LovePlay Read online

  Two rough-looking men at the next table overheard him and turned around. Anything was better than the usual dull routine of coffee and bagels.

  “Hey, lady, you got a screw loose?” one of them asked. “He ain’t bad looking. And babies need lots of stuff.”

  “That’s right,” the shorter, darker man agreed. “My wife and I raised six. Let me tell you, diapers don’t come cheap!”

  “Worst of all, it’s my baby,” Cul told the men on a soft sigh. “She won’t marry me and give it a name. It’s a little girl.”

  “Awwww,” the bigger man murmured, smiling. “That’s sweet.”

  “Yeah.” The shorter one grinned. “I got two little girls of my own.”

  “You oughta marry him, honey,” the bigger man told Bett. “All this talk about people living together and all—it ain’t right. Parents ought to be married. Kids notice stuff like that, you know. They make it rough on each other.”

  “He doesn’t believe it’s his baby,” Bett told them.

  “I do so,” Cul shot back.

  “No you don’t,” Bett said shortly. “You’re just saying that, to make me marry you. You feel sorry for me!”

  “Will you just for once listen to me?” Cul demanded.

  “Here, now, don’t go upsetting the girl,” the man at the next table threatened. “She’s delicate.”

  “That’s right, I’m delicate,” Bett told Cul with a curt nod of her head.

  “You’ll be more delicate if you don’t start eating a decent breakfast,” Cul returned. “You need bacon and eggs and toast and such.”

  “Well, he’s got a point there,” the short man at the next table agreed. “Babies need a lot of nourishment.”

  “I’ll say,” the waitress agreed, pausing to refill coffee cups. “I’ll never forget how hungry I used to get when I carried mine.”

  “My old lady says the same thing,” the bigger man agreed, pulling his hat further over his bald head and moving his chair closer. “You get heartburn yet, honey?”

  “Yes…” Bett began.

  “Nothing like a bottle of Maalox to fix that,” the big man told her.

  The shorter one moved his chair closer, too, forcing Cul to move right up against Bett. He grinned and put an arm around her as the waitress drew up a chair and sat down, and they discussed everything from heartburn to politics to theater.

  “I thought you looked familiar,” the big man nodded when he discovered who Bett was. “Everybody’s been talking about that play. And your feller wrote it, huh? Must be smart.”

  “Not so smart,” Cul sighed, dropping a careless kiss on Bett’s hair, “or I could get her to marry me.”

  “What kind of life would she have,” Janet muttered at him, “with your long line of girlfriends in the background?”

  “I don’t have a long line of girlfriends,” Cul told her. “I’ve reformed. I’m going to be a model husband and father.”

  “I’ve already told you, I’m not marrying you,” Bett told him firmly.

  “We’ll see about that,” Cul returned.

  “No, we won’t…oooof!” She jerked back again as the baby kicked and knocked the wind out of her.

  “What happened?” Cul asked, wide-eyed.

  “The baby kicked,” Janet said knowledgeably. “They do kick, you know.”

  “Awwww,” the big man next to Cul said again, smiling. “Ain’t that sweet? My oldest boy used to kick up a storm in my wife’s stomach.”

  Cul hardly heard the others launch into a discussion of kicking babies. He was staring at Bett, and the two of them were in a world of their own.

  She took his big hand and carried it to her abdomen, pressing it firmly against the mound, slightly to the side of her diaphragm. She bit her lip, waiting, and the baby kicked again. And he felt it.

  His face seemed to glow. His eyes softened as they met hers. He smiled, so tenderly. “My God,” he whispered.

  She smiled back. “She’s very strong, isn’t she?” she asked gently. “The doctor says it’s a good sign that she’s active so soon.”

  Cul searched her eyes. “Magic,” he said under his breath. “That two people can create something so beautiful.”

  Yes, she thought, if only he believed that it was truly his child and not someone else’s. She couldn’t believe that he’d changed his mind so radically, because nothing had changed. She was certain that he still had doubts.

  Around them, the others were still on the subject of pregnancy. They hardly noticed when Cul drew Bett up with him, nodded to Janet, and led her out onto the street.

