Newborn Needs a Dad / His Motherless Little Twins by Dianne Drake Page B

she was suddenly discovering that so much of her didn’t want to. For a little while, it would be nice to live in the illusion that they were a romantic couple caught up in the pure sensuality of the dance. Even with her boots…and her belly.
    “I’m not keeping you here, Gabrielle. I would never force you to do something you don’t want to do. So, it’s your choice.”
    Her choice…her body was already swaying to the rhythm. Swaying to Neil’s rhythm. It was like she couldn’t stop it. The music was drawing her in, pulling her even closer to Neil…he was holding her, they were dancing. Hands appropriate, of course. Proper dance etiquette. And she wished, dear heaven, she had on better shoes, something to help her glide more gracefully. But that didn’t matter, because they took up so little of the parquet floor, dancing mostly in one small spot. Tighter together. Their proper dance etiquette relaxing into something more personal, her arms slipped around his neck as his slipped around her back. They looked like every other couple out there. So close…Her head on his shoulder now, she couldfeel his breath on the back of her neck. The steady in and out of it, the gentle brush of his lips…no lips. No, that wasn’t his lips. Couldn’t be.
    Suddenly, Gabby pulled back, broke away, stared into his eyes. “I need to sit down.” she said, trying not to sound as breathless as she was. Which had nothing to do with the dance.
    “Are you OK?” he asked, leading her off the dance floor.
    “Just a little winded. I’ll be fine when I sit down.”
    She wasn’t, though. She wasn’t fine at all. In fact, she was so disquieted she wasn’t able to eat a bite of the chocolate trifle Angela had sent along for dessert. “Did you kiss me?” she finally blurted out.
    He looked up from his spoonful of trifle. Smiled. “I might have. Why?”
    “Why would you ask me why? No, skip that, and tell me why you might have kissed me?”
    “The moment was right. So was the mood.”
    “Whose mood?” she sputtered.
    “Mine. Yours.”
    “How do you figure my mood was right?”
    “Your head was on my shoulder, your arms around my neck. Since I wasn’t the one who placed them there, then I figured the mood had to be yours, too.”
    He took another bite of dessert, and over the flicker of the candles between them she saw the pure devilry in his eyes. “I was…” Voice quivering, she cleared her throat. “I told you I didn’t dance. I didn’t know what I was doing.”
    “Then I claim the same thing. I didn’t know what I was doing. If I kissed you, that is.” A purely sexual smile crossed his face. “And that hasn’t been established yet,
has it?”
    “I think it has.”
    “Did you see the kiss happen?”
    “Of course I didn’t. But I felt it.” Had felt goose bumps rising on her flesh, too. And shivers running up and down her spine. Shivers that were still there.
    “Are you sure that’s what you felt?”
    Oh, she was sure. But she wasn’t going to tell him.
    Neil scooped up a spoonful of trifle and held it across the table to her. Wiggled it ever so seductively close to her lips. And she wanted it, not because she craved the chocolate but because she craved the seduction. Or, rather, the illusion of seduction, as no man in his right mind would seduce a seven-and-a-half-months-pregnant woman. But it was so nice feeling wanted—in that way. And because she wanted it so desperately, she pushed herself back from the table, away from temptation. “What I felt was a man coercing me into doing something I didn’t want to do, and I was just being polite, so he wouldn’t be embarrassed by my rejection of him on the dance floor.”
    Neil laughed outright at that. His eyes twinkled, they crinkled at the corners, and he gave her the full effect of a laugh that was so contagious she couldn’t help but laugh, too, at the absurdity of what she’d said. In fact, she laughed herself to tears, and took the handkerchief he