Temporary Family Read online

  By the time his mouth closed over the tip of her breast and he started laving it with his tongue, Laura would have done anything to have him inside her.

  She would have pleaded, cried—anything. He lifted her in his arms. For one dizzying instant, she felt his arousal flush against belly. Then he sat her down on the edge of the counter, stripped her of her panties and started nibbling on her thighs.

  Laura gasped in surprise and pleasure so intense she thought she would surely die from it. The pressure deep inside her came on so quickly, so strongly, that it was nearly over before she realized it.

  “Wait,” she cried. When he looked up at her with his smoky brown eyes, she told him, “I don’t want to do this alone. I want you with me.”

  He was breathing as bard as she was, and he was smiling, too, as he loosened his pants and ripped open the package with the condom. “If you insist.”

  Laura didn’t think she’d ever been so greedy for the touch of a man’s body against her own. His mouth went back to the side of her neck, as she pulled him to her. She felt the pressure at the juncture of her thighs again, felt the heat, felt his muscles tense, then heard him groan.

  “I’ll never be able to make this last for you,” he admitted.

  “Next time,” she murmured. There would be a next time.

  He slid inside her in one long, slow, easy thrust, and she wrapped her legs around him to hold him there. He was big and hard and hot, the pressure of his body inside her more intense than anything she’d ever felt. He rocked his body against hers, holding her hips in the palms of his hands, and she just couldn’t get dose enough to him, even now.

  “Don’t stop.” Her words came out as no more than a ragged whisper. “Don’t.”

  Still, she knew it was all going to be over soon, that it could never last long enough to satisfy her need for him. Because she needed to do more than make love to this man. She needed much more, needed it desperately.

  In the end, she couldn’t say how long it lasted; she’d lost all sense of time, all sense of place, until there was nothing but Nick and the sound of her name on his lips, the feel of his body straining against hers.

  “Come with me,” he implored, knowing she was trying to hold back, to make it last.

  She moaned, incapable of putting anything into words just then.

  “With me,” he insisted, then proceeded to show her that it wasn’t up to her anyway, that she couldn’t control the reaction of her body to his.

  The tension built to the point where she simply couldn’t bear it. Her body throbbed to the rhythm of his. Her heart pounded in time with his, and she called out his name as the pleasure rolled over her in long, satisfying waves.

  She clung to him with every bit of strength she had left in her body and wished she never had to let go of him. He laughed, a wondrous sound of triumph and sheer happiness unlike anything she’d ever heard from him. This was the old Nick, Laura realized, the one buried under a year’s worth of anger and disillusionment. She’d managed to reach him after all.

  When she found the strength to lift her head from his shoulder, he was smiling at her in a way that changed his entire face. She put her hand to his cheek, fingered the tiny worry lines around the corners of his eyes that had seemed so pronounced before. Now she saw dimples, too. The man had dimples in his cheeks when he smiled. He looked twice as devastating now, even more the heartbreaker than before.

  Laura would swear that this man had broken more than his share of young girls’ hearts in his high-school and college days. Would he add hers to the list? She suspected he would, but that wasn’t something she was going to let herself worry about right now.

  Right now he was hers, and with a strength that amazed her after what they’d just done, he shifted her in his arms, then lifted her and carried her to the sofa in the living room. She was still settling herself against the cushions when he pulled off his pants and followed her down.

  He pushed the shirt up around her neck, then took the time to pull it over her head and throw it to the side. She sighed softly as this wondrous heat and weight of a naked, aroused male settled on top of her.

  With a killer smile, he told her, “I don’t think once is going to be enough, Laura.”

  Chapter 11

  Laura was dozing beside him on the sofa, her body wrapped around his, when sometime early in the morning the phone rang. She was slow to come awake, reluctant to lose this spot beside him or to give up that languorous web of sexual satisfaction that surrounded them.

  Nick raised his head and turned in the direction of the sound, but he didn’t move until Drew’s voice, projected from the answering machine, sent him scrambling for the phone on the end table at the opposite end of the sofa.

  He punched a button to stop the machine from broadcasting their conversation, and Laura knew instinctively that reality had just intruded into their too—brief time together.

  She sat up and pulled the afghan around her body.

  Watching him, she could tell by his body language that he was totally tuned in to the business at hand. They were all in some sort of trouble. This night, these stolen moments, couldn’t last. She wouldn’t regret what they had done, only the fact that the problems of the world outside this apartment had impinged so soon.

  She’d known this would happen, she just wished they could have a few more days to themselves first.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked as he replaced the receiver.

  Nick turned back to her. In the dim light, she could make out the sleek, powerful lines of his body, and she appreciated fully the set of weights pushed into the corner in the bedroom.

  His hair was tousled, his eyes guarded, and he needed to shave. He looked tired, a little unsure of himself and very serious. Laura didn’t like it at all.

  Nick hesitated a minute, then stretched his right arm along the back of the sofa. “Come a little closer.”

