“I surely don’t. It’s good to see someone who’s so unabashedly happy about the direction her life’s going. It’s refreshing.”
“You say that as if you think you won’t ever be happy again yourself.”
Had he ever been?
Certainly there had been a few moments in his history when he’d been honestly happy. But the only ones he could remember right now, as he stood next to Ally, were the ones that involved her.
Seeing her across the room at that Red Cross charity event and deciding that she was the one he wanted that night… Kissing her as the rain tapped on the window behind them in the Howards’ mansion… Taking part in her joy every time she even thought about that baby…
“I just never knew,” he said, “that happiness took so much work.”
“You think it does?”
“Hell, yeah. In a perfect world, welcoming a new person into the family, just like you’re about to do, would be an occasion to celebrate. Then there’s my world.” He glanced at the flowers near the toe of one boot. “Chet’s a good guy, and any family would be glad to have him, but that’s not how it shaped up to be with us.”
“I made the choice of bringing someone else into the fold. You didn’t.”
He’d never been able to talk to anyone like this—not even his brother Ty. Sure, they could be blunt with each other, but there’d always been a wall of shame between them, as if they’d both been trying to stay strong while the scandal had battered away at their foundations.
Ally was good at listening. And, for some reason, she even sounded…invested.
Jeremiah took his hands out of his pockets. He was so tired of playing games around her. He only wanted something real, like this conversation.
Like her.
Letting down another layer of defense, he said, “Here’s the thing with Chet…. It’s no big secret that I’m not the number one son in the Barron crowd. And, when Chet came down to Texas, I expected him to be put right in the same place I was—outside of the golden orbit my brother Ty casts. But my father took my brand spanking new brother right in.”
“He was given a copresidency with you and Tyler right off the bat.”
Jeremiah nodded.
Ally’s tone was conciliatory. “It had to hurt when Chet was given something so important like that without even earning it.”
She seemed to know that Jeremiah had spent a lifetime trying to be worthy of every bit and crumb his father had parsed out to him.
Was she the only person who could see that in him?
He moved on to the next little garden, this one decorated with pictures of a family—one of those studio deals where everyone was posed and smiling in their Sunday best. There were yellow flowers, pinwheels and rocket ships in this plot, and Jeremiah remembered long ago when he’d dreamed of flying to the stars one day, too.
“The reason Chet got that copresidency,” Jeremiah said, giving her more of the story than he ever had, “was because my uncle Abe had talked my father into it. Abe had already been diagnosed with cancer, and he wanted to give Chet an incentive to stay since they were on the outs. Abe didn’t have to go so far though. Chet would’ve stuck around through thick and thin. But that’s just how my family works—through machinations, in business and…otherwise.”
Ally came up behind him. He could feel her on his skin.
“What do you mean by ‘otherwise’?” she asked. “Are you talking about personal relationships, too?”
Normally, he would’ve found a way out of an explanation that cut so deep. He might have used a charming turn of phrase, or maybe an excuse to attend to some business on the other side of a room.
But when he turned and saw Ally’s beautiful seascape eyes, every last piece of him broke apart, drifting toward her.
“Jeremiah,” she said. “Just what makes you act the way you do with women?”
Her bluntness sliced even deeper. “Why do you want to know?”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
She never took her gaze off of him. Her curiosity enflamed him, licked heat through every inch of his body.
Could he hope that she was asking because she’d gotten past his reputation?
In the past, this was where the playboy’s escape machine would’ve been roaring to life so he wouldn’t have to deal with telling truths. But around Ally, that’s not who he was.
He was somehow more, and he wanted to live up to that with her.
“Are you asking if there was some girl who shattered my heart and started me off on my wanton path years ago?” he asked.
“We all have experiences that shape us.”
“And for you it was Marco.”
“That’s right.”
He couldn’t do any less than return the candidness.
“Then I guess we could talk about the dark ages, when there was a girl. Nancy.”
“How long ago?”
“College.”
Ally tilted her head, as if she was wondering about this girl. “There’s no one who’s broken your heart since then?”
Just you, he thought randomly.
But she’d done no such thing.
Not yet, anyway.
He was more of an enigma than ever, and she wanted to solve him.
Wanted more from him, because she knew answers were there, and it would snap her heart in two to learn that she’d been wrong about him.
“There haven’t been any more heartbreakers after Nancy,” he said. But he uttered it in a flat tone, as if he wasn’t about to put himself out there far enough to risk getting hurt.
Ally would’ve bet her last dollar that he did care, though.
“What was she like?” Ally asked.
“You mean, who was this girl who got Casanova to walk the line for a short time?” He shuffled a boot. “She wanted to be a teacher. Little kids, grade school, maybe even kindergarten.” He slid Ally a glance. “She liked children a lot, too.”
From the way he looked at her, warmth flared in Ally’s core. It was as if he admired her nurturing spirit. As if he was drawn to it.
