Knocked Up in Alaska, page 8
Izzy smiled, a little dreamily. “Best kind of study break.”
“Yeah.” Bridget braced her hands behind her, leaned back, and resumed her cloud-gazing. “If I’m grounded, that means Archer will be grounded, too. Hmm.” She grinned at the sky. “How will we manage to fill the time?”
Lilah’s hormones flared enviously. Those chemical messengers knew exactly how she’d be spending her free time—knitting—and their message was a strident, “We demand some action, too!” She might have laughed at her pathetic state, if the urge to burst into tears wasn’t so strong. She closed her eyes and willed her self-pity away. In the process, she must have made some sort of sound, because when she opened her eyes, both Izzy and Bridget stared at her.
Bridget broke the silence. “You’re not about to have a baby, are you?”
Those darn hormones sent heat rushing to her cheeks. “No. Nothing like that. It’s just…nothing.” She couldn’t talk about this.
Bridget unwrapped her towel and slid into the water. Stretching her arms along the edge of the tub, she tipped her head back and closed her eyes. “You know, Izzy, when my dear friend Lilah told me she was pregnant, I read up on that, so I could understand some of the stuff she’d go through.”
“Did you?” Izzy smiled gently at Lilah before shifting her attention to Bridget. “What sort of stuff?”
Bridget lifted her head, getting into her topic. “Well, the whole thing is crazy-amazing. The female bod is a biological marvel, when you get right down to it. I mean, I had a grasp of the basics, but it’s so much more nuanced and sophisticated than I ever appreciated. Almost every single body system undergoes some sort of change designed to support the fetus or endures a side effect caused by another body system supporting it.”
Izzy frowned. “Like morning sickness?”
“Exactly. But I already knew about the morning sickness side effect, and the food cravings—like the sudden need to eat an entire chocolate chunk brownie in one sitting.” Both sets of eyes shifted her way. “But wanna know another fun fact I picked up during my research?”
“I’m dying to know.” She winked at Lilah, who had the unsettling feeling she was being gently herded to a destination only she couldn’t see.
“Food cravings aren’t the only—or even the strongest—cravings a pregnant woman might experience.”
“You don’t say.”
“I don’t. Science says,” Bridget insisted. “Many pregnant women experience a significant increase in…ah…horniness.”
Lilah again found herself the target of two sets of eyes, just in time for a three-alarm fire to burn her cheeks and forehead.
“That doesn’t sound like a scientific term,” Izzy said.
“The scientist might have used the term increased libido, but it comes down to the same thing. Your system wants sex. A lot of sex. And it wants it now. For the endorphins, for bonding, to help you relax, to help you sleep…yada, yada, yada…all kinds of scientific reasons. Bottom line? It’s normal to feel a little on the horny side during pregnancy.”
Face aflame, she concentrated on running her hand down Key’s flank, sending fluffs of fur dancing into the air as he blew his coat for warmer weather. “I’m not normal.”
“No?” Bridget asked.
“Uh-uh.” Inhaling deeply, she raised her head to face her friends. “I am way above normal,” she admitted, feeling her face glow even hotter. “It’s like a nagging appetite I can never quite satisfy.”
Bridget turned, folded her arms over the edge of the tub, and rested her chin on her crossed wrists. “Good news, Lilah. You live in pretty much an all-you-can-eat buffet of available guys. Who’s making you hungriest?”
Oh, Lord. Were they really going to go there? “Nobody,” she lied. “It’s an unspecified craving.”
“Awesome. That means your options for satisfying it are wide open. Mad’s available—”
“Not Mad.” The words popped out instinctively.
“Why not? He’s unattached, easy on the eyes, safe without exception despite being a something of a manwhore. He loves women—short, tall, curvy, slim—and to be blunt, he knows how to show a girl a good time,” Bridget went on as if they were discussing the right person to tune up her car’s engine. She spoke from experience, too, as she and Mad had shown each other many good times before Archer had reappeared on Bridget’s horizon.
