Impossible Dreams (29 page)

Lifting his head, he looked directly into her eyes as if he
wanted to say something. She didn’t want words. Finally, at long last,
she could run her fingers over all those lovely muscles.

Axell nibbled her lips as she spread her palms across his
broad chest, igniting the flames in more places than one. He cupped her breasts
in return, taunting them into readiness.

She arched higher, and at the pressure of his hips against
her knee, she gladly parted her thighs.

Maya shuddered as Axell’s fingers slid downward,
discovering she wore no panties. He growled in appreciation and caressed her
with his thumb, while his mouth drove her senseless. Raising her legs, she
wrapped them around his hips, pulling him closer until she could feel the heat
of his arousal through the layers of his clothing.

“I hope you’ve taken care of birth
control,” he muttered thickly as his kisses melted her into tingling
nerve endings, “because I don’t think I can stop.”

“The pill,” she gasped, just before
Axell’s hot mouth greedily covered hers in an excess of gratitude.
She’d sworn never to leave herself unprotected again, but she’d
never thought to need protection from this man. She moaned as he spread her
thighs wider and only their clothing prevented their joining.

The phone rang.

Axell jerked, but his mouth didn’t release hers and
his hands cupped her tighter.

The phone rang again.

“They may need you at the...” Maya’s voice
trailed off as Axell’s fingers caressed the aching peak of her breast.

“They can handle it.” He slid his kisses toward
her ear lobe.

The phone shrilled louder.

Nervously, Maya thought she heard Alexa cry. They were
making love in the middle of the kitchen with three children only a few thin
walls away. She was the one losing it.

“What if it’s Cleo?” she asked weakly as
Axell’s teeth nibbled at her ear and his hand slid beneath her nightie
again. It wasn’t an unreasonable question. Cleo had said she had a
probation hearing coming up. She just couldn’t think straight enough to
recall the importance of such a call.

“She and Stephen can entertain each other,”
Axell answered without rancor, sliding his mouth back to hers.

That would have shut her up, but the wavering cry of an
infant stopped them both before their mouths connected.

Maya could feel Axell shudder as he stroked her where
she’d opened for him. Just a minute more...

The phone rang insistently. Alexa increased her wails. And a
sleepy voice calling “Maya” from the back bedrooms finally broke
the spell.

Maya flushed as she looked up and read the regret behind the
heat in Axell’s eyes.

He glanced down to where his tanned hand cupped her pale
breast. “Damn,” he muttered. “Damn, damn, and double
damn.”

“Point taken,” she said wryly, squirming
backward, hoping to escape his reach.

Refusing to let her go, Axell leaned over and grabbed the
phone. “What do you want?” he yelled into the receiver.

“My, my, the lion isn’t sleeping tonight,”
Selene’s voice purred from the other end of the line. “Did the fish
slip away from you again?”

Axell grimaced in defeat as Maya did just that — slipped
backward over the table and out of his hands, straightening her nightshirt in
the process.

“You got a telescope?” he asked in irritation.

“No, but I’ve seen our girl in action. You can
catch her later. Right now, we’ve got a problem. Put her on.”

Maya had already fled the kitchen to quiet Alexa and
reassure whichever of the kids the noise had disturbed. He could still feel the
heat of her bare skin on his hands. The ache in his groin pounded with the need
for release.

He’d forgotten the kids, the bar, Pfeiffer, and
everything else in his degenerate need to plow his maddening wife until she
screamed surrender. He was a sick man.

Wiping the sweat off his brow, Axell spoke abruptly.
“If it’s about Pfeiffer, I’ve already heard. There
isn’t a damned thing we can do at this hour. Go back to your party,
Selene.”

“My source says it’s murder, Holm. How far is
your mayor friend willing to go to get his damned road?” The phone
slammed in his ear.

Axell stared blankly at the receiver until the warning
signal shrilled, then hung it up. Ralph Arnold, a murderer? No man could be
that desperate for a road, could he? Murders around here tended to be drug
related, but that didn’t make sense either. Old Man Pfeiffer wasn’t
exactly the sort to deal in drugs.