  “Where are we going?” Bett asked him.

  He had her hand tight in his and he curled his fingers into hers, smiling down at her. “I thought we might go look through the baby department at Macy’s.”

  She tingled all over. “But…”

  “Listen—” he said, turning her to face him so that they blocked traffic, a big blond man with a redheaded pregnant woman in his grasp “—a baby is a baby. You’ve got one and I want one. So if you’ll let me help you raise her, I’ll spoil her rotten.”

  Her lips parted and he bent and kissed her with exquisite tenderness, sending swirls of pleasure all through her.

  “But…” she tried again.

  “You want me, Bett,” he said softly, searching her dark eyes with his green ones. “And I want you, and this.” He touched her abdomen gently. “We’ve got so much going for us, darling. A mutual love of theater, a love of children, an attraction that never seems to fade, and mutual respect. Isn’t that enough to start with?”

  She bit her lower lip. The baby did need a name. And she needed Cul. But how could she marry him when he thought she was carrying another man’s child? She looked up, worried, with the fear in her eyes.

  “I care about you,” he said soberly. “I want to look after you and the baby.”

  She stared at his tie. It was nice. Burgundy with little round things on it. “You don’t want to get married.”

  “Oh, but I do,” he breathed fervently. He cupped her face in his hands and lifted it to blazing green eyes. “I do, I do…you don’t know how much!”

  He bent and pressed her soft lips apart with his, probing, gently nibbling. She felt her knees going weak and caught his big arms to keep from going down. He smiled against her warm mouth.

  “Getting weak in the knees, little one?” he whispered on a rough laugh. “Come home with me, and I’ll love you half to death, Bett.”

  That did make her blood sing. She caught her breath. “You can’t go around propositioning pregnant women in the middle of the street.”

  “I just did. Come on,” he taunted, biting gently at her lower lip, tugging it between his teeth. “I’ll nib- ble your breasts like this, Bett, just the way you like it.”

  She trembled. “Cul!”

  His cheek nuzzled hers and his breath was warm at her ear. “Come home with me, you little coward. You know you want to.”

  “I have a matinee…” she began.

  “Your understudy is going on for you,” he murmured. “I want you all to myself for a while. Just the two of us. The three of us,” he amended, tracing her belly with his fingers. “Well?”

  Her nails bit into the fine fabric of his suit coat. Her eyes closed. Where were her pride and her temper when she needed them?

  “Yes,” she said on a held breath. He turned her, clasping her hand tightly, and drew her along with him.

  Minutes later, she found herself in his apartment without any real sense of how she got there. He had her across his lap on the sofa, and he was kissing her like a starving man.

  “Did you know,” he murmured between kisses, “that possession is nine-tenths of the law?

  “What do you mean?”

  “That I’ve got you now, and I’m not letting you out of this apartment,” he chuckled under his breath. “You’re mine.”

  “Kidnapper!” she accused.

  “When it’s the only recourse left,” he agreed.
His hands eased her out of the tweed coat, disclosing the burgundy corduroy maternity skirt and the patterned maternity top that matched it.

  She touched his hand as he started to remove the top. “Cul, I’m awfully swollen,” she said apprehensively.

  “And you don’t think I’ll find you sexy like this?” he mused, studying her wide eyes. “Idiot!”

  He picked her up, laughing, carrying her into his bedroom. He eased her down onto the coverlet, and stripped her with deft, expert hands, disclosing a body that was exquisite in pregnancy, all cream and mauve contrasts and rounded flesh.

  “Don’t you know,” he whispered, touching her stomach, her breasts, “that there’s nothing more beautiful than a rose in full bloom?”

  She bit her lower lip. “I’ll get bigger.”

  “Hallelujah!” he said on a beaming smile. “More of you to hold.”

  Tears misted her eyes. “You don’t think I look ugly?”

  “Wait until I get my clothes off, honey, and I’ll show you what I think.”

  He undressed slowly, letting her watch, laughing deeply at her fascination. This was new, because even during their earlier intimacy, he’d never undressed for her. There had always been too much urgency.

