Misty Reigenborn Romance Boxed Set (28 page)

Sierra

Sierra looked at Paul as he drove.  She was so happy that the baby was Luke’s that she felt like crying again.  But what she wanted to do most of all was make love to her husband.  Since it was such a long drive, they were staying in town overnight.  The drive back to their hotel room seemed to take forever to her.

He pulled up in the parking lot and they got out of the car.  She grabbed his hand and pulled him to their room on the second floor.  He grinned at her.  “I’m anxious too baby.”

“Uh huh.”  She tapped her foot as he unlocked the door.

As soon as he had closed it behind them, she rid herself of her clothes and moved to undress him.  He put a hand on her arm.  “Baby don’t you want a little romance?”

“Nope.  Not now.  Very little foreplay will be required the first time either.  The second time, you’re more than welcome to blow my mind like you did the last time we made love.  No condoms.”

“Babe you’re not on birth control.  Are you sure you want to take the chance of getting pregnant so soon?”

Sierra shot him a dirty look.  “I understand the consequences of having sex without a condom Paul.  We have an appointment with a counselor.  You’re picking your stuff up and coming home as soon as we get back to town.  We’re going to put all of this shit behind us and make our marriage work.  And making our marriage work includes you pleasing me in the bedroom.  I’m more than willing to please you too of course, but you have to at least try to satisfy my sexual needs.”

“Sierra I sometimes wonder if any man could satisfy your sexual needs.”

“Ha ha.  It’s okay for you to want me Paul.  I’m your wife.  If you want to have sex and the baby’s awake, whisper something dirty into my ear.  Or if you don’t feel comfortable talking dirty whisper into my ear that you want to make love when the baby’s down for the night.  Even if I’m not in the mood, I’ll give you the chance to try to turn me on.  And if that doesn’t work, I’m the
kind of wife that will still help you get off.  But I don’t see that as happening very often and getting you off turns me on anyway.”

Sierra finished stripping him and pressed him gently back to the bed.  “No condoms.  If I get pregnant, I get pregnant.  I feel like we can work through this now.  I will work my hardest to make our marriage work.  I think I might like to go back to work soon though.  I love taking care of Nathan, but sometimes I feel like I’m not doing what I’m really supposed to be doing.  You understand that don’t you?”

“Yes baby.  I love you Sierra.”

“I love you Paul.”

She kissed him.  She let all of her pent up sexual frustration out and let herself get lost in the feel of his lips on hers.  She was soon very excited and moved to straddle him.  She took him inside of her slowly but her movements above him weren’t slow.  She couldn’t take taking it slow with him the first time.  It had been far too long.

She collapsed on top of him minutes later.  He held her.  She still felt a little like crying, but she wasn’t going to let the misery that had threatened to overcome her in the past few months get to her on this day of all days.  Her man was her man again.  She wondered if since the baby was Luke’s that Kimber’s and Paul’s secret would have been better left unsaid, but she knew that their marriage needed to be built on a strong foundation that included honesty.

As Paul took her hand and led her to the shower, she was content in the fact that she and Paul were both going to try harder.  Counseling would be good for them and she didn’t think that either of them would really mind if she got pregnant.  They had weathered quite a storm in the past few months, but she was looking forward to a bright future with the man that she loved and their beautiful son.

Misty Reigenborn

Copyright 2013

By Misty Reigenborn

Kimber

Kimber Stone knew that her marriage was over as soon as she heard the other woman’s voice on the phone.  Life had thrown some crazy curveballs at her, in addition to some twists of fate that she chose not to think about, but this was just too much. 

She paced her bedroom as she waited for her husband to return home, thinking that she had to figure out what she was going to say to him.  But her mind was a blur, worse than it had been when she’d found out Luke had been cheating on her, worse even than when she had come to the decision that she had to tell him that the child she carried may not be his.

It all seemed so coincidental.  Kimber was off of work that day and normally the book store ran well without her.  But today there had been a problem with an order.  So instead of going to the grocery store with Luke, she’d stayed behind to try to straighten out the mess that had been created when somehow the only books that hadn’t come in her order had been the new novel out by the author that was doing a signing of that very book at the store in three days. 

Kimber had no idea what she was going to do about the issue with the books, but she did know that it was going to be easy enough to straighten out her problems with Luke.  It was going to hurt like hell, because she didn’t honestly believe she’d ever love another man the way she loved him.  But Kimber knew that if she stayed in her marriage now, she’d never be able to live with herself.

Even more coincidental was the fact that she and Luke, unlike so many others these days, still had a home phone.  She absentmindedly told herself that she needed to call and cancel the home phone, because it hardly ever rang anyway.  Then she wondered if she would have ever known about what Luke had done if they hadn’t still had a landline phone.  The woman that had made the phone call that had ended her marriage once and for all had done an internet search and came up with their phone number.

Kimber sighed as she heard the front door open and close, signaling the fact that Luke had returned home.  She took a deep breath and let it out, wondering if she was ready to face him.  But as he entered their bedroom, she realized that she hadn’t been ready.  He looked so damned handsome that it made her want to cry even more.

She turned away from him as he reached to embrace her, feeling tears sting her eyes.  Luke put a hand on her shoulder.  “Babe, what’s wrong?”

Kimber turned to face her husband, wondering if the anger she knew was bound to come out would be any better than the pain she was feeling.  She felt like such a fool. 

“What’s wrong Luke, is that I received a phone call while you were out.  Well, she wanted to talk to you actually, but of course you weren’t here.  I knew you were acting strange after you came back from meeting with that stupid pop star that wanted you to write that ridiculous song.  Why didn’t you just tell me Luke?  Why did you have to go on pretending that I was the person you wanted to be with when it was always her?”

