Risky Return

by Nicole Helm

  Maybe it wasn’t skin to skin; her hand never ventured past the cotton of his sleeve, but it still felt… What? He didn’t know. Something he wasn’t comfortable letting himself feel with Celia. Something he’d been ignoring since he’d found out he was still legally married while working on that last case.

  Attraction. The low buzz of wondering what her skin might feel like on his, amplified when her blue eyes met his, when she stepped closer. Their bodies were almost close enough to touch, to press together. It was just like the moment in the clearing earlier. Like time didn’t matter when it came to wanting her.

  It wouldn’t be the same. They were older. Different. But that didn’t mean it couldn’t still be— No. He could not let this happen.

  “Listen—”

  She cut him off by taking that last step and pressing her mouth to his. It was soft and sweet. His fingers itched to touch, to explore, and because she was kissing him, he let himself.

  He traced his fingertips over the elegant curve of her neck, cupped her jaw, and deepened the kiss into something that was so beyond a mistake he couldn’t even stop himself. When she opened her mouth, he took every advantage, rubbed his tongue across her bottom lip, nipped at it.

  Don’t do this. You will regret it.

  Well, fuck regret.

  A mix of the past and the present and the future. Oh, hell no, not the future. And it was that thought alone that had the blood pumping in his veins to stop and his brain to take back control. He pulled away.

  …

  When he pushed her back onto her heels, she didn’t need him to speak to know what he’d say. What she should say. This was a mistake. There was nothing good she could possibly get out of kissing him.

  Except feeling real instead of like a character. Feeling good, comfortable, happy.

  Please. As if she could afford any of those things.

  The oven timer beeped so she didn’t have to explain; he didn’t have to act as though she didn’t know this was everything she couldn’t afford.

  Ryan crossed to the oven, pulled it open, and seemed to take great care with getting the casserole dish out, placing it on the stovetop, rummaging around for a serving spoon he finally found.

  “That was a mistake,” he said, attacking the macaroni and cheese and sloshing it into bowls as if it were the mistake made.

  “Yes.”

  “There’s nothing good that could possibly come from any of that. We are not going down that road.”

  “No, we’re not.”

  He frowned over his shoulder at her.

  “Look, I know. I know. All wrong yadda yadda. I get it, but it’s been a long time…” How did she phrase this? It wasn’t as though she’d been alone, never dating, never doing anything that went with being in a relationship. It was just different, because she’d been playing a part more than she’d been…feeling. “I live a very isolating life. It was nice to feel…something real.”

  “How is that real? We’ve barely talked in ten years.”

  “But it was real. Even if it was a long time ago, that part is still there. For me. For parts of me. No matter how much a mistake or what good could come from it, I’m telling you. It was something good, for all its wrongness and not-going-to-pursue its, it was nice to feel like someone who didn’t give a shit about Celia Grant gave the tiniest of shits about me.”

  He’d stopped scooping pasta, though his gaze remained on the dish. As though he didn’t know what to say to her or how to handle her, and that last thought made her have to stifle a laugh. Possibly she was losing her mind, probably, but being something Ryan didn’t know how to handle was a thrill. A delight.

  He shoved a bowl and spoon at her.

  “It’s just, it’s hard to be yourself around somebody when what you’re really trying to do is be someone else. When I was still struggling, trying to land any role I could, I was fine. I didn’t mind isolating myself from the old version, the version I didn’t like. Now…well, there are days it gets lonely. So I’m sorry if kissing you was so terrible, but it was just a nice kind of…comfort.”

  “My kiss was comfortable?”

  “Leave it to you, Ryan, to already be calling it your kiss. I initiated it.”

  He scowled at her as he settled himself onto the couch. She felt more relaxed than she had since she’d gotten here. Maybe since she’d gotten the initial contact from Ryan. Maybe more relaxed than she had in years. She settled next to him on the couch, smiling. Sure, the kiss had been a mistake, but as long as she didn’t make it again, it really wasn’t that big of a deal.

