A Mother's Love, page 7
Bolting awake, she heard that last thought and sat straight up. “What are you thinking, Kyra Tierney?” she said aloud. “Haven’t you learned your lesson yet?”
The solicitor had expected the paperwork for the adoption to take a few weeks, but he’d filed to give her rights to take the baby out of the country, and that was expected to be returned in a day or two. No one objected to Kyra’s claim of adoption, especially as there was no one on Thomas’s side to step in.
As soon as she had the paperwork Kyra would have to go home. Away from the much-too-appealing Dylan Jones.
Why did that idea give her such a hole in her heart?
DYLAN SAFELY DELIVERED his mother to her sister’s house, where she was tucked in and properly fussed over. Doris clucked and brought Emma in to sit and have some tea. She was suffering simply from too much work. “Taking care of a baby at her age!”
And yet, as Dylan left, there was still so much Emma tried to cram into his brain. “Mother,” he said. “If I find some disaster I cannot handle, I promise I will call you.” Pressing a hand to her shoulder, Dylan murmured, “Kyra and the baby will be all right.”
But when he walked into the cottage an hour later, he was not entirely sure that was true. Mother and daughter sat in the rocking chair, both of them crying—Merry with great gulping sobs, and Kyra simply weeping, tears streaming down her pretty cheeks, her nose running.
“I am an absolute failure at this,” she said when he came in.
“No, no,” he said, gently taking the baby. “Has she been crying like this for long?”
“She did for about ninety minutes, then she fell asleep, then she started up again about, oh, twenty minutes ago. I’ve changed her. I tried feeding her.”
Merry snuffled into Dylan’s shoulder, rubbing her face hard on his shirt. “Why don’t you go wash your face and take a little break? I’ll heat a bottle and we’ll see if that does the trick.”
Kyra nodded wearily. “How is your mother?”
“She’ll be fine.”
In the kitchen, Dylan took out a prepared bottle and popped it in the microwave for a minute. The baby cried piteously on his shoulder, wiggling her little body, everything in her rigid and irritated. He patted her back and murmured nonsense words to soothe her, and still she mewled, exhausted.
His sister’s youngest had been a very colicky child, and he knew it exhausted both baby and mother. Holding her close, he pressed little kisses on her nose, her cheeks, and she turned her head fast, trying to nurse on his nose. Her eyes were swollen from crying. “Why are you giving her such a hard time, huh? She loves you.”
When the timer dinged, he took the bottle out, tested it for temperature and rubbed the nipple against the baby’s cheek. She halted midcry and turned, her mouth opening avidly. She clamped down with ferocity and began to nurse.
Kyra came into the kitchen. “And in five minutes you have her calmed down. I don’t know what I did wrong.”
“Nothing,” he said. “Sometimes babies just cry. She wore herself out and now she’s hungry, and when we put her down, I’m guessing she’ll sleep a good long stretch.”
“So will I!”
“You don’t have to wait up. I’ll stay the night, too. We can share the care of her.”
“I’m not going to say no—at least to the staying overnight. I slept on the couch for a while, though. I’m not ready to go to bed yet.” She tugged on a sweater that hung on a hook by the door. “I’ll be outside.”
Merry gulped the bottle, and Dylan expertly burped her, then put her down in her bed. She fell asleep in minutes. Dylan looked down at her for a long time, avoiding the moment he would have to join Kyra. There were so many wildly conflicting emotions warring in his head. His heart. Merry was part of it, his sense of connection to her, his sense of responsibility to Thomas.
But most of it was his confusion over the intensity of his reaction to Kyra herself. Even now, knowing she was sitting out there in the cool night, he wanted to go out there and simply hold her. It was much deeper than a sexual feeling, though of course he wanted her sexually, as well. But this was a sense of having waited for her.
Or maybe he was a romantic idiot.
