Peg Sutherland - All-American Baby

He came back to stand beside her now. He seemed very close. The room was small and he was not.

“Yes,” she said, her voice barely audible. “It’s sized for me, not you.”

“That’s true.”

He looked down at her, his eyes searching her face. She imagined that he knew all her secrets.

“I’ll join you for breakfast, if that’s okay.”

“That would be lovely.”

He stepped back. “Then, until morning ...”

He was leaving. She thought she wouldn’t be able to bear it if he left without touching her. “You really should kiss me good-night.”

“I should?”

“Oh, yes.”

He stepped in her direction. Their bodies brushed. She felt the heat, caught the scent of him—faintly evergreen, like the cypress trees that had dotted the landscape at her favorite convent the year she’d turned sixteen.

“What kind of kiss?” he asked softly.

“What kind?”

He touched her hair where it trickled against her cheek. “A peck-on-the-cheek kiss? A brush-of-the-lips kiss? A lingering, promise-her-anything kiss?”

She closed her eyes as he spoke, contemplated each alternative, mesmerized by his deep, velvet voice and the images he conjured. “Oh. Well. What about the blistering, ravaging, curl-her-toes kiss? You forgot about that one.”

He chuckled, deep in his chest. “I think, with Mrs. Wentwhistle waiting downstairs, I’d better play it safe.”

Then he drew her into his arms and brushed his lips against hers. His were soft and they tasted of ale. He didn’t let her go.

“That’s really quite unsatisfactory,” she said.

He took her face in both his hands. He whispered against her lips. “I know.”

“You could try the lingering variety.”

“Maybe I should.”

“Oh, yes.”

He pressed his lips to hers again, gentle but insistent. She felt all of him pressed to her, as well. He was lean and hard and his hands cupped her head as he tilted her face to deepen the kiss. His tongue touched hers lightly, the promise of more, just as he had said. Had he not been holding her, Melina felt certain she would have melted right into the floor.

“Will that do until morning?” he murmured.

“Not in the least.”

“Then it must have been satisfactory.”

“Quite.”

She hung over the railing and watched as he circled down the stairs to the attic door. “But I’m holding out for blistering.”

“Let me guess. You’ve never done blistering.”

She smiled. So did he. The air between them crackled.

“You know me too well, Ash Thorndyke.”

“Let me assure you, Melinda Summersby, as your guide to London, you won’t leave for Omaha without experiencing all the city has to offer...”

He had delivered on both his promises—both the spoken one and the one in his kiss. By day, he showed her everything that made London charming, unique and memorable. They toured the Tower, rode double-decker buses, marveled over an exhibit of Queen Victoria’s clothing, cried over Romeo and Juliet at the reconstructed Globe Theatre. The changing of the guard, the tolling of Big Ben, the swarming pigeons at Trafalgar Square.

London by day was a magical adventure.

London by night was every woman’s fantasy of how she should be introduced to the ways of love.

Ash became her first lover and, she had been certain at the time, would be her only lover. He was tender and passionate, considerate and thrilling. He taught her everything only guessed at or dreamed of by a girl raised in convents. Ash Thorndyke was the man she’d been hoping for all her life.

When he left her at Mrs. Wentwhistle’s on their fourteenth night, she perched on her knees and watched from the dormer window as he headed for the tube. She loved his loose, easy walk. She loved everything about him.

“I love you,” she whispered to his retreating figure.

The need to tell him so was becoming an impatient ache. But she knew she couldn’t tell him how she felt until she told him the truth about herself. She made up her mind as he turned the corner. She would tell him tomorrow. Then there would be nothing in the way of their love.

Except that he didn’t come the next day.

When she phoned his hotel, he was gone. Checked out. Only then did she realize she knew nothing about him, not the town he was from, not the name of his family business. Nothing.

Except that he was not the man she’d believed him to be.

He was, instead, a rogue. The kind of man who could cavalierly seduce an innocent woman and walk away with no explanation.

Her heart was broken. Bereft, she was almost grateful when her father’s men found her a day later.

On the hard floor of the van, Melina tried not to dwell on the way she’d felt when they made love, on the way she’d trusted him, on the way he’d betrayed her. What irony that he should be her rescuer.

Rescuer he might be, but he was no hero. He’d proven that and she would do well to remember it.

But she would find a hero. America was full of them. Yes, somewhere in this country she would find the perfect all-American town, and the perfect all-American hero to help raise the baby she now carried. A father for her baby.

And no matter what the biological facts were, Ash Thorndyke would not be that man.

CHAPTER FOUR

THE TWO MEN with military-issue haircuts and nondescript charcoal-gray suits arrived at the rendezvous point forty-five minutes early.

“Thorndyke must be good,” said the one who was built like a prizefighter gone to pot. “Not a peep of a problem at the party.”

“He’s good all right.” That from the one who looked like a college professor, thin and bespectacled. “Oughta be. Runs in the blood.”

“Yeah. What’s his old man in for, anyway?”

The professor studied the tips of his shoes, which were marred by pinpoint specks of dirt. “Counterfeiting. Ran a big real estate flimflam in Chicago, the whole thing backed by play money. Very slick. Hell, the whole family oughta be locked up. They’ve handled more hot ice than the first guys to climb the North Pole.”

“Didn’t nobody climb the North Pole, dumb ass.”

“Yeah, well, you catch my drift.”

They waited, each contemplating how he would spend the money he would receive when the Somerset woman was handed over to the guys at the Tokyo airport. They didn’t know what would happen to her then and it really didn’t matter. They didn’t even know the identity of the nutcase who wanted something to hold over Somerset’s head.

“You still planning to invest your take?” The professor glanced at his watch.

“Gotta plan for retirement.” The boxer tossed a cigarette butt onto the ground and tamped it out with his shoe.

“A waste of good dough, I say. What’s the likelihood either one of us’ll make it to a ripe old age?”

“Like spending it on some bimbo’s a wise use of resources?”

“She ain’t a bimbo,” the professor said, his carefully correct speech falling away as easily as the shine on his shoes. “She’s classy. A dancer.”

The boxer’s chuckle was gravelly. “Yeah, at Tony G’s in the Bronx. Some class.”

“Listen, pal—”

“Aw, never mind. You spend your way, I’ll spend mine. We’re gonna have too much to squabble over.”

“Ain’t that the truth.”

At the appointed time, Thorndyke didn’t show. Not a huge cause for alarm. Traffic could account for that.

Fifteen minutes passed. Then thirty. Still a no-show.

The professor and his pal exchanged uneasy glances. Neither of them relished the idea of explaining why they didn’t have the woman.

They waited two hours. The professor had used up every profanity he knew and his pal had smoked every cigarette in the pack in his pocket.