Impossible Dreams (38 page)

“What are you going to do about that pool?”
Sandra demanded. “The neighbors will be incensed.”

Axell agreed the pool was an abomination, but it was a
practical solution for the moment, even if it did kill the manicured lawn.
“What neighbors?” he asked. “They’d have to walk
through the woods to see it. Surely you didn’t come all the way from
Texas to complain about a little pool.”

“No, I’ve decided I’m moving back here. If
you won’t take care of Constance properly, I will. My suitcases are still
in the car. If you’ll get them out, I’ll begin house hunting on
Monday.”

Je-humping-hosaphat
. Axell pinched his eyes shut and
tried to mute more virulent swear words as he pictured the immediate
consequences of this decision.

The kids and Maya currently occupied the guest wing. He had
the choice of installing Sandra in Maya’s room, or in the sanctity of his
wing of the house — the only island of serenity in this chaotic world he
could call his own.

Opening his eyes and glancing at the pale curve of
Maya’s shoulders above her halter top, Axell knew damned well Sandra
wasn’t the one he’d be introducing to his inner sanctum.

Reality is a crutch for people who can’t handle drugs.

“They’re all asleep. Are you sure this will
work?” Maya asked worriedly as she slipped into the family room carrying
the last of Alexa’s blankets. She didn’t know how she’d
accumulated so much stuff in a few short months. She used to be able to pack
everything she owned into a suitcase. Those days were over.

“I’m not sure of anything,” Axell replied
a trifle grimly, taking the blankets from her. “I just couldn’t
find a polite way of throwing the woman out on her ear.”

The urge to reach out and kiss him bubbled deep in her
belly. Her Norse god looked so bewildered and beleaguered that she wanted to
cuddle him and tell him everything would be all right, even if it meant
sacrificing his holy privacy. But he wasn’t a child to be cuddled. She
could tell that by the fire igniting in Axell’s eyes the instant she
tucked her hand between the buttons of his shirt.

“Well, just pretend I’m a wanton woman come to
share your bed for the evening. You can throw me out in the morning.”

“And keep Alexa?” he inquired in a deep, low
drawl that chased shivers through her midsection.

“Well, there is that,” she admitted as she
followed him down the hall to his rooms. Rooms.

They passed a comfortable den/office complete with bar and
television, where he could retreat to watch football while the kids watched
cartoons. The next room had been turned into a home gym with all the latest
paraphernalia. No wonder the damned man looked like a pinup model beneath those
suits. He’d probably worked off a lot of frustration.

She supposed the smaller room next to it could have been
anything when the house was designed, but Axell had installed clothes racks and
used it for a dressing room. Alexa’s cradle and toys added a splash of
color to the rows of dark suits all hanging in the same direction. He dropped
the stack of blankets on a dresser and leaned over to adjust the covers over
Alexa’s defiantly upturned rear end. Ever since she’d learned to
roll over, she’d insisted on sleeping on her stomach. Or her knees.

Watching Axell’s big body tenderly leaning over the
tiny cradle brought tears to Maya’s eyes and a painful longing to her
heart. She’d gone and done it now, she realized. She supposed it had been
inevitable. She’d been in love with the intelligent curiosity peering
from behind his smoky eyes from the day he’d walked into the shop.
She’d fallen in love with his strength of character and competence the
day he’d delivered Alexa. And the night he’d slammed her against
the wall and taken her to heaven...

She was lost. Hopeless. Done for. She loved the big dope so
much it hurt in every cell and pore of her body. She had shit for brains.

She’d never felt so alone in her life as she did when
Axell held out his hand to lead her into the chamber he called his.

His. The room was his. The house was his.
She
was
his. And now he even owned her heart, while she had nothing. She’d been
terrified before, but nothing to compare with the sinking sensation of total
vulnerability.

She’d learned at an early age not to care — not to care
when she got yelled at for something she didn’t do, or for something she
did do but didn’t know was wrong. She’d learned not to care when no
one hung her pictures on their walls or hugged her for making A’s. She
hadn’t even cared when Stephen hadn’t bothered to call after she
told him she was pregnant. Not for long, anyway.

