“Like father, like son?” Paul asked.
“Maybe.”
“So why not do the DNA test and have your answer?”
“What if it’s the wrong answer?”
“Which one is the right one?”
“I don’t know anymore,” Nick admitted, and could hardly believe it himself. When this had all started, he’d wanted it settled and to be on his way again. He’d thought only of placating Jonas long enough for the kid to back off. He hadn’t wanted to even consider the possibility of being Jonas’s father. Now, though, he didn’t like the idea of not being his father, either. Yeah, he was great parent material. “At first all I could think about was my own ass. Getting it clear without the media getting wind of all this.”
“Yeah? What about now?” Paul’s steady gaze locked on him.
“Now … damn it, you should see him, Paul.” Nick chuckled softly. “He even looks like me. And Christ, what an operator. He plays Tasha like we used to work Mama.”
“Tasha?” Paul’s eyebrows lifted.
“Yeah. His foster mother—or not really his foster mother. She’s off traveling somewhere, but Tasha takes care of him and she’s…” He blew out a breath and reached for his beer again. “Driving me nuts.”
“This is getting interesting.”
Nick snorted a laugh. “Then I’m telling it wrong.”
“You?” Paul laughed shortly. “Woman troubles?”
“Jesus. She’s got me all tied up in knots. I don’t know whether to kiss her or tie her to a chair and gag her so she can’t argue with me.”
“This is getting better and better.” Paul’s grin flashed.
“Thanks for your support,” Nick said wryly.
“Hey, it’s about time it happened to you.”
“What?”
“You finally found something more important to you than you.”
“Now what do I do about it?”
“Enjoy it?” Paul suggested. “Hell, I plan on enjoying the show. In fact, I want a front row seat.”
“You’re my brother. You’re supposed to be on my side.”
“I am on your side, Nick. Hell, seeing you thinking about something else besides football is enough to make me want to go buy this Tasha a drink.”
Nick pushed himself out of the chair and stalked to the edge of the redwood deck Paul had just finished adding to the back of the house. Staring out into the woods lining the edge of the property, he looked through the gray naked branches of the trees, straight toward the highway that led to Tasha. And Jonas. He rubbed the back of his neck with a vicious grip. “I don’t know what to do here, Paul. I don’t want to fuck this up. Like I’ve fucked up so much of my life.”
“Then don’t.”
“Yeah, that’s easy.” He shook his head and stuffed both hands into his jeans pockets.
“Didn’t say it was easy,” Paul said, and, standing, crossed the deck to stop beside his twin. “We all make choices, Nick. Big ones, little ones. They’re all important one way or the other, and sometimes you don’t find out for years if it was the right choice or not.”
“Comforting.”
Paul slapped his shoulder. “All you can do is make the best call possible at the time. Then hope to hell it all works out.”
“Hope? That’s it? That’s all you can give me?”
Paul shrugged. “Sometimes, that’s all you need. Make a choice, Nick. Chances are, it’ll be the right one.”
Choices.
It was all about choices. Hadn’t he been telling himself that just the other day? In his mind’s eye he saw that accident on the freeway again, and felt a cold chill sweep through him. One wrong move and everything he’d come to care for could be lost.
The question was, did he trust himself to make the right choices?
CHAPTER 15
“Isn’t he something?” Alex Medina’s mom sidled up close to Tasha and pointed.
She needn’t have bothered.
Tasha knew just who Rose Medina was talking about. Nick Candellano, boy wonder. He was here again. At Jonas’s football game. She hadn’t expected to see him. And frankly, after the little chat she’d had with Molly just a couple of hours ago, she wasn’t really ready to see him again. But then, if she was going to be honest with herself, she’d probably never be ready to see him. There was no bracing herself as far as Nick was concerned. Every time she saw him, her pulse kicked into high gear and her knees turned into water. So just how was she supposed to prepare for that?
“I swear,” Rose said on a sigh, “if I wasn’t a happily married woman, I’d chase him until he dropped.”