  He didn’t have to ask a second time. She settled herself against his side, shut her eyes for a moment as his arm curled around her. The world wasn’t such a cold place after all.

  Nick shook his head, worrying her. “I didn’t think of this at all.”

  “What?”

  “Late last night, the cops found a body in an alley about a block and a half from Rico’s apartment.”

  “Yes?”

  “A young woman’s body.”

  “Oh, no.” Laura hadn’t thought about that possibility, either.

  She waited a minute, letting the news sink in. She’d hated Renata Leone at times. She’d cursed her, damned her, railed to anyone who would listen.

  And Laura was jealous of her, because she wanted Rico for her own. She wanted him because she thought she could be a better mother than Renata, and she wanted Rico to have a decent home. But Laura also felt guilty for coveting Renata’s son.

  Now Renata’s poor little boy was asleep in the next room, Laura was taking care of him, and Renata...

  “So, she’s dead.”

  Nick shrugged noncommittally. “The cops are waiting on a dental-records check for a positive ID, but Drew seems fairly confident that the body is Renata’s.”

  “Oh, God. All this time...I was so mad at her. 1 thought she’d just gone off and left him again. I never imagined that she might be dead.”

  Nick was silent beside her, waiting, watching her, clearly worried.

  Tears welled up in Laura’s eyes and spilled over, though she made no sound. She had tried to help Renata, then given up on the woman, preferring to concentrate her energy on Rico. Laura didn’t understand how any addiction to any kind of drug would be more important than a woman’s child, although she had tried to help Renata by getting her in touch with a variety of community-service agencies.

  “I should have done more to help her,” Laura said, certain of that now. “But I was so angry at her, Nick.”

  “Hey, you couldn’t save her from herself. She was lucky she had you to look after Rico when she was too messed up to do it
herself.” He took her chin in his hand and forced her to look at him. “You can’t help someone who doesn’t want to be helped.”

  “I know, but... oh, God. How are we going to tell Rico this?”

  “I don’t think we should tell him anything yet. There’s no need to upset him any more until we’re certain the body is hers.”

  “He’ll be devastated.” Laura had already accepted it herself. Renata Leone was dead.

  “Laura, if this is his mother’s body, I don’t think her death is going to come as a surprise to Rico. Remember, when he walked into the shelter he had blood on his shoes and his pants.”

  “Yes, but... ?” Laura didn’t see the connection at first. She’d jumped to conclusions. “I just assumed that Renata OD’d. She came so close to doing that before.”

  Nick shook his head. “She was murdered. Someone slit her throat.”

  They didn’t sleep after that. Laura couldn’t. Every time she closed her eyes, she imagined Renata lying there in a pool of blood. Poor Rico. How terrible that night must have been for him.

  Laura thought she was going to be sick. Nick made her take a long, cool shower, then wrapped her up in what must have been one of his robes. It was a mile too big, made of heavy terry cloth, but still she was shivering. He held her in his arms until the worst of it passed.

  “You’re going to help me, aren’t you? You’ll help me help Rico deal with this?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t even know where to start.”

  “Well, let’s talk about it. It will give you something to think about, instead of feeling guilty that it’s your fault.”

  “I... I just wish I’d done more.”

  “Think about Rico,” he suggested. “You can help Renata best right now by helping him.”

  “Tell me how.”

  “When a child loses a parent, one of his first questions is likely who will take care of him now. So, where’s his father?”

  If Laura knew, she would have strangled the man long ago. “He didn’t last very long. He took off sometime before Rico’s first birthday.”

  “And there’s been no contact since then?”

  “No visitation, no child support, no forwarding address. He just didn’t come home one night. Renata had no idea where to find him, and I don’t even know his name. I don’t even know if the social worker has his name on the case file.”

  “Okay, what about aunts, uncles, grandparents, cousins? Anyone like that?”

  “Oh, yes,” Laura said cynically. “I talked to Renata’s mother a few hours after I found the apartment wrecked. We had her number in Rico’s school files. I called thinking she might know where her daughter and her grandson were. You know what she said to me? She hadn’t seen or heard from Renata in nine years, and she’d never even seen Rico. Can you imagine that? He’s her grandson.”

  Nick wrapped his arms tighter around her, and right now it felt as if he were the only thing holding her together.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, fresh tears flooding her eyes.

  He kissed her forehead. “It’s all right.”

  “I just get so angry sometimes.”

  “We all do, Laura. It’s a professional hazard for anyone who works with kids. Tell me about his grandma.”

  “She kicked Renata out of the house when she found out Renata was pregnant with that ‘no-account colored boy’s baby.’ I told her that her grandson was missing, and she didn’t even care. So I can’t imagine her stepping forward to take him.”

  “Great,” he said, “so when he asks what’s going to happen to him, we’ll—”

  “Nick.” She stopped him. “I want him myself.”

  He pulled away from her enough that he could see her face. “Permanently?”

