Tender Loving Care

Chapter Three

Zoe sank into bubbles up to her chin, closed her eyes, sighed…and immediately tensed. Something had dropped with a deafening clatter in the twins’ bedroom. She heard the thundering of little feet, then Rafe’s firm, quiet voice, then the sound of the boys’ bedroom door closing.

Silence. Relaxing again, she tried out another blissful sigh, languidly raised a washcloth and let the water dribble over her raised knee. Laziness felt sublimely wanton, even if she only had in mind a five-minute bath. After dinner, Rafe had insisted that she disappear and let him handle the boys for a while, but she didn’t want to push that. Until he formed a really strong attachment to them, she figured she’d better shield him from discovering they weren’t quite the well-behaved angels she’d led him to believe.

Still, she had absolutely nothing to do for a few minutes but watch steam rise from the blue bathtub. She liked her baths wrinkle-hot and pore-opening. Leaning back against the cool porcelain, she felt her tense muscles gradually loosen in the hot water.

Through half-shuttered eyes, she studied her body. All the parts, however distorted by water, looked basically female, basically normal. Exercise gave her skin a healthy tone and suppleness. Her breasts were firm, white, proportionate. Her stomach was flat, and when not exposed to chocolate-chip cookies, her hips behaved. Her thighs were slim; she had terrific calves; and except for her big toes-both of them annoyed her-she had nice small feet.

It was a darn good body, and her pelvis was never going to have stretch marks, her breasts were never going to sag from nursing a baby, and her stomach was never going to turn into Jell-O from carrying a child.

The problem was that she wanted the stretch marks, the sag, the Jell-O.

She squeezed her eyes closed, furious with herself. After all this time, she should have gotten over it. And exactly when was she going to manage to completely forget Steven?

Being around the children had brought it all back. Aaron and Parker were the image of the kids she’d wanted to have with Steven-a mixture of scamps and innocents, love and trouble. Loving a man, she’d discovered, meant desperately wanting to bear his children. If that was basic human instinct, Zoe had learned it as basic pain.

She should have told Steven when she first met him that she couldn’t have kids. She hadn’t. Maybe because she’d met him at that vulnerable time right after the operation. A time when she’d desperately needed to know that she could be loved, that she was still a whole woman capable of filling a man’s life. She’d loved him so much! And when she had told him, when he’d walked out of her life, she’d died inside. It wasn’t Steven’s fault. All the blame was hers, for not telling him earlier, for hurting him, for being less than adequate as a woman…

The emotional scar still hadn’t healed. But she would never make the same mistake again. Falling in love meant ramming her head against the steel wall of all the natural biological urges she could no longer fulfill. And the very thought of falling in love still left that taste of acid in her mouth. Zoe, the woman, wasn’t enough for Steven. It wasn’t that she didn’t understand, but it hurt.

An image of Rafe’s face rose up in her mind and stayed there. He repeatedly insisted that he couldn’t tackle the kids alone. At first, she’d understood-his lifestyle had never included kids, and the sudden responsibilities of being a single parent were overwhelming and threatening-maybe especially for a man. That was all still true, but Zoe could see how firm and caring and compassionate he was with the boys. At his age, a bachelor could have been far more selfish and self-centered. In Rafe she saw no sign of either quality.

Loving a man like that would be all too easy. Zoe didn’t, of course. She barely knew him. She just wished fleetingly that he didn’t think badly of her. She’d deliberately misrepresented herself as selfish and insensitive to children; she’d had to do that, to make sure he knew the twins would be better off with him, but…

Her thoughts scattered instantly when she heard the faint creak of the doorknob turning. Her head whipped around. One freckled nose was slowly sneaking through the doorway. For a moment, she couldn’t identify which twin it was, but then she recognized Parker. He usually led with his tummy.

“Whatcha doing, Snookums?”

She was gathering suds together, fast…but not faster than Parker could close the door and edge closer to the tub. Zoe swallowed a huge lump of frantic indecision. Darn it, what was the parental thing to do? Cover herself, because he was a boy and hardly a baby at four, or act comfortable with nudity because that seemed a fairly important thing for him to learn? What about teaching the value of privacy as a personal right? But what about teaching honesty and natural behavior within a family? And did the same rules apply to a legal guardian as to a parent in this situation?

Parker overrode her indecision by leaning over the tub and studying her breasts interestedly. “Your bazooms are sure bigger than Mommy’s,” he said politely.

