Her mouth fell open. “Did you not hear me last night? How on earth could you have possibly thought you’d failed?”
“I didn’t say I failed,” he said, with a lopsided grin, “I said failed you. And that has nothing to do with making you scream your brains out....” He sighed. “Sorry, that sounded really crass—”
“Why?” she said on a short laugh. “Since you did. And I did.” She paused. “Speaking of firsts.”
“That is so sad,” he said, and a soft laugh popped from her mouth.
“You’re telling me. But I don’t get—”
“Okay, let me try this again. When you showed up last night, hell, even before, when you called—” he gave his head a shake “—I knew how hard it was for you to take that step. And I felt—” his hand landed on his chest “—humbled. Like you’d given me this precious chance to, I don’t know. Do whatever you needed me to do, be whoever you needed me to be. Like...”
He touched her cheek, his gaze so earnest it almost hurt to look at. “Like nothing less than my A game was gonna cut it. That I really had to think about what was happening, what I wanted to happen, instead of simply going with the flow.”
“Oh, Matt...” Horrified, Kelly cupped his rough cheeks. “I never meant to make you feel that pressured—”
“Not pressured. More like...highly motivated.”
Even as she laughed, her eyes stung again. Then, on another exhale, she rested her cheek in his hair. “You can’t help being who you are, being protective. But...that’s also what makes you so dangerous for me,” she said softly, and she felt him tense. She lifted her head to look into Matt’s face, smiling as she smoothed her fingertips over his creased forehead. “Because I still honestly don’t know if I’m strong enough to withstand your...pull.”
“And I told you, I’d never push you into something you weren’t ready for—”
“Then I suppose I should give you a chance to prove that, huh?”
Confusion played over his features for a moment or two before a smile bloomed. “You sure?”
In answer, even though she wasn’t sure at all, even though her stomach was quaking, Kelly grabbed the hem of her sweatshirt and whisked it over her head, her hair crackling madly around her face and shoulders when she tugged it off. Matt’s nostrils flared, his mouth going slack, and at that moment she felt...empowered. In charge.
And let’s go with that, shall we?
“I don’t do this for just anybody, you know,” she said, and he laughed and gently pushed her up and off his lap, letting the dog outside on their way back to the bedroom. Except she yanked him to a halt in the living room, ablaze in the morning sun.
Matt turned, frowning. Slightly. Then one eyebrow lifted. “Here? Really?”
Grinning through the nerves, Kelly dug a condom out of her jeans’ pocket and tossed it to Matt, who caught it one-handed. Then, in the spotlight of brilliant sunshine, she toed off her sneakers and wriggled out of her pants. Kicked them to the side. Took a moment to savor the delicious cocktail of chilled air and hot sun and her lover’s gaze prickling her skin before closing the few feet between them and lacing her fingers behind his neck.
“Really,” she said, and Matt’s hands were in her hair, and he was kissing her as though he’d just been let out of prison, leaving her dizzy. Then, somehow, he was on his knees, slowly scraping his whiskers across the tender skin of her belly, and she made a sound that was half gasp, half growl, which made him laugh in turn before carefully lowering to her to the soft, sun-heated area rug, like a glowing red jewel in the midst of the gleaming, golden floor.
And in that instant, everything shifted. Like freaking sand.
Never mind that, again, it had been her call. That, again, she’d opened to him. Except this time, when Matt’s gaze hooked Kelly’s as she took him inside, her surrender—to him, to the moment, to fate, whatever—was so complete and soul shattering, her hunger for him so rapacious that all she could think in that split second before she sailed over the edge was Oh, hell.
Because want and need had just gotten so tangled up in her brain, she had no idea what either of them meant anymore.
Chapter Ten
By mid-April, Matt—and apparently everybody else at Home Depot that Sunday afternoon—was finally beginning to believe spring might actually stick around for more than ten minutes.
