Baby Be Mine Read online

  The prize was exactly what Clair's eye was on. Both eyes were on Jace as he rounded the truck he'd just parked in the driveway so he could take Willy down from his car seat.

  He looked as if he'd had a hard day. His chiseled face seemed haggard and lined. And he did not seem happy to see the caravan of two that charged him as he and Willy came back around to the driver's side of the truck.

  He just watched them coming, without greeting either of them, and Clair thought that poor Rennie was having to be the recipient of his dark scowl by association.

  "Hi," Clair said when she and Rennie reached him, hoping her greeting sounded warm enough to let him know she hadn't come for a confrontation over Willy, which she sensed was what he thought.

  Jace merely inclined his head to acknowledge the greeting, but he didn't answer it.

  "Can we talk?" Clair asked.

  "I don't have anything else to say," he told her with a chill in his voice.

  "Wennie, I dots a dood wock," Willy said then, seeming oblivious to the tension that was shooting between Clair and Jace.

  Clair tried not to take offense at Willy's ignoring her in favor of a neighbor, and kept her focus on Jace.

  "How about if you go over to Rennie's house and show her your good rock?" Clair suggested to the toddler, proud of being better able to translate his mispronunciations than she had been at first.

  "Is it okay if he comes with me for a while?" Rennie asked Jace.

  "Should I be worried that this is a kidnapping conspiracy?" he asked her, as if he'd believe Rennie's answer more than he could believe one from Clair.

  "I've only conspired to give you guys a little while alone," Rennie assured him.

  Jace nodded his consent. "Okay. But don't make me break down your door to get 'im back," he warned.

  "Don't worry," Rennie said as she ushered Willy back the way she and Clair had come.

  Neither Jace nor Clair said anything while the sound of Rennie's voice was still in the air. They just remained locked in a stare that left them at odds.

  He wasn't going to give an inch, Clair thought. But since she wasn't sure she deserved even that much, she didn't let it discourage her.

  "I suppose you want to go inside," Jace said when Rennie and Willy were out of earshot, his tone less than hospitable. "But I should tell you right now that if you think for one minute you can convince me to hand Willy over to you, you're wrong and I won't have my time wasted listenin' to it."

  "That isn't what I have to say," Clair told him. "But I would like to go inside."

  Jace led the way, and as Clair followed and tried not to feast on the sight of his perfect posterior, she wondered if he was treating her to a dose of bad manners on purpose.

  But once they were at his front door, his manners kicked in again and he held it open for her to go in first.

  The house was chilly; apparently he'd turned the heat down for the day. Clair just hoped that was the only heat that was turned down and that she could raise Jace's temperature as easily as he had turned up the thermostat.

  "What is it you want to talk about?" Jace asked her then, standing barely a foot inside the arch that connected the entry and the living room, his hands on his hips, his weight slung more on one hip than the other, his denim-blue eyes as cold and hard and angry as they had been earlier in the day.

  "You put me into a panic this morning," she began from the center of the room where she'd stopped and pivoted to face him. Then she went on to tell him how his idea about her staying in Elk Creek had affected her and why.

  "I wouldn't expect that our whole life together would be about you giving in to me," he said when she'd laid out the whole list of things she'd had to concede to Lyle. "I'm not going to dictate when and what you eat or every movie we see or every TV program we watch or what you should read. I wouldn't want you not to have any friends of your own, and I can't imagine making you only see 'em when I'm not around."

  "I know. Rennie pointed out that my perspective was limited and that's part of what got me here tonight."

  "What's the other-part?"

  "I realized that you were right and that I couldn't do to Willy exactly what I was trying to save myself from – a big move, so much change, upheaval. I worked hard to get myself away from my father's control so I could have stability, and I guess I was hanging on so tight to it that it didn't even occur to me that I was going to inflict the same thing on Willy."

  "And now."

  "I know I can't do that to him. I can't take him away from you. You're so good with him and he adores you. Besides, I could never replace you. Not for him or for me," she added in a soft voice.

  “I wondered if we were ever going to get to the you-and-I portion of things. Or is there a you-and-I portion?"

  "There's definitely a you-and-I portion," she said. "At least I hope there is. I nearly threw myself into a tailspin just thinking about not having you in my life."

  "There's that 'in your life' thing again. You said it about Willy at the start of this – you wanted him to be a part of your life, you wanted to be a part of his – and here it is again. It leaves me not too sure exactly how far it goes."

  "It goes all the way," she said, not intending the innuendo that was in her voice. But there he was, standing tall and muscular and magnificent, his ruggedly handsome face etched with lamplight, his shoulders so broad they seemed able to carry the weight of the world. And she was having trouble keeping her mind from wandering to thoughts of how it had felt to be in his arms the night before, to how her naked body pressed to his felt. To having his hands on her. To having him inside her....

  "Explain to me just what 'all the way' we're talkin' about," he said. As if he'd been reading her mind, a slight smile curved just one corner of that mouth she was dying to have kiss her... every where.

  "I guess maybe you should explain to me first what you meant this morning when you were talking about me staying in Elk Creek, about our raising Willy together."

  "I was talkin' about you marryin' me," he said easily enough j

  Clair couldn't suppress a smile of her own as relief washed over her. Well, partial relief, anyway. She still didn't know if the offer had been taken off the table.

