Warm Hearts (21 page)

*   *   *

There was nothing mild or subtle about Brendan as he took the stairs to his apartment two at a time. He'd just come from Caroline's loft, where repeated banging on the door had resulted in nothing. She couldn't be sleeping, not after his pounding, which meant that either she'd gone out or she was here. If she'd gone out, he'd be destroyed. If she was here he'd be ecstatic.

Dropping his bags so that he could fumble with his keys, he finally managed to unlock the door and shove it open. His eyes fell on the sprawled, sleeping form on his sofa and he said a quick prayer of thanks. He shifted his bags inside the apartment, quietly closed the door and, with barely a sound, crossed to where she lay.

It had been a hectic four days. He hadn't had the leisure to indulge in daydreams, but the nights, around his calls to her, had been filled with dreams. There had been times when he hadn't been able to believe that she existed. Hearing her voice had helped, but it was her skin that he wanted to feel and the warmth of her surrounding him.

He felt relief, and yes, he was ecstatic to find that she did exist and in his own apartment, no less. He also realized that he was nearly fully aroused. Looking at her did that to him. No, not just looking at her. Loving her.

He whispered those words as he bent and placed a warm kiss on her cheek. She was dead to the world, and if she did wake up and ask him what he'd said, he could play dumb and she'd think that she'd imagined the words. He whispered them again, this time with a kiss to her chin. Would she be receptive to subliminal persuasion? On the bare chance that she would, he whispered them a third time, against her neck now.

She stirred softly. Her eyes didn't open, but her arms rose to loop around his neck. She wasn't awake, exactly; she wasn't asleep, exactly. She was in that limbo between the two where pleasure could be prolonged simply by willing it so. And she did feel pleasure. Gentle kisses. Whispered words that were indistinct but infinitely reassuring. Touches and caresses that brought excitement and heat to secret spots.

She didn't have to look to know that it was Brendan who was touching her so sweetly. Her fingers told her as they wound through his hair, curved around his neck, pressed into his shoulder. Her tongue told her as it explored the inside of his mouth. Her nose told her as it inhaled the scent that had taunted her earlier but was now present in greater force, the scent that was uniquely his.

With his shirt thrust aside, she could identify him by the texture of his skin—just the right proportion of flesh to body hair to muscle and the most pleasing tone of each. She could smile at the familiarity of the small sound he made—a cross between a groan, a growl and a sigh—when she slid her hands through his open fly and touched him there in a very special way. And she could never mistake the gentleness with which he lifted her hips to free her of her shorts.

Only after he'd entered her did she open her eyes, and then it was to smile up at him for an instant before the rhythm he set caught her in its vibrant beat. With her arms coiled around his neck and her legs circling his hips, she met his fire with her own until they both succumbed to the driving heat.

That night, Caroline realized that what she had with Brendan went far beyond the simple relationship she'd envisioned at the start. It came to her in those brief, special seconds after she'd climaxed, when he was in the throes of his own powerful release and she felt the warmth he poured into her as a life force in every sense of the word. She'd never experienced as profound a sensation. She'd never known it existed—that sensation of joining with a man and, together, being part of a cosmic order.

On the one hand, it was exhilarating. On the other, it was disturbing, even frightening, because she liked what she had with Brendan. She didn't want anything to spoil it, least of all one of them taking the other too seriously. If she were, by chance, to fall in love with him, she knew that she'd be breaking the rules she herself had established.

Which might be good. Or bad. But, in any case, that possibility was going to take a lot of thought.

*   *   *

Unfortunately, Caroline didn't have much time for thought. She spent the night in Brendan's apartment, in his bed and his arms. When she returned to her own loft the next morning to shower and change for work, she found a message from her mother on the answering service.

This time the alarm was for real. While Caroline had been following passion's path to Brendan's arms, her mother had been pacing the emergency room of a hospital in Milwaukee waiting for word on her husband, who'd suffered a stroke.

