This little frog wasn’t waking until morning. And Molly was zonked out next to her, draped in pretty puppy-sheets that Lea must have brought with her from home. For Molly, a dusk bedtime was normal.
Lea, not so much. Shouldn’t she eat something? If her body had thought food was more important than rest right now it would probably have woken her up. Wouldn’t it? He glanced sideways at the darkened doorway.
Watching her was like looking on Sleeping Beauty frozen in time, locked in her glass case for eternity. It was only the fairy-tale image that lessened the creep factor he felt standing in the shadows of her doorway, staring.
He’d not handled himself well the other day. Inviting her to stay—his lips twisted at the word ‘inviting’—had been a spontaneous and completely un-thought-through piece of Martin brilliance. In that moment, it had seemed like the best idea in the world, because in that moment his hormones had still been ruling play.
That much he understood. It was the deeper connotations that had him frowning.
Now he stood gazing on her sleeping form like it was some kind of holy relic. Drawing peace from her serene expression, from the way her hands still curved protectively around her belly. The softness of her lips that parted as though on a sigh. Fearing how badly he wanted to touch them again.
His fingers burned with the need.
What the blazes was wrong with him? One minute he wanted to shake her, the next he was fantasising about her lips. His emotions were like a bull ride.
Enough.
He stepped in from the veranda and reached around to close the two sleeping beauties behind glass double-doors for the night, and as he did one of the hinges protested loudly.
‘Reilly?’
He froze where he stood then turned slowly, his heart thumping. Lea was still asleep, murmuring. Murmuring
his name
in her sleep. It shot straight to his gut—south of his gut, actually.
‘It’s okay, Lea. Sleep now.’ His own voice was thick and low. And enormously strained. ‘I’ll see you in the morning.’
She made an indecipherable sound and let herself tumble back into oblivion. He pulled the curtains across and locked the doors behind him, sending Lea and Molly into complete darkness. Then he turned back to the light of the veranda, leaned back against the wall and finally released his breath.
His heart beat so hard, it ached…
It didn’t take a psychology degree to understand what was going on here. His body was responding to a range of instinctive cues as ancient as the granite ridges surrounding them. Answering the glowing fertility of hers. Animal attraction, pure and simple.
It was the dying days of the dry season, the land all around him was building up to the wet, the most abundant, verdant time of the year. The time when waterholes swelled, enthusiastic amphibians burst from their underground burrows and wildlife started pairing up so that their offspring emerged just as the new, sweet grasses did.
Sex was going on all around him. Everywhere.
And he hadn’t been with anyone for months—more than months. Since his diagnosis. But Lea Curran wasn’t his usual type. He liked women blonde, eager and available. Not prickly, brunette…and pregnant.
He marched off down the veranda back towards the front door. Maybe that was it—pure biology? She was already pregnant, she represented no biological risk whatsoever. But she did represent what he’d only just accepted he’d never have—a female large with his child.
And that was disturbingly seductive. No matter what his head said.
Two hours later, he was rattling around alone in the main part of the silent homestead as always. The sprawling house was designed to take a large family without popping a seam. Pity it had never had more than three people in it at one time.
And likely never would. It would be just him and the baby. And Mrs Dawes, who’d been the housekeeper since he was tiny.
Holding out for the right woman seemed pointless when he had nothing but a big, empty house and roomfuls of other people’s antiques to offer a woman. The kind of woman he wished for would go elsewhere, to a man who could offer children. Family.
It had been years since he’d last been truly attracted to the women he slept with. Had felt the kind of interest that lasted longer than an evening. The kind of interest that built anticipation like the onset of the wet season, and then wasn’t fully released by the first downpour.
Nearly six years, if he was counting. The weekend Molly was conceived.
He finally let himself go right back into the seductive, taboo detail. Repeatedly. Knowing he’d fathered a child with Lea gave the memories a primal kind of resonance. Caveman Reilly showed his face again. He imagined himself buried to the hilt inside all that fertility, creating their new child, his genes multiplying radically in her belly through more traditional means.
His groan was a tortured mix of regret and passion and it was all he could do not to take himself back to Lea’s bedroom door.
