“Then I’d remember I had a daughter. A little girl I’d hardly ever seen. Nat could’ve brought her to San Antonio, but she didn’t want to ‘traumatize’ her. And maybe, at that point, she was right, I don’t know...”
He released another breath. “At least she sent me pictures and videos. I mean, I loved Lili anyway, she was my kid. But getting to see her smile, and her first step...it didn’t matter how little I’d seen her in the flesh, I still would’ve killed for that kid, you know? So, yeah, she’s what kept me going. Guess I figured, since I hadn’t died, God wasn’t letting me off the hook yet. That Lili was waiting for me. Counting on me.” Another pause. “I just had no idea how much.”
“You mean because your wife...?”
“Left me, yeah. Left both of us. Last spring, after I’d been home three, four months. Funny thing was, Lili was fine with her daddy not looking ‘normal.’ Her mother, however...she never could come to terms with it. Although I have to say...”
Patrick lowered his feet to the floor, removing his arm from around April’s shoulders to lean forward, his hands clasped between his knees. “All the talking, the therapy...it brought me back from the brink of hell, sure. But it couldn’t fix what was broken inside me.”
Gently, April laid her palm between his shoulder blades. “You think you’re broken?”
He scrubbed a hand down his face. “I know I am, April. Even when things feel almost good again, nothing feels the same. I don’t feel the same. I don’t mean about how I look, although the stares still catch me off guard sometimes. But being over there, seeing what I saw, seeing my men...” She saw his jaw clench, even as she felt him shudder underneath her hand. “It took a helluva bigger toll than I had any idea it would when I signed up as a wet-behind-the-ears nineteen-year-old. I’m not sure anybody ever comes to terms with that. Not completely.”
He twisted to look into her eyes, the frustrated expression in his tearing her to pieces. “Tonight, being with you... I can’t even describe it. It almost felt, I don’t know...” He faced the fire again, his head shaking. “Real.”
She stilled, hardly daring to breathe. “But that’s good, right?”
“I said it felt real,” he said softly. “That doesn’t mean it was.”
Her eyes swimming, April wrapped her arm around his back and laid her head on his shoulder. “It sure as heck was real for me,” she whispered, then smiled. “Twice.” When he snorted a laugh in return, she said, “And if that’s your way of saying this was a one-shot deal, I’m going to be very pissed.”
Now he barked out a laugh, before turned to cup her face in his hands. “Even if I say things are never going to change? That I can never give you all of myself because I’m barely able to scrape enough together to give to my kid?”
She thought, weighing her options. Could she handle another conditional relationship? Was she a fool for even considering putting off her life again—putting off “real”—after she already had for so long? And it wasn’t as if she didn’t know that loving a man didn’t pave the way to changing him. For sure it hadn’t worked for her mother with her father, and she wasn’t so much of a fool as to believe it would work with Patrick.
And if it hadn’t been for that hope singing and dancing and bouncing around inside her head, she might’ve made what most folks would call the right decision. She was tough, she knew that, but still—she’d never ceded that kind of power to another human being. Clay’s death had stung, yes, but Patrick’s rejection...that could potentially devastate her.
But giving up without trying would devastate her far more.
Because then she’d be giving up on Patrick, wouldn’t she? Exactly like his wife had.
April clumsily shifted to straddle his lap, the heat from the fire licking at her bare back as she let the robe slide off and linked her hands behind his neck. Patrick’s eyes immediately darkened, and April realized she didn’t feel like a hussy, brazen or otherwise. What she felt like, was a woman. A woman relishing being able to give whatever she had to her man.
For as long as he needed it.
“What you are, right now,” she whispered, teasing his mouth with hers, “is more than I’ve ever had before. The thought of giving this up when I just found it...” Softly, she kissed him again. “Now how much sense does that make?”
When he didn’t answer, she levered off his lap, trying not to trip over the robe, then held out her hand. Wordlessly he rose and took it, leading her back to the bedroom.
No, she definitely wasn’t going to be able to walk tomorrow. But inside her head, she’d be dancing like nobody’s business.
Chapter Nine
The next morning April scurry-waddled through the house, pulling her barely combed hair into a ponytail as she tried to focus on her long to-do list for the day: potential employees to interview, decorations to finish, her mother’s call to return. Because didn’t it figure the woman would call on the one night when answering the phone hadn’t been on the top of her list? At least Mama had said it wasn’t urgent, she just wanted to chat, which marginally mitigated the guilt factor.
