Home to Eden (25 page)

"You know, most people prefer live flowers," he commented, glancing into the bag of faded blossoms. "And rd think those short, stubby little stems would make it real tough to get a good arrangement going."

"I thought I'd just float them in a bowl of water."

"Aren't they a little...faded?"

"Don't you think it's a little shallow of you to only admire blossoms that are in the full flush of youth?" she asked crisply.

"I never thought of it that way." Nick glanced into the bag again. "So what you're saying is that, if I were a deeper person, I'd actually think all those bald sticks and rotten petals in there were beautiful."

"Exactly."

"Hmm." He frowned and shook his head. "Nope. I guess I'm just destined to remain a shallow hedonist," he admitted without visible regret. "I like flowers that actually look like flowers."

His grin was irresistible. The comers of Kate's mouth curved in a smile despite her best efforts to look stem. "Peasant."

"To the core." He gave her a conspiratorial look and leaned closer. "Not only that but I actually like Norman Rockwell more than Picasso. All those women with only half a face and funny skin tones and breasts in the wrong place." He shuddered. "They always make me feel like I ate the wrong kind of mushrooms for lunch."

"I'm not sure but I think that could get you permanently kicked out of the in-crowd."

"I know." He sighed and shook his head sadly. "Once a geek, always a geek."

Kate nearly choked on a mouthful of coffee. She'd never seen a more unlikely candidate for geekhood in her life. "You hide it well," she said dryly.

"A mere mask, hiding a deep-seated anguish. Makeup concealing the tears of a clown. A facade to—" Leroy's loud yawn interrupted the dramatic recital. Nick scowled at the huge dog. "Everybody's a critic," he complained.

Kate's laughter spilled over. Pleased with himself, Nick grinned. He had the feeling that she hadn't laughed nearly enough in her life. She always seemed faintly surprised by the sound of her own laughter. In the first couple of weeks after the wedding, even her smiles had been fleeting and guilty. He understood. Guilt had become an all too familiar companion lately. When he let himself think of the pain he'd caused his brother, it threatened to choke him. But he was a realist. He couldn't change what had happened, and if he was honest, he didn't want to. Kate was his, the child she carried was his and not even to heal Gareth's pain could he wish it any other way.

As she took a sip of coffee, Nick let his eyes drop to her waist. She wore jeans and a faded olive green shirt, the tails worn out. The layers of clothing concealed the changes that pregnancy had made to her body but did nothing to stifle his curiosity. Was her waist thicker now? Were her breasts more sensitive?

Damn. Aware that he was becoming aroused, he looked away. Focusing his attention rather ferociously on an overblown rose in an eye-searing shade of red, he took a large swallow of hot coffee. Questions like that had contributed to quite a few sleepless nights lately. And seeing her like this, with the sunlight turning her hair to pure gold and her blue eyes smiling at him, he had to fight down the urge to sweep her up and carry her into the house where he could strip off the annoying layers of clothing and see exactly what changes his baby had caused.

Not part of the bargain, he reminded himself. When she'd agreed to marry him, it had been on the condition that they have separate bedrooms. He hadn't argued. He'd figured they could work out the details later. At the time, his main concern had been getting a wedding ring on her finger.

Looking back, he was sure he'd made the right decision, but that wasn't much consolation when he was lying awake, knowing that she was just down the hall, wearing his wedding ring, carrying his child. His memory was a little too sharp at times like that and all too eager to present him with crystal-clear images of the taste of her mouth, the scented softness of her skin and the hot, damp welcome of her body.

Swallowing a groan of frustration, Nick forced his thoughts in another direction. There was no point in torturing himself, especially since he wasn't willing to do anything to upset the fragile peace they'd achieved. If she'd shown the least sign of wanting to alter their arrangement—but she hadn't.

"I thought this was your day off," he said, nodding to the clippers in her hand. "Isn't this what they call a busman's holiday?"

"I suppose it is." Her smile was self-deprecating. "But it's such a beautiful day and—"

"You figured you'd spend it beheading roses," he finished for her.

"That's one way of putting it, I guess." Kate sighed and looked around the rose garden with an expression of pure joy. "This place is just so beautiful. Working here doesn't even feel like work."

"Harry thinks you're doing a great job with the place," Nick said, even as he wondered if it was possible to be jealous of a garden. He would have given a great deal to hear her express such open delight in his company.

"Harry doesn't care what I do as long as I don't ask him to make any decisions," Kate said dryly. She'd gotten to know Harry fairly well over the last couple of months. Though he was staying in the guest house, he usually joined them for dinner, and she'd found that her initial impression of him had been accurate. He was charming and a great deal shrewder than his perpetually wrinkled appearance would lead you to believe.

"I think he might register an objection if you decided to put in an amusement park," Nick said judiciously. "He also likes your cooking."

"Harry likes anything he doesn't have to cook himself," Kate pointed out.

"There's a certain truth in that," Nick admitted, grinning. "But he's still talking about that pot roast you made last week—the one you said was your mother's recipe. You got any more of her recipes stashed away?"

"A few." Kate reached out to snip a faded rose.

