The Yuletide Child, Charlotte Lamb [best novels to read .TXT] 📗

the baby’s small dark head to her breast, feeling the searching movements of that tiny mouth with a quiver of tenderness. Baby Ruth needed some help to get the brown-aureoled nipple between her parted lips, but once it was there she fastened on to it eagerly.

Henry smiled benignly. ‘Well done!’ He yawned, covering his mouth. ‘Well, you obviously don’t need me. I’ve had a long day—I’m off to bed. Goodnight.’

‘If you need anything else I’ll be downstairs in the kitchen for a while,” Ruth said, going out too.

The door closed quietly. The fire was burning low again, the soft drift of the ash through the grate the only sound in the room. Dylan gazed down at her baby, gently stroking the head moving so greedily at her breast.

‘Does it hurt?’ asked Ross, and she smiled.

‘It’s a strange feeling, but not exactly painful. I think I shall enjoy feeding her.’

‘She obviously enjoys it,’ he murmured, staring at her naked breast. ‘I can’t get over the way your breasts have changed. They’re twice the size they were.’

‘And you hate that,’ she muttered, looking at him angrily. ‘I know you couldn’t stand the way I looked while I was pregnant. You couldn’t bear to see me, or share my bed. I turned you right off! If you’d really loved me you would never have felt like that!’

CHAPTER NINE

Ross broke out in a hoarse voice, ‘Dylan, for God’s sake—I told you. You aren’t listening to me! I was going crazy. I didn’t dare make love to you because I believed Ella—I thought she must be right, that it could be dangerous for you, or the baby, if we had sex. You’re so delicate and frail; I was terrified of hurting you. I could see you were really down those last few months. You looked as if you were at the end of your tether! But believe me, darling, I wanted to make love to you so much it drove me out of my mind!’

She drew a sharp, agonising, hope-filled breath, holding that fixed, luminous stare. Did he mean it? Was that really how he had felt? Had they both been as frustrated, as unhappy, as each other?

‘God knows how many nights I slept in my forest hut, freezing to death, awake half the night, but staying away from you just to stop myself getting into your bed and doing what I badly needed to do,’ Ross said, his voice thickened with desire.

She said unsteadily, ‘I thought you hated the way I looked!”

‘I loved the way you looked. I found it intensely sexy to know my child was inside you,’ he said, reaching out to touch the smooth, pale flesh of the breast his baby was sucking. ‘I found it so moving, darling. I thought you were even lovelier than you had been before!’

She closed here eyes, breathing raggedly as he slowlycaressed her. ‘Oh, Ross! Why didn’t you tell me? If you had only said something, explained...’

‘I was afraid to say anything, in case...’ He was flushed, laughing. ‘Well, in case one thing led to another, and I ended up doing the very thing I was determined not to do. I thought it was safer not to talk about it.’ His fingers slid down to where the small mouth was clamped on her. He stroked the baby’s downy cheek. ‘I’d switch places with her any day!’ he whispered, and Dylan laughed huskily.

The baby stopped sucking, the small head falling back, the round blue eyes staring at Ross with affront.

He laughed at her furious expression. ‘Am I interrupting your dinner? Sorry, sweetheart,’ he said, watching Dylan switch her to the other breast. ‘She’s quite a character already, isn’t she?’

‘She reminds me of you,’ Dylan said, dimpling.

He softly pinched her ear between finger and thumb. ‘Well, who else would she take after? I am her father.’ His fingers pushed into Dylan’s curly brown hair and he sighed. ‘God—how much longer am I going to have to wait before I can make love to you, Dylan?’

She blushed and laughed. ‘I don’t know. I suppose it depends on how quickly I get over the birth.’ That reminded her of a notice she had seen in the village a month ago. ‘There are weekly aerobics classes at the village hall from January, Ross. I’ll sign up for them. I can take the baby with me; they have a crêche in another room while the mothers are working out. I’ll go swimming, too, and do lots more walking. That should soon get my figure back.’

His face grew serious. ‘You hated being pregnant, didn’t you?’

‘I wanted the baby, Ross!’

‘Yes, I know, but you hated being pregnant!’

She made a wry face. ‘Not at first, but towards the end, when I got so heavy, I have to admit... Well, a dancer has to be light on her feet, very supple, and suddenly I was neither. I couldn’t even see my feet this last couple of months!’

He smiled. ‘You were never that big!’

‘Oh, yes, I was—I hated seeing myself in the mirror, especially naked. That’s why I found it so easy to believe you hated the sight of me, too.’

‘But I didn’t! Dylan, I loved seeing you heavy with my baby; you were more beautiful than ever before. Your skin glowed like a peach and you had that wonderful, smooth roundness—I was dying to touch you all the time, but I couldn’t trust myself even to kiss you because I knew if I once got too close I’d never have the strength to stop myself.’

Dylan sighed, remembering the misery she had suffered during those final weeks. ‘I wish you’d told me that! I know you thought you were doing the right thing, staying away from me, not making love—but you should have told me why you were being so distant, then I wouldn’t have got the wrong idea. I’d have been saved a lot of grief.’

He leaned to kiss her gently, stroking her face. ‘I’m sorry, Dylan, the last thing I wanted to