She veered into the kitchen, yelping right along with Blythe, who, seated at the island, jumped and shoved down her laptop lid at April’s entrance.
“Damn, girl—give a person a heart attack, why not?”
“You should talk!” Pulse throbbing, April passed her cousin and headed straight for the Keurig. “What are you doing here?”
Blythe took a bite of something obviously left over from the night before. As usual, she’d taken casual chic to the next level—velvet leggings, four-inch-high ankle boots, a half-dozen random necklaces somehow not smothering at least three cleverly layered tops. “Potential new client, some moneybags couple out near where Ryder’s parents live. Saw pics of the inn on my website, asked if they could see it in person before deciding whether to hire me or not. Hope you don’t mind?”
“Letting you parade rich people through here?” April dropped her coffee selection into the basket, shut the lid. “Not hardly.”
Twisting to face April, Blythe propped one elbow on the island countertop and took a swallow of coffee. “So how was it? Not that I really need to ask, your hair is a disaster and you’re wearing two different shoes.”
April glanced down. Yep. One ballet flat with a buckle, one with a bow. At least they were both black. But still.
Patrick had left around midnight. Reluctantly, April thought, but still needing space to digest what had happened. Still torn. “It was good,” she said, deciding to flip the track switch on the conversation. “Why’d you close your laptop so fast when I came in?”
“What? Uh, nothing. Just a startled reflex.” Except April caught the blush, signifying her cousin wasn’t telling all. Which didn’t stop Blythe’s squint. “And don’t even think about changing the subject.”
“Watch me.”
Blythe rolled her pretty periwinkle eyes. “But I’m right, yes? Not that I’m pressing for details...”
“Press all you like, I’m not giving any.”
Although whether or not she and Patrick would ever fool around again, she had no clue. Would be a crying shame, though, letting all those condoms go to waste....
“So,” she said brightly. “When are these clients coming? I’ve got two interviews this morning and then Patrick’s picking me up to go get the tree.”
“At nine. And you’re picking out Christmas trees together? Dude.”
“He has a truck. It seemed expedient.”
“Is his kid going to be there?”
Ah, yes. That. Or perhaps she should say, that, too.
April poured herself a bowl of Cheerios, slicing a banana into it before climbing on the stool beside her cousin. “I have no idea,” she said softly, pouring milk into the bowl, watching all those little life preservers jostling for space as they floated to the top.
“Oops. That doesn’t sound good.”
“No,” she said, clinking the spoon a couple of times against
the edge of the bowl before shoveling her first spoonful into her mouth. Milk escaped; she grabbed a napkin to catch it before it dribbled down her chin. “It doesn’t.”
“Meaning?”
While what she and Patrick had shared in bed was not open for discussion, April could definitely use another perspective on one or two other things. Especially since, between sleep deprivation and hormonal overindulgence, the temptation to jump to conclusions was through the roof.
“I’m not sure.” April took another bite. One not quite so goopy. “I get the feeling Patrick is afraid to let me get close to Lili. Or her, me.”
“It is pretty early, you know,” Blythe said gently. “So can you blame him?”
“Not really,” April breathed out. “Especially considering what happened with his ex. Lili almost never sees her mother. And when she does, Patrick said she’s wrecked for days, which in turn wrecks him. So, since...”
April’s throat closed against the threatening tears, as the reality of the situation smacked her between the eyes. Clear light of day and all that.
“So since this is only a passing thing...”
Shoot. Pinching her mouth together, April dropped the spoon into her bowl and sat back, her arms tightly folded over her stomach. Blythe wrapped her hand around April’s wrist.
“You sure about that?”
“I’m not sure about anything. Not even how I feel, to be honest. Yes, I know—it’s been like five minutes, what’s the rush?” She sighed. “Although I do see potential, at least. He doesn’t.”
“He’s a guy. They never do.”
“Some guys must, else nobody would ever get married.”
“I think they simply get tired of fighting,” her cousin said on a short, dry laugh.
April frowned at her cousin. “Men do fall in love. Look at Ryder with Mel,” she said before Ms. Cynical could protest.
“Okay, I’ll give you that one. But if Patrick...” Blythe pressed her lips together, then opened her laptop again, quickly clicking away from whatever had been on the screen.
“Spit it out, Blythe.”