Tasha smiled at her. The other woman was short and round, and her dark brown eyes flashed with mischief while dimples creased her cheeks. Rose talked a good game, but she was completely nuts about her husband, Eduardo. “He probably wouldn’t run if it was you chasing him, Rose.”
“Ha! You’re a sweetie, Tasha.” The other woman grinned and reached out to squeeze her forearm. “But you’re a lousy liar.”
“So I’ve heard,” Tasha said, her gaze shifting to Nick, as it did whenever he was near. Just watching him from a distance was enough to make her blood hum. Which was so not a good thing. It could have been, Tasha thought, if things were different. Molly’s suggestion echoed in her mind: marry Nick and both of you have Jonas. But that wasn’t an option. She didn’t belong in his world and she couldn’t allow him into hers.
Rose wandered off, back to where her husband stood on the sidelines, shouting encouragement to his son and the rest of the kids. Tasha hardly noticed. Her gaze still focused on Nick, she tried to ignore the flash of heat that shot through her. But it was pointless. She couldn’t ignore what he did to her any more than she could avoid worrying about what would happen next.
She felt as if she were on a tightrope stretched across a pool loaded with sharks. One wrong move and down she went, to be a midnight snack for a hungry great white. And once that great white was finished with her, she’d be nothing more than a memory, if that. She huffed out a frustrated breath, shoved her hands into the pockets of her navy blue sweatshirt, and fingered her car keys.
Tiny cheerleaders bounced and jumped, waving crepe paper pom-poms. Parents shouted, coaches blew whistles, and the solid thump of small padded bodies being tackled underscored it all. The wind tugged at Tasha’s hair, whipping it across her eyes, and when she shook her head to clear her vision, she saw Nick, watching her.
She couldn’t see his eyes. He was too far away. But she felt the heat of his gaze. As surely as she would have felt a touch, and Tasha shivered as anticipation inched along her spine and settled somewhere deep inside her.
Stupid. What had happened to her sense of self-preservation, for God’s sake? Had she been too comfortable the last few years? Had she completely forgotten just how dangerous it was to let someone get too close? What in the hell was she doing?
Nick walked toward her, his long jean-clad legs carrying him quickly across the grassy field. The dark red sweater he wore accentuated his broad chest and muscular arms. As he came closer, she studied his eyes, the slightly crooked smile tilting one corner of his mouth, his wind-ruffled dark brown hair. Her mouth went dry and a spiral of sensations slipped through her body like ribbon dropping free of a spool.
He stopped just an arm’s reach away. “Hi.”
The wind carried his scent to her, subtly expensive with just a hint of spice and a whole lot of man. She drew it deeper inside, damn it.
Tasha forced a smile. “Didn’t expect to see you here today.”
He shrugged. “Promised Jonas.”
A promise. And he’d kept it. That should make her feel better. But it didn’t. Promises were too readily given and too easily broken. Jonas believed in him. For the boy’s sake, Tasha simply couldn’t. “There’s a lot of that going on lately.”
“Yeah, I know.” He shoved his hands into the back pockets of his worn, faded jeans. “Tasha—”
Behind him, on the field,
Jonas’s team scored another touchdown and the kids went nuts. The herd of tiny cheerleaders raced toward the goalposts, where they struck a pose and waited in hope of an extra point.
“They’re doing well,” Nick said.
“I’m sure you’ve been a big help.” There. That wasn’t hard. Be nice. Be cooperative. Be careful.
Nick’s eyebrows lifted, but he gave her a smile. “It’s fun, helping out. Never thought about coaching, but … I’m enjoying it more than I expected to.” She nodded. He nodded. Silence stretched out between them like a cord pulled to just this side of snapping.
She should say something. Anything. It would be better than simply standing there, looking at him and letting her thoughts run wild.
Nick cleared his throat and pulled his hands from his pockets. “Anyway. I wanted to ask you. Jonas needs to go shopping and I told him I’d take him tomorrow. If that’s okay with you.”
