by Rhodes, Beth
And Maria was prettier than that on her ugliest day.
She almost felt bad for the woman, but not really. That was merely her Catholic urging her to be a good person…and forgive. And darn it, this woman had painted a freaking A on her husband’s chest, so she could just take a flying leap as far as Maria was concerned.
The tall, beautiful, blonde—B—was just going to have to learn to deal.
From behind, David took Maria’s elbow and moved her toward the door.
Tammy intercepted them, tilting her head and looking down her nose. She looked straight at Maria. “You won’t last,” she said, hatred dripping from her words. “Don’t you know? A woman never stays with a March. You’ll leave—they always do—and you’ll get nothing. Not the money. Not the summer house on the coast—”
There was a summer house on the coast? Fun! She couldn’t wait.
“—or the ski lodge in Aspen. Nothing. And David will come back to me, because I ask nothing of him except a good hard fuck at night.” Her gaze fell to Maria’s waist. Oh, no. Maria, stepped up as blood pumped through her veins.
“And we’re leaving.” David’s grip tightened and pulled Maria away from Tammy. She fought him a little, but he placed himself between her and Tammy. “Your baby is no more David’s than it is the Queen of Sheba’s—”
Maria saw red as she worked to get around her husband—damn it, hers “David. Let me by.”
“Oh, no you don’t,” he answered her and then turned to the other woman. “Shut up, Tammy. You don’t want to do this.” David broke Tammy’s grip on Maria’s arm and firmly set her aside as he walked toward the door, Maria in tow.
“Everyone will see!” Tammy spoke too loudly, her face mottled in anger. The few other customers had stopped their conversations and were watching the events play out. “Your baby is a spic bastard.” The last words were drawn out and hissed through clenched teeth.
Maria froze and her heart pounded in her ears. She turned back, a rage unlike she’d ever felt in all her life pumped through her, and her hands fisted. Oh, mal presentimiento. Temper like her father’s, one she rarely saw, pumped through her veins.
But he stepped in her way. He took Tammy, gripping both her arms, his fingers white on her black, leather jacket. He pulled her so close it was like an embrace. Then he turned his face away from Maria and whispered in Tammy’s ear.
The words were too quiet to hear, but they were biting—short and staccato. Muscles tensed and bulged under his long-sleeve t-shirt and the vein in his neck pulsed.
He was working to control himself, his hands flexed and relaxed and flexed again, his words rose and fell, until finally he let her go and stepped back.
Tammy’s face paled even as she raised her chin in defiance. She turned on her heel, blonde hair flying, and strode to the ordering counter.
David came for Maria, took her hand. His face was schooled, blank, not a smidge of emotion to be seen. But his hand was warm and his touch was as familiar as breathing.
She wanted to run back in there and, and pull the woman’s hair. “Ugh! Let me go back—”
“No.”
“No?” She repeated, disbelieving and wound up. She was done taking any more crap from anyone. Even David. She swung around, but he gently lifted her and brought her back to his side as he opened the door to the cold winter day.
The cold shocked her into compliance.
“Punta!” she muttered, even as a lump formed in her throat. “You should have let me at her, David. I can take care of myself.”
He pulled her under his arm. Given the circumstance, though, it felt more like a show, an embrace for everyone else to see…and it made her feel cold inside, because no matter what, some people would still think she was a whore, some people would always think the worst of her and the baby.
“Don’t let it get to you.”
She wanted people to like her. Who didn’t?
Her stomach hurt a little at the thought and it twisted up the sandwich she’d just eaten.
“Hey.” He held her shoulders and stood facing her. “Come on. She’ll get over it and find someone else to torture. Soon Tammy will be a distant, unpleasant memory, headed back to her place on the coast.”
But Tammy had been around a lot longer than Maria, as a friend, as the one people wondered about. She was a known entity. And Maria wasn’t as certain they would be rid of her so easily. “What’s that quote about a woman scorned?”
David scowled. “That’s not how it happened. I asked her to marry me. She said no.”
“What?” Maria jerked away from his side. “You what?”
He looked around uncertainly. “Um, I asked her to marry me.”
“When? Before you came out to California, made me fall in love with you? Or after you were done with me and ready to finally settle down with the right girl.”
He winced. “I plead the fifth.”
“Oh, for crying out loud, this is not the time to clam up.” She started backing toward their vehicle. What the hell was she supposed to do now? She’d given up everything to come find him and been willing to try something new…
His trying something new had been sleeping with her!
He could have married Tammy—perfect, blonde, business-savvy Tammy. Instead he’d gone on some kind of break, had a little fun, and ended up with her—the woman who’d let passion burn away her moral fiber.
And she had nowhere to go…
She bit on her trembling lip and looked around. “Can we just…go home, please?”
“Maria,” he said, opening her car door. “I never knew what the right girl meant. Not until you. Do you hear me? Yes, I came home and I proposed to Tammy.”
The blood quickly left her head. This was so much worse. She shook her head. She didn’t want to hear anymore.
