Within the first week of their marriage, Lane had tied up nearly every loose end of his life prior to Toni. His request for an extended leave of absence from his job had been received with shock by all who knew him, but granted nevertheless. He had sublet his apartment, transferred his bank accounts, both savings and checking, to the bank in Chaney, and yesterday his car and the rest of his clothes had arrived via two lawmen who had volunteered to bring it all out on the way to their annual hunting trip in Kentucky.
But he had yet to confront the balance of Toni’s family or the doctor in charge of her care. The family would have to wait. Lane was determined that Dr. Cross tell him to his face that she was not in danger. Accompanying her to her next appointment was high on his list of things to do.
* * *
The phone rang sharply in the hall, breaking the quiet with a persistence that sent Toni scrambling to answer. She picked up on the fourth ring and was gasping for breath when she lifted the receiver to her ear. “Hello?”
“What’s wrong?” Justin asked. “You sound like you're out of breath.”
Toni leaned against the wall and pressed her hand to her chest, trying to slow down the rapid thump of her heartbeat.
“I am, you dolt,” she said lightly. “I can’t even walk without puffing, never mind running for the phone.”
“You shouldn’t be running,” Justin said shortly. “You might fall.”
Toni sighed. “Justin, for once, have pity on me and give it a rest. I hear caution on a daily basis now, you know.”
“No, I don’t know anything about what’s going on over there anymore,” he said, sounding slightly aggrieved.
“It’s probably just as well that you don’t,” she muttered, and didn’t realize that she’d spoken aloud.
She saw Lane out of the corner of her eye and tried not to stare. If he would only put on more clothes after his shower, she would be able to cope with his presence in a more dignified fashion. In her mind it wasn’t seemly to be so ungainly with child, and still so in lust for the man who had fathered it. She kept waiting for her nesting instincts to replace the ones that had gotten her into this mess, but they were lost somewhere in the memory of making love to a gentle giant.
Lane watched her from the hallway, and thought that she grew more beautiful with every day. Hiding his feelings was difficult, but imperative. Telling her that she was loved before she believed that she was worthy was not a wise move. Not after all that had come and gone between them during the past week.
After a lifetime in sunny Florida, the shock of a Tennessee winter and the warm woman he held each night without possibility of loving was making him slightly insane. Coupled with that, each day he was reliving a hell on earth just by watching her body grow bigger with a child that he’d caused, a child that he still believed might kill her. He was not a happy man.
Toni turned away from the intensity of Lane’s gaze and realized that Justin had stopped talking. She hoped that he had not been waiting for an answer to a question that she hadn’t heard.
“So, Justin, other than a small dose of guilt, which, by the way, remind me to thank you for later, was there anything else you wanted me to know?”
“I was just making sure you had someone to take you to your doctor’s appointment today. And,” he added, “Judy wanted me to invite you...and the lawman...to come to dinner this weekend after church. Everyone will be here.”
Toni wanted to say no, but there was really no point in delaying the inevitable. Her family already knew Lane as the man she’d saved from the flood, and who later had saved her life. But they had yet to meet him on personal ground as the newest member of the Hatfield clan. The implications of what might happen when they got together boggled, but she knew the time had come.
“I suppose we could,” she said.
Lane paused in the doorway, wearing nothing but a towel and giving her a look that she didn’t want to interpret. He was her husband in name only, but she still felt obligated to inform him of the invitation.
“Justin has invited us to dinner the day after tomorrow. Is there a reason why we can’t go?”
Lane grinned at the flush on her face, letting his gaze rake her lush, pregnant curves from top to bottom, then shook his head slowly from side to side.
“Not one I can do anything about,” he whispered for her ears alone.
Toni inhaled sharply and spun away from his taunting look. Why he kept flirting with her while she was in this...condition was beyond her comprehension. She’d always imagined that men would be turned off at the thought of hugging a whale. She hated pretense, and she was convinced that he was only being nice to her because he was a nice man, not because he really cared a damn about her. She had, after all, deceived him four ways from Sunday.
