Storybook Dad (Harlequin American Romance) (8 page)

Two minutes later, he was mentally patting himself on the back
as he watched her climb the wall with the help of an electronic belay, the
harness emphasizing her ass in a way that made him wish he was climbing right
behind her, his body melding against hers as they moved from hold to hold.

Unfortunately, he wasn’t in Emily’s league, as evidenced by his
repeated slips off the harder, more complex wall. But it didn’t matter. He was
having a blast nonetheless.

Here, the stress of day-to-day life was noticeably absent.

Here, he could laugh without guilt and live, rather than
remember.

So he threw himself into the process of climbing, discovering
what techniques worked for him. But even when he miscalculated, even when he
out-and-out failed, it was still fun. Energizing, even.

Eventually, though, his arms and legs began to protest the
workout, forcing him to unhook himself from the rope. “Emily? This was awesome!
I don’t know why I waited so long to try this kind of stuff. It’s…
motivating
.”

She came down from yet another successful climb on the expert
wall, and met him in the center of the room, her hand reaching for the straps of
her harness, only to be shooed away by his.

“Please. Allow me.” Snaking his arms around her midsection,
Mark slowly unhooked them, the feel of her lower back beneath his fingertips
making his shorts tighten in response. Carefully he set her harness on the
floor, then pulled her close once again, the ache to kiss her stronger than ever
before. But this time, instead of kissing her mouth, he drew his lips across her
eyes, her cheeks, her chin, eventually sinking still lower, to the base of her
neck.

When she laced her fingers in his hair, he moaned, her taste,
her touch like some sort of magnetic pull he was powerless to fight. Seconds
turned to minutes as his lips left her neck and traveled back up to her mouth,
the warmth and yearning he found there making him moan again.

“Mark,” she whispered against his mouth. “It’s almost one in
the morning.”

“And your point?” he countered as his tongue slipped past her
protests.

Bracing her hands against his chest, she stepped back. “Most
people are heading to bed by now.”

“Most people aren’t standing in a room alone with
you,
Emily Todd.” Her laugh caught him by surprise.
“You think I’m kidding?”

When she didn’t respond, he continued. “I can’t tell you the
last time I laughed as much as I have tonight. Or the last time I didn’t want to
escape into bed just to get the day over with. But tonight, with you, it’s been
different. Which means I now have a much better understanding of how much it
stinks for Seth when I make him clean up his toys before he’s ready to stop
playing.”

* * *

S
HE
MET
HIM
in the parking lot in the same outfit she’d worn when they arrived, the hint of
appreciation on Mark’s face worth the time it had taken to stop in her office
and change again. “Everything’s locked up, so we’re good to go,” she
announced.

At the feel of his hand on hers, Emily looked up and smiled.
“This was fun, Mark. It really was.”

“Uh-oh.”

She drew back. “Excuse me?”

“I said ‘uh-oh.’”

“I got that. But why?”

“I was bracing myself for the big black moment.”

She wiggled her hands free of his and rested them on her hips.
“What are you talking about?”

“The black moment. You know, like that instant when you reach
into your wallet to pay the toll and realize you’re flat broke. Or when you’ve
been craving some peace and quiet, only to get home and find that your water
valve broke and your basement is flooded. Or better yet, that moment when you’re
standing at the baggage claim in your oldest pair of ripped blue jeans and you
realize your suitcase is lost, and the meeting with your boss’s boss regarding
your long-awaited promotion is less than an hour away.”

“Ooh-kay. So what black moment are you bracing for right
now?”

He lifted his hand to her shoulder and then circled it around
her neck, drawing her to him with a gentle force that nearly took her breath
away. Slowly, deliberately, he brought his lips down on hers for what had to be
the sweetest, most passionate kiss she’d ever had—the kind she wasn’t likely to
forget in this lifetime or the next. When he was done, he hooked his index
finger beneath her chin and lifted her face just enough to leave a long,
lingering kiss at her hairline, making her shiver in response.

“I’m bracing myself for the moment you say goodbye.”

Chapter Eight

Emily tried to make her laugh sound carefree, but it
was obvious even to her that she’d failed miserably. She was falling for this
man. To pretend otherwise required a kind of theatrical prowess she simply
didn’t possess.

“I don’t want this to be a black moment,” she finally
whispered.

“Then say you’ll follow me back to my house and come inside for
a little while. Say you’re not ready for our time together to end yet,
either.”

Startled, she glanced at the ground momentarily while she
searched for something to say. All she came up with, though, was an echo of his
words. “Your house?”

The lone light in the parking lot caught the concern on his
face as he rushed to offer an explanation she wasn’t entirely sure her body
wanted to hear. “Oh. No. Not like that. It’s just that I’ve really enjoyed
hanging with you tonight, and I’m not too eager for reality to take over, you
know?”