“I was looking for a way to forget you! Because— because, you’d started to mean something to me.” His brow furrowed, as if he couldn’t understand why she was upset. But she was done giving him excuses. Letting his own past get in the way of her happiness today.
A great need for her family rose up inside her. She swallowed the lump in her throat.
She got in the car because she had nowhere else to go. She just had to get home. Get back. He wasn’t wrong. His feelings were valid, for his situation, but that didn’t make his actions hurt any less.
He touched her face with his hand, drawing her attention to him. “She isn’t worth our time or worry, Ree. Don’t let her win.”
A tear slipped down her cheek, angering her, and she wiped it away with a frustrated stroke of her hand. He was right, though. She had to think. Being pregnant was messing with her hormones. It didn’t matter if he’d asked that woman to marry him.
He’d agreed to a business arrangement. And so had she. The bottom line, all along.
Maria cleared her throat, nodding her head. She’d lost focus and begun to believe they had more. His affection seemed so real. His love-making…well, it reached into her soul and ripped her doubt away. Damn it.
How did he do that if he didn’t believe in love?
19
“Oh, your dad’s here. How nice.” Maria didn’t bother pretending it was at all nice.
David sighed as he brought the SUV to a stop inside the garage. “I’ll deal with him. Why don’t you go get some rest?”
He was humoring her, and it bugged her that he could act like he knew she needed a nap—especially when she did. She got out before he could do something tender, like he always did, taking her hand or putting an arm around her shoulders and kissing her. Like hell if she would take a nap. She was sick of napping. Sick of feeling off—tired and cranky.
She slammed the door shut and hurried through the breezeway to the kitchen.
“Well, hello!” Mrs. Kraus called from the breakfast nook with a wave.
Maria’s good manners kicked in and she slowed. “Hi, Mrs. Kraus.”
“How’s that baby doing?”
“Good. Heart
beat is going strong.”
“How fast?”
Maria smiled, she couldn’t help herself. “A hundred and forty.”
The older woman gave her a knowing look. “Sounds like a girl! You’re going to have to stop calling that baby he. Mark my words!”
Maria laughed and shook her head. “We’ll see.”
Taking the long way around so she didn’t happen upon her father-in-law, Maria made her way upstairs. She might have passed David’s room, but she saw him, rubbing the back of his neck and shrugging his shoulders, and her footsteps slowed.
None of this was easy on either of them. She softened.
She was such a shmuck always wanting to fix things, make everyone else happy.
He stretched his back, turned and sat in the big chair in the corner. The way his body moved—graceful and athletic—made arousal course through her. Contract or not, they had this chemistry between them.
She stepped into the room, making him look up at her. His smile didn’t hold the same happy sprite it had when they’d been at Henry’s. She’d done that with her grouchiness.
“You should move your stuff in here today,” he stated.
“I like it across the hall.” And she would bet her last dollar he hadn’t had any other women in the room across the hall.
“You’re scowling.” David pointed out, which made her scowl deepen, and she blew a raspberry his way before dropping her purse on the table just inside the door and toeing off her shoes.
“You’ve had other women in here—her.”
“Never,” he answered, deadpan.
“Really?” She didn’t like the streak of jealousy that was zipping through her.
“Never, not since I was eighteen and on my way to college with plans to never come back.” Something had happened to him while she was wallowing this afternoon, and he had this confident, and perhaps a tad gloating appeal to him. How the hell was she attracted to him when he sat there like a king, with satisfaction dripping from every pore?
“Come here,” he demanded, his tone dark and suggestive.
“No way,” she answered as she made her way to the bathroom. A nice, long soak in the tub sounded better than going another round with him, or rehashing the ugly that had happened at the coffee shop. She wanted to wash the dirty feeling from her skin, from her conscience.
But before she could take two steps, she was lifted from her feet, and a scream escaped as she grappled for a hold. David cradled her and brought her back into the room. He tossed her to the bed. She scrambled, but he caught her ankle and pulled her back. Then he pinned her down with the weight of his body—his hard, beautiful, male body.
So completely unfair. Her heart pounded again, this time for different reasons.
Dang. She truly was driven by her lusts. He kept proving she was a hussy, his hussy but still a hussy. She turned her head away, but a tear fell down her cheek.
He wiped it away. “I never wanted her, Ree,” he whispered.
He never wanted anyone, though, including her.
She nodded to acknowledge she’d heard him, but she didn’t look at him. She deserved a man who loved her more than life itself.
“However.”
She did look at him then.
“I like that you’re jealous.” And there was that grin—self-assured, handsome.
A rebel yell went off in Maria’s head, and she whacked him on the arm.
He rolled over, laughing, which should have pissed her off even more, but he rarely laughed. She got on her knees and pummeled him. “Of all the stupid, ridiculous, most idiotic things you’ve ever said.”
She got him in the gut but only made him laugh harder.
“Agh!” She let out all the pent up frustration in his direction, but his laugh had elicited her own, and suddenly she was locked to him, his arms around her, comforting, and his legs held her like a vice around her thighs. “I. Am. Not. Jealous!”
