Just the Man She Needs by Gwynne Forster Read Free Book Online Page B

stranger, a man of whom she knew almost nothing other than his ability to fire her up with his touch. She risked looking him in the eye and shuddered at the softness she saw there. “Let’s start slowly, Ashton. I’m thirty-eight, and I’m feeling the way I should have felt when I was twenty.”
    His hand tightened on hers. “You’ve never been in love?”
    “I thought I was, and maybe at that age and that time it was real, but I don’t think so now, because it never took control of me the way…” She stopped talking. She wasn’t so besotted that she’d confess it to him. Some things were best left unsaid. His arm eased around her shoulder, and he didn’t have to tell her that he understood all that she hadn’t said.
    “What we feel in our youth is fresh and new,” he said, “but I have a feeling that it’s nothing compared to a mature relationship. My love for my son is so all-encompassing that I can’t conceive of life without him. Just being with him gives me so much joy.”
    This man loves deeply, and I want him to love me like that. If only I can make myself believe that it’s possible. If I can forget that Herman Lamont ever lived.
    “Is Teddy enough for you?” she heard herself ask Ashton. “I mean, do you want any more children? Can you…is there room for…for more?”
    “I’d love to have the experience of planning a family with my wife…with the woman I love. As of now, I have no idea what that’s like. I told you how I happen to have Teddy. Maybe that’s why he’s so precious to me. But I don’t want to raise him as an only child.”
    “He may not want to share you with siblings.”
    “I would teach him to love them. I am not worried about that. I’ve prepared myself to be a single father. I can’t be a mother to Teddy. Eartha falls apart if it thunders loudly, but with her at least he has the benefit of a feminine presence. Every child needs that. Do you want a family?”
    He’d touched a sore spot. She could get pregnant at any time, or at least she hoped so, but she needed a husband first, and so far, the only one who she had considered a good prospect had also been a good liar, a polygamist working on wife number three. Fortunately for her, he’d slipped up and made a casual reference to “my wife.” It was an occasion in which her reporter’s nose had served her well. She’d checked on Herman, and as a result, he currently resided in jail.
    “Yes, I want a family, and I’ve decided that if I don’t have a child by the time I’m forty, I’m going to adopt two children, preferably two who are siblings.”
    He signaled for the waitress who arrived immediately and stood as close to him as the chair would permit. The woman took their order of cheese cake and cappuccino, smiled at Ashton and left.
    “I thought for a minute that she planned to take the order while sitting in your lap,” Felicia told him.
    “I noticed that your bottom lip dropped. I started to tell her that my wife was an Olympic boxer, but since I don’t know what kind of sense of humor you have, I restrained myself.”
    “That tells me about your sense of humor, though,” she said. The woman returned with their order and while putting the food on the table did her best to give Ashton an eyeful of her ample bosom.
    Felicia leaned back in her chair and smiled. “Miss,” she said, getting the waitress’s attention, “your bosom won’t impress my husband. As you can see, what he’s got at home is more than ample.” The woman’s face reddened, Ashton’s eyes increased to twice their size, and Felicia examined her nails before buffing them on her sleeve.
    “Well,” Felicia said to Ashton, “from what you said earlier, I figured you’ve got a sense of humor, and I don’t care what that brazen chick thinks.”
    The grin started around his lips, then his eyes sparkled, and suddenly his entire face lit up, his head went back and laughter poured out of him. She stared at him, poleaxed. If only