she knew they were only words. And though she pressed them into her mind as hard as she could, like a tongue probing a sensitive tooth, no matter how hard she tried, Devon could not find the feelings that went with the words. She tried to remember hugging her parents, or them hugging her. She couldn’t. She couldn’t remember the feel of her mother’s arms around her. Couldn’t remember the sound of her voice, comforting her after a nightmare. Couldn’t remember cool hands stroking her forehead in a fever, or putting a bandage on her skinned knee. Couldn’t remember sitting on her father’s lap, having him read to her, or tuck her in at night.

  Overcome with a terrible, panicky sadness, she turned from the window, already in full flight and thinking only of the stairs and the sanctuary of her room. Instead, she ran headlong into a solid object, one covered with a sweatshirt that was slightly damp. That smelled of baby powder, formula, dish soap and man.

  “Hey,” Eric exclaimed as his hands closed on her upper arms.

  Her head snapped back and she stared at him. Whiskey eyes, startled and golden, gazed into hers. She opened her mouth to say something-to protest, to explain?-what, she never knew. Just that suddenly, she was in his arms, and his hands were tangled in her hair and his mouth was hard and hot on hers.

  Hungry.

  And, oh, God, she was hungry, too. How good he tasted-fresh and clean, like joy and hope and sunshine and snow. Famished, she opened her mouth to him, and he brought all those things inside.

  And it wasn’t nearly enough to satisfy her. Greedily, she clutched at his sweatshirt, filled her fis
ts with it as she pressed her body against his, as if she were trying to soak him in, the very essence of all he was, trying to steal from him the warmth, the affection, the security and comfort, the gifts he’d been given in such abundance and hadn’t begun to appreciate.

  A sob rippled through her and burst from her mouth. He uttered a groan and stifled it with his as he caught her harder against him.

  Something-a shock, like lightning-sliced through her chest. The fascinating little bump that had pestered her heart so often came again-and this time exploded. Her heartbeat resounded through her head like thunder. She trembled. And opened still more…

  His mouth softened, persuaded. She felt the prick of his beard stubble on her lips. The delicious tingle of his fingertips stroking her scalp. She heard their breathing, the little groaning sounds he made, the soft whimpers that were hers. She felt the wiry strength of the muscles in his back against her palms, the thump of his heartbeat against her breasts. She felt melting weakness, the overwhelming ache of desire.

  Dimly, she was aware of movement-clumsy, awkward, directionless. Blind and uncaring, she let it carry her where it would.

  Then he was sitting in one of the kitchen chairs and she was astride his lap, her hands tangled in his hair as she arched above him, her mouth the aggressor now. His hands, free now to roam at will, pushed up her sweatshirt to knead the muscles of her back, reached between their bodies to nestle her breasts and chafe their hardened nipples with his palms, then thrust beneath the elastic of her sweats to grasp her bottom and pull the softest and most sensitive part of her hard and tight against him.

  And that, without separating, standing, unzipping, undressing, was as far as they could go.

  Devon acknowledged it first, with a tiny whimper of frustration. Eric’s arms tightened in denial, his body tensed, and then his mouth withdrew from hers and his breath came in an exhalation that was more like a sigh.

  “What the hell’re we doing?” It was a whisper that grated like windblown sand. The only reply she could manage was the smallest shake of her head, before she let it come to rest against his forehead. She heard another soft, sandy sound and realized that he was laughing. “Whatever it is, I sure hope one of us has the good sense to stop it.”

  She cleared her throat, realized it was hopeless and whispered instead. “It seems to me, you just did.”

  “Then how come nobody’s moving?”

  “I don’t know about you, but my legs are useless.” She was shaking all over; some of it was laughter. She could feel her heartbeat and his, colliding in uneven rhythms.

  “You’re shaking,” he said.

  “No kidding!” Laughter gusted from her lungs. What she really wanted was to burst into tears.

  And maybe it was fear that she might actually do that that gave her the strength, finally, to push herself away from him. To rise, jerky and uncoordinated, to her feet; to turn, hugging herself again, to the window. For a moment she stood blinking in the brilliance of sunshine on snow, and then in utter misery, closed her eyes and whispered, “I’m so sorry. I don’t know what happened. God-we don’t even know each other.”

  Behind her she heard the chair creak, and a gusty exhalation. Risking a glance, she saw that Eric was leaning forward with his elbows planted on his knees and his face buried in his hands, and for some reason she didn’t add the rest: Or like each other much, either.

  Instead, she said tightly, “There has to be a logical explanation for this.”

  Even muffled by his hands, the sound he made was replete with self-disgust. “Yeah, there is-I’m an idiot.”

  “For God’s sake, it wasn’t your fault. It was me. I was…I don’t know, thinking about…you know-my parents, Christmas…”

  He glanced up and his smile was almost painfully crooked. “Blame it on the holidays?”

  This time the snort of self-derision was Devon’s. “That’s such a cliché.”

  “Darlin’,” he said, stretching as if his bones ached, “clichés were meant for times like this.” He’d managed to hold on to the smile, but the eyes that lingered for a moment on her face seemed a hundred years old.

