Eli Edwards shared a tight father-daughter bond with Amy. That was evident.
“My dad never took a vacation. The motel was open weekdays, weekends, holidays. And in order to turn a profit, he did most of the work himself. Eventually I was able to help him.”
Again her eyes swung from the horizon to his face. “This is an important part of my story, because my dad is the reason I, um, the reason I made the choices I made.”
She blanched, swallowed, looked away. But then her gaze rose to his again. He found her reaction to her own statement rather odd, but the thought drifted from his mind quickly enough.
“What I mean is, my dad is the reason I stayed in Lebo for as long as I did.” She straightened in the chair. “I wanted to get out. But I stayed. In order to help Dad with the motel.”
Okay. He got it. She had some desires for her life. To do some traveling. To experience the world outside her small hometown. However, she had put her own wants on hold out of her devotion for her father. But Pierce still didn’t understand why that would make her want to shy away from exploring this phenomenal something that they felt when they were together.
He resolved to keep quiet for now. She’d said she’d put it all together for him. He trusted that she’d complete the puzzle before she finished.
“I watched my friends,” she told him. “I saw, firsthand, the mistakes they made.”
Her tone changed, grew resolved.
“One by one, they met men. Got married. Had kids. Soon they were so weighed down with responsibility, mortgage payments, car payments, doctor bills, credit debt, so stuck in the mire, that they could never get out from under it all even if they’d wanted to.”
Ah, Pierce thought. Now they were getting to the meat of the tale.
“I knew that one day I’d have my chance. One day I’d be free to do what I wanted. Go where I wanted. See all the things I’d been longing to see. And that time came just last year.”
Her shoulders were square, her spine straight, excitement lighting her nutmeg eyes.
“A large corporation offered to buy my father out,” Amy explained. “They wanted to build a hotel on what they said was our prime piece of property. My father refused at first. He said that the motel was mine. That he wanted to hand it down to me. To offer me a means of making a living for the rest of my life.” She paused. “That’s when I finally had to be honest with him. And it was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.”
Judging from the pain that eclipsed her sudden bout of exhilaration, Pierce could see that she was speaking the truth.
“I told him that running the motel wasn’t my life’s ambition.” She frowned. “He was hurt. And that about killed me. But I had to tell him, Pierce. I had to. Otherwise, I’d have been just as stuck as my friends were.”
He set down the glass he was holding. He wanted to reach out to her, but decided that it wasn’t a good idea. So instead he murmured, “I understand.”
Appreciation tinted the small smile she offered him.
“Dad was really quiet for several days,” she continued. “But he came around. In fact, he was the one who suggested I apply for a job as a flight attendant. ‘What better way to see the world?’ he said. I’d be traveling all over and getting paid to do it. So that’s what I did. I got a job with an airline. I completed my training. This ear problem may have postponed my maiden voyage—” a smile hovered at the edges of her mouth “—but as soon as my health is cleared at the end of the summer, I’ll be off on the first metal bird that’s flying out.”
When she talked about seeing the world, her whole face seemed to take on a thrilled glow.
“So, you see, I can’t be messing around with—” She stopped short when it was obvious that she couldn’t come up with a name for what it was between them. “Well, with any of this kind of stuff.” She waved her hand between the two of them to indicate the topic of their discussion. “It’s my turn to live the life of my dreams. I’ve sacrificed for years. I can’t risk anything holding me back, Pierce. I won’t risk it.”
Chapter Six
Curiosity killed the cat. That idiom hadn’t come into being without good and sound reason. Inquisitiveness was known to get people into deep trouble. Throughout history, the inability to leave things be had caused entire kingdoms to fall. Amy feared that curiosity was going to get the best of her, too.
She watched Jeremiah and Benjamin hard at work at the play table in their room, applying waxy color to the pictures they were carefully drawing for their parents. Amy had taken to boxing up care packages for John and Cynthia Winthrop—cards, letters, snapshots, small gifts and homemade goodies. The practice made the twins happy, made them feel as if they were doing something wonderful for their mom and dad, and made the boys feel closer to them. The boys were working on pictures to include in this week’s care package as Amy’s mind wandered.
It had been two long weeks since she had explained to Pierce her reasons for needing to avoid the heady magnetism that pulsed between them. She felt confident that he understood her motivation. However, the end of the conversation continued to run through her mind, continued to stir her curiosity.
He’d remained silent for some time after she’d finished talking that night. Then, without taking his green eyes off her face, he’d nodded somberly.
“I’d thought that doing a bit of exploring might help us to better understand what’s happening between us,” he’d told her. “That if we understood it, we could better control it. But I can see that’s not something you want to do. And I fully understand why now. I’ll respect your wishes, Amy. In fact, I have some really strong reasons of my own for steering clear of…this thing.” He’d pressed his palms to his knees, then stood. There had been deep conviction in his tone as he’d summed up. “So we’re going to disregard what we’re feeling. Act as if it’s not there. If that’s what you want, I can do it.”
And that had been the last they’d spoken of the matter.
I have some really strong reasons of my own.
