The Housekeeper's Daughter. Laurie Paige

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СКАЧАТЬ dad hadn’t had to lay a hand on them. Michael, riding behind him, hadn’t seen the car come speeding around the curve. Drake had. He’d yelled and run off the side of the road. Michael had been watching him, puzzled, right up until an instant before he’d been hit.

      Drake groaned and lifted his head. He watched the turbulent roll of the waves onto the shore, each one a reminder of the past. His father had told him Michael’s death wasn’t his fault. The child psychologist his father had called in had said the same.

      Drake’s adult reasoning assured him this was true in the sense that he hadn’t meant harm. But in his heart… In his heart, he would forever be calling for his brother to “Watch out” and knowing, even as he did, it was too late.

      Shaking his head, he wondered why, with all his other worries, this one had come back to haunt him now.

      Abruptly he pushed to his feet, needing movement to dispel the memories of a past too powerful to forget.

      Back at the house, he paused on the patio before going to his room. The light still shone in Maya’s window. A shadow moved across the drawn shade.

      Why was she still up?

      He saw her stop and bend forward. She was in obvious pain. Panic shot through him. He rushed to her door and entered without knocking.

      “Are you all right? Is the baby coming?” he demanded.

      She brought herself up straight and stared at him as if he were out of his mind. “No. Go away.”

      Pushing a lock of hair behind her ear, she moved away from him, her hands on her back. Insight came to him. “Your back’s hurting.”

      She sighed and didn’t answer.

      “Stay here,” he advised as if she might disappear into the night. “I’ll be right back.”

      Maya turned as quickly as she could, intending to tell him to leave her alone now and forever, but she faced only the door. He was already gone.

      Glancing at the clock, she knew she had to get some rest. She slipped out of the robe, got in bed and turned out the light. Lying on her side with a knee drawn up to support her midsection, she firmly closed her eyes.

      She’d counted three hundred sheep when the door opened and the light was switched on again. “What is it?” she snapped.

      “Liniment,” Drake said in a tone that implied this explained everything. “Stay still. I’ll rub your back.”

      Shock rolled over her. “You’ll do no such thing!”

      She’d die before she let him see her in her nightgown, her stomach round as a roly-poly.

      He snatched the covers down and sat on the edge of the bed. “This will help you sleep,” he assured her, as if that was the only concern about him being in her room at…

      “It’s almost one in the morning,” she said.

      “Yeah. You need your rest.”

      He pushed her gently down on the bed, then opened the bottle. The pungent scent of horse liniment filled the room. With one hand, he pulled the straps of her gown off her shoulders and down her arms.

      “Slip this down to your waist—”

      “No!” Panic was beginning to muddle her thoughts. She was entirely too aware of his warmth next to her hip and of the hour and of the yearning, the remembered hunger, that flooded her from deep within.

      Pushing upward, she realized that was a mistake as her gown slipped off her breasts. She threw her arms over her chest and huddled against the sheet as liquid heat ran in her blood.

      “That’s better,” Drake said.

      She heard the slosh of the liniment, then felt his hand on her bare shoulders, accompanied by the strong smell and cooling effects of horse medicine. Realizing he wouldn’t leave until he’d accomplished his task, she lay stiffly and let him rub her neck and down her spine to the edge of the nightgown.

      When his fingers slipped under the material, every nerve in her body jerked.

      “Easy,” he murmured, his voice low and sexy, soft the way it had been when they made love, endlessly tender as he coaxed her into wild passion.

      Relentlessly, he continued, rubbing and rubbing, pushing the gown down as he went lower until it finally rested at her waist. Using both hands, he massaged deeply on either side of her backbone and into the small of her back. It was painful, yet perversely made her feel better. Her eyes closed of their own accord as the pain receded.

      She groaned with relief as strained muscles slowly relaxed for the first time in weeks. He shifted closer, putting one knee up on the bed to rest by her side.

      “That’s better,” he murmured.

      Minutes went by in silence, broken only when he wet his hands with the liniment before starting his massage again.

      His fingers were magic. The stiffness melted away, replaced by a languid uneasiness that also faded as his touch became gentler. Now he rubbed soothingly.

      Exhaling on a deep sigh, she slipped into slumber with no dreams to haunt her rest.

      Drake continued rubbing lightly, not quite ready to stop touching her. Her skin was as smooth and soft as he remembered. Her warmth reached down inside him to that place of piercing cold that had been with him almost as long as he could remember. Only Maya had ever eased it.

      He screwed the cap on the liniment bottle and placed it on the night table, then turned out the lamp. The moonlight fell in an oblong of brilliance on the carpet. He couldn’t keep the thought from his mind that next door, Teddy slept in the bed that had once belonged to his twin.

      Last summer, lying in this bed, he’d told Maya about the accident and his part in it, about the guilt he sometimes felt for being alive. She’d simply held him closer and had made tender love to him until he’d forgotten the past. He grimaced slightly. They’d both forgotten everything, including the need to use protection, during those hazy moments of delight.

      It had never occurred to him that she would become pregnant. He’d never thought of having children.

      Without considering the act, he ran his hand around her waist and rested it on the hard mound of her abdomen. To his amazement, he felt something press against his palm, then he experienced a series of bumps. A funny feeling washed over him as he realized the baby was kicking the spot where his hand rested. It came to him that the child was alive and well and real.

      Very real.

      Maybe it was sheer vanity, but he knew it was his. It seemed to him that the baby knew him, too, that it was welcoming him home.

      About time.

      He started as the words popped into his head as if his son or daughter were speaking to him through mental telepathy.

      “Yeah, I know,” he said softly. “Now if we could get your mother to admit the truth, maybe we could figure out where to go from here.”

      Maya СКАЧАТЬ