When a bird called from a nearby tree, he glanced up in its direction. “Yeah, I came dangerously close to having dreams of settling down with Nancy. I actually thought she was meant for me, if you can believe that.”
“I can. I used to feel that way about Marco, too, until I learned that he didn’t want the family life that I did.”
“But you weren’t willing to change for him. I was willing to do it for Nancy, though. I would’ve done it in a blink if I could’ve managed it.”
At his wistful tone, Ally just stood there, uncomprehending for a second. There was real regret in his voice, although with the way he was studiously watching the treetops, as if to find that calling bird, she would’ve bet that he would give anything to hide the vulnerability.
“What happened with her?” she asked.
He narrowed his eyes. “After I did my damnedest to be a one-woman man and utterly failed, she decided that we wouldn’t work out.”
“You cheated on her?”
His jaw clenched, and he didn’t have to say anything else.
A heaviness took over Ally. But surely he’d changed since those years. It’d been a long time ago.
He spoke again. “After that, every time I even glanced at another girl—no matter how harmlessly—Nancy said that I made her wonder if I was just going to cheat again. It was too much for a relationship to handle in the end.”
“Would you have stayed faithful to her, though? If she’d stayed with you?”
“I wanted to—with all I had.” He shook his head. “But she unloaded me but good and, in hindsight, if I were her I probably would’ve done the same, because I wouldn’t have expected much more out of me, either.”
“If I didn’t know better, I’d say that’s your dad talking, Jeremiah.”
His gaze widened, and she knew she’d spoken too honestly.
“Sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have said that.”
>
The bird stopped its calling, as if it sensed the taut air down below.
Jeremiah stared at the ground now. “It needed to be said. Here I am, partly in charge of one of the biggest corporations in the country, and I still get rankled by disapproval from the old man. But at least keeping him firmly in mind has done one thing for me—it’s showed me that I don’t want to end up like him, even though that’s probably where I’m headed.”
“No, you’re not.”
The force of her conviction made him look up, and the second their gazes connected, Ally withstood the zing of desire.
“Unless your father would follow a woman halfway across the country to plant roses,” she said, “and buy her some much-appreciated baby stuff and fix up her house during a pretty stressful time for her, you’re nothing like your dad. You only are if you didn’t mean a bit of it.”
She was offering him a challenge, but it wasn’t really because she doubted him. She wondered if he doubted himself.
He didn’t look away from her, and his eye contact reached deep, curling around her insides and flipping them over until she keened low and sharp.
“When I first came out here,” he said, “I admit, it was because you ran away from me, and I couldn’t stand for that. Nobody had done that to me before. But then…” He took off his hat, slowly lowering it. “Then I realized that, day by day, I wanted to come back to your place, and it wasn’t just because I had the yen to play in a garden and fix a garbage disposal, or because of some Galveston property, either.”
His words lured her, even as the old reasons whipped through her like ghosts she wanted to exorcise: his reputation. His willingness to do anything to get what he wanted in business and pleasure. Her determination to be the best example she could for a child.
But the longer they looked at each other, the more the gulf between them closed. And closed.
Maybe she even took a step toward him. Or maybe he took one toward her.
All she knew was that she believed him when he said that his reasons for coming back to her had been stronger than either of them had admitted.
Before her brain could catch up, she was in his arms, clutching at the sleeves of his shirt.
She shouldn’t do this….
But she was going to.
His mouth crushed down on hers and, at the first explosion of contact, she moaned, her eyes closing. A field of glittery stars blinded her, spangling downward until they got to her chest, lower, settling in her belly like needling points of light.
He slid a hand up to her hair, dug into it, bruising her mouth with the force of his kiss.
The electric light in her belly intensified as he bent her backward slightly, one of his hands supporting her in the small of her back. Then the zapping current flowed lower, between her legs, buzzing, making her want him more than she’d ever wanted a man before.
Somehow, they stumbled off the path, into the trees, toward that shack with the flowers in it.
When his tongue parted her lips, she welcomed him, stroking his every stroke, getting greedy as her hands bunched his shirt, pulling him closer.
How could she have ever denied herself this?
But another question formed in the haze of her mind—how could she live without this?
The rashness of the thought disappeared as they barged into the shack. He closed the door, and her knees buckled, the momentum lowering her to the ground.
He came with her. “Ally…”
Yet she wasn’t letting him go, and she clutched his hair at the back of his head, bringing his mouth to hers again.
She wanted all of him, didn’t care about what would happen afterward. It was a new thrill for her, letting go like this, seizing these last days before her life would change—when she wouldn’t have time to see what it would be like to lose control for one hour, one day.
Letting her palms roam over his chest, she felt the muscle underneath, the fantasy of flesh and the hardness of male. Unstoppable, she yanked his shirt out of his jeans, wanting skin under her fingers.
She skimmed his ribs, his abs, and he sucked in a breath, then tightened his grip on her hair.
“Maybe this is enough,” he said.
“No.”
