by Amy Knupp
“Pedro will be fine. I’m sorry about the things I said the other day. About your family and your money.”
“Okay,” she said slowly. “My mom is kind of obnoxious about it, I know. It’s hard to ignore.”
“A lot of people could let it go, but you deserve to understand where I’m coming from,” he said. “I grew up poor, Selena. Dirt-poor would’ve been a step up.”
“I understand—”
“No. You don’t. There’s no way you could. No offense, but there isn’t.”
She frowned, acknowledging silently that maybe she didn’t. She wanted to, though. “Help me understand, Evan.”
He blew out his breath then rolled to his back, putting distance between them. Selena waited.
“My mom didn’t have an easy childhood,” he began. “She got pregnant young, ended up alone with two all by herself. Life wore her down fast and there was always a question of whether she’d make rent or have enough to feed us. We got evicted several times, ended up sleeping in the car every once in a while—a beat-up station wagon.”
Selena listened in horror. She knew people were homeless, knew many didn’t get enough to eat. But it’d never been driven home to her so effectively. Even the kids at Art to Heart had homes.
“I’m so, so sorry, Evan. You’re right. I can’t understand. Can’t comprehend how any of you could bear it.”
“I’m not proud of it but it’s a big part of who I am,” Evan said. “I take care of my money. Clay says I hoard it and it’s true. I put away every extra cent I can.”
Selena found his arm and held on to it as she listened.
“When you said you couldn’t pay for good medical care, it pushed all my buttons. I intended to do whatever I could so you’d have the basics. Whatever you needed.”
Selena’s heart swelled when she finally realized the extent of how she’d affected him. He’d found out she needed help and he’d been prepared to give it to her no matter what, regardless of the sacrifice. The boat, for one thing.
“Then you found out how well-off my family is,” she said regretfully. “And that must’ve seemed like I was a spoiled drama queen.”
“I wouldn’t put it that way,” Evan said. “It was a shock. What’s up with the Saturn? Why not a Bimmer?”
Selena’s lips stretched into a half grin. “The Saturn annoyed my mother no end.”
“I can imagine. The thing is, finding out about your family made me feel like an idiot. Inadequate.”
“You could never be inadequate,” she said. If he were inadequate, she wouldn’t be in quite the same dilemma now. “At any rate, my mother is hard-core about money, and maybe I came off the same way.”
“You’re not your mom. You’re nothing like her.”
“That’s the biggest compliment I’ve ever gotten.” The mood lightened as they both laughed. “She’s not that bad.”
“Yeah, you two were buddy-buddy all afternoon. What did you put in her drink?”
“Not a thing. That was all charm, darlin’.”
“You keep talking about that charm, but I’m still waiting to see it.”
“I seem to remember charming your panties right off you.”
He dipped his hands inside her jeans and below the panties he was so fixated on. His fingers on her bare skin lit her on fire. She squirmed and arched her body into his.
“Put your money where your mouth is. Or maybe your mouth where your hands are,” she said, grinning.
“What kind of guy do you think I am?” His voice had gone husky.
“I’m hoping you’re still the naughty kind,” she said, barely more than a whisper.
“See now, I’ve gotten in trouble for being naughty before, so I’m just not sure—”
Selena cut him off with a kiss. Impatiently, she slid her hand up under his shirt, raising it as she ran her fingers from his rock-hard abdomen over the ridges of his chest. She stopped kissing him long enough to whip the shirt over his head, then proceeded to unzip his jeans.
“Oh, no,” he said. “You’re not the only one who gets to play that game.”
Evan lifted her sweater over her head, then unbuttoned and removed her blouse, revealing her lacy dark purple bra. Her eyes had adjusted enough that she could just barely see him. She placed a hand on each side of that beautiful face and admired the angles, the strength of his jaw, the desire that burned in those eyes as they bored into hers. She didn’t remember ever taking the time to see him—to really look at him—when they’d made love before. A tangible connection vibrated between them. She felt it in the pit of her stomach, like the instant before you hit a roller-coaster valley, when everything bottoms out and makes you feel as if you’re spinning out of control.
