The Case of the Mesmerizing Boss (20 page)

But she didn’t know that. He’d said so many cruel things to her. She might not be able to forgive him, but she had to stay alive. She had to!

Daylight was streaming in the windows and the hospital was bus-tling with activity when she finally came back to consciousness. She was weak and still in pain. She opened her eyes. “Dane?” she whispered. “My baby…?”

He looked terrible, she thought dimly. His face was unshaven and starkly lined.

“Do you want the baby now?” he asked gently, bending over her. “They’ll bring him whenever you like. Right now, if you want.” She swallowed. “I want to see him.” He pushed the buzzer and called the nurse, asking for John to be

148 Diana Palmer brought in. The cheerful voice promised instant compliance. Sure enough, barely two minutes later, a nurse came into the room with a small bundle in her arms.

“Here he is, Mrs. Lassiter,” the nurse said cheerfully. “I’m glad to see you awake. You had us worried for a little while. Look what I’ve got.”

She laid the bundle down beside Tess and pulled the blanket away from the baby’s face.

Tess looked at him and saw Dane. She caught her breath. “He looks like my husband,” she whispered. “Oh, he looks like you, Dane!”

He leaned over her, touching the baby’s head gently. “He has your eyes,” he disagreed. “Big and soft.” “I’ll bring his bottle-” the nurse began.

“No,” Tess protested. She looked up. “Please. I want to feed him myself. Dr. Boswick said-“

“All right.” The nurse smiled. “We’ll bring the bottle, too. You’re very weak. You lost a lot of blood, and you may not have enough milk yet to satisfy him.”

The nurse went out and Tess fought pain to sit up against the pillows with the baby in her arms. “Help me, please,” she whispered, tugging at the neck of the gown.

He found the ties and helped her ease the gown away. She brought the baby to her breast and gently nudged the nipple into his mouth. He began to suckle at once, his tiny hand clenched against her breast.

She caught her breath at the pins-and-needles sensation, and then she laughed. She looked up at Dane, but he wasn’t laughing. His face was rigid and ruddy with color as he watched. His jaw clenched.

“My God,” he said unsteadily. “I didn’t realize it would look like that.” He moved closer, his eyes helplessly riveted to the baby. He reached down and lightly touched the small head before he looked into Tess’s eyes. “Does it hurt you?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “It’s uncomfortable just at first, that’s all. My stomach feels awful,” she grimaced. “The stitches pull and it hurts.”

“They can give you something else when you’re finished with John Richard.”

The Case of the Mesmerizing Boss 149 “You aren’t at work,” she said, frowning. “I couldn’t leave you, honey,” he replied quietly. “You scared me.” “Scared you?”

He hesitated for a long moment before he spoke. “You sounded as if you meant to go away,” he said. His hand touched her mouth. “I was afraid you didn’t want to live.” “I don’t remember.”

“It could have been the drugs, but I couldn’t take a chance.” He bent and kissed her gently. “You mean the world to me,” he said huskily. “I can’t lose you now.”

She didn’t trust her ears, or her mind. She only smiled, certain that it was the first flush of new fatherhood talking. Whatever he felt, he wanted John, and since there was no other woman in his life, presumably he’d decided that they might as well stay married. She’d take a chance on him, she decided. After all, he might learn to love her one day.

A week later, she and John were released from the hospital. Helen and Kit came to see the baby, raving over him while Tess smiled indulgently.

Dane was always somewhere nearby, although he went back to work with a vengeance. Tess was aware of his irritation that she wouldn’t listen to him when he tried to talk to her. She couldn’t help it. She didn’t want him making confessions of love. He’d been upset about her condition once he found out about it, and the labor had been a nightmare. Now he was feeling elated with his new son and relieved that Tess was out of danger. He was happy. But Tess didn’t want any false promises. She wanted him cold sober and completely over the experience of her pregnancy before they talked again.

Meanwhile, she had her son to take care of. It was six weeks before she could get around enough to feel like her old self. She doted on the baby, adored him, cosseted him, spent every free sec-ond with him. The baby was her life.

He was Dane’s, too, but as Tess lavished attention on the child, she denied it to him. He began to feel alone, unwanted, and his

Diana Palmer

temper became hot and unpredictable. He loved his son, but he couldn’t seem to make Tess notice that he needed her, too. She’d withdrawn into a world of her own, where her child was the only other occupant.

