Dream a Little Dream (Chicago Stars, #4)(190)

He heard Rachel behind him and turned. She looked rumpled and beautiful. The V-shaped crease in her cheek told him she’d been asleep when he’d driven up. He studied the shirt she was wearing more closely and felt vaguely irritated. “Don’t you have anything else to sleep in?”

“What’s wrong with this?”

“It’s Cal’s. If you need a shirt, you can wear one of mine.” He tossed his suitcase on the bed, opened it, and yanked out a shirt that was clean, but marked here and there with various stains that hadn’t come out in the laundry.

She took it from him and regarded it critically. “His is a lot nicer.”

He glared at her.

She gave him an impish smile. “But yours looks more comfortable.”

“Damn right it is.”

She smiled again, and pleasure leached into some of the barren places inside him. He thought about how she managed to find amusement in the smallest things, even with her life hanging in shreds around her.

Her green eyes grew crafty, and he braced himself. She planted one hand on her hip, a gesture that hiked up her shirt a few more inches. She was killing him, and she didn’t even know it. “If you expect me to cook, you have to buy all the food.”

Rachel had more ways of holding on to her money than anyone he’d ever known, and he couldn’t resist giving her a hard time. “Now why would I expect you to cook? I’m probably better at it than you are.”

She thought about that. “You also eat a lot more, so it wouldn’t be fair for me to spend my money on your food. Really, Gabe, you have the most enormous appetite I’ve ever seen. You’re always eating.”

Before he could figure out how to respond to that one, a small voice interrupted.

“Mommy?”

He whirled around and saw the boy standing there in the doorway. He was wearing a new pair of pajamas so big they had to be rolled at the cuff. Trust Rachel to protect her pennies by looking to the future.

She moved to his side as if the kid were burning up with fever, and when she bent over, he saw the edge of her panties. The boy gave him a brief, unfathomable look, then stared down at the floor. Gabe turned his back on them and busied himself unpacking.

“Come on, sweetie,” Rachel said. “Let me tuck you back in.”

“What’s he doing here?”

She began moving him out of the room into the hallway. “It’s Gabe’s cottage. He can come here whenever he wants.”

“It’s Pastor Ethan’s cottage.”

“He and Gabe are brothers.”

“Are not.” Gabe heard them turning into Annie’s old sewing room. The boy said something he couldn’t quite make out, but it sounded like behead—a peculiar word for a five-year-old to know. The kid was strange, and Gabe knew he should feel sorry for him, but memories were swallowing him up.

Jamie in his pajamas fresh from his bath. That little whorl of dark, wet hair on the top of his head. The way he’d snuggle into Gabe’s lap with his favorite book, sometimes falling asleep before they reached the end. Sitting there with a sleeping child heavy in his arms and one small, bare foot cupped in his hand . . .

“Do you have everything you need?”

He hadn’t heard Rachel come back in. He blinked his eyes and shook his head. “No.” The breath left his lungs in a shudder. “I need you.”

She came to him at once, pressed her body against his, and he knew this waiting had been as hard on her as on him. He pushed his hands underneath the shirt she wore, his brother’s shirt, and touched the soft skin beneath. But then she broke away. He felt a chill at her desertion, only to realize she was locking the door.

How many times had he or Cherry done that? Locked the bedroom door in that old Georgia farmhouse so Jamie wouldn’t wander in? The pain came back.

Rachel cupped his jaw, and her soft whisper fell on his cheek like a prayer. “Stay with me, buddy. I need you, too.”

She always seemed to understand. Once again, his hands found her warm flesh. She wiggled against him and began tugging at his clothes. She was demanding, impatient, and her clumsy eagerness aroused him to the point where he could barely think. In moments he was naked except for one sock.

He had known Cherry’s body as intimately as his own. Where she liked to be touched and how she wanted to be stroked. But Rachel was still a mystery.

He stripped his brother’s shirt from her, being deliberately rough enough to tear a few buttons so she wouldn’t be tempted to wear it again. Then he pushed her back on the bed.

She immediately rolled on top of him. “Who made you boss?”

He laughed and buried his mouth against her breast. She straddled his hips. She hadn’t taken off her panties, and now she tortured him with them, lightly sliding the nylon back and forth, up and down, leaving a damp, silky trail.


When he couldn’t stand it any longer, he curled his hands around her hips and brought her down hard against him. “Playtime’s over, sweetheart.”

She leaned forward, dragging her nipples across his chest. Her hair curled around her freckled shoulders, and, as a strand fell over his lips, the preacher’s widow regarded him with devilish eyes. “Who says?”

He groaned, slipped his fingers inside her panties, and gave her a dose of her own medicine.

After that, both of them went a little crazy, and because they couldn’t make any noise, their lust was all the more frenzied. She bit his chest, then sucked his tongue. He swatted her rear then kissed her until she was breathless. First one rolled on top, and then the other. She made him sit up, then impaled herself, not taking off the panties, merely pulling the crotch aside. Their passion was red-hot, visceral. Thrilling beyond belief. The very walls of the room oozed sex.