The sensation scared her, so she busied herself kissing his lips, nibbling her way to his ear, and then slowly sliding her mouth lower, to his chest. When she circled his nipple with her tongue, he undid her jeans, peeling them down her hips. She helped him get them off her ankles and tossed them to the floor.
Evan rolled her to her back and moved on top of her. He peered into her eyes, his face inches from hers, then smiled as he brushed her hair off her cheek. “Are you sure this is okay? The doctor said so?”
At this point Selena didn’t care what the doctor had said, so it was lucky the timing was all right. “It’s okay.”
He kissed her so gently and thoroughly that her heart went warm and soft. She’d never been kissed like that, full of tenderness and caring, as if he cherished her and wasn’t just in this to satisfy his own needs.
“I love looking at you,” he whispered, again piercing her with an intense gaze. “I love your eyes, so full of everything you feel at any given moment.” He kissed each lid as her eyes fluttered shut, then moved to her mouth.
“I love your lips, especially when you think about kissing me and they part just enough for your breath to rush out in a sexy exhale.” He slid his tongue over her lips, inside, keeping his touch light, teasing. Maddening.
He shifted downward, trailing his mouth over her neck and lower. “You’re sexy here,” he said as he kissed her collarbone.
“My collarbone? Is sexy?” Selena laughed, not sounding anything like her usual soprano self.
“Selena, every part of you is hot. Your little toe turns me on.”
His rough hands caressed her sides, then he unfastened the front hook of her bra and pushed it away so her breasts spilled into his hands. “These,” he said, alternately running his tongue around the center peak of each nipple, “are perfect in every way. I love watching them pucker when you think dirty thoughts. Love the way they taste like the sweetest aphrodisiac.” He took one in his mouth and sucked, making her arch off the mattress.
“I love the way you respond to me.”
For her part, Selena loved the way his voice alone could seduce her and his tongue could make her insane with a physical ache. But even more, she loved having him inside her.
“Evan?” Her voice barely worked.
“Yeah?”
“You are making me totally, completely crazy. I love that you love all my bits, but could you maybe…hurry?”
His laugh was low and the sexiest thing she’d ever heard. “Not a chance, darlin’. I want you climbing on the ceiling before I get done with you.”
Selena’s whimper became a gasp as he returned his attention to her body, continuing his slow descent and telling her every single thing he liked about every single inch of her. When he finally slid her panties off and circled his tongue over the part of her that throbbed for his attention, her every last nerve ending buzzed. It took only moments for her body to shatter around him, and yet she lifted her hips off the bed, begging him to give her more until she couldn’t take another second.
She collapsed, and he lay to her side, pulling her into him as she tried to catch her breath. “I don’t think I can move,” she whispered, unable to hide a big smile. “You’re trying to kill me.”
His gravelly voice rumbled in his th
roat. “Not even close. I’m not nearly done with you.”
“Is that a promise or a threat?”
“Yes.” He kissed her gently again and she felt his hardness pressing into her thigh. Two minutes ago she’d honestly believed she was spent and wouldn’t be able to move again for hours, but just the touch of him had her body responding, tightening…needing him again.
She made short work of getting his pants off him and baring that amazing body. Evan didn’t waste any time moving on top of her, kissing her to distraction and pressing his hard body into the softness between her thighs.
“So much for that slow, patient seduction thing, huh?” she teased.
His only response was to enter her. Excellent comeback, she thought, before losing her mind….
LATER, as they lay with their bodies still connected, hearts pounding, Evan buried his face in Selena’s hair, splayed across the pillow. Her scent was intoxicating. Hell, who was he kidding? She was intoxicating. Everything about her. Her body, her scent, her words, the sounds she made at the height of passion.
