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“This is for you.” His arms tightened, drawing her nearer. He kissed her with the tender-roughness she was coming to know. “And this is for me.” A large hand flattened over her hips, lifting her upward and forward. She cushioned his unslaked passion with her abdomen. His tongue swept her mouth hungrily, greedily. Then, like a miser, he meticulously gathered each nuance of it and made it a part of him. He tasted her, memorized her.
His embrace was encompassing. His hard thighs straddled hers, straining against them. With a grinding motion of his chest, he caressed her breasts. He held her with a finality, a desperation, that alarmed Leigh further.
As though he had vacuumed the life out of her and taken it into himself, she felt empty when at last he raised his head. His eyes scanned her face, striking each feature like a laser beam.
Her lips trembled. “Chad…?”
“I’ll contact you when I can. As soon as I get back. It may be… I don’t know how long it’ll be. But when I can, I’ll be back.”
The door closed behind him. She heard his running booted footsteps on the sidewalk, the slam of the truck’s door, the chugging of the starting motor, then its roar as he drove away.
Stunned and shaken, she pivoted, looking at the room as though she’d never seen it before. There was the couch where only moments before Chad had been loving her. It was empty. The room was empty. And so was her heart.
* * *
For days Leigh strove to put Chad out of her mind, but he wouldn’t be expelled. He was there, when she worked, when she played with Sarah, when she sat alone in her living room staring at the television set, when she lay alone in her bed, when she slept.
Was he a doctor? Who else rushed to emergencies and left numbers with answering services where he could be reached? But the person who had telephoned Chad didn’t have the melodious voice of an answering-service operator. The voice had been male, gruff, no nonsense.
Was Chad a criminal? Had he been warned by his
God, Leigh, you’re being melodramatic! She rebuked herself. Of course Chad wasn’t a criminal. He was too visible, too well known in the community. She had thought the day he took her to lunch she would learn more about him. After Chad had brought her back to the mall, she had nonchalantly asked questions of her crew, all of whom had seemed to know Chad well. But her questions got her nowhere. The men had become incredibly stupid during their lunch break, pleading that they didn’t know what Chad was up to these days, but remembering fondly how well he had played football.
Thanksgiving was upon her before she realized it and she was greeting her parents at her door. They had vetoed her suggestion that she and Sarah come to Big Spring for the day.
“Haven’t you learned your lesson by now?” her mother had demanded. “You had a baby on the side of the road, delivered by a man we know nothing about, who could just as easily have left you, or killed you, or worse.” She shivered.
Leigh only sighed resignedly and agreed that they should come to her house for the day.
They brought the turkey and dressing with them. Leigh ate desultorily. “Aren’t you feeling well, honey?” her father asked.
“Yes,” she said with false brightness. “I’m just hoping those Christmas decorations withstand the season. That’s all.” Liar! She lectured herself. She was thinking about Chad. Where was he having Thanksgiving? Was he having it? Where was he?
Sarah was fussy throughout the day. By early afternoon Leigh was worn out with rocking and trying to pacify her.
“She’s probably teething,” Lois Jackson said.
“She’s too young, Mother.”
“You had teeth when you were five months old.”
“Well, maybe so,” Leigh said wearily. She didn’t want to argue with anyone. She only wanted someone to tell her what Chad was doing. “She’s had a touch of diarrhea.”
“A sure sign. She’s teething.”
Thankfully her parents left in the early evening. Leigh went to bed as soon as she got the still-fretting Sarah into her crib. “Do you miss him, too?” she asked the sleeping baby.
Lying wide-eyed in bed despite her fatigue, Leigh stared at the shadows on the ceiling. She knew almost nothing about Chad Dillon. They had shared an experience few people ever do. He had brought her baby into the world, and yet she knew hardly anything about him, his family—
She sprang upright. Family? Could he be married? Had he lied to her from the beginning or had he gotten married in the time between Sarah’s birth and when he had come to see them? Was that what the telephone call had been about? His wife was on to the tawdry affair he was trying to get started
No, that telephone call had been an emergency. Emergency. His wife had been in an accident. Chad had said “Where?” “Bad?” That was it. His wife and four children had been in a terrible accident.
No, no, she groaned, and flopped backward onto the pillow. He wasn’t married. She didn’t know how she knew that, she just knew. There was so much about him that she didn’t know that she wanted to. What was his work? Where did he live? Why had he waited four months to contact her after leaving her in the hospital?
Invariably her mind reverted to the minutes just before he had gotten that call. To the time
when he was kissing her, touching her, stirring her as no other man had. Guiltily she had had to admit that the emotions and sensations Chad ignited in her were foreign. Greg, much as she had loved him, had never brought her to that pitch of arousal.
