Suddenly a Bride (15 page)

Excitement replaced nervousness instantly. “It’s a very old building. The walls are quite thick. I know, because the guy from the telephone company taught the boys a few new words when he was trying to run cable through the interior walls. But…I’ve never…I’ve never had a man in the house, Will. We’d have to be very quiet.”

He was touching her, running his fingertips lightly up and down her sides, turning her knees to water. “I can’t be held responsible for what
you
might do,” he said teasingly. “Although it could be interesting, searching for the limits of your self-control.”

“Is that a challenge? We see who
breaks
first? Who makes the first sound?” Elizabeth thought she might fall down where she was. She hadn’t experienced verbal foreplay until this point in her life. Man, the things you didn’t realize you’d missed…

He was nuzzling at her temple now, his breaths rather shallow and quick as he whispered, “I want you so much I ache with the wanting.” As if to prove his words, he slipped his thigh between hers and pulled her closer, so that she readily felt the evidence of his arousal. “I’ve never wanted anyone so much in my life.”

By now he was pressing kisses against the side of her neck, and she tilted her head to give him greater access, biting her bottom lip between her teeth as her body rocked with each new sensation. She wanted. She wanted so much.

All day, the tension between them had been building. She knew it. She’d known he’d felt it, as well.

She boldly slid her hand between their bodies, turning it so that her palm pressed against his arousal, so that she could cup him, feel the strong maleness of him through the material of his slacks. A lightning bolt of desire flashed white-hot through her as he softly moaned his pleasure, encouraging her. “Do…do we have to go upstairs? The bed is so far away…”

She’d already known that he’d need little encouragement, and the next thing she knew he had lifted her in his arms and was carrying her toward the gazebo just to the left of the tennis court.

Elizabeth was Rapunzel, released at last from her lonely tower. She was the rescued princess being carried off atop the white knight’s trusty steed. She was every fairy tale taken to its most romantic conclusion, every fantasy ever written or dreamed.

The thick cushions of the chaise lounge welcomed them to their private bower. The soft breeze wafted the intoxicating scent of climbing roses to them but was not able to cool their heated skin as their clothing was discarded, as their mouths clung, their hands raced over each soft curve, each firm, rippling muscle.

“I feel…I feel so decadent.”

“You taste so good….”

“Oh, yes, please…do that.”

“All day…I’ve thought of nothing but this all day…all of my life…”

“I didn’t know…I never knew there could be…this.”

“Pleasing you…it’s all I want.”

“No, no…you, too. I want you inside of me…as deep as you can be.” Elizabeth raked her fingernails over his bare back, drawing him to her even as she raised her hips to him, needing to be filled, demanding to be filled with the heat of him.

“Elizabeth!” he cried out, plunging into her, captured there as she scissored her long legs around his back.

Her jaw was tight with need, her muscles straining with the intensity of the arousal he’d brought her to with his mouth, his tongue, his wonderfully exploring fingers.

“Yes, yes,” she encouraged, her need for him removing any inhibitions. “Deeper, Will. Harder, faster…”

And then she felt it, that special, white-hot melting of every part of her, the complete loss of everything in the world except this man, this moment.

He must have sensed her total surrender to his body. He went faster, deeper, harder, his own storm building, raging out of control.

Elizabeth’s body clenched and unclenched around his, ecstasy building with each carnal sensation. But it was when she felt Will’s release that she flew beyond mere carnal pleasure and into the realm of the magnificent.

They were no longer two. They were one. One perfect whole.

When, finally spent, he collapsed onto her, Elizabeth reveled in his weight, the triumph of having pleased him. She stroked his damp back, pressed kisses against his cheek and ear, smiled as his breath came short and fast, as if he’d just run a long race.

“You…you’re unbelievable,” Will said at last, rolling onto his side and propping himself so that he could look down into her face. He ran his fingertips down her cheek. “I didn’t hurt you?”

“No,” she said, smiling, and then turning her mouth so that she could press a kiss into his palm. “You could never hurt me. I wouldn’t be here if I believed that you could.”

He didn’t answer her, and the light from the tennis court showed her that his eyes had lost some of their animation.

“Will?”

He kissed her, and then sat up on the edge of the chaise lounge, reaching for his clothing.

She sat up, pressed her cheek against his back. “Will? What did I say?”

