Think About Love (14 page)

By the time Samantha fell into bed Monday night, she was exhausted from the effort of trying to keep her life under control.

First, there was the wedding.

"I'd like my parents and sister to attend the ceremony," Cal had announced as they drove through Gabriola's forest tunnel on the way home. He had the wheel again, and it bothered Samantha that she hadn't made an issue of it when he slid into the driver's seat back in the hospital parking lot.

"We'll have the ceremony Saturday," he said. "I get back from New York Friday afternoon, and we want to be married before the custody hearing. Will you arrange the minister?"

"Marriage commissioner," she said. Sunlight flashed through the canopy of overhead branches. Saturday made sense as a wedding day, although she would have preferred it to be quiet, just the two of them, maybe Dorothy and Diane as witnesses—if Dorothy could leave the hospital.

"I'd rather not use a marriage commissioner," said Cal. "That suits the kind of marriage where the bride and groom have already planned the divorce, before the vows are exchanged."

She turned her head, stared at his hands, relaxed and confident on the wheel. Cal driving the car, driving her, driving Kippy, who had again fallen asleep with the motion of the car. She remembered reading a book on the meaning of dreams. In dreamland, the person driving the car was in control of your life.

"We have planned the divorce, Cal." She didn't like the nervous sound in her voice. "Eighteen years, we said. That'll be in the prenuptial. We'd be telling lies if we exchanged vows in a church ceremony. I won't do it."

Cal was silent... angry?

When the car emerged from the tunnel into full sunlight, he said, "All right. We'll do it your way. What about your family? Your parents? Can they come? I don't even know where your parents live."

"My mother's in Europe. She won't be able to come." She felt the web becoming even more complicated. His family would be there, and she knew Wayne would be hurt if she didn't invite him. "I should invite my mother's ex-husband. He's in Birch Bay."

He threw her a glance she couldn't interpret. "I'll head back to Seattle this afternoon, check on the personnel situation. Is there anything I can do for you there? Do you need anything from home?"

She realized that saying no was a habit, that she'd have to find a way to be comfortable with his offers of help. This was the deal: her eighteen-year-commitment to Tremaine's in exchange for his... his
services
as husband and father.

"I'll make a list a list of things I need from my apartment. Thanks, Cal."

As husband.

Cal wanted more than her services as his second-in-command. He'd made that clear today.
When it happens, it will be because we both want it.

She'd managed to avoid thinking about Cal Tremaine that way for eighteen months, but she'd be lying if she pretended she didn't find him attractive.

One day, perhaps a few months after the wedding....

She could handle it.
She could.
She'd been with Cal long enough to know that although he tended to grab the reins, she had the strength to oppose him when necessary, to keep control of her job.

Of her life... of herself.

At the house, he lifted Kippy's carrier from the car. She followed him to the house, the diaper bag over her shoulder. In Seattle, she'd have to work out a routine for Kippy and herself. She wondered how many of Tremaine's employees had small children.

"What do you think about starting a day care?" she asked his back.

He stepped up onto the porch and swung to face her, Kippy's carrier in one hand, his brows lifted in a question.

"How many of your employees have small children? It wouldn't take many to justify a company day care. It would be a terrific perk for the employees. They'd pay day-care fees, of course, just as they would with a regular day care."

She stepped up beside him. "But the convenience—parents could stop in to check on their kids at lunch, coffee. Even nursing moms could keep nursing if the baby was in our day care."

His smile lifted something dark and worried that she'd been carrying all day. "This sounds like a done deal," he said.

"I'll need to see if there are enough children to justify it, what it will cost."

He reached out with his free hand and pulled her toward him.

"Get the numbers," he said, and he bent his head and covered her lips with his.

His hand spread over her back, holding her as he slowly explored her mouth. She told herself the dizziness was exhaustion, not being used to dealing with a baby, with hospitals, with marriage plans... with Cal's mouth on hers.

Slow, so slow. She told herself it was a light kiss, a nonthreatening symbol of their new partnership. Then his lips softened, lingered, and brushed the curves of her mouth, soothing her tangled nerves. His tongue traced the seam of her lips, slowly, lightly, and her mouth parted as she sank into sensation.

She breathed in the warm scent of his skin, felt her lips soften, clinging, accepting. Then he shifted and she sank deeper, her head tilting back, a tendril of panic crawling along her veins.

Something happened. Her lips, his tongue, sliding along the seam, opening her. She found the warm heat of his mouth, her tongue sliding over his, his mouth taking hers in a deep, slow fire that licked lazily through her body with growing power, then flared, drawing a moan from somewhere deep inside.

His hand tangled in her hair and he pulled her even closer, her breasts crushed against his chest, his mouth hungry, plundering, not enough... thirst, her pulse throbbing, breath tearing, fingers weaving through his hair, pulling his mouth closer, arching her body against his. Drowning....

She gave up something, somehow drew him deeper into her, his mouth and hers clinging desperately, almost fighting now... now....

He tore his mouth away, stared down at her with eyes blazing, searching.

"Sam?"

She felt a shudder run through her. Then, as if from a long distance away, she heard a baby whimper.

"Cal, I—"

The baby's whimper became a choked-off cry.

Kippy, in the carrier Cal still held in one hand. His other arm holding her against him, her breasts crushed against his chest, someone's heart beating in hard, rough rhythm. Her hands tangled in his hair, trying to draw his head back, his mouth back to hers. A weight on her left arm—the diaper bag. It had slid off her shoulder and hung from her arm, bumping against Cal's shoulder.

She dropped her hands, tried to step back. Kippy's cry became a scream.

