A Mother's Love Read Online Free PDF Page A

She stepped beneath the canopy, feeling the hush of the sacred. For a moment she paused, breathing in the offered oxygen exhaled by the ancient beauty, and closed her eyes, feeling the sweet murmurs, the whisper of time and ancient witness on her skin.
    Hello, she said without saying it aloud and smiled as she felt a rippling welcome. She moved to the trunk of the tree and put her hands against it. A sense of wonder moved in her. “What kind of tree is this? I’ve never seen such a tree in my life!”
    â€œHaven’t you, now? It’s an oak. Some say they’re sacred.”
    â€œYes.” She nodded. “How old is it, do you think? Old as the church?”
    He glanced over his shoulder, a shadow on his craggy features. “Not that old, I don’t think. I don’t know.”
    Kyra looked up, through a roof of green leaves and branches weaving through each other. “Look at that!” she said. “If I could have a roof like this, I would never want a house.” Kyra glanced over her shoulder to where he stood on the edges of the clearing beneath the tree. “Come in!” she urged and held out her hand.
    He hesitated for the briefest second. An air of sorrow, sharp and hungry, rose from him, and she thought for a moment that he wouldn’t be able to move at all, that there was some magic wall keeping him out. He looked at her intently, and Kyra took off her sunglasses. “Come on,” she said and wiggled her fingers.
    As if shaking off a spell, he suddenly grinned, a rueful and rakish expression, then came over. “What are you feeling? The heartbeat of the tree or something?”
    Kyra laughed. “Not at all. I just wanted to touch it. Imagine how many days have passed over this tree. How many things have happened in the world while it stood here.”
    He put his hand on the tree, and Kyra watched as he bent his head, as if listening to some internal prompt. A lock of black hair, loosened and wavy, fell against his sharplyangled face. Amid all those craggy angles, his mouth was as lush as a peach, sinful in the hard male face.
    As if he felt her gaze, Dylan turned his head slightly and met her eyes. The color stunned her all over again—it seemed impossible that eyes should be that color, that saturated blue she had no name for. It made her think of the mountains on a winter day. Lively. Alive. Glittering.
    The moment stretched, and again Kyra had the sense of familiarity, as if she would remember at any moment when they had met before. It was impossible to look away from his liquid gaze, and as their eyes held, a wash of yearning moved down her spine, lighting up each bone, traveling around her ribs, through her pelvis and thighbones and feet. She had time to notice a thousand details of him. The slight crookedness of his nose, the fan of lines around his eyes, the heavy brows.
    As if he, too, were caught, his gaze washed over her entire face, from her hairline, where untamed curls sprang out, to her mouth and chin, to her neck. A sense of capture moved down her body, and she wanted, deeply and with urgency, to taste those lush lips, to see if his tongue tasted of peaches.
    Abruptly he straightened, brushing his hands together. “I didn’t get any magic messages,” he said, looking at his palms. That bad-boy lock of hair fell on his forehead.
    Kyra straightened, embarrassed, but still caught in the odd spell she’d found beneath the tree. Her hands tingled from pressing them against the bark, and she shook them, imagining that droplets of light flew off her fingers. “Maybe,” she said lightly, “you just don’t know how to speak tree.”
    For a moment she thought he didn’t get the joke, then hethrew back his head and laughed. God, what a sound! Kyra felt it in her throat, and she pressed her fingertips to the hollow there.
    â€œCome, dear,” he said. “Let’s go see the baby. My mother will be waiting