  When he pushed to his feet and turned away, she felt an irrational urge to call him back, beg him not to go. Her mind cast wildly about for reasons why he shouldn’t leave her standing there, something that would justify continuing what they’d been doing before they’d both come to their senses. Her whole body felt hollow, empty.

  Then, in the kitchen doorway he did pause, hesitate, and for a moment turn back, and her heart jolted with an equally irrational stab of fear. Awash with prickles of adrenaline, she folded her arms tightly across her middle, and a pulse tap-tap-tapped against the wall of her belly.

  “Look…Devon. I hate like hell to ask, but since she’s asleep, and I shouldn’t be long, would you mind keeping an ear out for Emily? There’s…something I’ve got to do.”

  She was so shaken, she barely hesitated before she nodded. She heard herself say, “Yeah, sure. Okay. Where-”

  “I’ll be in the bunkhouse.” He dodged into the service room long enough to snatch his jacket from its hook on the wall and was shrugging it on as he went out. A moment later she heard the back porch door close.

  What I’m feeling is wrong, Devon thought. It must be. Immoral and illegal, probably. Unethical, definitely.

  I should leave. Right now, this minute. Get in that big Lincoln, drive to Sioux City and hop the next flight to L.A.

  And what would you do with Emily? Leave her here, or take her with you?

  That was it-the million-dollar question. She clamped a hand to her forehead, gave a distraught whimper and raised her eyes to the ceiling. Even if she’d had the guts to try, she couldn’t take Emily back to L.A. without Eric-until court-ordered tests and a judge said otherwise, he was the baby’s father and legal guardian. She didn’t dare go back alone, either; every instinct told her that would be a mistake.

  No two ways about it, then, she was stuck-stuck on the horns of a dilemma, stuck in Iowa, stuck on a farm, stuck with strangers at Christmastime.

  Worst of all was knowing that leaving here, even if she could have, was the last thing her heart wanted to do.

  An hour later, Devon still had no idea what to do about a Christmas gift for Eric. She’d had no trouble finding something among the meager belongings she’d brought with her that would do for Mike and Lucy. The electronic pocket planner that had been last year’s Christmas gift from her firm’s senior partner, and which she almost never used, seemed perfect for Mike, and for Lucy she’d decided on a designer label silk scarf she’d brought along just in case she’d felt like dressing up a bit for that solitary hotel dinner. The brilliant shades of blue and green that complemented her own coloring so well would go just as nicely with Lucy’s nut-brown hair and eyes and sun-freckled skin.

  Mike and Lucy had both insisted, as they’d driven off on the freshly plowed road to finish up their own last minute holiday shopping, that under no circumstances was Devon to give them anything for Christmas. She was an invited guest, Lucy had reminded her, and a spur-of-the-moment one, at that. She was not to worry about gifts, period.

  Fat chance, Devon had mentally responded, being possessed of a strong sense of propriety as well as a great deal of pride, the kind of person who wouldn’t dream of showing up at a friend’s home for dinner without bringing along a bottle of wine or a potted houseplant. As far as she was concerned, she was an uninvited guest in the Lanagan household, and the least she could do to repay them for their hospitality was to give them a Christmas gift.

  That was fine, as far as her host and hostess went. But what about Eric? She had no real justification for giving him a gift-she wasn’t his guest. She owed him nothing-except a trip back to L.A. and an appearance before a family court judge, as soon as that could possibly be arranged. But she couldn’t keep her mind from chewing on possibilities.

  What could I give him if things were different? What might he like?

&nbs
p; The fruitlessness of that mental exercise only served to remind her how little she really knew the man-Eric Lanagan, from Iowa. And how far apart they were. The gulf between them seemed enormous, unbridgeable.

  How, then, to explain what had happened between them just now, down there in his mother’s kitchen? The memory of that slammed into her like a physical blow; her stomach gave a lurch and her heart began to race.

  Pure unadulterated lust?

  Oh, no. Lust didn’t begin to explain it-not as far as Devon was concerned. She hadn’t come by her reputation for being one of Los Angeles’s most unmeltable ice princesses by being lusty.

  Not that she hadn’t enjoyed her share of relationships-even sex, in her own way. It was just that in both circumstances she preferred to remain…perhaps the best word was the one used most often by her bed-partners, usually shortly before a dramatic departure: Uninvolved. Her most recent relationship, with a senior member of the D.A.’s staff, had ended late last summer when he’d complained that he needed a bit more from a woman than “affectionate detachment, dammit.” Or had it been “detached affection”?

  Either way, while Devon had been mildly distressed at his leaving, and in the months since had even thought of him once or twice with a fleeting sense of loneliness, frankly, she hadn’t missed the sex at all.

  So, what had happened this morning, with Eric? She’d never felt like that before in her life. Never.

  That quickly she was feeling it again-the flip-flop in her belly, the pounding heart, the surging heat, the trembling legs. Oh, man, she thought, hugging and rocking herself. Oh, man.