Authors: Jennifer Greene
Her whole body was trembling. He’d almost died? He’d made a choice in which his life was at risk. She wound her arms around him, bit her lip and forced back tears.
“It’s over,” he said roughly. “Forget it, Kay. You wanted to know. Now you know. We’ll never talk of it again.” His face was grave, hovering over hers, worldly and old and fiercely possessive as he stroked her hair and took her lips again and again, willing a different kind of trembling to overtake her body.
The soft blanket crushed against her bare skin. Fire licked and spit in the hearth, and shadows climbed up the walls. Their breathing became increasingly labored. Once, Kay felt a cool, smooth gem beneath her and Mitch’s hand swept it away as if it were a bothersome pebble, almost making her smile. His precious stones were suddenly not so precious. There was clearly only one thing on his mind.
And he was different.
He wasn’t a new lover anymore. He knew exactly what he wanted and he claimed it. His touch was tender and in no way rough, but there was a dominance, a sureness as he claimed his right to touch, to stroke, to kiss, to tease.
Mitch was primal male, strong, overpowering. When he stripped off the rest of his clothes and she saw his naked body by firelight, she felt a searing awareness of her own vulnerability. What hurt him, hurt her. What gave him pleasure gave her infinite quantities of the same.
With exquisite tenderness, he entered her. She surged toward him in a frantic attempt to be part of him. For his years of loneliness—and for her own, for she suddenly realized that until Mitch she
had
been lonely—there was no possible way she could get close enough. Her heart suddenly ached with fear, and Mitch whispered to her, over and over; he whispered silken love words and he whispered promises of a golden world inhabited by just the two of them, and on a satin thread of ecstasy, he claimed her soul.
***
Except for the crackle of Sunday newspapers, there was total silence in Mitch’s bedroom. With a pillow behind her head, Kay lay flat on the carpet, with her legs crossed and her feet propped up on Mitch’s lap. A coffee mug was perched precariously on her chest as she turned a page.
Mitch was sprawled more conventionally on the couch, one hand holding the paper and the other resting on Kay’s ankle. When he tossed down one section to pick up another, he inevitably glanced down at Kay with an amused smile.
“You’ve been reading the classifieds for better than twenty minutes.”
“Want ads are fascinating. Especially the personals. Listen.” She crackled the paper. “‘DWM.’ I assume that means divorced white male? ‘Looking for nice lady around fifty. Don’t smoke or drink, financially secure, not fat—but no heavy night action.’” Kay laid down the page. “I thought it was funny when I first read it. Now I think it’s sad.”
“
Resist
the urge to call him up and take him home,” Mitch advised dryly.
“I wasn’t going to,” Kay said indignantly.
“I know you better.”
“Well, the poor guy. Having to advertise in the paper. He sounds so lonely…”
Mitch reached down and replaced her want ads with the safer sports section. “It’s no wonder you fill that house of yours up with orphans. And
don’t
read page six. The guy who tore a few ligaments made three million dollars last year.”
“Which would hardly make up for—”
She heard Mitch sigh heavily, and mutter something under his breath that sounded distinctly like “softie.” Grinning, she flipped through the sports section until she found the crossword page. She raised a hand and found Mitch dropping a pencil in it before she even needed to ask.
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
“You’re getting pretty good at that.”
“At what?”
“Anticipating what I want to do before I want to do it.” Kay sighed. “Could you have anticipated that I just spilled the last of my cold coffee on my sweat shirt?”
Mitch chuckled. “If you’re determined to read lying on the floor—”
“I am.”
“Well, then.”
Kay set down the empty cup and newspaper and stood up with a disgusted look at the stain on her stomach. “I’m becoming slovenly,” she announced. She took two steps toward the bathroom before flipping her head back. “And if you loved me even a thimbleful, you would have instantly denied that.”
“I’d rather help you take a shower.”
“A spot no bigger than a quarter hardly rates a shower.”
“See? You’re becoming slovenly.” Hooded eyes studied her. “I could wash all the difficult places for you,” he coaxed. “The backs of your knees. Between your shoulders—”
“And then you’d want me to wash all those difficult places on you, too.”