Glancing at the knee-deep clutter surrounding him, Axell
took a deep breath and ordered the pounding in his pants to cool. Remembering
Maya’s willingness, he couldn’t summon much eagerness for the
effort. Maybe once she got the kids quieted...

Cursing Selene, phones, and his rotten timing, he stalked
upstairs to the part of the house Maya had claimed for her own.

She wouldn’t buy a damned thing for herself, but he
noticed she had no such compunction about buying for the kids. A six-foot Big
Bird greeted him as he turned the corner, buttoning his shirt. Brilliantly
colored art prints from the Madeline books and others of knights and dragons
adorned simple frames in between the bedrooms. He’d stumbled over enough
stacks of books in previous ventures into this territory to know to tread
warily. He couldn’t imagine how he’d once thought these rooms empty
and without life. They scarcely seemed big enough to contain all the energy
bouncing around in them.

Not knowing whether to be irritated or happy at the
discovery, Axell sought the sound of Maya’s voice. No one had ever driven
him over the brink of sexual frustration as she had. His loss of control
frightened him, heightening his irascibility. She’d damned well taunted
him into that scene — in the
kitchen
, for pity’s sake! The kids
could have walked in at any time.

He flushed at the thought of literally being caught with his
pants down. The only other time in his life he’d ever been so incautious
was to believe Angela when she’d told him she had used protection.
He’d almost made the same mistake again. Although, if he was being
rational about this, he’d have to figure Maya wasn’t in any hurry
to get pregnant. She didn’t need to. They were already married.

His head hurt with all the conflicting issues rampaging
around inside. Discovering Maya in her room, rocking a whimpering infant and
reassuring Matty in a low voice, Axell leaned against the doorjamb and just let
it all go for a moment. He couldn’t do anything about old man Pfeiffer or
Mayor Arnold or the Mid-East crisis at this hour. His concern now was getting
Maya into his bed so he could release some of this tension.
Then
he’d worry about getting to the bottom of their problems.

“I think Alexa has a fever,” Maya whispered over
Matty’s head.

That shot his ship down fast enough.

***

After a night of walking the floor with a crying baby, Axell
wasn’t in a humor for cock-and-bull stories.

“Even
I
know that’s ridiculous,”
Axell shouted the next afternoon at Headley’s latest gossip. He never
shouted. Resting his head in his hands, he propped his elbows on his desk and
wondered when his life had taken this bent direction. He didn’t have to
wonder. He knew.

“It’s either the mayor or that New York
developer he’s connected with,” Headley replied with assurance,
appropriating a seat on the couch without being asked. “I’ve done
my homework. Ralph’s invested heavily in that real estate corporation
owned by the Yankees. This is their first big project. They’ve got some
condos near town in the blueprint stage, and they’ve acquired land for
townhouse apartments. They need the cash flow from that shopping center.”

“Shit.” Axell sat back and stared out his
window. He really didn’t want the mayor’s job. He’d just
thrown out the threat to smack Ralph into line. But apartments and condos
weren’t the kind of lifestyle he wanted for Wadeville. The bastard.

He took a deep breath to clear the cobwebs. “That
doesn’t make Ralph a murderer. That’s preposterous. Pfeiffer has a
hundred and one relatives waiting with bated breath for his demise. Any one of
them could have been desperate enough to hurry him on.”

“They’ve not determined the cause of death
yet,” Headley reminded him. “That noxious brood of Pfeiffer’s
are the gun-and-knife toting sort. The sheriff would damned well know the cause
if they were involved.”

Axell pinched the bridge of his nose. “Speculation
will get us nowhere. I’ve got lawyers reading over the terms of
Maya’s lease, but we’ve got to start considering alternatives. No
place else is as convenient to the houses out there, and land prices are too
exorbitant to consider buying anything. She’ll be turning my house into a
home school if I don’t do something soon.”