  "Then I'm talking about going all the way to that. Unless you've changed your mind..."

  "You'd give up your big-deal job in Chicago, move to Elk Creek – -for good – and make a new life here with me?"

  "Yes," she said, amazed at how wonderful that suddenly sounded.

  "And you wouldn't look back? You wouldn't pine for it all and end up high-tailin' it out of here later on?"

  Clair knew from where his doubts stemmed and that he was thinking about the ways in which she was like his ex-wife. But there was one big way in which she wasn't like his ex-wife that he'd overlooked.

  "Don't forget that it's stability I've craved since I was a kid myself, Jace. Roots. Staying in one place to build my life. Making the move here is a huge thing for me, and once I've done it I'm here to stay. Like it or not. It's what I need."

  "I'll like it. But will you? Elk Creek isn't Chicago."

  Clair had no problem answering that, either, because she'd had all day long to think about it. "Elk Creek is a nice place. Small, but nice. And you were right about the telecommuting. I can't be an ad executive from here, but I can still work. I can freelance or maybe start something on my own. But the most important thing to me now is you and Willy. I thought maybe I'd make you two my number-one job."

  "You've got me, but Willy'll take some work."

  Clair met Jace's eyes with hers, seeing the warmth that was in them once again, reveling in it. "Do I have you?" she asked quietly.

  He crossed the room to her then, clasping his hands on either side of her hips to pull her up close to him. "You have me, hook, line and sinker," he said just as quietly.

  That was when Clair felt fully relieved. And more. She felt her heart swell and her eyes flush with tears. Happy tears this time.

  Seei
ng them made Jace smile but only for a split second before he leaned in to kiss her.

  His lips meeting hers ignited the same flame they would have lit if the events of the morning had never happened. That same passion still simmered just beneath the surface in them both.

  Before she had time to think about it, clothes were flying, and mouths were open, and tongues were playing while hands explored and relearned and aroused.

  Tonight the sofa was as far as they got. Tonight the urgency – maybe to reseal what had suffered a tear – was even greater than the urgency of the previous evening. And neither of them could do anything but ride the wave right there and then. A grand wave of sensation that united them more deeply than either of the other two times they'd made love, that brought them each to the ultimate peak of pleasure and then let them drift back to earth on angel's wings, body to body, heart to heart, soul to soul, arms and legs entwined in a tangle of perfect bliss.

  And when they could breathe again, when the pounding of their pulses wasn't all they could hear, Jace said, "Will you marry me, Clair?"

  "Yes," she answered without hesitation.

  "Good. Because I'm so much in love with you that I can hardly stand it."

  She nuzzled her head into the hollow of his shoulder as she lay atop him, their bodies still one. "You aren't standing at all," she joked.

  He pushed up into her one more time, an intimate nudge. "Not what I wanted to hear in answer to the first time I tell you I love you."

  She smiled against his chest. "I'm so in love with you that I can hardly stand it, either. Or did you think I was willing to throw my whole life away and start over with you just because I like you a little?"

  "It's nice to hear, anyway," he told her in a voice left raspy from lovemaking.

  "I do love you, Jace," she said more solemnly then, just in case he had any doubts.

  "Good. Because I do love you, too," he said the same way.

  For a long while they just stayed like that, connected, contented, holding each other, wrapped in the warmth of that love.

  Then Jace said, "How long do you think Rennie will keep Willy?"

  "She's probably already wondering what's going on over here that's taking so long."

  "Guess we should go get him, then."

  "Guess we should."

  But neither of them moved.

  "Think we could get a license tomorrow and be married by the weekend?'' he asked after another moment.

  "You're really in a hurry."

  "I can't have you stay in' here nights until we're legal. What kind of an impression would that make on our boy?"

  Our boy – the words made Clair's heart swell even more.

  "No, we wouldn't want to make a bad impression on him," she agreed.

  "And I can't wait much longer than that."

  "Neither can I," she whispered as if it were shameless to admit how much she wanted him even now.

  But she was sure she'd find comfort in knowing that in a few days the three of them would be together. Forever. And that was all that really mattered.

  "You'll have to help me get to be better with

  Willy," she said a few minutes later, when they were still just lying there.

  "It'll come," Jace said without a bit of concern. "What did I tell you before? Things happen the way they're supposed to, and Willy warmin' up to you will happen, too. Just give it some time."

  That she could do, now that there was no rush on it.

  "I love you, Jace," she said yet again, for no particular reason except that the feeling had welled up inside her so much she had to tell him.

  "I love you, too," he said without missing a beat. "And so will Willy. You'll see."

  She knew he was right.

  But then everything about this was right – that was something else she knew.

  Deep down and without a doubt she knew that it was right for the three of them to be together no matter how convoluted the path had been to get there.

  And together the three of them would keep alive in their hearts so many of the people they'd lost. All the people it had taken to bring them together in the first place.

  Because, in spite of the tragedies that had led to this moment, there had always been love and caring and a drive to do what was best.

  What was best for Willy.

  And now she and Jace would go on striving to do that same thing.

  Which wouldn't be too hard, Clair thought. Because she knew that Jace was definitely the best.

  For Willy.

  And for her, too.

  And that the best of all possible lives would be what the three of them would share.

  ************