WHEN ANDI RETURNED with pillows and towels in her arms and the camera shoved down the front of her suit, she found Bowie kneeling in front of Nicole. He was talking to her softly, his hands still in the air to keep them clean, while Nicole dug her fingers into his shoulders.
“Just hang on until it’s over,” he murmured. “That’s it. Quick little breaths.”
“I must be hurting you,” she gasped out.
“Not at all. Just hold on.”
“There.” Nicole hung her head and relaxed her grip. “That one’s past.”
“I’ll fix the bed,” Andi said, “and then I’ll try to wake Sleeping Beauty.”
“Yeah, I’d feel better if he was in on this,” Bowie said.
Andi walked around them and made a backrest of the pillows as she listened to Bowie help Nicole through another pain. “If you didn’t finish the childbirth classes, how do you know the breathing techniques?”
“Watching ‘ER,’” he said.
“Thank God for television.” Andi set the camera on a nearby shelf, where it would be handy, before crouching in front of Nicole. “I’m going to help you over to the bed now, okay?”
“Okay.” Nicole gripped her hand tight when another pain hit.
Wondering if Nicole had the strength to break the bones in her hand, Andi held on until the contraction passed, and then she finally got Nicole settled on the bed. “We’ll have to get that bathing suit off, Nic.”
“But what if Chance wakes up?”
“Hey, sweetheart, this is no time to be—”
“Let’s get her a sheet if it’ll make her feel better,” Bowie said. “That’s how they do it in the hospital, anyway.”
“Bowie, I love you,” Nicole said, her eyes teary. “Don’t you just love him, Andi?”
“Yeah, I’m crazy about him. You got yourself a winner, there, sis.” Andi leaned down and kissed Nicole on the cheek. “Sit tight. I’ll get you a sheet.”
She returned quickly, helped Nicole out of her bathing suit and draped the sheet over her, forming a tent over her bent knees. None too soon, apparently. Just as Andi was adjusting the sheet, Nicole let loose with a swearword Andi had never heard her use before.
Bowie looked startled. “Nic? You okay, babe?”
“Don’t you babe me,” Nicole said, panting. “And wake up that worthless brother of yours. It’s showtime.”
Andi stifled a chuckle as she looked at Bowie. “Guess I’d better rouse Marcus Welby. Watch over her.”
Nicole took one look at her husband, gave a loud groan and started swearing again. “I hate men!” she cried, breathing hard. “Every one of you can take a leap off the Sears Tower, as far as I’m concerned. And take your pride and joy with you!”
Bowie patted her knee. “We will, I promise. Right after we bring another delightful little girl into the world.”
“I’m never letting her have sex,” Nicole said darkly.
“She’ll be a nun,” Andi promised as she dampened a kitchen towel at the sink and walked back to the unconscious Chance. She wiped his forehead until he stirred and moaned.
Nicole continued to swear a blue streak during each contraction.
Andi figured her sister must be getting close to zero hour. “Let me know if you need me over there,” she said over her shoulder as she applied the damp towel to Chance’s face.
“I may need an interpreter,” Bowie said.
Andi grinned. “She learned to swear in Italian when Dad was stationed in Sicily. She just told you and Chance where to shove your precious houseboat.”
Chance slowly opened his eyes and looked up at her with a dazed expression. “Is that Nicole yelling?”
“Yeah. The paramedics couldn’t make it so we’re delivering this baby ourselves. We could use your help.”
Chance squeezed his eyes shut. “I passed out. Dammit.”
“Think you’re up to helping us out?”
“Yep.” With a grim set to his mouth, he heaved himself to his feet.
“Steady,” Andi said as he staggered slightly. She grabbed the chair Nicole had vacated and shoved it under him.
He sat down heavily. “Hi, Nic. How’re you doing?”
“Oh, so now I get to deal with two of you Jefferson sleazeballs.”
Bowie peered around her tented knees. “But hon, I’m your hero, remember?”
“I’m never letting you hero me again, you slimebucket. Oh, God!”
Chance swallowed and turned pale.
Bowie was concentrating on the task at hand and seemed not to notice his brother’s condition. “What should I do, Chance?” he asked.
“Tell her to push,” Chance said, his voice strained. Sweat popped out on his forehead.
“Push,” Bowie said, excitement lacing his voice.
Nicole swore some more.
“Push, sweetheart! That’s it She’s coming!”
Andi noticed Chance didn’t look too good, but she didn’t have time to tend to him. She grabbed the camera and stationed herself at the end of the bed. Kneeling down, she looked through the viewfinder as Nicole gave one more colorful curse and Bowie gently eased his daughter into the world. She forgot to click the shutter, and tears blurred her view. The tiny baby began to cry, and so did Bowie.