But that was just lust talking. Welcome, definitely; it was a timely validation that fertility was the only function he’d lost. If his body’s reaction to Lea’s ample charms was any indication, it was more than ready for a road test, evidence that he was half a man, at least. Staring down the barrel of forty years of emptiness, wandering around the house dwelling on the family he’d never have—it was hardly the stuff libido was made of. Reilly Martin didn’t do emptiness well. He’d made a specialty of filling the empty places.
He glanced at the cupboard above the microwave where he knew Mrs Dawes kept a bottle of cooking spirits. It was the only alcohol he allowed in the house. And it bothered the heck out of him that he knew exactly where she kept it.
‘Hey.’ The soft voice came from behind him.
Reilly spun as though she’d caught him cracking the top on the bottle. She was fresh from waking, a crease still marking her sleep-flushed cheek, looking more relaxed and at ease than he’d ever seen her. Except when she’d run with the brumbies that time.
That Lea made him think of tangled sheets and tongues. This Lea was almost childlike.
‘Did I miss dinner?’
She was hungry. He knew it. ‘I figured you needed sleep more than supper.’
‘I think I did. But now I’m ready to eat one of your horses. Do you mind if I make myself something?’
Visions of cooking spirits evaporated on his chuckle. ‘If it protects the livestock, help yourself.’
She ate like she rode, full throttle. Unapologetic. Watching her polish off Mrs Dawes’ leftover steak-and-kidney pie was like watching locusts swarm. Even for a countrywoman she had a healthy appetite.
‘Is that you or…?’ At her questioning look, he nodded from her empty plate to her belly.
She grinned and stretched back, satiated. ‘Would it be wrong to blame the pregnancy?’
The silence that fell didn’t feel awkward.
‘Tell me about Anna,’ he surprised himself by asking. Getting to know her better hadn’t been on his radar when he’d pressured her into staying at Minamurra. ‘What’s she like?’
‘Everyone loves Anna.’
‘Not what I asked.’
Lea sighed. ‘She’s the perfect outback wife: smart, loyal, determined. She and her husband Jared make a good pair.’
‘I sense some history here.’ It wasn’t a question. Dark eyes regarded her steadily.
Lea pushed away from the table and loaded her dish and cutlery into the dishwasher before crossing to the polished kettle sitting on the hob. One quick button-press had the flame magically popping into life. She turned back into the patient silence and waved her hand dismissively. ‘I was the oldest, so sometimes Anna and I clashed. You know siblings…there’s always history.’
‘Nope, can’t say I do. I’m a Martin original.’
Said with levity but hiding such sadness. ‘Take it as read that there’s always baggage between siblings, especially sisters. It doesn’t mean we love each other any less. There’s nothing Anna wouldn’t do for me. And vice versa. Sapphie too.’
He watched her long and hard before finally speaking. ‘That’s nice. Special.’
The stare went on just long enough to bring her tiny neck-hairs to attention. For Lea it just
was.
She couldn’t imagine not having Anna or Sapphie—or Jared and Liam, for that matter—a phone call away.
Time this conversation turned two-way.
‘You were an only child?’ she asked.
‘I was. Childbearing was not something my mother wanted to do again once she got over the novelty factor.’
Lea polished her hand over her tummy, knowing how wonderful her first pregnancy had been for her. Despite the aches and the sickness and the tiredness. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Why? I had it great. Fantastic property. Famous parents. Everything money could buy.’
She remembered what he’d said at the waterhole. ‘And no one to share it with.’
Reilly laughed, a harsh, unforgiving kind of sound. ‘As it happens, I don’t play well with others.’
Lea felt compelled to say something. ‘I’m sure that’s not true.’ Although she was very sure it was. Suddenly a familiar sensation drew her focus down to her body. Her hand followed her gaze.
‘You’re smiling?’
Her head snapped back up. ‘I’m sorry. It’s…’ She smiled again, completely unable not to as joy filled her. ‘It moves sometimes, when I’m not expecting it. I’ve only just started to feel movement. I was beginning to worry.’
Worry? Now why had she told him that?
He was on his feet in an instant, crossing to her with a fierce scowl on his handsome face. ‘What kind of movement?’
