The Texas Christmas Gift (20 page)

Derek pressed the back of his hand to Tiffany’s cheek. “She doesn’t seem to have any fever.” He looked at Eve. “What do you think?”

She gently touched Tiffany’s cheek, too. He was right. It was wet from her tears, but not in the least bit hot.

Tiffany again pushed her father away. When he stepped back, she twisted and sobbed. “Daddy!” Eve handed the little girl back to him.

He paced the length of the condo living room, his baby in his arms. Eve went down a mental checklist of things that had pacified the child before. “Do you think she could need a diaper change?”

He shook his head. “I changed her before we came over. And there’s no diaper rash or detergent allergy or anything that would be making her uncomfortable. So that’s not it.” He paused, thinking, walking back and forth. Tiffany sobbed louder. Derek looked over his daughter’s halo of dark curls. “Maybe if we offered her a bottle again. Apple juice, this time.”

Again, it was rejected after barely one sip.

Tiffany demanded Eve hold her again. Eve cradled her tenderly in her arms and walked the room, the same as Derek. The toddler fussed and squirmed and grabbed Eve’s hair in both fists and wailed in what sounded like raw fury. Which Eve could kind of understand, since all of Tiffany’s efforts to communicate with them had failed mightily. They had no more idea what was wrong now than they had when she’d arrived.

“This is really unlike her,” Derek said, reaching over to try and wrestle strands of Eve’s hair from Tiffany’s little fists.

And that was when his little girl leaned over and bit his hand as hard as she possibly could.

Derek let out a muffled grunt of pain.

Tiffany stopped crying and looked up at him in satisfaction.

And suddenly, Derek and Eve both knew. “Could she be teething?” she asked.

Derek ran his thumb along Tiffany’s gum. He pushed back her lip. There were two white teeth on the bottom, and another one coming in next to the two white teeth on top.

“No wonder,” he murmured, looking at the red, swollen gum, with a tooth that was only just beginning to tear through the tissue.

Tiffany bit down again. Derek grunted in pain. His daughter smiled.

Eve chuckled. “Well, at least we know what to do now.”

There was only one problem, as it turned out.

“Oh, no. I don’t believe it. It’s not in here,” Derek groaned. “I must have left the first-aid kit with the stuff at the house.”

And, Eve knew, it was a thirty-minute drive there and back. “There’s a drugstore on the corner,” she said as Tiffany began to cry once again, softly this time.

Derek looked torn, but there was no doubt in either adult’s mind what would be faster. “Is it okay if I leave her here with you while I go?”

“Sure.”

The minute he walked out, Tiffany began to cry again, in great choking sobs. Having seen her swollen gum, Eve couldn’t blame the child. “You know what?” she told Tiffany resolutely. “We’re not going to wait for someone to rescue us. We’re going to look for a solution ourselves.”

Eve carried the tyke into the kitchen. She opened the freezer, intending to get ice. Then smiled when she saw an even better solution. “Tiffany, sweetheart, I think I have what we both need....”

* * *

D
EREK HURRIED AS
fast as he could. It was still twenty minutes before he got back to Eve’s condo. He expected to hear Tiffany wailing up a storm. Instead, all was quiet. In fact, he observed as he opened the front door, there was only...
laughter?

He rounded the corner and found Eve lounging on her overstuffed white sofa. Her shoes were off, her hair looked sticky and her gold silk blouse was smeared with something white. Tiffany was on her lap. Her hair was sticky, too. As were her hands and her face, and her clothes.

She was also smiling.

“More,” Tiffany demanded happily, grinning from ear to ear.

“A gal after my own heart,” Eve exclaimed, offering a tiny spoonful of what looked to be the last of a small carton of premium vanilla ice cream.

Derek came closer.

And in that instant, as he took in both the woman and his little girl, he knew. He wasn’t just enamored of Eve. He didn’t just want her as a friend, or a lover, or both.

He wanted her as his wife.

* * *

“
A
SLEEP AT LAST
.” Eve and Derek stood in the corner of the master bedroom, which was illuminated only by a night-light. Tiffany was curled up on her side in the port-a-crib, her teddy in her arms, her favorite blanket spread over top of her. She looked incredibly angelic and sweet.