Andi lowered the camera. Some things just couldn’t be captured on film. Bowie lifted the baby, umbilical cord still attached, and laid her against Nicole’s breast. Then he leaned down and kissed his wife on the forehead, just as the whir of helicopter blades sounded in the distance and Chance moaned and slipped off the chair onto the floor.
WHEN CHANCE CAME TO he was looking into the face of a paramedic. Dammit, he’d passed out again. Major disgrace. He struggled to sit up.
“Take it easy,” the guy said. “Don’t move too fast. Fathers pass out all the time during deliveries.”
“I’m not the father. I’m the uncle.”
“So you’re the sensitive type. No reason to be embarrassed about that.”
Chance clenched his jaw. “I’m not the sensitive type.” He got to his feet and shook his head to clear it. The houseboat was a rush of sound and motion as the medical team worked in its practical and efficient manner to clean up mother and baby and prepare them for the flight to a Las Vegas hospital. Everyone exclaimed over the healthy baby. Nicole wasn’t in pain anymore and smiled at everyone who came within her field of vision. Chance felt his strength returning.
It really was a miracle, he thought, catching the contagious spirit of goodwill that touched everyone on board. Bowie ran around slapping the medical-team members on the back and promising to mail them all cigars. His little brother had delivered a baby, Chance thought, while he had been worse than no help. He’d been in the way. All in all, it had been an extremely humbling day.
He watched Andi rush around gathering belongings for Bowie and Nicole to take with them. Then she handed Bowie the key to her apartment so he’d have a place to stay in Las Vegas while Nicole and the baby were in the hospital. Everyone had a duty, a responsibility, except him. He couldn’t remember ever feeling quite so useless. Or quite so relieved.
“That does it, then,” the woman in charge said, surveying Nicole bundled on a stretcher and the baby tucked into a plastic bassinet. “We’ll transport mother, baby and father to the hospital. Here’s the phone number.” She handed a card to Andi. “I can radio someone to fly in and take you two off tonight, or the marina can send a boat here tomorrow morning. Your choice.”
Andi flicked a quick look at Chance. “Are you okay until tomorrow?”
“I’m fine.” And he was. With every passing minute he felt stronger…and more foolish. The least he could do to redeem himself was figure out a way to get this boat off the sand. “We can call in the morning if we need help,” he added.
“I may be able to do something about that tomorrow,” he said. “I’d like to try.”
“Just the two of you, with this huge boat?”
Andi glanced at him. “We’ll use leverage,” she said.
The woman looked at them with a resigned expression, as if she knew better than to argue with tourists. “Okeydokey. I guess that’s why God made cell phones. Let’s go, gang.”
“Bowie,” Chance said.
His brother turned.
“Hell of a job, Bowie,” he said. And for the first time in years, Chance embraced his brother. “Take care of those two.”
“With my life,” Bowie said, his voice hoarse as he stepped back. Then he hugged Andi as the medics picked up Nicole’s stretcher.
“Just a minute,” Chance said. “Let me say goodbye to my niece.” He hurried over and leaned down toward the tiny child tucked in the bassinet. Andi came up beside him, and he slipped his hand around her waist and drew her in close.
“See you soon, whatever your name is,” Chance said, touching his finger to the baby’s soft cheek.
“Au revoir, Colette,” Andi said, flashing a grin at her sister.
“Colette?” Bowie said, elbowing nearer. “Where did that come from, Nic? You know I was holding out for Bowina.”
“Bowina?” Chance stared at his brother.
“I made it up, but it’s supposed to be the feminine version of—”
“It’s the feminine version of blockhead! You can’t name this gorgeous little girl Bowina. Not while I’m—”
“Okay, folks,” the paramedic said. “You can name her Fred, for all I care, but you’ll have to do it on your own time. We’re outa here.”
Despite his faith in the paramedics, Chance followed them out to the rear deck and watched, the wind from the rotors whipping his hair, as they lifted Nicole and the baby up to the roof and got them safely inside the helicopter.
“I’ll call Mom from Las Vegas!” Bowie yelled over his shoulder as he climbed the ladder to the roof of the houseboat.
“And my parents!” Andi cried out as she came to stand beside Chance.
“I’ll call everybody!” Bowie called over his shoulder.
As he got into the helicopter, he turned to wave. “Bowina rules!” he shouted, laughing.
“Dream on, idiot!” Chance yelled back.
“You don’t have to worry,” Andi said from beside him. “Nicole would never let him get away with naming her that.”
“To hell with what Nicole would let him do. I’m not letting him name her that.”
Andi chuckled as the helicopter lifted off over the water, creating a small tidal wave on the surface. “You may not get a vote.”
“I may not, at that. Some help I was.” He watched the blinking lights of the helicopter as it carried the little family up into the night sky. “Thank God you and Bowie came through.”
