Lost and Found Groom by McLinn, Patricia (most difficult books to read .TXT) 📗

He pulled out the typed instructions she’d handed him yesterday at the co-op. Two pages, single-spaced with enough phone numbers to start a book. “Why don’t you go on, and quit worrying.

CHAPTER TEN

Kendra toed off her shoes as soon as she’d walked in the back door, and yawned as she hung her coat on the peg.

The banquet hadn’t held a single surprise. Except for maybe how friendly people were to her–she still got caught off guard sometimes that people here wanted coverage, unlike the subjects of most of her TV reports. But then, these stories were a far cry from investigative journalism.

Driving up to the house, she’d realized Daniel hadn’t brought Matthew home yet, even though it was nearly nine-thirty. The only lights on were the living room lamp operated by a timer and the outside light by the back door. Besides, Daniel’s car wasn’t here.

Darn him. Matthew would be overtired–so tired he’d be difficult to get to sleep, and miserable tomorrow.

She should have expected Daniel to be this foolhardy, this unreliable.

She slipped her key ring in her dress pocket. That’s when she noticed the light blinking on her answering machine. She punched it – fast–before her imagination could conjure more than the bare outlines of accidents, diseases or other traumas.

It was Marti. Excited. No trauma, but lots and lots of excitement about materials she’d found in an old trunk on the Susland ancestors. Expelling a pent up breath, Kendra barely listened once she took in the fact that it wasn’t about any of the phantom traumas she had feared for Matthew and Daniel.

As she started unbuttoning the back of her dress, working her way from the collar down to below the waist, she punched the button to repeat the message–this time listening closely enough that she wouldn’t be lost when Marti mentioned it at their next session for the supplement.

She’d found a diary by Charles Susland’s white wife. It told about his last meeting with Leaping Star. And it gave the details about the origins of the Susland legend–the Susland curse. She shivered slightly, hearing Ellyn’s whisper once more.

You turn away from your children, so your blood will be alone.

Kendra shook her head at herself.

What had gotten into her lately? First imagining horrors had overtaken Matthew and Daniel all because of a blinking light on her answering machine. And then getting lost in the campfire-ghost-story atmosphere of that silly legend.

But where were Matthew and Daniel? If he’d lived up to his promise to have their son home and in bed by now, she wouldn’t be worried about the two of them, no matter what was on the answering machine.

As she slipped the last button free, allowing the dress to fall forward, caught only by her arms still in the sleeves, her mind snagged on one phrase.

She’d feared for Matthew and Daniel.

Could she tell herself she felt simply the concern of one human being for another? Or for the father of her son?

Leaving the dim kitchen, she blinked against the light from the floor lamp by the sofa, unbuttoning the dress cuffs by feel, her movements dropping the already low neckline well past decent.

“You’ve been living alone too long, Kendra.”

Daniel’s low, slightly roughened voice came from the darkness beyond the lamp.

“Daniel! What on earth! I thought you weren’t here. Matthew–?”

“Is in bed. Asleep. Like you instructed.”

“But–your car? Your car isn’t here.”

“It wouldn’t start at the library. I got it towed. Ellyn gave us a ride.”

She squinted into the darkness. Car trouble could explain the tension in his voice.

“But how will you get home–I mean to your place? I can’t drive you. If I wake Matthew up to take him with I’ll never get him down again, and I won’t leave him here alone, so–”

He stood, coming toward her. “Maybe I won’t want to leave. Not after this striptease.”

“Striptease? Wha-?” She looked down at the dress’s V dipping nearly to her waist, clasped the loose material as best she could to her throat and turned her back. “I . . . I didn’t know anyone was here.”

“As I said, you’ve been living alone too long.” His warm voice, both teasing and tempting, came from right over her shoulder. “And if that’s how you come in every night, it’s a damned shame to waste it on a two-year-old who’s already asleep.”

The whisper of his touch against her back left a trail of shivers that expanded, deepened.

“Daniel . . . Don’t.”

But she didn’t move when she felt his lips touch the back of her bare shoulder.

“Your skin was this soft three years ago, Kendra. But I could never see . . .”

She glanced over her shoulder and saw him rest against the corner of the sofa arm. His hands at her hips were a gentle, persistent force that prompted one step back, then a second, so she stood between his knees. She felt his hands dip into the opening of her dress, then the heated touch against her skin as he ran his palms up to her shoulder blades, below the flare of her hips, and back again.

She should move away. She should leave. She should . . .

“Daniel, this isn’t a good–”

“It’s good, Kendra. It’s so good.” His lips against her skin at the point of her shoulder blade added a new heat.

She clutched the material of her dress in both fists against her collarbone, while he made love to her back.

Each cell seemed to have a separate nerve ending, each communicating pleasure and urgency for more. The inside of his thighs pressing against the outside of hers, squeezed gently, encasing her. Snugly drawn against his crotch, she could feel the insistence of his reaction . . . and her own.

He unhooked her bra, the skin once covered by the strap soaked in the sensation as his unimpeded stroke started at her nape and slowly traveled down her backbone, lower and lower until his hands dipped inside the waist of her panties, his fingers gliding over the swell of her buttocks.

She gasped and half sagged against him.

His hands rose again, sliding up either side of the