“You have a dirty mind,” he said admiringly. “You’re also smart.”
“What I am is still wandering around in yesterday’s clothes. And instead of going home and making the necessary repairs, I discover you’re as bad a Sunday paper addict as I am.” Flipping on the light switch, she disappeared into the bathroom, rubbing briskly at the stain on her stomach with a washcloth.
“We could move your things over here, and then we wouldn’t have that problem,” Mitch called out. “We could even get married and make it legal.”
Kay’s hand stilled, and her head abruptly lifted. The teasing note had suddenly left his voice. And a disgraceful image confronted her in the mirror; a woman whose hair hadn’t seen a curling iron in twenty-four hours, a face without makeup, lips that were redder than usual—and with good reason.
The lady looked definitely well loved.
The lady
felt
definitely well loved.
“Kay?”
She loved him. She’d loved before, but no one like Mitch, never like Mitch. And she couldn’t think of anything she wanted more than to wake up next to him, day after day, for the rest of her life. So why did she feel so
anxious,
suddenly?
“Have you drowned in there?” Mitch called out mildly.
“Nope.” Tossing down the washcloth, she hurriedly whipped Mitch’s brush through her hair and bounced out of the bathroom, her smile ready and her heart quaking.
Mitch only needed one look. “I shook you up?” he asked quietly.
“Of course not.”
“And badly? Come here, you.” He raised an arm at the same time that he shifted to a sitting position and set down the paper.
Dressed in old cords and a sweatshirt far older than hers and still barefoot on this lazy morning, he still had a special alertness in his eyes that unsettled her as he grabbed her hand and pulled her down beside him. Before she could dissemble, he’d gently brushed back the hair from her forehead and tilted up her chin so there was no hiding from him. Leaning over, he first kissed her forehead, then the very tip of her nose. “I happen to like the idea of your things hanging next to mine in the closet. Don’t tell me that idea terrifies you?”
His voice was deliberately gentle, teasing. “Hardly,” Kay said with equal lightness, but she couldn’t stop the little catch in her voice.
“Toothpaste would be cheaper if we could buy two tubes at a time.” His lips touched down on her chin.
“Think of that.”
“We could fight about all kinds of things. Drawer space. How many rooms we’re going to do in red. Whether we’re ever going to let you eat blueberry muffins in bed again. Who’s going to clean up after I cook. Doesn’t that sound like fun?”
Unfortunately, it did. She nuzzled her cheek in the hollow of his shoulder so he would stop tantalizing her with those itty-bitty kisses and tried to frame a coherent reply. He didn’t give her the chance.
“I’m not going to let you go, you know,” he murmured. “You didn’t think I just wanted an affair, Kay?”
She shook her head, closing her eyes as she felt the gentle stroke of his hand down her shoulder and arm. The touch wasn’t sexual but soothing, protective. The nagging anxiety in her head made no sense; she couldn’t even name it. Mitch sounded as sure as she felt. She wanted desperately to believe that his feelings were just that strong, but his proposal had followed too close on the heels of their first lovemaking. For Mitch, that lovemaking had been the first time ever, even if he didn’t know she had figured that out. Sexual feelings often carried that sweet label of love with them…and just as often one set of feelings could be confused with the other. “We haven’t known each other very long,” she ventured quietly.
“That one won’t go, love. People change. I expect to still be getting to know you fifty years from now.” When she parted her lips, Mitch raised a firm fingertip to them. “You want time,” he said softly.
She nodded unhappily, miserable at the thought that she was hurting him. She didn’t want time—she wanted to give
him
time…but she couldn’t tell him that.
“So you’ll have your time. A little of it, Kay.” His dark eyes seared hers. “I already know that time is the most precious commodity there is. Don’t waste a second of it, Kay. You can never have it again.”
“Mitch—”
He stood up abruptly, turning away from her. Something had changed in Kay’s feelings; he didn’t know what it was. She’d shown no hesitation in pursuing the relationship…until now.
Until they’d made love. Dammit. Had he failed her?
“Oh, yeah? So how exactly are you supposed to tell when it’s love and when it’s just sex, anyway?”