“I don’t know why not.” She raised her hands in helpless frustration, then let them drop. “It’s nothing against him. I just…I don’t look at him that way.” And she wasn’t explaining herself right. Her objection wasn’t specific to Mad.
Bridget lifted a naked shoulder and let it drop. “Wing, then. Also easy on the eye, and full of enthusiasm. He’s a little immature, but I bet you’d be able to tell him exactly what to do and exactly where, how, and when to do it.”
“Neither. No one.” This conversation had to end before it turned to…anyone else. But she wanted to end it without insulting Izzy, who had originally come to town with the unsentimental secret agenda of going wild in Captivity, sexually speaking, or Bridget, who had, for a period of time, designated sex her favorite sport in an effort to forget about Archer. For herself, sadly, it wasn’t so easy to separate act from emotion. Maybe her single encounter with Shay had mostly been an impulse on his part and an act of rebellion on hers, but she’d had special feeling for him, and those had mattered. A lot.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I know you’re both trying to be helpful and logical, but I don’t look at Wing that way, either. I guess don’t look at myself that way. Shay was my first, and my only. Just the one time—and yes, I know every girl in my position swears it was just the one time—but for us, it really was. I don’t know how to put this, but I don’t think I’ve…evolved…to the point I’m ready to tap a handy guy on the shoulder and, say, ‘Hey, want to—’”
“Don’t apologize.” Izzy leaned over and patted her knee. “You put it just perfectly. You prefer sex to be about more than scratching an itch. You’d like it to be supported by how you feel about the person and how he feels about you. Neither way is wrong, as far as I’m concerned, but having experienced it both ways, I can tell you, I agree. It’s better with the feelings. If that’s what you need, you should hold out for the whole package.”
“How about Ford?” Bridget went on, obviously determined to solve this problem for her.
“Oh, no…no, no.” A kind of fizzy panic exploded inside her, making it impossible to stay still. She got to her feet, paced right, turned, paced left, and caught the look Bridget and Izzy exchanged. What she should make of it, she didn’t know, except they’d definitely shared some sort of unspoken accord. “Ford’s extremely nice, but—”
“Nice”—Bridget documented the trait with an extended index finger—“smart” —she extended another finger—“hot, reliable, funny”—her fingers ticked off his finer qualities. “Shoot, he takes two hands,” she complained and brought the fingers of her left hand into play. “Protective, as you’ve already noted, not immature, hard-working, solvent, and…” She raised her last finger. “Did I already say hot?”
“Uh, yes. Yes, you did,” Izzy confirmed. “But with Ford, it bears repeating.”
“Agreed. Also, I should add, an excellent kisser.”
Lilah’s mind time-traveled back to the night Bridget and Ford had kissed in front of God and everyone at The Goose and wished the memory didn’t make her want to tackle her lifelong friend.
“So,” Bridget continued, and Lilah became the target of a razor-sharp gaze, “what about Ford?”
The geyser of panic went off again, forcing an awkward denial to her lips. “Not Ford. He…I… He let me stay with him, yes, and he’s so…” At a loss for words, she instinctively moved her hands and embarrassed herself further by tracing an imaginary set of broad shoulders. Ack. She was out of control. Yanking her hands back and lacing her fingers, she shook her head. “No.”
“Why not?” Bridget pressed, but Lilah saw what looked like compassion in her expression.
“Because.” She shook her head again but finally resorted to the God’s honest truth, or at least one part of it. “He’d never think of me that way.”
Was that the right answer? The wrong answer? She didn’t know. All she knew was Izzy and Bridget exchanged that look again. A look that made her insides jittery. Very jittery.
Boy, did she wish she understood that look.
Chapter Eight
Ford woke with a start, stared blindly around his dark bedroom as the furious chatter of rain hitting the cabin’s metal roof slowly permeated his groggy brain. Mother Nature had sent them a storm, but his military-trained senses tended to tune out natural sounds when it came time for shuteye. A glance at his watch told him it was just shy of three a.m. What the hell had yanked him out of sleep so deep that traces of the erotically vivid dream his subconscious had spun still lingered like perfume in his memory and left him with a brutal hard-on?