  But now he was taking his time, taunting her with the threat of his big, hard-muscled body.

  “Want me, Bett?” he chided as the last vestiges of clothing came away and he stood over her, hands on his hips, challenging her.

  Her eyes adored him. Her lover. The father of her child. Her whole world. “More than I want to go on breathing,” she whispered, absently.

  He sat down beside her and drew her hands to his chest, brushing them over the thick hair and warm muscle, watching them learn the contours of his body. “We never did it like this, did we, Bett?” he whispered as he taught her how to touch him, to please him. “We never did it with love.”

  She caught her breath. “I did.”

  “Yes. But I didn’t,” he whispered, bending to her mouth. “Not like this.”

  And when he began to kiss her, she knew the difference immediately. It was a kind of wooing. A tender wooing. A tasting of souls more than bodies, mutual consideration and selflessness. Her heart seemed to stop beating altogether at the new and gentle passion he gave her.

  She felt the rough-silk slide of his body on hers, the aching tenderness of his mouth learning every curve, every line of her body. He was slower than he’d ever been, more thorough. And in every soft brush of his lips was the emotion that had been lacking before. The love.

  “Exquisite,” he whispered huskily as his mouth edged down her waist to her hips and over the mound of their child. “I never knew anything could be as profound as this!”

  He was trembling all over, and still he continued, touching her writhing body as if he’d never touched a woman in his life. She moaned helplessly, giving herself to him, trusting her pleasure to the expert hands and mouth that were schooling her body in delicious agony.

  “Cul, please!” Her voice broke. Her eyes, looking up into his, were wild and darker than onyx, her body as taut as steel under the guiding touch of his hands.

  His own eyes were glittering strangely, his face drawn, reddened with contained passion. He smiled slowly as he lifted up and drew her hips gently under his.

  “Is it unbearable, Bett?” he whispered. “Is that why you’re trembling so madly under me?”

  “Un…bearable,” she agreed, gasping. Her hands went to his hips and tried to pull them down to the ache in her own. “I want…you…so, Cul!”

  He looked down at her body, sliding his big hands under her, lifting her. “No,” he whispered when she tried to rush him. “No, lie still. Let me do it. Let me control it. Look, darling. Watch us.”

  She did, her eyes widening in astonishment, because it had never been quite so intimate before. “Cul!”

  “Good,” he breathed, his eyes closing, his mouth opening. “Good. It’s good. It’s so good this time, so good! Bett!”

  She barely heard him. Her body was on fire, quicksilver under the sweet crush of his, feeling his heartbeat over hers, his fierce movements echoing the taut writhing of her own.

  He was groaning, and she twisted up toward him, reaching for a fulfillment that would surely kill her. And it was happening. All at once, in a sunburst of explosive passion, it was happening. She began to weep as it washed over her, taking her mind, flinging her up against his damp, shuddering body. She heard him cry out hoarsely seconds later, and their frantic heartbeats seemed amplified, filling the room, deafening her….

  She felt his mouth on her closed eyelids, her forehead, her cheeks, her throat. He was kissing her, comforting her, drying the tears.

  Her eyes opened, astonished, and looked up into a face so warm and tender with love that she started crying all over again.

  He laughed, the sound soft and sweet, and he drew a corner of the sheet against her cheeks to absorb the salty tears. “I hope my neighbors are away,” he whispered with wicked humor, “or the police may be at our doorstep any minute to find out who’s being tortured in here.”

  “I couldn’t help it,” she muttered, coloring.

  “Neither could I,” he whispered, bending to kiss her swollen mouth tenderly. “Oh, darling, such sweet explosions! We never loved like that.”

  She held him to her, staring past his damp blond head at the ceiling. “No,” she said quietly. “Not like that.”

  “I didn’t even know that I loved you, Bett,” he whispered at her ear, “until you accused me of not knowing how. Until you told me to go away, and I realized that I was going to die without you. And it was too late. Or so I thought.”

  Her heart leaped. She knew that he loved her, of course. After what had just happened, it was impossible not to know. But it was so wonderful to hear it.