Maybe the best thing was for her to give up the school. Men
desperate enough to murder over land wouldn’t let the little complication
of a lease stop them. Besides, he liked coming home at night to the sound of
Maya’s laughter and the kids giggles. He was even beginning to enjoy the
purple monstrosities growing in his dining room. He liked even better the idea
of slipping home when the kids weren’t—

“That little girl of yours sure has you wrapped around
her little finger, doesn’t she?” Headley broke into his reverie.
“You know, there used to be a kid from Texas named Alyssum who came into
the grill in your father’s time. Married a local girl. You think
it’s some relation?”

Axell glowered at the old man. “Maya’s parents
are dead.” He returned to staring at the building next door — the one Maya
and her former lover occupied, though on separate floors and for different
reasons. It still drove him nuts thinking about it.

Headley was right. Maya had him wrapped around her little
finger and it had very little to do with Constance’s welfare or
protective instincts or any of the other crap he’d been rationalizing.

He’d do a damned lot for his daughter, admittedly. She
hadn’t asked to be brought into this world. He accepted the
responsibility for that. But he didn’t think it was for Constance’s
sake that he worried about Maya and her school. He’d already provided a
permanent solution for Constance by marrying her teacher.

No, the hell of it was, now he was worrying about the damned
teacher.

Instead of solving several problems with his marriage,
he’d multiplied them into hordes the likes of which Genghis Khan had
never known — because of a wisp of a female with big blue-green eyes and hair the
color of sunset.

Maya wasn’t just a challenge. Maya was the moon and
stars and planets all rolled into one, and he sure the hell wasn’t NASA.

Reaching for the phone, he started to call to see if Alexa
was any better.

Instead, he dropped his hand and got up. He’d go next
door and see for himself.

He ignored Headley’s laughter as he strode out.

Give pizza chants.

Maya barely looked up as the shop chimes rang and Axell
entered. She was furious and embarrassed with herself, and not entirely happy
with him. This morning he’d grabbed a cup of coffee, kissed the kids on
the head, and escaped before they could exchange two words. She didn’t
like being given a taste of her own medicine. Axell was Virgo, dammit, not
Pisces. He wasn’t supposed to slip away like that.

His cautious approach warned he was treading as warily as
she. He glanced down at Alexa sleeping in her cradle. “How is she?”
he whispered.

Damn, he set every one of her nerve endings on fire just by
his presence. Maya glanced up from the shoe she was painting and studied him
from beneath her lashes. Axell never looked uncertain. He always looked
self-confident and in charge. But today... Did she detect just a hint of
tension in the way he loosened his tie? He’d apparently left his coat in
his office. Even that was a sign of something. She just didn’t know what.

“The doctor says I should expect fevers with colds and
allergies. If I’d been able to breast feed, she’d have had more
immunity. I’m not supposed to worry unless the fever lingers or gets
worse.”

“
We’re
not supposed to worry,” he
corrected, not looking up from the cradle. “We’re in this
together.”

“We” was a hard concept for Maya to wrap her
mind around. She’d never really been part of a “we” and
wasn’t entirely sure how it worked. Axell was trying to teach her, and
she appreciated his efforts, she really did, but she’d had the supports
pulled out from under her once too many times in the past. She’d taught
herself to be smarter than Charlie Brown with his football.

She painted the dragon’s breath a brighter orange and
didn’t reply.

Axell leaned his hip against the counter beside her, and
Maya could smell his shaving lotion. Last night, she’d gone to bed with
that scent on her hands. Tonight, she could easily go to bed with the scent of
the whole man on her. The quivering in her lower abdomen warned that was a path
she shouldn’t take with Axell standing this close. She didn’t like
being dominated by macho men, she reminded herself. His size alone could
diminish her. His superior attitude would wipe her up off the floor.

“I thought maybe I should take you out to dinner
tonight.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Maya could see Axell
confidently crossing his arms as he leaned against the counter. For whatever
reason, the combination of his tentative statement and confident pose struck
her funny bone.

“You thought maybe a bed would be more comfortable
than a kitchen table,” she translated for him, biting back a giggle.

That shut him up briefly. Then he grunted. “It’s
a damned good thing that table weighs a ton or I would have slammed it against
the wall.”

Maya grinned in relief. So, maybe they’d both come a
little unglued. “I vote we reserve the table for special, nonkid
occasions,” she replied noncommittally.