Within Reach (52 page)

His voice jumped. “You did?”

She nodded. “I saw the doctor this morning and he put the stethoscope in my ears and there it was.”

Michael’s eyes were round, too. “How did it sound?”

“Thu-thump. Thu-thump. A good, healthy little heartbeat. You’ll hear it next month when you take me to the doctor.” He grinned even more widely, but she had more to say. “And I can feel it moving now. It just kind of turns from time to time and there’s this ripple inside me.”

“When will
I
be able to feel it?”

She laughed. “As soon as its little leg is strong enough to kick when you have your hands on me.”

“Mmmm, that’s where I want ’em, babe. That’s where I want ’em.” Hastening his pace, he headed home.

An hour later they were sitting on the floor before the fire having seconds of hot chocolate. They had been talking nonstop since coming in, but the spell of the flames had taken over and they had fallen into a warm and comfortable silence. Curving his body behind hers, Michael rested his chin on her shoulder.

“Hypnotic, isn’t it?”

“Mmmm. Maybe it’s the time, though, or the place, or you.”

He pressed his lips to her neck and murmured against her skin, “I think all of those things. You smell so good.”

She smiled and tipped her head against his. “This is what I’ve always, always wanted. A home, a fire, the man I love, our child…”

Michael slipped his hand under the hem of her sweater and caressed her belly. “You
feel
so good.”

Closing her eyes, she basked in the warmth of his touch. When his hand moved higher to cover her breast, she pressed her own atop it. “
That
feels so good,” she murmured. A different kind of spell was taking over, well, not truly taking over because the other was still too strong, but mixing with it to make her float. She was still thinking about the heavenly sensation when she felt herself being lowered to the cushions Michael had tugged from the nearby chair. Opening her eyes, she met his gaze.

“I’ve been waiting a long time for this,” he whispered and reached for the hem of her sweater again. This time he drew it up and she arched her back, then raised her arms to help him. The sweater was tossed aside and his fingers went to the buttons of her blouse. “Tell me if you get cold,” he warned huskily, but she knew she wouldn’t get cold because, between the fire in the hearth, the one burning in her body and that in Michael’s, she was melting.

He had her blouse open and eased it off, then reached behind her and unhooked her bra. It too was discarded and he sat back on his heels to look at her. His gaze traced fire along her profile, retracing it again and again over her swollen breasts and their pebbled tips, then again down over the curve of her belly. With hands that trembled, he drew the stretch band of her jeans down until the curve was bare; then, with awe in his touch, he inched his palm back up over everything his gaze had scaled.

“So…beautiful,” he whispered as he continued to familiarize his fingers with every nuance of her altered shape.

Danica lay with hands by her head and her hazy eyes on his. A tiny sound came from her throat when he rubbed the tips of his fingers over her darkened nipples, and in the delight of the moment she lowered her lashes and let her head fall to the side. He touched her everywhere then, always slowly and with wonder, always with the same devastating effect on her senses.

She heard him move and felt him taking off her flats and the stylish patterned socks she had worn. Then he was slipping the jeans and her panties off and she was naked. She opened her eyes to see him before her bent knees, and would have murmured a protest when he gently eased her legs apart had it not been for the worshipful expression he wore.

He looked at what he had opened, then placed a hand there and stroked her. She did murmur, but not in protest, because she felt the heat and the tension that had begun to gather and she wanted him to relieve it as only he could. He had the key to her heart, and hence her body. She knew he was feeling joy in pleasuring her and that enhanced her pleasure tenfold.

Her knees fell farther to the side and he inched closer. He caressed her slowly, looking up along the creamy lines of her body from time to time to meet her gaze and smile. She smiled back while she could, but she was breathing more heavily and clear thought was fading fast.

“I love you, Danica,” he breathed, slipping a finger into her. She arched at the sensation, then closed her eyes and bit her lip when he introduced a second finger and began to move both.

She whispered his name in a tattered gasp and closed her fists on the edges of the cushion beneath her head.

“I love you,” he murmured again, and she cried out because his words, his fingers, his very presence, conspired to drive her to higher and higher peaks. Then she sucked in her breath, held it, and let it out at last in a series of fierce bursts.

Michael watched her, heard her, felt her spasmodically hugging his fingers. Only when the tension had seeped from her and she lay limp did he remove them and slide up alongside her body. He stroked her face until, smiling shyly, she opened her eyes.

He spoke softly. “I’ve always wanted to do that, to watch you when you climax, but I can’t when I’m in you myself because I can’t think straight then.” He smiled. “You have so much passion in you and you let it out with the same grace, the same beauty, with which you do everything else in life.”

Blushing, she managed to raise a hand to stroke his face and the light shadow of a beard on his jaw. “You unleash the passion,” she whispered brokenly. “You unleash so much of what’s good in me.”

“Then we complement each other, which is how it should be.”

She thought about that for a time, until her pulse had returned to normal. “I read a tea bag tag once—”

He rolled his eyes.

She lowered her hand to his chest. “No, I’m serious. It was soon after I met you, but I was thinking about Blake at the time. The tag said something about love being a magical bond, which makes one and one far more than two, and I remember thinking that Blake and I were so separate that there wasn’t any possible way we could combine to produce something else, at least not emotionally. Maybe deep down inside I was fantasizing about you and about how I
knew
we could make something more.” She began to stroke his chest, absently at first, then with more direction when the swell of his muscles titillated her fingers. “But it’s strange. When we’re together, when we make love, we’re totally united, really only one, though there’s no ‘only’ about it. It’s when we pull apart, when it’s over, that I feel like so much more because I’ve still got a part of you with me and I’m that much fuller a person for it. Take your sweater off. This is absurd.”

