Love in Bloom

by Alison Kent

  "Wigged out?"

  "Yeah. You know. Wigged out." He shrugged, looking for a better definition, finding none, and changing the subject. "So, what was it like dating a supermodel?"

  "A supermodel? Who? Oh. You mean your mom?" Carson laughed. "She doesn't like to admit it, does she?"

  "She doesn't even like to talk about it. And she hardly wants to have anything to do with my photography." Zack slumped even lower in the chair.

  Carson wanted to respond, but had a feeling the best thing he could do was say nothing at all. A wise move, he decided as Zack went on.

  "She won't tell me why. Which bugs me more than anything. Best I can figure, she doesn't want to remember that part of her life, or something. I guess I can respect that, but I'd like to have a reason. It would make it a lot easier to deal with."

  All of the answers Zack was seeking Carson could easily supply. He knew exactly why Eva didn't want to remember New York, why she had such an aversion to cameras and Zack's hobby. And Carson himself, his overbearing demand for perfection, his refusal to believe in the truth, the strength, the power of her love, was the reason.

  That wasn't what he wanted to tell Zack, however.

  He liked the kid. He saw a potential that deserved to be nourished. And if he wanted to make any sort of impression or impact on Zack's life, or to a lesser extent on his love of photography, Carson had to have the teen's respect.

  Funny, he had the respect of journalists worldwide, and he was worried about respect from one boy who looked enough like his younger self to be his son.

  Carson settled back into the corner of the couch, and used the remote to lower the volume on the news documentary he'd been watching when Zack came in. "New York was an interesting time in your mom's life. She was your age when she won the talent search. Put yourself in her shoes. Seventeen, or nearly. Away from family and friends. In an industry that makes an open book out of the lives of everyone involved."

  "Yeah. Watching Lindsay Lohan, I can see how that would really suck."

  "No privacy. No normalcy. Nothing like the Midwest, where she'd come from. No ball games or pizza parties with friends afterward." Carson waited, watching the play of emotions in Zack's changing expression. Nodding toward the teen, he added, "No food fights."

  Zack tugged his jersey from his chest and examined the tomato-and-cheese stains. "Man, Mom's gonna kill me. This grease'll stain my jersey for sure."

  "Maybe not. Moms are usually good about that stuff."

  "I guess it could've been worse. I could've been wearing that jerk TJ's Coke in my lap."

  Something in the low tone of Zack's comment gave Carson pause. This sounded personal. "And what sort of stain is TJ's mom going to have to worry about getting out?"

  "None, unfortunately." Zack slumped back. "I only hit him with a crust."

  Carson held back a smile. "A crust, huh? Hard and dried enough to do any damage?"

  "Nah. I got in my one lick and jetted before things got outta hand. I needed to get Katie home anyway."

  "Her parents fairly strict about that?"

  "Yeah. But that's okay. It's sorta like, since I've proved I can get her home when they want, then they don't mind that I hang out with her."

  "Hang out, huh?" Carson hadn't been a teenager for a lotta years. He definitely needed to update his vocabulary. "Is that what we used to call going steady?"

  Zack laughed. "You mean, going out? Like when you don't date anyone else?"

  "Going out. Got it." And here he'd thought going out meant … going out. Like on a date. "Is that what you and Katie have? An exclusive relationship?"

  "She's my girlfriend, yeah. Which doesn't make TJ very happy." Zack squared one ankle on the opposite knee and tugged at the laces of his athletic shoes. He'd started on the other shoe when he added, "She dumped him last summer."

  Interesting that Zack didn't seem the least bit deterred by the roadblocks his mother had tossed up at every turn to keep him from confiding in Carson. "She dumped him, huh. To go out with you? Or because of his table manners?"

  "Both, I guess," Zack said, and laughed. "We'd been friends for a while, me and Katie. And TJ can be a real creep." Zack stripped off his socks, and piled them on top of his discarded shoes. "I knew things between them pretty much sucked. And I really liked her."

  "I guess that made it hard to see them together."

