A Forever Kind of Family. Brenda Harlen

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      “Do you want me to get him a drink?” she asked as Ryan zipped up Oliver’s sleeper.

      “I can manage,” he assured her. “Go get some sleep.”

      Just as she decided that she would, Oliver—now clean and dry—stretched his arms out toward her. “Up.”

      Ryan deftly scooped him up in one arm. “I’ve got you, buddy.”

      The little boy shook his head, reaching for Harper. “Up.”

      “Harper has to go night-night, just like you,” Ryan said.

      “Up,” Oliver insisted.

      He looked at her questioningly.

      She shrugged. “I’ve got breasts.”

      She’d spoken automatically, her brain apparently stuck somewhere between asleep and awake, without regard to whom she was addressing or how he might respond.

      Of course, his response was predictably male—his gaze dropped to her chest and his lips curved in a slow and sexy smile. “Yeah—I’m aware of that.”

      Her cheeks burned as her traitorous nipples tightened beneath the thin cotton of her ribbed tank top in response to his perusal, practically begging for his attention. She lifted her arms to reach for the baby, and to cover up her breasts. “I only meant that he prefers a softer chest to snuggle against.”

      “Can’t blame him for that,” Ryan agreed, transferring the little boy to her.

      Oliver immediately dropped his head onto her shoulder and dipped a hand down the front of her top to rest on the slope of her breast.

      “The kid’s got some slick moves,” Ryan noted.

      Harper felt her cheeks burning again as she moved over to the chair and settled in to rock the baby.

      “It’s a comfort thing,” she said, not wanting to go into any more detail than that. She knew that it had started when Melissa was trying to wean him and Oliver stubbornly refused to drink from a cup. Her doctor had suggested that he was rejecting the cup because he wanted the skin-on-skin contact of nursing. So Melissa cuddled with him as if she was nursing but gave him milk from a cup.

      After a few weeks, he would happily drink from the cup so long as his hand was on her skin—and yes, she confided, that usually meant her breast. But over time, even that had become unnecessary. Losing his mother had obviously rekindled that need for skin-on-skin contact, and Harper had no intention of refusing Oliver the little comfort she could give him.

      “Maybe I need to be comforted, too,” Ryan teased.

      She rolled her eyes. “Then maybe you should call Brittney.”

      He looked at her blankly. “Who?”

      “The woman you were with the night I called to tell you about Melissa and Darren’s accident,” she prompted.

      The confusion in his eyes cleared. “That was Bethany.”

      “I’m going to have to write down the names of all of your girlfriends in order to keep them straight.”

      “That won’t be necessary,” he said. “Because there’s no reason for you to cross paths with any of them.”

      “Fair enough,” she agreed. “So long as you’re back from whatever bed you tangle the sheets in by five thirty so that I can go to work, I don’t care where you sleep.”

      “That’s what time you leave every morning? Five thirty a.m.?”

      She nodded.

      Because Oliver had been waking so frequently in the night, Ryan usually slept like the dead after he got the baby settled back down and returned to his own bed. So while he knew Harper’s day started early, he hadn’t realized it was quite so early. “That’s insane.”

      “Look on the plus side,” she suggested. “It will save you those awkward morning-after goodbyes.”

      She’d made it clear from their first meeting that she didn’t hold the highest opinion of him. Even at twenty-one, not yet graduated from NYU, Harper Ross had been a woman with plans and ambitions. Ryan had been finishing up his business degree at Columbia and preparing for an entry-level position at Garrett Furniture. And although there had been some definite chemistry between them, she’d made it clear that she wanted more than a man content to work in sales.

      Even when she’d found out that his family owned the multimillion-dollar company, she hadn’t been impressed. In fact, she’d accused him of coasting through life on his family name and money. There was probably some truth to that, but Ryan had grown up with a workaholic father who missed more family dinners than he attended. As a result, he’d vowed not to live his life the same way and he refused to apologize for the fact.

      He also refused to let her put him on the defensive about his personal relationships.

      “The only awkward morning-after I ever experienced was with you,” he told her.

      Harper drew in a sharp breath and glared at him over the baby’s head. “We agreed to never talk about that night.”

      “I didn’t agree to any such thing,” he denied. “You decreed it and I chose to go along.”

      She glanced down at Oliver, who, despite their heated exchange, had immediately settled back to sleep. “So why are you bringing it up now?” she challenged.

      It was a good question—and one he wasn’t sure he knew how to answer. Because even if he hadn’t explicitly agreed that the subject was off-limits, he had gone along with her request that they both forget it had ever happened.

      Except that he’d never really forgotten about that night. Yes, he wanted to—because it was more than a little humbling to share an incredible sexual experience with a woman who made it clear that it was never going to happen again—but his efforts had been unsuccessful.

      No, he hadn’t forgotten about that night, but he’d pretended that he could. And he’d never said a word about it to anyone. Until now.

      “Because it’s there,” he finally said in response to her question. “Even if we don’t talk about it—it’s there.”

      “It was one night more than four years ago,” she reminded him. “Ancient history.”

      “If it was so long ago and so unimportant, why didn’t you ever tell Melissa about it?” he challenged.

      “What?”

      “You always said that there were no secrets between best friends, that you told her everything. So why did you never tell her about that night?”

      “Because I didn’t want things to be awkward between us.”

      “Us who? You and her? You and me?”

      “All of us.” She kept her focus on the baby. “If I’d told Melissa, she would have told СКАЧАТЬ