  She held him closer, smoothing his cool, damp hair with long, loving fingers. “Those were dark days, without you,” she whispered.

  His hands contracted at her back. “And I left you to face it all alone. Pregnancy and illness…” His voice broke.

  “It’s all right,” she whispered, cherishing him against her. “It’s all right. I understand.”

  “No, you don’t.” He drew away from her slowly, with a deep breath, and reached for a cigarette. He propped himself up, magnificent in his unashamed nudity, and drew her to his side while he smoked. “Bett, what you said about my reasoning…most of it was true. I didn’t realize it, but I was using my sterility as a weapon, to keep out of emotional involvement. My parents weren’t the ideal endorsement for marriage and commitment, you know. They had affairs all my life. I never knew a loving family or security. I never had either. I thought I wanted it, but I kept drawing back, out of fear.” He looked down at her. “I was afraid of loving you, because I was afraid of losing you.”

  She let her head fall back on his arm and looked up at him with a teasing grin. “If you’d only known. I’d have followed you through a forest fire with matches in both hands. That never changed, in all the years between. Why do you think I was still a virgin?”

  “I didn’t let myself think about it. It was too revealing, because I realized how much it mattered to me, being your first man.” He touched her soft belly, and smiled broadly. “And now…our daughter. My God, you’ll never know the names I called myself when I thought I’d lost you and the baby. I’ve been in hell since the afternoon I stormed out of your apartment. I was terrified that you might go off half cocked and marry someone, just for security.”

  “So you locked yourself up in your tower and got drunk?”

  “Not quite,” he confessed. “Actually, I was working on something.”

  He put out the cigarette and got up, disappearing into the other room. He was back a minute later with a manuscript in one hand. He tossed it onto the bed and stretched out on his stomach beside her.

  “Read that,” he murmured, “while I take a catnap. When I wake up,” he added, opening one eye, “we’ll make fe
verish love, followed by feverish marriage plans.”

  She opened her mouth to speak, but he chided, “Read, woman, read!”

  And for the next hour, she did. It was a copy of his screenplay. It opened with a couple of struggling actors in a small summer stock theater group, and the hero was sterile. His lover became pregnant, and he wouldn’t believe the baby was his. But in the end, without having fertility tests rerun or any other scientific proof offered, he realized that trust was the important thing. Either he loved her enough to take her word, or he didn’t love her at all. He decided that the baby was his. And they married, after a turbulent courtship, and lived happily ever after with the twins she bore him.

  She stared at the scattered pages for a long moment, before she realized that it was their story. Cul was telling her that he did believe it was his baby, despite proof to the contrary. He was telling her, for all the world to see, that he loved her.

  Tears began to trickle down her cheeks. She felt humble.

  “Now, now, little mama, don’t cry,” he whispered, rolling over to draw her down into his arms. “You’ll upset little Kate.”

  She cried all the harder. “Oh, Cul,” she whimpered against his warm, strong shoulder. “I love you so!”

  “Do you really?” he murmured. “Why don’t you roll over and show me, then? And then I’ll show you, and afterward we’ll call your parents and tell them that they’re going to have a son-in-law and a grandbaby.”

  She sniffed into a corner of the sheet. “They’ll be scandalized.” she said, laughing tearfully.

  “They’ll be too delighted to be scandalized. Come on, weeping willow,” he teased, easing her onto his bare chest, so that her breasts became sensitive to the exquisite abrasion of his hair. “Make love to me.”

  “But I don’t know how,” she protested shyly. “You never liked me to take the initiative.”

  “That was before I realized why I’d walked around like half a man ever since Atlanta,” he murmured softly. His eyes caressed hers. “Oh, Bett, there was never another woman. There were a few casual pickups, but any man can tell you that lust alone is very unsatisfying. Eventually, I gave up sex for companionship. Until you came along again, that is. And now, I want to do everything with you. I want to live with you and love you and spoil you rotten. I want to plan things with you, and look forward to the baby with you.” He brushed her mouth with his. “I want to grow old with you, darling woman.”