Good Husband Material

Yet, he couldn’t stop kissing her.

A door opened and he heard raucous rock music pouring out. He removed his hand from Natalie’s breast, where it had mysteriously strayed without his conscious decision.

“We really shouldn’t be doing this,” Natalie said, her chest heaving so hard she was about to come out of her sundress.

“Why not?” he asked, though he knew the answer.

“Because some memories should be left alone.”

“And some memories should be taken out and examined,” he countered. “To see if they’re really as good as you remember.”

He coaxed a smile out of her. “And was it?” she asked.

“I don’t know yet. I have more examining to do.”

She allowed him to kiss her again. Kissing was innocent, after all. They couldn’t exactly rip their clothes off and make love right here.

As he delved into her mouth with his tongue, he wished he hadn’t thought about ripping off clothes. Because knowing they couldn’t get naked right here had only made him wonder where they could get naked.

“I’ve got a room at the Holiday Inn,” he whispered in her ear. But only because he wanted to get her reaction. Not because he thought she would take him up on his proposition.

He expected her to express shock or anger or at least issue a curt refusal. But she was the one to surprise him. “I can’t. I’m staying with Melissa.” Her voice was filled with regret.

“Do you really think she’d object if you went off with me? She’s been campaigning for us to get back together ever since our divorce.”

“Yeah. Get together, get married, live happily ever after.” She paused to kiss him some more, pulling the tails of his shirt from his pants so she could slide her hands up his bare back. The touch of her warm, soft hands made him shudder with desire. Oh, what this woman could do to him. He would be her slave if she wanted it. “She would not approve of what we’re…talking about doing,” Natalie concluded.

“It’s a class reunion.”

“You keep saying that.” She reached for his hand and placed it back on her breast. “Like a class reunion is some kind of free ticket to bad behavior.”

He dipped his head down and kissed the top of her breast. “And we’re doing more than talking.” If they didn’t come to a satisfactory plan very soon, they would be out of their clothes in a much-too-public place. He’d forgotten just how crazy Natalie could make him.

He forced himself to pull away, and push the strap of her dress up her arm and back on her shoulder where it belonged. “My car is twenty steps away. You can call Melissa’s cell from there. Better yet, leave a message on her home phone.”

“Yeah, with one of her kids. ‘Tell Mommy her slutty friend Natalie is getting laid instead of coming home tonight.’”

Josh chuckled. “C’mon, Nat. I wore Stetson for you, you know. Normally I never touch the stuff.” But the smell of it had brought back all kinds of memories. Really good ones.

Sensing her reluctance, he kissed her again—kissed her until, one by one, her tense muscles relaxed and she became liquid in his arms.

“All right,” she finally said with a naughty gleam in her eye. “Forget Melissa. I’m mad at her anyway for lying to me.”

Adrenaline shot through Josh’s body. She’d said yes. He and Natalie were going to make love.

He hadn’t come here to seduce Natalie. Yeah, he’d worn the Stetson cologne, but that was more to see if she would remember—and maybe to remind her of the good times, not the bad. But the moment he’d seen her, looking not so different from the teenage girl he’d fallen in love with, he’d known that he wanted her in his bed that night.

He’d given up one-night stands a long time ago. And since two marriages with bad endings had proved he wasn’t good husband material, marriage was out of the question.

This was different, though. This was Natalie, the woman he’d once loved so desperately, probably more than anyone on earth except his kids. Spending one night with her would not be the same as some empty, frantic one-nighter. This would be a trip down memory lane, a welcome oasis of nostalgia in a life that was so caught up in work and raising kids that he never had time for just Josh anymore.

By the time they reached his Jaguar, he’d beeped open the lock. He settled her on the leather passenger seat.

“Nice,” she commented.

He looked down at her bare leg, a lot of which had been exposed when her dress rode up as she sat down. “Nice,” he murmured right back. Natalie’s long legs had always driven him wild, but they’d been colt’s legs twenty years ago. Now they were strong, elegant and shapely.

He ran around to the driver’s door and quickly climbed inside, not wanting to waste any time. Before he turned the ignition, however, he slid his hand under Natalie’s hair to grasp the back of her neck, and pulled her in for another kiss. He didn’t want to give her too much time to think because he knew she’d let reason talk her out of what they both wanted.

