Tender Loving Care

Chapter Five

As soon as Zoe reached the living room, she was surrounded by darkness and two frantic boys. An acrid odor of smoke permeated the room. “Good Lord! What were you two doing!”

She couldn’t tell one voice from another in the pitch-black room, and they were both talking at once. “The lamp just fell all to pieces; I didn’t mean to-”

“What’d you expect to happen when you threw the book at it, stupid?”

Rafe clamped a hand on her shoulder from behind. “Keep them away from it, Zoe. I’ll unplug the lamp and change the fuse.”

Grabbing the little ones, she tried to soothe and calm and at the same time determine just how the disaster had happened. Both boys were safely stashed on the couch next to her when the lights snapped on again, and then her eyes widened in shock at the wreckage. Rafe’s huge porcelain lamp was in shards on the floor, its shade bent grotesquely. A leatherbound textbook lay in the center of the mess.

“All right. Who threw the book?” Rafe hadn’t taken long to return from the fuse box. Standing in the doorway, he looked like ten feet of cold male fury.

Total silence, then “Me.” Zoe stood up, but Aaron wrapped his arms around her hips in a viselike grasp.

“You know what’s going to happen to you, don’t you?” Rafe said sternly.

“Yup,” Aaron said sadly.

“And right now.”

“Yup,” the little boy agreed again.

“Now, wait a minute,” Zoe said frantically. “Rafe, I’m sure it was an acci-”

“Aaron, upstairs,” Rafe ordered.

“Yup.” Aaron quietly pried his fingers away from Zoe’s hip. Her arm tightened protectively around his shoulders.

“You haven’t even heard what happened!” she yelled at Rafe.

His voice was as calm and cold as the ocean in November. “I don’t need to hear a darn thing. I can see the book. He admitted he threw it. Upstairs, Aaron.”

“Yup.” Resigned to his fate, Aaron lowered his head, ducked out from under Zoe’s hold and headed for the stairs. He climbed them as heavily as if he were old and weary.

Zoe rushed after him, but Rafe reached the landing first.

“Stay out of it,” he said quietly.

“I won’t. Darn it, you can’t mean this! You’re angry, Rafe. You can’t deal with him when you’re this mad-”

“I sure as hell can.”

“It was an accident!”

“It was deliberate. And he knows it.”

“He’s only four years old!” They were at the door to the twins’ bedroom. Startled, Zoe noted Aaron had already bent over the bed, bottom up. One might almost think he’d been through this before. She flashed a look at the child, and then at Rafe.

His eyes were blue-black, and his jaw like iron. He was too big a man, too powerful, too strong…and all that patience he’d been famous for was gone. Rafe was flat-out furious.

With some vague thought of protecting Aaron, she hurled herself over him. Firm hands settled around her waist and lifted her off the small trembling body.

The trace of humor in Rafe’s voice came from nowhere. “Read that in a book, didn’t you?” he asked amiably.

“You are not going to spank him!”

“Seems to me I read that same book in a lit class my junior year in high school,” he continued gently. “The guy was a Canadian Mountie or something? Only these aren’t quite the same circumstances. I’d know that little boy’s fanny anytime over yours, and I’m not about to lay a hand on you. On him-you can bet your sweet petunias.”

“The heck you are!”

“Zoe. Try to relax.” He set her gently, firmly in the hall, and then quietly closed the door in her face.

Both boys were in bed by nine. A half hour before they went upstairs, Zoe had watched Aaron climb on Rafe’s lap and regale him with a story about a lost puppy. She’d watched Rafe listen, and she’d watched Aaron laugh. Rafe had toted both giggling boys upside down to bed and nobody was stingy with the good-night hugs.

Which was all very well. The urchins might take spankings for granted, but Zoe certainly didn’t, and nothing was about to subdue her growing fury.

When the kids were finally asleep, Rafe went for a walk, and Zoe settled in the living room, stiffly turning the pages of a book she had no interest in. Another half hour passed before she heard the back door opening.

