Bone Deep (32 page)

At least the bastard part could be changed.
They could be married. She was sure Tom would agree if that was what she wanted.

She
remembered
her first wedding, herself in a white, satin dress gliding down the aisle toward a smiling John at the front of the church. Replacing John with Tom in her mental picture simply didn’t work.
T
he idea of a traditional wedding was
impossible
. Maybe a justice of the peace would do.

She thought about the commitment of ‘forever’ between two people who had yet to say
the words
“I love you” to one another.

“Hi,” Andrew Harper’s voice startled her from her
musing
.

“Oh, hi Andrew.” Sarah smiled weakly. She hadn’t seen Andrew since last week when he came with the rest of the volunteers to help with barn clean up. The animal
corpses
had been winched to a pickup and dragged away for burial. Charred beams were knocked down into the center of the wreckage. In spring she
’
d have the site bulldozed and later erect a new barn. It all depended on how much farming she and Tom would be doing
, or if they decided to leave the area.

Aware that she’d been silent too long, Sarah asked, “How have you been?”

“Great. Keeping busy.”

“That’s good.”

“I just wanted to tell you how sorry I was about the fire.” Andrew
’s hands were in his pockets and he toed at the ground
. “When is the court date?”

“Reed is out of the hospital and in jail now. The hearing is set for next month. Both Tom and I have to testify.
The sheriff expects he’ll get a few years of prison time.
”

“Well, that’s good.”

Just then
Bonnie Samuels
walked up and possessively linked her arm through Andrew’s. “Hello, Sarah. So sorry about your barn. Andy and I were just saying that we should get the community involved and have a barn raising next spring, weren’t we, Andy?”

“Mm-hm.” Andrew blushed.

Bonnie’s intentions were obvious. Although she was only twenty-two and Andrew nearly forty,
b
achelors were in short supply since the war
.
Bonnie knew a solid match when she saw one.

“I’m starving. Are you ready to go
join the
line?” Bonnie asked Andrew
, then she
turned to Sarah. “You’ll stick around after the barbeque for the softball game, won’t you? You and your
, uh,
boyfriend?” Bonnie didn’t wait for an answer but deftly guided Andrew away.

Sarah smiled. Bonnie would be perfect for Andrew. She would dominate him with kid gloves and he’d be content.

She looked for Tom in the crowd. He was easy to find
, standing near the house, t
alking with Charlie Burkett
.
Sarah headed over to join them.

Charlie greeted her. “We were just discussing the bottom quarter and whether you’ll want me to work it for you next summer. Truth is,
i
t’d be nice to cut back on my workload and Tom here thinks he’d like to give it a try. I can teach him what needs to be done and rent out my plow and planter for you to use. What do you think?”

“It sounds perfect.” Sarah imagined next spring; Tom out in the field plowing and she swollen to bursting with a new life. By her calculations the baby should be born in June. It was too much to wrap her mind around such an enormous change in her life. Suddenly all she wanted was to be at home away from all these people sneaking looks at them, whispering and wondering behind their backs.

“
Tom
can
even
help me with the
late harvest
if he wants to. I could afford to pay a little,” Charlie
added
.

Tom looked as thrilled as when Sarah had offered to teach him to read. 
“Thank you. I’d like that. When can I start?”

Sarah was pleased
at his
easy rapport with
Charlie
. She
left them talking farming and
walked around the far side of the house to get away from the crowd
for a few moments
. She rounded the corner of
an outbuilding
and surprised Shirley Brodbeck necking with her boyfriend Eric Samuels.

“Oh, excuse me!”

The young lovers pulled quickly apart.
The boy
jumped back and
ducked his head sheepishly.
Shirley sprang away from the wall Eric had her pressed up against.

“That’s okay. We were just about to go back.” Sh
irley
grabbed her boyfriend’s hand and they
hurried
toward the party.

Sarah
sat down in
the grass,
knees
drawn to her chest
as she
rested her forehead against
them. Her mind continued to spin around
thought
of
Tom, their future,
and
their child.

H
ow dark and empty her life
had been when Tom had gone
missing and how she
’d
feared for him when he
fought
Reed. She pictured a hundred different moments with Tom over the past month
: h
is face shining in the sun
, h
is smile when he looked up at her from a book
, h
is
quiet humming
when he thought she wasn’t listening
, h
is
hands stroking her body slowly,
his eyes telling her she was everything he wanted in the world.

She
raised her face
and looked off across the field. The answer was so clear she wondered what she
’
d been working herself up over. She loved
this man,
his simplicity and sweetness
,
and nothing else mattered.
Everything else fell away.

