“How dare you accuse me of using my daughter to break up your relationship?”
He didn’t back down from her heated glare. “Did you?”
“For goodness sake, this isn’t a soap opera or some sleazy talk show. I’ll admit not telling you about Mia is the biggest mistake I’ve ever made, but that doesn’t give you the right to drag my entire character down into the mud.”
Travis sighed and plunged his hands into his hair as he started to pace. “Fine, so you didn’t put her up to it. It just really ticks me off that you won’t let me punish her. What she did was wrong, and I’m her father, dammit.”
“I didn’t say you couldn’t punish her. I said you were being a little too harsh.”
“Maybe you wouldn’t think so if you had just spoken to Kristen.”
“And what she did was pretty typical of her age and situation, I think. You said so yourself. Maybe you should have started a little smaller, like no computer or no phone—no sleepovers.”
“And I might lose the woman I…”
Gena held her breath, waiting for him to finish. The woman he what? Loves?
“—the woman I’m going to marry,” he said finally.
Gena stared down at the floor so he couldn’t see her face. “She loves playing the piano. She looks forward to her recitals and there’s nothing worse you could do to punish her. She’ll hate you.”
“She’ll get over it.”
“Maybe not. Soon you’re going to be seeing her a lot less, and then what? You’ll miss a recital, you’ll be busy a couple of weekends, and before you know it this great summer you guys have had will be ancient history.”
“No,” he said fiercely. “I’m not going to be one of those absentee dads. And that’s why I think it’s so important you respect me when I try to discipline her.”
“I do. I also know you don’t have a lot of experience with teenage daughters and you just jumped in the deep end. I was trying to help.”
Travis threw up his hands and walked toward the door. “This is ridiculous. We’ll talk later when everybody’s had a chance to calm down.”
“You can’t just walk out on this,” Gena said, following him into the kitchen. “We need to decide what we’re going to do. It’s not fair to just leave her wondering.”
“What she did to Kristen wasn’t fair, either.”
Gena couldn’t argue with that, so she was silent, waiting for him to make up his mind. Was he leaving or staying?
Travis leaned his head back against the doorjamb, wondering—not for the first time—how he had ended up in this situation. His anger was fading, and he had to admit that Gena knew a lot more about teenage girls than he did.
Most of his clients were teenagers, but they were primarily boys, and they talked mostly about sports. The proper punishment for trying to chase off a father’s fiancée had never come up.
The idea of Mia hating him wasn’t something he even wanted to consider. Not that he was always going to be the good guy, but he’d like to get to know her better before he started alienating her.
“Do you really think I’ll do that—” he looked over at Gena, “—become an absentee dad?”
He saw her hesitate, and he didn’t like it.
“I think there’s going to be a lot of times when Mia’s going to take a back seat,” she said.
His anger resumed its slow burn, and he crossed his arms. “What makes you say that?”
“Right now this situation works for you. But after you and Kristen get married she might not be thrilled about having a teenaged stepdaughter. And then you might have…”
He watched her draw a deep breath before she continued. “You might have babies with Kristen and you won’t be able to keep running up here.”
Babies? An image of Gena pregnant filled his mind. He’d left before she started showing, but he could imagine her heavy with his child, her face round and glowing. He could see himself pressing his face to her stomach, talking to the little person they had created together.
But she was the wrong woman. He shook his head slightly, then tried to refocus on what Gena had said. “I won’t ever abandon Mia. Not for Kristen, not for other children, not for anybody.”
Gena felt the bitter taste of sorrow in the back of her throat. He wouldn’t abandon Mia and she knew that. But he was going to abandon her.
She had reminded herself of that fact so many times she’d lost count, but it didn’t lessen the hurt. If anything, the pain flourished, taking root in the deepest recesses of her heart.
Loving Travis Ryan would always be an open wound. Maybe if he disappeared totally from her life she could heal, but she would have to see him—and his wife—for a very long time. He wasn’t going to stop being Mia’s father.
She cursed the tears that gathered in her eyes, blurring her view of Travis as he moved closer to her.
He touched her arm, hesitantly. “Hey, what’s the matter?”
“Nothing.”
“Then why are you crying?” He peered down into her face and Gena turned her head away.
“I’m not crying. I just…”
He took her chin and tilted her face up to his. “You just what?”
She couldn’t remember—couldn’t even think with his face so close to hers. Their breath mingled between them, and she closed her eyes as his lips lowered ever closer to hers.
“Travis?” she whispered.
Travis didn’t even try to stop himself—he didn’t think he could even if he wanted to. He was already lost.
Anger at his own weakness fueled his desire, making him grip her arms tightly and bring his mouth down on hers with punishing force.
She gasped against his lips and he reveled in the sound, wanting her to be shocked—to push him away. Instead he felt her fingers slide up his neck and into his hair, holding him to her.
His tongue parted her lips, not to rouse her passion, but to demand it. He bit gently at her lower lip, and when she pressed her body to his, he increased the pressure.
