3 Savor by Barbara Ellen Brink Page A

room,” he muttered softly.
    She giggled and tried to peer over
his shoulder to see if Davy was actually paying any attention to them, but Adam
caught her face between his palms and kissed her until she was breathless.
Rambo suddenly appeared below them, rubbing against her leg and purring his
contentment at the situation.
    “You guys missed the best part of
the movie,” Davy said from across the room. Taking a quick run, he slid across
the kitchen tile in his socks, bumping into them and sending them tottering.
“Whoa! Did you see how far I slid? That was awesome!”
    “Sorry bud, I was a little busy,”
Adam admitted, slowly releasing Margaret back to reality. “Your mom and I were
discussing dessert.”
    Margaret pulled away and started
straightening up the kitchen, throwing away the pizza scraps and napkins and
putting their glasses in the sink. She hummed as she worked and didn’t realize
until she saw Adam’s grin stretch wide, that she was humming the song he’d
written and sung for her at Handel and Billie’s engagement party.
    “Dessert?” Davy made a funny face.
“I thought we only get dessert on Sundays.”
    “Sometimes we need to make
exceptions to the rules,” she said, wondering if she’d always been so rigid or
if she’d gotten worse after Davy’s kidnapping. Seeing his face light up at the
simple suggestion to have dessert on a different night, she decided it was time
to loosen up. She didn’t want her son to grow up thinking life was only about
following rules and being safe. Sometimes you had to take chances, to choose
extraordinary rather than ordinary. “Who wants ice cream?” she asked, holding
up the metal scoop like a sword.
    “I do,” they both said
simultaneously and Davy yelled, “Jinx!”
    It was an hour past his usual
bedtime, following bowls of chocolate ice cream all around and lots of
laughter, that Davy finally trudged off to bed. He was so tired that when
Margaret went up to check on him, he was already fast asleep with the light
left on in his room.
    She turned off the lamp and shut
his door on her way out. The clock at the end of the hall chimed the half hour
as she slowly descended the stairs. Adam was stretched out on the couch in the
den, his hands clasped behind his head. A sappy grin turned up the corners of
his mouth, his gaze following her crossing the room.
    “I see you’ve made yourself
comfortable,” she said, shutting off the television. “It is getting pretty
late. I mean, if you’re too tired to go home, I guess you can crash here on the
couch.” He’d taken an apartment in town to be closer to the clubs where he
played at night and to give Billie and Handel the privacy they deserved as
newlyweds. He told her that living in his sister’s extra room was awkward
enough before the wedding.
    “I’m not tired,” he said, reaching
for her as she laid the controller down on the coffee table. He grasped her
wrist and gently tugged her toward him. “In fact, I’m rather wide awake.” He
pulled her down until she was leaning over him, her hands braced on the cushion
seat on either side of his lean, hard body. He reached up to release her hair
from the clip that held it off the back of her neck. Long blonde strands fell
between them, brushing his chest. “You are so beautiful, Meg. I’ll never be
able to get enough of you.”
    His words could have been the words
of any number of young men hot for some girl, and in the past she would have
brushed them off as nothing more than sexual desire talking. But tonight her
heart heard what he was trying to say rather than what he was saying. She
smiled and lowered her head to kiss him.
    “Wait,” he said, covering her lips
with two fingers. “I need to say this. I’ve wanted to say this for a long time,
but you weren’t ready to hear it.”
    She sighed, eased back to sit on
the coffee table facing him and waited.
    He scrambled up to a sitting
position and pushed his hands through his hair as though to tame