  "TJ doesn't know shit about how to treat girls. He doesn't know shit about how to treat anyone, really. He's got a lot of money and thinks that's all he needs."

  "God's gift to women?"

  "God's gift to baseball, maybe. But that's it. And his attitude makes it hard to want to play on the same team with him, even when he's as good as he is."

  "It's tough to suffer fools lightly."

  "Especially when you're stuck with them and don't have any choice."

  "At least Katie had the good sense to see him for what he is." Carson hoped he was doing justice to this conversation. "Or maybe she just had the good sense to see you for what you are."

  "What's that?"

  "Your mother's son."

  Zack seemed thoughtful. "I guess. It's just ..."

  "Just what?" Carson prompted, not sure where he would take Zack's answer, but certain by the teen's fidgeting movements that Zack was nowhere close to being ready to settle in for the night. He was as wound up as the Hornets' winning pitcher had been through those amazing nine innings.

  Zack shoved his hands back through the long hair on the top of his head. "It's just hard to say much to Mom about everything that's happened with me and Katie and TJ."

  Yeah. Carson could see Eva's protective hackles rising at news of the conflict among the three kids. "You seem to have a great relationship with your mom. I'd think you could talk to her about anything."

  "Anything except—"

  "Girls?"

  Reluctantly, Zack nodded, then hurried on to say, "Not that there's anything to talk about. With me and Katie. We don't do much but—"

  "Hang out?"

  "Yeah. It's just that ..." Zack snagged his ball cap from the floor and tugged it on in reverse. "Sometimes I get … frustrated, I guess, with … ya know … just … hanging out."

  Carson took a deep breath, hoping to quell the urge he had to get up and pace the length of the room and out the front door. He was supposed to be the adult here. The one with the answers, the advice. Right now all he knew was that he was in trouble. Big trouble.

  And if this conversation wasn't heading toward sex—premarital, teenage sex—then he didn't know his head from a hole in the ground. If Eva objected to him advising her son on photography, she'd toss him out on his ear if she found out he'd been talking to her son about sex.

  He sat up a bit straighter, and straightened his expression as well. And hoped to hell he looked like he knew what he was talking about. "So, that's all you've been doing then. Hanging out?"

  "Yeah," Zack said, and seemed to collapse with relief. "It's been a busy year between my baseball and her cheerleading and both of us on the yearbook staff and working on the school paper—"

  "Not to mention studying, I hope."

  Zack laughed. "That, too. Though not enough of that, according to my mom. It's just that when we get together to study, it's usually just Katie and me and, well, it gets sorta hard to concentrate on the books, if you know what I mean."

  As hard as he was trying to do this in a way to which Eva couldn't object, beating around the bush just wasn't in Carson's nature. "I know what you mean. Most guys would know what you mean. We're all horn dogs, you know."

  At that, Zack grinned. "It's just that sometimes ... what I feel for Katie. It's different. God, that probably sounds so totally bogus."

  "Why? Nothing is bogus about caring for someone."

  "You cared for my mom like that, right? And you were both pretty young, too."

  "I told you. I was in love with your mom. A long time ago." But how much caring had been a part of their relationship, Carson could
n't say. Caring had almost been tossed aside to make room for emotions more intense.

  "She told me that tonight. Katie did. That she loves me. She'd never said it before. It was really mind-blowing. To hear that." By now, Zack was so low in the chair he was sitting on his spine. "But I didn't say it back. And I think she wanted me to."

  "Did you want to say it back?"

  He shrugged.

  "Then don't. If you don't know, don't say it. Especially if Katie's that important to you."

  "She is."

  "Then protect what you have," Carson said, thinking more about Eva than about Katie and Zack. "Don't say anything or do anything to screw it up."

  "Like sex."

  "Like sex." Out in the open at last. "Sex can be the best thing for a relationship or it can be the worst."

  "Is that what happened with you and my mom?" Color rose in Zack's face and he hurried on. "I mean, it sorta makes sense that she wouldn't want to talk about New York if it was something like that. If she didn't want to remember because she'd been hurt."

