Tender Loving Care

Chapter Nine

“Aaron? Parker? Rafe?”

The apartment might as well have been a tomb. Parker was long past well and deserved a treat. Zoe had left the institute early, hoping to talk the group into an early Friday-night movie and dinner. Only there was no group.

Poking her head into the kitchen, she noted gleaming counters and clean dishes. Such perfection might have aroused shock and even alarm if she hadn’t heard a muffled thump from the bedroom. Someone was alive and well. Unbuttoning her jacket, she traveled the hallway to her bedroom door, where she took a long, amazed breath.

Two suitcases were propped on her bed. Neither of them was hers, although one was rapidly being filled with her clothes. Rafe was frowning in total masculine puzzlement over the difficulties of neatly folding a pink silk half-slip. Giving up, he tossed it on top, where it promptly slithered into a reasonably neat little heap.

The suitcases more than earned her surprise, but Rafe was the shocker. Used to seeing him in jeans and sweatshirts, Zoe noted the sharply creased tan cords, the calfskin vest, the gleam of a gold watch she hadn’t seen before. His chin was so smooth that his shave couldn’t have been an hour old, and a whiff of English Leather drifted toward her nostrils, distinctly and traditionally masculine. She had reason to know he was a handsome man, even when he was fresh out of bed, but spiffed up, he was darn close to kill-for material.

She delicately cleared her throat, which earned her a fast swivel of a man’s head and blue eyes that reflected dismay, surprise and, if she wasn’t mistaken, guilt.

“You seem to have misplaced two children,” she mentioned.

“You’re home early!” He glanced swiftly back to the suitcases. “I can explain…”

“Good, because for a minute I thought I’d had wine for lunch. I never have wine for lunch, but for some reason those look like my clothes being packed.”

“Yes.” A wisp of a masculine grin. “Now, let’s not panic, Zoe. This is a good surprise, not a bad one-although I admit I’d have been a lot happier if you hadn’t shown up until five. There’s one awkward detail…”

“Just one?”

“Yes, but it’s a big one. Remember, Zoe, I’ve only got one week left of my leave of absence. So next week we have to sit down quietly and discuss what we’ve both been avoiding talking about: what to do with our urchins.”

Her heart promptly pitter-pattered in both hope and despair. From Rafe’s expression, she couldn’t tell which emotion was more appropriate. If she hadn’t brought up the subject, it was only because she couldn’t face listening to what she didn’t want to hear. If an ending was coming, she wanted to postpone it as long as possible.

“But not this weekend, Zoe. This weekend I specifically don’t want to talk about children. I think it’ll do us both good to get away from them for two days. I want you alone. I need you alone.” He glanced up from the shirt he was folding and went totally still. His gaze intimately searched her face. “And I counted on you wanting to come with me,” he said quietly.

She couldn’t seem to stop looking at him. “Yes.” The word was soft and simple. For a moment, the word seemed the only thing that mattered, but of course it wasn’t. “But-”

“But,” he echoed, as he turned back to his packing, “I had to find a sitter for the kids if we were going to escape for two days. Good sitters aren’t exactly flying around free. I had to find someone who could handle scoundrel-age boys. Someone you would trust implicitly. Someone I would take to like weeds take to water.”

The strangest expression crossed his face. He cleared his throat, and his voice had a sudden boyish gruffness. “Look, Zoe. Choices weren’t exactly popping out of the woodwork. If I wanted to be alone with you, I had to find an answer. It was that simple. I don’t want you to be embarrassed, but when push came down to shove, there was really only one person I could ask.”

“For heaven’s sake, would you just tell me who you’re talking about?”

“His mother.” Tall and lanky, with a no-nonsense hairstyle and a smile that radiated warmth, Marjorie Kirkland stood in the doorway for only seconds before swiftly moving forward. “And you have to be Zoe. My son appears to be thoroughly embarrassed that there could be an occasion in a grown man’s life when a mother would still come in handy. I hope to heaven you’re not. I’m absolutely delighted to be here. The boys and I have been getting on like a house afire.”