She moaned and he felt the bite of her fingernails on his back. The desire that flared in his body shook him, weakened his knees, and he pulled back just a little.
“I can’t kiss you—” he ran his hands up either side of her face, his thumbs pressing into her flesh “—and I can’t not kiss you.”
He kissed her again, hard. “You’re driving me insane,” he muttered against her lips.
Gena opened her eyes, staring into his luminous blue gaze. She saw the torture—the need—and knew they mirrored her own.
One of his hands gripped her hair again, pulling her mouth to his, while the other slid over her back and to her hip, pulling her hard up against him.
A searing hunger she had never felt before took her breath away, and she surrendered to his ravishment of her mouth. Every place his lips pressed—every place his fingertips caressed—seemed to burn even hotter than the rest of her flushed skin.
He shifted his body, pressing his thigh high between her legs, and she groaned against his mouth. His lips left hers, and she waited for them to blaze a new molten trail, at her ear—down her neck.
The kisses didn’t come. When she opened her eyes the flames of passion turned to shards of ice.
He looked dismayed…appalled. She winced when he cursed and slapped the wall next to them. She touched his shoulder, silently questioning, but he shrugged her off.
“I can’t do this,” he said in an anguished voice. “Why do you do this to me?”
She stared at him, her chest rising and falling rapidly as her breathless desire became rage. “You kissed me.”
He turned away and kicked one of the kitchen chairs. “I can’t hurt Kristen like this.”
The emotional rollercoaster was too much for Gena and she felt her control start to slip. “Kristen. You can’t hurt Kristen?”
She could hear the hysterical note creeping into her voice and she didn’t care. “You don’t want to hurt Kristen, and you don’t want to hurt Mia. How
He looked confused and she got the impression he’d never really thought about it. That infuriated her. She wanted to scream at him—to rant and rave—but she remembered in time that Mia was upstairs. This was a conversation she didn’t need to overhear.
“What do you want me to do?” he shouted, obviously not having the same consideration.
“I want you stop playing games. If you’re going to marry Kristen—fine, just stop kissing me. And if you’re not going to marry her, then you need to tell her.”
Gena waited for what seemed like an eternity for him to say something…anything.
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” he finally said in a low voice. “Is that what you want to hear?”
She refused to let herself feel pity for him. “Well you need to figure it out because I’m not going to play this game with you anymore.”
He tried to touch her arm, but she moved away. “If you ever try to touch me again, Travis Ryan, I swear to God I’ll break your fingers.”
He recoiled from her anger and she felt a jolt of satisfaction. “And do you know what’s kind of funny?”
He frowned and started pacing again. “None of this is funny.”
“Ironic, then. Of the three women in your life right now, I seem to be the only one you don’t care about hurting—”
“That’s—”
“—and I’m the one who has loved you the longest.”
She turned and walked out before he could form a reply. A second later Travis heard the bathroom door slam closed.
He stood motionless. He should go after her. He couldn’t just walk out the door and leave her this upset. He started to swing the door open, then stopped.
What would he say to her? He didn’t think he could tell her what she wanted to hear. He knew he couldn’t, because all he could offer her now were empty words of comfort.
I’m the one who has loved you the longest.
The words seared across his heart as they echoed through his mind. Never once—not since they met on that first day of kindergarten—had he given her any reason to believe he was anything but a jerk. But she still loved him.
And he was throwing it away. For what?
All this time he had been so sure he knew the answer to that question. There were good reasons why he couldn’t give in to the undeniable feelings he had for Gena. But now he wasn’t sure they were enough.
Kristen was the biggest reason, of course. She loved him too—she had to in order to put up with the news she had received this summer. The four years they had behind them had been good ones, and he didn’t want to throw them away. And he didn’t want to break her heart.
Like he was breaking Gena’s. Travis tipped his head back against the wall and sighed. He would give anything to not be in this mess—to not have to hurt either one of these women.
He didn’t want to hurt Mia, either. She wanted so badly for them to all be together that he couldn’t imagine her devastation if things didn’t work out. And explaining to her why he was breaking up her family was a conversation he didn’t want to have. Fifteen was a tough age, and she had enough to go through without him adding more to it.
In a choice between breaking any woman’s heart and his daughter’s, there was no contest. It was best to leave the situation alone and hope Gena would forgive him eventually and move on, even if the thought of her finding a new relationship made him ache for his own loss.
It was soon obvious that Gena wasn’t going to come out of the bathroom as long as he was there. He had unfinished business with his daughter, so he followed the blare of the radio through the house and up the stairs.
It would be impossible for her to hear his knock over the music, so he opened her door a crack and peeked his head in. “Hey, kiddo. Can I come in?”
Her room was a typical fifteen-year-olds, with clothes draped over a chair and posters of boy bands on the walls. Her pom-poms were tossed in a corner, and her desk was covered in music CDs, most of them made by the boys in the posters.
Mia was lying on her stomach on the bed, idly flipping through a magazine. She gave him a sullen look and a shrug that clearly said suit yourself.