Laughing aloud, he whipped the sweater over his head, then curved his arm along her back, supporting her while she moved her lips through the hair on his chest.

“
You
smell good. What have you got on?”

“It’s either soap,” he mocked in his deepest voice, “or eau de Michael. You’ll have to be the judge.”

“Not soap, but clean. I love the way you smell.”

“Thank God for that,” he murmured, sliding his hand down to cover her belly. “And one and one does make more than two, if we count baby here.”

“That was the obvious part,” she breathed, dabbing his nipple with the tip of her tongue. “I was trying to be more…more esoteric.”

“Esoteric.” He arched his back, then cleared his throat, but his voice still came out sounding hoarse. “Good word,
esoteric
.…Dani, you’re driving me crazy.” Her lips were moving in lazy circles over his ribs, her breath warming his flesh. She lowered a hand to his jeans and cupped the firmness there.

“Take off your pants, then,” she whispered.

“You do it.”

“I can’t. I feel weak. You’ve made me that way.” Leaning back, she grinned. “I’ll watch.”

With a low growl, he rolled to his knees, tore at the fastening of his jeans and pushed them, and his shoes and socks, off to the side. Then he lifted her up and against him, groaning when her breasts touched his chest. Sliding his hands down her back, he cupped her bottom and raised her hips against his. She had her arms around his neck, which was good, because moments later he was lowering them both to lie face to face before the fire.

He kissed her then, drinking deeply from her lips in long, lingering sips. She offered her tongue, which he took readily, pulling it deeper and deeper into his mouth. Her hands were on him again. She used her fingers and palms to extend what was already so fully extended. When he could take no more of her torture, he lifted her thigh and opened her to his probing.

It was Danica’s turn to whisper soft words of love, which she did repeatedly as he sheathed himself in her warmth. She kissed him between breaths, stroked him where she knew he would be inflamed, and tightened herself around him as though to hold him there forever.

There was something more beautiful to their coupling than there had ever been before because there was no element of desperation this time, no fear of separation. Their love was unfettered and invincible, their future here, now and always.

epilogue

b
LAKE LINDSAY SERVED AS SECRETARY OF COMMERCE for another year. He was never quite as much at ease in Washington after the trial, and when he submitted his resignation just prior to the start of the campaign for Jason Claveling’s active reelection bid, it was graciously accepted. He left for Detroit to take over the reins of a troubled automobile manufacturing concern. In time, given his keen business sense and his organization expertise, he was able to turn the corporation around.

Though he lived in the same city as his family, he saw little of them. He never married again.

Cilla Buchanan never did write a story such as the one Harlan Magnusson had suggested. Though she believed that he had told her the truth, she had lost her taste for that subject. There were other stories to write, which she did with much enthusiasm, but she had more important things on her mind as time passed. After living together for a year and realizing that their lives were much richer when they had each other, she and Jeffrey Winston were married—again.

Jeffrey was gratified that, of the eight companies and seventeen individuals indicted as a result of his investigation, twenty-two all told were found guilty of the charges brought against them. He went on to carry out other critical work for the Department of Defense, though was very happy to share what he could with Cilla at the end of each day. Chauvinist that he had once been, he took an active role in caring for the child they subsequently had.

Gena Bradley proved to be as wonderful a mother-in-law as Danica had known she would be. The two women shared a special bond, one that grew stronger with each passing year.

Michael’s father, John, accepted Danica with remarkable grace. He seemed to see it as a victory that a Buchanan had stolen away a Marshall. Michael saw no point in reminding him that, in some regards, it had been the other way around.

Eleanor Marshall made up, in the years that followed, for all she hadn’t done when Danica had been younger. Her health held up, so she visited often and was always there when Danica called. She quickly grew to love Michael and became Danica’s and his champion, such that William, albeit begrudgingly at first, accompanied her to Maine for the birth of Danica’s child. In time he seemed to accept what Danica had done, and though he and Michael never fully warmed to each other, he showered genuine affection on their child.

Michael and Danica were married in March, three years to the day after they first met. It was a quiet ceremony, with only Greta and Pat McCabe present to serve as witnesses, but it was precisely what Michael and Danica wanted, and it was beautiful.

Two months later Danica gave birth to a daughter. Michael was by her side, holding her hand, telling her how much he loved her and their child, just as she had dreamed. From the start he was a doting father, even more so as their daughter grew. And when, two years later, they had a son, his capacity for love seemed simply to multiply.

Professionally, they became a team, collaborating on many books as the years passed, though writing was far from their only interest. Michael continued to teach at Harvard one afternoon a week each fall, staying the night in Cambridge only when Danica could be with him. Danica, filled with the self-confidence that came from being a champion wife and mother, approached a cable television station in Portland and sold it on letting her host a program similar to that she had done in Boston. Michael and the children were her biggest fans.

When she stopped to look back over those years, the times that were closest to her heart were those when she and Michael and the children were together before the fire on blustery winter days. The warmth, the closeness, they shared then epitomized everything she had always wanted in life. She loved and was loved. She felt peaceful, fulfilled, and very, very pleased with the path she had chosen.

About the Author

BARBARA DELINSKY, a lifelong New Englander, was a sociologist and photographer before she began writing. Readers can contact her c/o P.O. Box 812894, Wellesley, MA 02482-0026, or via the Web at
www.barbaradelinsky.com
.

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Praise
for Barbara Delinsky

“Delinsky is an expert at portraying strong women characters.”

Booklist

an expert

“Delinsky is one of those writers who knows how to introduce characters to her readers in such a way that they become more like old friends than works of fiction.”