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  “Wait a second.” Acting on impulse, Marta placed the bear on the sofa and turned to hug Ike.

  He held up a hand, stopping her. Picking up the bear, he turned it around so that it faced the sofa. Ike winked at her. “Wouldn’t want him getting an education before his time.”

  Unable to help herself, Marta laughed. The laughter felt good. Almost as good as his arms felt around her. She had slipped into them easily. Looking up, she shook her head, mystified.

  “I don’t know what to make of you.” He kept doing things that were at odds with the niche she’d mentally placed him in. He refused to stay put.

  He combed his fingers through her hair, sweeping it away from her face. “Do you have to try?”

  “Yes,” she answered honestly. Because he’d been kind to her, more than kind, she wanted him to understand. “Being naive has hurt me a great deal.”

  Unable to resist, Ike brushed a soft kiss against her lips. The thrill went deep, an arrow shot into the center of his core.

  “You weren’t naive, Marta, you were trusting, with a trusting heart. And you wanted to be loved.” All one kiss did was make him want another. He had a feeling there was no end to that feeling. But he’d enjoy conducting his own experiment to find out. “Nothing wrong with that. We all want to be loved in our own way.”

  “And yours would be to be loved by as many women as possible?” There was humor sparkling in her eyes as she asked.

  He inclined his head. “There are a great many definitions of love.” Very slowly, he anointed her mouth with his own, taking care not to be too rough, not to frighten her away.

  “No, there aren’t,” she whispered against his mouth, a moan echoing in her veins. “There’s only love, or the absence of it.”

  They were talking too much. Not loving enough. And he wanted to. He wanted to love every inch of her, for as long as possible. And even a little longer than that.

  Passing his hands slowly along the length of her, Ike filled his hands with her, worshipping what he touched with every movement he made.

  He wanted to enjoy her, to enjoy every inch, every curve, every beat of her heart. But a sense of urgency filled him, as if he knew he had to outrun not only time but a host of other demons before they took hold of both of them: the ghost of a lover not yet gone from her memory, and love too long elusive.

  He stood back, looking at her, his hands linked with hers. Though he’d undressed her with his eyes, and in his mind, he’d yet to take a single garment off her. It didn’t matter. Not in the way he saw her.

  “You are so beautiful.”

  Marta wasn’t going to let the words get to her, wasn’t going to allow her head to be turned to the point that she couldn’t find her way out of this heated maze. Even though she knew she was going to make love with him, she couldn’t lose sight of the end. Or of the fact that this was just exquisite physical love, and nothing more. Not for him.

  And so it couldn’t be for her.

  “What I am,” she whispered as he pressed his lips to her throat, driving her crazy, “is here.”

  His words hummed along her skin. His breath drove her crazy. “And I’ve never been so grateful for anything in my life, darlin’.”

  Darlin’. The neutral term. But she didn’t care. There was so little time left, and in the moments she had, she wanted to be his. His “darlin’.” Wanted to be all things to him so that, despite all the women who had been in his life and all the women who were to come, the moments he shared with her would stand out for him.

  Feeling like a tigress prowling the terrain one last time before she was returned to her cage, Marta allowed herself to break free of restraints. Allowed herself to stop thinking of the moment as something that would soon vanish. Instead, it became something for her to live within. To live for the moment because there was only now.

  Only him.

  She took Ike’s breath away. One moment, her mouth was upturned to his, her sighs throbbing in his brain, the next, he felt her hands racing along his body, pulling off his shirt, raking over his hips.

  Stunned, he caught her hands, looking at her. “Marta?”

  She twisted out of his hold. “Don’t talk. Just make love with me,” she breathed.

  “Yes, ma’am.” He took control. Or tried to. What resulted was an unspoken competition in which each tried to pleasure and outdo the other by raising that pleasure to a new high.

  They both lost.

  They both won.

