“You weren’t thinking anything. Except yes, yes, yes!” At her look of indignation, he quit teasing and held up his hand. “And neither was I. I’m sorry. I take full responsibility. I’m healthy, and I assume you are. But I promise, it won’t happen again.”
“Again?” she asked, surprised he didn’t understand her concern. Surprised he wasn’t as alarmed as she. “Won’t happen again! What good will that do us, or the baby we might have conceived?”
“Baby!” His eyes narrowed in speculation. “What are the chances of that?”
Gracie knew the statistics all too well. “About sixty-percent if my calculations are correct.”
He trailed his fingers through her hair, soothing her. “Aren’t you using any kind of birth control?”
She pulled away from him to jump and pace. She thought better when she paced. When he wasn’t touching her. Except for now when she wore nothing, and he watched her too closely and with an elevated level of interest. “Birth control pills. Which I left in Hartford, because I came up here unexpectedly, having just broken up with my boyfriend and not expecting to have sex.”
“Always be prepared, babe.” His cell phone trilled a welcome interruption.
“You should get that.” Her hand shook as she passed the phone to him. “There’s so much going on now.”
He looked at the display. “It’s my uncle.”
A flash of self-consciousness seized her by the throat even though Arthur had no way of knowing that his nephew was naked in her bed. She pulled on the oldest, most shapeless, sexless, pathetic robe she owned.
“No, I wasn’t asleep,” Dylan said. “We were just about to get up.”
Why did he have to say that? She dropped her head in her hands. They were adults. This wasn’t so bad. Gran knew they were sleeping together. And Clay suspected. Why did it matter if someone in Dylan’s family knew it, too? The information shouldn’t carry any particular significance just because that someone was a stiffly dignified US Senator.
Dylan covered the receiver and raised his eyebrows. “Breakfast with my uncle?”
“I’ll have to call the hospital first.” She bashed down the tentacles of embarrassment waiting to rise up and prevent her from ever facing Arthur again. “Depends on David.”
“I’ll meet you at the diner in an hour,” he said into the phone. “Gracie may or may not be with me.”
She grabbed her own phone and called Clay, Dylan headed for the bathroom. Finally, Clay came on the line and reported on David’s great improvement.
“Are you ready for a break?” she asked.
“I’m going to grab a nap and a shower before my morning rounds. Tanya’s coming back, and she’ll stay with David till you get here.”
“Will she mind if I go to breakfast first? I’ll be there in a couple of hours.”
“That should be fine. Are you going to breakfast with Dylan?”
“And his uncle.”
“Something odd happened last night,” he said. “I’m not sure how it’s connected or even if it is, but...”
“What?”
“Henry Stillberg’s body was brought in this morning. DOA. His car had been run off the road.”
“That is odd.” A battalion of goose bumps marched down her arms. “I mean, tragic, of course, but odd, too. I just talked to him last night.”
“It seems like some of this stuff that’s happening should fit together, doesn’t it? The fire at the cabin… my mother… now Henry. I can’t help feeling it all ties into the Bradfords or Old Maine Furniture.”
“I think so, too. Thanks for the info. See you later.”
Gracie turned to find Dylan standing in the bathroom doorway, wearing a towel around his neck and nothing else. “More bad news? Is it David?”
“No.” She told him about Henry.
He rested his hands on the ends of his towel, sending muscles bulging everywhere. “Did Clay say it was an accident?”
“No.” Pulling her gaze from his well-defined pecs and abs and growing erection, she bit her lip. Focus. “Do you think it was?”
“No. I think Henry was a slimy bastard who tried to pull that blackmail scam on the wrong person.”
He toweled off and rummaged through his suitcase for clean clothes. His muscles rippled and stretched in interesting ways. The va-va-voom impact his nakedness had on her was amazing. She’d never known a man so beautiful and comfortable in his own skin.
“Like who?” She tried to continue the conversation, but his body held her interest like a four-alarm fire to a pyromaniac. She traced her fingers down his bare rib cage. “Whoever killed Clay’s mother?”
“Maybe.” He tossed his jeans aside, turned toward her, and circled her waist with his hands.
“But that was a long time ago.” She planted kisses at the corner of his mouth, first one side and then the other. “Why wait to try something like that until now?”
“Who says he waited?”
He slipped his hand inside her robe to palm her breast and toy with an eager nipple. Her breath hitched as desire slammed through her in a white-hot spiral.
“He might have been blackmailing someone all along,” Dylan said. “With the discovery of Lana’s body, he raised the stakes.”
“And now he’s dead. We may never know.” Gracie surrendered her concentration to his actions rather than his words.
Lifting her mouth to his, she abandoned the conversation. Dylan filled her mouth with his tongue. She rubbed against him, creating an erotic friction that begged for more. Pressing her hips to his, Gracie tightened her grip on his shoulders and wrapped a leg around his thigh. Cupping her bottom in his hands, he lifted her up and stepped toward the bed.
“We can do this.” Leaning her neck to the side as he kissed her shoulder, she caught sight of the clock. “If we hurry.”
“Why hurry?” Dylan lowered her to the mattress. “Uncle Arthur will wait.”
Gracie stiffened in his arms. “Uncle Arthur! Oh, my God, your Uncle Arthur.” She pushed him away and pulled the edges of her robe together. “What are you doing? Let me up. I’m not keeping your Uncle Arthur waiting so we can have a quickie. No telling what he already thinks of me.”
“Hey, you started this.” Dylan stared down at his erect soldier and groaned. “This isn’t just about the sex and you know it.”
“I know I started it, and I don’t know what it’s about any more. I’m sorry, but we can’t finish it now. We can’t even finish talking about it now.” She retreated to the bathroom. Her hands trembled as she squeezed toothpaste onto her toothbrush. “I need to get dressed, or it’ll be noon before I get to the hospital.
“Gracie...”
“Yes?” She looked at his reflection beside hers in the mirror. Toothpaste foam rimmed her mouth, making her resemble a mad dog.
“Eventually we’ll get back to the subject we were talking about before Uncle Arthur called, you know.”
She bent at the waist to rinse and spit, and not, as it may have seemed, because she was unable to meet his eyes any longer. “Unprotected sex? The baby? That subject?”
“Right. The sixty-percent possibility of a baby.” His breath tickled her neck as he stepped closer to her, pressing against her back. Her knees weakened as he reached a hand around to rub her tummy, as if a baby nestled there already, a fait accompli instead of a scientific odd’s-on favorite.
Even favorites didn’t always pay off, though, and she was pretty sure this one wouldn’t. She crossed her fingers.
“If the possibility becomes a reality, you’ll let me know.”
She swallowed hard, reluctant to think beyond this moment to a terrifying, miraculous day when she might give birth to his child. “Why? What would you want to do about it?”
“Consider our options,” he said with a crooked version of that heart-stopping grin.
Chapter Twenty-eight
Gracie had left her car at the church the night before. Planning to retrieve it after breakfast, she rode into town with Dylan. For once, she had little to say and that gave him plenty of time to think.