Kissingate Magic #5
Bridget and Jacey looked up, both with stunned surprise. Mackenzie grumbled louder, so Gabe confiscated her broom. “See to dinner,” he said. “We’ll clean up in here.”
Gabriel turned back to the two people he loved most in the world. One would rather step around him as look at him. The other was bound to break him for good one of these days, especially if she discovered his lingering love. Still, there was no changing destiny.
He sat and crooked a finger to bring his comically adorable wee one over to him. And Cricket must actually have looked at him long enough to catch his summons, because she obeyed.
“Lovely dress,” he said.
Her doe eyes came alive. “It’s Mama’s. Myjacey made it smell like the water meadow again.
” Bridget shoved her arm under his nose, so he sniffed it, nodded, and kissed her elbow.
“Did you say, ‘Myjacey?’” He looked at her and felt a rush of love he so strong, he had to clear his throat.
“Haven’t you noticed, Cricket, that everybody else calls her Jacey? ”
Bridget nodded. “Mama called her that, but Nanny Mac called her Myjacey the day we met, and I like it ever so much better.”
Jacey sent him a plea with her look, and a similar rush of love for her engulfed him. For a bold minute, he let it show, but Jace sat, as if enticed by it but ruling it a danger.
He knew exactly how she felt.
“Can I call you Myjacey?” Bridget asked, standing before Jace, undoing a bodice button or three, shyly waiting for her aunt’s answer.
“Of course you can, sweetheart.” Jace smiled at his daughter’s plea, her cheeks like the rosebuds marching across the bit of chemise Cricket revealed. “Myjacey can be your special name for me, like Cricket is your papa’s pet name for you.”
Bridget gave him a nod, as if to say, “I told you”, the way Jacey the brat had tended to do. Had Bridget learned it? Or was prideful stubbornness a Lockhart trait?
“Tell me about the kitten,” Gabe said, to distract himself from Jace’s open dress.
“Suttie gave it to me.” Bridget sighed. “But it dist-appeared.”
“No, it didn’t,” he said, not quite pleased to report. Gabe joined Jace on the settee and pointed to the padded back where the outline of two wee paws pushed on the fabric from inside.
“Oh, my, God,” Jacey said. “We have to take the sofa apart.”
Gabe sighed. “I knew you’d say that.” He removed his jacket, waistcoat and collar, and rolled up his sleeves. Then he sat on the floor with his girls.
Two hours later, the sofa back flipped over the front, Bridget cuddled a wee white, blue-eyed kitten, trying to catch either bobbling hat berries or a bald bird.
Jacey massaged his back, because after sitting so long like a pretzel he couldn’t straighten. “You’re getting old,” she said, working his spine.
He liked her hands so much, he wondered how to get a back kink tomorrow. “If I’m old, you’re old.”
“You’ll always be older than me by three years.”
Mackenzie stopped in the doorway and gasped. “You were going to clean up. It’s thrice as messy.”
“Er, have I come at a bad time?”
“Nick!” Jacey shot to her feet.
Gabe saw her skirt was stained with Eccles cake, her bodice splattered with jam, and he stopped her to re-button her dress.
Jace raised a brow. He’d known for hours that Bridget didn’t button her up. “Your back got better fast.” She turned to Nick. “I’m sorry I’m a mess.”
Daventry smiled. “You never looked more beautiful.”
Gabe placed a posessive hand on Jacey’s shoulder.
“Is dinner still at eight?” Daventry asked.
“Oh, Lord,” Jacey said. “I forgot I invited you.”
Thirteen
Bridget’s first dress-up tea party monologue made dinner less awkward.
“Bridget, you’re eating too fast,” Jacey said.
“I’m hungry. Lydia said our pig should not be Lady Cowper. We should call our cow that. Do you think so, Papa … Gabe?”
Jacey caught his pleasure at being directly addressed. “I think our pig is happy with her name. Though we could call them the Ladies Cowper and Pigger.”
Cricket’s eyes widened and Jace decided he and Bridget needed to play more.
“How can you be hungry,” Mac asked. “After all those tea party sweets?”
Bridget dropped her fork.
“Bath time, lovey,” Mac said. “Then bed. Wee lady’s had a long day.”
Gabe followed them up, and Jacey took Nick into the secondbest parlour.
“Bridget’s sick,” Gabriel said from the doorway, a minute later, his look thunderous. “She’s crying for you.”
Jacey looked from one to the other, shrugged and left the room.
“I’ll show you out,” Gabriel said to Nick as she took the back stairs.
He caught up with her at the top.
“What did you do, shove him out the door?”
“I said goodbye.”
Bridget raised her arms. “Myjacey, my tummy hurts.”
“We’ve got her Nanny,” Jacey said. “Go to bed.”
“If this was a parlour needed cleaning,” Nanny grumbled, “I wouldn’t, but I expect you two can manage this one.”