He was rubbing cold hands together when he appeared in the living room. His dark hair was glistening with snow, and his cheeks were ruddy from his walk. He sent one quick look in her direction, and then crossed to the fireplace. He wasn’t smiling, but the patient expression on his face was darn near enough to make her want to hit him.

He bounced down on his haunches and started stacking logs on the hearth. “I had major hopes you’d cool down, but I can see that you’re still mad. Okay, let’s hear it,” he said quietly.

“You bet you will! I think that was one of the most cruel, insensitive, heartless, unfair-”

“Honey. I laid three quick ones on his backside. I realize from his yells you must have thought I was killing him, but you can’t seriously believe I would have harmed a hair on his head.” Rafe held a match to the fire and then turned to look at Zoe.

“That’s not the point. He was crying! And you didn’t even let me go in to him afterward-”

“There’s no point to a spanking if someone cuddles him two seconds later.”

His calmness only further infuriated her. “How could you? He just lost his parents. He’s having a terrible time believing they’re even gone. So he threw a lousy book. We’re all he’s got, and he goes and makes one tiny little mistake-”

Rafe shook his head despairingly. “Little? That was a three-hundred-dollar lamp, he could have set the house on fire-and we’re really going to have to do something about this cold-blooded streak of yours. Want some wine?”

“No.”

He sighed. “Look, honey. I loved Janet like a sister, but she coddled those kids way too much. Jonathan was my best friend, and there’s no question that he took his role as father very seriously. But haven’t you noticed that the monsters are a teeny bit spoiled?”

“I don’t care if they’re spoiled. They need love,” Zoe said furiously.

“I agree with you, but that doesn’t answer my question.”

“You have to consider what the kids are going through right now!”

He nodded. “I did. I thought they needed to know that in a world turned upside down, there’s still somebody in control. There are still rules they can count on. I wanted to give them the security of knowing that some actions are acceptable and others are dead wrong.”

His words sank in. Zoe could feel her fury abating as a confusing moodiness replaced it. He not only sounded sure, but he sounded right as well. The kids did need order. And suddenly she could think of a dozen times when they’d probably been testing her, demanding limits, rules…and she’d failed to provide them. It had never once occurred to her that rules might mean security for them.

While she was staring at the fire, Rafe came up behind her. With a firm, sure touch, he probed the knots of tension in her shoulders. At that first contact, she flinched away, but he paid no attention. She was getting a back rub. He really didn’t care whether she wanted it or not.

Flames licked a circle around the biggest log on the grate, and hot orange sparks soared up the chimney. His nostrils inhaled the sweet cherrywood smoke as his fingers relentlessly kneaded and probed and soothed. She didn’t want to relax. Her silhouette danced in the shadows on the far wall, so small next to his. Her slim shoulders and delicate profile emphasized that she was fragile and the splash of damp lashes on her cheeks showed that she was vulnerable. He knew damn well Zoe wanted to be neither.

But she wasn’t moving away.

He applied pressure to her shoulders to get her to sit down. That quickly, she coiled up again. “Come on, Zoe,” he scolded. “Is the world going to cave in if you relax?”

Maybe. All she really knew was that the weariness of a long, traumatic day was catching up with her. Feeling helpless, she eased down on her knees next to the crackle and warmth of the fire. She didn’t want the comfort of his long, strong hands on the nape of her neck. Or maybe she did. Maybe she wanted it far too much.

She sighed helplessly. “Rafe, I don’t know what the right thing to do was.”

“Neither did I. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you, Zoe. That I can’t handle this alone any more easily than you can. This parent business is exhausting,” he murmured wryly.

“Maybe we should get them some books?”

“Maybe we should forget about children for a while.”

“I can’t.”

Rafe’s eyes softened. “I know you can’t. So let’s talk about them indirectly. Tell me about the man who was in your life. He wanted kids, didn’t he? Is that why you broke off with him?”

