“The city.”
“New York?”
“That’s the one.”
“Do you know where in New York?”
He shook his head.“It’s a big place.She wanted to get lost while she had the kid, then she figured she’d climb out of her hole and make her fortune.”
Cyrill Stockland knew the score.New York was precisely the place to make a fortune, and the place to get lost, which didn’t help my search a whole lot.Mildly discouraged, I thanked him for his time.I turned to leave, paused, then turned back.“When did all this happen?If you were to pin down the birth of her child to a particular time, when would it be?”
“I can tell you exactly when it was,” the man said without hesitation.“I was here just a year when I got in that fight over her.I know ’cause I nearly blew that first raise I’d been counting on.It was twenty-one years last June when I started here, so she musta had her baby just about twenty years ago.”
I hadn’t been keeping a particularly close watch on the dates, other than to note that Cyrill hadn’t stayed in any one place for long.Now, hearing that she’d given birth to her baby twenty years before, something clicked.
Excited, I thanked the groundskeeper a second time, left and drove into New York.Peter was in conference across town when I arrived at his office; he hadn’t expected me until later.I waited patiently at first, then less patiently, until finally he returned.
The look of high pleasure that lit his face when he saw me sitting there was ample compensation for the wait.Kicking his office door closed, he strode across the oriental carpet, put his hands on either arm of my chair, leaned low and captured my mouth.Without touching any other part of me, he made me feel like a million.
He didn’t touch any other part of me because he didn’t trust himself that far—but he only told me that later, when we were in his apartment with no need for restraint.And we showed none there.Not only were we celebrating our reunion, but with a few phone calls and a little string-pulling on Peter’s part, we’d made a major discovery.
“Who’d have thought it?”Peter murmured against my neck.His hands were under my sweater busily working on the buttons of my blouse.“Who’d have guessed Cyrill was Benjie’s mom.”
I tugged off his tie and dropped it where westood.“But that’s the least of it,” I argued as I pulled the tails of his shirt from his trousers.“Cooper’s Benjie’s dad!Not his half brother.Hisdad!”I slid buttons through holes as quickly as I could.“It was right there on the birth certificate.Clear as day.So why didn’t we know?Why didn’t anyone say anything?”Pushing the shirt off his shoulders, I had just enough time to press my lips to the hair on his chest when he pulled my sweater over my head.
“Like the people in town?”He tossed the sweater aside and dispensed as quickly with my blouse.“Maybe they didn’t know.”
“They had to know Cooper’s mother wasn’t pregnant—help me with this, Peter.”I couldn’t get his belt undone.
He quickly took care of it.“Not necessarily.If a woman’s a little overweight to start with, she could go away for a month and come back with a baby, and the people around her might, just might believe it was hers.”He’d released the front closing of my bra as quickly as he had his belt.Peeling the lacy cups from my breasts, he tossed the bra aside.
We were both taking short, shallow breaths, as though we’d just come in from a sprint.Our hands tangled from time to time.That slowed us down and increased the impatience.
“I think they knew,” I decided as I gingerly worked his zipper over his arousal.“I think they all knew, just kept it to themselves.”I slipped my hands inside.“Maybe that’s why they were sotolerant—ahhhh, Peter …” He’d taken half of my breast into his mouth and was drawing on it so strongly that I felt the pull all the way to my womb.Momentarily abandoning the treasure in his briefs, I dug my fingers onto his hair and held on.
“Peter—ahhhhhh—it always comes down to this.”I gasped when he did something powerful to my nipple with his teeth, then felt instantly bereft when he raised his head.
“Shall I stop?”
“Lord, no!”I met his mouth in a hungry kiss and slipped my hands back into his briefs.He was hot and hard.The feel of him against my palms sent tiny currents of excitement through my fingers, up my arms and into the rest of my body.I stroked his distended length, taking pride when he grew even more rigid.It seemed that much more and he’d burst—I was feeling the same way inside.
He swore then and, setting me back, went at the rest of my clothes in earnest.“You distract me so much sometimes,” he growled, bending on a knee to tug down my skirt and panty hose together, “that I can’t concentrate on what I’m doing.”
“You were doin’ just fine,” I teased in a whisper.“You felt just right to hold.”
His pale green eyes, shimmering with darker shards and smoldering now, speared me with a hungry gaze.Then he lowered his eyes, leaned forward and kissed me where no one but he hadever kissed me before.It was suitable punishment for my teasing, because I nearly lost it there and then, particularly when his kiss grew deeper, his tongue more aggressive.
“Please!”I cried.
He knew what I wanted.With several rough tugs, he freed me of the last of my clothes, then did the same for himself.For an instant when we were both naked, we just stood there looking at each other’s bodies.But our inner demands were insistent.I had to touch him, had to feel the heat of his body on mine, in mine, and it was clear from the urgent way he reached for me that he felt the same.
Our bodies came together in a crush, fitting as perfectly as ever.My arms went around his neck, my legs around his hips when he lifted me, and when I felt the full force of him slide inside, I let out a small cry of pleasure.
To this day, I can’t begin to describe that feeling of having Peter inside.It was so many things—fullness, heat, excitement, satisfaction, completion, security—that it boggled my mind.
“Ahhh, Peter,” I cried, “what you do to me.”
“Tell me,” he whispered.“What do I do?”