But once he started kissing her, he couldn’t stop. He had his hands all over her, and before he knew it she’d scrambled over the gearshift to straddle his lap.

They were no strangers to car sex. During their senior year, his “car” had been a beat-up compact pickup truck with even less space than the Jaguar, but it had afforded them the privacy they’d needed. He pushed his seat all the way back, then reclined it until they were almost horizontal.

“Nice,” she said again. She had his shirt mostly unbuttoned and her hands rubbing his bare chest, so he didn’t know if she was talking about the car or him.

He slid his hand up her dress to caress her thigh, then her bottom, which was covered with something very silky—and very tiny. “Really nice,” he murmured, fingering the lacy waistband of her panties. “I’d like to see these.”

“You can see them if you take them off.” She claimed his mouth for yet more kisses, hot, wet, open-mouthed kisses with tongues and teeth.

He was not one to argue. In a maneuver they’d perfected with practice so many years before, she leaned down until she was chest-to-chest with him, pressing her wonderful, soft breasts against him. Natalie’s breasts were fuller, softer than he remembered. She straightened her legs and swung them around to the side. Now, with her sitting on his lap with her back to the window, it was easy to whisk her panties off.

“Still agile as ever,” Josh couldn’t resist saying.

“You talk too much. And you’re wearing way too many clothes.”

That he could fix. He had his pants unfastened and unzipped in record time. Natalie reached inside his briefs and wrapped her hand around his arousal, and he sucked in a breath. It had been way too long. He suspected he would have about as much control as a teenager, which was only appropriate, since they were acting like teenagers.

Suddenly a horrible thought occurred to him. “Dammit, I don’t have any protection.”

Natalie laughed. “Josh, get a grip. Remember who you’re with.”

“Oh. Right.”

“Even if I’d been fertile as a bunny rabbit in my twenties, I’m forty-three now.”

“Jeez, Nat, I’m sorry.” How could he have made such a blunder, reminding her of what had torn them apart? “I guess I was back in time, when we did have to worry about that. But I never for a moment forgot who I was with.”

She grinned. “I should take it as a compliment that having sex with me made you forget what year it is.”

“We’re not having sex,” he argued.

“Not yet.” But she soon changed the status quo.

As he entered her, he felt as if he’d come home after a long, long absence. No, he would never mistake her with any other woman.

He tried to make it last, but it took everything he had to hold off just long enough so that she could reach the peak of pleasure. Then he fell into a void, a vacuum in which there was nothing but white-hot sensation. He wanted to stay in that place forever, but it was over far too quickly.

When he returned to the here and now, he realized they were both slick with sweat. They’d been in a sealed car on a warm Texas summer night while generating their own heat.

He cradled Natalie against his left arm while he sat up slightly and reached for the car key. With a flick of the ignition the engine was running, the air-conditioning blasting.

“Well,” Natalie said.

Josh laughed. And when he looked down at her with her dress half off, her hair everywhere, her makeup smeared, not to mention his state of disarray, he laughed again. “Guess we still got it.”

She punched him lightly on the arm. “Is that all you have to say?”

Okay, so he’d never excelled at after-sex dialogue. One of his many failings. “Natalie, that was fantastic.”

“Yeah, we still got it. We’re still crazy. What if our children saw us right now?”

“Shh. Our children aren’t here. And we’re consenting adults. We haven’t done anything wrong.” In fact, he thought it had felt pretty right.

She leaned her cheek on his chest and sighed. “I’m glad you have tinted windows.”

“There’s nobody out here, anyway.”

“Josh, why did we do that?”

Good question. If he thought there was any chance they could start over…But that was impossible. They didn’t even live in the same city. It was a four-or five-hour drive between Dallas and Houston, depending on how far one exceeded the speed limit.

But even if they weren’t geographically challenged, there’d been too much pain between them. Each time they’d failed to conceive, Natalie had gotten a little more frustrated, a little angrier, until those negative emotions had infected every aspect of their lives.

