Seeing Stars: A Loveswept Classic Romance (13 page)

She looked, in short, like a woman who had taken charge of her life and meant to make the most of it. And she had Nick to thank for that. He’d forced her to face the truth, that it was time to stop playing earth mother to everyone else and start taking care of herself. Now, if only he’d quit playing so hard to forget …

No!

Catching herself before she could wallow in her misery-laden memories, Dovie grabbed her gloves off the chiffonier and went to find her heavy cardigan sweater. Her movements stirred the attar of
roses, which was trapped in the fabric of her dress. In the living room she unplugged the Christmas-tree lights. Then, satisfied that she hadn’t forgotten anything—

Who could that be? she wondered when the doorbell rang. Assuming it was a neighbor needing a ride to church, she ran to answer it.

“Merry Christmas.” Nick entered on a draft of frosty air, his hands deep in the pockets of his cashmere overcoat.

Dovie’s eyes flew to his, and her heart went on an old-fashioned sleigh ride when she saw he wasn’t wearing his sunglasses. “Merry Christmas.”

“Well …” He cleared his throat as his voice grew thick with words that would have to wait. “Are you ready to go?”

Warmth laced through her limbs as she put on her cardigan sweater before taking his arm. “As ready as I’ll ever be.”

“Hail, Mary …” Draped in a white sheet and sporting wings fashioned of gold foil, Rebecca got the pageant off to a good start by reciting her piece perfectly.

Nobody minded that the baby-doll Jesus lay in the manger long before the arrival of Mary and Joseph. Nor did anybody object when one of the shepherds scratched in all the wrong places.

By the time Rachel made her appearance in a boy’s bathrobe that read “Dallas Cowboys” on the
back and brought the production to an end with a resounding “myrrh,” there wasn’t a dry eye in the congregation.

During the service that followed the pageant, Dovie felt proud to be standing beside Nick. He cut a handsome figure in his gray wool suit, starched white shirt, and wine-colored tie. When they knelt and bowed their heads in prayer, she knew a spiritual high she’d never known before.

“Why aren’t you singing?” he whispered between the first and second verses of “Joy to the World.”

“Oh, I couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket,” she admitted cheerfully. “So I just lip-synch and hope that God has a good ear.”

Nick’s voice was rich with meaning, his hand on her nape warm with wanting, as he murmured, “At the risk of sounding sacrilegious, so do I.”

Dovie’s hand reached for his, and in their clasp the heartache of months dissolved, drowning out doubt and despair. How and when she had insinuated herself into that realm of his consciousness called confidence remained a mystery. Suffice it to say that her love filled the dark corners of his soul with light.

After the service they joined the rest of the congregation for coffee or juice in the common room.

“Merry Christmas, Doc.” Charlie greeted him with a hearty handshake.

Nick noticed a definite improvement in the greengrocer’s grip. “Say, the swelling’s gone down some, hasn’t it?”

“Thanks to you.”

“You still need to see a doctor, though.”

“What’s wrong with the doctor I’m seeing right now?” Charlie challenged.

A frisson of professional pride raced along Nick’s spine. He shook his head and smiled. “Nothing that a few more patients with your blind faith can’t cure.”

The two men talked a little while longer, mostly about fishing, before parting with another friendly handshake.

Nick set his empty coffee cup aside, wondering as he did so where Dovie had disappeared to. Damn it, he’d shared her long enough! Now he wanted her all to himself.

As though she’d read his mind, she reappeared at his side. “I’m sorry, but I couldn’t leave without saying good-bye to Rachel and Rebecca.”

Guilt twisted his insides when he heard the tension in her voice. He draped a reassuring arm across her shoulders. “Where are they?”

She gestured vaguely. “Over there.”

In his gut Nick began to feel a premonition. “With Jack and Jayrene?”

“Yes,” she admitted nervously.

“Who else is there?”

“Curtis and Linda.”

“And?”

“Ray and Lon.”

“What about Merle and Mary?”

She was surprised he remembered. “They’re there too.”

Thinking it was high time her family came to its collective senses, he steered her in that direction. “You know, I never had any brothers or sisters.”

“Nick—”

“I used to envy the kids who did, wondering how it would feel to have a friend or even someone to fight with living under the same roof.”