He thought about the conversation he’d had with her mother hours ago and knew he hadn’t been completely honest, with himself or with Mrs. C-J.
Reluctantly, he rolled to his side and brought her with him, wrapping his arm around her middle. She settled in with her head against his shoulder. Evan brushed his lips across her forehead and smoothed her hair back.
“I love you,” he said. His voice sounded as if it’d been through a rock tumbler. The words were out without any thought, as naturally as if he’d said it before. To anyone. Which he hadn’t. He’d never felt like this before, so consumed by another person, hyperaware of her every move when they were together. Absorbed by thoughts of her when they weren’t. At first he’d thought it was because, at least partly, she was carrying his child. But now he knew, even if she lost the baby tomorrow, he wanted to be with her.
Selena didn’t stir. He had to listen hard to hear her breathing. Maybe she wasn’t ready to hear the truth. Her silence told him she didn’t return the sentiment—yet.
She would. Soon. He had every confidence in that.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
SELENA WALKED from Evan’s truck to the house alone, after asking him not to get out and take her to the door. She’d used the excuses that it was cold and windy and he needed to get home so he could rest before going to work. But they both knew the real reason.
He’d said he loved her.
He couldn’t love her. She couldn’t afford to love him back.
As she put the key into the lock, the front door suddenly opened, startling the breath out of her.
“Mom,” she said. “What are you doing up at—” she checked her watch “—five-fifteen in the morning?”
Her mom went toward the living room, where the lamp and television were both on. “I passed out as soon as I got home. Slept from seven-thirty last night until four and couldn’t go back to sleep. Then I realized you weren’t home yet.”
“I’m home now. Nothing to worry about,” Selena said irritably.
“Considering you were out all night with a man who seems to care a lot about you, I’d expect you to be more chipper.”
“Yeah, well, the unexpected sucks.” Selena made a beeline for her bedroom.
Unfortunately, closing the door didn’t keep her pesky mother out.
“We need to talk,” her mom said after following her in. “No, we really don’t.” Selena wanted to sleep and ignore everything that was swimming around in her head. She crawled in under her blankets, fully dressed, sitting against the headboard.
“What is your problem, Selena? Evan seems like a good man. Handsome, smart, brave. Willing to take care of you and your baby. And yet, you’re pulling your usual stunt.”
“Oh, I am?” Selena didn’t even fake interest, keeping her voice monotone.
“Looks like it to me. You’re running away.”
“I’m not going anywhere. Yet.” She’d definitely considered it, though. The more time she and Evan spent together, the more she thought it would be safer to get away now. Before she cared too much. Before his job caught up with him.
Her mom, wearing mauve silk pajamas, crept onto the other side of her bed and stretched out on top of the covers. “If I thought you didn’t care about him, I’d back off. But I think you do. Am I right?”
Selena closed her eyes and wondered when her mom had started giving half a crap about what she did or who she cared for. “I don’t suppose you’d just let me go to sleep, would you?”
“Selena! You’re going to be a mother in a few months. You need to figure out how you’re going to handle that.”
“I’m going to have the baby, Mom. Going to do what everyone else does…try to figure out how to raise a child.”
“You could have help.”
“Evan?” Selena turned to look at her mom as if she’d grown a horn on the top of her head. “I should marry him so I can have help with the baby?”
“You should marry him because you two make a good couple and I think you’re both half in love already.”
“It doesn’t matter how I feel about him, Mom. Maybe I do love him. I don’t know. But it doesn’t make a difference.”
“Why not?”
“Do you understand what he does for a living?”
“Of course I do. You know very well I married a man with a blue-collar job. One that could kill him.”
“And look where that got you.” Selena squeezed her eyes shut, willing herself not to think about her dad’s death, not to cry. Not now.
“It got me two amazing children. It got me years of happiness and a good marriage with a wonderful man.”
“It got you years of loneliness and grief.”
Notably, she didn’t argue with that. “So you think that, because Evan is a firefighter, he’ll die on the job.”
