She felt him tense, felt the refusal to talk there just on the verge of being voiced. Then he relaxed and met her eyes.
“Yes. Fuck! I had hoped moving here I would get some peace, but she’s already found us. I got a letter.”
It all came out. Becca could see the relief he felt in being able to share it, and she was overwhelmed that he’d decided to let her in.
“You didn’t give her money, did you?”
At the guilty look that crossed his face, she had her answer. “It will give us a few months’ peace,” he muttered defensively.
“And then she’ll be back. Oh, Eli. You should let your parents know what’s going on. Tell Jake. Maybe Evan could help you get a restraining order or something.”
Eli laughed harshly. “It’s not always that simple, Becca.”
“Don’t,” she whispered. “Please don’t shut me out like that, not after you’ve let me in.”
“What do you mean?”
She stroked his hair. “I want to help. I might not have all the answers or even any of them, but don’t dismiss me.”
His brown eyes searched her face. “Is that what I was doing?”
She nodded. He swallowed and captured her hand in both of his. “It’s not what I meant. I’ve never really talked about this before.” He was quiet for a little while. “I had a security system installed at my rental house this morning. My dad thinks I’m crazy.”
“Does he know why?”
“No.”
Becca leaned her cheek against his shoulder. How had he carried this all by himself? More importantly...why had he? She slowly stroked her hand along his thigh.
“Did anyone else care for Bash when you lived at the beach?”
“His daycare. It was one of those twenty-four hour facilities. Why?”
“Did they know about Heather?”
“Well, yeah. She was on a no pick-up list, but they certainly didn’t know everything. Where’s this headed, Becca?”
“I just think everyone who cares for Bash here should be in the same loop. Do your parents know what she looks like?”
“No. We argued before I left town all those years ago. They...they hadn’t seen him until I came back, and they’ve never met Heather.”
She squeezed his leg. “I think you should tell Jake too. Does she have a record?”
Eli flushed. “Child neglect. It was how I was able to get sole custody.”
His left hand slowly clenched and unclenched.
“Talk to me, Eli. I want to help.”
He turned to look at her. “Why?”
“Because I...” she paused swallowed. “I care about you. I care about Bash.” She saw his expression shut down. She huffed. “Damn it, Mercer! I care about you. We’re friends. We’ve known each other for years, and...” She trailed off and swallowed, not yet ready to admit to anything deeper. “And I never forgot you.”
Chapter 8
He wrapped his arms around her, burying his face against her hair. “Becky.”
His tight throat prevented him from saying anything else. He wanted to tell her just how often he’d thought of her over the years. Since getting to know her again, it might even be more, but he wasn’t ready to bring up the love word. He’d said I love you to Heather once, and what he felt for Becca was not at all the same. Instead, he pressed her against him while he tried to settle his breathing.
He wanted to make love to her, felt the need to mark her as his in the most basic way possible. Certainly his cock was ready, but he’d told her they would just sleep.
“Make love to me, Eli,” she whispered.
“Oh God,” he laughed in relief. “I thought you’d never ask. We’ll sleep later, I promise.”
When Becca began to caress him through his boxers, his cock surged. He studied her expression as she took him in her hand. She ran her thumb across his tip, sliding it along the crevice. A shudder of raw desire ripped through him until he was afraid he’d lose it.
“Easy,” he gasped.
She leaned up against him. “My jaw’s too sore to repeat what we did in the bathroom, no matter how much I want to.” She leaned back, stripped off her shirt, and knelt in front of him. “But I can do this.”
She stroked her hand up and down his shaft.
“Becky!” It came out as a plea, but he wasn’t even sure for what. Mercy? He was shaking, fighting the need to lift her up and ram himself home. “I need...I want to...”
She squeezed him, and he whimpered. It wasn’t a very macho sound, but he was so mindless with pleasure, he didn’t care. They needed to stop. He wanted to touch her, taste her, but oh this felt so good.