Travis went straight to the radio and turned the volume down. Then he pushed some clothes out of the way and sat on the chair. “I didn’t want to leave without saying goodbye.”
“Leaving to your hotel or leaving for Boston?” She tried to ask the question casually, but he could see the tension in her face and shoulders.
“Back to the hotel,” he replied, trying to sound upbeat, which was far from how he was feeling. “I…I overreacted earlier. I was a little harsh. You can do your piano but you can’t use your computer or mine for a week.”
She shrugged again and he sighed. He’d worked with enough teenagers to know this was their standard form of communication, but it had never been this frustrating when it was somebody else’s child.
“I do want you to apologize to Kristen, though.”
She nodded, still flipping the pages of the book. He was getting ready to snatch the thing out from under her nose when she looked up. “I don’t want you guys to fight.”
The breath left his lungs in a rush. How much did she overhear? “We just don’t see eye to eye on some things. And I don’t know much about being a dad, and she knows a lot about being a mom, so it’s going to happen. And I don’t want you to think it’s your fault, because it’s not. We just have to learn how to be parents together.”
He couldn’t decipher the look she gave him. Maybe she just didn’t want them arguing over her. But maybe she had overheard a lot more than that and was seeing her dream of having her parents get married so they could all live happily ever after go down the drain.
It only reinforced the fact that having a relationship with Gena would not be healthy for Mia. They were all starting to adjust to their roles in the family and those roles didn’t need to change.
He slapped his hands on his thighs and smiled at her. “So are we okay?”
He got the shrug again, but this time a small smile with it. “Yeah, I guess.”
“Good.” He stood and walked over to the bed to kiss the top of her head. “I’ll see you later then.”
* * * * *
Gena heard Travis’s footsteps come down the stairs and stop in front of the bathroom door. She sat on the closed toilet lid with her face in her hands, trying to stop the steady flow of tears.
It wasn’t working. In her mind she kept seeing the horror on his face—over and over again, and it cut through her like a hot blade.
If kissing her made him feel like that, why did he do it again? How could he want her if kissing her had that affect on him?
I wasn’t good enough for him then, and I’m not now. She should have thrown him off her property when he and Kristen had first arrived. Mia would still be hers alone and her heart wouldn’t be shattering into a billion pieces.
After a few long minutes she heard Travis walk out into the kitchen, then the front door closed behind him. It wasn’t until she heard the growl of his pickup’s engine and the spray of gravel as he tore out of the driveway that she bent her head to knees and gave in to the wrenching sobs.
Chapter Ten
Gena held the cordless phone in her hand, daring herself yet again to make the call. She had already dialed the number once but hung up before the first ring had ended. Then she had hit the redial four times, each time hitting the OFF button before it could even ring.
“Just call him, already,” she said aloud in the empty kitchen.
The worst he could do was say no, and if he had caller ID, she had already embarrassed herself. Before she could change her mind again she turned the phone on and pressed redial. Taking a deep breath, she forced herself to wait through each ring until it was picked up at the other end.
“Hello?”
“Hi, Joe. It’s me—Gena.”
Joe Kirkwood didn’t say anything for a second, then she heard him clear his throat. “Gena, what a surprise! Is everything all right?”
No, everything was not all right. She had spent days feeling sorry for herself, reliving that kiss and the angry words that came after it over and over in her mind.
She was sick of it. She was tired of waiting around for Travis, only to have him sink her further into a pit of despair and confusion. She wasn’t going to do it anymore.
“Sure,” she said, forcing a cheerful note into her voice. “I called because…well, that new Mel Gibson movie is playing and I really want to see it, but I don’t want to go alone. Mia’s in Boston with…her dad. I know it’s kind of short notice, but I was wondering if you’d like to go with me tonight.”
He was silent for so long that she braced herself for a rejection. “I kind of got the impression you and Travis Ryan were…together, if you know what I mean.”
Why should he be any less confused about it than I am? she wondered. “We’re not a couple, Joe. The only thing we have together is Mia.”
“I’ll admit I was a little curious about that at the gallery because I’ve heard he’s supposed to marry that Kristen Sinclair from the Boston news channel.”
Gena sighed. She had called him to take her mind off Travis Ryan, not to talk about him. “He is. Look—if you’re busy tonight, or you don’t want to—”
“No!” he interrupted quickly. “A movie sounds great. What time does it start?”
“Twenty after eight. I can meet you outside.”
“No, I’ll pick you up at eight, and that’ll give us plenty of time to buy our tickets.”
Gena was pleased to hear the excitement in his voice. Here was a man who actually enjoyed her company and she had her fingers crossed she would feel the same. “That sounds good. See you then.”
She hung up the phone and sank into a chair, wondering if she had done the right thing. She wanted to prove to herself Travis Ryan wasn’t the only fish in the sea, but was it fair to drag Joe into it?
She had already made up her mind not to hang around the house pining for a man who didn’t want her. A date was definitely a step in the right direction. It’s not as if she had promised Joe anything. It was just a date—two friends going to a movie together.
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