Reilly's Return (14 page)

“Yeah. I hope she gets parents who really love her a lot,” Candi said wistfully.

“I’m sure she will, honey.”

Reilly watched the two of them, his shoulder braced against the doorway, his arms folded across his bare chest. He had awakened with a jolt, realizing that Jayne was gone from the bed. His first thought had been that she’d gone off to brood about Mac. He was sure she’d been thinking about MacGregor in the aftermath of their lovemaking. He had been too. There was no getting
around it—Mac had been a big part of both their lives. But Mac was gone now and Reilly had no intention of taking a backseat to his buddy’s ghost.

After pulling on his sweatpants, he had set out to find Jayne and take her back where she belonged—in his arms. It hadn’t been an hour since the second time they’d made love, and already his body was aching with hunger for hers. His search had gotten him as far as the doorway.

The scene below sent a soft warmth through him and lodged an unfamiliar knot in his throat. Jayne was curled on the sofa, her arm around her young charge. She spoke to Candi in a voice that was motherly and compassionate. She was quite a woman, his Jaynie. He loved her so much, he thought his heart would burst.

He wondered what she would think if he told her that. It had kind of taken him by surprise. He’d felt something for her ever since the first time they’d met, and he had given it a dozen different names, most of them having something to do with sex. None of the labels had ever quite fit. There had always been some aspect of the feeling that had eluded him when he tried to pin it down in his typically practical manner. Maybe it had
been the seed of this love that was now growing within him.

Well, no matter the root of it, he was in love with her now. The question was what to do about it. His own impulsive response was to bind her to him permanently as soon as possible, but he had an idea Jayne would shy away. For all her flakiness, she tended to be cautious with her heart—at least where he was concerned.

He was sure she was in love with him. There had been no mistaking the look in her eyes when he had been poised above her in bed. But she was wary too. Sweeping her off her feet and hustling her to Vegas for a quick ceremony probably wasn’t the answer.

They needed some time together. Time for Jayne to grow to trust him. Time for Jayne to see he wasn’t a threat, which was essentially what he had been when she’d been married to Mac. Time to see she wasn’t going to be just another in a long line of romantic interests. And when she’d had that time, then he’d sweep her off her feet.

He figured it’d take a couple of weeks, a month at the outside.

Pushing himself away from the door, he cleared his throat discreetly so as not to barge in on “woman talk.” Both Jayne and Candi looked up
at him. Candi wore a smug, knowing smirk. Jayne’s cheeks bloomed rosy and her eyes glowed. She looked as if she was feeling a little shy, which surprised him. She sure as hell hadn’t been shy with him in bed. The look made him want to scoop her up in his arms and carry her straight back to her room. He refrained out of deference to Candi, and bent to pick up his T-shirt from the arm of the couch instead.

He gave the girl a skeptical look, scratching his chin. “Oh, yeah, I remember you now,” he said with a sudden grin. He pulled the black T-shirt over his head and tugged it down. “I didn’t recognize you without the spikes.”

Candi tossed a pillow at him. “Smart ass.”

Reilly turned to Jayne with mock affront. “You gonna let her talk to me that way?”

Jayne snickered. “I always encourage her to tell the truth.”

“Women!” he said with a snort. “You can’t live with ’em, and you’ll never have clean underwear without ’em.”

“Why would you care?” Candi asked sarcastically. “It said in
StarBeat
you don’t wear any.”

“Candi!” Jayne wailed. “For crying out loud!”

Reilly just laughed. “Don’t believe everything
you read, little sheila. You’re liable to get yourself in trouble.”

“Too late for that,” Candi quipped, heaving herself up off the sofa. She rubbed her belly and heaved a sigh. “If you two will excuse me, I’m going to go raid the refrigerator. I haven’t cheated on my diet yet today.”

“How about I make us all a pot of tea?” Jayne offered.

Reilly and Candi groaned in unison. Jayne’s tea, made from the herbs she grew on the roof of the dairy parlor, was certifiably horrible. Reilly had sampled it once and likened it to the poison the old aborigines used on their hunting spears.

