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“Here’s the head … take some short breaths now,” he said. The shoulder was a little stuck. He needed a gloved hand and a well-practiced technique to free it, and then out came the slippery body. “Fabulous, it’s a girl, Gina,” he told the mom. “Congratulations, both of you.” Nurse Kate passed him a couple of instruments and he cut and clamped the cord.
The dad squeezed his wife’s shoulders and buried his face in her hair. Both new parents were tearful and gushy, and there was no doubt about the health of the baby. She was crying and waving her little arms, but when they placed her on her mom’s warm tummy she nestled and snuggled and it was wonderful.
But very late at night, second night in a row. His patients always seemed to give birth in clusters.
Andy delivered the placenta, checked the baby and the birth canal, made the necessary notes, all the small medical and administrative tasks that most new parents were too absorbed in their baby to notice. The high that everyone felt after a successful birth began to ebb and he started to think about a dark, quiet room, smooth sheets, closed eyes, warm dreams …
It was almost four when he turned into his driveway, and there was a light on in Claudia’s front window. He saw a shadow moving behind the closed drapes as he came up the porch steps, and a floorboard creaked. What was she doing up this late? Was something wrong?
He was still thinking like a doctor who’d just delivered a baby. Didn’t even pause to question his action, just knocked at her door and called out, “Claudia? Everything okay in there?”
He heard footsteps and the rattle of the doorknob. A gap of light appeared, partially blocked by a very tired and grumpy figure, holding a mug of hot chocolate with her little finger bent outward. “I’m pregnant and I can’t sleep. Or breathe. What’s your problem?”
“Called out for a delivery.”
The gap opened wider. “Oh? At Mitchum Medical Center?”
“That’s where all my patients go, unless it’s something really serious.”
“That’s right, you told me that last week. I liked it when I took a tour, but haven’t made a decision yet. Was it a good team? Did everything go well?”
“Textbook-perfect. Apart from happening in the middle of the night.”
“Isn’t that when they always happen?”
“Sure feels that way.” He hid a yawn behind his closed hand.
“Come in. You look cold. I’m sorry I sounded snippy. If you have any ideas about the not-sleeping thing …”
He was in her living room before he knew it. She’d lit the fire in the brick-and-tile hearth and the warm air smelled of chocolate and a hint of woodsmoke. She was wearing a fluffy white robe and sheepskin boots. Free of makeup, her eyes had little creases at the corners from lack of sleep. Her hair sat in its usual knot, but it was lopsided and fuzzy with tangles. It looked like a robin’s nest about to fall out of the fork of a tree.
“Looks like you’re doing all the right things,” he said. “Hot drink, warm air.”
“Except I’m so hot in bed.” She said it with total innocence, still grumpily focused on her discomfort and frowning at the fire, and he was shocked at the reply his very male mind came up with—luckily not out loud.
Hot in bed? I’ll bet you are.
The grumpy expression and bird’s-nest hair were weirdly sexy, for a start, as well as those fingers curved around her mug. And what was underneath the robe?
“It’s so crazy,” she went on. “In the daytime, I can go to sleep on the couch or on top of my comforter like that.” She took a hand from the mug and snapped her fingers. “At night, when I climb between the sheets … not happening.”
“So sleep on the couch at night.”
“That’s why I lit the fire. It’s kind of soothing when it crackles. I can watch the flames till my eyes get sleepy. Right now, I think that’s an hour away. Would you like some hot chocolate?”
She sounded wistful and eager at the same time, as if she really did want the company, and he wondered why this baby didn’t have a father.
Why had there needed to be that crisp, distancing announcement, the day they first met, about sperm donation and planned pregnancy? Just how impossible was she to live with? Or just how exacting in her standards about men? Had something happened in the past to scare her off?
Or did she try too hard, like Laura?
Laura had crammed his house with heart-shaped objects and romantic sayings on fridge magnets. She’d told him, “I love you,” so many times that the words lost all meaning. She’d created elaborate “date nights” after he’d worked eighteen hours straight and then sulked when he didn’t want to take part, and generally poked and prodded at their relationship until it died like an overfed fish.