  In fact, it was kind of nice. Being here with him was kind of nice, as long as she didn’t start thinking it could be anything more than these few days.

  “Okay, so maybe I get it. The keeping-yourself-apart thing. The feeling…isolated or whatever. But don’t do it again.”

  She snorted. “Please, how you can get the keeping-yourself-apart thing? You’ve always had this place.”

  He shifted, staring hard at the TV in front of them. The very blank TV in front of them. “I lived in Kansas City until last year.” He shrugged. “I rarely visited. I threw my life into school and then my career.” He stared at his bowl.

  “Why’d you change?”

  “Huh?”

  “The plan was always to work for family services, and yet you became a divorce lawyer. What made you change your plans? Very unlike you.”

  “You seriously have to ask that question?”

  Her stomach sank. Okay, maybe she hadn’t quite thought that question through, or the reasons behind her asking. It was just, she’d convinced herself that she hadn’t mattered to him, and she was learning she had.

  “If there was anything I learned from you, it was that I didn’t have the power to change a damn thing, no matter what kind of law I went into. I couldn’t save you or anyone like you no matter what law I practiced. At least in divorce I could give people clear-cut endings.”

  “Like the one you didn’t have.” Painful in how obvious it was now. She’d affected him. Her leaving, disappearing really. It had changed his life.

  There was something incredibly humbling about that. She’d convinced herself it wouldn’t matter, but everything the past few days showed her it had. Maybe he’d gotten over it and moved on, but she really had mattered.

  “Why are we talking about this? I thought you wanted to watch a movie.” He gestured at the entertainment center. “Pick one out. Not one of yours.”

  “Obviously.” She poked around his collection, finding the lightest movie possible. One that would require no thought or attention. He clicked on the TV and she pushed the DVD into the player.

  Her stomach flipped, the same kind of flip that happened on the downward slope of a roller coaster. It was a flip of excitement and anticipation, because sitting on a couch in a little house for a night of watching movies was so normal. So not Celia Grant. There were no fancy dinners here, no shopping sprees or coffee runs to make sure the paparazzi saw her looking fashionable and sophisticated and happy. Just sitting on a couch with her ex…well, no, with her husband.

  She was sitting on a couch about to watch a movie with her husband. Some alternate reality where she hadn’t left, and as much as she didn’t want that…pretending for one evening…what could it hurt?

  Her hands itched to touch, to explore, to find out what made him the same and different. She wanted to find out the bits of him that would be all wrong for her, because in this light she was only seeing the good. He cared. He knew all her secrets. Ryan would never care that she hadn’t given her father a kidney when he’d needed one. He was on her side. He believed that she’d done the right thing.

  It was a bit like a drug. She knew it—he—was dangerous, wrong, could derail everything, and yet the little thrill that touching him, having him touch her, gave her was irresistible, so her fingers wandered. She touched the skin at the cuff of his shirt, let an index finger wander across the inside of his wrist.

  He jerk
ed his arm away. “We can’t do this.”

  “I know.” She really did. “You risk everything I’ve worked for.”

  “Good. Then we’re clear.”

  “You know, we are married.”

  “It’s a piece of paper. It doesn’t mean anything.”

  She nodded, because words stuck in her throat. Something like disappointment settled in her stomach. In what alternate reality did she think kissing him did anything but complicate her life?

  But they were alone in his little house in the middle of rural Kansas, and damn if she didn’t deserve a little comfort. She rested her head on his shoulder, and when his arm moved around her shoulders those words in her throat formed a fizzling lump.

  They’d never be who they once were, and they’d never have a future, but for a few hours she’d just enjoy someone who knew who she was, and still cared about her.

  The only person.

  Chapter Eight

  Ryan woke up on the couch, the morning light filtering in through the window. It fell like gold across his lap.

  Wait. No. That was Celia’s hair. Shit. Had that really happened? Watching a movie with her head on his shoulder had somehow turned into them sleeping on the couch together.