  He’d never felt like this, never felt as if he couldn’t catch his breath, as if it was a struggle to keep his wits about him. When she strained against him, he could barely hold himself in check. The desire to plunge himself into her, to feel her seal herself around him, accepting this most intimate of unions, almost overwhelmed him.

  It was like being presented with a feast and wanting to sample everything at once, to eat and yet remain hungry enough to eat more. And he wanted more, so much more of her.

  His heart quickened at the same time as his loins did, when she urgently pressed herself against him. When he heard her moan as his hands covered her buttocks, pressing her even closer. So close that he thought he would absorb her. Be absorbed by her.

  He wanted to conquer this feeling, to rise above it and be able to look down on it from a safe perch, the way he’d always been able to before.

  But there was no conquering, there was only being conquered. And he couldn’t rise above it. Instead, he was engulfed by it and in it. Engulfed by it and by her. Engulfed in the magic her slightest sigh created. Her slightest movement.

  If this was insanity—and he suspected that it had to be—it was a wonderful insanity. He hoped he’d never recover.

  Pinning her to the floor, he kissed her over and over again, tracing his lips along her throat, her breasts, the quivering rise and fall of her belly. And quested ever farther.

  He heard her stifle a scream and knew that he had brought her up and over the first crest. But there were more crests to meet, more peaks to conquer. More to give her.

  Marta thought she’d bitten through her lip that time, stopping herself at the last minute from shouting out loud and waking up the baby. And quite possibly the whole town.

  Blindly, she felt for his shoulders, her fingers digging into his muscles. With the last bit of clarity left to her, she pressed her hands to his flesh, urging him back up to face her. To take her one last time and to make the journey with her.

  His heart pounding, he drew the length of his body over hers. His body quickening, hardening at the tantalizing contact. Perspiration mingled and sealed as he entered her and took her to somewhere they had already been.

  Somewhere new.

  “I love you.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Marta’s eyes sprang open.

  She wasn’t sure if she’d heard him, or if the words were just echoing in her head—shadows of what existed in her heart, so tightly under wraps.

  Her heart still beating erratically from the wild ride they had just taken each other on, she turned her head toward him.

  The words took Ike aback, even though they were his. They had just slipped out on a wave of emotion, as if they had wills of their own. He smiled to himself, feeling a little shaken. Raising himself up on his elbows, Ike framed Marta’s face and looked at her. What was she thinking? She hadn’t said anything to him in return.

  Was he alone in his feelings? He didn’t think so, but he couldn’t tell for sure. Couldn’t really tell what she was feeling because he wasn’t completely certain what it was that he was feeling. If pressed right now, he couldn’t say whether it was just the moment, or the thought of her leaving that had prompted him to say what he had.

  Or whether it was simply the woman.

  The woman who had created the feeling within him and brought the words to his lips. Ever since he’d first kissed her in the airport, she had stirred him up something fierce, leaving him a man without a compass, trying to find his way in the wilderness.
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br />   The silence was stretching out to unbearable lengths. “You know, I never said that to another woman before. Not where it meant something.”

  Was he trying to tell her something, or just rescind the words themselves? Marta wondered. “But you said it when it didn’t mean anything?” She struggled not to cling to the words, not to believe them. Because once she did, once she pretended that he meant them, even for a tiny space of time, then discovering otherwise would hurt twice as much. Maybe even more. Was there anything worse than wanting love and being cheated of it? She doubted it.

  But the sound of the three little words was, oh, so seductive.

  It wasn’t jealousy in her eyes. Ike knew what jealousy looked like, knew the signs. She wasn’t jealous of the women who had come before.

  “No, I’ve said it to my mother, to Junie.” Two women who had been so important to his life. And now there was a new woman, a smaller version who needed him. He would always be there for her, to give Celine whatever it was she needed. But he also had needs of his own. Needs that Marta had made him aware of.