  Carson found himself grinding his jaw, and forced himself to relax. "What happened between me and your mom on a personal level needs to remain personal."

  "And sex is about as personal as it gets."

  "Good. Glad to see you've got your head on straight about that."

  "It's hard not to when sex education starts in fourth grade and every year it seems they come up with more ways sex can ruin a guy's life." Zack leaned forward and grabbed up his shoes and his socks. "Sorta makes ya think about becoming a monk. Or a priest."

  Carson laughed. "Better yet, a shepherd on the slopes of the Alps. I'm not sure religion offers much protection anymore."

  "Neither does shepherding. Think about all those poor nervous sheep." Zack paused. "Uh, never mind. I'm not gonna go there."

  "Good idea." Carson had to say it. They'd come this far. "Another good idea. Condoms."

  "Yeah. I know all about condoms."

  "If you've had sex education for half your life, I'm sure you do. Just be sure to use them when the time comes. And using them means having them with you. All the time."

  "Like a Boy Scout, huh? Be prepared?"

  Carson nodded. "Even if you never need it and it wears an impression in the leather of your wallet."

  "You got one of those impressions in your wallet?"

  "Nope. Tore right through the leather, it was there so long."

  Zack laughed. "Better take your own advice and replace it. You never know when you might run into an old girlfriend."

  "Ah. Very funny," Carson said.

  Zack popped up out of the chair. "Hey, I gotta run and get cleaned up. Me and Ben are heading out to Aaron's lake house with his folks tonight."

  "Your mom know where you'll be?"

  "Yeah. I told her after the game. I think you'd already headed to the Jeep."

  "Okay. Then have a good time." Carson slumped back on the couch and picked up the remote.

  "Are you kidding? I'm gonna swim my butt off. And, yes. I have sunscreen," he added before Carson could act like a parent and remind him.

  Even after Zack had showered and headed out with his friends, Carson still hadn't shaken the remnants of their earlier conversation. He got up from the couch and rummaged through Eva's collection of videos, looking for anything to distract his subconscious from Zack's joking remarks about condoms and old girlfriends.

  Linking his mother to Carson in an obviously sexual way hadn't seemed to faze Zack in the least, giving Carson the impression that he'd been given the teen's blessing. So now all he could think about was Eva. Trying again with Eva. Winning back Eva. Did he even stand a chance with Eva?

  He hadn't come here to resume a relationship that had lost all focus seventeen years ago. It didn't matter that he remembered the first time he'd seen her that day in the Montclair studio. Nor did it matter that the last time they'd been together had been filled with heated words in a cliché of a bad television drama.

  They'd been everything to each other. But everything hadn't held them together. He had nothing to offer her now.

  Nothing but the truth.

  And the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth was, he still loved her.

  Chapter Eight

  Arriving home to find a gorgeous man half asleep on the sofa in her darkened living room sent a totally inappropriate thrill shimmying down Eva's spine.

  She was used to walking in and finding Zack in a similar position, one arm thrown above his head, one foot dragging the floor. But this was Carson. And his were arms that had held her. His were legs that had tangled with hers.

  Zack was gone for the rest of the weekend. And Eva was in trouble.

  As much as she wanted to push Carson out of her life ... as hard as she was trying not to notice him as the man he now was ... as often as she reminded herself that any awareness she felt was aggravation and not arousal ... none of her efforts were paying off. He'd been on her mind constantly, working his way under her skin, chipping away at the clasp on her heart as if determined to steal it a second time.

  And the fact that he'd loaded The Last of the Mohicans into the DVD player, and Hawkeye and Cora were lying romantically close in the dark beneath a canopy of stars, didn't help Eva to stand firm in her determination to resist the irresistible.

  And then there was the added seduction of the open bottle of Merlot ... and the two inviting wineglasses on the coffee table. Carson had not only made himself at home in her home on her sofa with her movie and her wine, the thief had obviously settled in for the evening.

