Jericho (A Redemption Novel) (14 page)

“What about your sister?”

Carolina. She had just been thinking about her, wondering if she could live with her sister and still live with herself. Carolina would come and, more important, Georgia had missed her terribly these past two years.

“I’ve been mad at her for so long.”

Christian leaned in closer, placing his lips just beneath her ear. “Maybe it’s time to forgive her. You’re starting a new life. It’s time to put the past behind you.”

“But—”

He set a soft kiss on her skin and she shivered from the contact. “But nothing. What better way to get back at them all than by being happy?”

“I don’t want to get back at them.”

“Then why won’t you invite your sister?”

“I should. I will.”

“Good.” He pushed her back on the bed and wrapped his arms around her, and for the first time in a long time she felt absolutely safe. “Let’s get some sleep. It’s been a long day.”

“Wait.” She was pressed against him and he was warm and hard and he smelled good and he made her want to get closer.

“What?” He opened his eyes.

“Um...” She didn’t know how to ask or even what to ask for. She just knew she wanted more of him.

He yawned widely and she immediately felt guilty. This was his first night in a real bed, in a quiet room that was very far from the hospital. He needed to sleep.

“You said we didn’t have to worry about money. How? I don’t think there has been a time that I haven’t been worried about it. I can work.”

“No. Have you ever heard of Howard and Helga’s?”

“The ice-cream company?”

He yawned again. “My father owned it. I own it. We’re going to be fine.”

“Christian...” Howard and Helga’s was no little ice-cream company. She didn’t think there was a person alive who hadn’t eaten one of their flavors. It was her even her father’s favorite brand. She was marrying a man of means. A millionaire. Something inside of her lurched. She really knew very little about the man she was marrying.

“There’s a plant just outside of Charleston. I’ll take you there sometime.” He pulled her closer, sliding his hand beneath her nightgown to cup her bottom.

She lost her train of thought. His hand felt so good there. It was possessive. As if it was his to hold. After all that had happened to her, she never thought she would like a man to have free rein over her body, but with Christian every touch was right. Every inch of space he invaded she was more than willing to give away.

“Are you okay with this?”

“Yes.”

“You’ll tell me when you don’t like something?”

“Yes.”

“Can I kiss you?”

“Yes. I never thought I would see you again,” she said, touching his face. “So you may kiss me whenever you want.”

He said nothing more, just buried his hand deep into her hair and set his lips on her. It wasn’t like their last kiss, which was hot and full of need and nearly uncontrollable. He was holding back. He was giving her just enough to make her crave more. She rubbed her body against his, opened her mouth to give him further access, and while she felt his erection between her legs, he never deepened the kiss. He never touched more than her backside. He just continued to give her the longest, slowest, deepest kiss of her life.

He broke the kiss, dragging his lips across her cheek and down to her throat. He didn’t kiss her, though, just rested his lips there. She wanted to urge him on, to beg him not to stop, but sex...lovemaking...was so new to her she didn’t know how to begin.

“Your hair is so beautiful,” he finally said after long torturous moments. “Do you ever wear it down?”

“Only at night. We weren’t allowed to wear it down during the day.”

“You can do whatever you want now, Georgia. Your life is about to change.”

And with those words he kissed her face and drifted off to sleep.

* * *

Christian woke up just before 6:00 a.m. He could sleep in all he wanted, but the marine in him always woke him up as the sun rose. He was about to give up that life and become a private citizen. He was about to give up everything he had known for the past ten years. He thought that not knowing how he was going to spend the next years of his life was going to throw him into a panic, and normally it would have, but this morning, unlike every other morning of his life, he woke up with a soft woman wrapped around him.

He looked down at Georgia, who was cuddled around him. Both of her arms were twined around his neck, and her soft thigh rested between his legs. He’d made the mistake of kissing her last night. He knew how responsive she was, how damn good her body felt when it was pressed up against his. He knew how hard it was to control himself when she was around. His lack of control was why they were getting married in the first place. Because of that kiss, the urge to flip her over and make love to her nearly took over. But he knew it wasn’t the right time. He knew that they were both tired and that they had just undergone huge life changes.

If he was going to make love to her, he was going to take his time and do it right. Georgia deserved their lovemaking to be special. She deserved everything he had to give.

The sound of baby babble from the monitor distracted him from his thoughts. Georgia was sound asleep. He had seen the exhaustion on her face last night, the little bit of worry that never entirely faded away. He didn’t want to wake her. She needed to rest because the next few days were going to be long ones.

He shut off the monitor and tried to ease from beneath her. She held on to him tighter.

“No,” she groaned.

“Go back to sleep, baby. I need to get up.”

She moaned and rolled over, allowing him to ease out of bed and go to Abby.

She was standing up in her crib when he got there, but as soon as she saw him her placid expression turned into a confused frown.

