Home to Laura

chapter SIXTEEN



TAMMY STOPPED AT the fence to say hello to the bison. She’d missed them.

Hirsute ran over and shoved his head into her hands.

She scrubbed him and petted him and cooed, and he lapped it up like a big baby. “I missed you, too.”

Over her shoulder, she stared at the house. I missed him.

She knew that Ty was working and wouldn’t get home for at least another half hour. She had time to put her plan into action.

She’d heard through the grapevine that Ty had driven Ruby to the airport yesterday, sending her home for the coming school year. Nick, Mort and Emily had gone home last week. How was it almost the end of August already and there had been no further movement forward with Ty?

She knew the answer to that, though. He’d made the first steps toward reconciliation. It was now up to her to either reject or follow through.

Since the Fourth of July, she’d kept her distance so Ty could have a relationship with his daughter without Tammy getting in their way, but she’d thought long and hard about what he’d said about holding on to past resentment.

Her talk with Ruby had been illuminating. She knew that Winona hadn’t returned to town since January. She knew there was no chance of reconciliation with Winona. She knew that Ty said he wanted her and their baby.

It was time to take him at his word. To trust him.

This evening, Tammy was putting a bold plan into action.

She wanted Ty and she wanted a family. She planned to get him back tonight for good, in the most daring way possible, to fix his attention firmly on her. She was going to make an impression, a lasting one, to leave him with a memory he wouldn’t soon forget.

She planned to obliterate any trace of Winona from Ty’s mind and claim him for herself.

If there was any way possible for a pregnant woman to be sexy, she was pulling out all the stops. Ty would love it, or he would find her pregnant body gross and she would have humiliated herself, and there would be no hope of a future between them.

But wasn’t love worth taking a chance for?

Go bold or go home.

Using her own key, she entered and closed the door behind her, her hands shaky, but her jaw tight. She was nothing if not determined, committed.

She unbuttoned her light summer cardigan and dropped it from her shoulders onto the floor in the front hallway, where it landed...in a lump.

Bending gingerly because her eight-months-pregnant body had a mind of its own, had a different balance than her normal body, she rearranged her sweater so it looked more graceful lying on the floor in the foyer.

Next, she took off her skirt and dropped it a few steps away, close to the bottom of the stairs.

She took off one black stocking and draped it on the bottom step, then hung the garter on the newel post.

A third of the way upstairs, she draped the second stocking and garter. Putting on the stockings with her big pregnant belly in the way had been a real pain. Ty had better appreciate her efforts or she would never speak to him again. Ever.

At the top of the stairs, she dropped her black lace bra onto the carpet.

With difficulty—thank God Ty wasn’t here to witness her ungainly striptease—she stepped out of her black lace panties. This evening, she’d eschewed maternity panties for a tiny pair that sat under her belly.

She hung the underwear on the doorknob of his bedroom then closed the door. She pulled the bedsheet to the foot of the bed then lay down.

At that moment, she heard Ty’s truck come barreling up his driveway.

She struggled to arrange herself into a sexy pose. How did an extremely pregnant woman do that?

Her hands started to shake. What if she was wrong about this? What if she turned Ty off? What if he ran for the hills rather than love her elephant body?

Since last January, when she had learned of Winona’s existence, and how eerily Tammy resembled the woman, she had been living half a life. She’d adored Ty for too long to let what they’d had slide off into oblivion.

Her baby needed a father, but Tammy needed Ty even more for herself. In the past, she had pushed Ty about marriage and he had always balked. It sounded as if he’d changed. She had to hope that was true. She wanted happiness. She wanted a family.

They belonged together.

She ran her hand over her stomach.

Oh, Lord, what if she was making a fool of herself?

* * *

TY ENTERED THE house and stopped, arrested by the sight of a pale yellow sweater on the floor of his entryway.

He would think it was Ruby’s, but she had left yesterday. Besides, the sweater hadn’t been there this morning when he had left for work.

Farther along the hallway, a yellow skirt lay on the floor.

What the—?

He picked it up and recognized it. Tammy had worn it on the Fourth of July, to his barbecue. He hadn’t realized then that it had a big elastic insert for her expanding belly.

What was it doing in his house, on his floor? A black stocking lay on the stairs, and farther up, another one hung on the banister. He picked it up and rubbed it between his fingers. Soft, like silk. Maybe it was silk. He didn’t know these things.

A garter circled the newel post. He picked it up and scrunched it in his fist. Tammy was in his house. His breath caught in his throat. Thank you, Jesus.

Tammy was here and, unless he missed his guess, was naked upstairs, or wearing pretty damn little.

He took the stairs two at a time.

A bra lay on the carpet and a pair of lacy black panties hung from his doorknob.

His hands shaking, he opened the door...and there she was, naked on his bed and blooming with pregnancy, and beautiful enough to break his heart. To rob him of breath. To send him to heaven.

He approached slowly, afraid that if he moved too quickly, she would disappear, that he would find she’d only been a mirage.

Her body fascinated him. Her breasts were bigger, the nipples swollen and ready to feed their babe after she gave birth, and her belly was large, round, hard.

“Take off your shirt,” she whispered.

He did, unbuttoning slowly because his fingers were clumsy. He would do anything Tammy asked of him, if only she would stay. He shrugged out of his shirt and she smiled.

“Take off your pants.”

He unbuckled his belt, unzipped his jeans then pulled them off, taking his boots and socks off at the same time. She watched his every move, the look in her eyes avid.

“Take off those.” She pointed to his underwear.

He took them off, unhooking them from the erection that had already started to burgeon.

When he stepped toward the bed, she asked, “Who am I?”

He shook his head, trying to catch his breath, to regain his senses. “What?”

“Who am I?” she repeated.

A slow smile crept across his lips. “Tammy.”

“Right answer.” Tammy smiled and opened her arms.

He stepped into them, his weight dipping the mattress. She rolled against him.

“You’re really here.” His voice broke, backed up as it was with tenderness and gratitude and relief. And love.

They kissed and Ty had never tasted anything as beautiful as Tammy’s lips. He drank in hints of her favorite black tea with orange zest. At some point this afternoon, she’d eaten something with cinnamon in it.

He ran his hands over her shoulders, her collarbone, her breasts and her stomach.

She touched every part of him she could reach. “Oh, Ty, it’s been so long.”

She turned her back to him and he positioned himself to enter her, taking it slow and easy. He’d never made love to a pregnant woman.

“I don’t want to hurt you.”

“You won’t.”

“I don’t want to hurt the baby.”

“Just take it slowly.”

He did. Her body welcomed him by degrees, with warmth and moisture and womanly acceptance.

He cupped her breasts then reached a hand below her belly to arouse her. Her breathing hitched and she moaned.

Slowly, delicately, her scent tinted the air. Ty drank in the beauty of it.

For hours they loved each other with their bodies, with hands and lips, with promises whispered in dirty words. In sweet phrases.

“Ty,” Tammy whispered, “marry me.”

Ty closed his eyes, wrapped her in a loving embrace and said, “Yes.”