Gathering her memories of herself, of that girl who’d defied her parents and married the wrong man on purpose, she dropped her purse on the table, took the three steps between them, lifted her arms to his shoulders, and went up on her tiptoes to kiss him. It was his turn to freeze, but only for a few seconds. He grabbed her, picked her up so she had to wrap her legs around his waist, and carried her into his bedroom.
He set her down and yanked her skirt up, reaching for her panties. But she didn’t care anymore. She wanted it as badly as he did. She felt the sort of yawning emptiness she’d experienced before she first had Anton. Their tongues tangled. Teeth clicked together as he yanked her panties down. She unzipped him and palmed his dick, marveling at the differences, yet knowing the goal was the same.
His fingers teased and tantalized her flesh. He slid the straps of her dress down with his other hand. With a sigh of pleasure he pressed her onto his bed, suckling her breasts, fingering her, giving her the exact amount of pressure and speed she needed until she cried out with pleasure.
“Now, that was very nice.” He put his fingers in his mouth, closing his eyes for a second. He loomed over her, parted her legs and slid between them, penetrating her so quickly she gasped. Before she could make him stop, reminding herself that this would be the most dangerous time of the month for her to have sex with her husband, much less this man who was not her husband, he reached up high, going slow and rocking against her in a way she’d never experienced.
She wrapped her legs around him, dying to feel every single inch. His chest was mostly hairless, and she found herself comparing him to Anton until she noticed he’d stopped moving. He was looking down at her. His arms on either side of her head shook.
“I … need to … oh, God.” He groaned and gave a huge thrust, banging her head into the headboard. “Oh God, oh God, oh God.” He kept banging into her as he shuddered all over, then stilled. The familiar warmth filled her, and she burst into embarrassed, horrified tears.
Chapter Nineteen
Lucasville
One year later
Aiden Leonardo Love was the easiest baby on the planet. Everyone said so. He slept hours at a stretch almost immediately. His nursing was easygoing, not frantic as Dominic’s had been. He smiled at everyone and would sit and watch the world go by, content even by the time he was crawling to follow his brothers, as much as they would let him.
Lindsay had asked to know his blood type, thinking she’d be safe for the rest of the boy’s life if she could assure herself that he could be cross-matched to hers. Unfortunately, it was not the case. He turned out to be blood type O and, based on her hours spent researching it, she knew the child was not Anton’s biological son. He couldn’t be, since she was type O negative and Anton was AB positive. The only way Aiden could be a type O was if his father had type O blood as well.
She kept those results on a small computer-generated printout, folded into a small square in an old cigar box where she kept her bank book from the Louisville institution that held her Halloran family money. The box was tucked far back on a deep shelf in the bottom basement, behind a stack of blankets, which were in turn stuffed behind a bunch of board games.
Anton had been frantic that weekend of course. He hadn’t asked where she’d gotten the clothes, makeup, and books for the boys and gifts for her friends. But he’d barely had time, since she dropped everything on the kitchen floor, ran to him, and threw herself into his arms a full day before she told Tanya Norris she’d be home.
They had made love three or four times by the time she retrieved her sons from her friends’ house, no worse for wear. Just for good measure, she made him stay home the next day, and when Kieran and Dom went down for a brief nap, after a carefully timed dose of liquid allergy medicine guaranteed to keep even Dominic down for a good hour, she jumped his bones again. He napped afterward, holding her close.
“So we’re good now,” he said when he woke. “We’re clear on the money.”
She bit the inside of her cheek, then turned to him and kissed him, her mind spinning with the horror of what she had done, as well as what she might have done, but keeping the Isabella thing tucked away in case she needed to pull it out for later use.
“We are, Anton. But you should know, I don’t want that Isabella person working at the pub anymore. We clear on that?”
He blinked, licked his lips, and propped up on his elbows. She pressed her fingers to his full lips, those lips she did love, and did not want to betray, even though she had in the worst possible way. “Just fire her. And we won’t have any more reason to discuss it.”
He nodded. The next time Lindsay went into the pub with the boys for dinner, she asked after Isabella and was told she’d been let go. Joe Patterson didn’t show his face much either, to her extreme relief.
Again, life, as it was wont to do, progressed. Her pregnancy, no surprise to her or Anton, was uneventful. Aiden was born the normal way, quickly, and with the usual amount of pain. When she looked into his eyes the first time, she knew. She ordered the blood test just so she would have no reason to doubt that she’d done the worst thing ever. But had gained a true angel of a son a result. A son Anton loved just as much as he did the others—sporadically, fiercely, and with a heavy hand.
The production side of the brewery did move, about a year after Aiden’s birth, and with the help of the mystery investor. The Love Pub remained downtown, one of the few local businesses unaffected by the steady encroachment of the suburbs from Lexington. With of the monthly weight off Anton’s shoulders thanks to a marked increase in sales and cash injections from the “angel,” he was able to put a new roof on their house, fix up the living room, and buy furniture, a new dishwasher and a stove.
Lindsay didn’t touch her money, swearing to herself she would use every single penny of it on the boys’ education. She allowed herself the occasional haircut and manicure, not the way she had when she was a pampered daughter, but at least often enough that she didn’t feel like the world’s biggest drudge. But she indulged only if she could justify paying for it out of what she might save on other monthly budgeted items.
The boys grew into their personalities, and Kieran began his infatuation with basketball that would morph into an all-consuming obsession for him and his father. Dominic never quite got over losing his coveted “baby” spot to another brother, and even walked baby Aiden around their neighborhood once, trying to sell him to the highest bidder.
Most days were a set of barely controlled hours of chaos, especially after both Antony and Kieran got better at basketball. The house suffered the direct attention of three very active boys, with a youngest brother tagging along the best he could. Lindsay relaxed after Aiden’s second birthday, allowing that she’d made a mistake and the good Lord had seen fit to gift her a son to remind her of it every single day.
The day Lindsay conceived her final child—the daughter she’d always believed she wanted—a snowstorm had socked the Love family into the house. At first it was fine. They gathered at the fireplace, toasted marshmallows, and sang songs. Lindsay let the boys set up a couple of real tents in the living room so they could pretend they were camping out. Marianne brought Rosie, and Tanya threw Paul into the fray while the women sipped coffee and nibbled the cookie dough Lindsay had ready for later treats.
At one point, Lindsay took in the atmosphere—the sound of giggling, happy children in one room, her friends in her kitchen under her snug new roof, her husband off at his successful business. Her heart felt so full, tears prickled her eyelids.