He listened for a stretch of seconds, but nothing stirred beneath the blanketing rain. Rolling onto his back, he wrapped his fist around his throbbing cock and prepared to sink back into the dream—one so off-limits he refused to entertain it in any capacity during his waking hours. Before he closed his eyes to re-enter the home theater for the X-rated adventures his unsupervised imagination chose to weave, a rapid pounding sounded from the front of the house, followed by someone calling his name in an urgent voice.
His eyes popped open. Not someone. Lilah. And not the breathlessly urgent tone from his dream, but an actual I-need-help! urgency. He shot out of bed and started for the front door before remembering the only thing he wore to sleep was his watch.
Shit. “Lilah,” he called, putting the kind of volume into his voice that would have made his drill instructor proud, “coming.”
Her rain-muffled reply might have been, “’Kay.”
Cursing, he rushed back to his bedroom, grabbed a pair of jeans off the top of the hamper in his closet, pulled them on, and buttoned them enough to ensure decency before hurrying to the door.
He hit the porch light at the same time he swung the door open to reveal Lilah, dripping, on his doorstep, covered by a bright yellow raincoat—her favorite color, he thought inanely—with her big duffel bag over her shoulder, her smaller duffel over her arm, her purse and a Captivity Inn tote bag on the other arm.
Questions—and he had many—could wait. He pulled her inside and shut the storm out before she could finish saying, “I’m sorry.”
“You’re soaked,” he said back and started taking bags from her. They, too, were soaked. Not slightly damp. Not a little wet, like they would have gotten after being loaded into and out of a car during a rainstorm, but full-on waterlogged and covered with flecks of soggy…debris? Once he’d emptied her arms, he realized she was shivering. His concern dialed up another degree as he eased the raincoat off her shoulders. “What happened?”
“M-my r-room at The C-C-Castaw-w-ay—”
“Jesus,” he interrupted, unable to hold back the outburst once he worked the coat down her arms. “You’re drenched to the skin.” Facing her, he tugged the yellow plastic off. It fell to the hardwood in a heavy heap, to leave her in a wet white T-shirt and pink pajama pants. Yellow flip flops completed the ensemble.
“T-too much r-r-rain…”
“Come on.” He swept her into his arms and walked quickly down the hall, through his bedroom, and into his small, attached bath. Her wet clothes chilled his skin, which meant she had to be freezing. That would be a predictable consequence of standing around in the rain during the early hours of the morning when the air temperature hovered in the mid-forties. He hit the wall switch with his shoulder, and as the long fixture above the mirror blinked on and sent light bouncing off glassy gray tile and stainless-steel fixtures, he deposited her on the counter between the double sinks and smoothed her wet hair away from her face. With his hands on her soft, damp cheeks, he looked into her bottomless green eyes. “What the hell happened at girl’s night?”
Incredibly, the lame attempt at humor earned him an unsteady smile and a tiny shake of her head. Icy fingers curled around his wrists.
“Goddammit.” He transferred his hold to her hands, pressing them together as if in prayer and then rubbing them between his bigger, warmer ones. “Honey, you’re freezing.”
“S-s-sorry.”
“No, I’m sorry. Explanations can wait until you’re warm and dry.” Releasing her, he turned to his glass-enclosed shower, flipped the single central knob to full spray, and thumbed the temperature control valve to full heat. In seconds, tendrils of steam wafted toward the ceiling, justifying the expense of his top-of-the-line water heater.
Turning back to her, mind focused on the imperative at hand, he gathered the hem of her soggy T-shirt in his hands and lifted it. “Let’s get you out of those wet clothes.” The consequence of the words sank in belatedly, right around the time he whisked the garment over her head to expose wide, shocked eyes and…skin.
The shirt slipped from his fingers and landed with a vaguely obscene slap on the tile floor.
Luminous skin. A whole lot of bare, glistening, beautifully luminous skin. Goose bumps covered most of it, especially the soft, opulent bounty partially obscured by wet, transparent demi-cups of fabric that adhered to her breasts like they’d been painted on and did nothing to hide the high, tight points of her nipples. He became intensely aware he wasn’t wearing a shirt, either, and his hot, dry skin literally itched to press against the cool, damp softness of hers.
