To Love a Man (42 page)

Lisa couldn’t have said anything to refute that smug statement even if she’d wanted to. Her impassioned response to his kiss had answered for her.

“Lisa . . .” he began in a throaty, thickened voice.

She thought, Uh-oh, here it comes. The moment of decision. She had been dreading it, waiting for it, hoping for it, for days. Yet still she wasn’t sure what answer to give. At least, she told herself she wasn’t.

“What on earth have you been doing?” he said in a totally different tone, pushing her a little away from him and lifting his hand to touch the bridge of her nose. When he drew back his finger, it was streaked with white paint.

“Oh. Painting.” Lisa rubbed self-consciously at her nose. Though she refused to admit it even to herself, she felt just the tiniest bit disappointed that he had not gone ahead and pressed her for her decision. He had been distracted by a little bit of white paint. . . . Despite herself, Lisa felt more than a trifle piqued.

“Painting what?”

She disengaged herself from his arms, struggling to overcome a rising spiral of indignation. Did he want to marry her or didn’t he? she wondered acerbically. Because if he did, he sure didn’t seem in any hurry to demand her answer!

“The bathroom ceiling.”

“Show me.”

The words were clipped, but Lisa was too caught up in her own feelings to notice. As far as she was concerned, the bathroom ceiling was pretty low on her list of immediate priorities. She wanted to be wooed, dammit—and, yes, won! She did not want to stand around discussing the activities of her day.

“It’s in the bathroom.”

If there was sarcasm in her voice—and there was—it didn’t stop Sam from following her down the hall to the bathroom. He stopped in the doorway, frowning, while she walked on inside and gestured at the ceiling, which was now about one-quarter white.

“See?”

His lips tightened. “Oh, I see, all right,” he said, his eyes surveying the paint can and brush balanced precariously on the top rung of the ladder. “I see you’re not safe to be left alone! You little idiot, don’t you know better than to go climbing around on ladders in your condition?”

The anger in his tone nettled her. She put her hands on her hips and glared back at him.

“You’re not my keeper, Sam Eastman!” she flared. “If I want to paint my ceiling—in my
condition
—I will! And don’t call me an idiot!”

“You need a keeper,” he retorted grimly, totally ignoring her ending salvo. “And if you don’t have enough sense to stay off ladders while you’re expecting a baby—
my
baby—then I’ll see to it that you get one!”

“Oh, you will, will you?”

Lisa’s green eyes flashed sparks at him. With speckles of white paint dotting her nose and cheeks like freckles and more streaks of white decorating her ponytailed hair, she looked like the little girl on one of the popular hamburger commercials—except for her rounded stomach, which was unmistakable even in the overlarge man’s shirt she wore. Sam glared at her. Lisa glared back, then swung around and with a defiant flourish scooped up the still-wet paintbrush and started to ascend the ladder.

“If I want to paint my ceiling—with
my
baby—I will, so there!”

She reached the top of the ladder as she spoke, and stretched up to take a defiant swipe at the ceiling. Before she could repeat it, or look around to measure his reaction, his hands were on her waist, lifting her down from her perch as if she weighed no more than a little child.

“Put me down!”

As soon as her feet touched the floor, she hit out at him with the handiest weapon—which happened to be the paintbrush. It caught him full in the face. Lisa stared, aghast, as the bronzed features were overlaid with a thick, dripping coat of white—and then as his eyes opened, twin spheres of cobalt blue regarding her with mingled anger and disbelief from amid that oozing mask, she giggled. And giggled again.

He glared at her. Then his lips twitched. Seconds later that twitch turned into a full-scale grin.

“Bitch,” he said with curious satisfaction.

Lisa didn’t have long to wonder at his tone. He bent his head toward her despite her shrieking protests, capturing her mouth with his and stealing her breath with a hot, hard kiss that managed to share the coating of paint very effectively.

“Isn’t there a saying about he who laughs last?” Sam murmured, grinning down into her white-smeared face after he released her. His arms were still locked loosely around her waist.

Lisa laughed back at him, her hands—one still holding the paintbrush—coming up to rub ineffectively at her cheeks. He looked so funny with paint covering his nose and cheeks and running down his chin, and so handsome despite it, with his black hair in wild disorder and his blue eyes twinkling at her, and so dear that her heart turned over in her breast. Suddenly she knew that her decision was made—had been made, probably, since he had first shown up in her apartment wanting to take care of her and the baby. For better or worse, she was going to take one more chance. On Sam. On love.

Paintbrush and all, she reached up to twine her arms around his neck and tell him so.

Epilogue

S
AM
sat in a chair in Lisa’s hospital room, watching her as she lay sleeping, feeling utterly drained. It was eight o’clock on the morning of September 14. A Wednesday. Lisa had given birth by cesarian section to a little girl, Katherine Elizabeth, during the night. Standing helpless outside the operating-room door while they had cut his child from the unconscious body of the woman he loved had been the worst experience of his life. He had prayed endlessly, bargaining with God, willing to sell his soul to the devil if it could be arranged, if in so doing it would save Lisa’s life. During the two months since their marriage, they had been happy, almost unbelievably so. Lisa had taken to life on the Circle C like a spaniel to water, decorating the house, getting a room ready for the baby, doing her best to cook a fair portion of their meals, being a friend as well as a stepmother to Jay and a wife to Sam. Such happiness had been too good to last. Sam had known it all along—feared it. And last night he had feared that the time had come to pay the piper. With Lisa’s life. It had seemed like a miracle when the doctor had come out with the little girl in his arms and told him that Lisa would be all right. For the first time since he was twenty-three years old, he had felt tears run down his cheeks.