  And he'd been waiting for her.

  If she didn't move from where she stood in the entryway from the kitchen to the living area, and demand Carson get off his duff and leave for wherever it was he was staying these days, she feared she'd give in to weakness and loneliness and female longing for a satisfying man and ask him, no, beg him to stay the night.

  But it was too late. Because he stirred and he shifted and he sat up straight, sensed her presence, and smiled. He smiled before he turned and saw her. And knowing he was so in tune to her, that he knew she was in the room though she hadn't made a sound, was almost Eva's undoing.

  She wrapped her arms tightly beneath her breasts in a rib-crushing, bracing grip. Right now, with tension running on live wires beneath the barest surface of her skin, any word he said, any move he made, could cause her to lose the precarious hold she had on her resolve. If she wasn't careful.

  Careful, Eva. Careful.

  Approaching the back of the sofa that sat in the center of the large room, she leaned forward only far enough to drop the key to the rented Jeep in Carson's lap. It bounced off his taut thigh and landed on the floor. He looked from the key to Eva, then repeated the process.

  "Well, now. This is an interesting dilemma." His voice was husky with half sleep, and suggestive because she knew him so well. "I can't decide if you're telling me to leave or asking me to stay."

  He made no move to retrieve the key. He made no move toward the door. What he did do was turn and brace his back against the sofa's overstuffed arm, one knee angled in front of him on the cushion, his foot in the cast still on the ground.

  With his hands laced behind his head, he studied her with audacious regard. The flicker and flash of the television screen cast light and shadow across his face. His lashes feather-dusted his cheeks when he blinked, and the oasis of his eyes was parched of true color.

  Still, she felt the pull, the invitation, the draw of his gaze no less than she felt the allure of his mouth. The smile he offered was one of shared memories, one of shared anticipation. Which was why she had to be careful.

  Careful, Eva. Careful.

  Intent on being just that, on watching each step she took around him, on second guessing the purpose behind his every move, she set her purse on the butterfly table beneath one of the living room's three narrow windows and circled the opposite end of the sofa.

  Carson sat back like he owned the jo
int. The man may have lost much of his youthful impatience, but not an iota of his arrogance. Or any of his commanding presence, which made being careful a difficult task.

  Keeping as much distance between them as possible, her arm stretching out and her body blocking Carson's view of Hawkeye and Cora's trek to Fort William Henry, Eva retrieved the key from the floor and held it out, waiting for Carson to extend an accepting hand. Which he did. Finally. Though he purposely drew out her excruciating wait.

  It didn't matter that she knew all there was to know about his affinity for mind games. Her heart still skipped a beat in expectation as the key fell into his palm. His fingers closed around the ring. And her throat closed around the air she needed so badly to breathe.

  Would she never grow immune to this man and his charms, which at times weren't in the least bit charming?

  Careful, Eva. Careful.

  "There," she said. "Now you have your answer. Feel free to go at any time." She crossed her arms over her chest, pressed her lips together in a line of disapproval, and waited.

  Shoving the key into the pocket of his khakis, Carson looked beyond her to the TV and waved her out of his line of vision. "I want to see this part."

  Eva moved to the side a bit and glanced back at the flickering screen. Big guns and battle. She rolled her eyes.

  "Sit down here and watch." He patted the middle cushion of the sofa. Way too close to where he sat. When she made no move, he gestured toward the coffee table and cajoled, "I have wine."

  Eva continued to stand, continued to appear put out with his supposed subtleties. "You have wine, darkness, and an empty house. Not to mention a sexy romantic movie playing. I'm surprised you're not already undressed."

  And even as she said it, she knew she'd set in motion the beginnings of a very male and female game.

  Carson's gaze moved from the French and Indian War on the screen to Eva's knees, then to her thighs, where he lingered, taking his time moving upward and causing her to hold in her stomach once he'd made it that high. He tarried too long on her breasts, and she regretted having been so clumsy earlier at the shop and splattering mud on the hem of her over shirt.