When Lightning Strikes Twice (11 page)

“You’re turning into a wrinkled purple prune, Brady,” Quint announced. “Time to get out.” He flipped open the drain, and the water swiftly began to recede.

Brady noticed. And couldn’t bear for the fun to end. “No, no, no! Bath, bath,” he wailed.

“Spoilsport,” Rachel murmured. As one who also didn’t appreciate Quint’s absolute authority, she sympathized with the toddler’s frustration.

“The water was getting cold, Rachel,” Quint pointed out.

“Brady didn’t mind. He was enjoying himself.”

He wasn’t now. Brady stood in the few inches of water that remained, crying his heart out as shivers racked his naked little body.

“Oh, poor Brady, you didn’t want to get out, did you?” Reflexively, Rachel took the towel that Quint handed her and wrapped it around the two-year-old. She picked him up, talking to him all the while.

“His room is this way,” Quint said, and she followed him down the short hallway carrying Brady in her arms.

By the time they reached Brady’s room, wallpapered with zoo animals in primary colors—Rachel guessed Quint had deemed them suitably masculine—the little boy had stopped crying and was eager to show her his toys.

Brady insisted that Mommy, not Daddy, dry him and dress him in his pajamas, which he chose from a drawer. “Choo-choo train,” he said, pointing at the blue engines printed on the cotton.

Rachel glanced at the other pajama sets. “More trains and boats and planes. Not a single pink bunny in sight,” she said dryly.

“Certainly not,” said Quint. He was standing aside, watching them.

Although Rachel was very much aware of his intensely focused gaze upon her, Brady’s presence diluted its effect. It was almost impossible to be sensually blitzkrieged while a toddler babbled incessantly as he dragged books and toys into the middle of the room for her inspection. Rachel dutifully admired each and every item.

“I hate to break up the party but it’s past seven-thirty, and Brady is usually zonked by this time,” Quint finally announced.

Rachel glanced at her watch. It was nearly eight o’clock and Brady’s little voice was beginning to sound hoarse with fatigue. “Brady, do you want me to read you a story or Daddy to read you a story before you go to sleep?” she asked.

She’d learned from her interactions with Snowy that offering a choice to youngsters in this age group often precluded a temper tantrum. Very young children didn’t seem to realize that another, unmentioned option existed—to reject both choices offered and keep on with the current activity.

Predictably, Brady fell for her ploy. “Mommy read,” he commanded.

“Okay. What book do you want?”

Brady immediately rummaged through the pile of books to find a well-used copy of that old classic
Goodnight Moon
. Rachel smiled. It had been Snowy’s bedtime favorite, too.

Quint flicked on a lamp made of alphabet blocks and turned off the overhead light. Rachel settled in the rocking chair with Brady on her lap and began to read. The text was so familiar to her she could recite it by memory. While she read, Quint quietly put the toys and books away and cleared a space for Brady in his crib, lining up his assortment of stuffed animal against the bars.

At the end of the story, Rachel glanced up and met Quint’s eyes. He gave a swift, silent nod and she lifted Brady into the crib. The baby glanced sleepily around, then reached for a stuffed brown raccoon. And promptly tossed it out of the crib.

Quint grinned. “Brady runs a very exclusive place. Only TV and video stars are allowed in. That raccoon is an irritating pest who keeps trying to break into the club.”

Rachel looked at the remaining toys in the crib. Every one of them was either a
Sesame Street
or a Disney character. She smiled, instantly disarmed by Quint’s amusing perspective.

Quint picked up the cast-aside toy and placed it on the child-sized table in the corner. “Sarah and I keep trying to slip the raccoon in, to see if it’ll get by him. So far, poor old Reject Raccoon gets the heave-ho every single time.”

Rachel chuckled. “I guess not even little kids are immune to the power of celebrity. Night-night, Brady,” she leaned down to kiss him. He smiled drowsily at her, already half-asleep.

Then it was Quint’s turn to bend down and kiss his son good night.

“ ‘Night, Brady.” Quint covered the child with a well-used pale blue blanket that looked as if it had been hauled many places for a very long time.

Rachel touched the satin edge of the blanket. Snowy had a beloved old blanket too, but hers was baby pink. A smile
curved her lips. It appeared that pastel blue had somehow passed Quint’s machismo test.

