Hope’s Child Page 15

  Unable to resist, he leaned forward and gently kissed her. “If she is a girl, I hope she’s a perfect miniature of her mother.”

  “Gallant answer.”

  He kissed her again, but then forced himself to rise before he started to cry. “What can I get for you before I head for that shower? You have to have something for the pain, you were practically sobbing in your sleep.”

  “No, I’m afraid to. I don’t have anything in the house except aspirin and acetaminophen and I’ve been reading that one can cause bleeding in the baby as well as me, and the other can cause wheezing in newborns. Imagine, simple over-the-counter drugs! I’m not taking any chances.”

  But Lyon could tell by her eyes that it had been and would be an ordeal. He only knew of one way he could help, minimal though it was. “Then I should go sleep in the guestroom,” he told her. What if he accidentally bumped her during the night? They’d been together long enough now that his body automatically sought contact with hers even in sleep.

  Hope looked instantly stricken. “Please don’t. It would help having you close. We could switch sides.”

  Lyon eyed the queen-size bed. “There wouldn’t be enough room for your arm to stay isolated like that.”

  “There would be if you spooned me.”

  Tempting as that—as well as the seductive look she gave him—was, he knew the extent of his own endurance. “We always get in trouble when I do that.” Just the thought of her sweet bottom pressed into his lap stirred him to life.

  “There, you see?” she coaxed. “The best kind of pain relief. Especially since Tan advised me to take off my ring because my fingers were starting to swell and he was concerned it would cause circulation problems. But now I can’t even stroke it to pretend you’re near.”

  Lyon had been unconvinced until she said that. She had just admitted to doing something he did all the time when they were apart. “Let me go get cleaned up,” he said in surrender. “You scoot over.”

  Chapter Eight

  On the first Tuesday in October, Hope and Lyon sat in the waiting room at Dr. Jacqueline Winslow’s practice. They were her last appointment for the day, which gave them the privacy Hope had wanted for Lyon, since he hadn’t had time to come home and change out of his uniform. They might be in the next county, but crossing county lines to transact business was a common matter in this sprawling state and one never knew who knew whom and would report a man in uniform from a distant town.

  “Nervous?” he asked her as she reached over and gripped his hand.

  Hope knew he had purposely positioned himself on her right so that they could do this. Her left hand no longer needed a bandage, but it remained sensitive. At least she was able to get her ring on again, she thought happily, fingering it with her thumb.

  “I didn’t think I would be, but I am.” She rested her head on his shoulder. “It’s not as though there’s any pain involved.”

  “Good. Because you couldn’t ask me to stand there and watch if there was.”

  He kept his voice low so that his words were for her ears only and Hope loved the way his breath caressed her hair. “But you’ve already signed up to be my natural childbirth coach,” she teased.

  “Under the condition that you understood I might not be able to go through with it on D-Day.”

  “B-Day,” she amended, not at all worried.

  “Stop being adorable when there’s nothing that I can do about it in here.”

  Hope was giggling as the door opened and a nurse said, “Mrs. Teague?” She bounded quickly to her feet. “That’s me.”

  To her surprise, Lyon held back. “Is something wrong?”

  “Do you want some time alone first?”

  “Don’t be silly,” she replied tugging his hand. “You know my body better than anyone here. Besides, with an ultrasound, all I have to do is raise my blouse.”

  “Thank you for sharing,” Lyon replied, trying to ignore the smirking nurse.

  Jacqueline Winslow was a tall, slender woman of forty with cropped blonde hair and kind gray eyes. She hugged Hope and shook Lyon’s hand.

  “Well, this is our big day, isn’t it?” she said slipping on her gloves.

  “One of them,” Lyon muttered.

  Hope grinned at her doctor. “Can you tell that we’ve been discussing the natural childbirth classes?”

  “Is that what I was sensing between the lines?” Dr. Winslow shook her head in bemusement. “It never fails that some of the strongest and bravest dads-to-be turn into Jell-O at the first sign of our mommies going into labor.”