“Hot chocolate?” Candi asked him.

“Heavy on the chocolate with lots of marshmallows.”

“I’ll get right on it.”

Jayne scowled at both of them, but they ignored her. Candi saluted smartly, turned, and left the room. Her footsteps sounded on the stairs.

“You snore,” Jayne said, making her accusation sound like a sin worse than any other.

Reilly’s brows lifted in amusement. “Do I?”

“Candi heard you. Snoring. In
my
bedroom!” She huffed an outraged breath, flapping her arms at her sides.

“If you’re worried about givin’ her ideas, I think she already knows how it’s done, luv.”

“That isn’t the point.”

Chuckling, Reilly circled behind Jayne and slid his arms around her, his big hands splaying across her tummy. He bent his head and nibbled at the satin-soft skin beneath her right ear. “Why the blush, Jaynie? I don’t recall you blushing when you were kissing my—”

“That was different,” Jayne said defensively. “I believe in complete honesty in the physical expression of feelings. The Buddhists teach that sexual honesty between people who care for each other is a key to a plane of higher spiritual enlightenment.”

“For once I think I agree with you,” he mumbled, nuzzling her cheek. “I also believe two mature adults involved in a caring relationship don’t have anything to be ashamed of.”

He snuggled her closer, his hands rubbing lazily across the smooth, slightly convex surface of her belly. “Um—this is a bit after the fact, I know, but are we gonna end up like Candi?”

Everything inside Jayne went still at the thought of Reilly’s baby growing within her. It stunned her how badly she wanted that. Mac hadn’t been able to give her children, and she had
accepted that fate. But to have Reilly’s baby … A fierce longing pierced her heart.

She loved Reilly in the most fundamental way a woman could love a man. The thought frightened her more than a little. She knew her own emotions were strong and true. She didn’t fall in and out of love. But what about Reilly—the sexiest man in the universe, the most eligible bachelor in Hollywood, the man whose life energy burned as hot and bright as a comet and who left a trail of broken hearts glowing in his wake?

“Jaynie?”

His voice startled her from her musings. “No. The timing is all wrong.”

“Famous last words,” he said with a wry chuckle. Deftly, he turned her in his arms and dropped a kiss on the tip of her little nose. “Not that I’m against the idea, mind you. I kinda like the thought of fillin’ this big barn up with little Reillys.”

Jayne blushed, more with pleasure at the thought and with his admission than with embarrassment. “Is that a fact?”

“Mmm … that would keep you out of mischief—chasing the little nippers around, changing nappies all day. Think of all the innocent movies
that would be saved from that razor tongue of yours.”

She gave him a narrow-eyed look. “Berg’s Drugstore is on the corner of Fourth and Kilmer.”

Reilly’s face dropped into a scowl as Jayne backed out of his arms and moved toward the hall. He planted his suddenly empty hands on his hips. “You mean you want me to—”

“That’s right, Big Daddy,” Jayne said with a feline smile.

Reilly sputtered, his face turning red. “I can’t go into a corner drugstore and buy—Bloody hell, it’d be in every paper from here to Sydney!”

“Wear your disguise, Romeo,” Jayne suggested, giggling at his obvious and very uncharacteristic embarrassment. “I can’t believe you haven’t bought more than your fair share of prophylactics over the years, Reilly. What do you usually do—buy them mail order by the gross?”

He caught the faint but distinct ring of jealousy in her voice. While it pleased him, he wasn’t going to have it be an issue between them. In three strides he cut off her escape route. She tried to dodge away from him, but he caught her with embarrassing ease and pulled her close.

“Let’s get this right straightaway, luv. I’ve
known my share of ladies, I don’t deny it, but I don’t carve notches in my bedposts.”

Jayne frowned. “They’re probably brass.”

“You don’t believe all those gossip rag rumors about me, do you?”

“If I believed only half of them, I’d know better than to get involved with you.”

He ignored her remark. His attention was focused on the delectable curve of her throat as she arched her head back to look at him. He traced the line of it with his thumb.