9

In a response so natural she would have thought it instinctive had it not been so new, Caroline called Brendan. She'd left no more than ten minutes before, and no more than ten minutes later he was at her loft wearing a handsome navy business suit and an expression of concern.

“I managed to reach my mother,” she told him in a voice that came higher and faster than usual. “She must have been driving the nurses crazy, because they sounded relieved that I'd called. She's being her own pessimistic self, so I can't get any kind of clear picture about what's going on except that the doctors are still with him. I'm going out there.”

Brendan's voice was as understanding as his eyes, and both were as supportive as the hand that held hers. “When?”

“This morning. As soon as I can get a flight.”

“Have you spoken with Karen or Carl?”

She shook her head.

“Do they know?”

Again she shook her head, this time sending him a look of helplessness. “This is the last thing Karen needs to hear, given everything else that's happened to her this week. And Carl—Lord only knows how Carl will react.”

“They'll have to be told.”

“I know,” she said on an even higher, faintly panicky note.

“Want me to call them?”

“I couldn't ask you—”

“You're not asking,” he interrupted, curving warm fingers around her neck. “I'm offering. If you take your shower and pack while I make the calls, things will be a little easier, won't they?”

“Oh, yes,” Caroline said, and meant it.

“Would I be better to try to catch Karen's husband and have him break the news to her?”

She considered that, then nodded quickly.

“I can easily call Carl,” he went on. “How about Diane?”

“She'll want to know, too.”

“Should I call her first?” Brendan asked. Behind the caution in his tone was an unspoken, even shrewd suggestion.

Caroline picked up on it with a quick nod. “Call Diane and have
her
call Carl.”

It amazed Caroline that she and Brendan could be scheming to get Carl and Diane back together at a time like this. More, though, it amazed her that she was scheming with Brendan, period. Without having met a single member of her family, he seemed to know all of them well. She wondered whether she'd really talked so much about them, or whether he'd been perceptive enough to fill in the blanks, or whether he was simply that kind of caring person.

Whatever the case, she was grateful. Again there was that sense of having an ally. Actually, now, it was more having someone to lean on, to ease a bit of the weight from her shoulders. She knew that Brendan couldn't take the whole load; this was her family, her responsibility. But knowing that he was here to help with the immediate arrangements made the broader worries about her father a bit easier to handle.

Sliding her arms around him, she gave him a tight squeeze in silent expression of her gratitude. He accepted it warmly, then held her back. “Phone numbers?”

She jotted them down on a pad of paper by the phone.

“Now, shower,” he urged, kissing her lightly on the forehead.

She did so and was in the midst of drying her hair when he poked his head into the bathroom. “Dan says not to worry, that he'll hold off a little bit before telling Karen so that you'll have a chance to get out to Milwaukee and hopefully call back with some news. Diane says that she'll take care of telling Carl and, by the way, thank you for calling her.”

Only after Caroline had stepped into the shower had it occurred to her that letting Brendan make the calls could pose an added problem. Neither Dan nor Diane knew who he was.

“Did either of them give you any trouble?”

Brendan knew just what she meant. “I told them I was a good friend and neighbor and that I was helping you out so you could be on your way. I also called the airport, by the way. You have a flight out in an hour. That'll give you another half hour here. Enough?”

She nodded. “Enough.” Setting the hair dryer down, she gave little shoves to the shoulder-length tresses, first with her brush, then with her fingers.

“Lookin' good,” he said. Unable to resist taking a minute to watch her, he stood just inside the door now. Still, he'd tucked his hands in the pockets of his slacks for safekeeping. She was wrapped in a thick terry towel that was knotted just above her left breast. He envied it.

She'd already reached for her makeup and was about to apply it when she suddenly set the bottle down on the sink and turned around. Putting a hand flat on either side of his face, she stood on tiptoe and gave him a warm, wet kiss on the mouth.

