by Diana Palmer
Her heart jumped. It was wrong to feel relieved. So wrong. She couldn’t let him see how much the statement pleased her.
“Your husband must have been proud of the child,” he said in a bland tone.
“He was looking forward to it,” she confessed. Her eyes closed. “He died before Joshua was born. He never even got to see him.”
“That must have been rough.”
She nodded. “Ruy was a good man. I owed him a lot.”
So did I, Rourke thought, for taking care of her. But he didn’t say it.
“The baby seems much better now,” he remarked.
“Dr. Steele is very good,” she agreed. “He was doing family practice, but Copper Coltrain was overworked and they needed another surgeon, so he specialized and went back to school.”
“He always had a knack for it,” Rourke said.
She was thinking about Rourke, with Micah Steele in Africa. “You’ve always done dangerous jobs. Even when you were a teenager.”
“I wanted to be like K.C.,” he mused. “I didn’t know he was my dad, at the time, but I always admired him. I’ve had a time trying to keep him out of the field since Mary Luke died. But he’s better.” He cocked his head, staring with fascination at the baby. “He said I should come home and raise lion cubs for zoos.”
“You’d never be able to settle for a life that tame, and you know it,” she said, her voice faintly wistful. “You have to have the adrenaline rushes.”
He smoothed over the khaki on his knee. “Yes, well, I’ve been thinking about that. I turned the wrong way and an IED exploded. Shrapnel hit me and did a number on my head. If I’d been home, where I belonged, I wouldn’t have lost almost a year of my life.”
She looked up at him, her blue eyes wide and sad.
His face drew taut. “I do at least remember why I was so cruel to you,” he said after a minute. “I thought you were my half sister.”
She averted her eyes and her face colored. “Yes.”
“Did I tell you that K.C. knocked me over a sofa when I accused him of sleeping with your mother?” he asked with a chuckle. “God, he hits hard!”
“My…mother?” she faltered, wide-eyed.
“Yes. Your mother. That was the gossip.”
“My mother was a saint,” Tat said quietly. “She would never have cheated on my father in a million years.”
“I noticed that when the DNA results came back,” he said with a straight face.
She just shrugged.
“The sins keep lining up, don’t they, Tat? I vaguely remember telling you once, God knows when, that I’d never hurt you again.” He smiled with pure self-contempt as he stared at the baby’s small head. “And I’ve done nothing but hurt you. For years.”
She didn’t answer him. The baby stopped suckling. She tried to hold him and close the nursing bra, but she couldn’t quite manage it.
“Here. Give him to me while you do that,” Rourke said gently.
She flushed a little as she lifted Joshua into his arms. She was fumbling with the bra or she might have noticed the exquisite pain on Rourke’s face as he looked down into the eyes of his firstborn. He stared into eyes that were already showing signs of being brown instead of blue, at the ears that were like his and K.C.’s.
“He’s a sturdy boy, isn’t he?” he asked softly, smiling at the child. “I think he may be tall, Tat.”
“That’s what I thought.” She had her blouse back in place, and she started to take the baby when she noticed the expression on Rourke’s hard face as he stared down at the little boy in his arms. She hesitated. It was so poignant that tears stung her eyes. Rourke, holding his son, and he didn’t know. He’d never know.
She swallowed down the hurt. “He needs to be burped,” she said, picking up a diaper.
“Show me how,” he said.
She had to reach up to put the diaper over his shoulder. She showed him how to put the baby over his shoulder and rub him gently between the shoulder blades.
“It gets a bit messy sometimes,” she warned. “They do spit up…”
“Clothes clean, honey,” he said with a tender smile. “It’s all right.”
She felt the endearment like a soft touch on her bare skin, but she tried to hide the effect it had on her. Rourke didn’t seem to realize what he’d said. He was intent on burping his son. A few smooth pats and a big burp came out of the tiny boy.
He laughed with pure delight.
Clarisse smiled tenderly at the picture they made.
He looked up into her soft eyes and his heart jumped right into his throat. He studied her over Joshua’s head, intently.
“You’re still too thin,” he said quietly. “You’ve been to hell and back. At least you’re finally in a place where you have friends. Real friends.”
She nodded. “Cash and Tippy have been so kind,” she said. “And Eb…” She bit her lip.
“Eb?” he queried, with just the right amount of curiosity.
“Eb Scott,” she said. “He and his wife invited me over for supper one night. So did Cy Parks and his wife. They’re such nice people.”
“Yes, they are. It’s a good place to raise a child.”
“It is. There are good schools here, too.” She looked at the baby on his shoulder. “I’ve never had a real friend, until Peg Grange. And that was a shameful thing I did to her, while I was spaced out on antianxiety meds. She’s a forgiving soul.”
“You weren’t responsible for your actions,” he said. “Any more than I was, just after I was injured.”
“It doesn’t help a lot,” she sighed. “I still feel guilty.”
“You made up for it.”
“I tried.”
He searched her eyes. “Tat, none of us is perfect. We make mistakes. We can’t live in the past. Today is all we have, really.”
