And Babies Make Four (8 page)

“Jolly-mon!”

The booming voice startled them both. Noel looked up, and met the black, laughing eyes of the man who’d stood beside Donovan during the ceremony.

“Jolly-mon,” he cried in battered and broken English. “And Mrs. Jolly-mon. You two big happy. Make big …”

He made a gesture that would have sent her well-bred
grandmother into a swoon. Noel was less shocked—though she still colored to the roots of her hair. But embarrassment was only a small part of what she felt. She was flushed from the drink and giddy from the kiss, and warm all over from the way Sam had just looked at her. She glanced back at him, smiling shyly.

She met the cold eyes of a stranger.

“You’re a hell of an actress,” he said grimly as he got to his feet. “Don’t let anyone tell you different.”

“But I wasn’t …” Her words dwindled off. Regardless of how it had started, regardless of what he thought, she’d meant that kiss. She believed that with every fiber of her being.

But she was less sure—in fact, she wasn’t sure at all—that it had meant anything to him.

The crowd flowed between them, separating them. Music started up in one end of the church, an unwieldy combination of reggae beat and voodoo chant. Noel found herself surrounded by the women she’d met earlier in the vestry. They hugged and coddled her, kissing her cheek and giving her advice she couldn’t even begin to understand. Noel nodded, gamely trying to keep up the appearance of happiness for a little longer. But it was a poor appearance at best. Regardless of what Donovan thought, she was no actress.

Outwardly she smiled. But inwardly she felt the same way she had all those years when she was growing up under her grandmother’s disapproving eye—like
she was being blamed for a crime she hadn’t committed.

The trip home from the old church was, incredibly, even more silent than the trip there had been. Sam sat behind the wheel, his face molded into a frown as dark and somber as the surrounding night. Noel was curled into the far corner of the Jeep’s passenger seat, watching the yellow headlight pick up the rutted road ahead, wrapped in her own intensely private thoughts. She should have felt relieved that one of the strangest days in her ordered life was finally drawing to a close. Instead, she had a profound sense of loss and disappointment.

And an even profounder sense of confusion over Donovan’s kiss.

She shifted uncomfortably against the Jeep’s worn leather cushions and tried with everything in her to forget Donovan’s kiss. No luck. The memory lingered not just in her mind but in every part of her body, making her feel tight and achy in outrageously intimate places. She stole a glance at the man beside her, hoping reality would dilute the memories. Worse luck. Moonlight and shadows blurred the harsh lines of his profile, making him appear less cynical and strangely, heartbreakingly alone. And loneliness was something she understood all too well.

Come on, Noel. You ought to be ready to throttle the guy. He’s an opportunist. He took advantage of
you in a public situation. He had no right to kiss you like that.

And you had no reason to kiss him back.

The call of a hidden bird threaded silver through the night air, but she barely heard it. Instead, she huddled as close to the open side of the cab as she could without risking a fall. A seat belt would have been nice. A clear conscience would have been better. She had loved Hayward. She had even thought she would marry him at one time. And yet she’d returned Donovan’s kiss with a hellfire passion she’d never experienced with her ex-boyfriend, not even when they’d made love.…

She had to regain her composure. She gripped the roll bar and looked out into the darkness, casting through her mind for something safe and innocuous to say. “Um, how soon can we start out for the mountains, Mr. Donovan?”

“
Mister
Donovan?”

“That’s your name, isn’t it?”

“Sure, but—” He glanced at her, the moonlight glittering in his eyes like demon fire. “Come on, Noel. We
are
married. Besides, that kiss put us on a first-name basis.”

“I’d prefer it if you didn’t mention the marriage—or the kiss—again,” she stated, her voice as rigid as her posture.

He shrugged and turned back to the road. “You’re paying the bills. We’ll load up the Jeep with your equipment at first light.”

“Good.”
Dammit, the guy even shrugs sexy.

He bent over to shift to a lower gear. Noel had a glimpse of the corded muscles of his broad back shifting effortlessly beneath his soft cotton shirt, and felt the air vanish from her lungs.
Careful, Noel. At this rate you won’t keep your distance two days, much less ten.

“We’ll start early,” he continued without taking his gaze from the road. “I figure we’ll make base camp in the mountains by late afternoon.”