Caught off-guard, Tasha glanced past him at the field, as if expecting Jonas to pop up and explain this. When he didn’t, she said, “Shopping? For what?”
Nick leaned in. “For you.”
“Me?”
“Your birthday?” he prompted.
Surprise slapped at her. With everything going on in her life at the moment, she hadn’t given a single thought to her birthday. Without Mimi to hound her about it and start the ritual teasing a month in advance of the event, it had slipped past her entirely. “Huh. I’d forgotten all about it.”
“Jonas hasn’t.”
That touched her so deeply, she felt the sudden sting of tears in her eyes. After losing Mimi, she and Jonas had clung together, tightening the bonds between them. And Tasha had been so worried that those bonds were loosening now, unraveling like an old tapestry. Things had changed too much lately. Everything was shifting, morphing into something she didn’t know quite how to handle. Her fears had nearly choked her, but Jonas … She swallowed hard past the knot in her throat. Even with finding the “father” he’d longed for, Jonas had remembered her. A sweet ache settled in her heart. “He doesn’t have to buy me anything,” she said softly.
“He’s not doing it because he has to,” Nick told her gently. “He loves you.”
She blew out a breath and tried to steady her emotions. But that was near impossible lately. She felt as though she was on a roller coaster—never sure if she was on the uphill climb or the sweeping, roaring downward plunge. Everything she was feeling lately was so charged, so changeable, it was as if she didn’t know whether she was coming or going anymore. Heck, she’d teared up and cried more in the last couple of weeks than she had in years.
“Yeah,” she said, looking past Nick to the squad of dirty little boys in oversize uniforms. One of those little monsters was all hers, and that knowledge warmed her even as she worried about it. “I know he does.”
“So why do you look like you’re about to cry?” Nick stared at her, his dark brown eyes shining with emotions that shifted and changed so quickly, she couldn’t identify them. And maybe that was just as well.
“I’m not gonna cry,” she lied, and not for the first time realized that she did that a lot around Nick. Why did he get to her so? Why couldn’t she just give in to the nearly overwhelming urge to lean into him and feel his arms wrap around her? She mentally squashed that thought almost as quickly as it appeared. “Just sinus trouble.”
“Right.” Nick’s mouth quirked as he stepped closer and reached out one hand to cup her cheek.
Tasha sniffed, sucked in a gulp of cold air, and told herself not to react. But his thumb stroked her skin and kindled a new slow-burning fire within her. She closed her eyes and resisted the urge to turn her face into his touch, to feel more of the heat he created. Why did this have to be so hard? Why couldn’t she ignore him and what he did to her? She’d never really wanted a man in her life. Never allowed a man in her life. Why did she have to start now? With him of all people?
“Nick…” She took a half step back, moving away from his touch while she could still manage it. He let his hand drop to his side, but his gaze caught hers and held. “We shouldn’t, uh…” Tasha waved one hand as if searching the air for just the right words to tell him to back off. Unfortunately, she came up empty.
“Probably not,” he admitted. “But I want you anyway.”
“Oh God.”
Nick smiled again and licked his lips before saying, “He’s got nothing to do with what’s between us, Tasha.”
“There can’t be anything between us, Nick.” The fact that her voice broke and shook just a little probably took the conviction from that argument.
“Too late.” His eyes darkened and Tasha wouldn’t have thought that possible. Dark brown eyes went black and seemed to draw her in, deeper and deeper, until she thought she might never be able to get free.
She tore her gaze from his. “It’s never too late.”
“It was too late that first day.”
She looked back at him. Couldn’t help herself. No other man in her life had gotten this close to her. And a part of Tasha was terrified. After all, just exactly how was a twenty-seven-year-old virgin supposed to act? What if she did something wrong? What if she let him in and he broke her heart? What if he laughed at her because she was inexperienced? What if …
“The minute you slammed the door on me,” Nick argued with a half-smile, “I was toast.”
She forced a laugh that didn’t come anywhere close to sounding amused. “Thrive on rejection, do you?”