“I never said…I never told you-”

“So tell me now,” he said quietly. “Why not?”

He sat on the floor and pulled her down in front of him, his thighs bracing hers while he continued to rub her back. A gentle massage wouldn’t do. Her slender spine was so knotted up with little coils that he was tempted to wrap her up in his arms and kiss her until every thought of children permanently vanished from her head…but that wouldn’t do, either. For now, he wanted to listen. He needed to listen.

When he found the taut cord at the nape of her neck, she lifted her head. He firmly pushed it back down again, and discovered that Zoe was a helpless sucker for a scalp rub. Her silky hair curled around his fingers, catching gold lights from the fire. In time, loosening all those tight muscles seemed to loosen her tongue as well.

She told him how sympathetic her parents had been after her hysterectomy, and how she’d come to the point where she’d had to reject that sympathy. Pity wasn’t going to help her put her world back together. She’d thought Steven would.

“You loved him?” He stopped rubbing only once, to lean forward and add another log to the fire.

“Yes.” Her head was bent low over her raised knees.

“But he wanted kids.”

“Naturally he wanted kids.” She added wearily, “Men seem to feel it’s macho to appear footless and ready to pursue a brief affair, but they have the same nesting urges that women have. When it comes down to the bottom line, men want a home, a wife and kids. It’s no different for them than it is for women.”

“In other words, the bastard split on you.” Rafe couldn’t keep the sharp coldness from his tone.

“He wasn’t a bastard!”

He paid for hitting that nerve. Her eyes snapped open, and her shoulders grew tight; he had to work on those muscles all over again. In time, she calmed down…in direct proportion to his tensing up. Thigh-to-thigh contact had already contributed to an unavoidable male response, but now he found his jaw clenched and his arms and shoulders coiled as tightly as a bowstring. Leave it alone, he told himself. Only he couldn’t. “You still love him?”

She didn’t answer that.

“Look, Zoe. He was a damned fool. It’s not as if the two of you didn’t have any other options-like adopting kids if he was so hot on-Never mind, never mind! Forget I said anything.”

When her lips parted, he gently shoved her head down again, discovering he didn’t want to hear her defend the bastard. He also didn’t want her tense. When his fingers gently kneaded her scalp again, she arched like a kitten in the sun. That was how he wanted her. Free to be soft and lazy. Easy, sleepy, safe.

Out-of-control protective urges rushed through him. All he could think of was that her attitude toward kids made sense now. She felt she had to avoid men who liked children. The ability to have kids had been taken away from her, and that trauma had been followed by the emotional blow of rejection by a creep who had led her halfway to the altar and then ditched her as if he’d discovered she was a mutant.

He meant to shut up and stay shut up, but, dammit, he couldn’t. His tone had a gruff scrape to it that he just couldn’t help. “That bastard didn’t leave you with the idiotic notion that being unable to have kids meant no man would ever love you, did he?”

“Rafe, stop talking about him that way. Our breakup was as much my fault as his, and I…” When his hands stopped massaging, it was as if he’d broken a magic spell. She was barely aware of what she’d said or of why they’d been talking about Steven. Rafe’s touch had mesmerized and comforted her after a terrible day, but Zoe had never been one to allow herself the excuse of extenuating circumstances. She pushed back her tangled hair and gave a quick laugh. “Look, I’m sorry for bending your ear like this. Steven and I parted a long time ago; it’s not your problem, and-”

Rafe wasn’t listening. “He must have made you feel totally inadequate. No wonder you’re uptight on the subject of kids.”

“Of course he didn’t. I told you, it wasn’t all his fault. For heaven’s sake-”

Too fast, he swiveled her around so she was facing him. Not expecting the quick move, she felt suddenly disoriented, and a two-second glance at Rafe’s face was all it took to tell her he was angry. His brows formed a grooved furrow, and his eyes snapped like the facets of a sapphire. The fire illuminated his rigid jaw and the compressed line of his mouth, but his voice came out soft and husky. “You don’t still love him. But maybe we’d better make absolutely sure you know that.”