The drone of the Piper’s engines blocked out any potential for conversation. Beyond his seat, her seat and two suitcases, there was barely enough room for the controls in front of Rafe. It was nearly sunset when they flew over the Columbia River, which marked the boundary between Washington and Oregon.

Zoe, silent, cocked her head toward Rafe bemusedly. She knew they were headed toward southern Oregon, but she hadn’t the faintest idea how he’d managed to rent a plane…or that he had two brothers, a fact she’d learned from his mother, or that he knew how to fly. The questions would wait. At the moment, she was busy absorbing the knowledge that she had Rafe to herself for two whole days. Her heart sang the bittersweet refrain that these two days might be all she’d ever have.

An hour with his mother had been enough to convince Zoe that Marjorie was an angel, and an angel who was more than familiar with little boys. She had a gift for making people comfortable. Initially, the situation had struck Zoe as impossibly awkward. What could Marge possibly think of a woman who would casually take off for a fun-filled weekend, leaving two kids in her wake?

Only Marge, as it happened, was an enthusiastic proponent of fun-filled weekends. She had two other sons who regularly called her to babysit so they could enjoy weekends of a similar nature with their wives. Marge figured such things saved marriages. In the case of her one bachelor son, she hoped it would make a marriage. “Rafe gave me a very serious song and dance about how you two needed some private time to discuss the children,” Marge told her frankly. “I admire both of you for taking on Aaron and Parker, but I knew the minute I saw my son’s face that kids were the last thing on his mind. I’ve never heard so much throat-clearing in my entire life. Good heavens, you’d think by now he’d realize I know a little about life.”

Marjorie Kirkland was a blend of frankness and subtlety, humor and common sense. She also knew the difference in action figures between Magneto and Cyclops, and the boys had been so absorbed in playing with her that a kiss and a quick squeeze at the door had been all they could spare for Zoe and Rafe.

“Cat got your tongue?”

She turned her head with a smile. “No.”

Rafe glanced at a dial in front of him and then shot her an easy grin. “Well, it’s got mine. I’m terrified I won’t remember how to have an adult conversation. I don’t think either of us has had the chance to finish a sentence in the last five weeks.” He hesitated. “You’re not worried about them?”

She shook her head. “Not at all.”

“Good. Relax, Zoe. It’s past time the two of us shared a very different world.”

Like the slow seep of a sunset, Zoe felt that different world gradually take hold of her senses. The cool cockpit and steady engine drone ended in the total stillness and silence of a hideaway landing strip tucked in among mountains. A rental car was waiting for them. Rafe seemed totally familiar with where they were and where they were going, but Zoe had no idea and increasingly didn’t want to know. Magic was stealing up on her like a secret.

Each minute took her farther from her work, the children, her apartment. The night was crisp, and midnight was creeping closer. Simple weariness slowed her blood to a languid pace, yet her heart kept beating with anticipation. She was alone with him. In all this time, she really hadn’t been alone with him.

Especially during the past few days, the future had yawned ahead of her like a chasm without a bridge to span it. Even arranging this weekend struck Zoe as further proof that Rafe missed the privacy and freedom and choices that a life with children made impossible. Decisions waited like the dread of a toothache, yet perhaps that added to her growing excitement, desperation, recklessness. She had now. She had Rafe. There was a time when she hadn’t believed in living for the moment, but this was different. If one only had minutes, the seconds were precious. These two days with him were hers-they had to be.

Neither lights nor road signs marked the gravel path where he finally turned in. Moments later, Zoe stepped out of the car, mesmerized. The thunder and roar of the sea were unmistakable. Jagged rock cliffs and the glistening sheen of moonlight. This place was a blend of her world and his, mountain and ocean, and nestled in a cradle of rock was a cabin, dark and wind-weathered, its windows overlooking the sea.

Rafe stood for a minute, watching her with a small smile on his lips. “Like it, Zoe?” he asked softly, but he knew. From the ease of her smile to the helpless gesture she made with her hands…she didn’t have to say anything.