As though he didn’t hear the glacial silence that greeted them or feel the chill of disapproval that iced her skin, he steered her straight to the center of her family circle and demanded, “Where’s your manners, woman? Introduce me to my future in-laws.”

Dovie’s head snapped up as if he’d just shouted her name. “What did you say?”

He grinned. “You heard me. Now, are you or aren’t you going to introduce me to them?”

What else could she do? She introduced him. “Nick, you remember my brother Curtis.”

“Sure do.” He extended his hand. “Good to see you again, Curtis. How’s the baby?”

“Fine.” Curtis ignored his hand.

Nick thought about offering him a knuckle sandwich instead, but suppressed the notion and moved on. “And whom do we have here?”

After giving Curtis a glare that would have freeze-dried coffee, Dovie said, “This is my brother Jack. I don’t see Rebecca and Rachel right now—they’ve
probably gone to change clothes—but he’s the proud papa.”

“Pleased to meet you, Jack.” Nick kept his hand out, daring him to shake it. “If I don’t see the girls before I go, would you tell them how much I enjoyed their performance tonight?”

Jack ignored both his hand and his request.

And so it went, with Ray and Lon and Merle and Mary rejecting him in turn. Infuriated to think he’d met with such discourtesy from her own family, Dovie realized that the time had come for that confrontation she and Arie had discussed some time ago.

“I never thought I’d say this about my own flesh and blood,” she said, seething, “but I’m ashamed of you—all of you.”

“Dovie,” Nick said in a tone of soft rebuke. He could understand her flare of temper, but saw no sense in adding fuel to the fire. “It’s not important.”

She felt the restraining hand he laid on her shoulder and turned her head slightly in his direction. Then her eyes roamed around the circle of people with frozen expressions surrounding them, and twenty years of all give and no take boiled up inside her.

“It’s important to me,” she insisted firmly. “I raised them, but I hardly recognize them. And I’ll be damned if I’ll stand by and let them insult the man I love.”

God above, Nick thought as he turned her loose,
what he wouldn’t give to see her now! He could actually feel the anger radiating from her lush body. And he could picture her saucy little chin pointed skyward. Better yet, he could just imagine her ripe breasts heaving with fury on his behalf.

“Now, Dovie—” Curtis began.

“Don’t you ‘now, Dovie’ me!”

“We only want what’s best for you.”

“Then you’d better shake Nick Monroe’s hand, brother dearest, because he’s the best thing that ever happened to me.” When her challenge went unanswered, she rounded on the lot of them. “You don’t want what’s best
for
me. You want what’s best
from
me. And you don’t want to share it with anyone else.”

“What do you mean by that?” Mary demanded.

Dovie wheeled on her sister. “Who stayed up night after night making your wedding dress? Who sewed all those tiny little buttons down the back and up the sleeves? Who hand-stitched yards and yards of lace to the hem and the collar and the cuffs?”

Mary’s mouth dropped open, then closed in chagrin.

“And you, Merle. When your second-grade teacher put you in remedial reading, who sat at the kitchen table with you after everyone else had gone to bed and worked with you until you could tell your
b
’s from your
d
’s?”

Merle hung his head.

“Ray, who cried buckets of tears when you and
those juvenile delinquents you used to run around with took a joyride in the sheriff’s car? Then who saw to it that you toed the mark until the judge released you from probation?”

Her brother’s face turned as red as if he’d been on the river all day.

She looked straight at Lon. “Who typed your résumé when you wanted to change jobs last year? And corrected your spelling in the process, I might add?”

Lon looked away.

“And Jack, who spotted the ‘For Sale’ sign in front of that big old house that you and Jayrene and the girls are living in? Then who insisted that you have the house inspected for termites and talked the owner down five thousand dollars because of the damage?”

Jack stared at the tips of his shoes.

At long last she turned to Curtis. “Who found you and Linda lying half-dead in your bed? Who went to the delivery room with her and witnessed your baby’s first breath? Who came straight to Intensive Care with the news that you’d fathered a healthy boy?”

Curtis swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down convulsively.