Bridget wasn’t well enough to undo his buttons. Bad sign.
Gabe caught her watching him undo his cuffs. He quirked a brow, but she didn’t turn away. He settled in the way she liked him best, collar in his pocket, sleeves rolled up.
Something about him, dressed, or undressed, in that “at home” way, made Jacey want to curl up in his arms before a fire and comb her fingers through the hair at his nape.
“Myjacey!” Bridget placed her hands on either side of Jacey’s face.
“I’m sorry, sweet, what is it?”
Bridget was sick.
Jacey gave her a bath and Gabriel changed her bed.
Jacey stroked Bridget’s fevered brow. “She’s sound asleep. Go to bed. I’ll stay with her.”
Gabriel shook his head. “I’ll wash and change, and when I get back, you change. We’re, neither of us, sweet and fresh right now.” He nodded. “Go on.”
After washing, Jacey left her hair loose down her back.
This time, she tied the ribbons beneath her breasts on the buttercup silk robe a bit tighter, and pinched her cheeks, before she left her room.
When she returned, approval leapt in Gabe’s eyes as he went out to change.
Jacey checked Bridget’s brow, pulled up her covers and opened the window.
She wondered where to go from here when Gabe came back in. He wore a black brocade dressing gown, and if she thought he looked good in shirtsleeves …
He gathered her in his arms and came for her mouth with the same greedy hunger he’d shown the day he came home from the seminary.
Jacey embraced the perfection of his kiss. His big hands explored, as if he didn’t have enough time to learn her, again.
Jacey’s head swam, her body ached. Her kiss was meant to drive him wild.
He sought closer contact and revealed his arousal, caressing the sides of her breasts, nearing the place she ached.
Her soul rejoiced; her body wept for more.
“Papa? Myjacey?” Bridget’s voice penetrated the sensual fog, and they jumped apart so fast, Jacey hit her head on the window.
“Cricket,” Gabriel said, clearing his throat.
“How do you feel, sweetheart?” Jacey asked.
“I’m thirsty. Hungry too.”
“I’ve heard this song before,” Gabe said.
Jacey put Bridget’s slippers on her. “Her stomach is empty. Perhaps a piece of toast to nibble on?”
“As long as I get more of what I was nibbling on.”
Fourteen
Jacey brought Bridget down for toast, but she fell asleep, half a slice in her hand.
Gabriel rose to take his daughter from her arms, his proximity sending skittering spirals of need to every nerve in her body. “Stay,” he said.
Jacey wrapped her arms around herself, chilled, bereft, glad Bridget had woken when she did. This was too fast, and between them: questions, lies, doubt, uncertainty, pain – hers, his.
“We need to talk,” Gabriel said from the bottom of the stairs, hands buried in his dressing gown pockets. He never looked so much like that fallen angel, but now she wished he’d spread his wings and take her in.
“What should we talk about?” she asked.
“Everything.”
Ah. There it was. “You’re right.” She placed a chunk of cheese and a knife beside the bread on the table and put on a pot of tea. “Where do you want to begin?”
He cut off a chunk of cheese and broke it in half.
She accepted the half he held out to her. As she took it, she knew, wherever life took her, she’d never be more “home” or more complete than at this moment, with him. “Your choice.”
“Why is Nick back from America at the same time you’ve come home?”
“Coincidence?”
“I won’t have him under my roof again.” Gabe stood. “I’m sorry. That wasn’t necessary, but you broke me, Jace.”
She watched him climb the stairs, tired and beaten.
Aye, she broke him. She knew it when she did. Otherwise, she would have snuffed the dignity and self-respect he craved, before he got it.
Besides, after losing him, then losing her daughter – damn it, she’d been broken, too. In her room, the connecting door might have been painted with the word “temptation”.
Telling him the truth played on her mind, but why? To prove herself a liar? So he’d confess and lose his flock’s respect?
If he believed her, he’d know he was the only man she loved, but nothing mattered now, except Bridget.
Jacey placed her hand against the connecting door. He’d paced for some time, but all seemed quiet now. She turned the knob.
A lamp beside his bed bathed the room in a soft glow. Gabriel sat up, naked to his waist, baring a solid wall of flesh and muscle. Aye, she’d once run her fingers through the mat of dark silk, but she hadn’t seen it.
He looked so anguished, Jacey turned to go.
“Jace.” A plea she couldn’t deny. Then she was in his arms, in his bed, and he was ravishing her mouth.
Her clothes fell away under his seeking hands.
Not yet, her rational mind warned, not with things unsaid. But her body carried a demand of its own, and Jacey couldn’t speak or think; she could only feel.
The hair on his chest abraded and caressed, as did his day’s growth of beard against her face and breasts, inciting new heat to build on the rest. He kissed and suckled, ravenous, greedy and ready, fulfilling four years of lonely dreams.
Fifteen