“Fine.”
I shouldn’t be thinking about him this way. I hardly know him. He’s a stranger. Okay, a stranger I kissed
 …

Donovan glanced her way, lifting his eyebrow in a cynical challenge. “Are you planning to talk in one-word sentences from now on, sweetheart?”

Noel met the challenge in his eyes with one of her own. “Maybe.”

He turned back to the road, but not before she caught the ghost of a genuine smile on his lips. She swallowed, feeling another section of her newly constructed defenses crumble to dust. It wasn’t fair—a scoundrel like Donovan shouldn’t have had a smile that promised forever. Or a kiss …

“Why did you come to St. Michelle?” she asked suddenly, surprised at how much she wanted to know the answer.

Donovan grinned again, but this time there was no warmth in his smile. “Because I had nowhere else to go. Now it’s my turn.”

“Turn?”

“To ask a question.”

Noel stiffened. She was an intensely private person,
a holdover from her youth when she’d been reprimanded for her “unseemly curiosity.” Divulging personal secrets was major surgery for her, but her sense of fair play stopped her from declining. She did owe him a question. One. “Okay, what do you want to know?”

Where do I start? Donovan wondered. Just being near the lady set off an avalanche of questions in his mind. Why did she keep a “body by Hefner” hidden underneath yards of old-lady blouses and shapeless skirts? Why did she keep a sweet smile and generous nature hidden beneath a sour-apple frown? And why had she given him a kiss that was the closest thing to paradise this side of heaven?

He wasn’t a romantic kind of guy—life had laid to rest that part of his nature a long time ago. But when he’d kissed her his mind had flooded with sappy, stupid, Beaver Cleaver images of white picket fences, Little League practices, minivans, and microwaves. Ridiculous, considering his background. They had less in common than champagne and raw whiskey—and he’d learned from experience the two didn’t mix. Women like her looked at a guy’s bank balance before they gave him the time of day. He didn’t even have a checking account.

Unfortunately, that didn’t stop him from wanting her like he wanted his next breath.…

“So who’s the guy?” he asked harshly.

His question ripped through the silent night like a bullet, startling her. “What guy?”

“The one you talked about in the church. You
didn’t seem to like him much. What’s the matter, sweetheart? Man problems?”

“No, not that.” Her face revealed a wince of unexpected pain. “The ‘guy’ was my father. He deserted me and my mother when I was seven.”

Lord. “I’m sorry, Noel. If I’d known I wouldn’t … look, I’m sorry I asked.”

“It’s all right.” She looked down and began to finger the iridescent material of her dress. “I got over it a long time ago.”

Like hell. She was twisting that material so tight, he was surprised it didn’t cry out in pain. But even if she’d been still as a dead calm sea he’d have known she was hurting. Scars like that never healed, not completely. You lived with them, but you never got over them. “My old man took off, too.”

“He did?”

Sam nodded. “After he left, my mom wasn’t too crazy about having me around, so she farmed me out with relatives. But I got lucky, because I ended up with Uncle Gus.”

Noel stopped worrying the dress material. She settled back in the passenger seat, watching him intently. “Tell me about him.”

Donovan shrugged. “Not much to tell. He was my mother’s uncle. We lived on a boat that went from port to port along the Gulf. He was registered as a shrimper, but we never caught much shrimp. He ran craps games on the deck, and moved on when things got too hot. He was a con man to the core, and could talk a man out of his last buck and leave him smiling—but
he never chose a mark who didn’t deserve it. He drank hard, swore worse, and was the nightmare of every cop along the coast.”

“You loved him, didn’t you?”

“I’d have walked through hell for him,” Sam acknowledged. “Not that it did much good. The social workers took me away from him and stuck me in a foster home. It broke the old man’s heart. He didn’t last out the year.”

“Oh Sam, I’m so sorry.”

“Yeah, well. It happened a long time ago.”

“That doesn’t make it right,” she stated with quiet conviction. “Love is the most important thing you can give a child—the only thing that really matters. It was wrong to take you away from someone who loved you, very wrong.”