  “Yes. It nearly killed me when I had to give him up the last time so he could go back home to Renata. I knew something awful was going to happen to him, and I never should have let him go back there.”

  “Laura, it wasn’t your decision to make. And you may want him very much right now, but you have to think about this. it’s a very big decision, and you’re still trying to get used to the idea that Renata is probably dead.”

  “I’ve thought about this for months. I decided after the second time Renata OD’d that if I ever had the chance, I would adopt Rico.”

  Nick didn’t say anything at first.

  “I love him very much,” she said. “I could never abandon him. He needs me more than ever.”

  “Do you think you could get permission to adopt him?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “His father was African-American?”

  She nodded.

  “You know there’s a lot of pressure right now to place black children in black families.”

  “I know, but his mother was Hispanic, and so am I. Surely that will be enough.”

  “I hope so, for your sake and for his. But try not to make any promises to him that you’re not sure you’ll be able to keep, all right? If you tell him that he’s going to be your little boy and then the courts won’t let you have him, he’ll be devastated all over again.”

  Laura closed her eyes tightly, too easily seeing in her mind someone taking Rico away from her because a judge decided Rico would be better off with someone else.

  “I can’t lose him,” she said. She wouldn’t. She and Rico were going to be a family, and Nick...

  Would Nick be a part of that? Would he want to be a member of their family? She had no idea how he felt about being a father. Working with kids the way he did, she knew he liked them. Surely he wanted children of his own.

  She thought briefly of the coldhearted professor in Boston to whom she’d been engaged. She’d mentioned the possibility of adoption to him once, and he’d reacted so coldly to the idea. His children would be his in every way—that precious Boston bloodline of his would run through his children’s veins.

  Mitch would have never understood, he would have never been able to accept a child like Rico because of the color of Rico’s skin alone.

  Laura looked at Nick now. He wasn’t anything like Mitch. She’d never detected the first bit of prejudice in him.

  But Laura wanted to be Rico’s mother permanently. She wanted to build a life with him. Rico was a part of her now. If Nick wanted Laura, if he ever came to love her, he’d have to love Rico, as well. She wouldn’t settle for less.

  After all, the world would always be a difficult place for Rico, merely because of the color of his skin. His own grandmother had rejected him because his father wasn’t the same color as she was. Add to that the fact that Rico had never known his father and that his mother had been murdered. He would need every bit of love Laura had to give. He would need a father, also.

  What if Nick didn’t want to be a father? What if he didn’t want to adopt?

  “Laura?” he said.

  “I’m sorry. I was just thinking. What do I say to Rico?”

  “The truth—that you’re going to be his foster parent for now while things get sorted out. Let’s hope that will be enough to satisfy him initially. Maybe by the time he asks more questions you’ll have some answers for him.”

  “All right.” She’d consider that issue settled. As for her and Nick, for families and adoptions, that wasn’t something she could let herself think about right now. She still had too many questions about what Renata’s murder meant. She thought of one of those remaining questions, the worst one.

  “Nick, do you think he saw his own mother die?”

  “It would account for the drops of blood on his clothes and his shoes, and it certainly accounts for the fact that he started running and didn’t stop for three days, that he hasn’t said more than five words since he showed up at the shelter.”

  “My poor little boy,” she said. She’d thought of him that way for the longest time, even though he wasn’t hers. “How are we going to explain this to him, Nick? How are we going to help him? You can help him, can’t you?”

  He didn’t
respond, and Laura panicked for an instant before she got her feelings under control. She hadn’t made a mistake in putting her faith in this man, she told herself. Surely she wouldn’t have made such a monumental mistakes.

  “I know you can help him,” she said, “even if you aren’t certain of that yourself.”

  He looked as if the very idea pained him.

  “Nick?”

  “I’m going to do everything I possibly can for him.”

  And then Laura could breathe again.

  “I hope that’s enough,” Nick added.

  “It will be. It has to be.”

  “Honestly, Laura, right now I’m more worried about keeping him alive than anything else.”

  “Alive?” She hadn’t gotten to the point of worrying about that yet. “What else did Drew say?”

  “Think about it,” Nick said. “What would make Rico so reluctant to talk? Besides seeing his mother that way.”

  Laura swallowed hard and had to force the words past her lips. “Seeing the man who did it?”

  Nick nodded. “Maybe even being warned that there’d be trouble for Rico if he talked about what he saw.”

  “Oh, no.” She tried to deny it for as long as she could.

  “I’m afraid so. If Rico saw that man, if he knew that man or he can identify that man, he won’t be safe until the man is caught.”

  Willingly, even gratefully, Laura went back into Nick’s arms. She was trembling and cold. Inside her, her heart ached for the little boy sleeping in the next room.

  “Laura?” He turned her face toward his again. “In all likelihood you’ve seen the man, as well. You’re in just as much danger as Rico is.”

  She tried to say something at first, but couldn’t. Honestly, she hadn’t thought of herself as being in any danger at all, except the danger that came from her proximity to Rico.