“I think it all worked out absolutely perfectly.”
He continued to gaze after the departing helicopter. “Perfectly? With me passed out most of the time?”
“You bet With you out of the picture, Bowie got to shine. It may have been his finest moment. If you’d been in charge, as usual, he wouldn’t know that he had the strength to handle a crisis like this. Now he does.”
Chance mulled that one over. The implication was pretty clear—he had been one of the obstacles to Bowie taking on his fair share of responsibility. How could he have, when Chance had always grabbed it away from him?
He couldn’t see the lights of the helicopter anymore. “Bowie will be a good father,” he said. A picture of Bowie cradling the little girl in his arms hit him like a sucker punch in the gut. He wanted what Bowie had. Wanted it bad.
Andi was silent for several seconds as the helicopter lights grew smaller. “Do you wish you were on that helicopter going with them?” She sounded subdued.
Her comment took a minute to register. Their situation look a moment longer. Bowie, Nicole and the baby were on their way to Las Vegas, and he and Andi were…
Alone. A quiver of anticipation ran through him as he turned to her. She could ease this empty feeling. She might be the only person in the world who could. Her hair was tangled from the wind created by the helicopter blades, but now only a faint breeze stirred around them. “No, I wouldn’t want to be on that helicopter.”
“You wouldn’t?” She lifted her eyebrows.
Memories of the afternoon came rushing back to heat his blood and tighten his groin. Those thoughts, combined with the need to hold and be held, created a desire so strong it took his breath away. An answering need flashed in her eyes and suddenly they were locked in each other’s arms, their mouths seeking, their hands searching, unfastening, stroking.
“I could take you right here,” he said, gasping. “Right on this damn deck.”
She pushed her hand inside his shorts. “We have ten beds—oh, yes, touch me there—ten beds, inside.”
No. He didn’t want to make love inside that crazy place where so much had just happened, where he’d been so weak he’d passed out in the middle of the action. With superhuman effort, he wrenched away. “The roof. Go on up. I’ll get what I need.”
She stared at him as she struggled for breath. “The roof? Why on earth do you want to go up on the roof?”
He gazed at her as an image of making love under a canopy of stars fueled his imagination. “I have my reasons.”
“Name one.”
God, she was saucy. And he loved it. Needed that spirit to lift him up. “I want to see your naked body caressed by starlight as you lie beneath me.”
“Oh.” Excitement flared in her eyes. “Well, okay, but we could—”
“I want to hear your moans echo between the rock walls of this inlet.”
She sighed. He’d pulled her bathing suit half-off and her breasts quivered as she took a deep breath and gazed up at him. “Oh.”
“And I want you to be able to look up and see the whole universe while I’m deep inside you.”
Her lips parted, but no exclamation came out this time.
He smiled. Finally, he’d made her speechless. It was worth slowing down the action, just for that. “Cat got your tongue, Andi? Better find it. I also want to feel the lick of your tongue, and the press of your lips, on every inch of—”
“Go,” she said in a breathless whisper. “I’ll be waiting.”
“On the roof?”
“I can’t think of a place I’d rather be.”
Neither could he, he thought moments later as he climbed the ladder carrying their sleeping bags. The contents of his general-store purchase rested in the pocket of his shorts.
But the roof was empty.
He tossed down the sleeping bags and looked around. “Andi?”
“I want to stroke my hands over your starlit, naked body,” she said.
“Where are you?”
“And then I want to flick my tongue over every delicious inch of you,” she said, her voice drifting up from somewhere below him.
“Then you’ll have to get the hell up on the roof, which is where I am, woman.”
“And I want your moan to echo between the rock walls when I finally put my mouth over your—”
“Andi!” His cry echoed back to him. He was going wild.
Slowly she appeared, coming up the ladder. She’d changed out of her swimsuit and put on the sexiest underwear he’d ever seen—wispy bits of black lace that barely covered her nipples and the vee between her thighs. And she was carrying an open jar of something. “Gotcha,” she whispered.
“You had to do some sneaking to get behind me like that.” But he had trouble being angry when he was so damn aroused.
“Oh, I’m very good at sneaking.” She reached between her breasts and unfastened a catch that allowed the skimpy bra to fall away. She shrugged out of it and it fell in her wake. “And I should also tell you, before we get too involved and you might forget, that I’m terrible at taking orders, and I hate letting someone else get the upper hand.”
He gazed at her, off balance as he usually was when this woman was around. “What’s in the jar?”
“Fingerpaints.”
He peered closer. “Looks like fudge sauce to me.”
“Does it?” She dipped her fingers into the jar as she came toward him. “Does that mean we don’t get to paint? You said you liked doing that.” Her breasts swayed provocatively as she approached.
He ached for her. “We may not have time.”