“But you probably shouldn’t plant petunias yet,” Kelly said beside him as he pushed his—their?—cart through the garden center that smelled of roses and fertilizer and damp soil. He’d mentioned fixing up the yard and she’d taken the bait. Thank God, since he knew diddly about plants. “It’s too early, we could still have another storm that’d freeze them.”
True enough. Craziest winter ever, with more snow this year than in the previous four or five combined. Last blizzard had only been the week before, in fact, decimating the cherry tree blossoms that, because of the insane warm spell the week before that, had decided to bloom early.
“Hey, guys,” she called out to the kids, who were fascinated by the display of fountains at the end of the aisle. A breeze danced in her hair, twisted her long, colorful skirt around her legs. “Don’t go any farther, okay?”
Matt smiled at Coop’s dismissive yeah-yeah wave, at Kelly’s mother-henning, despite feeling that, like the weather, he didn’t dare trust what was happening here, either. He wasn’t totally clueless—he’d picked up that something was off after they’d made love on his living room floor that morning. That things still didn’t feel quite right.
Even though it wasn’t like they didn’t get along fine, because they did. All of them, the kids included. In fact, when the munchkins had been with their grandmother again last weekend, it’d been Kelly’s suggestion they spend it together, snuggling up to him in her bed on Sunday morning, naked and warm and raring to go. Except that was when it hit him that she was trying too damn hard to make this work. Unfortunately so was he, twisting himself inside out to be whomever, whatever, she needed him to be...even if he still wasn’t sure what that was—
“Pansies,” she said, hiking her purse up on her shoulder and tromping over to a display of yellow and purple and white flowers, then holding out what she’d called a six-pack. And her smile sent shivers up his spine, like it always did. “That’s what you need.”
No, what Matt needed was to feel like he knew what the hell was going on here.
Not that he wasn’t grateful for her efforts—oh, so grateful—but somewhere along the way that whole honesty thing had gone out the window, which was beginning to irk him to no end. Especially since that was what’d tanked his marriage, that he and Marcia had never been entirely upfront with each other. Or happy, really.
Leaning heavily on the cart’s handle, Matt watched Kelly scoot up and down the aisles, frowning slightly as she poked through the plants, apparently searching for the most flawless specimens available. Like perfection was even possible.
Only as a grinning Kelly swished back to the cart, both hands laden with bobbing baby flowers, Matt reminded himself that she had been upfront with him all along about the risks. That she was still working stuff out in her head, that he’d have to be patient with her.
Then she zipped away again, this time to the kids, where she squatted to gather her daughter to her side, completely oblivious to Aislin’s tangling her fat little fingers in Kelly’s curls as she and Coop discussed the merits of the various fountains. And his heart swelled at all that love in her eyes, her voice, for her children, as that Bible verse his mother liked to quote popped into his head. Something about...patience having her perfect work?
And Matt hauled in a deep, deep breath and thought, Here’s hoping.
* * *
Later, in the midst of gouging holes for all those pansies alongside the front walk, Matt glanced up to see his father, in his standard TV-dad
cardigan and ball cap, moseying toward the house. Like dropping in unannounced was something he did on a regular basis.
His brow knotted, Matt rocked back on his heels, dragging his henley sleeve across his damp forehead. “Pop! What...?”
“It’s a nice day,” he said with a shrug. “Figured I’d better get in a walk before Mother Nature gets all pissy again.” The Colonel nodded toward Matt’s attempt at landscaping, slipping his hands in his pockets. “Looks good. Reminds me of our yard. When your mother...” He paused, frowning slightly, then repeated, “It looks good.”
“Thanks,” Matt muttered, getting to his feet, only then noticing a weary slump to his father’s shoulders he’d never seen before. Hell. “Come on up, have a seat—”
“Nah, you’re busy—”
“I’m digging holes. I think I can talk and do that at the same time.”
After a moment, his dad nodded, then started up the walk. “If you’re sure it’s no bother,” he said, and suddenly Matt saw through the tiny chink in the man’s nearly impervious armor that he still hadn’t recovered from losing his wife, only he was too damn stubborn to admit it.