She wrapped her arms around herself. She felt a chill. Sapara was after her and she couldn’t tell Rourke. She was nervous and uneasy and afraid.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, sensitive to her mood.
“Goose bumps,” she lied. “I’m chilly I guess.”
He scowled. “Are you still taking quinine?”
“Oh, yes,” she replied. “Religiously. It’s not malaria. Honest.”
He drew in a long breath. “You had a closer call than you told me, Tat,” he said. “K.C. told me just how close.”
“Neither of us realized it could be malaria,” she said simply. “Ruy was overworked and he was treating people with a stomach virus. The symptoms are very similar. I never dreamed…” She stopped before she could add that the mosquitoes had been placed deliberately in the house she shared with Ruy.
“Life happens.” He kissed the baby’s soft little head. “People die. It’s part of life, however tragic. But I’m sorry I said the things I did to you, in the pharmacy that day. I didn’t know what the hell I was talking about.”
“You didn’t remember,” she said. “I understood.”
That hurt even more. She always forgave him. And this time, she shouldn’t have.
“Here, I’ll take him now,” she said softly, holding out her arms for Joshua. “I put him down for his nap after I feed him.”
He handed her the little boy with flattering reluctance. “He’s a sweet child,” he said quietly. “Does he sleep the night through?”
“Usually. I thought he had colic, and it was a hernia. I didn’t even know that babies could get them.” She looked up at him. “I’ll never forget what you did for him. Giving blood, I mean. It probably saved his life. Micah thought so, at least.”
“God couldn’t have been that cruel to you, sweetheart,” he said gently. “Not after all you’ve been through.”
A tiny smile flared on her lips. “And now I know you�
��ve been living with a minister. Because that sounds very much more like Jake Blair than it does like you!”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
ROURKE REALIZED AFTER a minute that she was teasing, and he grinned. “Well, yes, I’m occupying his spare bedroom. And trying to behave myself. It’s not easy.”
She smiled back. “He might rub off on you.”
“The reverse is more likely.”
“He drives a red Ford Cobra,” she said. “It isn’t exactly the sort of car I’d picture a minister driving, you know?”
He chuckled as he followed her down the hall to the nursery. “He wasn’t always a minister.”
“Oh? What was he?”
He hesitated. “Probably best not to mention it,” he said. “No offense. Small towns, and all.”
“I see. He was like you, then.”
He lifted an eyebrow. He sobered as he met her soft eyes. “Ya. Just like me, in a lot of ways. He was never the sort to settle down, or so I thought. But now he has a daughter just a few years younger than you, and a grandchild on the way.”
She put the sleeping baby into his crib on his side and covered him with a light blanket. “Children change people,” she said after a minute.
He stared at her covertly. “I imagine they do,” he said. “You look quite natural with a child in your arms, Tat.”
She didn’t look at him. “Thanks,” she said huskily. “If it was a compliment…”
“It was.” He moved to stand beside her and look down at the sleeping baby, at his son. His own flesh and blood. Something inside him that had been frozen began to thaw.
“I’m sorry that your engagement didn’t work out,” she said.
He drew in a breath. “You know why I got engaged, Tat. You won’t say it out loud, because you don’t want me to feel guilty.”
She flushed. “I don’t understand.”
“I made sure that everyone around me knew about the engagement, so that it would get back to you.” His face grew hard and cold. “I don’t know how a man can make up for years of cruelty. All I can remember is how badly I’ve hurt you. I can’t even remember why I did it,” he lied.
She couldn’t look at him. “Maybe it’s not a bad thing that you’ve lost some memories, Stanton,” she said at last. “You can start over, start fresh. Charlene might not have been the right woman, but you’ll find someone who is.” It hurt her to say it, but she was fairly certain that he was unlikely to regain his memory after so long a time.
His heart sank. She wasn’t encouraging him. How could he expect her to? He’d done so much damage.
He stuck his hands in the pockets of his slacks. “There’s something I wanted to ask you, about Lopez.”
She looked up. “Jack Lopez?” she asked, surprised.
“Ya. Is it getting serious?”
Her heart jumped. “Well, not really,” she said. “I mean, he picks up things for me at the store sometimes, and I see him at public events. But I haven’t invited him here.”
“Is there a reason for that?” he asked quietly.
She frowned. “Not a lucid one. He’s very nice. He goes out of his way to help me and he seems to like the baby. But there’s something…” She laughed suddenly. “I suppose being ill has made me a bit twitchy.”
“He makes you nervous. And not in a good way,” he replied.
She turned and looked up at him. “How do you know that?”
He lifted his hands to her shoulders and rested them there, looking down at her. “You and I go back a long way. A very long way. I guess I’ve learned your body language—at least well enough to know when something unsettles you.”
“I’m sure it’s just my imagination,” she said, trying not to let him see how it affected her to have him so close.
His hands framed her face, lifting it to his intent gaze. “I make you nervous, Tat,” he said softly. “But not in a way that frightens you.”
She swallowed. Her heart was already racing. “Stanton…” she protested.