He carried the suitcases inside, and by the time she wandered through the door, he had a fire started in the corner hearth. Flames were already starting to lick the dry cedar logs. A kerosene lantern sat on the only table.

“Yours, Rafe?” she asked idly.

“It was. I sold it to a friend two years ago, but he rarely uses it except in the summer. He didn’t mind lending it to us for a weekend.”

She nodded, arms loosely folded around her chest as she explored. The cabin was as small as it was unexpectedly luxurious. Thick rust carpeting complemented the rich teak paneling. The double bed in one corner had a feather comforter and a mountain of down pillows. The kitchen ell was tiny, but stocked with everything from wok to microwave. Two oversized chairs flanked the fireplace, on both sides of a long couch in rust velvet.

A bath and a long storage room opened off from the main cabin. The bathroom ceiling was a skylight; the fixtures were brass and the towels pamper-thick.

Everywhere, she could hear the sea. Everywhere, she was conscious of isolation and privacy, of the romance implicit in the situation for two people who’d craved being alone for weeks, of Rafe watching her explore, waiting for her in total silence.

He still said nothing when she finally knelt beside him on the carpet by the hearth, but his gaze settled on her like an intimate touch. She suddenly registered the hammer-beating of her heart, her not-quite-dry palms, the texture of fragile feminine nerves. Her pulse throbbed with inordinate sensitivity; she wasn’t sure what to say, what to do. She’d always been natural with Rafe-she’d never had any choice but to be natural with Rafe-but these circumstances were different. Before, she’d always known that two children could interrupt them at any minute. Her heightened awareness of Rafe was a measure of her knowledge that no one would interrupt them now, any more than anyone could save her from a man who suddenly seemed part stranger, vibrantly sexual, and inescapably male.

She didn’t want to be saved. She just wished she could find something reasonably intelligent to say.

His jacket was gone, and so were his shoes. Clamped between his knees was a long green bottle, so recently uncorked that vapor still rose in wisps from its neck. He poured the sparkling wine into two stemmed glasses that gleamed like crystal in the firelight. The man’s eyes had a far more purposeful gleam when he handed her a glass. “I figured it was about time I found out if you could handle your wine, Zoe.”

“Yes?”

He nodded, his voice hushed and throaty. “Do you realize how much there is about you that I don’t know? Simple things, like whether you get silly on champagne. What you look like all dressed up. What you’ll look like when I wake you first thing in the morning. Or what colors you like-or what you’re like, naked, when there isn’t a soul around for ten miles and you know exactly what I want to do to you-Careful, sweet. You nearly spilled the wine.”

She was so shaken she could barely manage the first sip. “Rafe,” she said slowly, “I think you’re deliberately trying to unnerve me.”

He gave her a lazy smile. “A little.”

The champagne sizzled over her tongue, as heady as dancing blue eyes that spelled trouble as they peered over the rim of his glass. “It seems to me that a gentleman would make a little effort to make a lady feel at ease in a circumstance like this,” she scolded him.

“But then, I’m not always a gentleman, and I hope to hell you’re in no mood to be a lady. Have you had enough of that yet?”

“I just had one sip! And you just opened the bottle-” She snatched the glass away when he tried to take it from her. “Wait a minute, just wait a minute.” She took a breath. “It’s going to take me a second or two to put on a sophisticated face and pretend I know how to handle all this…attention.”

He managed to remove the glass from her hand, pin her flat on the carpet and still not make the first seductive move toward her. Balanced on his elbow so his weight wouldn’t crush her, he gave her his gravest frown. “Sophisticated faces never cut much ice with me, and it’s not attention you should be worried about handling. It’s lust.”

“Are you tactfully trying to warn me I’ve been kidnapped by a savage?” She reached her hand up to push aside the disobedient lock of hair that habitually strayed to his forehead.

“More or less.”

“I’m shaking.”

“No, you’re not. You’re relaxing. I’ll even give you your wine back if you’ll promise not to clutch the glass as though you’re worried I’ve turned into a stranger.”

“I don’t need the wine, but, Rafe?”

“Hmm?”