He kissed her, a long slow, tender kiss.
“I’m not,” she whispered against his lips.
He ignored her, kissing her again, this time with a deep stroke of his tongue. She hummed in pleasure and found herself clinging to him. Totally and completely weak with wanting him.
Damn it. She was about to let go of her grouch.
“David!” Mr. March called, his voice floated up from downstairs.
Her heart fell.
David lifted his head, breaking their embrace, and his hand rested on her rib cage. His thumb brushed against the side of her breast. His gaze locked on hers for a mere moment. She could drown in the depths of those eyes and wanted to see forever in them. But he slid down, rested his head against her heart for another fraction of a moment, and lifted her shirt. He kissed her once flat belly, now a firm, round bump. “Don’t go anywhere, Todd.”
“Ai, dios mio!” She swatted at him with a laugh. “We are not calling him Todd, either!”
David’s hands gripped her thighs as he pushed himself up off the bed. His hand came out to gently rub her belly, and her heart melted a little more. He might not know it, but he was going to be a great father.
She sighed and rolled to her side.
“Time to go see what Dad needs.”
She watched him run a hand through his hair and look around as if seeing the room for the first time. His gaze stopped on the window where the sun shone through clean glass. He swept the room with those calculating eyes and finally caught her. “You should do something about this room.”
“I should?”
“Yes. I don’t like it.”
Maria lifted a brow.
“Do you like it?” he asked.
“I like that it’s yours and you live in it.”
He waved off her reply. “I want it changed. It’s outdated…and—”
“It’s classic,” she added.
He shook his head. “No. We need something new. I wonder if we should build a new place.”
“What?” She sat up. Shocked, like cold water on a hot summer day.
His gaze turned wary. “We could build a place, get away from this…house. Something just for us.”
“You’d just leave Mrs. Kraus?” Panic had her scrambling for excuses, and she wasn’t sure why. This was what she’d just been thinking! But having him speak her thoughts was not only startling, it was unsettling. “Well, let’s keep our options open.”
“Yeah, I like that. We’ll talk about it later.” His frown deepened and he shrugged. “I better go. Enjoy your nap.”
And he was gone, and she was right back where she started—pissed off about needing a nap. She laughed at herself, though. She was being crazy. Laying back, she lifted the shirt and circled her hands on her belly.
What kind of mother would she be?
Maria sighed. She was going to be a great mother. She’d show her baby just what being an independent woman looked like. She’d be successful and energetic. Mostly, she’d love and she’d never leave.
In the end, she didn’t think it mattered where they lived. But there was something sad about David, leaving this place that she knew he loved so much. What if he regretted it? He could regret so much—her, the baby, a new house.
Maria got up for that bath she’d been thinking about, and her phone rang by the door. She hurried over to it and dug through her purse.
“Hello?” she answered Catalina’s call.
“Maria. It’s Dad.”
~*~
David shuffled through the letters.
Done with this guessing game he’d been playing for three weeks—no, the last year, he threw the old shoe box on top of his large, desk size calendar. 2008 in Times New Roman across the top.
The grid pattern noted April. The month he’d left Connecticut and come back to Vermont. A business decision, one made without regret. He’d come home.
And become a machine, become just like his father.
He pulled a random envelope from the box and ripped it open. He scanned the letter. How-do-you-dos and wh
at’s-ups. She talked about a camping trip they’d made when he was five.
He didn’t remember.
Hot dogs on the fire. His dad there, too. David frowned when the memory stayed buried. Those times were too long ago; the time in between filled with too much baggage.
Another letter, this one sent the month after his eighteenth birthday. He shuffled the remaining letters, looking for one from his actual birthday but came up empty.
The letter inside this one was longer, three pages.
He glanced over the way his mother loved to speak in poetry. The entire first page was like a love note. He smiled, but it felt a little sad. And, continuing to read, the letter finally got good.
She apologized first—as she should, of course—and then she went on.
David’s hand fisted on the paper.
The contract terms expire this year. It’s been too long, and I’ve wondered if I did the right thing—so many times. Oh, your father, he loves you, but he’s so danged stubborn. A lot how you are now, I imagine. You had the best of both of us.
A contract. His dad had made a contract to keep his mother away. He’d made a deal. He’d wrapped his life in regulations and terms. Signed and dated.
Oh, he didn’t doubt it.
His heart pounded with the truth.
She’d stayed away because she’d been bound.
Was that even possible? Had she done it out of respect for his father? Or had it been by some crazy decree with legal ramifications?
Panic threatened to close his throat, and he rubbed a hand over his neck.
His mom was right. So right. Too right.
He’d entered his marriage. And the only difference between that and what his dad had forced on his mother was the piece of paper.
The door opened behind him, and David turned.
Greg sighed. “What is it now, son?”
“You let me believe she just left us.”
His dad pulled a cigar from his sport coat. “She did.”
“You made her sign a contract.”
“Of course I did.” The frown showed up, deepened the crease between his father’s eyes. “A woman like her can’t be trusted.”