“We'll be there,” she said. “And Lane’s going to the doctor with me, so I don’t need you to ride sidesaddle anymore.”
“Well, if you ever need me, Judy and I are just a phone call away,” he muttered, and hung up the phone.
Toni replaced the receiver with a sigh. Her brother was feeling rejected, but she didn’t have time to pamper his ego, not when Lane kept putting himself in her direct line of vision.
“Aren’t you ever going to get dressed?” she grumbled. “We'll be late for my appointment.”
Lane grinned. “No, we won’t. But just to make you happy...” He came so close to her that she could smell the scent of soap still fresh on his skin. “I'll go put on some clothes. I wouldn’t want to make you mad.” He leaned down and kissed the tip of her ear. “I like to keep my women happy.”
“And you're very good at it, too, aren’t you? Comes from extreme amounts of practice, I would assume.”
She glared at him, almost begging him to deny what she’d implied, that he’d had so many women that he was highly adept at keeping them satisfied. But he did nothing but arch an eyebrow and stare intently at the curve of her lower lip.
“You're very beautiful when you're angry, did you know that?” He tilted her chin just enough to catch the light from the window behind him and knew that she was in shock by what he’d said. “It makes those little gold flecks in your eyes almost burn. And your nostrils flare, just like they do when you make love. It’s a sexy thing to see, Antonette. I hope you know you're making me hurt all over.”
Oh, my God. I can almost...almost believe he means that.
She slapped his hand away and pushed him toward the bedroom door. “Just put on some clothes and quit lying through your teeth. I don’t need to hear all of this, and I damn sure don’t believe it.”
Lane groaned softly with want. Ignoring the pout on her mouth, he leaned down and kissed her, savoring the connection as deeply as if it had been their bodies and not their lips that had joined.
“But you will,” he whispered as he reluctantly released her from the kiss. “One of these days you will believe everything I tell you.” If it isn’t too late, he thought. If I haven’t already killed you and we just don’t know it.
“I'll be ready in a few minutes.” He ran a finger down the straight of her nose. “You know what? You don’t have any more lipstick on, honey.” He winked as he walked away.
Toni held the memory of that kiss and his wink long after they had ended, and reminded herself not to make so much of the lust that she’d seen in his eyes. It had to have been her imagination.
* * *
As usual, the doctor’s office was crowded. Women in various stages of pregnancy sat or sprawled, as their conditions demanded, upon the waiting room chairs while herding their other offspring with weary eyes.
Lane tried to find a place for himself among this all-female show, but considering the location, and his size, it wasn’t easy. His legs stuck out in the aisle, and his shoulders bunched as he tried to make himself as small as possible.
At this point in their lives, no matter what their marital status, these women were almost past appreciating the male of the species. But Lane Monday was a hard man to ignore, and so he suffered more than one speculative glance.
Toni checked in, quietly giving the receptionist the new information regarding her name change. But a half hour later when the nurse announced the name of Toni Monday, and the woman everyone had known during the past few months as Toni Hatfield stood, the women grinned.
“Way to go, girl,” one woman said, and wiggled her eyebrows at Toni and appreciatively eyed Lane’s long legs and backside as they passed.
“Good grief,” Lane muttered, and sighed with relief as they bypassed the waiting room for an examining room instead.
Toni hid a grin. It was the first time in their entire relationship that she’d seen him ill at ease. She wanted to laugh at it all. At his unwarranted fears regarding the child. At the way fate had intervened with her plans. But she wouldn’t laugh in the face of fate. Not anymore. She’d come to realize that she was no good at playing God with people’s lives. She’d tried to have a child without the father’s knowledge and look what had happened. She’d ruined his future as well as her future plans. She’d planned on being a mother, not a wife. In her mind the two had still not mixed.
“Just have a seat,” the nurse said. “Dr. Cross will be with you shortly.”
The moment that they entered the confines of the sterile-looking room, Lane started to sweat. There were too many ugly memories associated with baby doctors and hospitals for him to relax.
Toni recognized his agitation and suspected its cause. Instinctively, she sought a way to make his fears a little easier to bear.
