Morgan's Child (21 page)

When Kate stepped out of the car at Morgan's house in historic downtown Charleston, she couldn't help gaping. She was prepared for an impressive house, but she hadn't expected it to be so grand.

Through the heavy front door, a wide circular staircase swept upward beneath a shimmering chandelier. Morgan led the way to the second story, guarded at the head of the stairs by a ceramic greyhound. Beyond it the master bedroom was sumptuously decorated in black and white.

Kate stopped momentarily to stare at the huge bathroom with its big shower and black fixtures. "Courtney's idea," Morgan said, turning the corners of his mouth down.

On the other side of the bathroom was another bedroom, this one decorated entirely in white. "You can sleep here," he said, setting her suitcase on the waiting luggage rack.

"It's lovely," Kate said, although privately she thought that the whole house was over decorated.

"I need to make some phone calls," he said. "Will you be all right on your own for a few minutes?"

Kate nodded, and in a few minutes she heard Morgan talking to his assistant, to Joanna, and to a few others. She wandered idly to the window. A spotlight below lit an English-style garden with neat, narrow brick paths dividing low plantings of flowers.

Morgan returned, popping in unexpectedly through the open door.

"I've told Joanna," he said.

"Told her about me and Courtney and the baby and you?" she asked in surprise.

"Only that I'm going to adopt your baby. I didn't want to go into detail on the telephone."

Kate's heart sank. "Morgan, I—"

He touched her cheek. "It'll be okay. After her initial shock, she thought it was wonderful that I'm adopting a child."

Kate turned away and stared out at the garden. Shapes blurred in front of her. She didn't want to look at Morgan at the moment, nor did she want to confront her own feelings about Morgan's taking the baby.

Oh, that was what she had wanted, all right, but what was it her father always used to say?
"Be careful what you want—you might get it."
She'd achieved what she'd wanted, but the thought of relinquishing this tiny scrap of humanity that moved inside her and for whom she was a lifeline—well, the thought was beginning to pain her.

"Kate, look at me," he commanded.

She didn't turn around.

"Is it so hard for you to believe that I love you? That I care about the baby?"

"Since the moment that you told me you'd adopt it, I've never doubted that you cared about the baby," Kate countered. "You've got it backward, though. You should love the baby and care about me." She didn't add that she still wasn't quite sure whether to trust him. Or anyone, for that matter, considering all the abandonment she'd experienced in her life.

He swung her around, his expression compassionate. "I couldn't help but fall in love with you, Kate. You're so fiercely independent that I admire you, you're so vulnerable that it breaks my heart, and you're so beautiful that I want to kiss you—"

"Morgan,"
Kate said in desperation.

"That I want to kiss you all over. Like this," he said, tipping her face toward his and letting his lips meet hers.

Kate felt as if she were spinning into a deep and dark vortex from which she might never emerge. His lips were insistent, pressing, seeking, exploring her mouth with great tenderness and then, when she didn't resist, even greater passion.

If she could have summoned the strength, she would have pushed him away. If she could have run, she would have tried. But there was no escaping Morgan Rhett in his own house, and she had known that before she'd agreed to come.

"Tell me," he insisted, his lips close to hers, "tell me that this doesn't mean something to you. If you dare."

She shook her head to clear it, but it was no use. His lips were upon hers again, his fingers caught in her tumbling hair, and her body was pressed against his so that she could feel his arousal.

"You're not saying much, my Kate," he observed, and she caught a devilish gleam in his eyes. In that moment her surrender was complete. She and his child were one, and it seemed the most natural thing in the world to unite with the child's father in a coupling that her body had been craving almost from the moment she had set eyes on him.

"There are other things I would rather do," she said softly, twining her hands around his neck and kissing him.

He slipped out of his clothes with minimal help from her, standing before her without the least bit of self-consciousness.
If only I can feel as comfortable standing naked in front of him,
Kate thought, but then she had always been matter-of-fact about her body and perhaps Morgan would be, too.

Morgan pushed the dress off her shoulders so that it fell to the ground. When she stood before him without her clothes, he felt as though he couldn't breathe. He'd had no idea she would be as lovely as this, as purely beautiful, as wholesomely arousing.

The low lamplight in the room bathed them both in its mellow glow. "You're wonderful, Kate," he said, smoothing his hands over her hips with reverence. "There's something elemental about you in this state. You're like—like the mother goddess, the earth mother, the source of all life and love."

"Morgan Rhett, I think you are crazy," she said clearly and distinctly, but he could see the emotion in her eyes, and he knew she was only joking.

"I won't hurt you, you know. I'd never hurt you," he said. He could barely speak, and it was as though an ever-abundant life force sprang from her to him through his fingertips, spiraling through him and filling him with wonder.

"I know," she said.

"We're going to be good together, Kate," he said.

"I know that, too," she whispered.

She felt his hands cupping the hot curves of her breasts, and she felt her nipples swelling under his insistent touch. She closed her eyes and floated with the sensation, feeling lost in her fantasy of making love with him, scarcely able to believe it had come true.

He parted her thighs gently, his hand softly seeking her warm center, and with the other hand he held her close, whispering, "Sweet, sweet."