She watched the quiet moment between father and son, consumed by a melting tenderness. The emotional feelings evoked were as strong as the sexual ones Quint roused in her.

Before she had fully comprehended the enormous scope of their cojoined power, Quint had hooked his arm around her waist and walked her out of the room.

Q
uint pulled Brady’s bedroom door closed behind them when they stepped into the hall. And before Rachel could move, think, or even breathe, she was pinned between Quint and the wall.

She raised her head and met his eyes, seeing the urgency and the passion that he made no attempt to conceal. His gaze held her captive as effectively as his body, which was hard and burgeoning with desire. He made no attempt to hide that either.

She must be getting conditioned to this, Rachel mused dazedly. Because instead of reacting with shock or outrage—certainly her expected response to such overt caveman tactics—she felt giddy with her own feminine power. Quint’s arousal was directly related to his proximity to her; his lack of restraint evidenced a lack of control. Which was especially thrilling because she knew how controlled the man could be.

Not now, however. Not with her.

‘There is something very familiar about this situation,” she murmured huskily. “You’ve got me backed up against the wall again. Literally.”

“And figuratively?”

“If you’re referring to that phony Tilden will—”

“Which is very real.” Quint’s dark brown eyes were alight with amusement.

“Mmm-hmm. You can’t even say that with a straight face, Quinton Cormack.”

“Rachel, speaking as one attorney to another, at this particular moment I don’t give a flying f—um—fig—about
anybody’s
will.”

“Coming from you, I think that’s something of a compliment.”

She raised her hands slowly. It wasn’t until Quint caught her wrists and pinned them at shoulder height against the wall on either side of her that Rachel realized she hadn’t intended to push him away. She’d been about to slide her arms around his neck.

That
startling realization finally cleared her head. What was she thinking, to allow Quint to manhandle her this way? While joking about the fake Tilden will!

Her pride demanded a struggle. At the very least, a token one. She tried to pull her arms away but his steely grip didn’t give even an inch. Having no luck there, she shifted her hips from side to side trying, not very successfully, to dislodge him. But her movements resulted in him settling more firmly between her thighs, which had parted during their little tussle. In addition, the motions of her body had only aroused him further. She could feel how much.

Quint groaned. Or maybe it was more of a moan. “You do it deliberately, don’t you? You’re determined to drive me crazy, you know exactly how to do it, and you won’t quit until I’ve gone totally over the edge.”

Rachel giggled, startling herself. She wasn’t the giggly type, she never had been. But Quint’s lamentations tickled her. He sounded so aggrieved!

She had to sternly remind herself that this was no laughing matter and that Quint had no cause for complaint.
She
was the one being pinned against the wall—and for the second time that day.
She
was the persecuted party here.

Although what she actually felt was as far from persecution as MTV was from PBS.

“You think it’s funny, hmm?” Quint nuzzled her neck as he spoke, gently nipping and kissing between words. She
felt him pull on her skin with his teeth, drawing it between his lips to suck.

Her breath burned against her throat, and she swallowed with difficulty. “N-No. It’s not funny at all.”

His erection pressed formidably against her and she rotated her hips in an erotic rhythm she hadn’t even realized she knew. She was acutely aware of his strength—and fiercely turned on by it. The shackles of inhibitions and repression that she had maintained for years suddenly disintegrated, leaving her at the mercy of this breakout of desire and need. She didn’t care about anything but this man and this moment.

Quint affectionately rubbed noses with her. “Aren’t you going to tell me to stop?” he whispered.

Rachel gazed deeply into his eyes. She felt as if she were drowning in the dark depths. “No,” she breathed the word. Her tongue felt thick in her mouth. Speaking required a concentrated effort.

“No?” His lips brushed hers lightly. “No, you don’t want me to stop?” The tip of his tongue traced the shape of her lips, and she parted them in aching invitation. Which he did not take.

“Do you want me to keep going?” he murmured instead.

“So many questions!” Rachel moaned a protest. And the answers were all too obvious!

“Remember my obsession with accuracy and specificity?” His smile was warm and teasingly intimate and made her shiver with yearning.

His lips flirted with hers, tantalizing her with feather-light touches, but lifting out of reach whenever she raised her mouth for deeper, stronger contact. “I think you carry accuracy and specificity to ridiculous lengths,” she complained.