She knew what he intended. She saw his blue eyes coming for her, and she saw his lips parting to take hers. It was like watching an avalanche headed her way with all the escape routes blocked. When she tried to duck her head, his fingers anchored her chin. When she tried to rise, his arms surrounded her and the pressure of that first kiss scolded her for even trying to escape.

Her body had a small problem: It still felt like a marshmallow from all his soothing caresses. Limbs that normally obeyed mental commands simply didn’t want to work just now. Her common sense seemed suddenly to have taken a vacation to Tahiti. She knew better than to allow him to kiss her. She’d sampled Rafe’s kisses the night before, and her pulse rate signaled that she was in danger…only the danger tasted so delicious.

She stopped struggling, only because a temporary submission was better than an awkward argument. As it happened, the mental fib wasn’t necessary. It wasn’t a simple submission Rafe wanted at all. Kiss followed kiss until she was breathless, until the snap of the fire sounded like a roar in her ears, until her arms were tightly wrapped around him and her fingers were laced in his hair. Responding to him wasn’t a matter of choice. She only wished it were.

When he finally lifted his head, the anger had disappeared from his expression. His eyes intimately searched hers, and whatever he saw there aroused the trace of a smile. Still, his low voice had an edge. “Don’t ever peg me on the same hook with him, Zoe. Children don’t matter to me; they’ve never mattered to me. It’s damned hard to find someone to talk to, someone you want to wake up to in the morning, someone who’ll still be there if you make a mistake. If and when a man finds someone like that, he’d be a damn fool to let her go. Believe me, you don’t still love him.”

Loving Steven wasn’t an issue, and she would have told Rafe that if he’d give her the chance. He didn’t. When his hands slid under her shirt, she shuddered. His palm stroked one breast until the tip hardened and her eyes closed, and his lips labeled the pulse at her throat “his.” The hollow above her collarbone was treated to a similar branding.

Any minute now, her heart was going to stop quaking. Tenderness and excitement didn’t go together like this. A man couldn’t be both fierce and tender. And a woman couldn’t possibly feel both helpless and superlatively, powerfully, exultantly female.

“You felt like this with him? As though the whole world were burning up? Do you know how you make me feel when you respond like this?”

“Rafe, stop…” Talking. She didn’t want to hear; she didn’t want to think. If he was trying to tell her he wanted her, he was making himself crystal clear. If he was trying to banish the thought of any other man from her mind, he was doing a good job of that, too. Steven had taught her something about need; Rafe was teaching her about a maelstrom of need. He made her feel as if she’d just discovered desire. He could make a woman believe she would die if she didn’t have him.

When he eased her down to the carpet, she welcomed its cushioning support in a world that was rapidly becoming blurred, indistinct, without edges. Her whole body tightened when his thigh slid between hers. His tightened when he impatiently released the buttons of her shirt and discovered bare skin.

Obviously, she shouldn’t have let him discover bare skin. His breath was suddenly a hoarse rasp, his eyes blazed blue, and need shuddered through his body. Through the thin material of her bra, she felt his lips on her nipple, and then his tongue.

He was going too fast, much too fast. She knew every reason why this was wrong, and couldn’t care. Maybe for too long she’d refused to believe that a man could want just Zoe, just the woman, not for what she could give or produce but for who she was. Maybe it was different because he was Rafe-patient always, but not now. Easy and slow always, but not now. Logical and rational always, but at the moment he couldn’t seem to manage the simple catch of a bra, and he kissed her like he was damn-well starved.

“Touch me, Zoe. Do you want me to go crazy?”

Was that the question of a rational man? “Rafe.” She managed to capture both his hands before they burned her up with a touch that was hotter than fire. “If you give me a chance, I will,” she murmured softly.