Sarah stood,
ready
to
hold
her head high, eat barbeque and visit with her friends and neighbors as if there was nothing out of the ordinary about her choice of man. And at the end of the day she would curl up with Tom in their bed and tell him the news that he was going to be a father.

Later, as s
he lay beneath Tom, the heat of his body covering her and the cool breeze from the open window drying the sheen of sweat on her skin
, Sarah was
completely content.

He moved inside her slowly thrusting, but with no urgency, simply filling her with himself. Her hands roved up and down the planes of his back and buttocks, feeling him tense and release with each stroke.

The gentle pace was peaceful, but
soon
Sarah felt
tension
building deep inside her. It coiled lazily through her,
blossoming
from a general sense of desire to a throbbing need
and finally an
explosion that shuddered through her.
S
he shook and moaned.

Tom
made a satisfied murmuring sound and pressed
a kiss to her throat.
His pace increased
as he pushed
into her with increasing urgency. She
watched
his face, the frown of concentration, his
parted lips as he strove toward climax
.
H
er
body
clenched
around
his cock
. She pictured the barbed wire
tattoo
encircling it and
remembered
Reed’s voice in her ear asking if it scratched.

Part of her wished
he’d
died. He
might
be released from prison some day, but he could never come back from the grave.
But they were safe from him for now, and he would probably never bother them again.

She
dismissed
thoughts of the evil man
and
focused
on Tom rising above her and thrusting deep as he reached his point of no
return. He bucked into her hard,
crying out his release
then
collapsed on top of her panting against her neck. She embraced him, humming into his shoulder and caressing the soft hair curling at the nape of his neck.

At last
Tom rolled off
to lie beside her, one
arm
draped
across her body. She linked
fingers with him
,
enjoying
the contrast of her pale skin and his riotous color. Their hands moved together playfully, Sarah trying to pin Tom’s thumb down with her own.

“I have something important to tell you,” she said after a moment, bringing their joined hands down to rest on her belly. She took a deep breath. “I’m pregnant.”

Tom was silent.

“I’m going to have a baby
.
”

After a long pause,
he said, “My baby?”

She turned her head on the pillow and glared at him. “Well, of course! Who else? You do understand how it works don’t you?” She couldn’t help her irritable tone. Her hormones were running rampant, and she
’
d assumed Tom would be
happy
at the news. Wasn’t a family what he
’
d always wished for?

He gazed back at her with solemn eyes. “Yes, I understand but...”

“What?” She tried to read his expression. Sometimes it was so hard.
A
hundred thoughts were flashing through his mind, but she couldn’t capture and examine even one.

“How can...?” He closed his eyes a moment then opened them to fix her with his vibrant blue gaze. “I’m glad. We would be a family then, wouldn’t we?”

“Yes.”

“But will the baby be happy? When it’s older and wants to have friends and be normal
.
”

Sarah rubbed his arm. “Things may be hard right now
, b
ut the longer we live
here
, the more people will get used to you. Maybe by the time our child is old enough for school people won’t even consider us different anymore.” She said it with
confidence she certainly wasn’t feeling
.

He reached up to
tuck
a strand of hair behind her ear. A slow smile curved his lips. “Should we get married then?”

She smiled back.
“It might help.
Do you want to marry me?”

“Yes.”

“Do you love me?”

His eyes answered more eloquently than the single word that issued almost soundlessly from his lips, “Yes.”

“I love you too.” She rolled onto her side and kissed his lips. “I want to get married and have our baby and live together here until we’re as old as the Burketts.”

“
I want that too
.” He gathered her into his arms and kissed her deeply.
“I love you, Sarah.”

Propping
her head on one hand
, she
watched Tom sleep
, h
er gaze linger
ing
on the meticulous artwork of each design that covered his skin like a quilt.
Evil as he was, she had to admit
Reed was a talented artist. Tom’s canvas of skin was intricately filled with dynamic color and motion.

When she
’d
first
seen him
,
she’d
thought there was no pattern or reason behind the designs
,
but the more she looked at them, the more she felt there was
a
significant
message just
beyond her grasp. Whatever the meaning, her lover’s painted skin was beautiful.
He
was beautiful
,
both inside and out.

A
fierce wave of love sw
ept
through her. She vowed
she would
always show him the love he
’
d been denied for so many years. She had
already
given him her heart, her body, her home, and now she would give him the new life growing inside of her.

Together they would create the family both had always wanted.