Читать книгу Committed to the Baby онлайн | страница 53

She heard him behind her and turned to look at him. Behind him, the house sat, windows glistening in the sun. To her right was a stone bench, and she heard the splash of the water from the fountain that sat directly in the middle of the garden.

Justice was looking at her through narrowed eyes and, not for the first time, Maggie wondered what he was thinking about. What he saw when he looked at her. Did he have the same regrets she did? When he looked at the roses his mother had planted, did he see Maggie there, too? Was she imprinted on this house, his memories? Or had she become someone he didn’t want to think about at all?

Well, that was depressing, she told herself and shook off the feeling deliberately. Instead, she cocked her head to one side, looked up at him and asked, “Do you remember that summer storm?”

After a second or two, he smiled and nodded. “Hard to forget that one.” He glanced around at the neatly laid out flower beds, then kicked at one of the bricks at his feet. “It’s the reason we laid these bricks, remember?”

A soft wind blew in and lifted her hair off her neck and Maggie grinned. “How could I forget? It rained so hard the roses were coming up out of the ground.” She looked around and saw the place as it had been that long-ago night. “The ground couldn’t hold any more water. And the roots of the bushes were pulling up just from the weight of the bushes themselves.” She and Justice had raced outside, determined to save his mother’s garden. “We were running around here for two hours, in the rain and the mud, propping up the rose bushes, trying to keep them all from being washed away.”

“We did it, too,” he mused, looking around now, as if reassuring himself that they’d been successful.

“Yeah, we did.” She took a breath and asked, “Remember how we celebrated?”

His gaze fixed on hers, and she felt the heat of that stare slide right down into her bones. “You mean how we made love out here, covered in mud, laughing like loons?”

“Yes,” she said, “that’s what I mean.” She took an instinctive step toward him. The past mingled with the present, memory tangling with fresh need. Her mouth went dry, her insides melted and something low and deep within her pulsed with desire. Passion. She remembered the feel of his hands on her. The taste of his mouth on hers. The heavy weight of him pressing her down, into cold, sodden earth. And she remembered she hadn’t felt the cold. Hadn’t noticed the rain. All she’d been aware of was Justice.