“Nothing, sweetheart,” he assured her, but his tone was flat. “How about we get dressed and finish that walk we were going to take?”

“And start that talk we were going to have?” she asked him, looking toward the house, and the dim light showing around the edges of Richard’s bedroom windows. “Yes, maybe we should.”

Will stood up, zipping his slacks, and looked down at her, making her feel self-conscious that she was just then hooking her bra. Maybe she wasn’t as blasé and modern as she thought.

“But we’re going to remember this—what just happened here, what we’re discovering about each other—when we have that talk. Promise me, Elizabeth. It’s not where we start but where we end up that matters.”

Elizabeth felt a chill skitter down her spine as she pulled her sleeveless tank over her head, momentarily hiding her face from him. Did he already know? Had Chessie told him? God, he must feel like some sort of a guinea pig she was using for her experiment—whatever that experiment had been.

“Will, I didn’t plan—”

The baby monitor that had been abandoned on the floor of the gazebo crackled into life. “Mom! Mom! Mikey’s sick! Oh, gross, it’s everywhere! MOM!”

Elizabeth didn’t know how she managed to slip her feet into her shoes. But suddenly she was on her feet, and Will had hold of her hand, and they were racing down the few steps from the gazebo and running across the grass toward the garage apartment.

She was a terrible mother. Alone! She’d left her boys alone. She should have been there, she would have heard Mikey stir, been there when he got sick. She’d let them both eat too much junk food today. The water, the rides, all that sun—it was all just too much. My baby.
My poor, poor baby. Mommy’s so sorry!

Will stepped aside to allow her to run up the stairs
ahead of him but was right behind her when she skidded into the twins’ room and flipped on the overhead light.

Danny was sitting cross-legged in the middle of his bed, wide-eyed as he hugged his favorite stuffed animal, watching Mikey, who was curled up in a small ball in the other bed.

“Mikey, honey, what’s wrong?” Elizabeth said, carefully stepping around the evidence of her son’s stomach upset and sitting down on the edge of the bed. “It’s all right. We’ll clean this up. Do you feel better now?”

Mikey shook his head, his eyes—his father’s eyes—looking up at her in mute appeal. “My belly hurts.”

“Still? Mikey, do you think you’re going to throw up again?”

Once more the negative shake of the child’s head. “It just hurts.” He had his arms crossed low on his belly. “Ow! Ow, ow, ow! Mommy, make it stop.”

“Do you think it was something he ate at the park?” Will asked from behind her.

Elizabeth turned her head to see that Will was holding Danny, who was clinging to him, his arms and legs wrapped around him, his head buried against Will’s chest. Seeking comfort, reassurance.

Her heart nearly broke.

“I don’t think so. He should have felt at least marginally better for a few minutes after he was sick. Before he was sick again, I mean. Mikey? Show Mommy where it hurts, okay?”

“He-here,” Mikey said, reluctantly moving his arms, and then pressing his hand just below his navel before
grabbing on to himself again, turning onto his side. “It hurts all the time. It really, really hurts.”

“Okay, honey,” Elizabeth soothed as she reached over to stroke his sweat-soaked curls. She looked to Will. “He’s really hot,” she said. “Maybe it’s some sort of virus?”

“But you don’t think so,” Will said, adjusting the clinging Danny in his arms. “It’s been a lot of years since I’ve watched my own mother in action, but I recognize that tone and that look on your face. Your mother’s intuition is kicking in, isn’t it?”

“I’m probably wrong,” Elizabeth admitted, getting to her feet. “I need to think horses, not zebras.”

“Okay, now you’ve lost me.”

“Don’t look for the exotic,” she said, her eyes once more on Mikey, who rarely complained when he bumped his head or skinned his knee. Unlike Danny, who seemed to need a bandage for every imagined booboo. “But ever since Jamie, I—I’m probably overreacting.”

“And what if you’re not? I’ve got nothing else to do. You want him checked, then we get him checked.”

Mikey leaned over the edge of the mattress and retched a single time before falling back against his pillow, his face nearly as white as the pillowcase. And then he started to cry. Really hard. Mikey wasn’t a crier.

“You don’t mind? I could call his pediatrician, but he’d probably just tell me to take him in if I thought he needed to go,” she said as she got to her feet, opening Mikey’s chest of drawers and pulling out a clean pair of pajamas.