“Da?”

“Yes. Good morning, Abby.” To his own ears he sounded like an ass, but he didn’t know how else to greet a baby.

He lifted her from her crib and deposited her on the floor. He wasn’t sure what to do with her next, so he sat down beside her.

He thought about calling room service to bring them up some breakfast, but he wasn’t sure what one-year-olds ate. Did she even have any teeth? Could babies eat scrambled eggs? What about oatmeal?

She looked up at him with her huge green eyes, seeming to sense his inner turmoil. “Mama?” she seemed to suggest.

“She’s sleeping, but you’ve got me for the moment. We are just going to have to figure this out together. Are you going to let me change your diaper before we eat?”

“No!”

“Good,” he sighed. “I didn’t want to do it anyway.”

“No Da!”

“Yes Da,” he countered. “I’m afraid you’re going to be stuck with me. I’m going to marry your mother.”

He could have sworn she rolled her eyes. She pulled herself up and walked around to his side. She looked at the burns that ran the length of his arm. Even to him they looked scary, as if part of him had emerged from a horror movie, but Abby didn’t seem afraid, only curious.

She touched his arm, running her tiny fingers over the most burned part of his skin. “Ow?” She looked up at him.

“Yes.”

She surprised him by climbing in his lap and reaching up to his face. He lifted her to give her better access. She took his face in both her hands. “Ow?”

“Yes, ow.”

“Da?”

“Yes.”

“No Da!”

Christian sighed again. This whole fatherhood thing wasn’t going to be easy. “Come on, you mean little thing. Let’s gets some oatmeal.”

* * *

Georgia woke up in a panic an hour later. At first she didn’t know where she was, but then she remembered. She was in a luxurious hotel suite about to marry a man whom she knew next to nothing about.

But he wasn’t in bed beside her. She vaguely remembered Christian telling her he had to get up. He must have heard Abby. She shot out of bed at that point. She’d never intended for him to take care of her. She was always the one to pull her baby out of bed in the morning, even when she was working those twelve-hour shifts. And Christian didn’t know what he was doing. She should have been up earlier. It was her job to take care of Abby.

But when she opened the door to their bedroom, she spotted Christian and Abby at the table. He was feeding her oatmeal with a determined frown on his face. Abby wasn’t exactly being cooperative. She was shaking her head and speaking to Christian in some kind of annoyed baby babble.

“I get it, Abs. You don’t like me, but could you stop yelling at me for ten minutes and finish your breakfast?”

“Da! No. No. No!” But she opened her mouth and accepted another spoonful of oatmeal.

Georgia laughed. The sight of a big scowling bare-chested marine with her little angry baby was too much for her.

“Mama!”

“Hi, baby.” She kissed her daughter’s head and then, because Abby was watching, kissed Christian on the lips. “Good morning, Daddy.”

He grabbed the back of her head, causing the kiss to go on longer than she had planned. Her parents had never shown affection in front of them. She had never seen them kiss or hold hands. Nothing more than the occasional touch.

Her mother had once told her that a wife only shows her husband how much she loves him in the privacy of their bedroom. That was before her brother had died, before her parents had changed into shells of themselves. When they were all happy.

She wanted to be happy with Christian. She wanted to be a good wife for him.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t up to feed her,” she said when he let her go. “I was just so tired. I’ll be up tomorrow.”

“You don’t have to. Sleep as long as you want. I wanted to feed her. I even changed her diaper.”

“But—but that’s my job.”

He shook his head. “Trust me, I’m not going to fight you for the privilege to change her stinky diapers, but it doesn’t just have to only be your job. I want her to get used to me.” He looked at Abby. “We’re going to bond if it kills me.”

Abby let out another string of angry baby babble, seemingly arguing the point, to which Christian responded by gently tugging on her ear.

Abby’s little mouth dropped open in indignation, which caused Christian to throw his head back and laugh.

“You’re going to be my toughest soldier.”

He scooped her off the table and stood up. “I’m going to get her dressed and then we are going to go out.” He leaned down and kissed Georgia’s cheek. “You are going to take my credit card and buy new clothes or whatever else your heart desires.”

“But—but...”

“You’re not alone anymore, Georgia. You’re going to have to learn to trust me.”

“I do,” she said truthfully, even though she felt her heart sinking. She had asked him to step up and really be Abby’s father, but she never expected him to take to it so fast. For so long she’d thought she was the only one who could take care of her baby the right way. But in came Christian, who’d known her child less than twenty-four hours, and yet he seemed to do just fine without her.

Part of her hated him for it. But another part of her felt herself falling in love with him because of it.

CHAPTER 14

“W
hen you asked if you could stop by, Christian, I never thought you would show up with a baby,” General Lee said when he opened his front door.

“This is Abby. She’s Georgia’s daughter. Say hello to the general, Abs.”