Not that he couldn’t take some responsibility for the mess they’d made of their marriage. He’d been less than sensitive to her insecurities. He’d viewed their infertility as a logistical problem to be overcome. If they just tried a little harder…

He hadn’t realized that Natalie considered her misbehaving ovaries a slap in the face of her womanhood, and he hadn’t understood her emotional storms. Sometimes, when she’d seemed especially moody, he’d just removed himself rather than comfort her and say the things she needed to hear—that he would love her forever even if there was never a baby.

Their disagreement over adoption had been the proverbial straw.

Right now they were wallowing in the good times, the fun times of high school, before real life intervened. But they were riding a pink cloud of nostalgia that couldn’t last for long.

Still, this night could last.

“Let’s go back to the hotel,” he said. “I want to make love to you properly, on a real bed, with air-conditioning.”

“Oh, no, I don’t think so.”

“What?” What was she saying?

“We need to get back to the reunion. There are so many people I haven’t talked to yet—”

“Nat, you’re making excuses. What’s the real reason?”

She maneuvered off his lap, managing to narrowly avoid kneeing him in the groin. “I don’t regret this, Josh, but I think we should return to our senses.”

“I happen to think making love to you in a comfortable king-size bed is perfectly sensible.” He adjusted his clothes and buttoned his shirt while Natalie located her panties and worked her feet back into her high-heeled sandals. “Besides, I’m not sure you want to go waltzing back into the VFW Hall looking like that.”

“What?” She pulled down the visor and checked herself in the mirror. “Oh, my God, I look like I just had sex in a car. Melissa would know instantly.”

Everyone would know instantly, but he didn’t say so. She opened her little purse and pulled out a comb and a lipstick, working feverishly, first on her hair, then her lips.

“This is hopeless! And I’m all sweaty.” She smelled her hair, then her shoulder. “I smell like Stetson! All right, yes, take me back to your hotel room. I’m going to shower and air out the dress.”

Not exactly what he wanted to hear, but it gave him time to change her mind. “I have to go inside to get my jacket and tie,” he said. “What do you want me to tell Melissa? Because she’s going to ask where you are.”

“Tell her we’re going for a drive.”

NATALIE SAT IN Josh’s fancy car waiting for him to return and ordered herself to calm down. She needed to downplay what they’d just done, or Josh would know how profoundly it had affected her.

She’d had no idea what she’d been missing. She’d thought her memories of Josh were pristine, untouched by the years of separation. Every so often—probably more often than was healthy—she trotted out those treasured memories and relived them. But clearly she’d suppressed some things—like how Josh could send her to the moon with a simple touch.

Her hormones hadn’t had a workout like this in a very long time. But it was more than just the physical stimulation. Memories assaulted her from every direction, things she hadn’t thought of in twenty years. Like when Josh had carved their initials in that picnic table, her first real indication that what he felt for her was more than fondness or teenage lust. And all those times they’d driven out to Cemetery Road and made love in his truck. They’d always done it in the cab, because the one time they’d spread some blankets out in the truck bed and attempted to make love, a sheriff’s deputy had driven by and caught them with their clothes half-off. He hadn’t turned them in, hadn’t called their parents, but he’d told them to get dressed and go home.

Natalie had never been able to look Deputy Klegg in the eye again.

So many good times—picnics, taking Josh’s family’s boat to the lake with their friends and waterskiing, parties at Melissa’s house dancing to MTV. So much love.

Though they’d raised a lot of eyebrows by marrying so young, most people thought they’d make it. The only ones who weren’t surprised when Josh and Natalie divorced were his parents. Though they’d always been civil to Natalie, she’d known they thought Josh could do much better.

Josh returned a couple of minutes later with his jacket and tie in hand. “Good news,” he said as he climbed into the car. “Melissa was out on the dance floor. I didn’t have to tell her anything.”

Good. Maybe Natalie had a chance of returning to the reunion before it was over and pretending nothing had happened.

She and Melissa had once shared everything, but Natalie would never tell anyone what had happened tonight.

The Holiday Inn was a good twenty-minute drive and two towns away. Josh turned down the air-conditioning and opened the sunroof. Natalie was quiet as the breeze blew in, whipping her hair around.