Those words kept echoing in her brain. Any normal person would be poked and prodded by the need to know what those reasons might be, and she certainly categorized herself as normal. As each day passed, the desire to know what motivated Pierce to ignore what was between them had niggled at her until she was now burning with inquisitiveness.
She shouldn’t care. But she did. She wanted to know. She wanted to hear why he wanted to avoid love—
No! Love was not what they were dodging. The thing they were desperate to evade was the chance of something like that happening. The chance that their relationship might grow into something beyond mere friendship.
There was a difference—a small nuance of a difference, maybe, but a difference nonetheless—and she clung to it.
She’d explained her motivation for avoiding the overwhelming desires he stirred in her. So what were his reasons?
There simply was no way to safely broach the subject that wouldn’t make her seem…interested. The last thing she wanted, now that the two of them had established firm boundary lines regarding the incredible feelings they spurred in each other, was to come off looking too interested in him.
But wasn’t that exactly what she was? Interested in him?
In his past, maybe. In the experiences he’d had that would have made him decide to avoid man-woman relationships. But she wasn’t interested in him in any way other than that.
Liar, a tiny voice taunted from the back of her brain. A voice that at first had been fairly easily banished ever since their talk on the deck. But as the days wore on, the murmurings in her head were asserting themselves into her conscious thoughts more and more. Becoming stronger and less easy to wrestle into submission.
She sensed him standing at the door of the boys’ room. There was no need to glance over her shoulder—she felt the zing in the air, the slight change in the temperature of the room. The tiny hairs on her arms stood on end and she fought the urge to run her hands over the gooseflesh that
broke out on her skin in his presence.
“Uncle Pierce.” Benjamin called a greeting. “Come look what I drew for Mommy and Daddy!”
“I drew a picture, too,” Jeremiah said.
After inhaling a fortifying breath, she cast Pierce a quick look. He nodded a greeting, and she returned it. This small gesture had become their routine salutation. It was innocent. Innocuous. Safe. All things they both needed.
The swirling enigma had entered the room along with him like a physical being. She sensed it just as surely as she was aware of the breeze blowing in through the window, sun-warmed and tinged with a hint of the sea. It might be invisible, but it was intent on making itself known.
Pierce walked to the table and peered down at the boys’ artwork.
“That’s great, guys,” he told them.
Benjamin pointed to his picture. “Here’s the house. Here’s me and you and Jeremiah and Amy.”
“We’re in the bay,” Pierce observed.
“Yeah, I drew a picture of you teaching all of us to swim. I drew this for Mommy and Daddy so they’d know we’re having a good time together.”
There had been a small hitch with the swimming lessons. The boys had continued on with theirs, but Amy had thought it best if she made her excuses. Benjamin and Jeremiah had been disappointed, of course, but Pierce hadn’t given the least argument. Because of this fact, a new rule had been put into place—the boys didn’t go into the bay without their uncle present.
Pierce squatted down to get closer to Benjamin. He placed his hand on the boy’s shoulder. “I think it’s a great picture. Your parents are going to love it.”
“How about mine?” Jeremiah held up the piece of construction paper. “Can you guess what it is?”
“Ah,” Pierce said, studying the image intently. “That’s a callinectes sapidus.”
“A call-in-what?” Jeremiah’s brow bunched, his tongue tripping over the scientific term. “Uncle Pierce, don’t you see the claws? They’re blue. And those beady eyes? This is a Maryland blue crab.”
Pierce chuckled. “That’s what I said, Jeremiah. I just gave you the name of the species. Callinectes is Greek. It means ‘beautiful swimmer.’ And sapidus is Latin for ‘tasty.”’
The child continued to look perplexed. “I don’t know that I’d call a blue crab beautiful, but—” he shrugged “—they are pretty tasty when they’re seasoned just right.”
Pierce ruffled his nephew’s hair and grinned.
Awareness crackled around Amy like static electricity. Her eyes traveled over Pierce’s body. His face and arms were tanned golden-brown from the extra time he’d been taking each afternoon to play with the boys out in the yard, and his powerful thigh muscles strained against the fabric of his cotton trousers as he squatted by the table.
Amy’s mouth went dry, and she attempted to keep her gaze on the plastic container filled with crayons. She concentrated on them, noticing the preferred, well-used bits that had lost their paper wrappers, as well as the odd-hued ones that still looked new.
Yet time and again her eyes darted to Pierce as he interacted with the children.
The mocking voice in her brain chose that instant to whisper, With his raven’s-wing hair and those intense green eyes, he sure would make some pretty babies.
A gasp gathered in her throat. Her brows rose. Her eyes widened. But it took only a moment of grappling with her reaction before she got it under control. Thankfully, no one seemed to notice.
“Amy helped us bake cookies this morning,” Benjamin told his uncle.
“We’re going to pack ’em up with these pictures and mail ’em off to Mommy and Daddy,” Jeremiah added.
“Well, I hope you saved a cookie or two for me.” Pierce balanced himself by placing a hand on the table’s edge.
Her gaze latched onto his tapered fingertips, remembering how his touch sparked fire in her. But then she lowered her eyelids and took a deep breath, and when she opened her eyes again, she forced herself to think only about the conversation at hand.
