The Parent Plan

“Sounds like Peggy’s not planning on going back to work anytime soon.” Travis shook his head. “No way! She’s got all she can handle with me and the twins.”

Cassidy hid his jealousy behind a grin. “Guess it’s a toss-up who demands the most TLC, you or the babies.”

Travis chuckled. “You could say that, yeah. Course, me being the easygoing sort, I don’t take a lot of care. Mostly just the tender lovin’ part.”

After giving an obligatory chuckle, Cassidy took another sip of soda pop and let his gaze wander over the crowd. The dancing had started again, and he let his attention linger for a moment on one of the couples, friends of Karen’s from the hospital. Noah Howell and his wife Amanda. Both doctors.

The last time he’d done time in this suit and tie, he’d been attending their wedding. From the way they were squeezing up to each other tonight, their thighs rubbing in time with the waltz, he figured the honeymoon was far from over.

Give ’em another few years and the groom would be leaning against a wall and wishing he could go home while the happy bride was off on her own, gossiping with her friends. Like Karen, he thought as he shifted his gaze to the cluster of tables to his left where she was laughing with a sleek blonde in a filmy dress the color of wood smoke. It took him a moment to place the face. Olivia’s daughter, Eve, had come home for the funeral, and a few weeks later she’d up and married one of his poker-playing buddies, Rio Redtree.

Weddings and babies. Hell, it was an epidemic.

Karen said it was all due to the horrendous spring storm, and that a sociologist from Denver was doing a study to see if the increase in life-altering changes was the result of heightened emotions.

Emotions. Hell, he thought. It was sex that produced weddings, just like it produced babies. The hot, steamy kind of sex that took a man by storm and messed up all his well-ordered plans.

His body stirring once more, he watched Karen laughing at something Eve had just said and brooded on the long restless nights he’d spent lately staring at the ceiling, his body hard and aching to be buried in his wife’s soft warmth.

Before he’d met Karen, he hadn’t known he had any real tenderness in him. The women he’d cared enough about to take to bed had excited other things in him. Hot, turbulent needs that settled as quickly as they rose. Dark, angry emotions that set his teeth on edge, even as he exerted a will of iron to keep his hands from bruising and his need from galloping out of control.

But somehow, with Karen, the ferocity of his needs was tempered by the greatest contentment he’d ever known. Somehow, when he was holding her in his arms, his sated body still sheathed by hers, the accusing voice inside his head was silent, allowing him peace.

He’d been shaken right down to his boots to realize he’d wanted her love desperately, wanted something he’d stopped believing in on his tenth birthday. Wanted what he, himself, was no longer able to offer a woman.

He drew a breath and watched her lift her wineglass to her lips. He longed to feel that lush, sweet mouth on his, opening eagerly, her hands clutching at his shoulders as she made soft pleading noises in her throat.

Even now, when a part of him hated her for being so stubborn, he wanted her more than any other woman he’d ever known. His sweet wife, the mother of his child. The hottest lady in the room, bar none.

A need to hold her tore through him, as raw as a bloody gash left by a brush from a rusty barb. It wasn’t safe to let himself think about loving her. It would never be safe. The closest he came was a fierce desire to protect her and spoil her and make love to her so thoroughly she would forget to notice he’d never said those three little words that came so easily to her lips.

Lost in his brooding thoughts, it took him a moment to realize Travis had asked him a question. “Sorry, run that by me one more time?” he said as he shifted his gaze Travis’s way.

A strange look came and went in the other man’s eyes before Travis’s mouth sidled up into a smug half smile. “I was just asking if things are any better between you and Karen, but from the droolin’ you been doin’ just watching her across the room, I gotta figure they are.”

Cassidy scowled. “If it’s all the same to you, I’d just as soon you keep your figurin’ to yourself.”

Travis lifted the bottle for one long, last swallow before wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “Take the advice of an old married guy like me, Cass. Point those shiny Sunday boots of yours toward that pretty lady in blue yonder and ask her to dance.” He chuckled. “Better yet, hustle her on home so you can finish the evening off right, just the two of you.”

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