Heart of Gold - By Tami Hoag Page 0,37
said, abruptly trying to sit up and finding it a futile task with Shane half-sprawled on top of her.
“She can’t see us.” He raised up just enough to peer over the wicker food hamper that shielded their activities from Lindy’s view. Faith’s daughter sat playing in the sand a good thirty feet away. “She’s completely absorbed in counting her seashells.”
“That won’t take long,” Faith said on a breathless laugh. “She can only make it to ten.”
“Lindy!” Shane called.
“I’m real busy!” she called back, not even lifting her head from her task.
“Okay. You give a holler when you’re not busy anymore.”
“Okie-dokie!”
Shane turned his attention from daughter to mother. Faith’s heart-shaped face was flushed, her lips were love-swollen and glistened from his kiss. Possessive desire pounded through him in waves.
“I don’t think this is a very good idea,” Faith said weakly, thrills rippling through her at the hungry look on his face.
“Really?” One black brow quirked upward as Shane began to lower his head. “Then you’re going to hate this.”
He kissed her again, slowly, deeply, as if they had years for just this one kiss. Faith wished they did. She wished they had forever. Surely the love she’d stored up in her heart would last that long and then some. But they didn’t have forever. They had only the present. Shane would be with her only a few weeks at the most.
Would the heartache be any less when he left if she said no to a physical relationship with him? Or would it be even more painful with the addition of regret for not taking as much as he was willing to give her?
Shane felt his heart twist when he raised his head and looked down into sable eyes swimming with tears of confusion. He cursed himself for complicating her already complicated situation. He had no business wanting Faith Kincaid in the first place. What the hell did he think he was doing pushing her this way? Not more than a few hours ago he’d told himself he wouldn’t pressure her into anything.
Gently he brushed a crystal drop of moisture from the corner of her eye with his thumb. “No tears,” he whispered, his expression more tender than he would have believed possible. “Today is too perfect for tears.”
He was right, Faith thought, her heart aching with love for him as she traced her fingertips over the angular planes of his aristocratic face. There would be time enough for tears later.
“I want you, Faith,” he said, his smoky voice a caress to her already-aroused senses. “But I won’t push you. It has to be your choice.”
Lindy’s voice floated to them on the breeze. “I’m all done being busy now!”
A rare smile lit Shane’s face as he sat up and put his sunglasses back on. “I think that’s our call to duty.”
“Duty?” Faith questioned, slowly gathering her scattered wits. She took Shane’s hand and let him help her up from the blanket.
“Construction crew. I promised Lindy I’d help her build a sand castle.”
“You’re a talented man, Mr. Callan.”
He slid an arm around her shoulders as they headed up the beach. “I told you before, I’m full of surprises.”
Faith leaned against him, silent, wondering if she dared hope one of the surprises inside him would be love.
He watched from the deck of the cabin cruiser, one eye pressed to the eyepiece of a state-of-the-art telescope. His blood heated as he watched them kiss and embrace. “Ah, yes,” he murmured, “love is a many-splendored thing.”
Sitting back in the comfortable helm seat on the navigation bridge, he propped his legs up on the railing and lazily polished the dull blue barrel of a semiautomatic pistol. “Love and death. How poetic. Soon Mrs. Gerrard, Agent Callan. Soon.”
SEVEN
ONE SAND CASTLE turned into two and eventually became a minor megalopolis on the little beach. After the construction boom came a well-deserved cookie break, then Lindy curled up on the blanket with her bedraggled doll tucked to her chest and fell into the deep, blissful sleep of a happy child.
Faith gazed down on her daughter, gently rubbing a hand back and forth over Lindy’s back as she slept. Shane watched quietly, his expression pensive as feelings tumbled loose inside him. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt such a sense of peace. There was no denying that the source of that peace was the lady sitting across from him, and the little girl with the sun-blushed cheeks and yellow Big Bird sweatshirt.
“She’s pretty special, isn’t she?” he murmured, reaching