were cradling her bottom, his arms around her.
“You know, that first time in the kitchen tonight, while I wasn’t thinking about anything but getting inside you, it still hit me hard that you didn’t insist on using protection. I had this huge urge to laugh out loud.”
He paused and Bonnie lay frozen, willing him not to think what she knew he was thinking. “Of course, other urges were much stronger than laughter….”
She chuckled with him and felt no laughter at all.
“I know it took a while for us to get pregnant with Katie,” Keith continued, his voice sleepy, content, happier than she’d heard him in far too long. “I’m not expecting anything to come of tonight. I’m just glad we’re getting started.”
Bonnie moved her head. It could have been a nod. Or a protest. She wanted so badly to want what Keith wanted, what they’d always wanted together.
A family. This house. This life.
Tied up in knots, she lay there beside him. Did she tell him she hadn’t stopped an incredibly spontaneous moment because she hadn’t had to? That it was a safe time for her?
The admission would hurt him, ruin the best evening they’d had in months. And for what?
She wasn’t sure she wasn’t going to have another child. And didn’t want him to think she didn’t want one. Because maybe she did. She loved being a mother. And a wife. She just had to figure out what she needed to do for Bonnie, the woman, before she committed herself any further.
Or figure out how to convince that woman to feel completely fulfilled with the life she had.
But how did she tell her husband that? How could she look into those gorgeous blue eyes and tell this man that the life he loved, the one they’d built together, wasn’t enough for her?
They could lose everything. And for what?
So maybe they wouldn’t use protection the next time they made love. Or the time after that.
Rolling over, she studied Keith’s familiar features. Those eyes, half-closed, slumbrous and sexy, the jaw with the familiar dark shadow, a mouth that wasn’t quite grinning but somehow expressing complete satisfaction. She loved him so much.
And couldn’t hurt him anymore.
“I SAW THIS FILM in the studio today.”
Keith and Bonnie were sitting up, wrapped in the quilt. Reflection from the flames swayed across Bonnie’s skin, clothing her in a mysterious beauty. It was after midnight and they both had to work early, but Keith had absolutely no desire to go to bed.
“Previewing?” she asked, glancing sideways at him.
He nodded. It wasn’t often a film stayed with him, coming to mind again and again, as this one had.
Keith wasn’t sure if it was the film itself or Martha’s reaction to it that was nagging at him. While he appreciated what the dancers and the filmmaker were saying, he still didn’t think it fit their programming mission.
“It’s bothering you?” Bonnie asked, understanding, even though he’d said nothing.
He nodded a second time, his gaze moving from her face to the fire.
He told her about the suffering he’d seen. The death and hopelessness that pervaded the film. “It was too much.”
“The movie showed them dying?” Bonnie asked.
“No.” And then, “They were dancing.”
“Dancing.” He could feel her looking at him. “Even at the end? They were dancing?”
“Yeah, but you had to see it, Bon. These guys were like shells of men, their bodies so thin you wondered how they had the strength to move.”
“But obviously they did have the strength, or they wouldn’t have been able to dance.”
She’d know about that, having been a dancer for years before she’d stopped to study early-childhood education.
“Yeah.” Elbows on his knees, Keith stared down a particular feisty flame.
“I think that’s inspiring. Like they weren’t going to quit until it was over.”
“So you think it would be okay to broadcast?”
“Of course!”
Keith turned his head to see Bonnie frowning at him. “Don’t you?” she asked.
He shrugged. “Yeah, I guess.” More so now.
“What did Martha have to say about it?”
“Pretty much the same thing you did.”
“I’m not surprised. We think a lot alike.”
Keith nodded.
He’d noticed that, too.
SHANE BELLOWS’S HEART sped up as he walked down the deserted hallway in Little Spirits. A light was still on in the playroom. That meant Bonnie was there.
According to the note he’d left on his mirror last night, she’d mentioned that she planned to move the reading corner to the other side of the room today.
He could help.
He could talk to her.
“Hi,” he said, trying to force his voice to respond to the commands he was giving it—trying to sound the way he had when he’d spoken to her during high school.
She’d wanted him then.
Facing a ceiling-high shelf, her arms full of the books she was pulling down, Bonnie turned to look at him over one shoulder.
“Hi, Shane.” Her easy grin settled so much of the uncertainty that was constantly there inside him.
He wanted to grin back, but was afraid his mouth would get that crooked hitch that came and went for no reason he could figure out. He didn’t want her to see that stupid look. Not ever.
“I can help,” he said, keeping his words to a minimum, as he always did around her. He hated the way his speech slowed and slurred. He’d never get used to that.
“You don’t have to,” she said. “You’ve been working all day.”
“So have you.”
She’d let him stay. She always did. And she always talked to him. Bonnie was the only person in his hometown who still treated him like a man.
She didn’t smother him with the pity that stripped him of what little pride he had left.
He removed some books from the shelves, taking care to keep his movements slow so he could control them. Bumbling around in front of Bonnie was humiliating.
“It’s
