His for the Taking - By Ann Major Page 0,38
she’d planned to marry Greg, but he had to focus on what he wanted—Noah and her—if he was going to win her over to his point of view. He didn’t want another man being a father to Noah now that Cole was free to marry and claim his son.
As he held her and stared down at her lovely face, his blood began to thrum as he remembered how she’d felt last night in his arms. Suddenly, he was tired of arguing. As always, he marveled that she could arouse him so easily, so quickly—and that he could do the same to her.
“Maybe I don’t love you, but I like a lot of things about you. For one thing, you’re too damn beautiful to argue with and you’re making me unbearably hot,” he said.
“What?”
“Since everybody already thinks you lured me to my pool to go skinny-dipping yesterday, why don’t we go there now…and actually do it?”
Her luminous eyes went so dark and shot so many sparks at him, he was afraid she was about to pull back her hand and take a swing at him. When she didn’t, when she simply stared at him with what became a charming, incredulous expression on her blushing face, he relaxed and grew even hotter for her.
“Now?” she demanded. “We’re in the middle of an argument. You can’t be serious!”
Relieved that she hadn’t said no, his hands twisted in her hair. He pulled her head back and her body flush against his own so that she could feel his erection. She gasped and cast a frantic look toward Bessie’s window.
“Feel what you do to me,” he whispered, right before he kissed her long and passionately. “Believe me—I’m very serious.”
“But we were arguing about getting married. You can’t just switch gears—”
“Who’s switching? Obviously, everything we do together turns me on, which proves how much fun marrying you would be.”
“Bessie’s probably watching,” she murmured, struggling to free herself.
“So? If we’re going to be talked about, Miss Gray, we might as well give the old biddies an X-rated kiss or two to speculate about, don’t you think?”
When he laughed, her lips quirked as she attempted to suppress her own smile. “Just because I can’t stay mad at you doesn’t mean I intend to marry you.”
“I can’t stay mad at you either, which I take as a good sign for two people considering marriage,” he countered.
She smiled a little.
“Hey, do you have a picture of Noah?” Cole asked, feeling vulnerable at his sudden need to see a snapshot.
She nodded slowly. Pulling her phone out of her pocket, she scrolled to her pictures. “Here,” she said, placing the device in his palm. “I can email any you like.”
Noah appeared to be a normal, happy, rambunctious little boy in every picture. His tumbled hair was coal-black. The kid’s lively green eyes grabbed Cole’s soul and refused to let it go. He looked just like Cole had at the same age.
He had a son who was everything a man could want in a child.
In one shot, Noah raced exuberantly toward a swing set with two other boys about his same size. The untied shoelaces of his sneakers flying, he was clearly ahead.
Competitive, Cole thought, remembering his days as a star quarterback in high school.
“Does he know how to tie his shoes?” he asked.
“Yes. But not all that well because too many of his shoes have had other types of fasteners.”
“Then we’ll have to work on that,” Cole said.
In another shot, Noah was on the yellow roof of a red playhouse with a smiling blonde girl who was missing a front tooth. His goofy grin and wide-eyed look of adoration tugged at Cole’s heart.
“Somebody’s got a crush,” he whispered.
“Her name’s Missy. And you’re right. I couldn’t believe it when he told me he brushed a spider off of her. He hates spiders with such a passion I knew she was special.”
In another, Noah hung upside down from a tree limb like an impishly grinning bat while an admiring Missy smiled up at him.
“Aren’t you afraid he’ll break something?” Cole asked.
“Oh, yes. He already has.”
She took the phone from him and flipped through the pictures until she found the one she was looking for. Then she handed it back to him.
The picture was of Noah lying on a hospital bed. There were dark circles under his worried green eyes as he studied his suspended arm in its white cast.
“What happened?”
“He broke his arm at school while racing a kid down a hill on the