  If the two had been the only ones to hear the words from him, Marta could have accepted that. But she knew that a man like Ike could no more refrain from telling women what they wanted to hear than he could stop breathing. It was just part of his nature to be accommodating, to be charming.

  “And to every other female within earshot,” she guessed.

  Ike could feel her stiffening, withdrawing. He blocked her retreat, at least physically, bracketing her head between his hands so that she couldn’t turn away from him. “No, not where I meant the words. Do you have to leave?” It wasn’t a question, it was an entreaty. He didn’t think she realized how much of himself he was risking by asking.

  Marta closed her eyes, wishing her body didn’t want him so. That she didn’t ache to believe the words that probably even now were being forgotten. “Not for a few hours.”

  She was being evasive, Ike thought. Why? Why was she drawing away from him? “I meant Hades—do you have to leave Hades so soon? You just got here.”

  It felt as if Marta had just set foot in Hades, and yet it felt as if she’d been here far longer than the two weeks that her round-trip ticket boasted. Pitching in to help in the fire, being part of the reconstruction that came in the aftermath, she felt more at home here than she ever had anywhere else.

  But she wasn’t Sydney. She couldn’t just pull up stakes and replant herself so far away from everything that was now familiar. She’d been uprooted so many times before. She just didn’t have it in her to do it again. She had a life back in Omaha. A job, responsibilities. People who depended on her.

  And an empty apartment.

  She ran her tongue along her lips, moistening them. The spark she saw entering Ike’s eyes almost made her forget what she was going to say. “I’ll be back in the summer. And maybe even during spring break if I can manage it.” That was coming up in April. It would only be for a week, but at least it would be something. “The baby will be here by then, and Sydney’ll welcome the extra help.”

  Her breasts rose and fell with each breath she took, moving so invitingly against Ike’s chest. The urge to take her again, to make love with her until both their bodies and minds were numb was appealing. But he couldn’t use that as a tool, no matter how tempting it was. It wouldn’t be fair to either of them.

  He wanted her to be honest with him.

  He wanted her to remain with him. Because of him. Somewhere, he thought, a man named Murphy was laughing because his law was being invoked. All the women who had been through his life, who would willingly have remained—and he wanted the one who was resisting.

  “So you’ll be coming back because of Sydney?”

  Was that hurt in his voice? Marta wondered. No, maybe injured vanity, but not hurt. Still, her breath caught in her throat as she looked up at him. Wanting him despite everything. “Should there be another reason?”

  Something sharp tore within Ike, ravaging his pride. “Well, hell, I guess you’ve got a lot of men telling you they love you, then. What I just said probably just washed off your back.”

  Did he think she was insensitive? Didn’t he know how much she ached to hear the words? To hear the words spoken with genuine feeling, instead of just popping out at the spur of the moment? “I don’t take the words ‘I love you’ lightly.”

  His eyes held hers. And darkened. “I don’t say them lightly.”

  Marta couldn’t allow herself to believe him. She couldn’t be hurt again. Because she knew that what she felt for Ike was so much more than it ever was for Alex. And that put her at greater risk than ever before. “I have to go.”

  For a moment, just a moment, Ike thought of refusing. Of keeping her here until she admitted to her feelings. But maybe he was just making it all up in his head. Maybe he wanted her to love him so much that he was reading things into every word she said, every look she spared him.

  Sighing, Ike rolled off her, allowing Marta to get up. But he didn’t avert his eyes as she scrambled to her feet. Instead, he watched her, memorizing every movement. Angry he still wanted her.

  Dead, he’d probably still want her, he thought.

  Completely unselfconscious as to his naked state, he propped up his head on his palm. If she hurried any faster into her clothes, her hands would get tangled. “You know, maybe it’s the weather, or maybe it’s the pace out here. Or maybe I’m just slow. But I don’t understand why you’re acting as if you suddenly realized I have the plague.”

  She jammed her arms through her sweater, then pulled it up over her head. She wished she could just close her eyes and vanish, instead of enduring this awkward interlude as she got dressed.