But now she cared so much she’d do almost anything
Axell asked in hopes he’d love her back and want to keep her. She thought
she’d killed that futile dream when she was ten years old. As Axell drew
her into his darkened room and pulled her shirt over her head, Maya shivered at
the possessive caress of his big hands over her bare breasts.

“I didn’t think this day would ever end,”
he whispered near her ear as he stroked her breasts, arousing them to aching
tenderness.

If she could just remember this was only sex to him...
Forcing her mind to focus on the physical, Maya fumbled at his shirt buttons
until her palms lay flat against his heated chest. Axell was always warm, and
strong, and hard...

Dammit, she couldn’t think straight. She wanted to
whisper love words and kiss him all over, but then he’d know he had her,
that he’d won, that he could do with her as he wished. She couldn’t
allow that. Somehow, she had to retain her independence, so when the day came
that he threw her out, she could walk away without looking back.

“Your new manager is learning so fast you didn’t
need to keep him company tonight?” she asked, deliberately licking at his
nipple and feeling his shudder with triumph.

“The crowd was light when I left. He knows how to
reach me if there’s — ” He groaned deep in his throat as she
unfastened his belt and brushed her knuckles against the coarse hair there.
“It’s not supposed to be this way,” he muttered, finishing
the task she’d started and stepping out of his trousers.

Maya wanted to question that absurdity, but Axell swept her
from the floor and flung her on the bed and she forgot the question and
everything else.

“Axell...” She breathed his name as he stripped
off her shorts and underwear in a single stroke and the cool air and his hot
hand caressed her intimately at the same time.

“I’ll make this up to you later,” he
murmured, pressing his hand against her mound, “but I’ve been
thinking about this all day and can’t stop now.”

Maya grabbed Axell’s arms and choked back a scream as
he slammed into her, sending her spiraling over the edge before she knew what
hit her. Even as her blood boiled and her brain melted to putty, her soul
reacted to the matching desperation in his and reached out with all the power
she possessed.

Their rhythm pounded a steady “yes, yes, yes!”
until tears of joy slipped from the corners of her eyes and all the atoms of
her body surrendered to the sweet oblivion of Axell’s obsession. As he
drove up inside her and shuddered with the force of a raging river crashing
through a dam, Maya surrendered to the bliss of physical satisfaction.

This was enough, for now.

***

“Let her watch cartoons,” Axell grumbled as
Alexa’s coo’s threatened to become squalls in the early dawn.

With her nose buried in thick feather pillows and
Axell’s heavy, muscled arm holding her down, Maya woke from hazy dreams
of being twenty-months pregnant again. Only, this time, the child was
Axell’s.

Shivering at this premonition, she shoved at his hand. He
merely curled his arm around her chest and dragged her backward against him,
plucking her nipple into instant readiness.

“I didn’t know you were going to be
insatiable,” she yawned, snuggling her posterior into the masculine angle
of his hips, waking rapidly at the rod probing between her thighs — the hot rod,
she giggled to herself.

“In a few months, you’ll be staggering around in
a ratty bathrobe, yelling at the kids,” Axell warned as his fingers did
wonderful, marvelous things to her awakening body. “Let’s enjoy the
honeymoon while it lasts.”

While it lasts
. Those prophetic words rang in
Maya’s heart even as Axell held her hips and her body opened wide at his
command. She buried her cries of ecstasy and protest in her pillow with his
thrust.

She’d forgotten to take her pill last night, she
remembered in panic as Axell stroked her deep from the inside. Damned dreams
had a way of infiltrating the brain to become self-fulfilling. As his rhythm
became wilder, she vowed to take two today to compensate.

In another few months, Cleo could be back in jail, the state
could be condemning her school, and Axell could be sorry he’d ever met
her. She certainly didn’t need another baby tying her down when it all
collapsed around her again.

As her womb shivered in joy and accepted the hot flow from
her husband’s body, Maya wished it could be otherwise.