She motioned generally to the room beyond him. “You planned. A lot,” she accused quietly. “The plane, your mother, this place, the car. This is a lot more than a whim you thought up on the spur of the moment.”

“Yes.”

“I think…” She hesitated. “I think you should have asked me.”

He nodded and set his glass on the hearth. “I know I should have asked you, but I wasn’t willing to risk your saying no.” She was wearing a coral blouse with a neckline that annoyingly blocked his view of her throat and that for some inconceivable reason buttoned at the shoulder. He opened those buttons one at a time. “You have extraordinary green eyes, love.”

“You never told me you had two brothers. That you could fly. Where you rented the plane. How you found this place-”

“Suddenly, you’re chattering like a magpie. Am I making you nervous again?”

“I want to hear more about your mother,” she said stubbornly. “And what your father’s like. I didn’t even realize you came from South Dakota, did you know that?”

“You are nervous.” His breath fanned her lips just before his mouth touched down. “Good,” he murmured with satisfaction.

The Oregon sun filtered in the windows. The cabin was cool by morning, and invaded by the smells of sea and woodsmoke. Rafe watched her sleep, aware of the faint, lingering scent of her perfume. Her skin had the blush of dreams, and her hair was tousled on the pillow. Zoe inevitably slept sprawled on her tummy, except for those times he’d tucked her close to him in the night.

He’d kept her tucked close until dawn, and he had in mind keeping her close for a lifetime, but Zoe…he was so unsure of Zoe.

Especially these past two weeks, he’d carefully led her to believe that kids were a low priority for him, but it was like traveling on quicksand-he didn’t know how to be careful enough. The kids had nothing to do with what he felt for Zoe, but getting her to believe that had him tied up in knots. That Steven character had wanted her on a package-with-children basis; there was no way he wanted her to think this was the same thing.

He’d deliberately told her he couldn’t handle the responsibility of children alone. He’d deliberately tried to show her that he felt just as inadequate as a father as she could possibly feel as a mother-when Parker was ill, for instance. If she could just see that the little imps needed both of them, he knew they could work through any lingering fears or negative emotions she’d built up about children. She adored the twins, whether she knew it or not. And so did he, but it was a thousand times more important to make Zoe see that there was nothing they couldn’t tackle as a twosome.

He didn’t plan to spend the long stretch of lonely years without her, but two days wasn’t long enough to make absolutely sure Zoe felt loved for Zoe. He had in mind binding ties and complicating her emotions and wearing down her resistance and stealing the alternatives away from her. He had in mind sneaking in some love whenever he could. He had in mind assaulting the lady where she was most vulnerable.

Sleeping, she was most vulnerable. Gently, silently, he slid the comforter off her, then the sheet. Her bare skin had the satin glow of sleep, and the long expanse from the nape of her neck to her toes confronted him with far too many options for the ruthless assault he had in mind. Her slim thighs were his personal preference, but he could also build a ladder of kisses up her spine. Her neck enticed him, but so did the curves of her calves.

It was going to be a long war if the choice of first battle was going to be this difficult. Finally, he chose her fanny, primarily because he was sure no one had ever begun a seduction with Zoe on that particular portion of her anatomy. He attacked with assorted kisses, some butterfly soft, some lingering. The firm skin sloped with delicate feminine perfection, which he always knew. His tongue scouted the hollow at the base of her spine, and then dawdled down to the tops of her thighs.

Ruthlessly, his lips coasted down the long expanse of her right leg, then up her left. Where he kissed, she was his. He didn’t dare miss a spot-it was a superstition, like avoiding stepping on cracks in the sidewalk. Everything would be all right…everything had to be all right…if he labeled every inch of her skin Rafe Kirkland’s, if he did it gently enough, softly enough, lovingly enough.

Somewhere en route, he forgot the war.

It was Zoe’s fault. Her skin had this scent, all sleepy female, and the supple texture of her flesh yielded so readily to lips and fingertips. Kisses climbed up her sides to where her breasts were being cruelly crushed to the mattress. His tongue laved that plumpness. When he heard the hoarse little murmur that escaped her throat, he felt irritable. “Lie still,” he murmured. “I want you to wake up nice and slow.”