A whisper of an idea wafted through him, ridiculous and sensible at once: what if they married, he and Kyra, to give Merry the home she deserved? It would not be unpleasant, he was sure.
But he imagined offering Kyra a marriage of convenience and the shuttering of her face.
And was that even what he wanted? He didn’t know. He felt tangled and hungry and aroused and irritated that this stranger should have so much of an effect on him.
A marriage of convenience, my eye, said a voice in his head.
Dylan dismissed everything and went outside to sit with the poor, exhausted woman, leaving the door open so they could hear Merry if she cried.
Kyra sat on a stone bench facing the sea. “Is she asleep?”
He settled next to her, breathing in the salty taste of night and sea and fish. “Soundly, I suspect.”
“I was doing all right the first time,” she said. “I just let her cry and I was fine, and it seemed to me that she would cry herself out eventually and that getting upset would just make it harder on both of us.”
He took her hand and she allowed it.
“She fell asleep and so did I. And then she just woke up screaming. As if she was in pain. And I couldn’t figure out what was wrong and I felt so terrible about it.”
“Imagine,” Dylan said, “that you have only one way to tell the world what you want. She woke up furious and hungry and nothing would do but to let you know that.”
Kyra nodded. “I really started wondering tonight if I have what it takes.”
A chill moved in him. “Do you mean you might not go through with the adoption?”
“I don’t want to torture her the rest of her life. I mean, I really know what it’s like to have a lousy mother.”
He rubbed his index finger around the edge of the nail on her thumb. “Is that it? Or are you ducking away from taking responsibility?”
“Please don’t use that tone of voice with me. I’m not the one who was running all over the world. I step up to my responsibilities. But I’m terrible at being her mother. Maybe I just need to recognize that I’m not a good mother.”
The tenseness in him broke. “Ah, my lovely,” he said, pulling her under his chin. “Did you do yoga perfectly the first time you tried it? Did you learn to read in a day?”
She looked up at him. “No.”
“Why would you think you’d know how to care for a baby right out of the gate?”
She nodded. “I see your point. Thank you.”
“Anytime.”
Kyra was quiet for a time. Then she said, “Dylan, isn’t it going to kill you to wave goodbye to her?”
“It will. But I’ll come see her. And send eccentric presents.”
She chuckled. “You might have to go a long way into eccentric to outwit the eccentrics at Yogariffic.”
“You love that business, don’t you?”
“I love yoga,” she said. “And I like the challenge of making everything fit together so that the business can succeed. But I’m not sure I’m happy with the direction we were going. Africa wanted to go upscale and bring in all these extras that just don’t feel right to me.”
“So now you can eliminate whatever doesn’t feel authentic.”
“But that feels like dishonoring her memory.”
Dylan nodded. “Sadly, life goes on.”
It was so very quiet. The sea whispered below, and there was no wind, and her hand felt right in his own. “I wish you weren’t going,” he said without realizing he was going to say it.
She looked at him soberly.
Dylan continued, “I wish we had some time to explore this.”
Her gaze lit on their hands, which felt to him as if they’d fit forever just this way. “We have tonight, don’t we? Let’s talk.”
“All right,” he said and put his arm around her. “Long as you sit close to keep me warm.”
“I don’t mind.”
Dylan felt aroused mentally and emotionally as well as physically as they curled close beneath the boughs of the tree, trying to keep warm. He pulled her next to his ribs and wrapped his arms around her. She tucked her legs over his, and they were warm enough.
“You fit me,” he said.
Kyra nestled into the hollow of his shoulder, her hand slipping inside his coat. “Did you go to their wedding? Africa and Thomas?”
“I didn’t. They eloped at Gretna Green.”
“How traditional.” She chuckled against him, and he liked her for knowing what it was.
“Why haven’t you married?” he asked.
“Well, not for lack of trying. I’ve been engaged twice. Both times the groom-to-be changed his mind.”
“Ah. That’s my tale, too.”
“Your groom changed his mind?”