“It will be fine,” she said softly, and patted his arm without thinking that she’d initiated a contact she’d sworn not to make.
Lane covered her hand with his own, and then caught it to his lips, pressing a kiss on the palm of her hand before pulling his chair as close to hers as it could get.
“God, Toni, you just don’t understand. You keep saying that I should look at you and know that you can handle anything. Well, look at me for a change. See me and know the truth. I'm so big, Toni. Maybe too big. I sire children just like me.”
She shuddered and wanted to throw her arms around him. But that would be admitting to herself, as well as to him, that she couldn’t do this alone.
“I certainly hope so,” she said. “I always wanted a child with blue eyes.”
Lane’s eyes widened, and a slight smile spread across his face. “You are so damned hardheaded, aren’t you?”
She shrugged, trying to think of an answer that was close to the truth; then the doctor entered the room and saved her from lying.
“Miss Hatfield, I see you're—”
“Mrs. Monday,” Toni said, correcting him at the same instant that the doctor noticed Lane. “Dr. Cross, this is my husband, Lane Monday. And he seems to believe that I will die having this child.”
The shock of her statement stayed with Dr. Cross as he watched the man unfold himself from the chair and then stand to shake his hand. He looked up, then up some more.
“Mr. Monday, it’s a pleasure,” he said, and waved for them to sit as he dropped onto his stool. “And what exactly is it that causes such fears? Your wife is as healthy a patient as I've ever had.”
“I've already lost one woman I got in this condition, that’s why,” Lane growled. “Now, you tell me that it’s not going to happen again.”
“I don’t understand,” the doctor said.
“His first wife died trying to give birth. The baby was too big, and she didn’t survive the shock of other complications. Because of his size, Lane blames himself.”
“A common, but unfortunate, misconception,” the doctor said. He smiled at Lane as if to ease his words. “You are definitely a big man. But all big men start out as small babies.”
“Not always so small. I weighed eleven pounds when I was born,” Lane said. “My first wife wife died trying to give birth to a seven-and-a-half-month preemie that weighed nearly ten pounds. Talk me out of this. I need to believe you,” Lane said.
The doctor’s eyebrows rose as he listened to the big man’s shaky voice. “Look, Mr. Monday, during a woman’s pregnancy and the ultimate act of birth, the only real thing a man can take credit for is the sex of the child. Whatever else happens during the pregnancy and birth process is the mother’s and the doctor’s business. You just sit back and wait for it all to happen. If there should be a complication, thanks to your warnings, we'll be well prepared. But I do appreciate knowing your family history. It will help me prepare for things I might not have foreseen.”
“I told you it would be fine,” Toni said, and tried not to think of another woman dying without being able to give life to the baby that she and Lane had created.
“I will believe it when I see that baby and know that my wife is fine and not before then,” Lane said stubbornly.
“I take it you wish to be in the delivery room,” the doctor said.
“I have to be,” Lane replied, taking Toni’s hand as he spoke. “I need to see for myself that she will be all right.”
He doesn’t mean that the way it sounded, Toni told herself. He doesn’t really care about me on that level. It’s just fear, and not love, that I hear in his voice.
But the notion had still been set, and when the checkup was over and they were on their way home, Toni dozed with her head against his shoulder, and dreamed of a man and a baby and matching eyes of blue.
* * *
“You sure are big,” a young Hatfield announced. “Are you a giant?”
Lane eyed the stair-stepped brood of children surrounding his chair, and tried not to grin. They were so serious that he felt they at least deserved his full attention.
“Nope,” he said, and ruffled the dark brown hair of the nearest child. “Do I look like one?”
“Yes,” they chorused, and then giggled.
“Well, you all look like little squirts to me. Are you?”
A small blond girl giggled. She was David and Laura’s youngest, and the Sunday dinner that Lane was given to endure seemed destined to be a series of questions and answers. First from the grown-ups, now from their children.
“I'm not a squirt,” the child said. “I'm Chelsea.”
Lane laughed, and lifted the tiny child onto his lap. “Hello there, Chelsea. You sure are pretty. Just like your aunt Toni.”