She’s cold, his mind reminded him even as his mouth filled with saliva.
Cold, barely old enough to drink, and pregnant with a dead man’s child. Drag yourself out of the gutter, be a fucking friend, and help her.
There. That worked. His hands—the ones that had been reaching for the waist of her pajama pants—stalled in mid-air. His palms lifted in a gesture that made it clear to both of them he wasn’t going to touch her again. “I’ll just…uh…” He crouched and took a clean towel from the cabinet beneath one of the sinks. “Leave this right here.” He placed it on the counter beside her. “For you.”
“T-thanks,” she whispered and sat there, motionless, staring at him with a wide, dazed gaze.
Probably because he’d just freaked the shit out of her. “Take your time.” He gestured at the running shower. “I’m just gonna go…do…something.” With that smooth exit line hanging in the air, he backed out of the room and closed the door. Then he leaned against the doorjamb and thunked his head against it hard enough, he prayed, to knock some sense into himself.
Don’t hang here like a creeper listening to her shower. He needed to do something useful and get his mind off Lilah, chilly and naked, on the other side of the door. He pushed himself into motion and headed down the hall toward the kitchen, making a mental list. Fix her something warm to eat, and put an extra blanket on the bed in the spare room, and…
What’s she going to wear when she gets out of the shower?
The question stopped him. Pivoting, he headed to the entryway where he’d left her stuff. Unzipping one duffel told him whatever she’d wear tonight, it wouldn’t come from her bags. Everything inside was varying degrees of drenched. He added “dry Lilah’s clothes” to his mental list and reversed course to his bedroom. After a little consideration, he dug out an old pair of drab green drawstring sweatpants with U.S. Army stenciled in black letters down the side of one leg and a white, long-sleeve T-shirt. A memory of her breasts heaving beneath her wet bra flashed through his mind. With unsteady hands, he shoved the white T-shirt away and pulled out a thicker black one instead.
The water still ran on the other side of the closed bathroom door. He knocked hard and called, “Clean clothes for you. I’m going to put them on the counter.”
“Oh. Um. Okay,” came from inside the room.
Keeping his face averted, he cracked the door just wide enough to put the clothes onto the counter and quickly retreated, closing the door firmly behind him. His heart beat as if he’d just finished a five-mile uphill trail run hacking a fifty-pound pack. His cock surged and declared a painful war against the buttons along his fly, leaving him all the more lightheaded.
Breathe, Langley. Slow, deep breaths. Breathe and move. She cannot find you unconscious by the bathroom door with your dick pointing up like a sundial.
Questioning his mental stability, he backtracked to the entryway and looked at her bags. He could open them, take out the wet clothes, and toss them in his dryer, but… Would she want him rifling through her things, even with noble intentions? Would any woman? He sighed and scrubbed his palm over the back of his neck where heat rose.
Probably not.
Okay, they’d tackle the laundry after her shower. That brought him to the warm meal portion of his to-do list, so he strode to the kitchen. After cursing his still meagerly stocked pantry, he decided on soup. He opened the can of chicken noodle, dumped it in a saucepan, brought it to a boil, and then reduced it to a simmer. The rain had mellowed from a loud, relentless deluge to a steady, muted patter. That, combined with the mundane chore, helped settle his system and reaffirm in his own mind his role in her life as a trustworthy friend.
Nothing more. Nothing less.
When she walked silently into the kitchen a few moments later, he felt certain that’s what she saw—a friend. What she absolutely, positively would not see was a sweaty-palmed pervert who couldn’t get the image of her half-naked body out of his head.
Then her eyes slowly roamed over his chest and he wished he’d put on a shirt. Jesus, he was losing it. Turning away, he opened a cabinet and took out a bowl. Dedicating more attention than the task warranted, he poured the soup from the saucepan to the bowl, selected a spoon from the utensil drawer and, as he was fresh out of napkins, tore a paper towel from the roll on the counter. When he turned back, she’d seated herself on one of the stools at the island.