Abby looked up into the general’s unsmiling face and then turned to bury her face in Christian’s shoulder. “No!” Then she remembered that she didn’t like him and lifted her head. “No Da!”

“Not exactly friendly, is she?”

“She’s a mean little thing, but I like her. She’s going to be my daughter.”

“Oh?” General Lee stepped aside to let him in his home.

“Yes, I’m getting married.”

General Lee nodded. “I knew you would do the right thing.”

Christian’s brain stopped working for a moment. More than his words, the expression on General Lee’s face told Christian that the man knew more than he was letting on. “Excuse me?”

“Really, Daniel.” An elegant redhead appeared from the hallway. “Ask Captain Howard to sit. Can’t you see he is holding a child?”

The general sighed. “Of course I can see that, dear. But the man is as big as a bull, so if he can’t survive holding a twenty-pound baby for a few minutes, then the marines as we know them are doomed.” He nodded at Christian. “Sit down, boy, before my wife goes off on a tangent. Doesn’t think I’m fit for polite company and maybe I’m not, but you are definitely not what I would consider polite company.”

The general’s wife sighed. “Can you at least introduce me to your friend before you continue complaining about me?”

“Christian, this is my wife, Alma.” General Lee grabbed his wife around the waist and kissed her cheek loudly. “The love of my life.”

Alma rolled her eyes, but her cheeks were pink, reminding Christian of a schoolgirl. He thought back to the general’s story about how they had met. Alma and Daniel might bicker, but the love between them was apparent.

“It’s nice to meet you, ma’am.”

“And you, as well,” she said, approaching. “I’ve heard so much about you.” Her face lit up when she looked at Abby. “Oh, my word, what a gorgeous little girl you have.”

Abby smiled beautifully at Mrs. Lee, which proved Georgia’s point that Abby was more comfortable around women than around men. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to change that about her or not. He just wanted her to like him. “Thank you, Mrs. Lee.”

“You’re welcome. Now sit. Sit!” She pointed Christian to an easy chair while she and her husband took a seat on the couch. “Can I offer you something? We’ve got sweet tea, coffee and juice. My husband keeps a couple of bottles of good whiskey in his office.”

“No, thank you. We have to get back to her mother soon. She didn’t say anything, but I know she was worried about me taking Abby out.”

“My Daniel here has never taken our girls out alone. I think he was more afraid of them than Vietnam.” She gave her husband an affectionate smile. “Your lady is very lucky. I did overhear you say you were getting married, didn’t I?”

“I am, and I would be honored if you would both come as my guests, but I would really like to hear what your husband knows about my upcoming nuptials.”

“I don’t know anything, son,” he said with a straight face. “But I was pretty sure if I sent that rat-faced nurse in on you two, you would end up getting married.”

“What? You sent Georgia’s boss in that night?”

“I saw you two kissing that day. I saw how she looked at you. God damn it, son. When a woman looks at you like that, big, ugly, half-blown-up son of a bitch you are, you marry her.”

“You mean to tell me you ruined a good woman’s career just because you thought I would do the right thing? How did you know I would marry her? Or that she would say yes? Do you have any idea what kind of shit storm you caused? I don’t know what happened to you since you decided to retire, but you seem to be morphing into some kind of meddling old biddy.”

“No!” Abby chimed in, yelling at the general. “Da. No! No! Mama.”

“Exactly,” he said to the fussing baby as he tousled her curls.

“You’re right. It all could have gone to hell, but look at you. If I didn’t know any better I would think you’d been that baby’s father from birth. And I never once heard you say you didn’t want to marry her. If I didn’t know in my gut that this was the right move for you, I wouldn’t have interfered.”

Christian didn’t know what to say, so he stood up. It was too much for him to process in that moment. “I have to get back to Georgia. I’ll call you with the final plans as soon as they are set. It was nice meeting you, Mrs. Lee.”

* * *

When Christian walked back into their suite, Georgia wasn’t there. He was surprised. He didn’t miss the expression of panic on her face when he told her he was taking Abby out. He thought for sure she would be waiting there for them when they got back. But the suite was quiet.

Absolute quiet was the one thing he wasn’t used to. He had been at war for the past five years. He’d slept around other men. He could barely remember the last time he had a place he called his own, and then he was stuck in the hospital, which was never truly quiet with all the footsteps and beeping machines and other patients around. One grew accustomed to constant noise, and now that it wasn’t there it almost felt as if something was missing.

“Mama?” Abby asked him.

“She’s not back yet.”

Abby sighed and rested her head on his shoulder. “No Da.”

“You must be tired. That or you’re starting to like me.”

She frowned at him, making her feelings clear.

“You want to take a nap? Babies do that, don’t they?”

“No!”

“Fine.” He sat down on the couch with her. She nestled herself in the crook of his arm and studied his face again for a moment before she shut her eyes.

