Think About Love (13 page)

"This pack was a good idea, wasn't it, sweetheart?"

Kippy closed her eyes. Was she hungry yet? She would need lunch soon, the bottle in the diaper bag. So many details. Samantha got a parking permit from a machine at the edge of the lot, walked back to the car, and put it on the dash. Then she picked up the diaper bag and headed for the hospital building.

Cal was inside, standing beside the elevators.
 

Samantha stopped in front of him.

"I'm sorry," she said soberly. "I don't know what got into me."

"I wasn't trying to take over." He didn't smile.

The elevator doors opened. Cal cupped his hand around her shoulder and led her two steps away from the elevators.

"You were taking over. Maybe it was some sort of guy thing, but I didn't know how to deal with it."

"We're going to be a family. The three imperatives of primitive man—protect, provide, procreate."

She felt heat flush her face, inappropriate laughter welling up at the same time. "You were trying to protect me, look after me?" And
procreate?

"Guilty." He touched Kippy's head, brushed the baby hair with gentle fingers, almost touching Samantha's shoulder. Kippy smiled without opening her eyes.

"This pack thing you're carrying her in was a good idea. She's smiling. Do you think she's got gas?"

"You're the one who's used to babies, but no, I think she's smiling for you. Cal, what are we going to do?"

"Get married. Share the driving. Argue sometimes."

"You walked away." She hadn't admitted to herself how much that hurt.

"Stuck in a car with the baby crying, there was no way we could talk about anything. Also, I was angry and I didn't want to say something I'd regret." He ran his hand roughly through his hair. "The only thing I could think of to do was to kiss you. I figured that would be a mistake."

She felt like a grounded fish, her mouth parted in shock. She'd been
whining
instead of acting like the independent, assertive woman he knew, and he wanted
to kiss her!

"Why would you kiss me?"

"Sam, you've got to know I find you attractive."

She wanted to deny it, but last night she had wondered what it would be like to make love with him, and she hadn't needed to ask herself if he would want to.

"We haven't talked about it, not really."
 

Her words drew a half smile to his lips, and he said gently, "I didn't think we needed a clause in our contract."

She felt herself stiffen. "Why not?"

"When it happens, it will be because we both want it. There wouldn't be any pleasure in it otherwise."

She knew she was blushing again, wished she could tame the red in her face as well as the tone of her voice.

"Fair enough.
If
it happens."

"We've got to stop having important conversations in public places with a baby who's going to interrupt us at any moment. Let's go up. You can introduce me to your grandmother and tell her the news. We can talk later, in private."

I'll decide when to tell Dorothy
. The words, fast and sharp, flew into her mind, but speaking them would have made her feel like a petulant teenager.

Cal wanted her sexually.

She wished she'd left her hair down, wished she could tilt her head forward the way Sarah used to do and have it slide over her face, hiding her expression.

"Let's go," she said.

A minefield, a bloody minefield, thought Cal, and he seemed to set off land mines wherever he stepped. He realized she was only comfortable with this marriage as a business proposition, but somehow the knowledge that she was going to marry him, that she'd be
his wife,
was acting on the primitive centers of his brain.

He had started treating her differently, touching her, wanting to carry things for her, wanting to see emotion flash in her eyes, wanting her lips to curve... for him.

Wanting to make love with her, to touch her in secret places and hear her moan, see her eyes glaze with the storm of her own passion as she lost control and screamed his name.

Damn!

Last night, it had seemed so straightforward. The knowledge that he mustn't let Sam walk away, the flash of recognition,
knowing
that Calin Tremaine and Samantha Jones were meant to be together. Partners in life.

More than partners.

It was a damned good thing Sam didn't realize this marriage proposal was the impulse of a desperate moment. She'd only accepted because he'd pitched it as a business deal.

Risking everything for a hunch was more or less habit with Cal Tremaine. He'd been maybe thirteen when he felt the excitement hit for the first time. His friend Eddie had bought a couple of gerbils, got them breeding with plans to make a fortune selling the offspring back to the pet store.

Eddie's gerbils had escaped their cages, resulting in his friend's mother screaming loud enough to be heard next door at the Tremaine house. But Cal figured he knew exactly what Eddie had done wrong.

So, at the age of thirteen, in impulse and conviction, he'd taken his entire fortune—$110, given by his grandparents and intended for his higher education—and had founded a tiny empire on gerbils, selling the offspring to a pet store distributor, making his father proud, his mother vaguely worried, and his sister, Adrienne, fascinated.

He'd given up on gerbils two years later, replacing them with lab rats, in high demand by medical laboratories. He raised the rats in partnership with Adrienne. To the astonishment of both their parents, his share of the rats paid for the first two years of college, by which time he had turned the rats over to Adrienne. He didn't need them. He was selling his brain, writing computer programs for royalties from a games distributor.

Decisions made on instinct, on
feeling,
had always paid off for Cal. Until now, though, the only one at risk had been Cal himself. This time, he was risking Samantha as much as himself, on nothing but a feeling. What if it didn't work? What if
they
didn't work? Did he have the right to make an impulsive life decision for someone else?

As the elevator doors opened on the third floor, Cal placed his hand on the small of Sam's back.