Forcing his brain to work, he reached down and lifted her, laying her on the bed so he could strip off her sleep pants and tear off his boxers. His hands shook as he spread her smooth thighs. It would be so easy to slide inside her, knowing she could take him, that he didn’t need to hold back. But he wanted to taste her. His gaze dropped to her smooth mound. He fell to his knees and kissed his way up from her hot pink toes to her firm calf and along the silky skin of her thighs. His hands spread her as he went.
When his breath fanned across her core, she trembled and her breathing accelerated. His body responded. She gave him back the confidence he’d once had.
“Eli.”
He smiled as he heard the same need in her voice that he’d been overcome with earlier. “Yes, baby?”
He ran a finger teasingly between the folds of her sex, growling as her fragrance released. Saliva pooled. Slowly, tauntingly, he lowered his face, laving her and flicking her with his tongue until she arched mindlessly against him. He savored the taste of her and shivered as she cried out in pleasure. When he slipped his fingers inside, just to prepare her, she startled them both by climaxing.
“I need to be in you.”
“Condoms,” she gasped. “In the drawer.”
He wasted no time tearing open the foil and sheathing himself. After scooting her farther onto the bed, he crawled between her thighs and positioned himself. Even though she’d already taken his full length, he was still careful as he entered, giving her time to adjust before he moved. The feeling of her snug passage gloving him all the way to his testicles blew his mind.
“I can’t last long,” he muttered as he thrust.
“It’s okay,” she reassured him in a breathless voice. “Neither can I.”
He laughed and chanted her name as pleasure spiraled up and suffused them. She cried out again and tightened around him. Eli exploded with a release so intense it overwhelmed him.
* * * *
Becca held him, stroking his back, feeling him still nestled inside her. His ex was responsible for a whole lot more than just neglecting Bash. Eli was a beautiful, tender lover, but so much more tentative than the teenager she had seen in the woods so many years ago. It was as if his confidence had been shot to hell. That made two of them.
“Where are you going?” she whispered as she felt him move off her.
“To get a warm cloth, baby. To clean you up.”
When he was through, he turned off the light and pulled her into a position where he could spoon her. Becca loved the feel of him curled around her. She felt protected. She felt loved. Even if he hadn’t said the words.
She let him sleep when her alarm went off. He had looked so tired the night before, and he must be worrying about his ex-wife’s threat to visit. She felt a surge of protectiveness for Bash. How much more intense must it be for Eli?
After showering and dressing, she looked in on him and smiled. Eli was sprawled face down in the middle of the bed, his arms and legs spread wide. Becca looked at his butt and swallowed. Lord, the man was too sexy for words. She would come back up in a couple of hours to wake him so he could get home before too many people began stirring.
She hurried downstairs to the kitchen, pausing just outside the door when she heard voices from inside. Had Luke come with Jared again? But when she opened the door, it was Caleb leaning aga
inst the counter, his hands slowly kneading bread dough as he worked next to his nephew.
“What are you doing here?” Her tone was sharper than she intended, and she closed her eyes for a minute to calm down. Shit! This had all the makings of a farce with Eli upstairs in her bed.
“Come on, Becca,” Caleb teased. “Did you really think I would let you dismiss me with the princess act? That I would go crawling off to lick my wounds?”
Unwillingly, the picture of him slinking away like a whipped dog made her lips twitch. “I could only be so lucky.”
“You don’t mean that. You know you love me best of all your big brothers.”
“Hmm.”
“I made coffee.”
She smiled at his ingratiating tone. “Okay. I love you best of all my brothers who are here right now.”
Caleb snorted. “Very diplomatic.” He glanced her way. “Your bruise looks very colorful.”
She narrowed her eyes on him. “So do yours. Maybe I should ask Eli if he can split your lip too. He offered. And Bash says you should say sorry.”
“I tried, if you’ll remember.”
“Try again. Harder.”