“Sit, Pop,” he said gently. “You want a soda or something?”
“Water’s fine, thanks. These new?” he said, lowering himself to one of the white Kennedy rockers that had somehow ended up in the back of the SUV with the flowers.
“Yep. Today, in fact. Kelly helped picked them out.” Actually, Matt remembered as he ducked inside to grab a water bottle from the fridge, she’d pointed and said, “You need these,” and he hadn’t argued.
“How’s that working out?” his father said when Matt returned and handed over the condensation-beaded bottle. Kelly and the kids had visited the Colonel a couple times after he’d gotten back, so he knew all the pertinent details behind her return to Maple River. That she was renting the basement apartment. But that was all. And Matt intended to keep it that way until... Well, until there was something to say, he supposed.
“Good,” he said, bouncing down the steps to continue his chore. “Alf’s in heaven, having kids to play with.” Lying in the shade of the front yard’s lone tree, a twenty-five-foot maple heavy with seeds, the dog lifted her head, groaned and laid back down again.
“I take it Kelly’s not here?”
“No, she and the chicks went to Target. I said I’d rather chew off my right arm than go anywhere near there on a Sunday.”
His father chuckled. “Don’t blame you. She help pick out the flowers, too?”
“Yeah, actually.” He popped another young, bright yellow plant out of its black-plastic bed, tucked it into the warm soil, where the little pansy faces seemed to grin up at him. Or stick out their tongues. “Since what I know about gardening you could write on a matchbook.”
“So...you think she’s going to stick around?”
“Have no idea,” Matt said over the twist in his gut. “Although I doubt a basement apartment is part of her long-term plan.”
“And I’d say you’re probably right,” his father said in a funny voice. His brows pulled together, Matt looked over his shoulder at him.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
The water bottle set on a small iron table beside the rocker, his father abandoned the rocker to sit on the porch’s top step, removing his hat to dangle it between his knees. “I guess I can understand why Kelly moved back to Maple River. But since this town is lousy with apartments, she didn’t have to live in your basement, did she? Now she’s picking out porch furniture. And plants. And clearly you were expected to go along on the Target junket, but you declined.” His shoulders hitched. “You can’t be that blind, boy. And if you are, I’m sure as hell not.”
Matt laughed out loud. “You think she’s—”
“Got an eye on moving upstairs,” his father said, blue eyes twinkling. “So you might want to keep an eye on that.”
As Matt gawked at him, his brain having apparently gone offline, his father palmed his salt-and-pepper hair, then said, very softly, “I know what’s it like, son. The...” He frowned at the hat, then lifted his eyes back to Matt. “The damned emptiness. And that emptiness... Sometimes it plays with your head. Makes you vulnerable. And you find yourself thinking, wouldn’t it be nice to fill all that empty space...?”
“That’s not what’s going on here,” Matt said, because obviously his mouth had come back online before his brain, and he thought, Damn it. Especially when it occurred to him, a second and a lifetime later, that he didn’t actually know whose emptiness his father meant—Matt’s or Kelly’s.
“Then what is?” his father asked, and Matt balked. Like always. Hell, he was still even selective about what he shared with Kelly, although that was partly because he figured she had enough going on in her own head, she didn’t need to deal with his crap, too. But he could tell from the way Pop was looking at him that circumventing the topic wasn’t going to work, in no small part because he knew how much Kelly meant to the old man.
Who obviously hadn’t ambled over here to talk about gardening.
Another moment passed, however, before Matt joined his father. And, after a few stops and starts, told him everything. Well, almost everything. Not about the sex, obviously, but about Kelly’s fears and Matt’s wondering if he was, in fact, a fool for hoping...or if that message he’d gotten about patience was worth heeding. And Pop listened, poker-faced, mulling all of it over for some time before saying, “So you love her.”
After a moment, Matt breathed out, “Yeah.”