Touching her again.

He slid the diaper bag from her shoulder. "I'll take that," he said, figuring they'd argue about it later.

Chapter Seven

"Married?" Dorothy Marshall's sharp eyes studied Cal, taking his measure. "You're planning to marry my granddaughter?"

"That's right." He stepped forward and held out his hand. She had the look of his Aunt Jemma, who had always known when he was hiding some boyish sin. "I'm very pleased to meet you, Mrs. Marshall."

Dorothy turned away from him, talked to Samantha as if Cal weren't there, "Child, why are you marrying him?"

Cal saw an expression on Samantha's face that reminded him of Aunt Jemma's inquisitions, hauling the truth from a ten-year-old boy who'd just fed the last of the Sunday roast to a dog named Jenson. He could have told Sam that lying to women like Dorothy and his aunt Jemma was a waste of time.

"Grandma, we've made a business arrangement," said Sam, who must have also realized there was no point lying to her grandmother.

"Business?" echoed Dorothy with a cutting look at Cal.

"The social worker doesn't approve of me," said Sam, "and Kippy's protection hearing comes up in two weeks. If we've got the custody transfer underway by then and if the social worker believes I'm a good guardian for Kippy, Dexter says the ministry will drop the application for custody. Cal needs me for his company, and with the social worker complaining that I'm not a proper guardian for Kippy, the baby could use two parents at the custody hearing."

He wasn't sure what Jemma would say if she were thirty years older and her granddaughter made an announcement like that. Dorothy said nothing for a full minute, and Sam proved her strength of character by standing motionless under scrutiny, holding her grandmother's gaze.

"Give me the baby," ordered Dorothy finally.

Samantha shrugged out of the harness and handed her drowsy niece to Dorothy, who cradled the child in one arm, staring down at her soberly.

Sam said, "I'll look after her, Grandma."

"Until they let me out of this place," said Dorothy. "We' re doing the paperwork to keep Kippy out of foster care, but this is temporary."

He could see that Sam didn't know what to say, but finally she said, "I want you to think about coming to Seattle. If you stayed with me, we'd be together, both looking after Kippy."

Dorothy stared at Cal.

"We'd like you to come. It would make Sam happy."

Dorothy shook her head. "Kippy needs her diaper changed. Take her, Samantha, and leave us. I want to talk to him."

Him.

When Sam had disappeared into the washroom with Kippy and the diaper bag, Dorothy demanded quietly, "Why are you marrying my granddaughter?"

"Sam explained it. I hope you'll consider moving to Seattle."

"I don't like the city."

"My place is outside the city, on Lake Washington." He made his voice deliberately mild. They weren't exchanging smiles, but Cal couldn't help admiring the elderly woman.

She obviously cared deeply about both Sam and Kippy. She looked fragile, tired, although not as weak as he would have expected from Sam's descriptions of her illness. "It's a big house. There's lots of room. There's a guest cottage. Visit us, see what you think."

Us. Sam would be living in that house with him. Sam sitting across a breakfast table, meeting his eyes with her direct gaze, her slow smile stopping his heart.

"They want me in a nursing home." She hitched herself up in the bed. "This crazy doctor thinks I shouldn't be living alone. That I need
care."

"There must be other options. Home-care workers. Private nurses. You should be with your family."

"You've got money, talking about home-care nurses."

"Enough."

"Exactly how much is Sam worth to your business?"

"Whatever it takes." He pulled a chair up and sat down. If she was going to put him through an inquisition, he may as well answer questions in comfort.

"Enough for marriage and taking on an old woman?" She picked up a plastic container of water and sipped through the straw. "You ever been married before, boy?"

He grinned. "My name's Cal—Calin—not
boy.
And no, I've never married."

"Why not?" She wasn't willing to smile back at him, not yet.

"No time." She glared at him, and he added, "No one mattered enough."

"How long until the divorce?"

"I'm not planning on a divorce," he said quietly. "Sam told you the truth; she's marrying me as part of a business deal. My company needs her. If I don't do something, she'll leave to take a part-time job, to make time for Kippy. This way, she doesn't have to leave, and marriage will help at the custody hearing."

"Samantha is Kippy's aunt. She doesn't need you to keep Kippy. I've just signed papers to transfer guardianship to her. Last winter, if Sam and I had applied for joint custody of Kippy, we'd never have had this problem. But I do have rights under law where Kippy's concerned, and so does my granddaughter. The judge can't deny that."

"It will go more smoothly this way."

She studied him, less critically now, although Cal didn't fool himself that he'd won her over completely.

"You didn't answer my question. Why are you marrying my granddaughter? Don't give me nonsense about needing her in your business. You didn't need to marry her to get her to stay. That girl loves her job."

"She loves Kippy more."

Dorothy stared at him with Aunt Jemma's eyes.

"I don't want to lose her."

"You're in love with her."

He thought of Sam's head bent over the baby's sleeping face... her eyes startled, wide, as she looked up at him... her smile growing from some secret place inside, drawing him in... her eyes and her mind meeting his... Sam at his side... always.

"I guess I am."
 

"You're doing it backward, boy. You're supposed to court your woman before you marry her. If you hurt Samantha, you'll answer to me."