She nodded, apparently well aware of her worth in her family. “Did you really marry my aunt Toni?”
“Yes. Is that okay?”
“I guess so,” she said, giving his face and hands special consideration. “You don’t even have to stand on a chair to do the tree, do you?”
Even the adults who were trying not to listen laughed along with Lane at the little girl’s reference to decorating the Christmas trees that stood in every Hatfield home. And it was fairly obvious, even to the babies, that Lane Monday did not stand on chairs to do anything.
Toni watched from across the room, wishing she believed Lane when he said that she was pretty, and wanting desperately to be the one sitting in Lane’s lap, and not her niece. She was tired and aching, and sleepy beyond belief, and she could have used that broad strong shoulder to lean on.
Her spirit was still willing, but her body was giving out on her on a daily basis. At eight months pregnant, she completed daily tasks with slow deliberation, not wasting a motion or wanting to retrace a step.
She shifted in her seat, and then stood, bracing her back with her hand as she slipped from the room. Maybe if she could just find a quiet place to lie down for a minute, she would feel better.
It was instinctive, but the moment Toni left the room, Lane seemed to know it. It was as if she’d turned out a light behind her. The sense of loss was physical as his gaze lifted from the child in his lap to the people sitting and standing around the room.
He stood, making a game out of dumping the little girl on her head in the chair that he had just vacated, while he searched the room for a sign of his wife.
“Where did Toni go?” Lane asked.
Both Justin and David looked startled at Lane’s obvious concern. “Why, she’s right over...”
The chair was empty.
Lane walked out of the room without waiting for an answer. He would see for himself.
* * *
There were no empty beds. They were full of napping babies in various stages of development, from toddlers to crawlers. The youngest baby, Lucy, claimed the baby bed for her own.
Toni sighed and then smiled at the sight of the babies in slumber. “I should have known better,” she said, and then turned and walked straight into Lane’s outstretched arms.
“Oh!” she gasped, and would have staggered but for the strong clasp of his hands upon her arms. “I didn’t see you there.”
“But I saw you,” he whispered, aware of sleeping children and his weary woman, and held out his arms again. He groaned beneath his breath when she walked into the hug without complaint. Little by little, she was coming around. He just had to have faith that she would finally realize what she meant to him.
“Are you ready to go home?” he asked as he stroked the back of her neck with a gentle, massaging touch. “You look tired.”
Toni leaned sideways against him, remembering a time when their bodies fit much closer, and tried not to cry, although it was something that happened often these days.
“Yes, I am. Thank you for asking.”
He frowned. “I don’t need to be thanked for taking care of what’s mine.”
Oh, Lane, if only I believed that you meant that. But the only sign that she gave of how moved she was by his words was to lay her head a little closer to the middle of his chest. It felt safest to be closest to his heart.
She entered the living room beneath the shelter of his arm, although from Toni’s point of view, Lane was simply helping her stay on her feet.
“What’s wrong?” Justin asked when he saw how Toni was leaning.
Lane answered for the both of them. “She’s tired. We're going home. Thank you for dinner and the family welcome. She will call.”
Toni didn’t even bother adding to his comments other than sending a smile and a couple of kisses to a niece who demanded what she called “bye-bye sugars.”
She wondered as they drove home if she dared let herself get used to someone making decisions for her. Having a broad shoulder and a warm body to lean on was a luxury she could get used to fast.
* * *
It was almost dark when Lane burst through the kitchen door, slamming it shut behind him, trying to outrun the cold gust of air that had been on his heels.
“I wondered where you had gone,” Toni said nonchalantly, trying not to let him know that she even cared. She’d awakened from her nap to an empty house and realized how much she’d come to depend upon his presence for comfort.
“I was helping Abel feed the livestock,” he said, stuffing his gloves into the pocket of his coat before hanging it on a peg by the door. “He says it’s going to snow before morning.”
Toni shrugged. The man that she’d hired months earlier to help her with the heavy work had taken a definite liking to Lane.