Caleb’s green eyes glinted as he backed away from the dough, fell to his knees and clasped his hands together. “Oh please, queen bee of our family, forgive me for your clumsiness in stepping between my fist and Eli’s face.”
“That doesn’t sound nearly sincere enough,” a voice growled from the doorway.
All eyes went to Eli standing in the doorway, thumbs hooked in his jeans and looking exactly like what he was...a man who’d just crawled out of bed.
Caleb jumped back to his feet, putting himself between Becca and Eli. “Tell me you didn’t just spend the night here.”
Becca sagged and rolled her eyes. Oh God! Not again.
Eli’s mouth quirked at one corner. “Okay. I didn’t just spend the night here,” he repeated dutifully. “I spent it upstairs.”
As Caleb started to take a step forward, help came from an unexpected corner. Jared planted himself right in front of his uncle. Smaller and slighter than either man, he stood without fear between them.
“Stop it, Uncle Caleb. I only let you come with me because you promised to apologize.”
“And I did.”
“You also promised to stay out of Becca and Eli’s business.”
Becca stepped around where she could see her brother’s face. “You did?”
Caleb’s glance went from her to Eli. He kept his eyes on his friend. “Yes. I did.” He dropped his gaze. When he lifted it again, there was a curious brightness there. “Damn it. You’re my little sister, and you’re my best friend. I don’t want to lose either one of you because of whatever concerns I might have. You obviously don’t share them, so I guess I’ll wish you well and worry about getting my own business started.”
Eli walked forward and wrapped Caleb in a bear hug. “Sorry for the black eyes, dude.”
Caleb nodded and turned to Becca. “And I really am sorrier than I can say that you got caught in the middle, Becca. If there’s anything I can do...”
While Eli shook his head, Becca nodded. “For starters, you can let everybody know how you and I were roughhousing and you bruised my jaw.”
“Huh?”
Becca’s hands went automatically to her hips. “Eli’s already getting the blame for my jaw along with some unsavory rumors that he was a wife beater. Hardly fair.”
“All right, all right.”
She looked at both men. “Now—get out of my kitchen. You can sit out front, drink coffee and eat my business out of whatever you find, or you can get your behinds out of here.”
“First dibs on the bread pudding,” Eli whispered as they jostled their way through the swinging door to the dining area.
Becca shook her head and turned back to Jared. The teenager had already gone back to work. She stepped up behind him, squeezed his shoulders and laid her cheek against his. “Thanks, Jared. You not only made peace between Caleb and me, but helped heal the breach between two men who’ve always been as close as any brothers.”
“No sweat. I know what it’s like to have your sister mad at you, and since Uncle Caleb was acting just as stupid as I did last year...”
Becca kissed his cheek then scrubbed her hands so she could begin forming loaves. Luke and Rachel had told her about all the tension last summer. It had really started even earlier with the accident that had killed Jared and Emma’s mother.
Both kids thought it was their fault because they’d never told their father about the affair she was having. And that had translated into a confrontation between Jared and her mother’s lover that had left her rattled enough she’d pulled out in front of a truck. Jared saw the accident, and his sister had survived it. But they’d all been injured in their own ways. Emma had retreated into silence, Jared into belligerence, and Luke into a liquor bottle. Eventually, it was Rachel who’d helped them all heal.
Pretty soon, as Becca worked, masculine laughter drifted in from the other side of the door. She smiled in relief. As much as she and Eli might care about each other, their relationship would have had some tough times if it had caused a permanent rift between Eli and Caleb.
The three of them—Eli, Noah, and Caleb—had done everything together since they started first grade. She blushed. She supposed if what she’d heard about a lot of boys was indeed true, that might have been one of the reasons Caleb had objected so violently to Eli’s romantic interest in her. They had to know...no she wouldn’t even go there. It didn’t matter. What happened between them in the bedroom was theirs alone. And just thinking about what had happened was enough to make her tingle.