She didn’t want to talk, just wanted his hands on her, and she grabbed one of them, leading it up to a breast. As she breathed against his mouth—warm, breathless—she felt as light as air.
He’d slowed their frantic pace, touching her as if he’d fantasized about it many times before. Ally had never thought of herself as a fantasy, and it thrust at her down deep, where she’d felt nearly empty for months and months.
“Look at you,” he said, his voice gritty. “Just look at you.”
He was tracing the center of a breast with his thumb, and it pebbled through her bra, her sundress. She couldn’t help rising to her knees, glancing down, watching him. She’d never done that before—watched.
Marveled.
Been a little wicked.
When she pulled down the thick strap of her dress, revealing more of her lacy bra, he was the one who groaned this time.
And, just like the man who knew what he wanted, he eased the material all the way from her breast, as if to get a stolen glance.
She still watched him, her pulse pounding between her legs. It only beat harder when he bent, touching his tongue to her nipple.
Biting her lip, she stifled an excited sound, but he heard it. She knew, because he took his time in tasting her breast again, one slow, lazy lick, as if he enjoyed knowing what it did to her.
She couldn’t take it, and she pulled down her dress more, exposing her entire breast. He cupped it, and she leaned back her head, dying a little inside while he took her nipple into his mouth—warm, wet….
As he sipped, he sketched a hand to her thigh, stroking it.
The simultaneous caresses drove her mad, and agonized, she moved with him, hoping he’d move his hand up, to the apex of her thighs.
“Yes,” she whispered, urging him on. “Oh, yes…”
Her voice seemed to strike something in him, and he stopped, just breathing against her skin, then wrapping both his arms around her, pulling her in for an embrace.
As he held her, Ally paused, embarrassed that he was the one putting a halt to things again.
Good girl?
Hardly.
Then a dark thought intruded on her. It must’ve been hiding out inside her someplace, back where she’d put it on the night they’d spent underneath the stars.
It must have come out when he’d been honest about not being able to stop himself from being a good-time guy, even if he’d been committed to another woman.
That dark thought exploded into a question: What if he was putting a halt to their kisses now because everything had been a game for him and he was letting her know now that she’d already lost?
No, she shouldn’t be thinking it….
As he slid his hands up, adjusting her bra and dress so that she was covered, then cupping her face, she saw the intensity in his gaze.
The certainty that this wasn’t a game to him.
She tried to look away, but it was too late.
“You don’t trust me,” he said.
He thought that she believed he was never going to change. But she hadn’t doubted it until he’d told her that story about college.
Just as she was about to explain, he kissed her once again, and she tasted a hint of resignation in it.
As his tenderness ripped at her, she tried to say something, but he only helped her to her feet.
“I’ve got to get you back before they think I made off with you,” he said.
“Jeremiah…”
He opened the shack door, then went ahead to the path, where he’d dropped his cowboy hat without her even knowing it. She followed him, fumbling for words—an explanation of what he’d seen in her gaze.
He put that hat back on his head, covering himself, then waited for her.
Without
much to say, they went back to his pickup. He helped her in, as always, and as he went around to the other side, she thought, How am I ever going to make him see that I didn’t think he was playing with me?
Then her phone rang.
He was just getting into the cab when he heard it, too.
“Go ahead,” he said.
“But…”
“It’s fine. Go ahead.”
She would just take a glimpse at the ID screen. Nothing could be as important as this….
But she was wrong.
She gasped, flipped open the phone, answered it. “Hello?”
Michele, her adoption facilitator, got right to the point. “Ally, Cheryl’s in labor. It’s time.”
“It’s…time?” Tears came to Ally’s eyes.
She could feel Jeremiah watching her, as if he knew this was it. Her life was never going to be the same.
But hadn’t that been her feeling during the kiss, too?
Jeremiah started up the engine. “Where’re we going?”
“You don’t have to—”
He turned to her, and there was such stalwart determination in his gaze that she didn’t say anything more.
“Where, Ally?”
Her heart flew back to him again as she realized that, even after everything, the so-called fly-by-night guy wasn’t going to leave her stranded.
Not even with a baby on the way.
Chapter Nine
Even before Ally had answered that phone, Jeremiah had known that it was time.
Time for him to leave her for good, if he was really going to do it.
How did he know? She’d gotten the same look in her eyes that he’d seen in his college girlfriend—that question, “How long will it be before you go back to the way you were?” It made his stomach sink.
Yeah, it was definitely time to go.
Nevertheless, here he was now, in Ally’s private hospital room. Technically, the baby who was being given up by its birth mother was just as much the hospital’s patient as Cheryl was, so that’s why the child would have its own quarters. And Ally was there to take care of the newborn, staying with the baby, holding it, bonding like the new mother she was about to become.
He sat watching her pace the linoleum floor. He would’ve been a complete creep to leave her in the lurch. But he would be out of here soon. And he meant it this time.
Taming the Texas Playboy Page 11