“Don’t whine, Rachel.” He laughed softly.

“I was not whining!” Rachel was instantly indignant. “I have never whined in my entire life! I can’t tell you how insulted I am that—”

“Shh, baby, I’m sorry. The last thing I want to do is
insult you.” Grinning down at her, he freed her wrists. “I want to make you feel good, I don’t want to make you mad at me.”

He was teasing her, flirting with her, and Rachel felt the antagonism that should’ve restored her sanity and sent her on her way, dissolving like an ice-cream cone in the sun.

What made her so susceptible to his roguish brand of charm? Rachel wondered desperately. It didn’t seem to matter that she found him irritating, even infuriating; mere moments later she would be completely disarmed by him.

“Does this feel good?” Quint carefully cupped her breasts with his hands.

Though he’d released her wrists, a dazed Rachel kept her arms flexed against the wall on either side of her. Instinctively, she pushed her breasts against his palms. He fondled the rounded softness, and she exhaled on a sigh. “Feeling good” seemed a pallid euphemism for this sensuous bliss.

Yet, it was not enough. Her nipples peaked and strained against her bra; they were taut and sensitive and needed soothing. She was close to begging him to touch her there when his thumbs finally caressed her, alternately making lazy circles and applying gentle pressure exactly where she wanted it, how she wanted it.

Rachel whimpered. He’d worked her into such a sensual frenzy that her whole body was shaking.

“Open your eyes, Rachel,” Quint murmured against her ear. “Look at me.”

Her eyelids opened slowly, and her limpid hazel eyes locked on his lips that were barely touching her own.

“Do you want me to kiss you?”

Rachel could not ever remember wanting to be kissed as badly as she did at this moment. She gave her head a faint nod.

“I didn’t hear you,” he whispered.

She expelled a tremulous breath. “Yes.” The word was full of want and need, her voice soft with surrender.

He nibbled on her lower lip, then the upper one, and a tiny moan escaped from deep in her throat.

“Say my name, Rachel,” he said hoarsely.

In an act of wanton boldness that would’ve scandalized her usual guarded, coolly reserved self, she slid her arms around his neck. “You talk too much,
Quint.”

“I should just shut up and kiss you?”

“Yes!”

His arms fully encircled her then, fitting her soft curves against the hard planes of his body, as his mouth closed fiercely over hers. She parted her lips on impact, and, when his tongue thrust inside, Rachel met it with her own to engage in an erotically intimate little duel.

Desire flooded her with an urgency she had never before experienced. Her skilled analytical, rational thought processes were incoherent and overwhelmed, but she didn’t care. She didn’t even notice.

Not when his wonderful hands so exquisitely caressed her breasts. Not when he was hard and thick between her legs, moving against her in a way that sent shock waves of pleasure jolting through her. Swollen and aching and wet, Rachel squirmed, wanting, needing so much more than he was giving her.

His hands lowered to clench her buttocks, his fingers squeezing hard. She rubbed against him provocatively, aware of the empty, achy void within her, experiencing a previously unknown craving to be filled. By him.

The barriers of their clothing were suddenly intolerable to her. Daring and desperate, Rachel tugged his shirt from the waistband of his jeans and slipped her hands under it, gliding her palms along his bare back. His skin was smooth and warm and slightly damp.

She felt as if she were losing herself in him, drowning in the scent and taste and feel of him. But instead of being threatened by his compelling virility, she felt empowered and euphoric.

I
want him
. Her whole body vibrated with the wild urgency of that admission. And jolted her back to her senses, like an electroshock altering errant brain waves. She tore her mouth from his and stared up at him.

Quint saw the glimmer of uncertainty in her eyes. And rebelled against it. “We both want this, Rachel,” he asserted, with as much certitude as a lawyer arguing his case in front of the Supreme Court.

He dipped his mouth to resume his seduction of her neck, his moist little kisses already beginning to undermine her fledgling resolve. “And it feels wonderful, Rachel. It feels right”

She could hardly argue with that. Still, she tried to present a case for lucidity and restraint. “We shouldn’t do this, Quint,” she whispered weakly.

“Probably not, but we’re going to anyway, aren’t we?”

He claimed her mouth again, his body hard and tight, the blood fizzing hotly through his veins. He wanted her with a ferocious urgency that rocked him. She was so passionate, so responsive, a feminine sensual paradox who was both pliant and demanding.

