The Mother Of His Child. Sandra Field

at me, Cal.” As he reluctantly obeyed, Marnie said, “I’m sorry your wife died. I’m truly sorry.”

      Her turquoise eyes were wide with sincerity and her fingers still lay loosely on his arm. “You mean that, don’t you?”

      “Of course I do. She was so young. It must have been dreadful for you—and for Kit.”

      He said in a voice from which all emotion had been removed, “That’s why I can’t risk your meeting Kit. She changed after Jennifer died. She started questioning everything and bucking authority, and she’d spend hours in her room listening to music and refusing to talk to me. I didn’t know how to handle her. Still don’t. She’s not ready for another emotional upheaval, Marnie. You’ve got to believe me. She’s not.”

      With a huge effort, Marnie kept her voice even. “I do believe you.” She believed something else: that very likely Cal was also talking about himself.

      Quickly, Cal covered her fingers with his own. “What I just said—it hurt, didn’t it? Because it means you can’t see Kit again. God, this is such a mess….”

      “Just the same, I’m glad you told me about her.”

      Absently, he was playing with her hand. It was her left hand. “No rings?” he said. “But you must be married.”

      “Oh, no,” she said, and snatched her hand back. “I’ve never married. Never wanted to.”

      His eyes were suddenly appalled. “Surely to God you weren’t raped? That’s not how Kit—”

      “No! No, of course not. Her father’s a good man, always was. He didn’t even know about Kit until I told him five years ago. I never told him at the time.”

      “Why didn’t you? Why didn’t you marry him when she was born? If he was such a good man.”

      Marnie reached up and plucked a branch from the birch tree that brushed her arm, systematically starting to tear the buds apart with her nails. “Yesterday you virtually accused me of making up stories about how I lost Kit,” she said in a low voice. “Give me one good reason why should I tell you about it now.”

      He took the twig from her fingers and dropped it to the ground. “Let’s go down to the beach, sit on the rocks,” he said, and for the first time that morning smiled at her. “We both need a break.”

      His smile transformed him, investing him with a wholly masculine vitality to which Marnie couldn’t help but respond. As she gaped at him, he added quizzically, “Did I say something wrong?”

      It’s me that’s in the wrong, thought Marnie. Thirteen years ago, I swore off sex and now I’m practically fainting at Cal’s feet. Why do I keep forgetting that he’s Kit’s father? “No, no,” she sputtered. “No, you didn’t. I—I just can’t figure you out, that’s all.”

      “I’m just an ordinary guy, Marnie.”

      She snorted. “And the sea’s made of cherry swirl ice cream.”

      He began to laugh. “It took me a whole box of Kleenex to clean off my car. Do you always mix your flavors?”

      If his smile was sexy, his laugh was dynamite. “Always,” she said. “Life’s too short to play it safe.”

      Her words hung in the air between them. “So you believe that, too, do you?” Cal said. “Is that how Kit was conceived?”

      Her smile died. “It always comes back to that, doesn’t it?”

      “You know what keeps throwing me?” he said with underlying violence. “You look so like Kit and yet you don’t. You’re a woman, where Kit’s hovering between child and adolescent. You’ve suffered—don’t think I can’t see that—and it’s given you a beauty that’s been tested. A beauty that’s far more than a question of good bones, skin like silk, eyes as blue as the sea.” His gaze raked her from head to foot. “Along with legs that go on forever and a body that could drive a man crazy…” Running his fingers through his hair, he finished explosively, “Dammit, I never meant to say any of this! But there’s something about you that takes all the rules and turfs them out the window.”

      Frightened out of her wits, Marnie blurted, “If you have rules, so do I. We can’t afford to forget them, either one of us, because of your daughter. Your daughter and mine.”

      “You think I don’t know that?” he blazed.

      “This isn’t about you and me,” she persisted wildly. “It’s about Kit.” She was right, she knew she was. Not since that one time had she ever let a man seduce her, not with words or with his body. So what was so different about Cal Huntingdon?

      Power, she thought with an inward shiver. The power of his words, which had both terrified and exhilarated her. And, she admitted unwillingly, the power of his body. His height, the way his muscles moved in his throat when he swallowed, the gleam of sunlight across his cheekbones… Oh God, what was wrong with her? She’d never in her life been so aware of a man’s sheer physicality.

      Why did it have to be Cal, of all people, who was causing her to break all her self-imposed rules?

      Be careful, Marnie. Be very careful. It’s Kit you want. Not Kit’s father.

      Unable to stand the direction her thoughts had taken her, Marnie pushed her way through the bayberry shrubs onto the rocks.

      Cal was right. She did need a break.