She’d just turned the knob on the door when she felt his arms swamp her from behind. Sleepy and warm, he turned her around and wrapped her up as if she were a fragile present and he were the ribbon. His chest hair tickled like a memory, and his forehead touched hers in the darkness. He hugged her, and life seemed so simple. And then his finger lifted the strap on her nightgown. “I like it better when you don’t wear clothes,” he said sleepily.
“This is my favorite nightgown, I’ll have you know.”
“Still no good, Zoe.”
“No?”
“Bare is better. Your skin is better.” He touched the fabric. “This is just silk.”
She smiled, nuzzling just a moment more in the hollow of his throat. He smelled so sleepy and warm, so uniquely like Rafe. His whiskered cheek scraped against her forehead. “Come back to bed.”
“I can’t. You know I can’t. The children…”
“At the moment, Zoe, the only one I care about is you, and you’re not going out to a cold couch in the middle of the night.” He added, “I’ll stay awake; I’ll get you up before they’re up. But you’re sleeping with me.”
His words both warmed and disturbed her. How many thousands of times had she desperately wished for a man who wanted her more than he wanted children? Only that man couldn’t be Rafe. He had to care about the little ones, and he had to care more about them than about her, because their future mattered so much.
Still, he wasn’t an easy man to argue with at three in the morning. He led her back to bed, and then, like a man, still wasn’t pleased. Her cheek had to be pressed to his shoulder, her leg anchored gently between his, the covers arranged just so. He even bullied her into closing her eyes, but she whispered, “You can’t fall asleep.”
“I won’t. Zoe?”
“Hmm?”
“I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
“Not that kind of I-love-you. Not the words that get said automatically after making love. I mean I love you.”
She didn’t have to think. She didn’t even have to open her eyes. “No, you don’t.”
“Funny, but I’m damn sure I do.”
“No. It’s just…needing each other right now. Because we’ve been thrown together in this situation with the kids.”
“If I’d been thrown together with a three-hundred-pound battle-ax with warts because of the kids, I assure you I wouldn’t be in bed with her right now.”
“Thank heavens you’re discriminating,” she murmured, but his mood would not be lightened.
“What I feel for you has nothing to do with the children, Zoe. I’ll tell you as often as I have to, until you finally believe it.” Before she could answer, he’d heaved up on an elbow. Dark eyes bore down on her as he stole first one pillow and then the second from beneath her head. “Honey,” he scolded gruffly, “what I would like you to do, just once, is not think about anyone but yourself, what you feel, what you want, what you need. I realize you think you’re a very selfish lady-you certainly keep telling me how selfish and cold-blooded you are-so just try to be that way. Just once.”
“Rafe-” Her nightgown seemed to be skimming over her head.
“I’d better confess right now that three times in a night for an old man like me might be close to a miracle. But we’ll try. Someone’s got to teach you to be selfish, to be greedy, to be just a little bit of a taker. The whole rest of the world mastered those vices a long time ago. It’s not so hard. But you want to pay close attention, because this is a very serious test about what you want.”
“Rafe-”
“Are you concentrating?”
There was just no talking to him.
Chapter Eight
Just as Zoe lifted the toothbrush to her mouth, the bathroom door was nudged open. “Morning, Snookums.” Parker was still trailing his blanket.
“Morning, pumpkin,” she replied to the wearer of the sagging teddy-bear pajamas, and whisked an eye to the doorway where his sidekick stood.
“Morning, Snookums.” Aaron yawned.
“Morning, lovebug.” Her hips shifted back to make room as both boys climbed up on stools and reached for their toothbrushes. Especially this morning, she would have appreciated an ounce of privacy, but the assembly line was already being organized. They brushed and spit in a harmonious trio, followed by three face washes, and then immediately the boys scrambled up on the vanity and perched on either side of her. Aaron patiently held the hairbrush and Parker automatically started to open lipstick tubes to figure out which one matched her outfit. Some day that decision could take time, but today her outfit for work was jeans and a fisherman’s sweater. Parker could choose any color he liked, his favorite game.
“Which perfume today, Zoe?” Aaron asked sleepily.
“This one. You can spray it.” Neither showed the least expression when she unlocked the medicine cabinet to remove a vial of perfume, though they both knew darn well she usually kept the scents on the dresser in her bedroom. “Did you give Uncle Rafe a hard time yesterday?” she asked casually.
Two small jaws dropped. “’Course not. We were wonderful,” Parker assured her.
“I take the question back,” Zoe said wryly. “Let’s put it this way. You are going to go easy on Uncle Rafe today, understand?”
“Sure.”
“Sure.”
“Because if you go very easy on Uncle Rafe today, late this afternoon you can come visit me and my whales.”
“We will be awesome.”
She listened patiently to the rash promises. Aaron was going to make lunch for everyone. Parker was going to remember to flush every time. Both planned to cultivate silence. No one was going to hit anyone even if Aaron hit him first.
“’Scara, Zoe?”
“Thank you.” With the mascara wand in her hand, she leaned closer to the mirror, her movement mimicked by the two urchins, who never seemed to lose their fascination with the mascara wand. She’d just finished one eye when a fourth reflection appeared in the mirror.
All she could think of was: and now we pay the piper.
The man standing behind her was wearing navy blue pajama bottoms, which were tied with a drawstring below his navel. His arms were loosely folded over a golden chest peppered with dark hair. His whiskered chin gave him an unkempt, dangerous look; his muscled shoulders again made Zoe think of a lumberjack’s, and there was an elemental maleness about this particular man-fresh-out-of-bed that set her nerve endings rippling like the stir of a breeze on the surface of a cool, smooth pond.
His slash of a smile set off waves of more intimate proportions. Suddenly and privately conscious of a delicate tenderness between her legs directly related to the man in question, Zoe felt color seep up her cheeks. It deepened when he uncrossed his arms and moved directly behind her.
“You helping Zoe get dressed?” he asked the twins.
“We always help her,” Aaron affirmed. “She couldn’t do it without us.”
“And I can see you do a terrific job.” Yawning, he reached for his toothbrush…by sliding both arms under Zoe’s from behind her, and made the boys giggle when he applied toothpaste to the brush the same way.
“You look like you got four arms, Snookums!”
And one set was distinctly male, not to mention what was pressing intimately against her back. She scolded him with her eyes in the mirror.
“Shouldn’t I be brushing my teeth in front of the kids?”
Such innocence, and she must have jumped sky high when the fingers of his left hand walked all the way down her spine and ended up with a private little pat. “We’ll just go out and start breakfast,” she said swiftly.