He glanced at her, surprised by both her strength and her common sense. On the rare occasions when he shared his past with women like her, they usually gave him some innocuous cliché about everything being for the best. But Noel didn’t do that. She faced the old injustice head-on, without diluting it with platitudes. “You’re right,” he agreed. “Love
is
the only thing that matters … to a kid.”

Silence wrapped around them again, but this time it wasn’t stiff or strained. The troubles in their pasts forged a bond between them, a momentary cease-fire in a long-standing war. Donovan breathed in the sweet night air, feeling a peace inside him he hadn’t known in years. It felt good to talk about Gus—to talk to
her
. Suddenly he thought about all the places he
could show her in the mountains—the hidden pools, the bright, rare flowers, the secret caves, the frightening, beautiful lava pits. They were his treasure, these personal and private places—his only earthly fortune. He’d never showed them to anyone. But he wanted to show them to her—

“I don’t know why I told you about my father,” she confessed, her voice revealing the same lightheartedness that he felt. “I haven’t even told that to Hayward.”

He stiffened like a wolf catching an enemy scent. “Hayward?”

“Yes,” she said sleepily, snuggling like a contented kitten into the leather passenger seat.

Hayward. Christ. Only rich guys had dumb names like that. Very rich guys. “Let me guess. His ancestors fought in the Civil War.”

“And the Revolution. His people came over on the
Mayflower
.”

“Yeah, well, I’ve traveled steerage myself, and it’s nothing to brag about.”

Noel’s eyes narrowed. “Why are you so angry?”

Good question. And one he wasn’t about to answer. “Careful, sweetheart. Remember the rules. You ask a question, I ask a question. Fair’s fair.”

“Okay, I’m asking my question. Why are you so angry?”

Women, he decided darkly, were God’s worst idea. They couldn’t take a hint, even when you handed it to them on a silver platter. “You want to know why I’m so angry? Because I’m a healthy, red-blooded
male animal and you’ve got the best pair of legs I’ve seen in longer than I can remember.”

“I do?”

Lord help him, she thought he was giving her a compliment! His fingers tightened their grip on the wheel and a sheen of sweat broke out on his brow. He could ignore her killer legs and her centerfold body, but not her sweet, achingly innocent voice. She was either the most naive woman he’d ever met—or she was one hell of an actress. At the moment he really didn’t care which.

“Yes, you do,” he said tightly, trying to ignore the hellfire pressure building in his abdomen. “And that was another question. You owe me one.”

“Shoot.” She settled back in her seat, apparently beginning to enjoy herself.

He narrowed his eyes like a lion on the prowl and lowered his voice to a lethal, caressing softness. “Why did you kiss me like you meant it when you’re sleeping with someone else?”

Noel’s newfound confidence drained out of her like water from a sieve. He was only baiting her, playing with her like a fish on a line to gain her trust. And dammit, it had worked! A vise had tightened around her heart when he’d told her about his love for his uncle Gus. A warm glow of pride had filled her when he’d complimented her on her legs. Never totally comfortable with people, she’d suddenly found herself at ease with him. She’d shared the deepest part of herself when she’d told him about her father. She’d
begun to like him, to trust him, to want to be the friend that she knew he needed … and that she needed, too.

And all the while he’d been looking at her as nothing more than another cheap conquest.

She looked away, staring into the empty night because she couldn’t look at him while she lied. “That kiss was to convince your friends that the wedding was genuine. It meant nothing. And it certainly—” She paused, taking a deep breath before she continued. “It certainly wasn’t an invitation to add me to the collection of notches on your bedpost.”

He said nothing. For the first time in her life she realized that silence could be as damning as condemning words. Belatedly, she realized she’d misjudged him, and that she’d hurt him as much as he’d hurt her. The knowledge made her a little sick.
But I had to do it, don’t you see? I’m only going to be here for two weeks—barely two lousy weeks. The only thing we could possibly have is a cheap little affair. People can’t learn to care for each other in two weeks. They certainly can’t fall in love. Life isn’t a fairy tale. My mother found that out. So did I
—

He pulled the Jeep to a bone-rattling stop. Yanking herself out of her turbulent thoughts, she discovered they’d arrived back at his bungalow. “I didn’t realize we were so close.”

“We weren’t. I took a shortcut home.” He grasped the roll bar and swung out of the Jeep. “You can see your own way in, can’t you?”