“If Abel says it will snow, then it wouldn’t surprise me.” And then she smiled at the thought of the Christmas tree in the living room and the presents tucked far underneath the spreading branches. “In six more days, it will be Christmas. It would be nice if we could have a white one.”
Lane frowned at the thought of snow and ice. “I don’t want to be stranded up here,” he muttered, unaware that he’d thought out loud.
Tears stung Toni’s eyes, and she turned away, unwilling to let him see that he could hurt her this badly, simply by admitting that he didn’t want to be around her.
“I know I'm not the best company, but you asked for every bit of this, you know.”
Lane groaned, caught her in his arms, then turned her to face him. “I didn’t mean I didn’t want to be stranded with you. I meant I didn’t want you to be stranded, honey. When are you going to get it through your head that I want you safe?”
“And when are you going to stop making me crazy talking like I'm a doomed woman? How do you think that makes me feel, Lane? I've never had a baby before. I want this to be a positive experience, not one where I go in expecting to breathe my last gasp on a delivery table while you stand there pointing and saying 'I told you so.'”
Shame made him acknowledge the truth of her words, although he couldn’t let go of his fear.
“You're right,” he said quietly, and tilted her chin with his fingertip. “I'm sorry. I'm a jerk.”
“I already knew that,” Toni said, then looked away so that he would not see her smile.
“How can I make it up to you?” Lane asked, and nipped the lobe of her ear with his teeth before cupping her hips with the palms of his hands.
“Don’t,” Toni said, trying to twist out of his arms. “I'm ugly. You don’t want to—”
“My God,” Lane said, and shook from the need to make love to her. “How can you say that? Better yet, how can you think it, lady? Do you feel this?”
He grabbed her hand and slid it down the front of his jeans. It wasn’t the zipper that bulged against her palm. Her eyes widened as he wrapped her in his arms and whispered against her cheek.
“I lie beside you and watch you sleep and think I've never seen a woman as beautiful. You smile and my damned legs get weak in the knees. I've loved you far longer than I had a right to. And I don’t care anymore whether you believe me or not. I had what I thought was a really good reason to leave you behind. You, my hardheaded woman, have proved me wrong.”
“I don’t believe you, you know,” Toni whispered, and let his hands wander across her body because it felt too good to make him stop.
“Oh, hell, I know that,” he muttered, and picked her up into his arms as if she didn’t weigh an ounce.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“To bed. I want to show you something.”
“What?” she asked.
“How many ways there are to make love without rocking the boat...and our baby.”
She gasped and unconsciously covered her belly with her hands. “You can’t actually mean you want to...that we can...” She ducked her head and then closed her eyes when he laid her gently in the middle of the bed. She heard the rustling of clothing being removed and moaned softly. “I don’t want you to see me like this.”
“Why not, love, why not?” he whispered. “I'm willing to let you see me like this.”
Toni opened her eyes and couldn’t tear her gaze away. He wore nothing but the jutting proof of his desire and a fire in his eyes that burned white-hot.
Her voice shook, but her gaze never wavered as she made a place for him on the bed.
“Oh, Lane, what was I thinking when I pulled you out of that flood?”
“If you weren’t out of your mind then, I can assure you that before we're through tonight, you will be.”
* * *
“It snowed.”
“Good morning, love,” Lane whispered as he walked up behind her, kissing the back of her neck before peering over her shoulder and out the window. “Of course it snowed. Abel said it would, remember?”
Toni remembered a whole lot more about last night than Abel’s predictions. She’d never known a body could soar when weighed down with a burgeoning anchor.
“Oh!” she gasped, laughing when the baby kicked and rolled inside her like a tumbling pup. “Feel that! We're not the only ones awake.”
Lane’s eyes turned dark with emotion as Toni grabbed his hands and held them flat against the skin on her belly. But old memories got in the way of new joy, and he dropped his hands and turned away. As badly as he wanted to share Toni’s joy, he was unable to let himself care. If he cared too much, it might jinx them all.
“Don’t,” Toni urged, pulling him back around and then stepping into his arms. “Don’t be afraid for me or for your child. We're going to be fine.”
And if you're not, I will not survive twice.