LITMIR.BIZ

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shut behind him.

      The next day was the Fourth of July. Ingrid, Liv and Finn went together to the picnic sponsored by the Boys and Girls Clubs of Sacramento. There was softball. Liv and Finn played on opposite teams. Twice, Finn put her out at third.

      That night, after the fireworks at the fairgrounds and the more intimate pyrotechnics at home, she told him she didn’t at all appreciate the look of pleasure on his face those two times he caught the ball just as she was sliding in.

      He pulled her close and kissed her hard. ‘‘Ah, my love. Leave a man his petty triumphs, won’t you?’’

      ‘‘Why? Your team won.’’

      For that, she got a maddening low chuckle.

      She grumbled, ‘‘I’ll bet you’re a lousy loser.’’

      ‘‘Not as lousy as you are, my darling.’’ He slid beneath the sheet, disappearing from her view. She felt the shivery scrape of his tongue against the curve of her hip. ‘‘I am not a lousy loser,’’ she announced.

      And then she moaned.

      And then she forgot everything but the magic he could work with his hands and his tongue.

      Liv and a number of other ‘‘nonessential’’ staff at the Justice Department got Friday off.

      She and Finn slept late. When they woke, they made leisurely love. Then they wandered downstairs and fixed a big brunch, which they ate sitting on the floor in the family room watching daytime TV, sharing coffee-flavored kisses.

      Later they went over to Old Sac. They strolled the wooden sidewalks and toured the permanently moored Delta King. When Ingrid’s shop closed at six, they took her to dinner.

      They were back at the T Street house by eight-thirty—and wrapped in each other’s arms upstairs in her bed by nine. They made love and then they made love again.

      They slept.

      Live woke a little after two. She looked at the clock and she thought of the test she’d agreed to take in just a few short hours. The truth was, the test had been there, lurking in the back of her mind, since the night Finn had brought it to her and they became lovers again.

      Her period hadn’t come and she’d experienced none of the usual signs that it was coming. Still, things had been stressful, to say the least, these past few weeks. In all likelihood, she was simply going to be a little late this month.

      She turned her head and looked at the sleeping man beside her, resisting the all-too-constant urge to touch him, to trace his fine brows, to brush at his hair where it curled at his temple, to run her finger down his beautiful blade of a nose.

      Positive or negative…

      Either way, tomorrow she would probably lose him. Unless she agreed to return to Gullandria and become his wife. The choice, in the end, was one she dreaded having to make. Give him up. Or give up her dreams for herself.

      There was pressure at the back of her throat. Ridiculous. She was Liv Thorson, head of her class, with a mind like a steel trap. She was going into politics and there was no crying in politics. She swallowed to banish the traitorous tightness.

      Finn stirred. He opened his eyes. Through the darkness she saw the white flash of his smile. The smile faded and he looked at her deeply as he realized what was going through her mind. ‘‘Don’t think about it. Plenty of time for that when daylight comes.’’

      She did touch him, then. She laid her palm against his cheek, rough now with the beginnings of morning stubble. ‘‘It seems as if we’ve just begun to get to know each other.’’

      ‘‘Come home with me. Marry me.’’

      What could she say? She settled for snuggling close and lifting her mouth to his.

      Daylight came too quickly, a golden slice of light between the curtains. Finn lay with his eyes closed as he felt the bed shift.

      Oh, he knew her. Three short weeks since the night he’d first seen her, in the grand ballroom at Isenhalla, a frown on her kissable mouth as she watched him whirl another across the floor. Two weeks since Midsummer’s Eve, when he’d first held her naked in his arms. And but a few short days since he’d become her lover once again.

      The blankets moved slightly as she slid from the bed. Her bare feet whispered across the floor. The bathroom door made hardly a sound as she shut it behind her.

      He turned so that he could watch the clock. The test would take several minutes. He waited.

      When the time came, he pushed back the covers and rose from the bed. He knew she wouldn’t lock the door.

      She hadn’t. He turned the handle and pushed it open. And there she was, wearing a fluffy white robe, perched on the edge of the claw-footed tub, head bent over the test wand, her straight gold hair sleep-tangled, falling forward over her shoulders.

      Something happened inside him right then as he stood naked in the doorway and stared at the vulnerable crown of her head. Something tore.

      Something ripped wide open.

      She looked up. Her face was white as her robe, the blue eyes haunted.

      Up till now, he’d been able to keep his eyes on the prize—the prize being to get the mother of his child to marry him and come home with him where she belonged. My love, he had called her. And Darling Liv. It had all been in the nature of a delicious game, a game he had played for the joy and the challenge of it, his only goal: to win.

      But all at once it was a game no longer. His mouth tasted of ashes as he recognized the moment for what it was: the moment of his own defeat.

      ‘‘Well?’’ The word emerged from his mouth sounding harsh, guttural.

      She whispered, ‘‘I’m pregnant.’’

      It was no surprise to Finn. He’d known she carried his child from the Sunday after Midsummer’s Eve, when her father called him to his chambers to tell him of the Freyasdahl signs and their meaning.

      No, it wasn’t the news of a baby coming that stole his breath and gripped his belly to a fisted knot.

      It was the sudden clear knowledge that he loved her.

      Deeply.

      Completely.

      He loved her in a way he had never, ever meant to love anyone—the way his father had once loved his mother, the way that cut out all others and left him longing only for her.

      He felt scraped raw, his flesh peeled away. Leaving him much worse than naked. Leaving him shamed and revealed: the seducer, seduced.

      He looked into those stunned blue eyes and saw her doubts, her thousand and one denials. He knew her thoughts exactly. ‘‘You never believed you were pregnant, did you, until now?’’

      She swallowed, her slim throat moving convulsively, and she shook her head.

      ‘‘And even though you know it now, you still don’t plan to marry me, do you?’’

      She found her voice. She used it to sputter excuses, to stammer out halting evasions. ‘‘It’s just…so difficult. To believe. I, well, of course, somehow there’ll be a way. It’s going to be…challenging, but not impossible.’’

      He knew what people called him. Player. Charmer. A man who changed lovers like most men change shirts. And it was true. He wanted to give pleasure. And take it. It was never his intention to love anyone too much or too long. He’d seen what that could do to a man.

      Yet at the core he was Gullandrian. It was bred in the bone with him to make certain his children were born only to his wife.

      What a vain, proud fool he’d been. He should have taken the advice of his king, should have kidnapped her that morning when she first refused him, should have kept her under

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