“All of you have had exclusive use of my eyes for twenty years, but …” Dovie paused, recalling the vigils she’d kept. Even knowing she was finally doing the right thing, she felt a terrible sense of loss. “But it’s time you learned to share them. And
as much as it pains me to say this, it’s past time you started looking our for yourselves.”

Nick heard the note of tight control in her voice and took her hand. He felt the tremor there and drew her toward him. “Don’t push it, Dovie. This is something they have to work out in their own minds.”

She started to let him lead her away, then remembered that he’d taken her for granted too. Digging in her heels, she decided she might as well set the record straight all around.

“And
you
 …”—she jabbed his chest with an accusing finger—“… didn’t even bother to ask me to marry you. You just assumed I would!”

He burst out laughing and encircled her with arms that gave her the freedom to stay or to go. “Will you marry me?”

Dovie’s heart soared on butterfly wings as she leaned into his embrace. “I most certainly will.”

“How I adore you!” Nick’s face changed, grew serious. “There was no light in my life until you loved me.”

Joy pumped through her body. “Then that light will shine forever, because that’s how long I’ll love you.”

His lips feathered her cheeks, her eyelids, the tip of her nose. “What now?”

“Let’s go home,” she murmured.

When they turned to cross the common room, what remained of the congregation parted ahead of them as the Red Sea must have parted for Moses.

Nick grabbed his topcoat and tossed it over one shoulder. “Now I know how vulnerable my patients must’ve felt when they put on one of those paper gowns.”

Dovie laughed as they stepped out into the starry night. “If it’s any consolation, Rebecca and Rachel rank you right up there with Santa Claus.”

“Ho, ho, ho.” A teasing smile touched his lips as they crossed the parking lot through the crisp new snow. “And have
you
been a good little girl this year?”

Stopping beside her car, she tilted her head back and answered in kind. “Yes, but only because the opportunity to be bad keeps slipping through my fingers.”

Nick started to make a fresh remark, then changed his mind and caught her hand. His voice went husky with emotion. “You’re taking a hell of a risk, loving me.”

Dovie looked up to the sky and saw a heaven of rippling silver sweeping from horizon to horizon. Shivers of desire raced through her as the pad of his thumb drew circles in the center of her palm. “A love that risks nothing is worth nothing.”

The Christmas-tree lights cast a Persian-carpet pattern of gold and red and blue and green across the living-room floor. A black high-heel pump, size six, lay abandoned beside the leather wing chair, while its mate wallowed in a wine-colored puddle of tie just outside the bedroom door.…

“Oh, no, you don’t.” Nick swatted Dovie’s hands away, then slid his index finger into the knot of her scarf and tugged. When it gave, he slipped the lacy fabric off her neck and tossed it over his shoulder. “You steal my tie … I steal yours.”

Lilting laughter escaped her lips. “So you want to play games, huh?”

“Yeah.” He turned her slowly and, with only his sense of touch to guide him, lowered the tab of her zipper past her waist.

Air cooled her flushed skin as he drew the dress
from her shoulders and arms, then pulled it down so she could step out of it. But his breath warmed her all over again when he placed his lips to her nape and whispered, “Strip poker.”

“All right …” In retaliation she turned and reached for the top button of his shirt. As she worked her way down, her fingers took leisurely detours over the crinkly chest hair, the firm muscles, and masculine nipples. The hair tickled; the muscles bunched; the nipples puckered. “You asked for it.”

“Asked for it, hell.” But honey coated his voice as he hooked his fingers under the straps of her slip and peeled the satiny material down to her dainty, nylon-sheathed feet. “I
prayed
for it.”

“Come to think of it”—she stepped out of her slip and kicked it aside, then freed his arms of shirt and suit coat in one fell swoop—“you did look awfully pious for a while.”

Both of his arms went around her, and she felt her bra go tight, then loose, then fall away. Just as he’d imagined so many times, her breasts filled his hands … and then some. His teeth shone in the mellow light thrown by her bedside lamp. “Glory hallelujah.”

Tears seemed to gather between her legs when his thumbs grazed her nipples. She moaned his name deep in her throat, begging for more.

Heeding her plea, he lowered his head and lifted her breasts, squeezing them together with soft
pressure. Then lightly, ever so lightly, he flicked his tongue from one fragrant bud to the other.