She was feeding John early one Saturday afternoon when Dane came down the hall, his gloves clenched in one hand, his chaps making leathery sounds against his powerful legs as he walked. His battered gray Stetson was cocked low over one eye. He wasn’t working today, so he’d been out with his men on the ranch. He looked out of sorts and viciously irritable.

Dane paused in the doorway, hesitating as he saw Tess in the rocking chair in their bedroom, nursing the baby. “I have to talk to you,” he said tersely. “I’ll be finished in a minute,” she replied.

He sat down on the edge of the bed, his eyes calming as he watched their child nurse. Pride softened his expression, and he smiled. “I never get tired of watching that,” he said quietly. “You look like something out of a dream with the boy at your breast.” She smiled shyly. “He’s growing, have you noticed?” “Tess, how long are you going to nurse him?”

The question startled her. She looked up, idly brushing away a loosened strand of blond hair. She seemed so young in her green gingham dress, so vulnerable. “I hadn’t thought about it,” she said. “Does it matter?”

He hesitated. “He’s tied to you as long as you feed him,” he said. “You can’t be away from him for more than a couple of hours at a time.”

Her face paled. Her eyes went huge in her face. “You want me to leave?” she asked huskily. “Is that why you want me to stop nursing him, so that you can get a nurse for him…?” His breathing checked. “God in heaven, no!” She shivered, her expression torn between relief and fear.

He closed his eyes and reopened them. He got up and went to the window, slapping his gloves into his palm as he stared angrily out at the autumn landscape. “I guess I’ve given you plenty of reason to think I wanted the

The Case of the Mesmerizing Boss 151 baby and not you. But I’m not such a monster that I’d take your child away from you.”

“I know that,” she said, faintly shy of him. The baby finished pulling at her breast, his eyes drooping. She burped him and got up to put him in his baby bed against the wall, gently settling him on his side and covering him with a light blanket. She tiptoed out of the room, leaving Dane to follow.

“Don’t run off again,” he said tersely, glaring at her. “You’ve avoided me ever since you’ve been home.” “I want to sit on the porch,” she said evasively. “It’s too cold.” “No, it isn’t. I’ll ask Beryl to watch out for John.”

He gave in. “All right.” He waited until she talked to Beryl, then he followed her out the back door and sat down beside her on the warm concrete stoop that overlooked the outbuildings. She glanced at his batwing chaps. “You’ve been working.”

“I bought some new horses,” he said. “I’ve been watching the vet work on them.” He lit a cigarette and she stared out over the pasture.

“Tess, I’ve been trying to get you still long enough to apologize. I said some harsh, cruel things before the baby came. Things that haunt me now.”

“You didn’t know about what was wrong with me,” she said simply. “I only wanted to spare you. You didn’t think you could even have a child, and you were so excited about him.” She smiled wanly. “I didn’t want to spoil it for you.”

His eyes closed and he groaned. “And what about you, you little idiot? Worried to death, and all you got from me was a cold shoulder and accusations about being lazy. Lazy!” He jerked off his hat and tossed it aside, running a restless hand through his hair. “I can’t bear to remember the way I treated you. I’ve given you nothing but heartache, Tess.”

She searched his profile quietly, her eyes soft and loving. “That isn’t quite true. You gave me John.”

He glanced down at her. “I never thought of precautions,” he said slowly. “Because I didn’t think I needed to. If I’d known the risk…!”

Diana Palmer

“But you didn’t. Neither did I. But I would have taken the risk, even if I had known, Dane,” she said with quiet conviction. “I’d do it all over again.”

He searched her eyes slowly. “It wasn’t just the baby I wanted,” he said huskily. “It was you. I wanted you, needed you, so I…would have married you even if there hadn’t been a child, because my world collapsed when you walked out of it. Sending you away was the single worst mistake of my life.” His expression was vulnerable then, so loving that it knocked the breath out of her. “That night… I never knew what love was until then. I was afraid of it, terrified that I was wrong and it wouldn’t last. But it has. It will. God, Tess,” he whispered, “I’ll love you until I die.”

She shifted a little away from him and averted her eyes to the horizon. She couldn’t believe him. She didn’t dare. “You don’t have to pretend,” she said gently. “It’s all right. You love John, and maybe you’re fond of me. That will be enough.”