“No, my bride-to-be left me at the altar in front of the town. At that old stone church you know.”
“Literally at the altar?”
He nodded, realizing that the sting of it had finally subsided. He lifted a shoulder. “Things happen, don’t they?”
“No, that’s not right, Dylan. That was wrong of her. There were a hundred ways not to humiliate you. She didn’t have to do it that way.” Kyra shook her head. “I hate it that that happened to you.”
“Thank you.” He lifted her hand, kissed her fingers. “I hated it, too.”
“Was she the love of your life?”
“I thought so at the time. How about you? Who was the love of your life?”
She wiggled her foot and he wondered if she realized it. “Oh, I haven’t really chosen very well. Africa always told me that. Both times I fell for a bad boy. Like you.”
He spluttered. “I’m not a bad boy! I’m an engineer.”
“You play Celtic fiddle.”
“So?”
“And you look like—”
He grinned. “Like?”
“This was actually supposed to be about me, wasn’t it?”
“Ah, I forgot. Yes, the loves of your life. Bad boys and bad judgment.”
She sighed. “Not even worth it. I learned my lesson.”
“Oh, no you don’t. You can’t get off the hook that easily. I want the chance to be outraged on your behalf.”
A small laugh fell from her lips. “Okay, okay. Robert was my college beau. He loved motorcycles and rock climbing and we had a great…um…time. He broke our engagement on my birthday, and I never heard another word from him ever again.”
“Bastard!”
Kyra grinned. “The other engagement was a couple of years ago. He was a pilot. Very handsome, very charming. He started coming to Yogariffic with a flight attendant girlfriend and came back on his own. We were together for three years. It turned out he had a girl in every port, as they say. One of them called me. It was pretty embarrassing.”
He cuddled her close. “I’m not a jerk like those guys.”
“How can I possibly know that, though? It wasn’t as if the other two told me so.”
He thought about that for a long while, watching stars dance on the dark water. “When I think of Maeve, my ex-fiancée, I think about how she spoke of travel. She loved to travel, go far away, and she was so independent that she didn’t really didn’t need anyone else.” Rubbing his head along the crown of her head, he said, “I knew she would never stay in a little Welsh town and have babies with me. She didn’t, but I did.”
“So are you saying I probably knew at the start?”
“There were things you knew from the start that you chose to overlook. That’s what we do.”
“Why?”
“To fall in love,” he said. “That’s what we’re all trying to do. Connect. Find that special person.”
“And yet, look how often we’re wrong!”
He nodded. A ripple of nervousness moved through his gut, and he knew he was going to do it. Suggest it. He cleared his throat, playing with her fingers.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
“I am.” He raised his head and looked at her pixie face. Her clear eyes. “Maybe the trick is to make a different kind of connection. One that isn’t based in emotion but in reason.”
She inclined her head, undaunted. “Like arranged marriages?”
“Exactly.” He paused then. “What if we, for example, married to give that baby a sweet life? A solid life.”
He felt her body go utterly still. “For example? Or is that a real suggestion?”
“Would it be so odd?”
“I don’t know.” She pursed her lips, and in that moment he saw the levelheaded businesswoman who had built an empire. “No,” she said finally. “If it’s an arrangement made in the same way as any other kind of partnership, with clear parameters and requirements, it wouldn’t be odd. There is…a certain chemistry between us. And you’re a man of reason.”
There was a war between his reasonable side, which said this was all exactly as it should be, and his emotional, Celtic side, which said it was much too cold and rational. “Shall we consider it, then? Talk it out?”
“Yes,” she said. “You would have to come to Denver, because I can’t leave my business.”
“I would imagine they build bridges there. I’d like to get back to roadworks.”
Kyra laughed. “Oh, believe me, the I-25 corridor is one big construction zone!”
“For myself,” he said, “I would not like it to be a false marriage. I would insist that we honor a vow of fidelity and commitment.”