Problem was, she did know. She, too, found herself in a world
of married friends who were suddenly much harder to nail down for a movie or a
coffee or even a walk in the park. She wasn’t thrilled with the change, but she
was used to it. Mark, however, probably wasn’t. After all, his status as a
single father was still fairly new.

“I could start a fire in the pit outside and we could sit on
the patio and talk. Or if you’d rather, we could see if there are any good
movies on cable. Whatever you want.”

It took everything she could muster not to ask if he could kiss
her again the way he had outside Kate’s house, or even the way he had just now,
on her forehead. Never in her history of kissing had such encounters zipped
along virtually every nerve fiber in her body, waking up senses that had
obviously been in a deep slumber for most, if not all, of her life.

Instead, she nodded, the answering smile on Mark’s face one she
wished she could bottle.

Reaching into her purse, she felt around for her keys and then
headed to the driver’s side of her car, the prospect of spending a few more
hours with Mark intriguing. Once she was settled in her vehicle and he in his,
he gave her the high sign from his window and motioned for her to follow him to
the home he shared with his son.

When they arrived, she slid the Jeep into Park and looked to
her right, absorbing the small white bungalow situated peacefully between two
large oak trees. The front porch, while not terribly deep, welcomed with its
whimsical summer flag and cozy wicker swing suspended on thick chains. The
pathway that led to the steps boasted an assortment of black-eyed Susans, bee
balms and even a few holdout blue flags.

His tap against her window prompted her to roll it down. “I see
you garden?”

“Sally gardened. I’m just doing my best to keep everything—”
his voice dipped ever so slightly “—
alive
. You know,
so things look the same for Seth. He needs that sense of continuity and
stability right now.” Gesturing toward the walkway, Mark met her gaze through
the open window. “Well? Shall we?”

“Um, sure.” Squaring her shoulders, she stepped from the car
and allowed him to place a guiding hand at her back.

Slowly, they made their way up the sidewalk and onto the porch,
the answering silence of the crickets sending an unexpected shiver down her
spine.

“Are you cold?” he asked, draping an arm over her
shoulders.

“I think the more accurate word would be
nervous
.” The second the comment was out of her mouth, she regretted
it.

“Hey.” He turned to face her, the concern in his eyes
impossible to miss. “There’s no need to be nervous. This is just another setting
for an evening that’s been mighty special so far. That’s it, okay?”

Two seconds later, as she stood in his front hallway, she knew
Mark was right. The barbecue had given them a chance to size each other up. The
time spent climbing had been about having fun and not worrying about Kate’s
prying eyes. And being here in Mark’s house was just another opportunity to
enjoy each other’s company before their day-to-day lives took over.

Glancing about, she couldn’t help but notice the homey touches
that magnified the welcoming feel of the porch. Knickknacks and memorabilia
dotted the shelves of a corner hutch off to her left, while a smattering of
pictures lined the wall on her right, creating a sense of warmth and
familiarity.

Emily approached the first picture, the image of a newborn Seth
drawing her. “His hair back then was the same color as yours.”

Mark’s breath was warm on her neck as he, too, moved in closer.
“It was. But it didn’t stay that way for long. When he wasn’t much more than
five or six months old, the hair on the sides of his head started to disappear.
Funny thing is, we never saw any clumps in his crib or on the floor. It just
kind of disintegrated, replaced with the blond hair he has now.”

“Your wife was blonde, I take it,” Emily mused before stepping
to the right to take in the next picture, of a slightly older Seth with a smile
so big it transformed his penetrating blue eyes into a virtual carbon copy of
Mark’s. “Wow. He was every bit as adorable here as he is now.”

And just like that, the same sparkle she saw inside the frame
ignited in the eyes of the man who shadowed her footsteps. “He
is
a cutie, isn’t he?”

“The cutest,” she echoed. “But even more than that, he’s sweet
and kind and quite the little conversationalist. I’ve found myself actually
missing him since the other night at Sam’s.”

Mark drew back. “You mean that was real the other night?”

“
Real?
” she parroted.

“Yeah. I mean, I kind of assumed you were just being nice and,
you know, humoring him because he’s four and still hurting over his mom.”

She pulled her focus from the photograph and fixed it on the
larger, dark-haired man beside her. “
You
don’t humor
him, do you?”

“No. But he’s mine. It’s only natural for me to think he’s
brilliant and funny and the best kid in the world.”

Sinking against the wall, Emily did her best to explain the
lift the little boy had given her by simply being himself. “Well, he’s
not
mine. And as you know, I’d never laid eyes on him
before that night. But it took all of about five minutes—which, for the record,
happened sans you—for me to find him engaging, thoughtful and very sweet. It’s
like—” she looked past Mark as she searched for the right words among an
unexpected minefield of emotion “—being around him erased reality for a little
while and actually enabled me to step back into the part of the picture I
didn’t
draw when I was ten, yet always knew was
there.”