  “I’m going to take that as confirmation that instincts still have value,” Lyon drawled.

  Hope shivered as the doctor put the cold gel on her stomach. “Sorry about that,” Dr. Wilson said. “You’ll get used to it in a second—or to be more accurate, totally forget about it. Watch that screen,” she added placing the transducer probe onto the goo. She started easing the probe around, paused to type in some adjustments on the computerized part of the machine, then moved it some more. “Here we come…ah, and listen to that heartbeat. Best sound in the whole world until Delivery Day.”

  “D-Day. Told you so,” Lyon said under his breath.

  “Smarty,” Hope replied, her gaze locked on the screen. Then her mouth fell open and she squeezed his hand even tighter. “Oh, my Lord! Is that her? I can’t believe it.” She had to blink furiously because tears were threatening to blind her.

  “Her?” Dr. Winslow continued with her scanning. “It’s a little late to put in an order.”

  “I know.” Hope sighed. “But can you tell?”

  “As a matter of fact, she’s being very obliging this afternoon. I don’t know how you knew it, but Mommy and Daddy had better start thinking of little girl names.”

  Hope dropped her head back onto the pillow and laughed with delight. “Thank you!”

  Dr. Winslow reviewed Hope’s chart with her, answered the questions Hope had brought with her, and gave her the contact information for the classes. The nurse printed a copy of the baby’s image for Hope and also presented her with a DVD, too.

  Hope was still staring at the picture as Lyon drove them home. “Isn’t she beautiful?”

  When Lyon didn’t immediately reply, she turned to look at his profile in the dimming light of dusk. He’d been so quiet for the rest of the session. She thought she caught him gulping once, but with her own compromised vision, she couldn’t be sure. That would be wonderful if he was as moved and thrilled as she was. Much stayed an unmarked road ahead of them. The most important things remained unsaid. That made it scary when she thought too far into the future, so she tried not to except when clients and black-and-white issues demanded it.

  “She’s going to be more than beautiful,” Lyon said at last. “She’ll be her mother’s daughter. A single word won’t ever describe her.”

  He always managed to move her with his simple yet almost romantic reflections. Why was she worrying?

  Because I love you was simple and romantic, too.

  She reached over and gently touched his nape. “Are you okay?”

  “Watch the hand.”

  “I’m watching,” she replied knowing full well what he was up to.

  She accepted that he was going to make the most of Dr. Winslow’s scolding; she knew it as soon as Jacqueline had spotted her injury and learned what they did not do that night. Although the wound had scabbed over and seemed to be healing, the doctor had demanded that if anything like that should happen again to get to the ER immediately. She spoke two words to make Hope realize her potential folly. “Staph infection.”

  In this day and age when germs could not only ignore but outmaneuver state-of-the-art drugs and mutate, Hope had risked having a safer, healthier pregnancy. She’d learned that she was wrong to assume that being current with shots and careful with hygiene and medication that she was protected. And there was a danger of MRSA, which her doctor explained as “methicillin-resistant” staph bacteria. As a prec
aution, Dr. Winslow had the nurse take a blood sample to make sure there was no sign of infection in her bloodstream.

  “I’m okay,” Lyon said with a misleading nod. “Provided I can lock you in a safe place for the next four months where you only get out when I’m home to watch you.”

  “The concern is touching,” she said playing along with him. “But what a caveman concept for such a respected women’s advocate. Can’t you see Pettigrew’s headline? Pregnant Sex Slave Discovered in Police Chief’s Closet.”

  “I’m not talking as a law officer or the chief law authority. I’m talking as the concerned man in your life.”

  Hope looked out the passenger window at his careful phrasing. How could they be so free and open with each other when alone—particularly in bed—and hit this indescribable, unmovable mental glitch when it came to their public persona as a unit? Why not “husband and lover?” Was it because lover had the word love in it?

  “I know you worry,” she said this time touching his thigh.

  “I like your doctor.”

  “Jacqueline lost her own baby and husband in a car accident ten years ago. She never remarried, but she adopted a special needs child.”