Why,
Kay thought wryly, did her ninth graders have to ask the really big questions today? It was the last day before Christmas holidays;
now
her ninth graders had decided to get into it?
“If you want a pat answer to that one, I don’t have it,” Kay admitted. She had divided the class into discussion groups, and she’d made the unfortunate mistake of pausing by her six most inquisitive girls. Sprawled on the floor, festooned with pinned-on holly and Christmas bells, the ninth graders looked too young to be asking such questions. “No one’s ever been able to come up with an exact list of symptoms of being in love.”
“But you said experimenting with sex just for sex’s sake was a sure way to get hurt,” Janey objected. A freckle-faced girl with a long ponytail, she habitually squinted and only wore her glasses during tests.
“I did.”
“So we were talking about really caring for somebody. How’s that
wrong
then, as long as you really care?”
Kay crouched down, the group moving to make room for her in their circle. “There is never anything
wrong
with your feelings,” she said gently. “We talked about that, and it matters that you understand and believe it. And I wasn’t trying to make a rule for you as to what you should or shouldn’t do with your boyfriend—or boyfriends.
Your
values are the ones that are going to have to determine that. I
was
suggesting that you see the difference between sexual feelings and love feelings. They can be related but they’re not the same.”
“Janey, you keep asking the same dumb questions,” Roberta said in a bored voice. “When are you going to get the picture? Sex is a big high. So is the free fall when you jump off a cliff. Landing is the cruncher, so don’t get carried away by the first big thrill.”
“I don’t remember putting it quite that way,” Kay said wryly.
“You didn’t have to,” Roberta said, leaning back with a yawn, all Miss Experience. “I never thought sex was all it was cracked up to be, anyway. I mean, why risk getting pregnant for a five-minute rush at a drive-in movie with a payoff of a Coke at McDonald’s afterward? No thanks.”
Janey’s eyes widened. “Have you really—?”
“We’re talking about
values,
”Kay interjected rapidly. “Being sure that the pleasure of being physically close to someone isn’t all we’re really feeling when we call it love. Sexual feelings are so powerful at times that they can be confused with love. If you take your time, and know your partner well, you have a much better chance of being sure of your feelings. Now, does that help, Janey?”
Janey hesitated.
“She wants you to give her permission to go one more step with Jeff,” Roberta said wearily. “Miss Sanders isn’t going to do that, you fool. She just said that if you don’t feel sure about your own feelings, you should lay off until you do. In other words, tell him to get his hands up five inches or take a hike.”
“Roberta.”
“Sorry,” Roberta said unrepentantly. “I’ve liked this class, Miss Sanders,” she added. “You’re terrific, but sometimes you have to talk a little straighter. I mean, her boyfriend’s telling her to—” Kay’s hand clamped across Roberta’s mouth “—or get off the pot. And you’ve tried to tell her a dozen times that he doesn’t have the right to push. In other words, she should tell him to stick it up his—” Again, Kay’s hand sealed Roberta’s mouth.
The sound of the bell had never been so welcome to Kay’s ears.
When she left the school building, Kay noted speckles of white fluff in the air, but the snow really wasn’t trying very hard. A big, lukewarm, watery sun peeked out from behind a few gray clouds, and the sidewalks were wet.
Restlessness stole into her bloodstream, and refused to leave. The kids had been infected with it, except for that last class. Everyone was filled with that sense of anticipation that dominated the holidays. Expectations and anxieties and hopes, and suddenly the world turned high-strung.
Walking it off seemed the best answer. Mitch was out of town for the day. At home she had nothing more interesting to do than clean; being Kay, she had already bought most of her presents by Thanksgiving. That would have left the tree still to do, but Mitch had taken care of that three days before.
A fleeting smile touched her features, and then died. Mitch was serious about wanting to marry her. She was desperately serious about wanting to spend the rest of her life with him. She had no doubts whatsoever about her own feelings. When you found a man who shared the important things, a man who was a giver, who was intelligent and warm and gentle and exhaustingly creative when the lights were out…you latched on to him, and you didn’t let go.
It was Mitch’s feelings that increasingly concerned her. How many times had she said it to the ninth graders? First sexual feelings are incredibly powerful. But they aren’t necessarily love.