‘The best kind. The kind that just says, “Hey, I’m here”.’
An intense focus sharpened his expression. She forgot he had a professional interest in pregnancy, but had very little opportunity to ask his equine mothers what it felt like.
‘Do you…Would you like me to describe it?’
‘Can you? I mean, will that be difficult for you?’
Probably, given that she tried to not think about it at all. But the deep longing that glowed in his eyes was added incentive. She wanted to give him this, even if it meant opening the emotional box she’d sealed shut. She slid both hands under her T-shirt to frame the slightly hardened roundness. She hadn’t really thought about how to describe it before. She closed her eyes a moment to get it right. ‘It’s like…ripples. Deep inside. Some people feel it as butterflies, but for me it’s kind of a tide. A pulling. I know it’s shifting. Maybe that causes the fluid to swirl.’
‘Do you feel it on the outside?’
She lifted her lashes. His gaze was fixated on where her hands rubbed over her stomach.
He really is interested.
As unexpected as that was, she felt no reason to hold the knowledge to herself. She’d been doing that so long, the chance to share it with someone, anyone, was
enticing. Even if he was the last man on the planet she’d have expected to be sharing with. The only man on the planet who had the right.
She took a breath. ‘Sometimes. Would you like to feel?’
He just about stumbled over the kitchen chair in his haste to back off. But he pulled up on the other side of it and watched avidly.
‘Come on, Reilly. You’ve already compared me to one of your horses. Just pretend I’m on all fours and wearing a bridle.’
The heat that flared in his eyes then had nothing to do with embarrassment, and it was Lea’s turn to blush. That expression was more the Reilly she expected. She’d been seeing less of him, lately, and more of his quiet, sensitive twin. She stepped towards him; he stiffened immediately. There was the slightest power rush in watching his reaction to her advancing body. Big, bad Reilly Martin was nervous.
Because of her.
‘Just one feel.’ She spoke to him like he spoke to God’s Gift: confident; soothing. She took his left hand and placed it surely onto her skin near where she could still feel some residual activity. Her warm skin blazed with remembrance at his touch. Five years had done nothing to dilute her flesh’s memory. His fingers were large and just slightly work-roughened and Lea had to clamp her jaw to prevent the sensation of pleasure.
Just man hands; nothing special.
She shifted his fingers like a stethoscope, closer to one hip. ‘Can you feel anything?’ Her question was more of a breath. Her eyes darted up to his, where they locked on what his fingers were doing.
He shook his head, so close to hers.
Damn. She was suddenly burning for someone else to feel it, to make this all real. She shifted his hand lower, into the curve of her pelvis.
His eyes widened, met hers. ‘Was that the baby?’
She laughed. ‘I don’t know. What did it feel like?’
‘A hand waving.’
She closed her fingers over his consolingly. ‘No; it’s still too small. That might have been the fluttering?’
And with her disappointing words the magic of the moment evaporated, leaving a man and a woman in a kitchen, with his big man-hands closer to her panty line than anyone had been in years. In fact, the last hands had been his, too.
His eyes locked on hers; his thumb slid tenderly across her hip. She drowned in their intensity.
God, Lea. What are you doing?
She shifted sideways out of his reach, striving for casualness. Her suddenly rapid heartbeat thumped out through her laugh. ‘So, similar to horses after all?’
He didn’t answer directly, but he stepped back and gave her the space she needed. ‘Horses. Humans. Either way, it’s a miracle.’
She stared at him. ‘I imagine this is not something you expected would ever happen in your life?’
His laugh was bitter. ‘Not exactly.’
‘Were you planning a family before it happened?’
‘It?’
His glower and single arched eyebrow didn’t frighten her off. Not this time. ‘Before your injuries.’
‘Did I have plans for a loving wife and a house full of kids?’ He had to think about it. ‘Not consciously, but, yeah. I always imagined myself sharing this place with someone. Handing it over to someone when I got old.’
His pain was visible. ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘Why? You didn’t cause the damage. Rodeo was my choice. Besides, as it turns out, I have a child and a second one on the way. That’s a heck of a lot more than I was expecting out of life. I think I can survive not having the loving wife to come home to.’