Nick saw the sudden tension in her face. He saw the same reaction whenever the subject of her family came up, which wasn't very often. Ordinarily, he was willing to follow her lead but today he felt like pushing a little. They were married, not roommates, no matter how comfortable she seemed with that pretense.

"How old were you when your mother died?"

She let a few seconds pass before responding and then her answer seemed pulled from her. "I was twelve."

Nick winced. "That's a rough age to lose a parent."

"Is there a good age?"

"No, but there are better ages than that."

She shrugged and said nothing. Nick almost dropped the subject but something pushed him to probe a little further.

"Were you very close to her?"

"Not particularly." Kate reached out and cut a perfectly healthy rose off the shrub, dropping it blindly into the bag at her feet. "She pretty much lived and breathed for my father. I don't think she had much left over for her...for me."

Nick groped for something to say, but her tone made it impossible to offer sympathy. He was starting to wish he hadn't given in to the impulse to probe for information about her family. But he wasn't quite ready to let the subject go.

"Is your father still alive?"

"I had a card from him at Christmas." Her knuckles had turned white with the force of her grip on the pruning shears. "It's a little difficult to keep track of him. He moves around a lot."

More than ever, Nick wished he hadn't given in to the impulse to ask about her family. He'd been left with more questions than answers and accomplished little beyond upsetting Kate. He opened his mouth to apologize but before he could say anything, she gasped and put her hand against her stomach.

"What is it?" His coffee mug hit the ground with a soft thud as he moved to her side.

"It's nothing." She shook her head. "Nothing wrong, I mean. The baby moved and it startled me. That's all."

"Does he move often?" Nick asked, staring at her stomach with open fascination.

''Quite a bit."

The compulsion to feel his child moving within her was too strong to resist. As if drawn by a magnet, Nick's hand came out and settled against the gentle swell of her belly.

Surprise held Kate still. It was the first time he'd touched her—really touched her—since the chaste kiss they'd exchanged at their wedding. She could feel the heat of his palm through the layers of her clothing. As if in response to his father's touch, the baby kicked again. Nick sucked in a sharp breath and lifted his eyes to her face. Pure happiness blazed in them, sharp and almost fierce in its intensity.

"He feels strong and healthy."

"It could be a girl," she said, smiling at his excitement.

"Either way is fine with me. Do you have a preference?"

"No." She shook her head. "Just as long as he or she is healthy."

"I guess we're going to have to pick out names." Nick's fingers shifted slightly against her belly, his touch becoming subtly caressing.

"I haven't really thought about that yet." She felt mesmerized by the intensity of his gaze. The sun-soaked garden wrapped them in a gentle cocoon, creating a sense of isolation, as if the rest of the world no longer existed.

"We've got time." He brought his other hand up and set one fingertip against the pulse that fluttered at the base of her throat. "We've been married for two months, Kate."

"I know." It was hard to force words out past the constriction in her throat.

"Two months, and I haven't really kissed you."

"No." She couldn't have said whether she was agreeing with him or protesting his obvious intention to make up for lost time.

Her thoughts were careening inside her head, a frightened need to retain the status quo bouncing off the purely feminine satisfaction of knowing that he wanted her. She wanted to lean toward him, feel his arms come around her. And she wanted to pull away, protect herself from the danger he represented. Caught between the conflicting urges, she did nothing.

Nick took her silence for acceptance and slid his hand around the back of her neck. She swayed toward him, her eyes closing, and he lowered his head.

"Hullo."

A siren couldn't have had a more powerful effect than that single word, offered in a piping little voice. Kate's eyes flew open and she stepped back so quickly that she nearly fell over her own feet. Nick's head jerked up and his entire body flinched as if from a physical blow. He sucked in a sharp breath and barely controlled the urge to release it on an even sharper epithet. With an effort, he gathered his self-control and turned to look at their visitor. Laura was standing next to Leroy, her big blue eyes wide with curiosity.

"Were you two kissing?"

"No.''

"Yes.'' Nick's flat confirmation overrode Kate's breathless denial. "We were about to kiss," he told the little girl, hoping she'd take the hint—and her small person—elsewhere.

"Mommy and Daddy kiss sometimes," she informed them.

"Lucky Mommy and Daddy," Nick muttered and heard Kate's stifled snort of laughter behind him.

"Once, when they didn't know I could see. Daddy put his hand in Mommy's blouse." She reached out to scratch Leroy behind the ear, oblivious to the effect her words were having on her listeners. "Mommy seemed to like it but I thought it looked silly."

At a loss for words, Nick threw a pleading look over his shoulder at Kate, who was doing her best not to laugh out loud. Laura's matter-of-fact recital of her parents' behavior was bad enough, but the utter panic in Nick's eyes was almost too much for her self-control.

"I know where babies come from," Laura announced. She threw one arm around Leroy's thick neck and fixed them with a superior look as she prepared to educate. "The daddy puts his—"

"I have to go," Nick said loudly. "I have to, uh, take a shower." He bent and scooped his cup from where it had fallen in the grass and fled the scene as if the Hound of the Baskervilles was nipping at his heels.