That shimmer of doubt kept edging up into her consciousness. Mitch hadn’t played before. Naturally, his feelings were running pretty strong and pretty sure—but just as naturally, they could be entirely sexual. When the fireworks simmered down, maybe he was going to wish he had a few more notches on his belt.
Who was kidding whom? She was a perky lady with big eyes and a nice figure…and she’d had the sense—and the bullheadedness—to coax him out of his shell. But she was hardly a femme fatale. With a little more confidence who was to say he couldn’t at least look around for a lady who was less rosy and more voluptuous and who could grow plants? That he’d get the invitations she had no doubt.
Since the weekend, she’d been trying to give him space. For weeks, they’d been seeing each other almost daily, and Kay couldn’t have felt worse, thinking up excuses why she was suddenly busy every day of the past week. On Wednesday, he hadn’t listened; he’d barged in with that huge crazy Christmas tree… They’d laughed so much…
And she’d sent him home alone, truthfully the last thing she wanted to do. But Mitch
had
to be sure of his feelings for her. A woman felt something special for her first lover; there was no reason why a man should feel any differently. That first introduction to sexual pleasures could overwhelm a relationship, and that was exactly what she was afraid was happening with Mitch. If she could talk to him…but Mitch was long on male pride, and his lack of experience was something he clearly hadn’t wanted her to be aware of.
Talking wasn’t the problem anyway. Time was. Time out of bed. Time for Mitch to see exactly what they had apart from sexual chemistry.
Time, Kay thought glumly. It sounded good, but after only a week without him, she was miserable. What if he used that time to look around and try his new wings on the rest of the female population?
***
Rhoda took one look at Mitch and burst into peals of laughter. “Merry Christmas, Santa!”
Mitch scowled. “Just tell me where I can get out of this outfit before I turn into a furnace.”
“Mitch, it’s adorable,” Rhoda protested teasingly.
Mitch glanced around the corridor and then pulled out the pillow that was padding his stomach. Dots of moisture beaded his forehead from the heat of the Santa suit. Kay had talked him into the charade…and truth to tell, he’d enjoyed every minute of it. Kay had wrapped the dozens of presents and put them in a huge sack. She’d also pasted on the cotton fluff that was itching his chin like poison ivy. It really wasn’t a nice thing to do to a man at five o’clock in the morning.
And now it was nine, and parents were starting to flood into the hospital. Kay and Mitch had thought about those first lonely hours when the children were awake and no one was there, when memories of other Christmases weighed down on them, when they pictured their siblings tearing the wrapping paper off presents around the tree at dawn…
that
was the hour Santa had decided to visit the hospital this year. And Mitch had the terrible feeling Kay was going to talk him into doing it next Christmas as well.
“I’ve lost Mrs. Claus,” Mitch growled to Rhoda.
“She’s in the nursery.” Rhoda’s eyes couldn’t stop teasing.
“I’ve also lost my clothes.”
“You know, just watching the two of you this year was almost worth having to work over the holidays.” Rhoda motioned to the supply room near the nurses’ station. “Kay stuck your clothes back there, if you really have to change.” Her eyes flicked past him and then widened. “Mitch,” she whispered.
Mitch pivoted around, to see a little boy trying to maneuver himself down the hall in a wheelchair. His eyes were like black diamonds, staring at Mitch. Mitch’s features softened; he wielded his all-but-empty sack in front of his now-too-flat stomach, and let out a brisk “ho-ho-ho” as he sauntered off, hot as an oven, to spread a little more Christmas cheer.
***
An hour later he wandered toward the nursery, feeling infinitely cooler in a simple pair of navy flannel slacks and red shirt. He’d conned Rhoda into letting him steal fifteen minutes in the nurses’ shower, and his hair was still slightly damp…just as his cheeks were still a rather flaming red from the removal of his beard glue.
He passed room after room, occasionally hearing a little voice breathlessly relating to parents how Santa had already been there that morning, but beyond a vague smile, he paid no attention. At the moment, claiming Kay was the only thing on his mind.