  With her head in his lap.

  The head-to-crotch proximity was incredibly uncomfortable now that he thought about it. Gingerly, he slid out from under her, and though she stirred, she curled against the couch and went back to even breathing.

  He stood there, his heart doing a weird heavy-beating thing as he watched. This. Last night. It was all innocent. Like one-kiss innocent, and yet…it felt so unbearably intimate.

  Like husband and wife. Like they were, but weren’t. It was a piece of paper, as he’d told her. Meaningless. Why didn’t it feel that way?

  He looked away, rubbing at the uncomfortable pain at the center of his chest. He felt…vulnerable. It was as if she just hacked away all the things that kept him strong and in control and all that was left was this teenage version of himself.

  He heard her moving around, and he tried to avoid looking. He tried to force his legs to walk away and go take a cold shower or something. But she’d broken him. She’d broken his control, his ability to do what his brain told him to, all by giving him a piece of what might have been.

  No. No more of this thinking about then or marriage or future or anything. It didn’t do a damn thing for him. For either of them.

  “Was that second movie as terrible as the first?” She stretched into a sitting position on the couch, arms reaching behind her, breasts arching toward him.

  No. It took a lot more energy than it should to make himself look away from her. The sleep-tousled hair, lush, unpainted mouth, flushed cheeks from being pressed against the couch.

  He could not let his imagination go one millimeter further. They were sharing a roof for another four days yet; any place his mind might go… Nope.

  “Some idiot running around in a tux, so yeah, I’d say so.”

  “What’s wrong with a tux?”

  “Those clown outfits you celebrities wear are just some lame attempt to feel important. Same with all those glitzy parties the guy was crashing. Real people don’t need that.”

  She stared at him a beat, then two, silence between them. Reality between them. He could be transported to the past, or even this weird alternate-reality present they had going on, but whatever amends they came to, their lives would always be night and day. He wanted real. She wanted pretend. Would do anything for her pretend.

  “Right,” she finally said, pushing off the couch. She bent over, collecting the plates from the coffee table and giving him an unobscured look at her ass. Christ. He was not going to be undone by that ass.

  She stood, taking the plates to the sink. She glanced at him. “You okay?”

  Sure, just an inappropriate erection for his almost-ex-wife. A pounding need to touch her, kiss her. As if losing himself in her would be an answer to any of the feelings, as if it wouldn’t confuse everything even more.

  That idiotic idea helped, actually. An answer? Nothing about Celia could ever be the answer. Not a damn thing. They didn’t exist in the same world anymore, and they never would again. “I’m fine. I’m going to run through the shower.”

  “Want me to make breakfast?”

  Sure. If she wanted to kill him completely dead by all this damn could-have-been. “No.”

  “Suit yourself,” she said with a breezy calm that had him all but stomping to the shower. He stripped and wrenched the water as hot as it would go, to burn away all this…weirdness. Discomfort mixed with comfort. Rightness mixed with “none of this was fucking right.”

  The shower didn’t fix it, though. Not really. And when he returned to the living room, she was standing in front of his mantel, clutching the picture of his grandparents.

  “What are you doing?” he asked, his voice sounding rusty to his own ears.

  She didn’t look at him, kept her back facing him, her hands on that picture. “You…must miss her.”

  “Yeah, I do.” Not that he let himself think about it too often. It had been years since Grandma had passed away. Ryan had just finished law school, and he’d come back for the summer and one day she’d been fine and the next day she’d been gone and…

  Well, that was life, wasn’t it?

  “And…Millard. You haven’t mentioned…”

  “He had a stroke. He’s in a nursing home.” The words were harsh, but they had to be. If he explained it in detail…if he let himself really go into it… It would hurt. A lot. And he was tired of hurting.

  The back of her ponytail bobbed up and down. “I’m sorry.”

  He didn’t know what to say to that. It was what it was, and as much as it sucked, as much is it broke his damn heart, there wasn’t anything he could do about it.