“What are you talking about Kimber?”

He was turning his wedding ring around on his finger.  Most people didn’t notice Luke’s nervous habits, but Kimber knew them like the back of her hand.  She had thought that she’d known Luke, especially after all the therapy sessions they had attended after the possibility that their son Halden could belong to another man had come to light.  But looking at him, looking at the handsome face that she had memorized every detail of, she realized that he might as well have been a stranger since the day she had met him. 

“Don’t give me that bullshit Luke.  A woman named Jess called our house.  She’s a bartender in some shithole town.  I’m sure you probably remember it.  Or were you too drunk?  Whatever.  It doesn’t matter.  What matters is that this woman is pregnant.  Not only is there the possibility that the child could be yours, though she did tell me that her fiancé is willing to raise the child like his own and the baby might be his anyway, but she told me that you opened up to her.  Told her that you love your wife, but there’s another woman you will always love more.  She said you told her that when I was pregnant with Halden, you wished sometimes that he was Paul’s.”

The color drained from Luke’s face.  To Kimber, he looked like what she felt like right about then.  She felt a little splash of triumph, but it faded quickly.  She didn’t know how she was going to explain to their children that Mommy and Daddy weren’t going to be living together anymore.

“Kimber, I said a lot of things to Jess that I shouldn’t have.  You will never know how sorry I am.”

“Please give me the courtesy of being honest for once.  I think you were more honest with this woman than you’ve ever been with me.  It’s really sad to me that you can tell a woman you spent one night with the truth when you’ve been lying to me for years.  This is it.  I’m calling a lawyer first thing in the morning.  We’ll work out custody of the kids.  Take what you want and get out.  I don’t want you in my house anymore.”

“Kimber.”

Kimber gave him a look and he shut up.  She left the bedroom, glad that both of the kids were gone for the night.  She didn’t think she could face them right now and that hurt even more.  Knowing that she was going to see Luke in their children every time she looked at them.  Well, Kimber thought, stifling what felt like a completely inappropriate laugh, at least she hadn’t made the colossal mistake of actually marrying the idiot she’d been engaged to until shortly before she’d met Luke.

She slumped onto the couch, wondering what was going to stop her from getting completely shit faced as soon as Luke was out the door.  She figured that there wasn’t much.  The kids were well taken care of, and she was going to be alone.  The thought that Luke’s side of the bed was going to remain empty hit her then.  She put her head in her hands, trying not to cry.  She wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction.

He passed by her fifteen minutes or so later, his arms so full that she almost got up and opened the door for him.  But he said nothing to her as he tried to shift what was in his arms so he could open the front door.  Finally he gave up, put some of what he was holding down and then opened the door.  He didn’t say goodbye.  Kimber didn’t know who she was angrier with when she heard the well-tuned engine of his Mustang start, him or her.  There was a part of her that wanted to go after him. 

But she didn’t.  She made herself a light dinner that she didn’t each much of since her stomach felt like it was tied in knots, called to make sure that everything was well with Alexis and Halden, and then set about getting drunk.

Luke

Luke didn’t say anything to Kimber when he left the house.  He figured at that point there wasn’t much he could say that wouldn’t make things worse.  It was hard to leave Kimber because he did love her, but he also knew that he had never been fair to her.  He had never wanted to make her feel like his second choice, but the reality was that she had been. 

As much as he loved Kimber, he would never love her like he loved Sierra.  It hit him as he unlocked the door of the anonymous motel room that he had checked into simply because it had been the first place he had seen with ‘vacany’ lit up on the sign that he should have been honest with Kimber from the beginning. 

He had come to that realization before of course.  It had hit him hard when he had seen Sierra again.  But the fact that it had hit him hardest when he had been with Jess that night was what bothered him.  He had known that night that there was no going back from the things he had said, what he had done.  And Luke knew that if he wanted to be completely honest with himself, a part of him had felt as if it was worth it.  He believed that every person that cheated had to have some feeling, even if it was buried, that being with that other person was worth losing the person that they were with or they wouldn’t have done it.

He half hated himself as he shoved his clothes into a dresser that looked like it had come from the 1950’s.  He felt like a selfish piece of shit for having sex with Jess.  The idea that she carried a child that could be his turned his stomach.  He knew that he could never be any kind of a father to her child, so even with as fucked up as it sounded to his own ears, he knew he wasn’t going to contact Jess.  He didn’t want to have another child unless it was with Sierra.

He wondered what Sierra was doing at that moment as he lay back on the bed staring at the ceiling.  The mattress seemed to be in less than stellar shape and it made a noise like it wanted to be put out of its misery as he rolled over.  Luke sighed and lit a cigarette as he crossed to the dorm sized refrigerator, pulling out one of the beers he had bought at the liquor store on the way to the motel. 

The cigarette tasted like shit and he was reminded of another reason he had decided to quit smoking as he put it out in the ashtray beside the bed.  He thought briefly that a joint would be great right about now.  He smoked occasionally since it helped him with his song writing at times, though it was yet another thing he had kept hidden from Kimber. 

He shook his head at himself as he drained the beer.  He was such an ass.  His wife had just kicked him out of the house for good reason and he couldn’t stop wondering what Sierra was up to.  Shouldn’t he be more concerned about how Kimber was feeling because he did love her and he knew that he had put her through a lot, than with what Sierra was doing?  Sierra could be in bed with her husband right now, giving him a blow job Luke thought with a snort as he lit another cigarette, popping the top on another beer.

Luke wasn’t feeling much by the time he went to bed that night.  He had downed a twelve pack of beer and half a bottle of tequila.   He figured he was going to wake up with a hell of a hangover, but he would take it as it came.  He would figure it all out in the morning.