“It’s far too late for that,” she whispered, and twisted over in one lithe, feminine move that did nothing for his sanity. The rosy tips of her breasts were tilted up, as neglected as the firm white flesh around them. Her tummy…he hadn’t even touched her tummy yet, and below she had a lush pyramid of soft curls that needed finger-combing, teasing, kisses, the caress of a tongue…she still wasn’t used to that kind of caress. She took for granted that he wouldn’t want to. The lady had no idea how much he wanted to.

“Rafe…”

The single word drew his attention to her mouth, the curve and swell of her lower lip, the more fragile heart shape of her upper one. She tasted sleepy, possibly the most intimate taste a man could steal. There was only one spot on her body softer than the inside of her cheek, but he settled there first.

His hunger grew, the more sweetness he found with his tongue. Breathing was becoming an effort, and the temperature in the cabin seemed to soar. He had every intention of making this last for a good hundred years, but she wasn’t helping by responding like an abandoned, sultry, wanton, vibrantly sensual…

“Rafe?”

“Honey, I’m so busy. Could we talk later?” He had more work wiping off that perfectly wicked smile of hers.

“There seems to be something terribly wrong with me,” she murmured.

“Take my word for it, love. There is nothing wrong with any part of you.”

There was. Heat had replaced bones, and the surface of her skin was shimmering. She’d wakened to a man intimately, sneakily, lazily taking advantage of her, and she’d entered into that spirit of play. One look at his eyes and she knew he wasn’t playing any longer. Suddenly, neither was she.

Everywhere she touched, she could feel need rippling through his skin. His lips craved contact. Hands kneaded and clutched and held, suddenly not so gentle. Outside, lonely waves crashed endlessly on rock, the silkiness of water eroding the hardest stone over thousands of years. Zoe urged the man inside her where she could hold him, the deeper Rafe, the vulnerable Rafe, the Rafe who shouted with his touch how much he wanted and needed her.

When he claimed, she became silk. Flesh grew slick as they discovered their own desperate rhythm. The roar of endless loneliness was just outside, but not here. Her legs clamped around him, she drew him down into yielding softness, caring, hope, woman, love.

In claiming her, he drove in his need to have, to hold, to protect and care for, to love.

You can’t turn away from this, she told him with her lips.

See what we have, he whispered in his heart.

She fought the climax because it would have meant the end, and she had all of him for this moment. It didn’t work; it couldn’t. Waves of sharp, bright color rolled through her like the tide, powerful and inescapable and relentless. Her lips released a fragile cry, and then he folded her close and held her and held her…

And held her.

“I’m not climbing that, you overgrown bully.”

“You’re probably more fit than I am. Come on, Zoe, you’re no sissy.”

“I’m swim-fit. Not climb-fit.” Southern Oregon fashion, the sand dune facing Zoe was at least 150 feet tall. Rafe was sitting at the top holding a can of beer, the lazy good-for-nothing. She’d made it halfway. Considering how little sleep he’d allowed her last night and this morning, she evaluated that distance as reasonable. The weather bureau had reported the temperature as a cool sixty, but where sun beat down on sand Zoe could have testified to at least a hundred.

“Lunch is waiting for you at the top,” he called.

“Bring it down.”

“Nope.”

“When…” She dug up fistfuls of sand as she crawled toward him. “When I get up there, Kirkland, you’re going to be such dead meat. You’re going to be such cooked goose. You’re going to be such fried fowl…”

When she reached the top, panting and sweating, Rafe was lying flat on the sand holding his stomach. He seemed to have a small problem with laughter. That laughter ended up in a howl when she bent down and gave him a definite shove.

How the mighty do fall, and 180 pounds had so much momentum on the slippery sand. Moments later, she sat on the top of the dune with a beer can in her hand and waved down. “You can do it, Rafe! You’re no sissy!” she called down encouragingly.

“Listen, you turkey. I’ve got sand in my mouth.”

“No kidding?”