“This is a gorgeous car,” she finally said to break the silence.

“Thanks. Kind of a cliché, though, don’t you think? A guy hits forty and buys himself expensive toys to compensate for his loss of youthful virility…”

“Ah, trust me, you haven’t lost anything. In the dark I’d have thought you were seventeen again.”

“I hope my technique has improved some since I was seventeen.”

“Fishing for a compliment?” Still, she couldn’t help smiling, remembering their early fumblings. They’d been each other’s firsts. They’d learned together through trial and error. Lots and lots of trial and error, followed by even more trial and success.

She squirmed a bit in her seat and deliberately changed her line of thought. She didn’t want to get all hot and bothered again, not when they would soon be alone in a hotel room. She could only hope Josh would honor her desire to freshen up and return her to the reunion.

The hotel was nice, built only a couple of years earlier. As Josh let Natalie into his room, she noted the open suitcase on the bed as well as the faded Levi’s and golf shirt he’d draped over the back of a chair, probably the clothes he’d driven here in.

The bed was covered with a snow-white duvet, but the pillows had been rearranged. She could see him propped up in bed, probably shirtless, one arm behind his head as he channel-surfed.

Her mouth went dry and she walked briskly across the room, out of touching range. She tossed her purse on the bed and kicked off her shoes. “Guess I better get busy. You made quite a mess of me.”

“I think you look better than you have in your whole life.” The way he looked at her almost did her in.

No, no, no, she couldn’t succumb again. But she froze as Josh followed her, walking slowly, purposely, with a devilish intent obvious in his blue eyes.

But instead of reaching for her, he reached for her purse and opened it, snagging her cell phone and pulling it out. He extended it toward her. “Call Melissa and leave a message that you won’t be home until morning.”

A whole night with Josh? Did she dare? Or rather, did she dare pass up the chance? How much fun did she allow herself, anyway? Her life was devoted to her work and her child. Not that she and Mary didn’t have fun, but Natalie seldom did anything for herself.

One night with Josh. Melissa would know the truth, but so what? Even if she told their friends—and she probably would—Natalie was no longer a part of this community. It wouldn’t matter what they thought.

She opened the phone, located Melissa’s cell number and dialed it.

Chapter Three

“So what is it?” Natalie asked her gynecologist, pulling her sweater more tightly around her. “You’re not saying anything. I’m in early menopause, right?” When her doctor still remained quiet, Natalie became alarmed. “Is it something worse? Cancer? Am I going to die next week? What?”

“Oh, no, no, honey. I didn’t mean to scare you ’cause it’s nothing like that. I just didn’t know how to say it, but I guess I better just blurt it out. You’re pregnant.”

Natalie laughed. “Of all the people in the world, you know that’s not possible.” Surely Celia Brewster was kidding. She’d been Natalie’s doctor for close to twenty years, but more than that, the two had become friends.

Natalie’s laughter died as Celia stared at her with an unreadable expression. “It must be a mistake,” Natalie pointed out. “A lab mix-up. I could not possibly be preg—” She couldn’t even finish the word.

Celia’s steady gaze never faltered. “There’s no mistake. You are most definitely pregnant.”

Natalie couldn’t believe this. Pregnant at forty-three, when she was supposedly terminally infertile. She’d had sex exactly once in the last several years—okay, more than once if you got technical. She’d lost count of the number of times she and Josh had made love that crazy night of the reunion two months ago. But still…

“How is it possible, Celia? What about my underfunctioning ovaries? Women just don’t get pregnant at my age, even normal ones!”

“You’d be surprised how many women give birth in their forties. As for how you could have overcome your fertility problem, I have a theory about that. Remember when you first came to me as a patient? You were very thin and your periods were almost nonexistent. Underweight women often don’t ovulate.”

Natalie did remember Celia’s concern about her weight. But Natalie’s diet had been more than adequate. She just hadn’t easily gained weight and she was perfectly healthy in every other respect.

“Over the years you’ve put on a few pounds,” Celia continued. “I’m not criticizing—you looked a bit malnourished before. Now you look great and you’re healthy as a horse. But discounting the last couple of months, have your cycles become more regular?”