He opened glazed eyes on her smile. Whatever he saw made him momentarily still. Her tumbled hair was catching the glow of firelight, and his fingers reached up to touch it, and while he was busy with that she raised her lips to his. She offered him a woman’s kiss, a woman’s wooing, soft, exploring, a sharing of promises. Her fingers strayed over his forehead, his cheekbones, the line of his jaw.

“You know this isn’t wise, don’t you?” she whispered, but she didn’t stop. The pulse in his Adam’s apple leaped when she traced it with her forefinger. She opened the top button of his shirt, and then the next and the next. His chest was smooth and brown and warm to her touch.

“This isn’t wise,” she echoed, but sensations kept flooding her, and wisdom was easily jettisoned. She felt brazen and desirable and joyful. She hadn’t voluntarily touched a man in three years. She couldn’t. The right to be loved was inexorably linked, in her mind, to her right to love, to come to a man as a whole woman. For three years, she’d felt like apologizing to every man she met for being flawed. Not with Rafe. When Rafe touched her, she felt infinitely whole, deliciously powerful as a woman. Her lips brushed his heartbeat with sweet abandon.

“Stop me, Rafe,” she whispered. All of it was illusion. It had to be. Maybe she just wanted to believe with this man it was different. Touch was only going to complicate her life and his. She knew that, but she couldn’t seem to stop. Her own needs led the dance she’d thought she’d never know again.

“So precious, Zoe. You’re so precious…” His palm slid down her side to her hip. He molded her length to his, kisses falling on her nose, her cheeks, her closed eyes.

“Hi,”

Rafe instantly turned to stone at the sound of the sleepy soprano.

“Whatcha doing?” Parker asked interestedly. His pajama bottoms sagging, he had one foot propped on the other in the doorway.

“We were…” Rafe took a rapid breath. He turned eyes glazed with horror on Zoe, but only for a second. In the next second, his hands were groping for her shirt. “I was…Snookums had a small hurt. I was fixing it.”

“Daddy did that for Mommy all the time.”

“Did he?”

Parker nodded. “He kissed her to make it better. Mommy did that for us, too. Except that most of the time she kissed our hurts on the kitchen counter. Daddy always took Mommy into the bedroom on Sunday mornings while we were supposed to be-”

“I get the picture,” Rafe said rapidly. He shot Zoe another look, an interesting blend of murderous frustration and mild amusement. She was too busy climbing back to the real world to ponder it. He was having problems closing the blouse over her breasts, mostly because his hands were distinctly unsteady. Finally, he appeared satisfied and straightened up.

He pushed a hand through his hair and stared for several seconds as if the child were a Martian. “Did you want something?”

The urchin nodded. “I’m thirsty.”

“Thirsty.” Rafe repeated the word as if he’d never heard it before. “Thirsty?”

“I’m milk thirsty. Not water thirsty. Otherwise-”

“You could have gotten it yourself.” Rafe muttered a fierce “Do not move, Zoe. Do not think, do not breathe, do not do anything,” and lurched to his feet.

Thoughts began to reel through her head the instant he and Parker were out of sight. Shakily, she got to her feet and pulled her blouse closed, buttoning fast. From the kitchen, she could hear the two talking, the refrigerator door closing, a glass being set on a counter.

It wasn’t long before the light flicked off in the kitchen and Rafe headed for the stairs with the little boy in his arms. Parker’s head was already lying on Rafe’s shoulder, and his eyelids were drooping.

Minutes later, Rafe came back downstairs. Waiting for him at the bottom of the steps, Zoe had her hands on her hips. His gaze seared on hers when he saw her expression. “You didn’t do a very good job of staying put,” he said softly.

“We both knew that either of them could have woken up at any time. And we were right there in plain sight on the living room carpet.”

“Yes,” he murmured. “And the wonder of it is that you forgot about the kids for a few minutes.”

“Rafe-”

“Yes, I heard you. We were way out of line.” He took the last step down, blocking her path to the stairway. Gently, he brushed her hot cheeks with his knuckles. “We’ll have to be more careful about choosing a time and place.”