“Ah, Zoe. You’re going to be so sorry. When I get my hands on you…when I get my hands on you…”

“Uh…Rafe? Have you looked around recently?”

“Yes.” Rafe smiled. “I’ve never seen you look more lovely.” He’d found the dress in the back of her closet and packed it, so he considered himself partially responsible for her looks right now. The skirt was a simple black crepe, and the top a turquoise satin that draped to the hollow of her breasts. The sleeves seemed made of yards of material that cinched at her wrists, and the effect was alluringly feminine. He hadn’t yet figured out what she’d done to her eyes and hair. Something. Something that made her eyes look emerald green and her hair gleam with shafts of gold and silky softness.

Zoe let her eyes sweep over him as well. He’d brought his tux-she hadn’t known he owned one-and since the man had done the packing, the tux had a predictable wrinkle or two. Never mind that; black made his shoulders look impossibly huge, and it was his pride that struck her.

She ate the last bite of her fillet, and then took a sip of wine. “Rafe…” she started again.

He shook his head. “I wanted to see you dressed up, and I wanted to dance with you. Come on, Zoe.”

She placed her napkin on the table and stood up, letting him lead her to the crowded dance floor. With one hand at her waist, his other hand covered hers on his chest. He picked up the subtle rhythm of the song. Not once did he move to hold her closer, but deliberately he let thigh occasionally tease thigh, chest occasionally flirt with breast. His eyes never left hers. He told her she was lovely, priceless, precious and, so simply, that he wanted to be with her. He told her that without saying a word.

Sometime…sometime…she was going to mention to him that the band was playing country rock. That everyone else in the place was wearing jeans. That the only person with a candle on the table was the one who’d brought it, and that was Rafe. Southern Oregon didn’t exactly abound in elegant restaurants.

Since neither of them cared a hoot what anyone else was doing, it didn’t particularly matter.

“I hate to tell you this, little one, but you’re turning into a downright glutton for pleasure-and all those little hip actions aren’t going to do you a bit of good.”

“No?” Embers of a fire glowed in the corner, casting soft shadows in the pitch-black room. Swallowed in the depths of the featherbed, Zoe nudged her pelvis delicately against Rafe. “I’m not claiming to be an expert in this,” she admitted, “but I could swear I sense a certain effect.”

His lips touched her forehead. “I didn’t say you weren’t having any effect. I said it wasn’t going to do you any good. It’s three in the morning, and you need your sleep.”

“I can sleep next year.”

His whisper grazed her skin like wet velvet. “You’re sore.”

“No, I’m not.”

“You are. In between climbing dunes and dinner, I think you might remember that we were doing other things.”

“Believe me, I remember.”

He clasped both her hands patiently in one of his. “No. When I touched you the last time, you were sensitive. Dammit, did you think I didn’t notice? We are not making love again-Zoe. Those are your teeth in my shoulder.”

“You like that.”

“Is that supposed to be relevant to anything in particular? You know darn well I like everything you do.”

“You like this, too-good heavens! You like it a lot.”

“You’re sore,” he repeated in the tone of a drowning man.

“A little. Not that much.”

“That much is my fault.”

“I could have sworn I was there at the time.”

“You were.”

“Rafe, I have an itch-”

“You do not have an itch, not there, and I am not letting go of your hands.”

“All right. I think it’s time we got serious here. Fifty cents says I can make you let go.”

“No.”

“Five bucks says you’ll be breathing hard inside of three minutes.”

“No.”

“A hundred-flat on the line, and believe me, you’ll never get this offer again-says you’ll be inside me on the short side of ten minutes.”

“If and when I meet your mother, Zoe, I’m going to tell her just what kind of daughter she raised.”

Conversation lagged. He’d just released her hands.

From the rear window of the rental car, Zoe took one last look at the cabin. She thought, it’s over, and tested every corner of her mind for regrets. There had only been so much time, and maybe they should have spent it talking about each other. Maybe they should have spent it talking about the children.

Instead, all they’d done was…be together.

She had no regrets.

As for all the decisions waiting to be made, she knew exactly what she was going to do. Loving him had clarified the only choice she really had.