“It’s a distinct possibility,” Selena said, leaning forward. “He goes into burning buildings, Mom. So much could go wrong.”
Her mom surprised her by nodding empathetically. “Lots of what-ifs to consider.”
“Yes, exactly. And to put a child in that situation, where he or she could lose a father… How can I knowingly do that?”
“You mean like I did,” her mother said quietly. “Is that something you’ve held against me all these years?”
Selena thought about it for a meant. “No, actually. I haven’t. The only thing I’ve held against you is the way you stopped being part of our family as soon as he died.”
“We were all affected so much by your dad’s death,” her mom said, sorrow edging her voice. “You, in particular. You two were so close. You always were a daddy’s girl.”
“It was devastating,” Selena said matter-of-factly. “But just as bad was what happened to you, to us, afterward. What if I’m the same way, Mom? What if I married Evan, something happened to him, and then I shut down, too?”
She dared a glance at her mother in the light of dawn and saw her swallow hard, saw her emotion, her pain. Instead of the usual unemotional mask, the expression remained there, drawing her features downward. Tugging at Selena against her will.
“You won’t, Selena.” Her voice was lower, quiet, yet firm with conviction.
“How can you know that?” Selena asked.
Her mom sat up in the bed, pulling a throw pillow to her and hugging it. “What I’m about to say I’ve never told anyone besides my therapist. It’s something I don’t like to think about and certainly don’t like to say out loud.”
Selena’s internal alarm went off. She and her mom didn’t have serious talks.
“Being married to your father, I lived in fear from the time he graduated from the academy. At first I didn’t talk about it much. Figured it was my problem. Didn’t need to burden him with my fears. Then as time went on, I started to be a little more open.”
“I’m sure he knew you were scared for him anyway,” Selena said.
“Maybe. But I think they ha
ve to approach their jobs very differently. They don’t fear them. They can’t. They believe they can handle just about anything that’s thrown at them. If they went out in the field scared of what might happen, they’d mess up and maybe die.”
Selena considered what she said, turned it over in her mind and finally nodded. “Maybe.”
“Just before your dad’s last assignment, my fear skyrocketed. One of his colleagues had a close call. I no longer remember the details. I just know it scared the daylights out of me.”
Selena thought about the firefighters on the mural. They weren’t even colleagues of Evan’s, but thinking about the men who had died had heightened her fear for Evan.
“The day before he left, I went a little crazy. I was so afraid for him.”
“Did you have a premonition or something?”
Her mother shook her head. “Nothing as concrete as that. Just cold, stark fear. It’d gotten bad enough that I was panicky. And I expressed my fears to your father.”
Her mom’s voice cracked and tears filled her eyes.
“He tried to comfort me and I wouldn’t have any of it. I kept going, building on my fears, making them worse. I started listing all the ways things that could go wrong. Mind you, I didn’t know what kind of assignment he was going on, but that didn’t matter. My imagination was out of control.”
“I can understand that,” Selena said honestly.
“The next day he died.”
A lump the size of Texas lodged in Selena’s throat and she couldn’t say a word.
“And I’ve wondered…” Her mom hesitated, sucking in a shaky breath. “I’ve thought maybe it was because I opened his mind to doubt. I went through scene after scene of ways someone could hurt him. What if that was enough to put the slightest fear, doubt, into him? What if I was partly to blame for his state of mind and that’s what got him killed?”
Tears fell freely down Selena’s cheeks and she reached out to hold her mother’s hand. “It wasn’t your fault, Mom.”
“To this day I don’t know. God knows I’ve spent enough on counseling to sort through it but how can I ever believe I was blameless? And the guilt—” Her mom’s voice cracked again. “I’m so sorry, Selena. When he died, I could hardly face you and your brother. I felt so responsible. Like every ounce of your pain was my fault. I shut down. It took me years to realize my mistake, to understand what it had done to our family, but by that time, I didn’t know how to get you back. How to repair the damage.”