He moved closer, so that he was right against her, so that she could feel the heat and strength of his body. “I’ve lost so many memories,” he whispered as his head bent. “But I think I remember this…”
His mouth brushed softly over her lips. He expected her to fight him, to draw back, to be angry. But she didn’t protest at all. Her breath caught. Her hands, flat against his chest, tightened with a flood of sensation that she hadn’t felt in almost a year.
He knew that, too.
“I never touched Charlene,” he murmured against her soft mouth. “I haven’t touched anyone else, either, since I was wounded.”
That was surprising. It was exciting, too. She could taste coffee on his lips. They were warm, and firm, and confident as they teased hers. Her eyes closed on a wave of hunger so strong that she moaned.
“Why does this feel so familiar?” he whispered. “We’ve done this before, haven’t we, Tat?” he whispered, feeling his way. He didn’t want to confess what he knew. He didn’t dare.
She didn’t answer him. But her arms stole up and around his neck so that he could deepen the kiss.
He lifted her against him, so that they were so close that air could hardly pass between them. His mouth opened on her welcoming lips, and he gave in to the hunger that had started to consume him with the return of his memory.
“I don’t remember anything recent,” he said, deliberately stretching the truth. “But I remember when you were seventeen,” he groaned into her mouth. “I was in Manaus on a job and I came by to see you on Christmas Eve. Just an impulse. You were wearing a green dress and I thought I’d never seen any woman so beautiful. I kissed you and it was like starting a brushfire. We were on the sofa, your mother’s sofa. We went so far that it was almost impossible to stop, even when we heard your mother coming in the front door.”
She gasped. “Yes…”
His hand was behind her head, tangling in her hair. “I wanted you…to the point of madness. Just as I want you now, right now… Kiss me, Tat!”
His mouth was insistent, devouring, on her soft lips. He groaned harshly as one lean hand slid down her back and ground her hips into the arousal he didn’t even bother to hide from her. She didn’t fight. She couldn’t. She pressed closer to him and let the world fall away.
A long time later, he forced himself to draw back. He grimaced. “The stitches… I forgot! I’m so sorry, Tat!”
She was hanging at his lips, her blue eyes open wide, her breath coming in little gasps. “Sorry?” she whispered, dazed.
“The stitches.” His hand moved between them to touch, gently, the scar under her cotton slacks on her flat belly.
“Oh. Those stitches. I didn’t notice…” She stopped and flushed.
He smiled gently. “And you still don’t really know how to kiss, do you, darling?” he teased softly.
“I…” She swallowed, hard. “Well, I haven’t…”
His nose brushed against hers. “Not even with your husband?” he asked quietly.
She bit her lip. She didn’t dare admit that. He was very quick. He might guess, about Joshua.
“Foolish question. You have a child.” He grimaced. “Sorry.”
“It’s all right.”
His fingers brushed lightly over her flushed cheek. “You’re so beautiful, Tat,” he said in a tone like velvet. “Eyes like cornflowers. Hair like pale silk. But you’re too thin. You’ve had a hell of a bad time, and I haven’t helped. If I could go back and change things, I would.”
“Life happens,” she said simply. “We make choices and then we live with them.”
His face went hard. “Sometimes we make stupid choices and other people pay for them, too,” he said, thinking back to the assignment he could have refused. If he had, he and Tat would be married. H
e’d have been with her all through her pregnancy, and Sapara would never have threatened her.
“You still understand Afrikaans, don’t you?” he asked abruptly.
“Yes, of course.”
He switched to that tongue and gave her a very odd instruction.
“I don’t understand,” she faltered.
“You don’t need to. Things are going on around you that you can’t know about. You must trust me. Just this once. Do what I tell you to do. For your sake, and the baby’s.”
She felt uncomfortable. “You think there are bugs in my house,” she said suddenly, still in Afrikaans.
“Yes, I do,” he said, without adding that he had other suspicions, as well. “If your cowboy friend comes here unexpectedly, you remember what I said, right?”
“But, why?” she asked.
“Remember when I came and got you out of Ngawa, without telling you why?”
“Yes,” she replied.
“It’s like that. I know things I can’t tell you. But I want nothing more desperately than your safety. So, just do what I say. Okay?”
“Okay.” It touched her that he was so concerned, although she wondered why.
He bent and brushed his lips across hers. “You should lay into me with an iron skillet. Tippy would loan you hers.”
She smiled softly. “I don’t think she would anymore. You saved Joshua’s life,” she added. “If you hadn’t donated blood, Dr. Steele might not have been able to operate in time.”
He thought about that, and it made his stomach drop. His own child, and he hadn’t known when he’d gone to donate blood. “Coincidences happen, don’t they?” he asked to mislead her.
“They do.” She was relieved that he hadn’t connected the similarity in blood types between himself and Joshua.
He let her go, reluctantly, and looked down at his child. He felt a surge of pride that hit him right in the heart, but he didn’t dare let it show.
“He’s a handsome boy,” he said gently. “Looks just like you, Tat.”