Frankly, Natalie had never paid that much attention. After adopting Mary, she’d put all thoughts of conceiving her own child out of her mind, so her cycle was inconsequential. But now that she thought about it, she had been more regular the last few years.

She nodded numbly.

“My theory is that in your late teens and early twenties, your body weight was slightly under what you would need to regularly ovulate. In addition, you were under tremendous stress.”

“Because of how badly I wanted to give Josh a baby, you mean?”

“And because you were so young, married, both of you trying to go to school and make ends meet.”

“My doctor at the time did say if I could relax a bit, it might help,” she admitted. “But I thought that was just something doctors said to nervous women patients.”

Celia laughed. “You’re right. But in this case, it’s true. Stress impedes ovulation, too. At some point, when your weight reached a certain level, your ovaries corrected themselves. Absent the stress of worrying about conception, perhaps you approached something like normal fertility. Only you never realized it, because you weren’t having unprotected sex.”

“I wasn’t having any sex.”

“Well, clearly, you’ve had some.”

Natalie groaned. What was she going to tell Josh? What was she going to tell Mary?

“Then there’s also the one-in-a-million theory. Yes, the chances of a woman your age conceiving are quite small. But the chance is there. Kind of like your chances of winning the lottery.”

“Great. Why couldn’t I have won the lottery instead?” But then it hit her. This was better than winning the lottery. She was going to have a baby. Right now, a life was growing inside her. She put a hand to her abdomen, and a sense of wonder replaced the shock and terror.

“Will it be healthy?” she asked in a small voice as her eyes filled with tears.

“You know the risks as well as I,” Celia said gently. “Babies of older mothers do bear some additional potential problems. But I intend to keep a very close watch on you and the baby. First thing, we’ll get you on prenatal vitamins.”

Celia rattled on some more about the various things they would have to watch, the tests Natalie would have to take, but Natalie was hardly listening.

A baby.

MARY BRIGGS ADDED a pinch more curry to the sauce she was making, then took a taste. “Yessss, I am so good.”

As she heard the garage door go up, she checked her watch, pleased that her mother was on time. She pulled a bottle of cold Chablis from the fridge, uncorked it and poured a glass for her mom, knowing how much she liked to sit and unwind after a long day on her feet taking care of her babies.

As her mom entered the kitchen, Mary greeted her with a big smile and extended the glass of wine. But her smile fell as she immediately knew something was up. Her mother’s eyes were glazed.

“Mom, what’s wrong?”

“Uh…what makes you think something’s wrong?”

Relief washed over Mary. “You look funny. I thought you’d had a wreck or something.”

“No, no accidents. Well, not auto accidents, anyway.”

“So something is wrong?”

“Not wrong, exactly. Just shocking.” Her mom set down her purse on the breakfast bar and sank onto one of the bar stools.

Mary set the wine in front of her. “You look like you could use this.”

Her mom stared at the wine longingly, then shoved it away. “Nope. No more wine. Mary, your mother has gone and done something very foolish. But at the same time…well, it’s kind of a miracle.”

Concerned, Mary studied her mom, who looked kind of dreamy and misty. “Are we getting a puppy?”

Her mom laughed. “Better than a puppy. I’m having a baby.”

Mary stared, stunned into silence.

“Mary?”

“You’re pregnant?” She should have guessed when her mom had called it a miracle. That was a word she used a lot whenever she talked about anyone having a baby. Holy guacamole. She hadn’t thought her mother was even sexual.

Mary stepped around the kitchen island and enveloped her mother in a hug. “This is so cool! I’m going to be a big sister.”

When they pulled apart, they both had tears in their eyes. Natalie grabbed a paper towel and wiped at hers, but they just kept coming. “I feel so stupid, having to break the news to my own teenage daughter. Usually it’s the other way around.”

Mary pulled up another stool. “I thought you couldn’t. Get pregnant, I mean.”

“I thought I couldn’t, too. Which is why, you know, I didn’t protect myself.”

“You should have anyway,” Mary said primly. “For other reasons. Oh, but who cares now. This is so cool. So, who is he? You’re not going to have to marry the guy, are you? That would be positively medieval.”