A conversation stopper if ever there was one. “Oh?”

“Mommy always let me take a bath with her.”

“That’s nice.” At least Zoe had learned fairly fast about how Janet had been raising the twins in terms of bodies and modesty.

“Could I? Take a bath with you?” Parker sent her a disarming grin. “Mommy always let me.”

“Well, I guess…if you’re sure she always did? I mean…” Parker was already pulling off his striped shirt; he had apparently taken her agreement for granted. Zoe slid up to the faucet end of the tub, the thought of a relaxing bath fast disappearing. Saying no had never occurred to her. No matter what her feelings about children were, she would have done anything on earth to make the twins miss their parents less.

She marveled, watching Parker. It took him hours to put his clothes on in the morning, but he could strip them off faster than a speeding bullet. He dipped his big toe in the water and wrinkled his nose. “Why is it so hot?”

“We’ll cool it down,” she assured him, and immediately flicked on the cold-water tap.

She figured he’d sit on the opposite side of the tub, but he immediately arranged himself on her lap. The warm body wriggled until he was comfortable just so, and then he raised his head to grin at her upside down. “I love baths, Snookums,” he told her.

“Me, too.”

“I have a beautiful body. Did you notice?”

She smothered a laugh. “I certainly did.”

“Want to play a game?”

“Sure.”

The game was that he closed his eyes and she made a letter on his chest with the edge of the bar of soap. If he guessed the letter correctly, he got a kiss. If he guessed the letter wrong, he got a kiss, too. Parker liked games where he couldn’t lose.

Zoe didn’t hear the door opening again until Aaron stepped in. When she looked up, she saw a pair of stricken, soft eyes and sturdy legs planted belligerently. “How come you get to take a bath with Zoe and not me?”

“Because she asked me specially,” Parker said smugly.

Zoe’s jaw dropped. “Now wait a minute, Parker, I never-”

“Snookums, I thought you loved me!” Aaron’s eyes immediately brimmed.

“Honey, I do. It was just that Parker came in here first, and I-”

“Probably she loves me more,” Parker offered with a careless shrug.

“Parker! Aaron, listen to me…”

It wasn’t as if she had a choice. In the end, Aaron squeezed in on her right and Parker on her left. Sardines couldn’t have been packed any tighter. The best Zoe could manage was to guard her vital parts from injury and exert token control over the soap, which kept flying back and forth between the boys like a rocket. A limp and sodden washcloth seemed to be draped over her head when the bathroom door opened yet again.

Strange, but this time she clearly heard the soft click of the knob over the splashing and giggling. She promptly froze.

For three and a half seconds, she couldn’t see anything because of the washcloth. But then, she comforted herself, for three and a half seconds Rafe could hardly see anything either, because she was completely covered with little boys. Both circumstances changed rather fast. As she pushed off the dripping cloth, Rafe was calmly, firmly lifting one boy and then the other out of the tub.

She’d never heard his preacher-stern voice before, but she certainly heard it now. “Snookums,” he said as he dried two small bodies at the same time, “is going to take a bath every single day after dinner from now on. That means that for a full half hour she is going to be behind a closed door. Nobody bugs her when that door’s closed. Nobody. Have we got that, boys?”

“What if we spill a glass of milk?” Aaron always liked to know the rules for extenuating circumstances.

“You call me.”

“What if you’re not there?”

“I’ll be there.”

“But what if you’re not?”

“Then you let the milk stay spilled. Snookums is entitled to privacy. All grown-ups need privacy.”

“Why?” Parker asked bewilderedly.

“Because.”

“Because why?”

“Because-never mind. We’ll discuss this in your bedroom.” Rafe rose from his crouch and patted two bare fannies in the direction of the door. “Out. Now. And head straight for your pajamas.”

As soon as they were gone, silence filled the steamy blue bathroom. Zoe didn’t say anything, because she didn’t want to draw attention to herself. Her arms and legs were all appropriately twisted up to hide everything it was possible to hide, but the water was definitely clear now. One last soap bubble was floating toward the faucets, but that was all.

She watched that lone soap bubble, and then she stared with fascination at Rafe’s jeaned knees, mostly because they weren’t moving. If he’d been any kind of gentleman, they would have been moving. Toward the door. Her gaze wandered up to his lean thighs, whisked past the bulge near his zipper and paused momentarily on the hands on his hips. His sweater sleeves were pushed up; his chest looked massive. Just above that, her eyes paused on a long brown throat with a distinct Adam’s apple. That Adam’s apple was pulsing wildly. She risked only a very quick glance at his face.

