The Complete Red-Hot Collection. Kelly Hunter
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and pretty soon it was going on for one a.m. and her head was resting on his chest and her eyes were closed and her breathing was regular and deep.
Jared knew what bone-deep tiredness felt like and he had a sneaking suspicion that Rowan was no stranger to it either. He turned off the big screen and the lights and let the stars shine down on them. He dragged pillows towards them, pulled a cover over, tucked her into his side until they fitted together like pieces of a puzzle, and followed her into oblivion.
And the little bird inside his chest—it was singing.
Rowan woke before dawn—it was just her way. She’d been doing it for too many years to adjust easily to waking at a later time.
This time, however, she woke to a sea of pillows and blankets, the sky overhead, and a warm weight at her side was—Jared West. And he was a possessive bastard, even in his sleep, if the hand splayed over her heart was any indication. He hadn’t pressured her into anything last night. In fact he’d given her what she’d needed. A place to unwind from the pressures of a hellish week, permission to lie back and breathe.
She might have wanted soul-stealing sexual relations, but he’d given her exactly what she’d needed.
She rolled onto her stomach and moments later he followed, awake and tracing gentle fingers down her spine.
‘Did you sleep well?’ he murmured.
‘Mmm.’
‘Want to not sleep any more?’
‘Mmm.’
How was that even a question, given that his lips were following his fingers down her spine, soft and dragging and wholly reverent? A breaking dawn and the promise of lovemaking. She arched back against him, helpless in her longing for him.
‘Want you to be in me.’
He savoured her—there was no other word for it—and she surrendered to the blinding pleasure and the warmth.
He curled his hands around her thighs once he’d finished exploring every dip of her back. He lifted her to his mouth and for a while she thought he might be a sex god. And then he released her, and then blanketed her again as he slid into her, slow and easy, and then she could have sworn he was a sex god.
He rode her slowly, teased and tormented, built a stairway to the sky for her. She climbed every step of it. And in the light of a new day they climaxed together.
This wasn’t sex as she knew it.
This was different.
‘Children,’ Rowan said to Jared later that afternoon, over a meal of barbecued ocean perch and mixed salad, served on plastic plates on the deck of Jared’s yacht. ‘What’s your view on them?’
‘I like them,’ he told her. ‘Got nothing against them. Not sure I want any.’
‘You’re young yet. This is only to be expected. Do you envision them anywhere in your future?
‘What if I get it wrong?’ He gestured with his fork, barefoot and expansive, looking ever more carefree. ‘If I fall down on the parenting job the child wears it. Parenthood requires careful consideration.’
Indeed it did.
‘What about you?’ he asked. ‘Do you want children?’
‘My parents are really bad role models. My grandfather, by his own admission, was neglectful of my mother, and my mother continued the tradition. I figure that if I remain childless the cycle will stop.’
‘And I figure that for bull. Do you want children? If you had a loving family to raise them in … a village full of caring people to help you … would you want them then?’
Her hesitation told him many things.
‘I’d still have to make a lot of lifestyle changes,’ she murmured. ‘And I’m getting a little old for child-bearing.’
A valid point—but not insurmountable, by his reckoning.
‘And I’ve never really met a man I’ve felt a compelling urge to have children with,’ she added quietly. ‘I don’t know what kind of parent I’d make. What about my job? You know the hours I keep. It took me five days and two IOUs to get this weekend off.’
Jared frowned.
‘I gave up on the idea of motherhood when I got the directorship,’ she told him. ‘I know you don’t think that the age gap between us matters, but maybe my ambivalence when it comes to having children will matter to you.’
‘You’re pushing me away?’
‘No.’ She looked troubled for the first time that weekend. ‘I’m letting you in. Telling you about the hopes and dreams I still harbour, as well as the ones I’ve let go of.’
Jared digested that, as she’d meant him to all along, and then he looked out over the ocean and realised that fatherhood held no appeal for him if the woman by his side didn’t want to be a mother. It was one of the more easy decisions he’d made in quite some time.
‘How do you feel about being an aunt?’
‘I would make a really good aunt,’ she told him solemnly. ‘Alas, I have no siblings.’
‘I have three. And one very pregnant sister-in-law. I figure that if I get in good with her she might let me borrow the kid from time to time. You could tag along.’
Her eyes warmed. ‘You’re kind of perfect. Don’t let anyone ever tell you any different.’
They made it to Lena’s for drinks that afternoon, but only just.
And it wasn’t because of sailing boats and contrary winds.
Rowan left late Sunday night, and Jared let her be for three days while he tinkered with the yacht.
He wasn’t the only one feeling the tyranny of distance when it came to relationships. Trig was back at work in Canberra—a mere twelve-hour drive from the farmhouse—and although his sister was fiercely independent, there was no denying that Lena was missing her husband.
‘We could go visit them,’ she said on Wednesday afternoon over the phone. ‘Do you still have your private pilot’s licence?’
‘I haven’t flown for two years. I’ll need a review.’
‘Good thing I kept mine up to date, then.’
‘Brat. Do we still have a plane?’
‘We do.’
‘Does it go?’ Keeping the Cessna flight-ready had once been his task—back before Antonov.
‘Of course it goes. What good are toys if you can’t use them?’ Lena paused. ‘So what do you think? Want to go to Canberra? Because I think midweek visits to people we care about are important.’
‘I think you’re right.’
Rowan liked Thursdays—and never more so than when a blue-eyed devil rang her at six-thirty, while she was still at work, and asked her to dinner that night.
‘Why aren’t you at the beach house?’ she wanted to know.
‘Lena decided to implement a must-see-Trig-midweek-and-have-dinner-with-him policy. She also has a plane, so we flew down.’
‘You people …’
‘You’re not going to talk carbon footprints, are you?’
‘No, I was going to stick with a comment about obscene wealth instead, but I’ve changed my mind. It’s good to hear from you.’
‘And dinner this evening? I know it’s short notice.’
It was. Rowan eyed the number of case updates still open on her taskbar, all of which needed to be read and signed off on. Tonight.
‘What