Claudia didn’t seem exacting and impossible. Right now, she seemed adorable and sexy without knowing it and more alone than she should be a month from giving birth. He couldn’t say no to her. He should say it, but—
“Hot chocolate would be great.” He began to follow her to the kitchen, but she shook her head.
“Sit! I’m going to reheat this one while I’m there, I didn’t give it long enough.” She gestured to the mug in her hand.
He heard the refrigerator open and shut, and then the microwave. After a couple of minutes she reappeared, walking gracefully but super carefully with the two mugs so that the foamy chocolate didn’t spill. She’d filled them too full.
The pink tip of her tongue appeared at the corner of her mouth, the way a little girl’s did when she was working on a tricky drawing. Ms. Nelson would not have made a successful waitress if she had this much trouble balancing two drinks. Andy hid a smile, half amused, half captivated by the evidence of imperfection. He was beginning to realize that he couldn’t think straight around this woman, and that there was a lot more to her than the efficiency and the plans.
They sat and sipped the chocolate. She asked him about his firewood supply. Would he mind if she lit the fire each night until the evenings were warmer? Or was that a nuisance, her using up the wood? Would he prefer her to use the furnace?
“The fire is fine,” he told her. “I have one on my side, too, use it on snowy weekends mainly, when I’m planning to be home. There weren’t enough of those weekends this past winter, so there’s plenty left.”
“I love the tiled surround. And the hardwood mantel.” Her voice was lazy. She might not be able to sleep, but she’d lost the efficient edge he had heard in her daytime conversation.
It was so late.
So late, and he was beyond tired.
“They were boarded over when I first bought the house,” he told her, feeling lazy about speech, as well. His voice creaked a little. “There was some hideous death-trap gas thing in this one. I took it out and took a sledgehammer to the boards. That was a great moment, when I saw the tiling and hearth all still intact behind the mess.”
“Bet it was! I can imagine that hammer, too.” She smiled, and he wasn’t sure what she was thinking. “It was on my wish list, once, renovating an old house, but other things kept getting slotted in higher up.”
“May still happen. You never know. Life takes curves.”
He was getting sleepy. Really had been a long night. He’d only just gotten to sleep when the call had come from Gina Wilkins and her husband to say she was in active labor and they were heading to the hospital. Now it must be going on five.
He’d finished the chocolate. He put down the mug, but didn’t want to jump straight up and leave.
“Curves,” Claudia was saying. “It does.”
They both thought about that for a moment.
A long, sleepy moment, with the flames dancing before their eyes—maybe if he just closed his for a second—and the room so … deliciously … warm …
And dark.
And downy, tucked under his chin.
Soft comforter, felt just like his. He decided fuzzily that he must be in bed …
He was definitely asleep. Deeply and righteously asleep, not just dozing as Claudia had thought at first.
Thinking about life’s curves—like her parents’ bitter, drawn-out divorce when she was ten—she’d heard the subtle change in his breathing and in the stillness between them. She’d sat beside him for several minutes, thinking that at any moment he would startle out of sleep and mumble an apology and she would usher him to the door so they could both get to bed. She was starting to feel as if sleep might be a possibility for herself, at last.
The pine log on the fire had begun to burn too low and the room wasn’t so warm. Or maybe it was just because she’d been sitting so still, not sure whether to disturb Andy with her movement or leave him be. After a few more minutes, she’d eased herself off the couch, turned the lights low and gone to bring the spare comforter from the bed she had ready for Kelly.
She’d tucked it around her landlord—very important to remember, at that point, that he was her landlord—still expecting that the movement would waken him.
But no. She crouched uncomfortably beside the couch with her hand still on the puffy fabric she’d just spread across his body and studied his face and his breathing, and he was definitely still fast asleep.
Look at him, sighing into the comforter with the faintest of smiles on his face, the muscles around his jaw and eyes and cheeks so relaxed and smooth, his lashes all thick and dark on his cheeks!
He had freckles across that crooked nose.
She hadn’t noticed them before. They were faint and light and sprinkled like gold dust on his skin, adding to the outdoorsy impression he gave. There was even a freckle on his top lip, right near the corner of his motionless mouth.