  “Lucky kid.” Lyon folded his right hand around her fingers avoiding her palm that retained subtle swelling. “Would you like to stop somewhere to eat? To celebrate? It would save having to fix something at the house.”

  “Are you hungry?”

  “Not really, I had a late lunch. But if you are, I’d find something and keep you company.”

  “I had a big lunch, and—” with her right hand, Hope plucked at her red-and-black maternity top “—if you don’t mind, I’d like to get home and wash off this gunk. The wipes the nurse gave me don’t cut it.”

  “I had no idea. Of course.”

  They did reach home less than an hour later. It was dark and the lights that Lyon had set to come on by various timers since Hope’s accident were working as programmed, lending a welcoming glow inside and out of the sprawling house.

  As soon as they were in the kitchen, without even taking the time to remove her shawl or put down her purse and the DVD, Hope fastened the sonogram picture to the refrigerator with the service-number magnet from the side. “Ta-da!” she sang to the little being in the picture. “Your first piece of refrigerator art.”

  “Be careful what you wish for.” Coming up beside her, Lyon put his arm around her. “Today a mesmerizing printout, tomorrow a wall-papered appliance—like a kitchen doesn’t lend itself to being a fire hazard in a dozen different other ways.”

  “You cynic,” Hope said laughing and threatening to punch his shoulder. “I bet your mother treasured your school drawings.” She couldn’t wait to see glimpses of what was going on inside her child’s mind. “When I was growing up,” she said to make Lyon understand, “the refrigerator was Mrs. Crandall’s property. Don’t get me wrong, she was a good woman, but she didn’t want scribbles of stick figures with purple hair and eyelashes that resembled tarantula legs marring her everything-in-its-place territory.”

  “Poor rejected artist.”

  She supposed it must seem silly to anyone else. “How would you feel if your work was tucked away out of sight in a file?”

  He gave the question about three seconds thought. “Confused. My stuff was used to start stove fires. Productive little guy that I was, I was instrumental in keeping us warm all that winter. After that I quit drawing and took up building ship models. They don’t burn as well and the smoke stinks. I found out trying to have a Viking funeral in our stock pond. My dad gave me an earful when he came chasing out there thinking the pasture was on fire.”

  Hope gave him the arched Alessandro stare that Lyon recently told her made him almost hear flamenco music. “If you had said model horse kits, I might have believed you.”

  “Sissy stuff.”

  “You seriously did that?”

  “Heck, no, there was no money for that. As soon as I was old enough, I got a paper route to start saving for college because I knew there was no way my parents were going to be able to afford to send me.”

  “Now that sounds like the Lyon Teague I know,” Hope said over her shoulder as she moved on to the bedroom. She set her purse on her vanity in the bathroom, and folded the shawl and laid it on a shelf in her closet. As an afterthought, she slipped off her heels. They were low in comparison to what she was used to wearing, but they, too, made her back ache as if she wore them all day.

  When she reemerged, she saw that he was removing his gun and the belt with the extra clip, and putting it in his closet. “I’m sorry that you had a demanding childhood.”

  He shrugged. “It kept me fit and taught me discipline. Let me help you with that.” Coming up behind her, he moved her hair aside to unzip her top.

  “Thanks.” Hope watched him in her vanity mirror. “I guess we do need to start thinking of girl names.”

  Startled, he met her gaze in the mirror.

  “What?”

  “Well, I thought you’d want—” He shook his head. “Hope is what I would pick.”

  She made a face. “I like my name, but it would feel a little egotistical.”

  “Why?” Lyon scoffed. “Men do it all the time with the junior and second, third thing. It’s a badge of honor. Let’s get that left arm out of the sleeve before this knit material gets caught and rips off some scab prematurely.”

  “How lucky am I to have my own personal dresser,” she said softly as she watched him focus diligently on his task.

  “The official un-dresser.” His secret smile suggested he enjoyed his own humor. “How about Rebecca Hope?” he added finally lifting the whole top over her head.