He was already at the point where kissing wasn’t enough and the clothing they were wearing was way too much. He wanted to carry her into his bedroom and undress her, to feel her bare skin under his hands, to touch her intimately….

He raised his head slightly but kept his mouth so close to hers that she could feel his lips touch her own when he spoke, could feel his warm breath mingle with hers.

“I want to make love to you, Rachel. So much.” His hands slipped under her cotton top, and he skimmed the smooth skin of her midriff with his fingertips. “Let me. Please.”

Before she could reply, he added seductively, “Tell me that you want it, too. Let me hear you say it.”

“You really do believe in validation every step of the way, don’t you?” An unexpected surge of affection swept through her, further destabilizing her.

“Yes,” said Quint.

He stared so intensely at her that she felt he was looking inside her, seeing her exposed and vulnerable, divining all
the secret feelings that she’d always managed to keep hidden, even from herself.

“Yes,” she repeated dazedly. Despite her considerable verbal skills in the courtroom, she was inexperienced and inarticulate in expressing need or desire. But Quint was watching her, and waiting.

“Say it, Rachel.”

“I—I want—what you do,” she managed to rasp.

Quint kissed her again, and Rachel responded with all the passion she’d kept locked deep within her for so long. Lost in a maelstrom of lust and longing, she couldn’t remember why she’d ever tried to call a halt to things in the first place.

They were so intensely absorbed in each other that neither one heard the car pull into the carport, neither heard the kitchen door open and close or the footsteps on the stairs.

It wasn’t until an awestruck voice exclaimed, “Wow! Don’t you two ever come up for air?” that Rachel and Quint sprang apart, startled and shocked.

The descent from their private sensual universe to the real one, where a fascinated Sarah Sheely stood in the hall gaping at them, was swift and brutal.

Rachel gasped. Quint cursed. Both began to move slowly in opposite directions.

“Sorry to interrupt,” Sarah said, though her tone was merrily unapologetic. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to stick around and bug you. I’m on my way to my room and I’ll put on the TV—and keep the sound up high.” She gave a jovially conspiratorial thumbs-up and went on her way.

Silently, Quint and Rachel watched her open the door of the room next to Brady’s and disappear inside.

“I have to go.” Rachel’s entire body was one flaming scarlet blush.

“Rachel, wait.”

If he tried to talk her into staying, she would scream. Rachel walked away from him, quickly reaching the staircase and taking the steps two at a time to the ground floor.

But Quint moved even faster and easily caught up to her before she reached the front door. His hand closed around her upper arm.

Rachel prepared herself for a fight, she almost welcomed it. Frustration, embarrassment, and the powerful force of unslaked passion roared through her, seeking an outlet. A ferocious quarrel with Quint Cormack,
the cause of it all
, would serve nicely.

“I want to thank you for taking such good care of Brady today,” Quint said quietly.

Rachel looked up at him, nonplussed and deflated. She knew at that moment he wasn’t going to do or say anything to keep her with him tonight. Perversely, she was disappointed, though she knew she wouldn’t have stayed.

He released her arm and she unconsciously rubbed the skin there. “If you want to see him again—” Quint paused, looking uncertain. “If you ever feel like visiting—” He took a deep breath and started over. “I just want you to know that you’re welcome to visit Brady anytime, Rachel.”

She nodded her head, not trusting herself to speak. She rushed to her car, blinking back the tears that were burning her eyes. Quint didn’t follow her, but he remained standing in the open doorway. Rachel saw him watching her as she got into her car and drove away.

The pent-up emotions she hadn’t been able to release through lovemaking or fighting surged through her with tidal-wave force. Crying might provide some relief, but Rachel had never wept over a man, and she certainly wasn’t about to turn lachrymose now.

To distract herself, she turned on the radio and hit the button set for a station featuring an all-talk format. An irate voice came blaring over the airwaves, immediately commanding her attention. Tonight’s topic had something to do with a strange plan to resurrect the long-dead dirigible industry, beginning in Camden with two huge hangars that would build a pair of dirigibles every eighteen months and employ fifty thousand people. Most callers blasted the plan as either an insane pipe dream or a ridiculous scam, but a
few were hopeful, citing the cottage industries that could be centered around dirigibles, for example, T-shirts and souvenir items of all kinds.