Evening Star (Star Quartet 1)

He grinned at her, his eyes flitting from the top of her head to her bare toes, and cocked a wicked eyebrow at her. “Isn’t it your turn now, love?”

Giana tossed back her head and looked him squarely in the eye. “Yes,” she said, “I suppose it is. You will not embarrass me, Alex Saxton.”

Still, she could not quite meet his eyes when her dressing gown and chemise lay on the floor. She felt his hands close over her arms and draw her gently to him. He pulled her down on his lap. “You have become quite an armful,” he said, resting his hand on her belly.

She squirmed slightly against him and pressed her breasts against his chest.

“Have you no control, woman? You are shamefully eager.” He kissed her deeply, feeling the violent emotional jumble of the day fade away, leaving a tenderness in its wake.

He could feel the hammering of her heart against his chest as he lifted her to the bed.

He made love to her gently, with only the sound of her quickening breath and her soft cries filling the silence. When he felt her tense against him, he gloried in it, and buried his own moans of pleasure against her throat.

“I love you, Alex. Damn you, I love you.”

He twisted his hands in her hair, and covered her soft mouth with kisses.

“I will take your love,” he said, stroking her back gently as she calmed. “It is enough, for now.”

She raised passion-drenched eyes to his face. “I am so frightened,” she whispered. “I am no longer just myself.”

“Then you know how I feel.” He lifted her easily beneath her arms and raised her off him, despite her protests, and smiled. “Let me tell you what I did today,” he said. “Then perhaps you will let me rest awhile.”

He settled himself beside her, eased her against his side, and pulled the covers over them. “After I left you, I went to a sailors’ bar down on the Battery. The bruise on my ribs is the result of a drunken brawl.”

She ran her fingers lightly over the purple bruise. “Was it me you were hitting?”

“No. I am much too mild a man ever to strike a woman.”

“You, mild, Mr. Saxton?”

“Mild but potent,” he said blandly.

“Very true. Your son has been pounding me all day.”

“Giana, there is something I want to tell you.”

She was alerted instantly.

“You remember I told you that Charles Lattimer had wanted to marry Laura?”

“Yes.”

“That wasn’t quite all of it. You see, love, upon reflection, I think my great anger at you was because of Laura, and my memories of her.”

“I don’t understand, Alex,” she said.

He drew a deep breath. “Laura didn’t die in a boating accident, Giana. She killed herself.”

“Oh, Alex, no.” She shuddered at the pain in his eyes. “But why?”

“Her illness became apparent toward the end of our first year of marriage and her pregnancy with Leah. She became afraid of everything, afraid of me, afraid of seeing people, afraid of dying in childbirth. After Leah’s birth, she slipped into a depression so profound that no one could help her. That is why I bought the house in Connecticut. She lived there for three years with her companion. After the death of her father, she lost all hold on reality and killed herself.”

“I’m sorry, Alex.” She clutched him to her, wanting to erase the memory. “But then I must have brought it all back, all of it, at Thanksgiving. You were so superb, you never let on any of it, you never blamed me. It never occurred to me that—”

“How could I blame you?” he said, surprise in his voice. “There was no way you could have known. No one knows the truth. I even kept it from her family. They are Quakers, and the truth would have destroyed them.”

“I always rush into things. I’m an idiot, I never think.”