As Becca worked, she kept one eye on the swinging door leading from the kitchen to the front. Less than a half hour later, Caleb came through with the dirty dishes. Becca smiled at him but couldn’t help the faint disappointment when Eli didn’t follow him in. Caleb seemed to read her mind.
“He told me to tell you he had to get on home before everyone started stirring. He didn’t want people to see him leaving here in the same clothes he had on yesterday. I think he was afraid to add any more fuel to the gossip fire. He really cares about you, Becca. I’m sorry I made such a ruckus about it.”
Becca nodded. “He’s caught most of it, Caleb. I’m serious about you telling people that you hit me. Eli doesn’t need anything else on his plate to worry about right now.”
Caleb was instantly on the alert.
“What do you mean?”
“His ex has found him again.”
“Shit! Eli’s always been self-conscious. Heather made him retreat even further into himself. He doesn’t need her back in his business...or Bash’s.”
“He’s installed a security system at his rental house.”
“She must be making threats to come after Bash.”
Becca’s gaze slid to the ovens where Jared was taking out the first of the day’s baked loaves. She lowered her voice.
“He paid her.”
Caleb nodded. “He’s done it several times before, but Eli isn’t a bottomless till. I don’t know how much longer this can go on because it won’t last. Now she’s found him, she’ll keep coming back.”
Becca nodded. “I think he should talk to Jake. Can you work on him? Maybe if we both keep after him...”
Caleb hugged her. “You’ll be good for him,” he whispered in her ear.
Becca smiled a little bemusedly.
“I better go. I have a place I’m taking a look at out on the edge of town.”
“Business or personal?”
Caleb grinned. “Business. Personal’s already settled. Doc Jenny’s renting me her house out near Rachel’s place.”
“Why didn’t you just rent Rachel’s house?”
Caleb winked and whispered. “It’s Luke and Rachel’s sexscape.”
Becca rolled her eyes. “That is so cornball, and I so did not need to know about my eldest brother and my former English teacher�
��s sex life.”
Caleb was true to his word. When Becca walked across the square to go to Tarpley’s after The Secret Ingredient closed for the afternoon, she ran into several people who asked if she’d blacked her brother’s eyes for decking her. Becca just smiled and went on. She stepped into the relative cool of the Mountain Meadow General Store. That was the name on the sign over the door, but it was Tarpley’s to everyone who wasn’t a tourist.
“Afternoon, Mrs. Tarpley. How are y’all doing?”
“Can’t complain. Wow, Caleb gave you a whopper of a bruise. That boy just doesn’t ever change. I always said it’d be a long time before he and Noah, either one, quit bein’ rascals. You been puttin’ ice on that?”
“Yes ma’am.”
“Hmm. Caleb said Eli blacked his eyes, but I’m thinkin’ young Eli shoulda done more.”
“Susie!” Jim Tarpley walked up at that point and gave Becca a hug. “It’s that Presbyterian background of hers. I keep trying to get her to come listen to Pastor Joe at the Baptist Church, but she won’t hear of it.”
She smirked. “We’ve gotten through nearly fifty years of marriage going to different churches. I guess we can keep on that way.”
Becca loved listening to the Tarpley’s easy back and forth banter. While she continued to chat, Tyler Morgan, Jake’s teenage brother-in-law, quietly took Becca’s list and began filling it. He grinned as he passed by now and then.
Tarpley’s was always an experience. At least it was late enough in the day that the retiree contingent who usually sat on chairs near the front of the store had gone home. Becca would swear the same old men had been sitting out front her entire life with bottles of cokes and bags of peanuts.
Gossipy church ladies and tall-tale telling old men were part of the charm of Mountain Meadow. For all its warts, it was home. And there must be something to that when she thought about all the people who had come back.
Jake left then returned just a couple of years after leaving the army. He didn’t talk much about what he’d done in those two years between the army and coming home...and nobody asked. Evan had never left and eventually Doc Jenny had come back and they’d found each other again.
The Secret Ingredient (A Place to Call Home Book 2) Page 12
