He was pleased to hear the same huskiness in her voice as in his own. It meant he wasn't alone in the passion causing his pulse to hammer and hum.
"I don't think I give a good damn," he muttered with no small amount of feeling behind the words.
"As bad an idea as that probably is, I sincerely wish we could. Anything would be better than having to face your mother again."
The corner of Marc's mouth quirked down in a frown. Was she implying that staying in the room to make love with him would be only slightly less miserable than an evening spent in his family's company? He wasn't sure he liked being considered the lesser of two evils.
Before he had a chance to reply, however, a tapping sounded on the suite's outer door.
"That will be the nanny," he said, just managing to mask a sigh of disappointment.
"You hired a nanny?" Vanessa asked, sounding both surprised and disapproving.
"Not really," he replied. "One of Mother's maids is going to sit with him for a couple of hours. That's all right, isn't it?"
Her brows crossed. "I don't know. Is she good with infants?"
"I don't know," he said, repeating her phrase. "Let's go meet her and give her the third degree."
Wrapping his hand around her elbow, he pulled her with him toward the bedroom door.
"I don't want to give her the third degree," Vanessa murmured softly as they crossed the sitting room where Danny was sleeping. "I just want to know that she's qualified to sit with my child."
"We'll be right downstairs, so you can come up and check on her any time you like," he assured her, keeping his voice equally low. "Tonight can be her test run. If you like her and she does a good job, she can stay with Danny whenever you need her while you're here. If not, we'll hire a real nanny. One you feel a hundred percent confident in."
"You're placating me, aren't you?" she asked, an edge of annoyance entering her tone.
With his hand on the knob of the sitting room door, he turned to her and smiled. "Absolutely. While you're here, whatever you need, whatever you want, I intend to see that you get it."
Her eyes widened and he knew she was about to argue. So he bent down and captured her mouth, kissing her into warm and pliant submission.
When he pulled away, his own body was buzzing with warmth, but he was far from pliant. Quite stiff and unyielding would have been more accurate.
"Indulge me," he said, brushing a stray copper curl behind her ear while the taste of her lingered on his lips and prodded him to kiss her again. "Please."
Thirteen
As always, dinner with Marc's family was exhausting. Delicious, but exhausting.
Marc's mother was her usual haughty self, and though Vanessa had always liked Marc's brother Adam and Adam's wife, Clarissa, they were cut from the same basic cloth as Eleanor. Born with silver spoons in their mouths, they'd never known a moment of true want or need. And being raised as they had been, they were extremely refined, never a hair out of place, never a wrong word spoken.
The only reason Vanessa felt kindly toward them at all was that, despite their upbringings, Adam and Clarissa weren't quite as cold and judgmental as her ex-mother-in-law. From the moment she'd married Marc, they'd treated her like a true member of the family and had seemed genuinely sorry when she and Marc had split up.
Even tonight, knowing the circumstances surrounding Vanessa's return to Keller Manor and Eleanor's obvious disdain for her, Marc's brother and sister-in-law had treated her exactly the same as they had in the past. No sidelong glances or sharply pointed questions meant to put her on the spot or make her feel insecure, just friendly smiles and harmless banter.
That alone had helped to assuage some of Vanessa's raw and rampaging nerves when she'd first walked into the opulent dining room. Of course, Eleanor had already been seated at the head of the table like a queen holding court-and her expression alone had made Vanessa feel like a bug under a microscope.
To Vanessa's relief, her former mother-in-law had played fair through the soup and salad courses, keeping conversation light and impersonal. There were a couple of sticky moments while they enjoyed their entrees, but by the time dessert was being served, Eleanor dropped her semi-polite facade and began taking potshots at Vanessa as often as she thought she could get away with it. Some of them were direct, others more passive-aggressively delivered.
But this time, Marc actually stuck up for her-something he'd never done before, not with his mother. Possibly because in the past, Eleanor's attacks had been much more subtle, and often reserved for moments when the two of them were alone so that no one else would witness her true hatred for her son's wife.
Marc had grown up under Eleanor's frosty disposition, so he was used to her testy personality and jagged barbs. Even though her mother-in-law's malicious treatment had cut her to the quick, Vanessa truly believed that much of what Marc witnessed had gone straight over his head. He was like someone raised in the city, who wouldn't be bothered by the sounds of round-the-clock street traffic the way someone would who'd been raised in the quietness of the country.
But tonight, Marc hadn't let his mother's not-so-subtle assaults slide by. He'd caught and responded to every one, always in Vanessa's defense. And once dessert was finished, when Eleanor seemed to be working herself toward a full-blown attack, he'd announced that it had been a long day, wished his family good-night, and taken Vanessa's hand to lead her out of the dining room.
She was almost giddy with relief and unaccustomed empowerment … and was still clutching his hand like a life preserver as they jogged upstairs side by side. She felt like she had when they'd first been dating, before the realities of being Mrs. Marcus Keller had settled around her and robbed her of her happiness.
Reaching the door to his suite, they were both smiling, and she was slightly out of breath. He put a finger to his lips, signaling for her to be quiet before he opened the door.
The fact that he had to remind her to be silent made her realize how close to giggling she was. Giggling. Like a twelve-year-old.
Biting back the strangled sound, she kept hold of Marc's hand and followed him into the darkened sitting room. The maid-slash-nanny they'd left with Danny was sitting across the room from the crib, reading a magazine beneath the muted yellow glare of a single low-lit lamp. When she saw them, she closed the magazine and quickly rose to her feet.
"How was he?" Marc whispered.
"Just fine," the young woman answered with a small smile. "He slept the entire time."
Good news for a babysitter. Not such good news for parents who were looking forward to a full night's sleep.
"That means he'll be up in the middle of the night," Vanessa whispered to no one in particular. And then to Marc, she said, "Prepare yourself for finally experiencing the true rigors of fatherhood."
He flashed her a grin, his green eyes sparking with a blaze of heat that had nothing to do with parental exhilaration. "I'm looking forward to it."
After slipping the young maid a couple of folded-up bills that Vanessa was sure Eleanor would disapprove of, he saw her out, then joined Vanessa at the side of Danny's crib. His hand came up to rest on the small of her back, and she had to swallow a lump of emotion at the picture they must have made. Mother and father standing at the edge of their infant son's crib, watching him sleep.
This was what she'd always imagined motherhood and family would be like. It's what she'd wanted when she'd married Marc and they'd first started trying to get pregnant.
Funny how life never quite turned out the way you planned.
But this was nice, too. Maybe not ideal, maybe not the epitome of her adolescent dreams, but it still warmed her and made her heart swell inside her chest.
"I hope he's not coming down with something," she murmured, putting the back of her hand to Danny's tiny forehead. He didn't feel feverish, but one could never tell. "He doesn't usually sleep this long."
"He's had a busy day," Marc offered just as softly. "You'd be tired, too, if this were your first big trip since being born."