She’d made a mistake, thinking that his eyes were blue. They were a brooding blue-black, like the sky at midnight and just as fathomless. Dammit, he could have smiled. Her hair had to be hanging in wet ropes around her face, and he could have relieved her unbearable tension if he’d smiled, but he didn’t. He just looked at her until her throat went dry.

“I…um…they said their mother let them take a bath with her.”

“And you believed that?” He shook his head, still not moving, but she saw the spark of humor in his eyes. “Know something, Zoe?”

She hoped this conversation wasn’t going to be long. “What?”

“It would have been a lot easier on both of us if you’d been fat and ugly.”

He closed the door behind him. And not that she’d been holding her breath, but a huge gush of air suddenly whooshed out of her lungs. Freezing, she pushed up the drain and reached for a towel. So much for relaxing baths.

Putting the twins to bed covered up all kinds of tension. After that, the atmosphere in the house plummeted directly to uneasy. Rafe didn’t help when he brought blankets and a pillow from upstairs to make a bed for himself on the couch. She could have argued with him, but didn’t. Arguing beds with Rafe just didn’t seem wise.

By nine o’clock, she could honestly claim exhaustion, and escaped to his bed with three books about earthquakes-not because that was his field, but because the reading material in the house consisted of nothing but seismology texts and the last three issues of Penthouse.

Propped against his pillows in a green nightgown, she read about fault lines and snagged bedrock and trench subduction. That had her yawning. The second book had a section on how winter snow loads and increased barometric pressure could trigger earthquakes, and how even the slightest tremor could ignite an avalanche of disastrous proportions. That had her frowning. The damn fool was in a dangerous profession. Seismological projects were particularly perilous in this area of Montana. An earthquake here in 1959 had jolted some 500,000 acres.

She turned off the light at eleven, punched her pillow a few times and settled down to worry about earthquakes and avalanches, not necessarily of the geological variety.

There was every chance, of course, that she was exaggerating the significance of this little attraction problem. People thrown together under adverse circumstances always felt some normal curiosity and interest in each other. But to acknowledge even a little tremor was to invite the most disastrous kind of emotional avalanche, with implications for the children that Zoe couldn’t begin to face. The thing was, to keep things honest and aboveboard.

The thing was, to control that hum.

The thing was, he should have hightailed it out of the bathroom instead of looking at her with those damned blue eyes.

She was turning the pillow to the cool side for the fourth time when she heard the faintest sound coming from the boys’ room. Pushing back the covers, she padded to the door and listened again. More muffled sounds. Crying?

She crossed the hall and hesitated in the boys’ doorway. Aaron was in the far bed, the pillow over his head, and his diminutive figure huddled in a tight ball under the covers. The muffled sobs wrenched her heart. She tiptoed closer and touched his cheek. “Aaron? Honey, are you having a nightmare?”

Two small arms grabbed for her neck and hung on like a vise. “I want Mommy. I want my Mommy, Zoe!”

“Oh, darling, I know…” Cradling him against her, she sat on the bed and just rocked him. In three seconds flat, she was crying as hard as he was. She didn’t know what to say, what to do. His little body was hot and tense, and he was crying so hard.

She rocked him back and forth and then from side to side, and when his nose started running she grabbed a tissue from the night table and told him to blow his nose. He blew, and then started crying again. So did she. She’d never felt more inadequate in her entire life.

In time, he was shuddering more than crying, and eventually even that stopped. His body turned to dead weight in her arms, and his damp lashes lay flush on his cheeks. He’d fallen asleep. Carefully, carefully, Zoe laid him back down and tucked the covers under his chin. She was moving to tuck Parker in when she saw Rafe in the doorway.

She finished tucking and then moved toward his shadowed form. At the door, Rafe reached out to touch her shoulder; she flinched away from his hand. Locking her arms across her chest, she stalked toward the stairs.

Rafe had been asleep until the sounds of Aaron’s crying wakened him, and the lights were off downstairs. He followed Zoe, watching her grope her way to the kitchen and snap on the light. He couldn’t keep his eyes off her face. Her skin was pale and her eyes emerald with anxiety. She was as tense as a coiled whip.