  “Close!” She was delighted that they were almost on the same track. Watching as he laid the top on the edge of the garden tub, she said, “I was thinking Meredith. Meredith Rebecca Teague.”

  She watched as Lyon stared at the back of her head and then met her eyes in the mirror. “Our mothers would like that,” he said quietly.

  “I think so, too. I like the way Meredith flows off the tongue. It also makes me think of the lilt in inquisitive children’s voices. You’ll probably hate this, but we could call her Merri while she’s little.”

  Lyon’s eyes lit with humor as he took gentle hold of her shoulders. “Hope and Merri…doesn’t that pairing demand it’s own photo Christmas card?”

  Dropping her head against his shoulder, Hope looked up at him. “Oh, you!”

  She saw desire change the light in his dark eyes as he realized that she was wearing the red-over-black lace bra that had made his chest rise and fall the first time he’d seen her in it. Hope hadn’t yet done more than finish unzipping her low-rise jeans but his glances down into that V indicated that he knew she had on the matching panties.

  Framing her face with his right hand, he said, “Meredith or Merri, I can see I’ll be quickly outnumbered and outvoted.”

  “No, you won’t, but thank you for agreeing.”

  He stroked her high cheekbone with his thumb. “How could I not? I ache just looking at you,” he said before lowering his head.

  His kiss was possessive yet tender, hungry yet generous as he strived to give her as much pleasure as he was taking. When Hope reached up to slip her right hand to his nape to deepen the kiss, he groaned and gave her what she wanted, stealing her taste and then her breath with his tongue. Locked in this sensual prison, he slid his hands down her arms and over her breasts. Her sheer bra immediately exposed her arousal and he intensified it by circling her nipples, then raking his thumb nails over the ultra-sensitive peaks.

  Hope’s sounds of yearning abruptly ended in a choked cry and her body shuddered with the sexual need that remained close like a prowling predator whenever they were within sight of each other. Murmuring something she couldn’t discern, he then slid his right hand into her jeans until he cupped her.

  Her body jerked, defenseless against her own passion. When he drew her harder against hi
s hips, it exposed the answer to an unasked question. Yes, he was as turned on as she was aroused.

  Hope wanted to turn and wrap both arms around him, but she wouldn’t even if she could free herself from his sensual vise. She would only get that awful gel on his uniform. As it was, he was probably getting some on his sleeve, but she could no more warn him than she could stop rocking against her hips in the erotic, age-old rhythm he coaxed from her with his hand.

  The more the tension built, the more feral the bite of her fingers at his nape and the wilder his kiss. Then he tore his mouth from hers and with his teeth on her neck groaned in a quaking climax that thrust her into sensory overload, and she gasped from her own release.

  Lyon wrapped both of his arms around her, clutching her to his chest and rocked them soothingly until his heart didn’t beat like a jackhammer against her spine and neither of them was still panting like marathon runners.

  “What you do to me,” he said, his face buried in her hair.

  Hope leaned her head back against his shoulder. “I want you inside me.”

  “In about five minutes,” he said. “As soon as I shower.” He kissed her hair before releasing her to start unbuttoning his shirt. “Come with me?”

  Hope chuckled briefly. “Don’t look at me that way. You’ll get my hair drenched and I only washed it hours ago. Then you’ll be lying in bed asking me what’s taking so long to dry it.”

  “Not if you’d stand where I could watch you.” He tossed his shirt beside hers.

  “By the time I finish,” she said ignoring that, “you’ll be twenty minutes into REM sleep.”

  Glancing down at himself, Lyon muttered, “Want to bet?”

  As he opened the shower’s frosted glass door to turn on the spray, Hope turned away to the vanity to turn on the sink water and adjusted the wand to a comfortably warm temperature. Under her lashes she watched Lyon strip off the rest of his clothes. No, it wasn’t likely that he would be asleep quite so soon. His provocative invitation and his own active imagination had sabotaged him. He may have climaxed two minutes ago, but his body was in denial.