Heart of a Hero. Anne Marie Winston

was more pleased than the two small words warranted that she’d admitted it. Sliding his arms around her, he drew her close. “Let’s make a new memory.”

      She didn’t resist as he found her mouth with his. His pulse doubled its rate when he felt her small hands creep around his back. Her mouth was soft and yielding beneath his, her body equally so. Touching the closed line of her lips with his tongue, he gently traced the tender seam until she opened for him, then deepened the kiss as he gathered her closer.

      He took her arms and pulled them up around his neck as he feasted on her mouth. She was so much shorter than he was that she had to stand practically on her toes, throwing her off balance and bringing her body to rest against his. Her soft belly pressed against him and his hardening shaft nestled into the cleft at her thighs, sending a surge of pleasure dancing up his spine.

      Tearing his mouth from hers, he kissed a trail along the silken column of her neck, then nuzzled the collar of the nightshirt out of the way. She had only buttoned it as high as the one between her breasts, and he exposed a generous expanse of her pale flesh until the shirt drooped off one shoulder.

      “Beautiful,” he breathed against her skin. He brought up a hand and cupped one breast in his palm, lightly brushing his thumb across the nipple through the thin fabric of the shirt.

      She made a small sound and her head fell back.

      “The baby was fussing so I—” Reston stopped halfway down the stairs with Bridget in his arms. Even in the dim light, Wade could see his father’s eyebrows rising.

      Phoebe jerked upright with a startled sound, but when she tried to pull away, Wade refused to let her go. She buried her face in the front of his shirt as Wade met his father’s speculative gaze over her head.

      “You do know this is how you got the first one, right?”

      Wade couldn’t prevent the snort of laughter that escaped. “No, Dad,” he said. “This is absolutely, positively not it.”

      It was Reston’s turn to grin while Phoebe made a quiet moan of mortification. “So,” he said. “You gettin’ married?”

      “Yes,” said Wade.

      “No,” said Phoebe.

      If his father’s eyebrows had moved any higher they’d have merged with his hairline. “I see.” He turned and started back up the stairs with the baby, who appeared to have gone back to sleep. But just before he disappeared, he stopped and looked back, and his shadowed eyes held a sober expression that contrasted sharply with the grin of a moment ago. “That would please your mother,” he said quietly to Wade. Then he looked at Phoebe, who still hadn’t moved. He shook his head and his shoulders slumped. “Sometimes I still can’t believe she’s not here. She’d be tickled down to her toes with that baby girl.”

      “Old manipulator,” Wade said quietly when he was sure his father was out of earshot.

      Phoebe lifted her head from Wade’s chest, although she couldn’t bring herself to meet his eyes. His father’s final words echoed in her ears, awakening all the guilt and remorse she felt for keeping the news of Wade’s child to herself.

      Looking down the path her life was about to follow, it didn’t take a fortune-teller to predict heartbreak. Then again, if she didn’t marry him, that was a given.

      She knew she was going to say yes, even before she opened her mouth. She’d rather live with Wade, knowing he didn’t love her the way she craved, than live without him. She’d thought he was dead and gone forever and it had felt as if half of her had died, too. She was going to take him any way she could get him, regardless of the pain she knew lay in wait.

      “All right,” she said quietly.

      “What?” Wade looked puzzled. He was still staring at the doorway where his father had been a moment ago.

      “All right, I’ll marry you.”

      That got his attention. Wade’s gaze shot to hers again and his gray eyes focused on her with a blazing intensity that made her cringe inwardly. “My father catching us kissing made you change your mind?”

      She shrugged. “I just—I know Bridget deserves a family. An intact family,” she amended. He’d been right. A child was a good reason to get married. Every child deserved a set of parents.

       And grandparents. I will never forgive myself for depriving her of knowing her paternal grandmother. If it was for a day, or a month, or even years and years, I should have thought about how they would feel.

      Wade was looking down at her and his eyes still felt like two lasers examining her soul.

      God, had she really just agreed to marry this man? This man whom she’d loved since she’d been a child on the playground? She had reasons, she reminded herself. Bridget needed a father; she deserved a stable childhood with two parents. Raising a family on a teacher’s salary could be done, but it wouldn’t be easy. With Wade’s help, they’d be able to give their daughter the things Phoebe wanted for her: music or dance lessons, sports opportunities, all the myriad activities that children of the modern world pursued.

      Phoebe, on the other hand, only needed one reason to marry Wade: love. She’d loved him for what seemed like forever. And then he’d died and she’d had to accept it, though it had felt as if her heart had been permanently shattered.

      And then…then she’d found out he hadn’t died at all.

      Her stupid heart had bounced back a lot faster than her head. She was still having trouble believing that all this was real. But her heart was having no trouble at all loving Wade with even more intensity than she had when she was seventeen years old and he’d belonged to her sister.

      “Good,” Wade finally said, startling Phoebe out of whatever internal argument she was having with herself. The expressions fleeting across her face ranged from tenderness to the deepest sadness he’d ever seen. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know what she was thinking about. “When?”

      “I don’t know!” She looked startled again. “Do we have to decide tonight?”

      He nodded. “Yeah. Before you change your mind.” He snapped his finger. “I know. We could stop in Vegas on the way home.”

      Phoebe’s expression was horrified; he almost laughed out loud. “I am not getting married in a quickie wedding chapel in the gambling capital of the world! Besides, what would we do with Bridget?”

      He shrugged. “Take her with us?”

      “No,” she said. “Absolutely, positively no way. We go back to New York and apply for a license like normal people, wait until we get it, and do this right. I have no intention of telling Bridget we got married in Las Vegas on the spur of the moment.”

      “Or our other children.” He tried to make it sound innocent; he couldn’t resist teasing her.

      “Our other—” She stopped and narrowed her eyes. “You said that just to rattle me,” she accused.

      He grinned. “Did it work?”

      A wry smile lifted the corners of her mouth. “I guess it did.”

      He was still embracing her, still deeply aware of the pounding of his pulse, of her soft curves and the way her hips cradled him. Holding her gaze, he put both hands on her hips and pulled her more firmly against him. Then he shifted his hips slightly, pressing himself so snugly against her that he nearly groaned aloud. “I want you,” he said quietly.

      She closed her eyes. “Not here.” Her voice was so soft he could barely hear her.

      “No.” He pressed a short, hard kiss to her full pink lips. “Not here. But soon.”

      Eight

      They were off the plane in New York and heading away from the airport. Bridget had just fallen asleep in her car seat