The Baby Scandal(34)

Would it be ridiculous, he wondered, if he told her thank you?

One  month later, and with Natasha sound asleep in her cot, Ruth curled  her  body into Franco's, drawing up her legs and resting her head  against his  chest. She could hear his heart beating in this position  and there was  something foolishly comforting about that.                       
       
           



       

His feet were  stretched out on the table in front of them, and on the  television a  blonde presenter was winding up the news with a touching,  sentimental  story of some endangered animal or other in a zoo somewhere  or other.

Ruth  didn't really hear what was being said. She had been waiting for  this  moment all evening, enjoy¬ing the thrill of anticipation as they  ate  their dinner, chatted and touched and chatted and touched again,  their  minds and bodies perfectly in tune with one an¬other.

"Oh, by the  way," she said, stretching and sitting up straight so that  she could  see his face, "a bit of news." He smiled slowly at her.  "Seeing that  you've left it this late, I know it's got to be important.  Not to do  with the retreat, is it?"

That was their code name for the house  they were buying in the country,  not five miles away from the  vicarage-somewhere they could escape to  on the oc¬casional weekend when  they weren't seeing friends.

"Don't tell me that half-wit estate  agent's screwed up." He frowned,  anticipating unwelcome news. The  cottage, derelict though it was, had  limitless potential, and if they  lost it he would personally hang the  little twit by the feet from the  nearest available tree. He had done  precious little to secure the deal  in the first place.

"No, no, no," Ruth said hastily, seeing the  warning signs from her  husband, who could still intimidate when he chose  and whose  appreciation of the estate agent handling the matter had been  reduced  to rubble when he'd caught the hapless boy sneaking furtive  glances at  his wife.


"What, then? Come back here, where you were sit¬ting. I liked being able to put my hand just there, on your left breast."

In  a minute," Ruth told him, determined not to be side-tracked, even   though the prospect of his hand ca¬ressing her breast was almost too   tempting to resist. "I want to see your face when I break this to   you..."

"Break what?"

Ruth took a deep breath and said, in  a pleased rush. "You're going to  be a father for a second time!" His  reaction was everything she had  hoped: surprise very quickly followed by  delight. "I think," she added,  "that a certain night spent on a certain  beach when a certain man  couldn't keep his hands off me is to blame for  that."

"Oh, is that right?" he murmured softly, the strong,  aggressive  contours of his face softened by his smile. "All I can say to  that,  Mrs. Leoni, is that it worked..."

"What did?"

"Well..."  He pulled her toward him and returned hís hand to the place  he wanted  it to be, covering the mound of her breast, then he kissed  the top of  her head. "My plan for Natasha to have a baby brother or  sister..." He  pulled down the straps of her vest-style tee shirt to  expose the breast  he had been caressing, soft and full, the big nipple  ripe with  expectation of the baby growing inside his wife.

"Does that  mean..." Ruth lowered her eyes and smiled a secret smile  "...that now  your dastardly plan has succeeded there'll be no more  rehearsals for  that baby brother or sister?" She lay back against the  arm of the sofa  and pulled the vest down to her waist, watching as his  eyes glittered in  appreciation of her body.

"Typical female!" he growled, bending to nuzzle her soft skin. "No logic at all..."

Ruth closed her eyes and sighed. How was it that her parents had never told her that heaven was some¬thing you could touch...?

End