Eve shook her head, thinking of what the little girl had been through that evening before she and Derek had figured out what the problem was. “Poor little thing,” she whispered to Derek.

He wrapped his arm about her shoulders and pulled her in close. Bending down, his sandpapery beard brushing her temple, he pressed a kiss to her forehead before turning back to regard his daughter once again. “The combination of acetaminophen and numbing gel are working great at the moment, anyway.”

Eve turned to face Derek. Together, they eased from the room, leaving the door open.

“And when it wears off four hours from now?” She couldn’t help but worry about the little girl, the way a mom would. It had been heart-wrenching, seeing Tiffany so distressed.

Derek predicted, with the expertise of a very hands-on daddy, “She’ll probably be up again. But don’t worry...I’ll handle it.”

Eve wondered if this was what it would feel like if the three of them ever became a family. She only knew she didn’t want to let this kind of happiness go, and that scared her. It was too soon to be thinking this way and wanting so much. Too soon to be risking so much of her heart...

Oblivious to the tumultuous nature of her thoughts, but sensing something was amiss, Derek studied her closely. “What’s wrong?”

Eve shrugged and forced her mind back to the practical. “Well, for starters, I wish I had an actual guest bedroom.”

Then the three of them could have all comfortably stayed there.

Instead, he was going to have to sleep in her room, in her bed, while she went elsewhere.

Derek ambled toward her. “Still planning to sleep at your mother’s?”

Eve pushed the mental image of a half-naked Derek, lounging against her pillows, out of her head. She didn’t need to know how he looked in her ultrafeminine satin bedcovers. And she certainly didn’t need to be envisioning what it would be like to make love to him there. She swallowed around the sudden parched feeling in her throat and turned away from his probing gaze. “I thought you might like your privacy.”

He shot her a bold, possessive look. “What I would like is to have you here.”

She flushed and struggled to keep her guard up. “On the sofa?”

“Or in bed, with me. Where, just so you’ll know, all we will do is sleep.”

Eve knew that with Tiffany in there, everything in her bedroom would be totally G-rated. Oddly enough, the idea of bedding down with Derek—without hooking up—seemed even more fraught with peril. Cuddling all night, just for the sake of cuddling, was the kind of thing that could entice one to fall in love. And given how very close she was to that, as it was...

She turned toward him, drew a breath of the bracing scent of his hair and skin, and tried not to fall any harder for him. “Are you sure my place isn’t too small for the three of us?”

Derek didn’t seem the least bit discomfited by the physical or emotional intimacy of such an arrangement. He met her eyes and didn’t look away. “Actually, it’s just right for one night.” He favored her with a brief, warm smile. “Although I have to wonder...” He paused, slightly perplexed. “Given your success as a real estate broker, why don’t you have a bigger place?”

Good question. And one she had been asked before.

Eve went into the kitchen. She opened the drawer where she kept several take-out menus and pulled out a stack. “It’s the reality of my business.” She fanned the menus across the counter so he could choose one, then turned to face him again. “Real estate is among the hardest-hit business in any economic downturn. When that happens, commissions can be few and far between. So, as a hedge against that, my mother and I both live way beneath our means.”

Derek bypassed the dinner selection process and instead made himself comfortable, lounging against the counter next to her, watching her. “Nothing wrong with being cautious financially,” he murmured, “so long as you’re emboldened to take risks in other aspects of your life.”

Risks, Eve noted, that seemed to include whatever this was with him. Her heart stilled and she wet her lips, aware that with Tiffany sleeping on the other side of the apartment, anything could happen here. “I thought this was going to be a G-rated evening.” He moved so that she was between him and the counter, and braced a hand on either side, trapping her against his long, hard length. He bent to nuzzle the sensitive side of her neck. “In the bedroom.” He found his way to her ear, her throat, then eventually her mouth. “We’re not there now,” he whispered, expertly fitting his lips to hers. He stopped and grinned. “We’re in the kitchen.”

And the kitchen suddenly seemed a very erotic place to be. Eve groaned, even as her arms went up to wreathe his shoulders. Before she knew it, she was kissing him back. “You make a tempting case.”

