Man With A Message

He blew air into her mouth, raised his head to see if it was having an effect. When he couldn’t detect one, he covered her mouth again and breathed into it. After several more breaths, a curious thing happened. He felt the first infinitesimal sign of life as a small, almost sinuous exhalation swelled the breasts under his chest.

Disbelieving, he breathed into her again, and that same subtle ripple occurred in the lips under his.

He put a hand to her ribs, feeling for an intake of breath, even as he gave her another one of his.

When he felt the probing tip of a tongue in his mouth, he thought he was hallucinating—giving her too much of his air, not keeping enough for himself.

Then her lips moved under his, and before he could raise his head in surprise, one of her hands went into his hair in a caress that paralyzed him momentarily into helplessness.

As he hovered above her in shock, her body arched up to his and she expelled a little moan. “Ben,” she murmured against his lips.

For an instant, everything in him rose to the challenge. Yes! This was what life was supposed to be about! Man and woman entangled, seeking solace and pleasure in each other, their bodies a mutual haven. He’d have given a lot at that instant to be the Ben she sighed for.

Then reality reclaimed him and he sat up abruptly, the children all staring, not sure what they’d seen.

His heart was beating hard, then his brain snapped to attention. This kind of thing won’t work for you, it told him. You have a past. Allison had thought it wouldn’t matter, but eventually it did. You’re starting over, but you’ll only get half the dream….

The woman opened deep brown eyes, and after a moment of searching the room, a puzzled line between her brows, she focused on him. A small smile of what appeared to be—he wasn’t sure…surprise? delight?—curved her pale lips.

No one had ever looked at him that way—as if he represented home at the end of a long journey. He still leaned over her, a hand on the mattress on either side of her, unable to move or speak.

MARIAH SURFACED FROM her chilled dream to find that the last year had all been some kind of terrible misunderstanding. Ben was back the way she remembered him at their wedding—the loving, solid partner around whom she’d centered her hopes, rather than the angry and confused man he’d become after she’d lost four babies and refused to try again to get pregnant.

Then his mouth had been hard and condemning. Now it was pliant and…life giving.

But why were they surrounded by children? They’d never be able to have their own. And he hadn’t wanted to consider adoption—

“Mariah?”

She turned at the sound of her name and focused on…on Ashley? Of course. Ashley. She looked at the children circling the bed and remembered that they were not her children, but the Manor’s. The kid fix she’d sought when she couldn’t have her own.

The euphoria of a moment ago collapsed, and with it came the bitter disappointment that always returned to take hold of her when she allowed herself to think about her marriage, her divorce, all the things she wanted that she’d never have.

She gazed into dark-lashed hazel eyes set in a handsome face crowned with very short dark brown hair.

She put her fingertips to her mouth, recalling those nicely shaped lips on hers and the renewal she’d thought he’d brought to her life.

But he wasn’t Ben. He was a stranger. And she didn’t care what he was doing here or why she was in bed with the children gathered around her.

The only thing that mattered was that he’d led her to believe the pain was over and life was going to begin again.

It wasn’t, though. And it was all his fault.

She raised a hand and slapped him as hard as she could.

CHAPTER TWO

“NO, MARIAH!” BRIAN, standing beside the stranger, caught her wrist. “He saved your life! I broke the water pipe—remember?—and you slipped on the towel and fell and hit your head. He carried you in here. He didn’t kiss you. He gave you artificial…you know.”

“Resuscitation,” Ashley said knowledgeably. “But I think you kissed him.”

“Yeah,” Jessica said. “I saw it.”

“Me, too,” Peter confirmed.

“Me, too,” Philip chimed in.

Mariah groaned and put her hands to her face. If she didn’t get herself together soon, she had no hope for her future. Once the school found out she was French-kissing strange men in front of the children, she’d have to take the job her sister, Parker, had offered her—working in her massage studio in the basement of city hall. Then she’d never get to Europe.

Mariah felt movement on the bed, and when she lowered her hands, she saw that the stranger was gone.

Brian took off after him, calling over his shoulder, “We’re going to cut off the water!”

The screeching of a siren could be heard outside.

“I’ll let the ambulance men in,” Ashley shouted as she left the room.

The children stood back and Mariah sat up. She was horrified that an ambulance had been called.

“I don’t think you’re supposed to get up,” Jessica said worriedly, sitting beside her.

Mariah’s intention was to tell her that she was fine, but she realized suddenly that she wasn’t. Her head ached abominably, and suddenly everything around her was wobbling.

Two men in white shirts with some kind of insignia on them burst into the room. One cupped her head gently with his hand and leaned her back into the pillows. “What’s your name, ma’am?” he asked.

“Mariah,” she replied weakly.

“I understand you’ve had a fall.”

That’s an understatement, she thought as she battled nausea. The Fall of Mariah Mercer could be a play in three acts.

WITH THE LITTLE BOY NAMED Brian shining a flashlight into the dark corners of the basement, Cam found the cutoff and turned it off. When he raced back upstairs, Brian at his heels, the paramedics were putting a protesting Mariah on a gurney.

“I cannot leave the children!” she insisted. “There are eight children under ten years of age…”

“We’re here, dear. We’re here.” The Lightfoot sisters appeared in the hallway, looking as though they’d just stepped out of a family portrait, circa 1930-something. They wore their usual long black dresses with lace collars. Letitia, the elder sister, had a small gold watch attached to her generous bosom. Lavinia, younger and smaller, had a sprig of silk violets pinned at the waist of her dress. Cam had had several meetings with them to discuss the kitchen renovation, and he’d found them surprisingly sharp in business, considering their vintage clothing and their charmingly old-fashioned approach to education.

“Ashley called us.” Letitia put an arm around the girl’s shoulders. “You gentlemen take good care of Mariah!” she admonished the paramedics, who were heading for the stairs. “I know your mother, Matthew Collingwood. I’ll have a word with her if Mariah isn’t returned to us in perfect health.”

The paramedic pushing the gurney cast a smile over his shoulder. “Don’t worry, Miss Letty. She’ll be fine. Watch the stairs, Charlie.”

“Well, now!” The sisters shooed the children toward the back of the house. “While Miss Lavinia calls the janitorial service to clean up the water, we’re going to camp here. Where are the sleeping bags from our hiking trip during spring break?”

Jessica and her sisters pulled down the attic stairs and fought over who would climb up to get them.

Letty tried to enlist Brian’s help, but he turned to Cam. “I could help you,” he whispered pleadingly.

“Ah…I’m sort of using him as my assistant,” Cam said. “Is it all right if I keep him for another hour or so?”