“No,” she said simply.

He didn’t pretend any confusion about what she was saying no to. “It will happen again,” he said quietly. “I think you know that.”

She shook her head and stared at the blur just beyond his shoulder. To look in his eyes was to see things she didn’t want to see. To be touched by him was to feel things she shouldn’t feel. She took a breath. “If this happens again, I’ll leave. They’re better off with you anyway, Rafe; surely you can already see that?”

All he could see was that she ran scared whenever kids came into the picture. Time. He desperately needed time with her. “You can’t leave,” he said swiftly.

“I can.”

“But you wouldn’t, Zoe,” he said softly. “You wouldn’t leave the children stranded with me unless you were absolutely sure they’d be happy here. You agreed to give it three weeks in my place and another three at yours. I intend to hold you to that. At the end of that time, we’ll agree about where they’re better off, but you’ve got to give-” He almost said “the two of us,” and immediately corrected that. “You’ve got to give them that much time.”

She searched his eyes a long time before she said quietly, “You’re right. I won’t leave you stranded,” and sighed. “Rafe, we’ve both been thrown into this situation against our will, so maybe it’s natural for us to need each other, to turn to each other. And maybe we got temporarily carried away, but we’re not going to be together permanently. One of us is going to have the kids. The other one isn’t. And to start something-”

Rafe’s palms framed her face, forcing her to meet his eyes. “Nothing’s going to happen that you don’t want. No one’s going to push you into anything you can’t handle. Believe me?”

“No.”

Humor glinted in his blue eyes. For two cents, he’d kiss that stubborn chin until it melted. “Maybe you can believe something that’s far more important, then,” he whispered. “A man scraped your emotions pretty raw because he wanted a mother for his kids. You can be damned sure that what I feel for you has nothing to do with children. Any children.”

“That isn’t the point.”

“Yes, it is. I want you for you, Zoe. And what the two of us feel for each other is the only thing that matters.”

There was just no talking to him. Zoe shot him a look, and then ducked under his arm and hurried up the stairs. Inside his bedroom, she leaned back against the closed door, feeling her breath come quick and uneasy in the darkness.

Rafe was clearly an irrational man. Any sane human being would see that a relationship was impossible because of the kids. It was sheer selfishness for them to think of each other when they had to do what was right for the children.

Eventually, she moved away from the door and burrowed under the bed covers. And eventually, it occurred to her that, like a total idiot, she was lying there fully dressed. She pushed herself back up, rid herself of her clothes and tugged on a nightgown. Between soft sheets and the warm weight of a comforter again, she discovered her hands were annoyingly cold and trembly.

It seemed she was capable of being as irrational as Rafe. When he touched her, she felt as if she’d found something she’d thought irretrievably lost, the quality of feeling whole and good about herself and free and just…a woman. She wanted that feeling. She so badly wanted the man. In his arms, she’d never once thought of the kids.

Two people naturally turned to each other when they were thrown together in an emotional situation. That was all that was going on. She knew better than to involve herself in a relationship with a man who needed her only to care for children. She would never be sure she was loved for herself. And as far as the kids went, everything that had happened since they’d arrived had shown her she had no ideal-mother potential whatsoever.

She had to think of the twins. In her heart, she knew they would be better off with Rafe. Kids don’t matter to me, Zoe. They’ve never mattered to me. Yes, she’d heard that, but she also saw how he was with them. His job, his house, his whole life would be affected when he took the children; naturally, he felt unsure about his ability to handle it. He needed time. He was such terrific father material. He just didn’t know it yet.

Punching the pillow, Zoe settled down and determinedly closed her eyes. She’d stay because she had to stay. She’d stay until he saw how precious the twins were, and with time she had no doubt that would happen. The only thing that couldn’t happen was her falling in love with him.

Except that in the darkness, in the silence, she was terribly afraid that it had already happened.