He had hardly spared the infant a glance, although he supposed that he would be interested enough in her now that Lisa was out of danger. During the last weeks, he had visited her obstetrician with her, taken part in childbirth-education classes, planned to be with her throughout the birth of their baby. But last night had been so unexpected, so horrible, that he hadn’t quite recovered from the shock. She had started hemorrhaging at the ranch. . . . Even now he could see the blood that had soaked through the blanket he had wrapped around her for the mad drive to the hospital. Small wonder that he hadn’t felt an upsurge of fatherly affection for the wrinkled mite who had caused her such pain, and himself such fright. But he would, he promised himself, he would. . . . He had not slept at all the night before, in fact had not slept in more than twenty-four hours. Suddenly he was conscious of feeling dead tired. His eyes felt like they had lead weights attached to the lids. If he could close them, just for a second . . .

When Lisa awoke, the first thing she saw was Sam sprawled in what looked to be a very uncomfortable upright chair, his head lolling back against its vinyl upholstery, his arms trailing limply to the floor on either side of him. He was sound asleep; a faint snore issued periodically from between his parted lips. Lisa smiled at the long form and hard face softened now as he slept. She had only hazy memories of what had taken place the previous afternoon and night, but she could recall him constantly at her side until the doctors had put her to sleep. He had been a tower of strength for her throughout the ordeal, rushing her to the hospital while masking his fear so as not to increase hers, carrying her into the emergency entrance, holding her hand while wave after wave of burning pain had tortured her body. . . .

Their baby: she had not yet seen their baby, did not even know if it was a boy or a girl. In a sudden fever of impatience, she sat up, wincing at the soreness of her abdomen, and pushed the nurses’ call button by the bed. A white-clad nurse appeared almost instantly.

“I want to see my baby,” Lisa said, speaking softly so as not to wake Sam. The nurse followed the direction of her glance, and smiled.

“I always think it’s harder on the father,” she said with a twinkle, and went out. When she came back, she was carrying a squirming infant in her arms.

“My baby!” Lisa said, enraptured, holding out her arms to take the precious bundle. “Is it a boy, or . . . ?”

“Mrs. Eastman, meet Katherine Elizabeth Eastman. Your husband gave us the name you picked out while you were asleep.”

“A girl,” Lisa whispered as the woman placed the blanket-wrapped bundle in her arms.

“Call me when you want me,” the nurse said, smiling at Lisa’s absorbed expression as she inspected her tiny daughter. Then she went out.

Lisa stared down at her child, enraptured by the crinkly little face topped by a crown of dark hair. She unwrapped the blanket swaddling the child, inspecting its tiny, bowed legs and waving arms, counting its little fingers and toes. The little girl kicked and wriggled, but she kept her eyes shut and she didn’t cry.

“What do you think?” The voice was Sam’s.

Lisa looked up to find him straightening in the chair, watching her with an almost diffident expression on his dark face. Lisa smiled blindingly at him.

“I think she’s beautiful,” she said sincerely.

“She must take after you, then.” His smile was warm.

Lisa grinned at him. “No, as a matter of fact, I think she looks more like you. See?”

Lisa lifted their daughter so that he could see the spiky black hair covering the tiny skull. Sam leaned closer, looking fascinatedly at his daughter.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything that small.” He sounded awed.

Lisa laughed, and eased herself a little higher against the pillows, cradling the child against her breast.

“She’ll grow.”

“Yes.” Sam cleared his throat, his eyes suddenly intent as they met hers. “I love you, Lisa.”

Lisa smiled at him. But before she could return the compliment, as she had every intention of doing, the tiny scrap in her arms let out a little mewling cry. Lisa looked down, surprised to see that the child’s eyes were open at last as she chewed hungrily on one miniscule fist. To Lisa’s amazement, they were blue. Not the baby blue of nearly all infants, which in many cases changes with time, but a striking cobalt blue as deep and arresting as that of the man who had fathered her.

As Lisa stared down at that tiny face, which she guessed would in time become a feminized version of Sam’s, she was shaken by the enormity of the emotion that surged through her. Never in her life had she felt anything like the strength of the love that swept her. She looked from Katherine Elizabeth’s slightly unfocused blue eyes to the very focused ones of the man she loved, and smiled tenderly.

“I love you, too,” she said to Sam, meaning it from the depths of her soul. Then she looked back at her daughter. “Both of you.”

Michael J. Elderman

K
AREN
R
OBARDS
is one of the best known names in romance today. Renowned for her “marvelous talent to zero in on the heart of erotic fantasy” (
Romantic Times
), she is the author of more than a dozen national bestsellers, including her
New York Times
bestseller
This Side of Heaven.
She has won numerous awards, including three
Affaire de Coeur
Silver Pen Awards for favorite romance author. Her books have been sold all over the world; many have been book club selections; and her combined total of copies in print has hit the 14 million mark and climbs steadily with every new novel.

Karen Robards lives with her family in Louisville, Kentucky.