slid slowly into her, relishing her tightness and the excitement of her gasps “—when we come together.”
He held her gaze, letting her body language tell him when to speed up and when to slow down. Their breathing synchronized. She clawed at his arms and back with mewling sounds. He quickened his thrusts.
She met each one, driving down onto him until her moves became wild and frenzied, making him rigid almost to the point of pain. He couldn’t hold back much longer.
Her eyes opened wide. “Oh, Chance! I’m going to—” He felt her body curving into him as her back arched.
Now! Make her yours. One last time.
Her muscles contracted around him, and, with a final plunge, he released nine years of pent-up passion…along with the silent, secret contents of his heart.
Their names echoed through the chamber as wave after wave shook them until they collapsed in a sweaty heap, exhausted and speechless.
She gave him a dreamy smile, and he kissed away a tear leaving its track along her flushed cheek. “Don’t cry, Kyn. It’s okay. We needed this.”
“I know,” she whispered. “It’s just the irony…that the first place we made love is also the last place we’ll make love. We talked about things coming full circle and…and they have.”
The truth brought an ache to his chest. The whole situation was ironic—a twist thrown into the natural order of things. The woman he worked so hard to get out of his life was back in his arms. She felt so right despite being so wrong.
And the closure she’d promised didn’t feel like closure at all.
His heart felt as if it had been laid wide-open.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
THE PHONE RANG, AND JACI reached for it, abandoning her search for the perfect shade of puce from among the endless set of color swatches. “Decor and More.”
“Hi, Jaci. It’s Erlene Moore.”
“Hey, Erlene. It’s good to hear from you.” Flashes of the precious nursery Julia had designed for the Moores filled Jaci’s memory. Surely, the woman wasn’t calling to complain about anything. “How’s that baby boy?”
“He’s getting to be a big boy now, which is why I called.” There was a short pause. “I’m pregnant again.”
“Wow, it’s been longer than I realized. Congratulations.”
“Thanks. This one’s a girl, so we want to have the nursery redone, and we also want Cody to have a room of his own.”
Handling the child’s room would be no problem, but nurseries were Julia’s forté. “Are you in a hurry for this? Julia’s away for a few weeks.”
“I’m seven months already.”
Exactly the same as I would have been… The acknowledgment brought a pang of something that felt as if regret and guilt and fear made a fist and punched her in the stomach.
Erlene’s tone became apologetic. “I shouldn’t have waited so long to call, but Cody and my job take up so much time. Then finding out I was pregnant again was like being caught up in a whirlwind, and before I knew it, there were only two months to go and nothing’s been done.” Her voice raised an octave. “No, no, Cody. Give Mommy her keys.” Erlene paused, then continued in her normal tone. “I looked for my keys for three days last week before I found them inside an unzipped teddy bear.”
Jaci pushed through the discomfort as she flipped the pages of her appointment book. There was no use dwelling on what had happened, and the thought of designing a nursery by herself had a certain appeal. She might never get to design one for herself, but doing someone else’s might give her vicarious satisfaction. She found an opening for the following week. “I’m open a week from today at two-thirty.”
“Cody goes down for… Not right now, Cody. Mommy will be off the phone in just a minute. Yeah, I’m off on Tuesdays, and Cody takes a nap at two, so he should be asleep. That would be good.”
“Would you like me to come to your house?”
The response was an emphatic “No.”
“No?”
“No, Cody. Leave the lamp cord alone. We mustn’t pull on cords. That would be great, Jaci. And I’m desperate for suggestions on more ways to baby-proof things.”
“I’m sure if you search Google—”
“I’ve got to go, Jaci. See you next Tuesday. Cody, come back with that.” The last sounded as if Erlene had broken into a jog.
Jaci moved the color swatches off her lap, and typed “baby-proofing the house” into a search engine.
“Oh, dear Lord!” She gasped as her eyes fell on the results—all 881,000 of them—and the sense of ineptitude