Father For Keeps

Sean turned her to face him and looked down at her with a serious expression. “I heard what your sister said, Kate, and I saw the misgivings in the faces of the others. But I do want to make you happy. You and our daughter.”

She smiled up at him. “Caroline’s quite taken with her papa already. And, of course, her mother’s been hopeless about him since the day we met.”

“On the steps in front of the Wentworth Bank.”

She nodded.

“You were wearing a blue dress, just the shade of your eyes, and I thought you were the prettiest sight I’d ever laid eyes on.”

Kate moved more fully into his arms. “You said, ‘Miss, I hope you’re planning to lock some of that beauty up in the bank here, because it’s not safe to have it out in the open.’“

“Did I now?” Sean grinned.

“Yes, and I thought it was the most outrageous nonsense I’d ever heard.”

“But look where it led us.”

“Yes.”

She turned her face up for his kiss, and all the misgivings of the brief wedding ceremony faded as once again her body responded to his caresses with increasingly strident yearnings.

“Ah, Kate, you turn me to fire every time I hold you,” Sean murmured in her ear, and the hardening of his body against her was ample proof of his words.

They were too impatient to pull back the coverlet on the bed, tumbling right on top of it and shedding clothes as they fell. “Jennie gave me a lovely nightdress to wear.” Kate began, but trailed off the words as Sean met her mouth with searching, skillful kisses that made her head spin. Her eyes closed and she lay back and let him stroke her into passion, her thighs, her stomach, her breasts.

“We’ll put it on you later,” he whispered. “For now I want just you…naked and soft and warm.” The words accented his deliberate caresses. Eventually his hand slipped between her legs where she was moist and ready to receive him. He pulled himself over her and asked softly, “Now?”

She opened her eyes to look up into his, glittering blue fire above her. “Please. .now,” she whispered, and guided his entry.

Their union was slow perfection. The speed they had felt at the beginning was through, replaced by a delicious sense of timelessness. All their feelings were centered on their joined flesh. Kate reached the edge first, and she whimpered at the back of her throat and hugged him more closely to her, prompting him to hasten his movements into a quickened shared rhythm that sent them both crashing into completion.

His body rested on top of hers, their damp skin sticking together wherever they touched. Kate’s fingers played idly through his tangled hair.

“You were magnificent, Mrs. Flaherty,” he said finally.

Kate gave a slow smile. Mrs. Flaherty. It had a lovely sound. “You were pretty magnificent yourself, Mr. Flaherty,” she said happily.

He rolled off her and pulled himself up to lie next to her on top of the coverlet. “To all appearances, Katie Mane, one of us was in a bit of a hurry. We didn’t even undo the bed.”

She loved the teasing note to his voice. “I believe we both were impatient, my love.”

Sean smiled. “My love…I like the sound of that.”

Actually, the endearment had slipped out unintended. Sean had still never told her in so many words that he loved her, and she had thought that she should not push the matter. But he was her love, and after what they’d just shared, it only seemed right to tell him so.

“Then I shall call you that every morning when I wake you up in our new home in San Francisco,” she said, tapping a finger lightly on his nose.

His smile dimmed, and for a moment his thoughts seemed to wander away from her. “I may change my bedroom,” he said after a moment.

She frowned in confusion. He’d already explained that for the time being they would be living at his family’s mansion, which was plenty big enough to house them and Caroline. “Change it?” she asked.

“We’re right down the hall from Mother, and I have a feeling if we don’t do something about it, the first sound either of us hears each morning will be her knock.”

“Surely your mother wouldn’t intrude on a newly married couple.”

For just a moment Sean looked younger than his twenty-five years. “We’ll see,” he said, but his voice lacked its usual confidence.