He pushed open the door to the guest bedroom, but there was no one there. By the time he reached Trent’s room, he had worked himself into a froth. Where the hell was she, for crissake?
He shoved the door; it went swinging open and banged against the inside wall. Kerry had changed out of the wilted linen dress and had put on a pair of jeans and a cotton camisole. She was barefoot and her hair was hanging loosely down her back. She was sitting on the edge of the twin bed where Lisa lay sleeping. Trent was softly snoring in the other one.
For a moment, they only stared at each other.
Then Kerry bounded to her feet. “You scared me half to death!” She kept her voice down so the children wouldn’t wake up, but was as angry as a spitting cat because he had caught her crying. “Why did you come barging in here like that? I thought you were a burglar!”
In three long strides, Linc was beside the bed and gripping her arm. He pulled her across the room, and out the door. When they were safely on the other side of it, he thrust his chin out belligerently and said, “No problem. If I’d been a burglar you could have impersonated a karate expert.”
“Very funny. And let go of my arm.” She wrested herself free of his grasp. “I just got those children to sleep. They were exhausted, but too excited to settle down. Then you come charging through the door like a rampaging bull and— Wait a minute. I thought you’d be on your way to Dallas by now. What are you doing here?”
“Proposing.”
Kerry gaped at him. “Proposing? Proposing what?”
“Marriage, of course. What does a man usually propose to a woman?”
“Lots of things. Among them, marriage is usually the last resort.”
His face was dark and fearsome with annoyance. “Well, that’s what I’m proposing. Marriage.”
“Why?”
“Because I make good on my obligations, that’s why. On the way to the airport, Cage reminded me of something.”
“What?”
“That we didn’t use anything to keep you from getting pregnant.” He bobbed his head firmly, as though he’d just dropped a bomb of startling information. “You didn’t think of that, did you?”
Her hesitation was so fleeting that he didn’t even notice it. For a fraction of a second, she entertained the thought of letting him go on believing that they’d been careless. But earlier that morning, she had resolved that she would never use people again for her own gain. She couldn’t trick Linc that way; it would be unconscionable. By the same token, it enraged her that the only reason he had come back proposing marriage was because he felt obligated to do so.
“As a matter of fact I did.”
That served to suck the wind out of his sails. Kerry took a great deal of pleasure in watching his puffed-up arrogance fall like a knifed souffle.
“I thought about it over a year ago,” she told him triumphantly. “Before I went to Monterico, when there was a very real possibility that I might be raped by guerrilla soldiers, I started taking birth control pills. So, Mr. O’Neal, you’ve got nothing to worry about. You’re relieved of your ‘obligation.’ Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m very tired.”
She spun on her heel, but took no more than a few steps before he grabbed the seat of her britches and jerked her to a halt. “What now?” she demanded.
“You’re forgetting something else,” Linc said.
“Well?” Kerry folded her arms over her chest and all but tapped her foot with impatience.
Curbing an urge to strangle her, he said, “Lisa. Do you honestly think they’ll let you adopt her?”
“Yes.”
In spite of her ready affirmation, Linc saw the chink in Kerry’s confidence and, like a mountain climber looking for footholds in the side of a sheer cliff, dug into it. “Well, I’m not so sure. And neither are Cage and Jenny. He mentioned it on the way to the airport.”
“I’ll exhaust every possibility.”
“You still might lose.”
“Then I’ll take her to live someplace outside the United States, to Mexico, anywhere.”
“Oh, and that would be just dandy. A terrific life for a kid, having no sense of stability, no country to claim.”
“I won’t give her up,” Kerry cried softly. “I love her.”