  “You don’t have the plague, you have a mouth dipped in honey. According to Sydney, you can turn any woman’s head, and I don’t doubt it.” She ran her hands through her hair, knowing she had to look like hell. “You’re good-looking, you know how to say just the right words. One look from you and a woman’s knees turn to mush. And heaven knows you’ve turned lovemaking into an art form.”

  So far, she hadn’t said anything that gave him a clue as to why she was running from him. “There’s a ‘but’ coming here, isn’t there?”

  She nodded, the words sticking in her throat as she forced them out. “But I’m not about to sell my heart for a one-night stand, or even a two-night stand.”

  Was that what she thought of him? After he’d gone out of his way to show her otherwise?

  He struggled to maintain the easygoing facade that had once been his natural bent. “I wasn’t asking you for your heart,” he lied. “I was just telling you how I felt. If that bothers you, then I’m sorry, but there’s no need to run off half-cocked, or half dressed.”

  His eyes slid very slowly down her lower torso. Marta looked down and her cheeks heated instantly. In her hurry to get dressed, she’d somehow managed to neglect to put on her jeans. Embarrassed, she grabbed them from the floor and yanked them on.

  Ike didn’t want her leaving this way. Getting to his feet, he stopped only long enough to put his own jeans on.

  “Look, maybe I shouldn’t have said anything.” It was as close as he could bring himself to apologizing for saying something that he felt. “It just seemed like the right thing to say at the time.” He caught her hand, forcing her to look at him. “Marta, I’ve never felt like this before.”

  Another reason for his words began to materialize in her mind. It made far more sense than his loving her. “You’ve never been in a position like this before.”

  Ike realized that his grip was tightening, and he loosened his fingers around her wrist. But he still held on. “Meaning what?”

  Why hadn’t she realized this before? Marta had walked in on Shayne and Ike talking about this very thing last week. A woman who could fill three capacities. Ike had called it ‘killing three birds with one stone.’ It made so much sense. She’d practically embraced the role as caretaker. “Meaning you suddenly have a chi
ld to raise. Maybe you think it would be nice to share the burden.”

  “Responsibility,” he corrected tersely. “Celine’s not a burden.” He still didn’t see where she was going with this, or why she was suddenly so upset. He hadn’t done anything but love her. “And maybe I do think it would be nice to share raising her with someone. So what?”

  Did he think she was blind? Or just too enamored to see? “So what you’re really looking for is someone to warm your bed at night and to take care of Celine during the day.”

  Ike’s eyes narrowed. She made it sound like a business deal. Worse, she made him sound like a man he’d loathe. A man who used people. Wounded that she’d think so little of him, and annoyed with himself for caring, he struggled to keep from shouting at her.

  “What I’d be looking for—if I were looking—is a woman who doesn’t blow hot and cold in the space of one rotation of the minute hand.”

  Why she suddenly felt like crying was beyond her, but Marta knew she had to get out before she made an even greater fool of herself. She grabbed her parka. “Maybe it’s the company I keep—ever stop to think of that?”

  She shoved her arms through the sleeves, then, fumbling with the parka’s zipper, she stormed out, slamming the door.

  He stared at the closed door. What the hell had just happened here? Ike dragged his hand through his hair, angry and mystified at the same time. He’d just told her he loved her. That wasn’t supposed to have made everything blow up in his face. Why had it?

  He saw the bear on the sofa, the one he’d gotten for her. She’d left it behind. Just like she’d left him.

  For two cents, he’d wring her neck for turning him inside out like this. For less than that, he’d drag her back and force her to—

  To what? To make love with him again? That wasn’t his style.

  Maybe she didn’t love him. Maybe she had been just dallying with him, the way she claimed he did with other women.

  Maybe…

  Maybe he’d better think about this later. Right now, Celine was crying. At least he could understand her needs.