Their Newborn Gift (19 page)
His smile was bittersweet and he stroked her wet hair from her face, shaking his head. ‘It’s not weak.’
She blazed up at him. ‘I want you to know you will always be welcome in your children’s lives.’
No matter how hard that will be
. ‘We’ll work something out.’
His stare was intense. Finally he spoke. ‘It’s not enough, Lea.’
The air sucked out of her and she stumbled a pace back. ‘What?’
‘Knowing I have a family somewhere, seeing them occasionally. It’s not enough. I want the whole package. I deserve more too. Daughter. Son. Wife.’ He blazed down at her. ‘People to love.’
Lea shook her head. Had he not heard her? ‘Reilly…’
‘People I
already
love,’ he clarified.
Daughter. Son. Lea gasped.
Wife
.
‘You love Molly.’
‘I love you both, Lea.’
The ground shifted beneath her and she clung half to Reilly, half to the IV drip. He held her up at the elbows. Intense heat rained down on her from his eyes, warming her chilled body.
‘I’ve loved you since you rode wild with the brumbies.’ He risked a fleeting kiss on her frigid lips. Warmth leached out from the contact. ‘It took me a while to recognise the sensation.’
He loved her? She became aware of the nursing staff hovering anxiously with umbrellas. She clung to Reilly.
Not yet
. She wasn’t ready to be away from him.
Her voice broke. ‘You love me?’
‘So much it hurts. I thought you’d guessed. Weren’t we talking about that when we came in yesterday?’
‘I thought we were talking about me. My feelings.’
Reilly groaned and pulled her against his lips. ‘We’re going to have to talk more.’
Lea clung to him. ‘I thought you just wanted a family. Badly enough to take me too.’
His angry growl was answer enough. ‘I didn’t want just
any
family. I wanted
this
family. I wanted you.’
‘You wanted the baby.’
He nodded. ‘I did, at the beginning. But I could have just turned up on delivery day and taken him if that’s what it was really all about. I wanted you, Lea. And Molly. I love
you
.’
His scorching mouth bled heat into hers, a crazy, thrilling kind of life support. She pressed herself to her toes to feed on his strong, full lips. Then he pulled away, his voice a smooth tumble of river stones. ‘Unless you can think of any reason that two people who love each other can’t be together, then I really, very badly, would like to marry you, Lea Curran. If you’ll have me.’
Lea held her stitches together as she stretched up to find his mouth again, pressing a dozen acceptances into his blazing mouth, laughing and crying all at once. His hands drifted
around behind her to tuck the open folds of the saturated gown more modestly together. She felt him smile against her lips.
‘We need to get you inside without anyone else seeing you,’ he whispered. ‘Bad enough that I’m ogling the wet body of a woman who’s just had surgery.’
Lea laughed and slipped her arms into the sleeves of his coat, sliding it on properly. The movement temporarily revealed the pink flush of her breasts, rounded and aching with milk, through the translucence of the wet hospital gown.
Reilly’s eyes darkened further. He blew out a steadying breath and nodded to the hospital entrance. ‘It seems impossible, but I think there’s someone inside who needs those even more than I do.’
A nurse darted forward and pointedly handed Reilly a large umbrella then sprinted back into the cover of the foyer. He steadied Lea’s IV-drip as she turned, curled in his embrace, and limped barefoot back into the hospital towards their daughter. And their new son.
The rain poured on.
B
ABY
Harrison certainly had a decent set of choppers on him. Lea winced as the emerging teeth grated on the sensitive flesh of her breast as he hungrily fed. She shifted on the comfortable swing-chair on Minamurra’s wide veranda as the fabulous June sunshine sprinkled down on them.
Definitely time for solids. That would disappoint the little man in her arms, but she knew an older one who’d be delighted to have exclusive access at long last. She smiled at the thought. Her eyes found Reilly out in the left paddock, working one of the heavily pregnant mares in broad circles. Without the distraction of a hot-blooded stallion prancing about the place looking for trouble, the females had settled down well, showing Reilly what an intelligent and bombproof breed the brumbies were.
He had two orders for new-blood foals that weren’t even conceived yet.
Frank Dawes had trucked God’s Gift back to his mob at Yurraji, and then he’d trucked his wife and forty boxes of lord-knew-what out there. They were to become caretakers. Agnes had been only too happy to hang up her apron after a lifetime of caring for Reilly, and Frank had finally felt ready to call the love of his life ‘wife’ in the true sense and live with her. At the ripe age of sixty-two.
They were as happy as clams in her grandfather’s little house.
Lea swapped Harrison to the other breast and settled back into the cushions. Life was good. Despite the best attempts of
Adele, the nightmare mother-in-law, their wedding had been simple, homely and crawling with children—Liam and Sapphie’s Harry, and Anna and Jared’s surprise sisters from India. Lea had caught Reilly clearing his throat thickly a number of times as he’d looked around him in dazed appreciation of the crowded, crazy family he was about to join.
Not that he had a moment’s doubt, as he reminded her in very tangible terms every evening.
She stretched in satisfaction. Yes, putting two loners together had worked out pretty well. Very well, in fact.
Max the cat sprinted wildly across the house-paddock, a squealing Molly in hot pursuit. Molly with the flushed, pink cheeks and salmon-coloured lips of perfect, miraculous health. Lea caught herself as she was about to call out, ‘Walk!’
She swallowed back a lump and let her daughter run.
All the characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author, and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all the incidents are pure invention.
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First published in Great Britain 2010
Harlequin Mills & Boon Limited,
Eton House, 18-24 Paradise Road, Richmond, Surrey TW9 1SR
© Nikki Logan 2010
ISBN: 978-1-408-92846-2