To answer her, Will hefted Danny higher against his chest. “Okay, Dan the Man, how about we go get you strapped into your booster seat while Mom gets Mike dressed. You have slippers?”

Elizabeth was ahead of him, having grabbed Danny’s slippers from under his bed, and slipped them on his feet. “We’ll be right there.”

But by the time Elizabeth had washed Mikey’s hands and face and gotten him dressed in the clean pajamas, Will was back.

“Mike? Hey, Mike, here’s the deal. I’m going to lift you, and you’re going to tell me if I hurt you. But I’m going to be really, really careful, because I know you’re hurting. We have a deal?”

Mikey, his eyes wide with pain, bit his bottom lip and nodded.

Elizabeth followed them, grabbing her purse from the kitchen table because she’d need her health insurance cards, and within ten minutes of hearing Danny’s voice over the baby monitor, they were all in her car and on their way to the Emergency Room.

Will drove, without asking her, and she was grateful, sure she was shaking too hard not to run the SUV into a ditch. Instead, she sat in the backseat, wedged between the two booster seats. Danny clutched her one hand, Mikey the other.

It had been that way for such a long time. She and her boys against the large, indifferent world.

But tonight she could see the back of Will’s head as he drove competently, only five miles over the speed
limit, assuring the twins, assuring her, that everything was going to be all right. Everything was going to be just fine.

Tears pricked at Elizabeth’s eyes, and she blinked them away, not wanting the boys to see her cry.

This was what she had wanted. To not be alone anymore. To not have every decision be only in her hands. To feel safe. To feel secure. To make the world better for her boys.

She hadn’t counted on feeling loved.

Will hadn’t been inside a hospital Emergency Room since he’d taken a baseball to the head during his junior year in college.

It was both comforting and maddening to know that emergency rooms never changed.

“Are you open to bribes?” he asked the nurse in charge after they’d been handed a pink kidney-shaped plastic basin and told to have a seat in the waiting area. Mikey had used the pan twice, and he was still crying, still looking like one sick puppy.

“Sir, we’re lining patients up in the hallways,” the nurse told him, not for the first time. “Your son will be seen in order of the severity of his complaint.”

“He’s not—” Will shut his mouth, as he’d been about to deny that Mikey was his son. If he did that, would Nurse Ratched here let him through those damn doors, or would Elizabeth have to go it alone back there in the examination room? “Look, Nurse, I know I’m driving you nuts, but what if it’s his appendix? What if it bursts
while you’re guarding that door like some—no, I’m sorry. I won’t say it. Just get the kid back there, okay? How do you let a kid sit out here in pain like this?”

The nurse consulted the sheet of paper in front of her. “The name again?”

“Holl—Hallelujah, and thank you,” Will improvised quickly. “It’s Carstairs. Michael Carstairs. He’s seven. And he’s scared. His brother’s scared. His mom is scared.”

“And you’re the epitome of calm,” the nurse said, but she smiled. “I see here that Michael is next, Mr. Carstairs. Feel better now, or am I going to have to find a doctor to prescribe a sedative?”

“Everybody’s a comedian,” Will muttered under his breath as he headed back to the kiddie corner, where Dan was playing at some sort of weird activity table with colorful twisted wires holding impaled wooden beads he could move. Who invented this stuff?

He was just about to sit down next to Elizabeth, who was holding Mike in her lap, when a nurse called out “Carstairs.” Will grabbed Mike, figuring they had to let him in if he was the one carrying the kid, for crying out loud, and Elizabeth followed with Dan.

“Sorry, no one under twelve except the patient,” the nurse told them when they reached the double doors.

“Ah, come on, they’re twins. Inseparable. And Dan will be good. Won’t you, Dan?”

“Let the kid in, Mary,” the nurse at the desk said, hooking a thumb at Will. “
He’s
the one who’ll give you trouble.”

“Thank you,” Will told the nurse, as if she’d just complimented him, and the “Carstairs family” all made it past the double doors and into an exam room.

“We’re probably in for another wait. This is only the second plateau. It could be a while before we see the doctor. You don’t have to stay,” Elizabeth told him as she pulled off Mike’s pajamas to get him ready to be examined. “And I probably overreacted. He seems a little better.”