Forbidden by Susan Johnson (best feel good books txt) 📗

into the starlite night, adding in a teasing voice, "No one can be as pleased as I, but are you half as pleased?"

"I look in the mirror a hundred times a day waiting to see… that first indication, wanting to have visual evidence of our child." Reaching up, she kissed the coolness of his cheek. "I'm ecstatic. And thank you for coming so soon. I told Father I should be more mature and patient, but I wanted you here with me… right now. I couldn't wait."

"When your telegram came and I read it, the normal operation of my brain stopped for a moment in this shuddering suspension of belief, followed a second later by a fanfare of trumpets and colors flying. Bourges said I quite literally stopped breathing for a moment. You couldn't have kept me away."

"How long can you stay?" She said it quickly, like a child would ask for bad news about bedtime.

"I hope to stay as long as you need me."

His words frightened her mildly, for they didn't speak of permanence. Although she understood in the rational portion of her mind he couldn't offer her what she wished. "You found a house. I'm glad." She could say that at least without being clinging and difficult. He had said they would marry, too, when his divorce was final. When that happened, he would be hers in the commitment of his world. She should be content with that. She shouldn't want everything. She must accept there would be times in the coming months they would be separated. She worried, though, in a small recess of her mind—about those separations, her jealousy a stabbing reality. What would he be doing and with whom… should they be regularly apart?

"I'll build something better… later."

"I'm finding my nesting instincts are becoming more active. A biological manifestation apparently, because I've never cared particularly where I lived. I've always had my own apartments in my parents' homes and been content." She didn't say she had this overpowering impulse to include him in her nest. An irrational kind of jealous bondage so that he was hers alone.

"Do some shopping tomorrow then. I only bought the bare minimum today. Nest to your heart's content. I'll help you."

"I'm going to buy baby things."

His arms went around her shoulders and he hugged her close. "We'll buy out the stores."

"Oh, Etienne…" Daisy whispered, tears spilling over onto her cheeks, her heart so full of love she found the boundless sky too small to hold her happiness.

He stopped the buggy when he realized she was crying, pulled her into his arms and kissed her gently, his lips cool, their pressure delicate. "Don't cry," he whispered. "We don't have to buy out the stores." His teasing huskiness drifted over the softness of her mouth.

Daisy hiccupped a wet smile, then spoke from her heart because the words wouldn't stay repressed any longer, because she couldn't be acceptant or practical as she should be, as she'd been most of her life. "I love you too much," she said in a tremulous voice, "and I'm happy beyond any dimension I'd ever envisioned, but I'm jealous and petty, too, and I want you beside me every minute, every day. I want you to stay with me after we buy baby clothes; I want you to stay with me until our baby isn't a baby, until our baby has brothers and sisters, and I'm afraid of my own possessiveness. I'll drive you away with this intense need for ownership. I'm sorry. I wish I was more…"

"Submissive?" Etienne offered, amusement lacing the richness of his voice.

Daisy's lashes lifted abruptly. "I don't like that word."

The Duc was pleased to see his darling Daisy had reverted to form. "I think the baby makes you feel this way… along with your nesting instinct. I'm not going anywhere… don't worry."

"You have to though. Bourges can't telegraph everything, nor can your business manager or—"

"Let me worry about that. You feel free to be as possessive as you wish. I'll fight back if you become annoying," he added with an indulgent smile.

"You won't mind? You won't find it intolerable?" She sighed softly. "I'm afraid I'm only going to get worse…"

"And fatter," he added with a grin.

"You won't want to look at me," she said with a pout.

"Or I may want to look at you more." He gently lifted her chin with one crooked finger. "I have my own obsessive inclination of ownership. That's my child you're carrying and I want to see it growing in you."

"You're sure?" Her question was tentative, a need for assurance.

"I've been counting the days and hours since I received your telegram till I could see you again. When I went to Isabelle's I was prepared to beg her for a divorce, on my knees if necessary. I'm sure," he said in a quiet, hushed voice. "I've never been so sure of anything in my life."

Daisy's smile was blissful. "You'll allow me to be demanding then?"

"I'll allow you anything, darling. My benevolence knows no bounds."

"That must be why women love you." She said it in open artlessness, as if she were not a sophisticated woman who had lured him more provocatively than most females.

A benevolence of a specific sort, the Duc recognized, was the reason women found him attractive, but he knew Daisy was speaking in a more comprehensive, unsubstantial way, so he said, "As long as you love me, I'm content."

They were in Clear River Valley short minutes later, the two-story log home nestled at the base of the treeline, aglow with light, welcoming with every window golden warm against the dark shadowed pines.

And when Louis greeted them at the door, Daisy experienced a delicious feeling of coming home. Louis had been such an integral part of their existence at Etienne's home on the Seine, it seemed for a moment, she were back in Paris. But the gun rack in the foyer reminded her succinctly she was not in cosmospolitan Paris, as did the moosehead mounted at the