***

Her insides still aching with the force and promise of Axell’s
lovemaking all weekend, Maya added the final touches to the dining room mural.
She was still furious with Cleo. She didn’t dare step inside the store
until she calmed down. The peace of the empty house — Sandra had gone out house
shopping — appealed to the turmoil inside her. The roar and grind of a heavy
truck outside shattered any illusion of peace.

Holding her paintbrush and glancing out the bay window, she
frowned in bewilderment as a huge tree backed into the yard.

A heavy construction truck stopped near a stake someone had
driven into the lawn. Even as she gaped in astonishment, the wide drill on the
back of the truck lowered and began to dig.

In awe, Maya watched the process of a full-grown tree
miraculously sprouting in the barren back yard — a tree that would shade her
tender plants, cool the kitchen, provide branches for the children to play in
and the birds to sing from. She could hang feeders from those limbs and watch
the goldfinches and cardinals. A tree was life.

A tree was promise.

Tears welled, then spilled as Maya clutched her paintbrush
and watched the lovely maple tucked into the ground and mulched. Axell was
incapable of expressing emotion in any verbal manner. She was starting to
understand that.

That didn’t mean Axell couldn’t
feel
emotion.

Maya stood transfixed in front of the window until the very
last particle of dirt was tapped down and every last needle of pine mulch was
in place. The maple rustled its fat green leaves in contentment as the trucks
drove away.

She wanted to fly to Axell’s side, fling her arms
around his marvelous shoulders, and scream “I love you!” to the
world while covering him in kisses. She would embarrass him to death if she
did.

Excitement zipping through her soul but brain shouting
“Whoa!,” Maya dithered in indecision. Slipping outside and turning
on the garden hose, she stood beneath shady leaves and welcomed the tree with
water. Her wilting flowers had already perked up by the time she turned the
hose on them. Maybe she could tuck some more around the tree.

She was doing it again: swimming back and forth rather than
striking out in a determined direction. Maya shut off the hose and advanced
into the house. Maybe the tree wasn’t a declaration of love. Maybe
Axell’s practical streak had recognized the need for shade and he’d
just dialed the phone and ordered the tree plunked down. Maybe he had ordered
it months ago, even before they’d met.

Or maybe he’d just said he loved her, and she was
dithering rather than responding.

Racing into the house, Maya came to a screeching halt as she
turned down the wrong hallway. She didn’t have her own room any more.
Sandra had it.

Stalking down the hall past her husband’s playthings,
Maya ground her teeth. She was Axell’s
wife
. She had no room, no
house, no life of her own except as an extension of his. What had she been
thinking?

She hadn’t, as usual. She’d just jumped right in
and gone with the flow because it was easiest.

Well, she’d damned well better stop and think now. She
could love Axell and even trust him — and Lord knew, she did, with every fiber of
her being. Her heart ached with the depth of it, and she wanted to explode with
the joy of knowing a man as steady and trustworthy and intelligent and sexy as
Axell could conceivably want someone as unwantable as her.

But life happened. It had happened to her one too many
times, and she was never prepared. This time, she couldn’t afford to go
with the flow. She had Alexa to consider. If — when — Axell realized life with her
was too impossible to go on, she had to be able to walk away.

The phone rang.

Staring gloomily at the rumpled bed she’d shared with
Axell last night, Maya ignored the intrusion. Axell had left her sleeping this
morning, or this room would never look like this. Axell didn’t leave beds
unmade or clothes hanging on chairs. Remembering the round of lovemaking that
had left her satiated and curled in a cocoon of contentment, she grimaced. It
was too damned easy to make babies and she was too damned careless.

The phone rang again.

She picked up the clothes they’d scattered in haste
last night. She’d have to get Sandra out of here so she could move back
to her old room before this became habit. If she just thought of herself as a
boarder...

She grabbed the phone on the third ring rather than follow
that thought. The city council had a meeting tonight. If it was one of
Axell’s damned constituents, she’d personally ram the receiver down
their throats. Axell better believe she’d make a lousy mayor’s
wife.