"Later," he said, his voice hoarse. "We'll come back to this later."

He released her and she crouched down to unstrap the baby from the carrier with trembling hands.

"Do you want lunch before you leave?" Her voice was pitched too high.

"Maybe some sandwiches." His voice sounded almost like the Cal she was used to. "I'll take them with me. What time's the social worker coming tomorrow?"

Samantha had the baby in her arms now, her breath almost normal again. Her breasts still ached, but she held Kippy tighter, as if to deny the sensation.

"She'll be coming at one. I've got some conference calls set up tomorrow morning. Can you bring the Lloyd contract when you come back? I'm working on the pro formas for the bank, for the ASP stage. I want to check a few things."

"Yeah." For a second she thought he intended to touch her again, but he stepped to the door with her keys in his hand.

"When I come back," he said, "I'll have another of those."

"Another?" Why didn't he unlock the door? She needed to get inside, to start making sandwiches or—something, anything. "Another what?"

"Kiss." Then he did step closer and her breath dried up. "I won't bother with the sandwiches. Keep me a kiss, though, for when I get back." He brushed her lips, stretching over the shape of the baby to reach her.

Kippy started to complain as Cal's lips touched Samantha's.

"I'll be thinking about this," he growled.

Then he was gone, striding toward the helicopter on her lawn as Kippy started wailing, her mouth against Samantha's ear, her face scrunched up in distress.

"It's all right," Samantha said mechanically. "Everything's all right."

A business deal, but the business part of it seemed to be slipping away, and she couldn't let that happen. Before they became lovers as well as man and wife, she needed to be ready. She needed to get used to the marriage, to being his partner in a new way. Then, when she had that under control... then....

She'd better not stand here, watching him take off as if she were a pioneer wife watching her husband go off to the war, fearing he'd never return. This was
Cal,
and she was Samantha, a practical businesswoman with a firm vision of the future.

All right, so her vision had changed overnight. She'd acquired a baby, would add a husband in only a few days. But whatever that was, whatever she'd become, kissing him, it was only a kiss. They were going to marry, and Cal had kissed her. She was a woman, and he was a very attractive, virile man. The kiss had been... pleasant.

No wonder she felt off balance, though, considering the way she'd been behaving all day, shouting in the car at Cal, insisting she intended to pretend to Dorothy that this marriage was a love match, then telling her grandmother the stark truth.

Hormones, she decided. Some crazy fluctuation in her brain chemicals, brought on by stress, by worry about Dorothy, about Kippy, about fifty things unfinished at Tremaine's.

Stress. The pounding heart, shortness of breath. Probably the first signs of high blood pressure. She'd make a doctor's appointment when she got back to Seattle, ask for a thorough checkup. Meanwhile, she had a wedding to arrange, a baby to tend to, two books on baby care to read, and Tremaine's to look after by remote control.

She needed to organize, prioritize.

When the helicopter's rotors faded to silence, she mixed pabulum and stirred in two spoonfuls of pureed peaches. Then she strapped Kippy in the old high chair. Kippy showed her enjoyment of the exercise by grabbing the spoon, shoving it against her mouth, and gurgling, her laughing eyes watching Samantha. Ten minutes later, Kippy, Samantha, and the high chair wore a splattered layer of peaches and cereal, but perhaps half the mixture had found its home inside Kippy.

A bath, Samantha decided, and she took both Kippy and herself into the warm water. Afterward, the baby lay on the floor waving a pink, noisy rattle in one clenched fist. Samantha fired up her computer, collected her e-mail, and dashed off a series of responses involving everything from the additional leasehold improvements planned for the new premises, to HR's question about a brilliant young developer who wanted some crucial clauses in the contract altered before he would sign.

She forwarded the protesting genius to Cal, with notes on options, then fired off a query to Jason in human resources, asking for the number of Tremaine employees with young children. The answer came back in twenty minutes, just as Kippy was beginning to grunt and twist her body into a pretzel.

Samantha changed the baby's diaper, cuddled her and sang a half remembered nursery song, then mixed a bottle of formula and settled Kippy in the crib. Amazingly, the baby fell directly asleep.

While she napped, Samantha called three marriage commissioners from the list before she found one who agreed that yes, she was available to perform a wedding Saturday afternoon. Samantha made an appointment for herself and Cal to meet with her the next afternoon at four, by which time Brenda the social worker would surely be gone.

Then she called Wayne, who demanded to know why he hadn't met this guy if Sam was involved enough to be talking marriage. Yes, of course he'd be at the wedding, along with his wife, Nora.

"Have you told your mother, Samantha?"

"I'm not sure where she is. Europe, I think." The last Samantha heard, Jeanette was living with a psychiatrist she'd married two years ago, but going on the odds, her mother would have ditched the psychiatrist by now. After the wedding, Samantha would send a note to the address on Jeanette's last Christmas card.

Once, Wayne had been the husband of the moment. Unlike the others, Wayne had remained a part of Samantha and Sarah's life afterward.

She got human resources busy preparing a questionnaire for the staff, asking about interest in a company day care, and delegated Marcy to check out day-care regulations.

By the time Tremaine's closed, Kippy had woken and Samantha felt as if she'd spent the whole day delegating duties she was paid to look after herself. Her e-mail in-basket was empty, though, and everything had been dealt with.

Cal had sent her several e-mails by the end of the day. She was relieved to be dealing with him on business matters, where she knew her ground. He sent her the Lloyd contract by attachment, which made her realize she needed a printer, not just her portable.

He'd bring one, he said in his last e-mail of the day, then added:
Do you need the newspaper stopped at your apartment, the mail picked up, any plants watered?