Heart of Gold - By Tami Hoag Page 0,43
love he needed, the love she needed to give. Being right was small consolation, but the struggle he seemed to be waging within himself gave life to a spark of hope. Maybe, if they could just have a little time together, maybe …
Maybe what, Faith, she asked herself. Maybe Shane would change, the way she had believed William would change? Maybe they could live happily ever after? Maybe she was being a fool.
“I have to go back to my room,” she whispered as tears filled her eyes. She blinked them back determinedly. “Lindy will be getting up soon. I just wanted you to know how I feel. We can have a few weeks together; I’ll take whatever you’re willing to give me. But if you decide you want more, we can have more.”
We can have forever, she added silently.
She started to turn away from him to slide out of bed, but Shane’s big hand on her shoulder stopped her. Without saying a word, he bent down and settled his mouth against hers in a hot, deep kiss, a kiss of raw, primitive possession. He swept a hand down her side to her hip to steady her as he kneed her thighs apart and eased into her with one slow thrust. Faith moaned at the feel of him filling her. Automatically her hips lifted to make his entrance easier.
“This is what I can give you, Faith,” he murmured darkly against her lips as his body moved against her and within her, seeking the mind-numbing solace he found only with her.
Faith wrapped her arms around him and held him tight, riding out the storm of passion with him and praying there would be something left of her heart when it was all over.
“Mama, I want toast,” Lindy announced, kneeling on her chair at the kitchen table, her place setting overrun with tiny plastic dinosaurs.
“Yes, sweetie, I know,” Faith said. She was trying simultaneously to handle the coffee maker and the toaster while keeping one eye on the eggs that were cooking on the stove.
“I’ll do the coffee,” Alaina volunteered as she and Jayne entered the room. She took the pot from Faith’s slightly trembling hand, giving her friend a sharp, speculative glance. “You look tired. Did you get any sleep last night?”
Faith felt her cheeks flush instantly. She’d hardly slept a wink, but the reason had nothing to do with insomnia. “Um—I’m all right,” she mumbled.
Blast it, couldn’t she be a little more sophisticated? Did she have to blush as if Alaina had come right out and asked if she’d just spent the last six hours between the sheets with Shane Callan? And for heaven’s sake, she was a grown woman. It wasn’t as if Shane was the first man she’d ever gone to bed with.
He was the second.
He was the only man she’d ever made love with in the truest sense of the term—whether he admitted his heart was involved or not. She had to believe it was. Nothing that beautiful had ever come from simple physical need.
“Mama, can I have my toast now?”
“Yes, Lindy, I’m coming.” She put her daughter’s breakfast on a plate and dropped it off at the table on her way to check the eggs.
Lindy made a face and lifted one square of bread by the corner. “I don’t want this kind.”
“It’s the only kind we have.”
“I want the kind with raisins.”
“We’re all out of the raisin kind.”
“Can we go to the beach today?”
“No, honey, not today,” Faith said, sighing, putting the teakettle on to heat. “Mama’s got work to do.”
“Work, work, work,” Lindy grumbled, folding her toast in half and mushing it with her fist. “All grown-ups ever do is work.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that, sugar plum,” Jayne said, pausing in her task of pouring orange juice to lean across the table and tweak Lindy’s nose. “Grown-ups have fun sometimes too, don’t we, Faith?”
Faith couldn’t have looked more guilty had she been wearing a sign around her neck that spelled out “strumpet” in big glossy red letters. “Who, me?”
Alaina’s mouth lifted in a wry smile as she leaned back against the counter and crossed her arms. “I believe the question was rhetorical, not accusatory. At any rate, most kinds of fun aren’t against the law, are they, Mr. Callan?”
If Faith’s cheeks had been red before, they were fuchsia now as she looked up and her gaze collided with Shane’s. He strolled into the kitchen looking impossibly handsome in black jeans and a gray polo shirt,