He crushed out the cigarette and stood up. He glared at her. “No, it will not. You want me to love you.”

She flushed and averted her gaze to the distant horizon. “I know how hard relationships are for you….”

He caught her gently by the shoulders and she stood up. “My mother warped my outlook. Jane savaged my pride. By the time you came along, I was an emotional basket case. I was afraid of you,” he said. “Didn’t you know?”

“I think part of me did.” She lifted her eyes to his. “I tried to make you see that I’d never hurt you. But you wouldn’t trust me.”

“I couldn’t.” His hands slid down to clasp hers. “I told you that I didn’t know how to love, how to be gentle.” He leaned closer. “I had to learn those things. I learned them with you, Tess.”

“You’re proud of John,” she whispered, glancing down, “and you felt responsible for the trouble I had. You don’t have to say these things….”

He caught her chin between his thumb and forefinger and lifted her face, made her look at him. “I love you,” he said. “How many ways, how many times, do I have to repeat it before you start believing that I mean it?”

The Case of the Mesmerizing Boss 153

She winced. Her eyes narrowed worriedly. “It might be so many things besides love, Dane.”

“It might. But it isn’t. You know it, you little coward.” He smiled as he bent his head and gently took her lips with his. “But maybe it’s time I proved it.”

He kissed her softly, teasing her mouth until she began to relax, her mouth answering his in the warm silence of the afternoon. He caught his breath and groaned when he felt her arms go around him, felt the soft trembling of her body as she gave in. His lips probed her open mouth, his tongue teasing and then thrusting, so that she moaned hoarsely and tried to get closer to him.

His lean hand contracted at the base of her spine, rubbing her hungrily against his fierce arousal. “I want you,” he ground out. “Are you able?”

“Oh…yes,” she whispered dazedly through swollen lips, her body already throbbing wildly from the contact.

He groaned. “Where the hell can we go?” He lifted his head, looking so haunted that she almost smiled. “Beryl’s upstairs with the baby.”

She glanced toward the barn. He shook his head. “No,” he said unsteadily. “It’s far too unsanitary.” “They do it in books,” she moaned.

“That is fantasy,” he whispered. He nuzzled his face against her full breasts and then back up to her mouth. “And what I feel right now isn’t a quick lust that I need to satisfy. I love you. I want to make love with you, be a part of you.” “I want that, too,” she said huskily.

He pulled her closer, kissing her again, his mouth slow and sensuous, loving. “Tess,” he breathed into her mouth, and he shuddered. “Tess, I love you…!”

The back door suddenly opened, breaking them apart, and Beryl came out wearing a sweater. “John’s sleeping soundly. Would you two mind if I ran down to see about Mrs. Jewell? I’ll only be an hour or so….”

Tess could have hugged her. She probably knew that the two of them would have killed for some time alone together, even with a sleeping baby nearby. “You go right ahead,” Tess said softly.

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‘Thanks. Mrs. Jewell looks forward to our afternoons,” Beryl assured her. She left, smiling secretly to herself.

They waited until the car pulled out of the driveway before Dane escorted her upstairs with undue haste and locked the bedroom door behind them.

He lifted her quickly and carried her to the bed, easing down onto it with her. “Don’t be noisy or you’ll wake the baby,” he breathed into her mouth. “God bless Beryl…” “The door…” She choked. “It’s locked. Tess, it’s been so long!”

He kissed her with aching hunger for a long time until the fever burned too high to contain. He smiled sensually as he proceeded to remove every stitch of fabric from his powerful body. Tess watched him unashamedly, her eyes wide and curious. He was beautifully made, she thought, scars and all. The most perfect man she could ever have imagined.

As she thought it, she said it, whispered it to him. He smiled as he eased back down beside her and removed her dress and under-things between soft kisses.

She was a little self-conscious about her own scar, but he kissed it gently and smiled. It was, he murmured, like a battle scar that she’d earned with exceptional courage. She relaxed then and smiled back, lifting her face for his kiss.

She couldn’t have imagined the tenderness of his possession. It was slow and thorough and breathlessly gentle. In between kisses and erotic caresses, he told her that he loved her, that he needed her, that she was the most important thing in his life. The magic they’d shared in his apartment was still there, intensified. He touched her and she felt boneless, anguished with her need of him. Her arms clung to his neck when he moved over her and hesitated.