She swallowed. “That would be fine with me.” She inclined her head. “And I would like another child.”
“Of course.” His chest hurt with it.
As their eyes met, the air grew suddenly thick between them, buzzing with possibilities. A soaring sense of happiness burst in him, and he kissed her knuckles. “Shall we agree to marry, then?”
Kyra’s eyes closed, and he saw that she struggled with emotion. After a moment, she opened them and straightened her spine. “Yes,” she said firmly. “I think it will be a good partnership.”
Suddenly the narrowing world of his life expanded, widened, looked as fruitful as anything he’d ever dreamed, and he knew that, at least from his own side, he was in love with her. It didn’t matter, though. The deal would be made from a much more logical place, built like a bridge between a man and a woman who would each honor their agreements.
“There is one more thing,” she said and stood, holding out her hand.
“What would that be, my lovely?”
“We should test our physical compatibility.”
“That,” he said, standing up with a dry throat, “can certainly be arranged.”
CHAPTER NINE
THEY WENT INSIDE AND checked on Merry, who was absolutely conked out, exhausted by her long crying spell. “Good exercise, all that crying,” Dylan said, reaching in to adjust the blanket.
“She’s so precious,” Kyra said.
“Yes.” He took her hand, inclined his head. “For her sake, I think we should explore this last bit of compatibility.”
“I didn’t ask if you have protection,” Kyra said.
“A smart man is always prepared,” he said with a rakish, devilishly sexy grin, and Kyra felt little explosions of desire burst all over her flesh once again.
He led her into a spare bedroom furnished with a small double bed and a chest of drawers and a window spilling thin white light into the room. He pulled back the blankets on the bed and kicked off his shoes, while she stood there, suddenly realizing she had not showered all day and probably smelled of baby and weariness and all sorts of things. “Maybe I should shower!” she whispered.
He came around the bed to her, put his hands on her shoulders and kissed her. “I doubt it.”
Just the nearness of him made her knees feel jointless, her hips soft, as if her legs would collapse beneath her and open just for him. That soft scent of rain, fresh and heady, filled her sinuses, and her mouth opened beneath his to accept the graceful, clever sweep of his tongue, which invited her own to waltz. And there they stood for long moments, kissing and kissing, bodies barely touching. His hands moved over her shoulders, up her neck to her skull, and she loved the tenderness in the way he cupped her head, tilting it backward to give him access to her throat. His mouth moved exquisitely down her neck, over her collarbones, and she had to grab his shoulders to keep from swaying.
“Let’s take off our shirts,” she whispered. “Just that for now.”
He raised his head, nostrils flaring, and nodded. He began to unbutton his shirt, and she reached for the hem of her T-shirt and skimmed it over her head, then without fanfare reached around and unhooked her bra. He let his shirt fall to the floor.
His chest and shoulders were beautiful, not too muscular but nicely rounded, firm. Scattered hair from nipple to nipple, a lean belly she brushed with her palm. As if he understood she needed to lead, he stood there allowing her brushing exploration over his torso.
But as she explored with her hands, he devoured her with his eyes and spoke softly, the accent deepening, his voice going darkly husky. “You’ve have beautiful breasts. Such dark nipples. I have been thinking a lot about how they might taste.”
She pulled his hands up to the aching flesh. “Taste away.”
He sat on the bed and pulled her into his lap, putting her breasts at a level he could fully appreciate. His hands lifted her, and meditatively he stroked circles around the flesh, arousing her even more, and his thumbs rubbed over the vividly aroused tips. “Beautiful,” he said, and Kyra, straddling him, pressed their clothed parts closer together. He made a low groaning noise and bent his head to take her into his mouth.
An explosion of sensation burst through her, and she arched into the heat and pleasure of that hot mouth, that slippery tongue, the elegant rub of his lightly nipping teeth. A depth of sensation built between her legs, almost too much, and she pulled away, shocked that she might come before she even had her clothes off.