“Thank you,” she said, moving her fingers ever so slightly on his cheeks. “You have no idea—” Her voice cracked and broke off. Strange, her throat had grown tight, almost as though she was going to cry. But that was impossible. She never cried.

Taking a deep breath, she steadied herself and released him, then returned to her makeup.

Brendan had sensed the emotion that, for a minute, had come very close to the surface. He knew what he wanted to attribute it to, but he didn't dare. As a matter of fact, there was an awful lot that he didn't dare do, and it was beginning to bother him. With each additional minute that he spent with Caroline he grew more sure of his feelings. He tried to remind himself that barely a week had passed since they'd first gotten together, but each time he was with her he wanted her more, harder, longer, deeper, and not only physically. Hiding his feelings was becoming increasingly difficult.

But it was necessary, he reminded himself, especially now. So he thrust aside his frustrations and the dire yearning to take her in his arms, tell her that he loved her and assure her that everything would be all right, and instead asked, “Will someone cover for you at work?”

“They'd better.”

“Who should I call?”

This time she shook her head. “I'll have to. I can do it while I'm packing.”

He watched her for several minutes, until she'd zipped the small makeup bag. Then he asked, “Would you like anything—coffee, O.J., eggs?”

Again she shook her head. “My stomach's feeling a little off.”

“What can I do? Name it and it's as good as done.”

She looked up at him, her eyes large and troubled, and whispered, “Just hold me for a minute.” Wrapping her arms around his neck, she closed her eyes and held tight.

It was all he could do just then not to offer to go with her. But she hadn't asked him to do it, and he didn't want to put her on the spot. It was possible that she preferred to make the trip alone. She was going to have enough to handle between her mother's mania and her father's illness, he knew, without having to worry about explaining the presence of this new man in her life.

Ironically, it was for these same reasons that he ended up on a flight to Milwaukee early Saturday morning. Caroline had called the night before to say that while her father had suffered some paralysis, he was going to be fine. Madeline Cooper was the real basket case, and the doctors' vagueness didn't help. Karen was calling regularly, and Carl was planning to fly out. Between coping with them and her mother and trying to talk with the doctors and visit her father, Caroline sounded strung out after eight short hours in Milwaukee.

So Brendan was flying out to help her. He knew that he could. He could talk with Madeline, and even if he couldn't do any better than Caroline in calming her down, at least Caroline wouldn't be taking the brunt of it.

He could also talk with the doctors. His own experience with the medical profession, obtained when his mother had had major surgery several years before, was that occasionally a deeper, louder voice was heard more quickly. He had no doubt that Caroline would have her answers in time, but if he could shorten that time, so much the better.

He could help deal with Carl when Caroline had her hands full with her mother. He could pass news on to Karen when Caroline's head ached, as she'd said it had been doing last night.

Most important, he could let Caroline lean on him when she felt pushed to the limit. It occurred to him shortly before his plane landed in Milwaukee that, at the moment, all he really wanted in life was to be there for her.

Of course, whether that was what
she
wanted was up for grabs. He knew that she'd appreciated his coming over on Friday morning. She'd told him so several times with smiles and hugs, and he'd had no cause to doubt her sincerity. But whether she'd appreciate his flying halfway across the country on her behalf was something else. He purposely hadn't told her he was coming because he hadn't wanted to give her the chance to protest.

The prospect of such a protest unsettled him as the plane landed. During the taxi ride to the hospital, he ran through the many arguments he could make to explain his presence. By the time he'd located Allan Cooper's room, he was thoroughly prepared to plead his case.

He wasn't prepared, though, for what the sight of Caroline, looking tired and pale as she sat by her father's bedside, would do to him. His insides knotted up, and he felt as though something was squeezing his heart. It was lucky that she seemed equally stunned when she looked up and saw him at the door, because it gave him a few precious minutes to recover. By the time she'd risen and come to join him, he was composed enough to launch his campaign, albeit in a low murmur appropriate to the setting.