He took that as a good sign. He let his eyes close as he thought back to the revealing conversation he’d had with General Lee. He was annoyed with the man for messing with his life, with Georgia’s. It all could have gone so horribly wrong. It could still go so horribly wrong, but right now he almost felt a little hopeful.

There was a warm sleepy baby in his arms and a beautiful woman who was going to marry him. He was going to have a family. He didn’t want to think about the fact that Georgia would have never agreed to marry him if she hadn’t lost her job. He didn’t want to think that he wouldn’t have the kind of marriage his parents had. That neither of them had much of a choice. That there might never be deep love between them.

A pair of soft lips brushed over his burned cheek. Georgia stood before him, her gaze passing over his face. He couldn’t read the look in her eyes, but he knew that nobody had ever looked at him that way. Besides the general, she was the only one who could look at his face and not study his burns. He wondered if she was as oblivious to them as she said she was. He didn’t know how that could be possible. Even if he couldn’t see the burns, he knew that his face was disfigured nearly every moment of the day, except when she looked at him like she was looking at him in that moment.

He gripped the back of her neck and pulled her closer. She blushed just before he kissed her. Sweet girl. Her kiss was shy. But her lips were warm and her mouth moist and he didn’t stop wanting to kiss her. She broke away, and her cheeks were red. She pressed her fingers to her lips.

“Why do you look so shy? That’s not the first time we’ve done that.”

“Those are the kind of kisses you should only give me when the lights are off and the door is closed.”

He grinned at her. If she thought that was the only kind of kiss he would give her when the lights were off she was in for a surprise. “You kissed me first. Kissing me in the daylight could cause potential problems, then. Your touch causes my brain to malfunction. That’s why I have to marry you. Maybe you shouldn’t touch me at all until we’re behind closed doors.”

“Oh.” She blinked at him. “Okay.”

He wasn’t sure if she took him seriously, but before he could really think about it he noticed the change in her appearance. Her hair was down, and was inches shorter than the last time he has seen it. It framed her face. Soft bangs made her already beautiful eyes stand out even more.

“You cut your hair.”

He pulled her down on the couch next to him so that she wasn’t hovering above him and Abby anymore.

“You don’t like it?”

“I—I...” Before she had a girlish quality about her. But now he could only see a woman next to him. He more than liked it. He wasn’t eloquent enough to describe what it did for her. Lifting his hand, he ran his fingers through the silky strands. “It looks good.”

“I know you like to touch it sometimes.” She blushed again.

He wasn’t sure why she was suddenly so shy with him. She had seen him at his absolute worst. He had to keep reminding himself that this was new to her. To them. They had never spent so much time alone together. Before they had the hospital and the fear of getting caught to check their emotions, but now it was just them in the real world. This would take some getting used to.

“It’s usually too hot and heavy to wear down so I thought I would get it cut.”

“You did this for me?”

“Yes, but I feel kind of bad. You paid a lot of money for this haircut.”

“I don’t care how much it costs. Do you like it?”

She nodded. “Thank you for giving me the money.”

“Don’t thank me, Georgia.” He stroked her cheek with the backs of his fingers. “Some men are afraid that their wives are going to bankrupt them. Mine feels bad for getting a haircut.”

“I’m not your wife yet. I think we might need to talk about some things now.”

“Mama?”

Abby woke up, rubbing her eyes with her fists. Christian lost his train of thought when he saw how Georgia’s eyes filled with love when she looked at her little girl.

“Hello, baby.” The smile that broke out on her face could have lit the room.

Abby launched herself out of Christian’s arms and into Georgia’s. “Mama! No Da!”

“Abby,” Georgia groaned. “You need to be nice.”

“No.” She snuggled into her mother’s chest.

“Yes.” She kissed her daughter’s head. “But it’s okay if you like me better. I did go through twenty-seven hours of brutal labor before you were born, before they cut you out of me.” She shut her eyes and rubbed her hand slowly down Abby’s back. “I missed you like crazy today, baby girl. How did things go with Daddy?”

Christian stared at her. She looked so beautifully peaceful sitting there with her eyes closed and a baby in her arms. She looked natural and homey and right. An image of her with another child came into his mind. A boy this time, with curly blond hair and green eyes. That jolted him. Having a child of his blood had never entered his mind before. It was something that he never thought he wanted.

“We got along. I didn’t drop her or lose her once.”

Georgia opened her eyes and gave him just a hint of a smile. “I trust you with her, but seeing you walk out the door with my baby was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.”

“Why?”

“Because it made me realize that I had no other choice to trust you. It made me realize that my life will never be the same.”

He could hear the nervousness in her voice. He didn’t blame her for it. He just wondered what he could do to make it better. “I think we need to have that talk now.”

“We should, but can we have it on the way to my sister’s house?”