She held out her hand to him. "Lie with me, Kevin. I – I need you."
He joined her in bed, wondering if she'd been about to say she loved him. If only she did. If only she hadn't had to force herself to come to Hardyville.
He gently kissed her face, the hollow of her throat, the inside of her arm, and between her breasts – all the places guaranteed to drive her wild. And when she'd heated up again, he kissed her mouth with an almost savage intensity before entering her.
He moved inside her, his own desires building to an almost unbearable peak until they overflowed. A raging bonfire exploded inside him. Moments later, as he lay spent and damp against her, she put her hands on either side of his face and kissed him, the kiss as gentle and loving as his had been rough and demanding. Surely she still loved him. She must. She'd been really angry the night they'd broken up, and rightfully so, but he couldn't believe that one argument would negate the foundation of trust and love they'd built before then.
As they lay together in a cocoon of intimacy, Tara sighed deeply. This was good, really good. But sex by itself wasn't enough to make a marriage work – she'd heard that from countless sources. She would have to carve a place for herself, cultivate a life of purpose apart from wife and mother. But what could she possibly find to do here in the wilderness that would fulfill her? Start a mail-order homemade soap business? Raise rabbits? Get a job selling paint at the hardware store?
The possibilities made her shiver with distaste.
"Cold?" Kevin asked, drawing the covers over her bare torso.
She was about to answer when a baby's cry startled her. It came from a small speaker on the nightstand – a baby monitor, she realized, a thoughtful touch. Debra's, or Kevin's?
Tara groaned. "I don't suppose you'd like to check on your son, find out what the trouble is?"
Kevin grew tense beside her. "I wouldn't know what to do. You and I have hardly seen each other in the past few months. I – I haven't really spent any time with Andrew alone since he was born."
"Well, you'd better start learning, Daddy-boy," she said playfully, although tension bloomed inside her chest. Surely Kevin wasn't going to turn out to be one of those macho fathers who thought taking care of children was women's work.
Tara all but dragged Kevin with her to check on Andrew. Now that her mind was clearer, she took a good look at the nursery. Fussy, fussy, fussy, with yellow ducks and blue elephants everywhere. But it was well equipped, with everything she would need to care for an infant, and for that she was grateful.
Aunt Debra's work, no doubt.
"Ah, just as I suspected," she said after a quick diaper check. "He needs a change. You do know how to change a diaper, right?"
"I'm not very good at it. I'll watch you do this one. Then the next one's mine."
"That seems fair."
He watched dutifully as Tara went through the now routine task, wiping, powdering, and taping on the new diaper. "Seems easy enough. Will he go back to sleep now?"
"I doubt it. Getting close to feeding time."
"Okay. I need to make a phone call." And just like that, Kevin disappeared upstairs.
Tara sighed. What was wrong with Kevin? She'd never known him to be tentative or wishy-washy about anything. Did he just plain not like kids? Or was he resentful of being trapped into marriage by an unplanned pregnancy? If that was the case, she couldn't go through with the wedding. She could not bind herself to a man whose resentment for his wife and child might well turn to something worse. She had been telling herself she loved him, but could she truly love a man who didn't put his own offspring first?
It took Kevin a couple of minutes after he reached his home office before he stopped trembling. It was a baby, just a baby. But nothing had ever scared him like his own son.
Get a grip, he ordered himself. There was no reason to believe he could not learn to competently, responsibly care for his own child. But then he started thinking of the hundreds of things that could go wrong.
He hadn't anticipated such a visceral response to the baby, and such a confusion of feelings. He couldn't help but love Andrew, a tiny human being that he and Tara had created together. But he was also terrified.
The fear was a result of the events in Chicago – he was smart enough to figure that out. His last day on the force had forever changed him. Before then, he'd liked children, had even participated in some programs to help underprivileged kids. Afterward, though, the sheer miracle of a child's life…and the tragedy of her death…had hit Kevin with the force of a wrecking ball.
He hadn't told Tara about that day's tragedy. She might have heard about it on the news, but she wouldn't have known he was involved. He'd been too close to it, too wrapped up in his sins to confide in anyone, even her. His lack of honesty had cost him the relationship, he realized now. They'd broken up that same day.
He would just have to find the strength to bury his fears, he realized. And meanwhile, he needed to find out what Tara's actual plans had been when she'd come to Hardyville. He didn't want any harm to come to her business in Chicago as a result of this little game he was playing.
He found her partner's phone number and called her, relieved to get her right away. "Cindy? It's Kevin Rayburn, Tara's…friend."
"Thank God! I've been trying to get Tara on her cell phone. Has something happened?"
"Her car was stolen," Kevin said. "She also…she's okay, don't worry, but she can't exactly remember how she got to Hardyville."
"You mean she has amnesia? What about Andrew?"
After calming Cindy down and explaining everything, he asked her to rearrange Tara's appointments and make sure her bills were paid on time. Tara was going to be furious with him as it was. No need for him to wreck her business or her credit rating while he was lying to her.
"I'll give you a week to come clean with her," Cindy finally said. "But only because I think what you guys had is worth salvaging. And because Andrew needs a father. But you do right by Tara, or you'll answer to me."
Chapter Five
Tara's strength came back more quickly than she would have thought possible, and she fell into a comfortable routine. She got up early with Kevin, they made breakfast together, and he left for work. Then she fed the baby, bathed him, dressed him, all tasks she had once imagined to be drudgery. But everything was fun with Andrew. She delighted in each smile, each wiggle, each time she caught him looking at something with a baby's awe.
While the baby napped, which he did a lot, she tackled the decor of her new home, eradicating Kevin's ugly bachelor theme. Kevin had told her she could do whatever she wanted, so she went hog-wild.
"What's this?" Kevin asked one evening when he got home from work.
"Berber carpet." Tara realized she should have at least warned him. "Stain-resistant – very important when you have kids."
"What happened to my sofa?"
"It's in your office." She bit her lip, wondering if she'd gone too far buying the sage-green sofa and matching chair, and the sage-and-clay striped love seat. Were the colors too girly? They would play in Chicago, but how about Hardyville?
Kevin sat in the chair. He bounced experimentally, then leaned back and nodded with satisfaction. "Okay. What's for dinner?"
She breathed a sigh of relief. "I started a pot of chili." Most evenings, she and Kevin cooked dinner together. He'd turned into a good cook over the past year, probably out of necessity. No human being could endure the greasy food at the Hole-In-Your-Shoe Saloon seven nights a week.
"I'll make some corn bread to go with it."
She smiled, then waited, as she did every evening, for him to ask about his son. If she was away from Andrew for even a few minutes, he was the first thing she asked about when she returned. But Kevin didn't, and it bothered her. A lot. There was something not quite normal about Kevin's attitude toward Andrew, but she couldn't figure out what it was. He seemed interested in the baby whenever they were in the same room, sometimes watching him like a hawk. But he wouldn't touch Andrew unless it was forced on him.