“I’ll let you paint, too.” She stopped in front of him and smeared sauce around his nipple. Then she tilted her head to one side. “Nice design, but I can improve on it” She started making swirling patterns, kneading his skin with her fingers.
He couldn’t believe what the sensation did to him, how his loins began to pound as she played with her design. And then she began to lick him clean, murmuring her appreciation as if she were enjoying a piece of Godiva.
His breathing grew labored. “Andi…”
She lifted her head and held up the jar. “Sorry,” she said, her tone low and sultry as she slowly sucked the chocolate from her fingers. “Didn’t mean to hog all the fun. Your turn.”
He took the jar. He couldn’t remember ever touching fudge sauce with his fingers, and it felt creamy and sinful as he scooped some out.
She shook her hair back over her shoulders and cupped her breasts with both hands. “Your canvas.”
He set the jar at his feet Then he straightened and began painting the sauce on as if she were wearing a fudge bikini top. Her nipples tightened as he swirled and smoothed the sauce, and the visual and tactile pleasure of smearing the fudge over her breasts drove him crazy. She’d lured him into creating the sweetest treat he could ever imagine taking into his mouth. Finally he could wait no longer. Easing her supporting hands away, he cradled one chocolate-covered breast in his hand and began to taste his handiwork.
“Good?” she murmured, arching upward.
“Mmm.” He licked and suckled and went slowly out of his mind. “Mmm-mmm.”
He wasn’t exactly clear how they got there, but somehow they’d ended up on their knees as he continued to feast on her breasts. He was so engrossed he barely noticed when she unfastened his shorts and pulled down his briefs. Then she demanded another turn, and he found himself stretched out flat, the stars above him, the roof of the houseboat under him. He had the first fudge-covered erection of his life.
And indeed, his moans did echo against the canyon walls as she enjoyed her chocolate-coated treat, comparing him favorably to every candy bar she’d ever known. Through the unbelievable bliss of her nibbling forays, he fought to keep some kind of control.
“Snack time’s over,” he said finally, gasping as he drew her away and brought her up to plunder her mouth with his lips and tongue. “You are outrageous.”
“Is that good?” she murmured, nibbling on his lower lip.
“Good doesn’t even begin to cover it.” He rolled her gently to her back. “But I don’t want to fingerpaint anymore.”
“Time for a new game?”
“The oldest game of all.” He slipped his hand beneath the black lace of her panties as he licked some lingering smears of fudge from her breasts. “Even better than chocolate.”
“You’ll have to prove it to me.”
“Love to.” He drew in a breath as he slid two fingers deep into her moistness and felt the tremor go through her. He nuzzled her ear as he created a subtle friction with his fingers and another tremor shook her. “I don’t think it’ll take long to prove,” he whispered.
“Ha. I’m cool…as a cucumber.” Her breathing grew uneven. “If you can last forever, so can I.”
“I have a reason to last forever.” There it was again. She pulsed against his fingers. Soon. “You don’t.”
“Pride,” she whispered. “Oh, Chance, that’s…I don’t want you to think…ohhh…to think I’m a…pushover.”
“Never.” He settled his lips over her mouth and drank in her cries as he propelled her over the edge. Then, as she gradually returned to earth, he eased her panties off and reached behind him to find the shorts she’d stripped away during the fingerpainting session.
“My pride is gone,” she murmured as he sheathed himself. “I still want you.”
“I was hoping you would.” Cradling her head on his arm, he moved over her and eased between her sleek thighs. His heart hammered frantically in anticipation of burying himself within her heat at last. He gazed into her eyes, those wise, funny, passionate eyes. “I’m very glad you still want me.”
“I do.” She grasped his hips and drew him down. “Show me the universe, Chance.”
He pushed deep, and he thought his heart might stop altogether from the sweet ecstasy of the moment. He looked down at her, and she seemed as awestruck as he, but the shadows hid her expression from him. “I wish I could see your face better,” he murmured.
She swallowed and took a shaky breath. “You can’t because it’s dark.”
“Thank you, Einstein,” he said softly, leaning down to kiss her. “Oh, well. Tomorrow we’ll have sunlight.” He eased back and buried himself again, and as he did, she lifted her hips and welcomed him with an undulating motion that made him gasp with delight. It was the most sensuous joining he’d ever known.
“Tomorrow we…have to move…the boat,” she said between ragged breaths.
“Who gives a damn about the boat?” He abandoned himself to the exquisite pleasure of matching her rhythm and discovering which movements brought forth her lusty moans.
Vaguely he realized he’d just turned away from responsibility once again, and that doing so was becoming a dangerous habit. Then she tightened around him and began crooning his name, and he no longer cared. The drive for satisfaction crowded out all rational thought, until at last the sounds of their joyous completion careened off the surrounding canyon walls and floated up into the star-sprinkled night.