“How in the world can you separate pretty and sexy and wanting to go to bed with someone from liking them?”
Mike gave a shrug that was the male equivalent of, I don’t know and don’t plan to analyze it.
Samantha got off the bed. “What am I going to wear? The pink Chanel or the red Valentino or the gray Dior?”
“Jeans. They’re in Central Park having a picnic, and there’s over a hundred of them.”
Samantha sat down heavily. It would have been nice if there had been a chair placed where she sat, but there wasn’t.
Moving to the edge of the bed to hang over the side and look down at her sitting on the floor, stark naked, legs crossed, Mike smiled. “You want to try the guest bedroom before we leave?”
Samantha groaned.
“Come on, Sammy-girl, how bad can it be? A hundred people inspecting you, asking you personal questions, my mother wanting to know if you’re a fit person to live with her precious son, the other wives looking you over, my father—”
She hit him in the face with a pillow.
26
It was over an hour before they made it to Central Park because Samantha and Mike nearly had a fight when Mike wanted her to wear skintight jeans and a red T-shirt with no bra. Perhaps the argument had gone farther than it need have because she’d as soon have a fight as go to the park and be put under the scrutiny of a hundred of Mike’s relatives.
When they finally did reach the park, Mike pointed. “There they are.”
It took Samantha a moment to realize that the group of people she’d assumed was the entire population of one of those oddly named European countries was Mike’s relatives. There weren’t a hundred of them, there were at least four hundred, maybe five, she thought. Without a conscious thought, Samantha turned on her heel and started back toward the safety of Fifth Avenue, but Mike caught her arm. Smiling and teasing her all the way from the town house to the park, he seemed to be enjoying himself immensely, so it took a moment for him to see that she wasn’t kidding, that she was indeed petrified with fear.
Turning to look at his family, at the zillions of kids running around, at the chumminess of them all, he thought that maybe Sam was right to be a little nervous.
“Stay here and I’ll get something to calm you down,” he said as he started toward his family.
“Michael!” Samantha hissed at him. “I do not want something to drink!” But Mike didn’t hear her or else he ignored her, as he was already at the first table that was set up under the trees. Half behind a bush, half exposed so she could watch, Samantha saw Mike walk to a woman sitting on a chair under a tree, holding what appeared to be a nursing infant. Mike spoke to the woman for a few minutes, she nodded, then pulled the child from her breast and handed the baby to Mike.
As though the sight of Mike taking a child from its mother’s breast weren’t enough, the fact that no one at the gathering said anything to him was, in Samantha’s eyes, quite odd. She knew he hadn’t seen any of them in at least two months and they had come all the way from Colorado and some from Maine to see him, so why did they say n
othing when he walked into the midst of them?
A moment later he was in front of her and was offering her the drowsy baby as though he were a bouquet of flowers.
Samantha took a step backward. “Mike, I don’t know anything about babies.”
“You didn’t know anything about sex either but you learned,” he said, smiling lecherously. “Take him.”
Looking at the baby he held, she thought she’d never seen anything so beautiful as this pink and white creature. There was milk on the baby’s chin, and she used the blanket edge to wipe it away.
“He needs to be burped.” Watching with great interest, she saw Mike expertly unwind the blanket from the baby, exposing fat arms and legs, a plastic-coated diaper, and a little shirt. Draping the blanket over Samantha’s shoulder, he then pressed the child to her until she was forced to take it into her arms.
Instinct and desire went together to make Samantha gather the child to her.
“A perfect fit,” Mike said, leaning forward to kiss her mouth softly. “Now jostle him around a bit, thump him on the back, and get a belch out of him.”
“Like this?”
“Perfect.”
When the baby gave an enormous burp, she looked at Mike with eyes that said she’d accomplished the most wondrous feat in the world, making him laugh, but she could tell that he was proud of her.
“You’re Uncle Mike,” said a voice some distance below them. They looked down to see a very pretty little girl, about eight years old, golden brown hair perfectly curled and arranged, wearing a divine little white dress with hand-embroidered rosebuds across the front and white shoes and stockings.
“Well, Miss Lisa,” Mike said, “aren’t you the fashion plate for a picnic? Where’d you get that dress?”