Huge glass windows encased the soundproof nursery. A dozen cribs were lined up in the center of the room, only four of them in use. One red-faced urchin was screaming its tiny head off, and two others were swaddled white bundles of sleeping bliss.
The fourth baby was in Kay’s arms. Mitch paused, staring at her through the glass. The last time he’d seen her she’d been dressed as Mrs. Claus—white wig, rotund tummy and all. Her face had been animated and full of laughter; she’d been tossing up ribbons and silver paper and gleefully making a terrible mess for the hospital staff to clean up.
At the moment, there were tears in her eyes that wrenched his heart. She’d changed to a scarlet dress, and her hair was a smooth taffy curtain. A diaper was draped over her shoulder and she was rocking her precious burden.
She glanced up and caught sight of him, her smile as instant as the rapid blinking of her eyes. He went through the steel door into the tiny anteroom with masks and gowns, and then pushed open the second steel door.
“Aren’t you supposed to have a gown on?” he whispered.
“Not on Christmas,” Kay chided, which truly had no rational basis whatsoever in terms of hospital policy.
He moved forward when she motioned him closer. He couldn’t see much of the little one she held in her arms. Just an extremely wrinkled red face and a tuft of a black curl at the top of his head. Bleary blue eyes focused haphazardly in his direction, and then closed again.
“Someone
left
him,” Kay hissed. “Just
left
him. And on Christmas!”
He could barely hear her over the caterwauling of the other infant, but he could see the shimmer of tears in her eyes, and felt utterly helpless. Kay glanced at the baby crying in the crib, and handed her bundle to Mitch. “You take him,” she murmured, and then, “just support his head, Mitch.”
“Wait!” he whispered as he balanced the swaddled baby, but Kay was already bending over the other crib. With the screamer in her arms, she turned around with a grin for him, and motioned to the white rocker in the center of the nursery.
“You rock. I’ll pace,” she whispered.
“Why are you whispering? That one’s screaming loud enough to wake the dead, and it doesn’t seem to bother any of the others.”
She shook her head. Mitch sighed and settled gingerly in the rocker, terrified the thing would creak and the baby would cry.
“He’s not made of glass,” Kay chided, clearly amused at the way he was holding the baby.
“He’s terrifying,” Mitch said gruffly. “Give me a terrible two-year-old any day. I can deal with those.”
“You’re doing just fine.” Supporting the baby, Kay leaned down to kiss him on the forehead. “You were beautiful, Mitch. A beautiful Santa. Your visit made a lot of difference this day, to an awful lot of kids.”
“I wasn’t alone.” The blanket slipped from around the baby; he couldn’t figure out how. Before he had that fixed, a tiny toe escaped as well, and he found himself staring at the little toe. As he tried to wrap the ridiculously small blanket, a thought struck him. “Kay, you’re not taking this baby home?”
“I’d love to take him home,” she said fiercely, and sighed as she laid the second child back in its crib, fast asleep. “I can’t believe a mother would just
leave
him, and if I didn’t know there are tons of potential parents waiting to adopt…”
When the blanket was arranged and his baby
still
hadn’t started crying, Mitch relaxed, finding a sort of right-side-up football carry that the baby didn’t seem to mind. “I get the feeling we’re going to be a little late for the family dinner,” he drawled.
“Do you mind, Mitch?”
Mind? He considered himself extremely lucky that they weren’t taking a two-week-old infant home. Loving Kay was knowing she had an instinct for finding the world’s loneliest, and taking them in. And loving her meant anticipating any number of potential disruptions in a quiet life in the years ahead. “We’re in no hurry, honey,” Mitch agreed, but he was more than half mesmerized at the thought of his own child in her arms.
“The nurses will flood back in here at feeding time. They were just so busy before, particularly this morning, and then this one—I didn’t think he should be left alone.”
“It’s all ri—
Kay.
It’s—” Mitch’s face became peculiarly contorted.
“Silly.” Kay snatched the baby from him. “Did you wet on poor old Mitch?” she cooed at him. “You just scared him out of his mind, darling.”
***
“I was
not
scared out of my mind,” Mitch growled as he pushed open the front door of her house and patted her rear end with unerring aim until Kay was safely out of the driving wind.