I want to kiss him.
I want to reach out and shape his face in my hands. I want to put my mouth on to his and take the heat of it until it wakes him up. I want him to reach for me, too, and pull me down, and make room for me on the couch with the whole length of him. And just keep me there. And kiss me. Hold me. Till morning.
I want the contact. It’s been too long.
I want the connection.
I just want him.
A man.
Him.
It was her body talking, not her. Or it was her loneliness. Or her hormones. Or something. Something she had no control over. The thoughts didn’t even come in words, they came in a surge of need that seemed more powerful because of all the extra blood in her body.
Think about that, Claudia.
Pregnant women had fifty percent more blood. It was one of the reasons she was so warm, most of the time.
You ‘re pregnant, Claudia.
You have a baby due in a month.
The last thing you need is to feel like this.
About your landlord.
Your sexy, manly, capable, laid-back landlord.
She made a frustrated sound, and it seemed to make him stir. She was just about to whisper something to him about getting to bed—he could stay on the couch till morning, if he wanted, but she needed her room—when he reached out.
Was he still asleep?
His hand curved around the back of her head and pulled her closer. His eyes were still closed. His nose nudged forward. Where was the mouth he was looking for? Ahh …
His lips were so warm. She had to drag herself away. She had to! Or push him, or tell him, “Wake up, Andy. I’m not whoever you think I am.”
But none of that happened. She let him kiss her, her own mouth motionless while his lips coaxed her. He mumbled, “Mmm,” the sound coming from deep in his chest. He wanted a response. His dream self was growing frustrated that these soft lips beneath his weren’t answering the kiss.
How could she answer it?
How could she not?
He tasted chocolatey-sweet and delicious and male and perfect. She hadn’t been kissed for a year. She hadn’t been pleasurably kissed for two, because the year-ago man had been a total disaster and had lasted just one date, and Claudia Nelson did not do second dates when the first one hadn’t worked. It was inefficient, a waste of time.
She’d never been kissed like this, so slowly and dreamily and blindly.
She leaned deeper into the soft edge of the couch seat, and the only place to rest her arm was on his shoulder. She felt the baby move and settle, as if she … he? … felt at home inside her body, with all this give and relaxation. She felt a fullness deep inside her, an aching of muscles she hadn’t known were there.
Oh, his mouth! How could it make such a connection with the rest of her body? How could she feel so full and yet so deeply throbbing with need? Her body had changed so much. She felt ripe down to her bones and to the tips of her newly filled breasts. She was a prisoner in her own skin—a prisoner who never wanted to leave.
She leaned in closer, parted her lips and touched him with her tongue then went deeper. Her body was boneless and helpless. He groaned. He stroked the back of her neck, ran his fingers up into her hair, found the knot on top of her head and suddenly the fingers went still.
Totally still.
But only for a moment.
“Claudia,” he said, in a voice that was sleepy and gravelly and only very slightly surprised.
And then he went right on kissing her.
Chapter Four
Man.
You couldn’t think in such a situation. It took Andy several seconds of groping thought, while his whole body clamored with one very simple feeling, even to realize where he was, what time it must be, what he was doing here.
Claudia. Hot chocolate. Middle of the night. Deep asleep.
He’d been dreaming. Not about Laura, or some fantasy woman, or anyone in particular. Just about femaleness and all the things a man loved. Silky hair and skin, sweet musky scent, softness and warmth, curves and weight beneath his hands, the touch of caressing fingers.
Man!
He was sure that it was a dream, that this delicious kissing feeling wasn’t really happening, that it was all part of the cocoon of warmth that wrapped around him, the sense of peace and a good job done.
But when his dream hand reached up to run through dream hair that might have been blond or chestnut or black and he found that tight little bird’s-nest knot with hairpins in it, his dream self had suddenly jolted into knowing that this wasn’t a dream, after all.
This was Claudia.
But he still wasn’t really awake …
Okay, so it was Claudia, sexy Claudia.
Wonderful.
She tasted delicious and she felt even better and she seemed as happy to stay in the dream as he was. He pulled her closer, found her peachy butt beneath his hand and levered her onto the couch beside him. There was just enough room.