“There’s wine in the refrigerator,” he said quietly.

“The last thing I want is wine!”

“And I’ll pour.” He reached into the cupboard for two glasses.

She pushed back her hair in an exasperated gesture, and the words that lashed out of her tore at his heart. “Look, Rafe, you could see. I’m just no good at dealing with children. Already, I’m doing all the wrong things. They’re good kids, dammit; it’s just me…I made a mess of it this afternoon with them, I didn’t know how to handle the bath, and up there with Aaron just now, I couldn’t think of anything to say. He needed comfort, and I couldn’t think of one single thing to say!”

All Rafe wanted was to sweep her into his arms and erase that terrible look from her eyes. “Maybe there’s nothing anyone could have said, Zoe,” he said quietly. “And for the rest…don’t you think there’s a small possibility that you’re trying too hard?”

“How can anyone try too hard? They haven’t got anybody but us. And I keep trying to tell you that they’d be better off with you than with me.”

“Yes,” he murmured. “Every time I turn around, you’re showing me how much you don’t like children. How selfish and cold-blooded you are. Come on, C.B.” He threaded the fingers of his right hand around the stems of two wineglasses and the bottle, and hooked his other arm around her neck.

She was in no mood to be gently nudged toward the back room. “Come on what? What are you doing?”

“It’s a cinch you’re not going to sleep. So we’re going to try a little eight ball. Ever played pool?”

He flicked on the hanging wicker lamp over the pool table. The green felt was spotless, and the balls were all set up. Zoe wasn’t interested.

“Look,” she said wearily.

“The cue looks about right for your size. The chalk’s over there.” He poured a glass of wine and set it on the rail of the pool table in front of her, then chose a cue from the rack on the far wall and started chalking it.

She looked at Rafe as if he were insane. He pushed up his sleeves, focusing his concentration on the cue ball, all business. Sooner or later it was bound to occur to Zoe that she was standing barefoot in a frayed nightgown in the middle of the night. He hoped it wouldn’t happen soon. He also hoped she didn’t make any reckless moves, like flying for the door, because there wasn’t a chance in hell he’d let her go back to bed alone, upset as she was.

She sighed. He took that to mean she was resigned to a game of billiards. “So you have played before?”

“I know how.”

“Willing to play for some interesting stakes then?”

“Rafe…” She didn’t know what she was willing to do at the moment. She certainly had more sense than to encourage any closeness between them, but he was also the only other adult on this emotional island with her and the twins. Returning to her bed was the wisest choice, except that if she went back to bed she would undoubtedly think. About children. About emotional avalanches. About problems she couldn’t seem to solve.

She took a sip of the cool red wine and picked up the pool cue he’d chosen for her. “What are these ‘interesting stakes’?”

“Not money. We’ll play for total dominion-and you can break,” he offered generously.

“What’s ‘total dominion’ supposed to mean?”

“For every ball you sink, you get a minute of total dominion. A minute to ask for anything you want-within reason, of course. For instance, if you sink five balls, you win five minutes…five minutes with the kids completely off your hands whenever you choose, or five minutes in which you could order me to polish the silver or paint your toenails or…heck, I don’t know. Whatever you want.”

Whether she knew it or not, he held his breath while he waited for her answer. Seconds passed before he saw the unwilling spark of whimsical humor in her eyes, the first hint that she was relaxing. “Those are probably the silliest stakes I’ve ever heard,” she announced finally.

“Yes.”

“Eight ball?”

“That’ll do.”

“I used to play when I was a kid, but I’m awfully rusty.”

“So am I,” he lied. She was giving in. He breathed again, and swallowed a solid lump of guilt. Zoe didn’t know what was coming, and what he had in mind was neither honorable nor fair. Another time, he’d exercise those principles.

Now he watched her lithe form lean over the table as she concentrated on the break. She was good. Balls scattered every which way, two so close to pockets that a breath of air would have nudged them in. More important to him was watching a little color come back into her cheeks. Maybe she didn’t really want to play, but she couldn’t live on that razor’s edge of tension forever.

“Darn,” she said. “You’d think one of those would have gone in.”

“They should have,” he agreed, casually aiming his cue. He dropped the four ball into a corner pocket, then used a bank shot to land the six in the side. “Must be my lucky night,” he mentioned.

“I’ll have my chance.”

