Page 28 of Prognosis Do Over

He put his hands up in protest. ‘No, no. You have them. You obviously need them more than I do.’

‘No, I’ll be fine now. I just got caught without my Fruit Tingles. Didn’t expect to be here today. It can be a demanding little critter,’ she said, rubbing her bump.

The baby disliked the weight of her hand and kicked at it. ‘Ow!’ she yelped, still amazed at the power of a five-pound foetus. ‘I swear this kid’s going to be a line rower, like his dad.’

Will laughed. ‘Where?’ he asked. ‘Is it here?’ He placed his hand next to hers and she shook her head, picking his hand up and moving it over slightly, getting an immediate response. ‘Maybe he’ll kick for Australia?’ he grinned.

‘Maybe she’ll kick butts in the courtroom? Or parliament?’

He laughed as she continued to cover his hand and steer it around, trying to follow the movements of the baby. ‘Do you know the sex?’

She shook her head. ‘We were going to find out. Jan and Martin wanted to be able to name the baby and talk about it as a real person instead of the baby. But after the accident...I just wanted something out of all of this to look forward to, you know? A nice surprise after all the bad ones.’

He nodded, moving his hand up high on her bump as the baby frolicked there. It looped the loop a couple more times, and he grinned at her, remembering the times he had felt Candy’s foetal contortions and how endlessly fascinating they’d been. For one brief moment as they shared this intimate experience, her hand on his, he wished the baby was theirs.

His and Lou’s.

The baby stopped moving, and they waited for it to start up again. After a minute it became apparent that the show was over. By then Will was more conscious of how close they were. How, from his vantage point, he could see down her cleavage to the creamy rise of her breasts. How her neck smelt like flowers and her breath like mint and her hair like coconut. How her lips shimmered with some gloss stuff she had on, and her breath was raspy and uneven.

She removed her hand from his. ‘I think it’s stopped now,’ she said quietly.

Lou stared at his nicely tanned hand against the white of her polo shirt, because his head was so close to hers she didn’t dare look up into his eyes. His mouth, his lips, were somewhere in the vicinity of her forehead; she could almost feel the heat from them searing into her flesh. As the silence grew to a loud roar she wanted him to remove his hands and step back. But she needed to feel his arms around her more.

‘Will,’ she pleaded softly, her resolve to not go back crumbling by the second.

‘I missed you,’ Will said huskily, feeling the strength of his connection to her not just through the intimacy of his touch but through a thousand rekindled memories.

She nodded, and felt a lump of emotion clog her throat. ‘I missed you too,’ she admitted, and looked up into his face.

‘Lou,’ he groaned, as a shimmer of moisture glimmered in her beautiful blue eyes. He moved his hands to cradle her face, and before he could analyse it, or she could protest, or they could both think better of it, he kissed her.

Lou felt the soft touch of his lips and a groan of sheer unadulterated lust escaped her mouth, and then she was kissing him back as if it was her last moment on earth. Her hands crept up his arms, revelling in the feel of his strength beneath them, and linked at the back of his neck, her fingers playing with the hair at his collar.

Heat flared to life deep down low inside, and she wanted to push herself closer. Be nearer. Feel his heat and his hardness. Be one. It wasn’t enough. She wanted to tear off his shirt and feel his chest, the hard ridges of his back. She wanted to run her hands over his warmth, feel the smooth glide of his flesh.

As if nothing had changed.

She heard him groan and pressed her lips closer, opened her mouth wider, held him tighter. He was right in front of her, but it wasn’t enough. She wanted more. She wanted him everywhere. She wanted to be wrapped up in his body, part of him.

Part of them.

Will, too, was totally lost in the moment. It didn’t matter that this was what he shouldn’t be doing. The simple matter was that it was exactly what he wanted to do. And something so wrong had never felt so right. She was soft and wonderful, and her minty breath and coconut hair were driving him crazy. He was being blown to a tropical island on a peppermint breeze and it was bliss. But he wanted more.

He wanted all of her.

And then his pager beeped, and startled the hell out of both of them. Lydia might as well have come in and thrown a bucket of cold water over them. They broke apart, and he stared at her for a few moments, her chest heaving, her lips moist and swollen from their passion.

They didn’t speak — they didn’t have to.

He teetered on the edge for those few precarious moments, achingly close to claiming her mouth again. She wanted him to. He could see it in her eyes, hear it in the rasp of her breath. He swayed closer and watched as she shut her eyes and parted her lips, and he couldn’t stop the groan that rushed out from inside him.

And then the pager beeped again, and he stopped. She opened her eyes and stared at him, and then stared at his lips.

‘You’d better get that,’ she said huskily.

He sighed and nodded, pushing himself away from the couch and turning to the phone on the desk. His hand shook slightly as he dialled the extension number displayed on his pager. He cleared his throat and shut his eyes, and waited for the other end to pick up.

Lou took a few deep breaths while Will spoke, making a conscious effort to settle her breathing and her heart-rate. She wiped her lips and tried not to think about how close they had come to losing perspective.

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