Читать книгу The Man From Oklahoma - Darlene Graham - Страница 7

AT ELEVEN-THIRTY on an ordinary Wednesday morning, right smack in the middle of his workweek, Susie Biddle called her husband Nathan’s office, and after making sure he wasn’t on the speakerphone or some such thing, informed him in a teasing voice that she was wearing “that little black thing,” and would he, perhaps, be interested in running home for lunch?

Nathan, after picking up the chair he’d tipped over, beat a path past his secretary’s desk and told her in a false-sounding too-loud voice that his wife had taken ill suddenly, and that he had to rush home immediately to tend to her. Cancel this afternoon’s meeting.

On his way out—sans coat, tie or briefcase—a couple of the secretaries in the outer office cast knowing smiles at each other, as if they suspected his real mission. Had Susie discussed their infertility troubles with these women? The thought might have bothered him under other circumstances, but, Nathan asked himself, considering the current state of their marriage, did he care? No, he most certainly did not.

Susie opened the door of their fine old Tulsa home before he even got the key in the lock. Sure enough, there she stood, with a come-hither look on her face and one hand planted saucily on her hip, wearing only that little black thing.

Man.

Nathan Biddle hadn’t seen the little black thing—or a willing wife—in quite a long time.

“Well?” was all she said.

With one big hand at her tiny waist and the other grasping the back of her slender neck, Nathan pulled Susie against his body while he danced her backward, toward privacy, all the while giving her a lusty kiss.

“You crazy woman,” he growled when they got to the door of the master suite. Then he kissed her again. Fiercely. Joyously. For at last the clouds of discontent that had enveloped her these past months seemed to have parted.

“Not crazy,” Susie said, laughing as his hungry mouth made its way down her slender neck. “Just fertile.”

But Nathan—who had never in their entire ten-year marriage received a call that tantalizing from Susie, fertile or not—was way beyond caring about Susie’s endless obsession with calendars and basal thermometers and fertility charts. Right now all he wanted was Susie.

She smelled like pure heaven and her skin felt as soft as rose petals. Her answering kisses told him that this was going to be easy, so easy. He didn’t feel even a glimmer of the anxiety about pregnancy that had disabled their sex life in recent months.

In fact, on that Wednesday afternoon, Nathan Biddle didn’t feel anything at all except Susie. Only Susie.