Natalie laughed and shook her head, pulling back far enough that she could look up at his face. “Cocky bastard.”
“Ah yes,” Kyle said with a smile. “But I’m your cocky bastard.” He rubbed a circle on Natalie’s back with one hand while letting the other wander down to cup her ass.
She looked up at him, amused. “Oh, really?”
“Really.” He pressed his hips against her and gave her a good, long kiss that warmed her blood and made her joints feel rubbery and loose. The irritation she’d felt just moments before vanished, and desire took over.
“The kids might be home any minute,” Natalie whispered, snaking her arms up to link her wrists behind his neck.
“Then we’d better be quick,” he said, grabbing her hand and pulling her down the hall to the stairs that led to their bedroom, and Natalie felt like she had when they first met, when they couldn’t keep their hands off each other. Once inside their room, he laid her down, and with a firm grip, pinned her arms above her head. Natalie felt her pulse quicken as he stared at her as though he were trying to memorize all the details of her face. “I love you, Nat,” he said, and then she let him take her, knowing that even when they disagreed, Kyle’s honesty was part of what she loved about him. He was her husband. He would always be on her side.
? ? ?
The next morning, after Natalie had finished with her baking prep for the week’s orders and Kyle got home from playing racquetball with John, she grabbed her cell phone from her purse, which was on the kitchen counter.
“I need to call my mom,” she told her husband, who was in the living room with the kids, keeping them occupied with books and Legos and building forts so Natalie could work without interruption. Yesterday, when her parents had stood on the front porch to drop off the kids, they’d kept the conversation brief and casual, no one acknowledging the life-changing bomb that had been dropped the day Natalie’s mother handed her her adoption file. Still, Natalie noted a muscle twitching beneath her mother’s right eye, a telltale sign of the stress she felt, and she knew she needed to resolve things sooner rather than later.
“Okay,” Kyle said.
“I won’t be long,” Natalie said, and she headed upstairs. She sat on the bed, which was unmade and still smelled faintly sexual after their passionate quickie the day before. She smiled a little to herself, remembering, and then shook her head as though to rid it of those images before she dialed her mother’s phone number.
It only took a few rings for her mother to answer. “Hi, honey,” she said, sounding guarded.
“Hi,” Natalie replied. “Thanks again for taking the kids yesterday. They had a great time.”
“Oh, good.”
Natalie decided the best thing she could do was get right to the point. “So, finding out I have a sister sort of put me in a tailspin. I’m sorry I haven’t called to talk about it.”
“Sweetie—” her mother began, but Natalie interrupted her.
“The truth is, I can’t pretend to understand all your reasons for not telling me about Brooke.” She paused, trying to sort out exactly the right thing to say. “I know you’re afraid of losing me, which you never will, but I guess it makes sense you might feel that way. And I don’t really know how else to tell you this, but I found her. My sister.” The word felt stiff and strange inside Natalie’s mouth, as though it belonged to a foreign language. “I met the social worker who handled our case and it took a few weeks after that. Brooke still lives in Seattle. She grew up here. We talked on the phone Friday, and I met with her yesterday.”
Her mother finally spoke. “Does she know where . . . did you find . . . your birth mother, too?”
“No,” Natalie said, thinking about the way Brooke had shut down when Natalie asked her about their mother. “Not yet.”
“So she . . . your sister,” her mother said, “isn’t in contact with her?”
“No. She grew up in and out of foster homes, but mostly lived at Hillcrest.”
Her mom let out a tiny, surprised yip. “She was never adopted?”
“No.” Natalie was quiet then, letting this bit of information settle in before she spoke again. “I just wanted to be honest with you about what’s going on. I don’t want to keep anything from you.”
“The way we kept this from you,” her mother said in a barely audible voice. She didn’t wait for Natalie’s reply. “I’m so sorry, honey. I wish . . .” Her mother sounded as though she were about to say more, but then allowed her words to trail off into nothing.
“I know,” Natalie said, feeling a flash of suspicion that her parents might still be keeping something from her, but she decided she wasn’t up to pushing the issue. “You did what you thought was best at the time. There’s no way to change it now.”
Jennifer