“It gets my attention,” he admitted, then added, “You’ve got my attention.”
A cold wind raced across the field, tugged at the V neck of her sweater, then slipped down beneath it, teasing her skin with icy fingers. Her nipples went taut, but she had the distinct feeling that fact had more to do with him than the chill of the wind.
God, how could she be this hot when the wind was racing and thunderclouds were chasing one another across the sky? The scent of rain was in the air and a distant roar of thunder sounded like angry whispers.
Nick’s gaze moved over her slowly, from head to toe and back again. Flames licked at her insides and reflected back at her from the depths of his eyes. A heat she didn’t know what to do with swamped her.
As probably the oldest virgin in California, Tasha had no clue about how she should handle the desire she saw in his eyes. All she’d ever learned was how to say no. She’d never even thought about saying yes before.
Her virginity had been the one thing she’d been able to hold on to. The one piece of herself that had remained hers—even during those scary two years on the streets. Back then, she’d seen other girls her age trade their bodies for warmth. For comfort. Even for food. But once that trade had been made, those same girls had found it all too easy to sell what they’d already given away.
Tasha had seen it time after time and had vowed to stay far from that slippery slope into emptiness. And until meeting Nick Candellano, she’d never even been tempted to break that vow.
Now, though, she saw desire in his eyes, the set of his jaw, and the way his hands fisted and relaxed at his sides, as if he was just managing to keep from grabbing her. And that thought welcomed memories from the night before, when he’d held her close, when he’d kissed her and awakened sensations she’d never experienced before.
Tasha’s throat closed up tight and she was pretty sure she was about to hyperventilate. Wouldn’t that be attractive?
Want shimmered between them like a living, breathing thing. Electricity hummed in the air and she wouldn’t have been surprised to see lightning arc across the cloud-tossed sky in response.
“Nick … we can’t—”
Who knew what might have happened if they hadn’t suddenly been surrounded by fifty eleven-year-olds screaming for pizza? The game obviously over, both teams were racing toward the parking lot and their parents’ cars and didn’t much care who they had to trample along the way. Nick grabbed Tasha’s forearm and pulled her up close to him. Holding her back
to his front, he wrapped his arms around her and held on tight as the sea of children rushed past them.
She felt his breath on her cheek. Felt his hard, muscled arms resting just beneath her breasts. Felt the thundering beat of his heart against her back. And Tasha’s blood turned to fire. Right there, on a muddy field, with storm clouds overhead and a noisy crowd surrounding them, she felt a quickening inside her that she’d never known before. She felt his erection press against her and she squirmed in his arms, instinctively trying to ease the pulsing ache that had settled low in her body.
“Christ, Tasha,” Nick growled, bending low enough that his throaty whisper rumbled gently in her ear. “If you keep moving like that, we’re in deep shit.”
She froze.
He chuckled, his breath fanning against her cheek, dusting her hair. He dipped his head closer and kissed the tip of her ear. She shivered.
“It’s no good, y’know,” he said, and his voice was a low hum of sound, carrying just beneath the screams and shouts of hungry children. “Standing still or moving, you do things to me.”
“I’m not—”
“And stop saying you’re not trying to.” He cut her off neatly. Shifting one hand, he casually brushed his palm across her breast, scraping gently across her nipple.
She sucked in a gulp of air like a drowning woman.
“It doesn’t seem to matter that you’re not trying,” he continued, and caressed her one last quick time before turning her loose and taking a step back. “I’m gonna have to have you.”
Everything in her tightened.
Her breath caught in her lungs.
She had to lock her knees to keep upright.
Yet she managed to look him in the eye and meet the hunger there. “I don’t think—”
He laughed shortly and shook his head. “Don’t say something you’re gonna have to take back.”
“Pretty sure of yourself, aren’t you?” Tasha asked, and wondered wildly where the hell Jonas was and why wasn’t he racing up to them so they could stop talking about this and she could take a breath without going up in flames? And oh God, there goes the whole hyperventilating thing again.
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