Barbara McCauley - Secret Baby Santos

Setting her cotton workbag on the bathroom counter, she recovered her handheld tape recorder, turned it on and cleared her throat. “Testing, testing,” she spoke into the recorder, cleared her throat and said quietly, “Cottleston, Cottleston, Cottleston Pie, a fly can’t bird, but a bird can fly.” She listened to the recording, then flipped it off again and closed her eyes as she took another drink of champagne.

When she opened her eyes again, she looked into the bathroom mirror and stared at herself. She could have at least put some lipstick on, tried to do something with her wild hair. She’d just never known what to do when it came to cosmetics and hairstyles. Or maybe it had just never mattered to her. Suddenly it seemed to matter very much.

But there was nothing that could be done about it now. With a sigh, she removed her glasses and turned the faucet on, intending to splash cold water on her face. A stream of water sprayed up at her, drenching the front of her jacket. Gasping, she fumbled with the faucet handle and shut off the water. Looks like she found out what Hawaiian Man had wanted her to look at.

Groaning, she removed her jacket and slipped it into her bag with her glasses, then mopped up the water on the counter and floor with a hand towel. This cinched it for her. She was leaving.

She downed the remaining champagne, drew in a deep breath and slipped out of the bathroom.

Someone had closed the bedroom door to the outside parlor and the bedroom was cloaked in darkness. Maggie had no idea where the light switch was, so she felt her way across the large bedroom. The corner couch, a desk chair, the edge of the king-size bed.

A man’s chest.

Startled, she stumbled back onto the bed with a strangled cry.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.” He sat down beside her on the bed. “I thought maybe you were in here.”

It was Nick! Maggie could barely breathe. He’d actually seen her? And recognized her? His thigh nudged hers and her pulse turned erratic as a New York taxi driver.

“You did?” Because she couldn’t draw air into her lungs, her words had a soft, breathless quality to them.

He slipped an arm behind her. “I heard you wanted to see me.”

“Well, I...ah, yes, actually.” How clever she was. How professional. Sophisticated, she thought with disgust.

“I don’t want to keep you from your party,” she said, reaching for her bag that had spilled over somewhere on the floor. Why hadn’t he turned the light on? And why didn’t she suggest that he do so now?

Because she liked it, she realized. Sitting on a bed in the dark with Nick, with champagne buzzing in her head and the masculine scent of his aftershave deep in her lungs.

“They moved the party to the suite across the hall. There’s a football game on and that TV is bigger.”

“Well,” she said, her voice strained, “I guess bigger is better.”

He laughed, and the rich, deep sound of it was like velvet stroking her skin. His finger traced a hot, electric trail up her arm to her shoulders where he threaded his fingers through the ends of her curly hair. “You let your hair grow. I like it.”

He noticed her hair? Nick Santos, who hadn’t seen her in at least seven years, had really noticed her hair? The buzz in her head increased with his nearness, with his touch. When his hand skimmed up her back, she trembled. “Thank you.”

“Relax,” he said softly, and she felt his breath on her ear. “I realize it’s been a while, but you don’t have to be so nervous.”

There was a roughness to his voice, a sensual quality that sent shivers up her spine. “I’m not nervous,” she lied. “But I know how busy you are and I thought that...well, that maybe we should, uh, get started.”

He chuckled quietly, then touched her cheek with his fingertips. “You always did make me laugh.”

She wasn’t sure how to take that. Did he mean, laugh, like laugh at her, or laugh, like she said something funny. But he couldn’t mean that. She’d never said more than hello to him.

And when his lips closed over hers, when he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her down on the bed, every thought she’d ever had flew out of her head.

She’d been kissed twice in her life before. Once in the tenth grade by Kevin Hatcher, and once by Brian Whitman, who’d sat next to her in an American history course in her second year of college. But neither kiss had tasted like champagne and pure, unadulterated lust, neither kiss had turned her upside down and inside out. Those other kisses would be like comparing a spark to a raging inferno.

His arms tightened around her, and she melted into that inferno, let herself be swept up in the roaring flames, despite the voice from somewhere deep inside her that told her she shouldn’t be doing this.

“Nick,” she gasped softly when he moved over her jaw and blazed kisses down her neck, “I don’t think—”

“Good—” he nipped at the corner of her ear, then found a soft sensitive spot behind her lobe “—don’t think. It feels so much better when you don’t think.”

He was right. So incredibly right. It felt wonderful. Like nothing she’d ever experienced, and was certain she’d never experience again. How many years had this been her fantasy? Why should she deny herself this? She was an adult. Twenty-four. Wasn’t it time she found out what it was really like to be with a man? And this wasn’t just any man. This was Nick.

She heard a soft moan and was startled to realize it came from her. His hands were everywhere now, on her breasts, her leg, pushing her skirt up and sliding up her thigh. Her skin burned everywhere he touched and when he stroked between her legs, caressed her gently, she felt an ache she’d never known before, a desperate need for him to be closer still.

“You’re different,” he murmured between kisses.

He was right. She was different. From the first moment he’d kissed her, she was no longer shy little Maggie Smith. She felt like a woman for the first time in her life—a sexy, sensuous woman. She pulled his mouth back to hers, moaned when he unbuttoned her blouse and slipped his hand inside to cup her breast. When he pushed the cotton fabric aside and teased her hardened nipples with his thumb she moaned again, then cried out a moment later when his mouth replaced his thumb.

Nothing could have prepared her for the sensations that rocked her body. Pleasure shot like an arrow from her breast to the most intimate part of her. She arched upward, touching him, whispering his name over and over, until clothes were gone and he was finally where she wanted him to be, where she needed him to be.

There was no pain that she noticed, only intense, unbearable pleasure when he filled her. A pleasure that built as he moved, coiled and tightened until she shattered from the sheer force of it. And then he shattered, as well, she realized, amazed that she could do that.

Her heart was still beating wildly when he pulled her close and tucked her tightly against him. “Stay with me, Cindy,” he whispered, kissing her softly.

Cindy?

Good God, he thought she was someone else.

Humiliation stiffened her body. She couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. She simply wanted to be swallowed up whole and never seen again. She lay like that, until she heard the soft, regular sound of his breathing, then slipped out from the bed, quietly gathered her clothes and dressed in the dark.

She was at her car before the pain seized hold of her, halfway home before the tears started. She’d had to pull over to the side of the road and let the torrent rip through her. He’d thought she was someone else, thought he’d made love to someone else in the dark.

Someone named Cindy.

He’d be furious when he found out, she thought frantically. Or else he’d laugh his head off. Either way, she could never face him again. Ever.