“You tell her that?”
“And scare her off? Hell, no.”
“Huh.” His father tapped his hat against the edge of the step. “But you’re friends, yes?”
“I’d like to think so.”
“And her kids... You like them?”
He thought of Coop, such a goofy amalgamation of silly and serious, of Aislin’s unfettered joy, and smiled. “You have no idea.”
“And they’re okay with you?”
“Seems that way.”
“And you’re sure that’s not just the emptiness talking? I mean, after what that...woman put you through—”
Matt’s brows dipped. He’d never told his father the details behind his breakup. “How do you know about—”
“As I said, I’m not blind. So?”
“I don’t know,” Matt said on a rush of air. “Maybe it is. But...is it so wrong to want to fill the void? If the time’s right?”
“I’d say that depends on the woman.”
“Hey. It was you who brought up her helping me buy plants and porch furniture, remember?”
“So I might’ve been off-base there,” the Colonel said, and Matt released a dry laugh. Then he sighed.
“So...what are you saying, Pop? Now, I mean?” His eyes cut to his father’s. “That I should give up?”
After a moment, the Colonel palmed the space between Matt’s shoulder blades, shocking him. Physically demonstrative, the old man wasn’t. And damned if there wasn’t a softness in his eyes he’d never seen before, either. “Don’t get me wrong—I like Kelly. A lot. And I appreciate what she’s been through. But you’re my son. Meaning I’m not real keen on seeing you go through hell again. Like you said, these things can’t be forced. I’m not saying it doesn’t take a lot of work to keep the spark lit, but if it feels too hard to light it to begin with...”
He gave Matt’s back a pat, then looked back out over the yard. “If you’re not absolutely sure this is going to pan out, you might want to consider cutting your losses. Before things get any messier. Especially for the kids.”
Then Kelly’s van turned into their street, and despite everything his father had said, Matt’s heart rate sped up at the thought of seeing her again. Of sharing the mundane things, like eating dinner and reading to Aislin, of wal
ks to the park as the kids rode their bikes, of trolling the aisles at Home Depot....
So what if it wasn’t perfect? What relationship was?
Or maybe Pop was right, if it was this hard to keep the spark lit—
Van in driveway, everyone out of the car, Kelly came over, smiling, arms outstretched. Not to hug Matt, but the Colonel, who’d gotten to his feet. A huge hug, like only Kelly could give.
“Stay for dinner?” she said to his father, her eyes crinkled as she kept hold of his arms. When he demurred, she shook her head. Laughing. “Pork chops. Already defrosted, easy-peasy. You can’t say no.”
And as Matt stood there, watching, he knew, without a doubt, why he loved her. With everything he had in him.
Meaning he also knew, without a doubt, that half-assed wasn’t gonna cut it.
Not anymore.
* * *
“So you gonna tell me what’s going on between you and my brother or do I have to come out to Jersey and smack it out of you?”
Sabrina’s exasperation vibrating in her ear, Kelly wandered out onto the porch, her forehead scrunched so hard it hurt. It was a perfect spring evening, slightly breezy, not too cool. As anyone with half a brain would think her life was right now. Perfect, that is. Or as close to perfect as it got. Her kids were healthy and happy, business was good and Matt...
Oh, dear God. Matt.
Sighing, Kelly sank onto the top step, tugging her long tiered skirt around her legs. Matt, kids and dog had walked the Colonel back to his house, although they’d return at any moment. Nearby a robin sang its heart out. Probably to its mate.
Not helping, she thought, her eyes watering.
“He wasn’t supposed to say anything. Not until...we were sure.”
Bree snorted. “Yeah, well, he did. Although to give him credit I don’t think he meant to spill the beans, they just kinda fell out of his mouth.”
“And what ‘beans,’ exactly, did he spill?”
“That the two of you have been together for a few weeks. Except he didn’t sound nearly as happy about that as I would’ve expected. And neither do you, chickie.”
The Real Mr. Right Page 17