And her frantic hands sought him, sought and held him, wanting him, and somehow they were on the bed lying on their sides and gazing at each other as if they were the only two people on earth.

Slowly he sat and lifted her to him, soothing her, urging her, his thighs solid beneath her.

"Gently," she reminded him, her voice only a murmur.

"Yes," he said, and he was gentle, and she rocked against him, reaching with her hands, their fingers entwining, reaching with her eyes, their eyes holding.

"You can't love me," she whispered, but he only smiled and slid his hand beneath the hair on her neck to pull her closer for a kiss.

Chapter 11

Sometime before first light, Kate drifted awake and groped her way to the unfamiliar bathroom. When she returned to the bed and lay down beside Morgan, she didn't fall asleep immediately. Instead she felt the baby stirring in her womb, reminding her of its presence.

Morgan's eyes opened briefly and she saw him smile in recognition before he curved an arm across her stomach. It fit there as if it had always belonged, and she wove her fingers between his. The three of them—she and Morgan and the baby—hovered somewhere between sleeping and waking, all together in one bed. It seemed right.

Morgan was not the kind of lover she'd expected. His tight buttoned-down exterior had disappeared completely when they made love. He was uninhibited and yet gentle. And caring. And so considerate of the baby.

The baby. Always the baby. The reason for their meeting, the reason for their mating. Talk about the cart before the horse!

Kate turned onto her side, still within Morgan's grasp, and his arm easily accommodated her change in position. This position, with her knees pulled up, was the most comfortable one in which to sleep these days.

Last night she had acted wanton, delirious with sensation, lost in passion with a passionate man. Still, she had realized that the act was not one that either of them regarded lightly.

Afterward, when they had lain together waiting for their breathing to return to normal, she'd wondered,
How can he love me?
She still had no answer to that question. In her mind it simply wasn't possible for a Morgan Rhett to love a Kate Sinclair. They were two distinct types with two distinct backgrounds, and the only thing they had in common was the child. Morgan's child.

She dozed, and when she woke up, Morgan wasn't beside her. She sat up, hair tousled, and smiled at the wild disarray of the sheets. After wrapping one of them around her, she padded into the bathroom, where Morgan was noisily taking a shower.

He stood in the middle of the huge shower, which was so big that no shower curtain was needed, with three shower jets trained on him.

"Just the person I've been wanting to see," he said, tossing the sheet aside, grabbing her and pulling her into the spray. He smacked her soundly on the lips, and she said, "Suppose I didn't feel like a shower," and he winked lewdly and ran his soapy hands down her sides and said in his best Groucho Marx imitation, "You may not feel like a shower, but you feel pretty good to me!"

He shampooed her hair, frowning as he concentrated on the task, and she soaped his back, making forays into other areas.

"Darling Kate," he said. "I had no idea you'd be so good at this."

"At what?" she said.

"This," he said, backing her up against the shower wall and demonstrating.

"I think" she gasped through clouds of steam, "I think I've had enough."

"Aha! She says she's had enough," he said, stepping out of the spray. He drew a fuzzy terry cloth robe out of a closet and hung it over her shoulders.

"Put this on," he said. "When you're ready for breakfast, I'll see you in the kitchen." He kissed her once in front of her still-wet ear and disappeared into his bedroom.

When she joined Morgan downstairs, he had already set the table in the breakfast room and was standing at the stove, concentrating on the frying pan. "Do you like your eggs sunny-side up or over?" he asked.

"Sunny-side up, and can't I help?"

"No, Kate. Sit down and be decorative."

"I'm about as decorative as a baby blimp," she complained.

He sent a stern look in her direction. "Don't be silly," he said. "I thought I left no doubt in your mind last night how sexy you are."

"Yeah," she said reluctantly. "I guess you settled that question."

"Forever," he said. He set aside the spatula and swept her into his arms, kissing her until her knees went weak.

"I think I ordered eggs," she said when he released her. "Not that."

"Good thing you reminded me," he said, returning his attention to the pan on the stove.

"I had no idea you could be so handy around a house," she told him when they were both sitting at the table and she was digging into the eggs. She hadn't realized before how hungry she was.

"Bachelorhood taught me a lot of things," Morgan said, smiling at her.

"For instance?"

"That having help around the house isn't dependable, and that I would have to learn to do everything myself for the inevitable days when my housekeeper didn't show up. What do you think of the eggs?"

"Scrumptious," she said with her mouth full.

"I fry them in bacon grease. Not so good for your health, but delicious on the palate."

"I can always have my arteries reamed out by Roto-Rooter," Kate said. "Or maybe a bulldozer. I know where I can find one. I hope it's gone when I go back to the island. When
are
we going back, anyway?"

"Not for a while, I hope," he said, taking a sip of orange juice. He leaned back in his chair. "Are you so eager?" he asked.

"You know how much I love the island."

"Don't look at me like that," he said, putting his hand over hers. "You make me feel so guilty."

"Guilty?" she repeated.

"If you think I pressured you into making love with me, if you think I was seeking some weird kind of thrill, if you think that I was only curious about making love with an expectant mother, you're wrong."