“And you are one tempting woman.” He nuzzled his way down to the first button of her blouse. “Even with ice cream in your hair.”

Eve touched a hand to the stickiness she had entirely forgotten about. He was right; several strands were matted with vanilla ice cream. “Ohhh.”

He threaded his fingers through her hair and then bent and kissed her temple, then her cheek. “You’re one hell of a good woman, Eve,” he whispered as his mouth drifted slowly toward hers. “Do you know that?”

She pulled him flush against her and opened her lips to the investigating pressure of his. She moaned again, her entire body going soft with pleasure. He kissed her again, a deep, giving kiss that had her senses spinning and her heart soaring. “I know you make me feel that way.”

They kissed again, even more passionately, holding nothing back, seeking solace in the harbor of each other’s arms. “And I know you’re one hell of a good man,” Eve told him breathlessly, undoing the buttons of his shirt while he made short work of hers.

Derek grinned as both garments fell to the ground. His undershirt went the same way as her bra. As the heat and strength of his erection pressed against her, he cupped the weight of her breasts in his hands, rubbed his thumbs across her taut nipples. “Always something to be said for being on the same page.”

Seemingly in no hurry, he lowered his lips to hers again. Eve kissed him back, sweetly and reverently. She ran her palms across the width of his shoulders, down his spine, luxuriating in the satiny feel of his skin and the flex of masculine muscle, aware that nothing had ever seemed as right as this.

Derek hadn’t come there with the idea of making love to Eve. Given the way the evening had started out, he hadn’t expected to have any opportunity to show her how much he cared for her. But now that the moment was here, he wasn’t going to walk away without giving free rein to the primal possessiveness that emerged every time he was near her.

He kissed his way down her body, easing open the zipper of her skirt. Soon she was wearing nothing but a sparkly golden thong.

And eventually that went, too. Nudging her legs apart, he settled between her open thighs, sliding even lower. Eve gasped as his mouth crossed the flat of her abdomen. And she caught his head between her trembling palms when he went lower still, lifting her against his kisses, circling and retreating, adoring, seducing, until at last she fell apart in his hands. Satisfaction roared through him when he heard her choppy breathing and the sexy sounds being ripped from her throat. He held her until the last of her shudders had passed, then moved upward once again. In a flash, whatever clothes remained were off.

And then it was her turn to fulfill his fantasies. Kissing and touching, wrapping her hands around his thighs before sending him into a frenzy of wanting, of need.

He urged her upward. She shifted. Once again their eyes locked, their lips met, and then he was lifting her onto the counter, pulling her to the edge and stepping in. Luxuriating in the hot, intense quality of their connection, he penetrated her slowly, then caught her by the hips and let her do for him, with the most feminine part of her, what he had already done for her. Eve moaned and melded into him, murmuring his name again and again. Already granite-hard, he rocked against her and took his time, going ever deeper, slower, demanding she surrender to him completely.

And she did. Heaven help him, she did, until there was no more blood left in his head. Until there was no more prolonging the inevitable, no more holding their passion and their feelings in check, and the two of them went spiraling over the edge, still kissing, still clutching each other, still giving one another everything it was possible to give.

And then some, he realized shakily, as they clung together through the aftershocks. Affirming, to him and to her, that however this had started, their coming together was a hell of a lot more than just sex. It was, he thought, what she was to him, and he was to her: the best Christmas gift ever.

Chapter Fourteen

Eve’s phone rang at seven o’clock the next morning. She was not surprised to see her mother’s caller ID pop up on screen. Marjorie wasted no time on preambles. “Have you seen this morning’s newspaper?”

“No.” Careful not to wake Derek and Tiffany, who were both still sleeping, Eve slid a robe on over her silk pajamas and popped out to get it.

“Check the business section.”

Front page was a banner headline: Sibley & Smith Leading Year End Real Estate Sales Race.

Eve groaned. “I’m sorry, Mom.”

“Not that one. Loughlin Realty is not about to let that one stand, at least not for the long haul.”

Eve imagined when her mother got back to work, things would be different. Marjorie’s enthusiasm for the business was always contagious. When she was around, sales were made and deals were closed almost effortlessly, it seemed.