“You bet you will.” And while she still believed it, he plopped the two, ten and twelve balls neatly in various pockets. Zoe was taking a sip of wine when he slowly hung up his pool cue.

She cocked her head. “It’s still your turn.”

“I won my five minutes,” he said gently. “That was all I wanted.”

“But the game isn’t over. I haven’t had a chance to catch up-”

“I’ll give you a chance to finish this game or start a new one some other time,” he promised her. “But not just now. These five minutes of total dominion are mine. Come here, Zoe.”

Odd, but her legs turned to lead and her heart was strangely pounding. “Now, wait a minute…”

The man could cross a room faster and more quietly than a tomcat on a spring night, and he was suddenly standing in front of her. Behind her was the pool table, which had about as much give as a brick wall. “No talking,” he murmured. “While you’re under my dominion, I make all the rules. You agreed to those terms, remember?”

“But I never thought you meant-”

“Shh.” He took the pool cue out of her hand and laid it on the table.

“This is not fair,” she declared mutinously. And to prove it, she remained an iceberg when he bent down to smooth his lips over hers.

He raised his head and smiled…and then stopped smiling. His voice was little more than a mesmerizing whisper. “For five minutes, I want you to relax. That’s all. You’re as tense as a kitten stranded on a limb. For five minutes, I want you to believe there’s someone waiting to catch you if you fall. For five minutes, I want you to let go…”

His fingers threaded through her hair, and his thumb brushed the line of her jaw. She intended to move. All of this was nonsense, just a silly game. The man had no real dominion over her, no real control. She could move if she wanted to. Any time she darn well pleased.

But when his lips touched hers a second time, his mouth was warm and mobile. The smell and shape and power of him surrounded her, and that kiss just kept coming. He tasted of wine, and his mouth moved with such alluring tenderness over hers, inviting her to share a cold winter night, teasing her with temptation…Her breasts tightened under her nightgown, and a shock of heat warmed the private parts of her body. Still, she didn’t move.

He murmured, “Your arms are just dangling there, Zoe. Put them around my neck.”

“Rafe-”

“I still have four minutes left. What on earth are you afraid might happen in four short minutes?”

Well, damn the man. A kiss, she supposed, was hardly worth the effort of fighting it. And four short minutes wouldn’t mean the end of the world.

She lifted her arms, and immediately felt the lance of a very different kind of kiss. His mouth took hers with devastating thoroughness. His hands possessively swept down her spine, and he molded her hard against him. Her heart was suddenly galloping inside her chest. Hunger, loneliness, the intimacy of his dark, dark eyes…he’d have her believe she was the first woman he’d touched in years. The only woman that he wanted to touch.

It was a trick, Zoe knew. A trick of time and place that she so quickly felt like that kitten on a high, shaky limb. Her fingers clutched for a hold on his neck, but not because she didn’t know better. Rafe understood too much for her sanity…but not enough. From the moment she’d met him, she had felt stranded on an emotional limb…and she was alone. No one could help her. No one would catch her if she fell.

For this moment, though, she couldn’t seem to move away. His soft tongue found a willing mate. She was lonely, too, and frightened-and all the emotional upheaval of the past week poured into a response she couldn’t control. He had the total dominion he wanted. She was afraid…of so much. And she had to hold on to someone.

His hand traced the shape of her breast, and her emotions became a shambles. There was something dangerous about a man who kissed so thoroughly that the earth moved. He wouldn’t make a safe, easy lover. He wanted too much. He took too much.

He gave too much. His hands protected as they claimed. His lips gave warmth as they sapped the will from her. His body shielded her even as it tempted her toward danger. He made it far too easy to believe that she could fill his world, banish the loneliness, and when he finally lifted his head, she still wanted to believe. His eyes were a searing blue, luminous with need. The way he looked at her was more intimate, more knowing, more possessive than even his touch had been. “You’re beautiful,” he said softly.

She shook her head.

“Yes.” He stroked her hair. “I knew you’d be fire. And sweetness. I didn’t know how much. Lord, you’re so giving.”

“I’m not,” she breathed. When he said nothing, she stepped back from him. “Rafe, this can’t happen again.”

She wanted an answer, but got none. He made no move to stop her from leaving the room, but she could feel his eyes on her back until she was out of his sight. A shiver chased up her spine as she climbed the stairs.

Long after the household was totally still, she lay wide awake in the darkness.