“You’re the only woman I’ve had on my mind or anywhere else for a long time, Jaynie,” he murmured. “You’ve got my word on that.”

And Pat Reilly was nothing if not a man of his word, Jayne thought, rising up on tiptoes to meet his kiss.

Maybe there was a chance that their romance would work out after all. Maybe he was going to prove to be the exception to the rule of fickle actors. The way he made her feel when he kissed her left Jayne thinking she had no other choice but to find out. Reilly may have unsettled her and overwhelmed her and knocked her off her cosmic center of oneness with the universe, but he was one heck of a kisser, and she loved him like she never thought she’d love another man again.

“Stand very still,” Bryan instructed.

“What are you going to do?” Alaina asked. Motionless, she wore a look of wary concentration and a Ralph Lauren ensemble. On her head was perched a shiny black top hat. They were standing in the small yard next to the converted dairy parlor, a benevolent sun shining down on them, cutting the chill of the breeze that came inland off the ocean. “There isn’t going to be a live animal on my head when you take this thing off, is there?”

Bryan made no answer but looped his arms around her neck and slowly drew them back, flipping the hat off with a flourish. Alaina remained still, but her cool blue eyes narrowed at the frown on Bryan’s face.

“What? Bryan, I love you like a brother, but if there’s an animal on my head, I’ll pound you.”

He lifted down a scrawny gray kitten and petted it absently. It looked up at him and mewed.

“I don’t understand what went wrong,” he said morosely. “It was supposed to be a bouquet of silk flowers.”

While he dug a scrap of paper out of his shirt pocket and jotted himself a note, Alaina brushed
frantically at her fifty-dollar hairstyle and swore a blue streak.

“You know I want to help,” she said, shaking a finger at him. “You’ve always been there when I needed you, and I want to be here for you. But you promised you wouldn’t put animals on me!”

Bryan pushed his glasses up on his nose and looked hurt. “I didn’t mean to put an animal on your head. I don’t understand what’s going wrong. I used to be able to do that trick with my eyes closed. I’ve completely lost my magic!” he said, throwing his hands up in the air, apparently forgetting he held a cat in one of them.

Alaina snatched the kitten away from imminent danger and set it down on the ground where it wasted no time scampering away. She took Bryan’s big hand in hers and kissed his knuckles. “It hasn’t been that long since you lost Serena, Bryan. Give yourself some time. What you need is a distraction.” She stood back and turned to the side. “What do you think? Do you think I look fat? I’m not big enough for maternity clothes yet, but I think I look fat.”

A lopsided smile tugged at Bryan’s mouth. “I think you look fabulous. You’re glowing.”

“I’d better be glowing,” she said dryly. “Forty-five bucks for face cream. If I’m not glowing, I’m
going back to Saks and cram that bubblehead of a clerk into the jar.”

“And they say mothers-to-be are serene,” Jayne commented as she rounded the corner of the milk parlor.

“I love being pregnant,” Alaina insisted. “It’s the sensory deprivation that’s getting on my nerves. I haven’t had a cigarette in twelve weeks, three days, and seventeen hours.”

Jayne gave her friend a consolatory pat on the shoulder and changed the subject. “Have either of you seen Reilly?”

“I saw him heading down to the llama barn,” Bryan said. He gave Jayne a long look. “Are you trying to find him or avoid him?”

“Find him.” She looked from friend to friend, hoping to find some kind of reassurance that giving her heart to Reilly was the right thing to do. “What do you think?”

Bryan didn’t need to answer aloud. Jayne knew immediately he had no answers for her. He had all he could do to get himself from one day to the next. His ability to sense the feelings of others had deserted him as he focused on his own shattered emotions. He simply shrugged and looked apologetic.

“He seems like a good guy,” he said. “What does your bracelet tell you?”

“Nothing.” She lifted her arm and tapped a finger against the key as if she thought she could somehow jar it into working. She turned a worried look toward Bryan. “Do you think it’s a bad omen?”