“Wait.” Mark held up his hand. “You mean the pictures in your
office? I thought you drew them all. They certainly looked like they’d been
drawn by the same—”

“There was one more. One you didn’t see because I opted not to
frame it, much to Kate’s chagrin, I might add. But I’m talking about one I
thought
about drawing but didn’t.” Suddenly aware of
how idiotic she must sound, Emily straightened and made her way to the next
photo, farther down the hallway. It was of Seth at about two, his face not much
different than it was now. “While I can’t be sure how I would have drawn a
little boy at that time, my dream son would have been everything I saw in Seth
the other night. The same joy, the same curiosity, the same beautiful heart. And
he would have been a spectacular big brother to the little girl I would have
drawn in his arms.”

“You were quite the little artist back then, weren’t you?”

“No, I was quite the
dreamer
.”

“So you want kids? One boy, one girl?” Mark reached around her
to straighten the frame, which had slipped off center by a fraction.

“I did. But I’m older now. Wiser, too.” Feeling her mood begin
to slip, she cast about for something to get things back on track. “Seth is just
one of those kids who stick in your head and your heart long after they’ve run
off, you know?”

At the feel of Mark’s breath on her neck again, she turned to
find his mouth settling on hers with an urgency that both stunned and excited
her. Rising on tiptoe, she slipped her arms around his back and reveled in the
feel of his strong, healthy body.

She gasped ever so slightly when he ran his fingers through her
hair, pulling her head back so his lips could explore her chin, her jaw, the
base of her throat. Her body responded with an undeniable warmth that left her
heart pounding mere seconds before his hands started untying her halter top.

His gaze followed the straps as they cascaded down the front of
her body to reveal even more of her breasts than her attire had already
provided. Her breath hitched when his tongue slid over his lip in response.

“Emily?” he asked hungrily, before meeting her eyes and seeking
permission to continue.

With a gentle yet deliberate finger, Mark lowered the fabric
enough to reveal the lacy, strapless bra she’d bought during an extra girlie
moment, his moan of desire instantly wiping away any regret she’d had over the
price tag.

Slowly, deliberately, he moved his lips over the tops of her
breasts, while his hands slipped behind her back and unfastened her bra. As the
last hook was freed, the flimsy material fell away revealing the effects of his
nearness. She cried out as his urgent mouth settled on her hardened nipples,
teasing, caressing....

Suddenly he pulled back, desire blazing in his eyes. “Emily, I
want you.”

She answered by slipping her halter top the rest of the way
off, her efforts rewarded by the appreciation in his eyes and the unmistakable
bulge in his pants. Reaching around her waist, he undid the lone button on her
waistband and watched her skirt fall into a puddle at her feet, revealing her
white lacy thong.

“Oh my God, you are sexy as hell, Emily,” he murmured against
her ear. Grasping her hand, he led her through a small but tasteful family room
and into a second, darker hallway beyond.

When they stepped inside his bedroom, he pulled her close, his
fingers slipping around her waist, only to travel to her ass and tug her against
his still-clad body, evoking a moan of her own.

He wanted
her
.

Emily.

MS and all…

* * *

R
ELEASING
HIS
HOLD
on her, Mark stepped back long enough to take
stock of the woman standing in the middle of his bedroom, his erection straining
against the fabric of his shorts in response. Never in his wildest fantasies had
he ever come across a female quite like Emily Todd.

Her eyes, her hair, her face spoke to his protective side, the
innocence he found in her gripping his heart and threatening to never let it go.
And her breasts spoke to him in a different way—tantalizing and teasing him with
rock-hard nipples that confirmed his desire was reciprocated.

With determination befitting a Jedi warrior, he forced his eyes
from her breasts and allowed them to travel south, down her flat and sexy
abdomen to the alluring scrap of fabric that separated him from a heat he craved
as he’d never craved before. He sank to his knees and guided her panties down
her legs with his mouth, letting the garment drop to her ankles so he could
taste her sweetness.

Her answering moan of pleasure was followed by the feel of her
fingers as they buried themselves in his hair. He wanted this woman. Wanted her
now.

Rising to his feet, he steered her hands to the waistband of
his shorts, watching her face as she released his erection with a tug. When she
was done, he pulled her to him, the heat of their skin mingling as he laid her
on the bed and lowered himself to her, their bodies joining effortlessly.

She felt so good and so right as he moved inside her—slowly and
gently at first, then with gathering strength and desire. With thrust after
thrust he claimed her, the intensity of his efforts making her cry out for
more—a request he was all too happy to oblige, until neither one of them could
resist any longer, their release coming so strong and so decisively it left his
body craving an encore before the spinning in his head had even stopped.