  “Well… Let’s get going, huh?

  “No, I…I need to see him.”

  “What?”

  She turned, clasping the picture frame to her chest. “I want you to take me to see him. They have visiting hours, right? That’s where you and Nate went yesterday over lunch? I want to see him…I just… Please.”

  Ryan stared at her, realizing after a minute or so his mouth was hanging open. “He won’t know who you are. It’s pointless.” Pointless. Hard. Ridiculous.

  “He meant a lot to me. And I didn’t get to say good-bye to Vanessa. I don’t care if he knows me. I just want to see him.”

  “No.” Maybe it was knee-jerk but he didn’t care. This was his grandfather, not hers. She didn’t get to waltz in and…

  And what? Christ. Millard had meant something to CeeCee. And vice versa.

  She crossed the room, that damn picture still clutched to her chest. “Please, Ryan. I’m begging you.” He saw tears in her eyes, so he looked away.

  He wanted to tell her he didn’t care what she needed, but of course that wasn’t true, was it? “Fine, but we’ll have to be quick about it.”

  She nodded, handing him the picture. “I’ll be ready in ten.”

  She disappeared into the bathroom and Ryan swallowed, looking at the photo. Grandma and Gramps. Happy, arms around each other. It had been their fiftieth wedding anniversary. It had been a happy day. Gramps had made jokes and Grandma had made pie.

  It had been a good day, and the memory of it made everything inside him ache. They were gone or all but gone, and he didn’t think he had it in him to have that kind of good day ever again.

  …

  Celia sat in the passenger seat of Ryan’s car. If she looked at herself in the mirror, she looked calm and collected. The hat, the scarf, the oversize sunglasses did a lot to aid that image. Inside, she was awash with nerves and guilt and fear.

  The nice thing about being estranged from your family was you didn’t have to watch anyone else get old. Not that dear old Dad had grown old.

  The twinge of guilt over that was annoying. He didn’t deserve an ounce of her guilt. Not after what he’d done.r />
  But she should and did feel guilty that she’d left the only three people who’d ever cared about her—the real her—behind without another look back. Vanessa, Millard…Ryan.

  She didn’t regret it, though. Couldn’t. With everything she’d accomplished, how could she? If she had stayed, she would be Ryan’s dutiful housewife, as he’d wanted, and she’d be miserable.

  Probably. She was 98 percent sure she would be miserable. It was that lingering 2 percent in question that drove her crazy.

  Ryan pulled into a parking space at a small, brick building in the outskirts of Addington. The building looked old, but the lawn was well groomed and the white trim freshly painted.

  Poor Mill. She couldn’t imagine his life without Harrington. It and his planes had been everything to him, and now all he had were the walls of a nursing home room.

  Celia swallowed down the emotion, sneaked a glance at Ryan as they walked in. His jaw was set, the muscles in his shoulders so tense it had to hurt. Why should she want to soothe him when he was blackmailing her? Why should she feel anything but disgust for him, period?

  Celia let out a long breath. The why didn’t matter, because she did feel. A lot of confusing things, and some of those things were stronger than she’d like. Attraction, longing.

  Ryan stopped outside a door, she could hear his intake of breath, see him clench and unclench his fists. He and Nate had been so close to their grandfather, she couldn’t even imagine how hard it had been for them to put Millard in a home.

  She wanted to slip her hand into his, offer him some comfort, but the hard set of his muscles seemed to be a sign to keep away. Far away.

  Ryan opened the door and Celia steeled herself to look pleasant and calm and, hopefully, inconspicuous.

  “I don’t want your damn box macaroni and cheese,” Millard muttered, pushing a tray toward the nurse who stood over him. “It’s crap.” It made Celia think about the homemade mac and cheese Ryan had put together last night, and it made her heart hurt even more.

  God, how was that possible?

  “Now, Mill. You need to eat. You don’t want to go through the feeding tube fiasco again, do you?”