“Oh, don’t worry ‘bout that!” Jeremiah’s smile was so big, the small scar on his chin stretched taut. “We made a double batch.”
The boy’s excitement was infectious and she found herself grinning right along with him.
“Amy said that we’ll have to pack the cookies just right so they don’t break.” Benjamin’s expression grew serious. “I don’t want Daddy’s cookies to arrive in Africa all crumbled up. That wouldn’t be good at all.”
“Don’t worry, hon,” Amy assured him. “We’ll protect them.”
Her heart warmed. She couldn’t help but imagine how John and Cynthia Winthrop would feel when they received the pictures their sons had drawn for them, when they tasted the cookies the boys had spent time baking just for them to enjoy. Amy would like to think that someday she just might have a son or daughter who would make small gifts…just for her and the man she might someday call husband.
Again her eyes drifted to Pierce, and he chose that moment to look her way. Their gazes caught. And held.
For the duration of three heartbeats she felt as if she’d never in her life experienced such power. Finally it became too much to bear.
Immediately she dipped her chin and stared down at her hands where they were fisted in her lap.
What was the matter with her? She had hopes. She had plans. Dreams of seeing the world. Dreams of encountering different people, different places. Dreams that were so close to being realized she could almost see them and taste them.
The time for marrying and having babies, if it happened at all, was years away for her. Years away.
How far in the future was that time for Pierce? The question flooded her mind as if a dam had broken, filling every nook and cranny with curiosity, making her feel as if she would drown in it. Was he putting off marriage and children just for the time being? Or was he thinking of never marrying? Never fathering kids?
Frustration churned in her stomach like hot acid. Yes, curiosity was really going to get her into deep trouble. She could feel it in her bones.
Why? Why were thoughts of his man haunting her so?
“Amy?”
The rich timbre of his voice caressed her. Soothed her as surely as if it were a cool cloth against feverish flesh. She inhaled deeply not daring to lift her eyes to his just yet. She didn’t want him to know what she was feeling, and she suspected that those intense eyes of his, that quick intelligence, would surely figure out that she was once again in turmoil…all because of him.
“You seem disturbed about something.”
She smiled at him then, imposing a calmness on her countenance that was directly opposed to the emotions seething inside her.
“I’m fine,” she said, satisfied that her tone sounded somewhat serene. “I’m wondering, though,” she continued, “what you’re doing home so early? You usually work until dinnertime.”
“I thought we’d go out to eat tonight.” Then he looked at the boys. “How do hamburgers and French fries sound?”
Both boys cheered their approval.
Amy tsked. “That wouldn’t be a very healthy dinner.”
“You can have a salad.” The suggestion seemed to spill from Benjamin without thought. Jeremiah snickered and Pierce laughed.
“Yeah,” Pierce agreed. “You can have a salad.”
She put forth a long-suffering sigh, but the lightheartedness of the moment got to her. She chuckled. “Who in their right mind would eat lettuce when everyone else is enjoying fat, juicy hamburgers and French fries smothered in ketchup?”
Raising both hands heavenward, Jeremiah gleefully added, “With extra ketchup!”
Just forty-five minutes later, Amy and Pierce sat at the table in a small family-style eatery waiting for their order to be served. The boys were within sight, dropping quarters into video games.
The homey scents wafting in the air—hints of smoky bacon, grilling steak and fried onions—did nothing to calm Amy’s agitation.
/> Pierce had his elbows resting on the table, his fingers steepled in front of his face. Lively background music filled the air, and he tapped his index fingers to the beat as he casually looked about him.
How could the man act so darned unruffled? The allure that had been spinning its web around them since he’d entered the boys’ room and suggested they all go out to dinner had her feeling tangled in its pulsing energy. Coping with that was one thing, but the urge to ask him that burning question about his motivation for ignoring the very thing that had her all tangled up was pushing her to the very edge of reason.
“Unruffled?”
Amy’s gaze flew to his face. “Pardon?”
His black brows arched high with what looked to be incredulity and he asked, “You honestly think I look unruffled?”
Words failed her as a cyclone of panic swept through her entire being. Had she really uttered that question aloud? She knew she was completely off-kilter, but was she so vexed that she could voice a thought without even realizing it?
Apparently so.
That mouth of his, the one that was already as sexy as red-hot sin, pulled into a languorous smile that made her fear she’d drool.
“Then I guess I’m doing an excellent job of keeping our pact, aren’t I?”
The man was definitely satisfied with himself. His powerful shoulders had squared, his hard chest had expanded a fraction, even his mouth had taken on a smug twist. If she hadn’t been feeling so tense she’d have teased him, had a chuckle at his expense over his obvious puffing up.
However, in the blink of an eye his whole demeanor changed. His lips went flat, his jaw grew taut and his eyes…his eyes turned on her with a concentrated emotion that was simply too intense for her to tolerate. She had to look away.
But his palm smoothed over the back of her hand, calling her attention, and her gaze was drawn back to his like metal to a strong magnet.
“I’m feeling anything but.” His voice was hushed. Ragged, even. “And I’ve been feeling anything but ever since our decision to ignore what’s between us.”
He paused as if to let his words sink in.
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