A moment passed before she met April’s gaze, her own full of concern. “You don’t want a man to be with you simply because you wore him down. I’ve been there. And ultimately that hurts far more than if the relationship had never gotten off the ground to begin with. You also...”
“What?”
“You’re very new at this. So just be careful, okay? Protect your own heart first. Don’t give until you’ve bled yourself dry. Because trust me, they don’t appreciate it.”
It wasn’t as if April didn’t hear her cousin. Or, heck, even agree with her, to a certain extent. She was new at this, she was vulnerable, and heaven knew she’d always been predisposed to giving of herself without thinking through the consequences. Except this time, even if she didn’t really know what she was doing, she did know what the risks were. And what the rewards could be...if she was willing to take that chance—
“And you know what?” Blythe said, derailing April’s thoughts. “Kudos to Patrick for putting his daughter first. Maybe if more parents did that we wouldn’t have so many screwed up kids in the world.” The doorbell rang. Muttering, “Probably my clients,” she dismounted the stool, tossing, “You should probably fix yourself up,” over her shoulder as she strode from the room.
Very true.
Ten minutes later, hair tamed and shoes matching, April answered the door herself, smiling for the grinning couple on the other side, there to interview for the housekeeper/handyman positions. The house echoed with their oohs and aahs as she ushered the two men—one, a bearded blond, the other with skin like oiled teak—to her office.
Heh. Somewhere, Nana’s ashes were whirling like a dust devil.
* * *
Patrick parked in front of the inn and got out, his sensitive skin protesting some in the damp breeze as he stood with his hands rammed in his work coat pockets, half wondering if last night had been a dream. A good one, for a change. The corners of his mouth stretched: A very good one.
The front door swung open and April hustled through it, her smile knocking his breath—not to mention coherent thought—clean out of him.
Literally shaking off the dizziness, Patrick walked around to the truck’s passenger side to open the door as she approached, her hair bouncing off her shoulders, a bright blue scarf wound in some bizarre way across her chest. No one else was around that he could tell, no other cars besides hers parked in the driveway—
“Hi,” she said when she reached him, not quite shyly but close enough to make his throat catch, to send a hundred memories from the night before shooting through him, instantly provoking both tenderness and an arousal so intense he nearly choked. As it was he’d lain awake the rest of the night, head propped on one arm, staring at his shadowy ceiling and trying to make sense of what had happened. What he’d gotten himself into. What, he now realized when she stood on tiptoe to gently press her mouth to his, he wasn’t getting himself out of anytime too soon.
Or—and here was the frightening part—wanted to.
He bent to haul her close so he could kiss her properly, feeling all warm inside when she laughed against his lips. Even so—even now—the impulse to run was so strong he nearly shook with it, never mind that all he wanted was to carry her back into the house and bury himself, and his pain, inside all that sweetness and generosity for as long as she’d let him—
Damn. He was so hard it hurt.
April laughed again, a soft, low chuckle. “Guess that answers my question.”
He set her down. “And what question would that be?”
“Whether you want to, you know. Again. With me.”
Never before had he found coyness even remotely a turn-on. Until now. Probably because with April, it was genuine. Like everything else about her.
“Wanting to, you know, again was never a question. Whether I should was something else entirely.”
She met his gaze straight on, the coyness banished. “So who are you trying to protect?”
“I’m not sure.”
Huffing an obviously frustrated sigh, she poked her hands in her jacket pockets and looked away, like she was thinking, before eyeing him again.
“Then maybe you need to clear that up in your head,” she said, firmly enough but not meanly. Although he doubted she could do “mean” if you put a gun to her head. “Because here’s my take on it—if you feel you have to protect yourself, then fine. Go. Right now,” she said, pointing to the road. “But I don’t need protecting, Patrick Shaughnessy, from you or anybody else. I invited you into my bed because I wanted you there.” She flushed. “And I’m inviting you back because I still want you there. Because I waited a heckuva long time to find a man I wanted to do that with, and frankly, I think I made a dang good choice. It was fun, you were fun, and like I said, I’m not hot on the idea of quitting before I’ve hardly gotten started. So if it’s all the same to you—”
“Good God, woman, you talk a lot.”
Grinning, she freed one hand to grab the front of his jacket, like she’d done in the car a few nights ago. “And something tells me you can probably figure out how to shut me up.”
Unable to decide if she was a torment or a blessing, Patrick palmed the truck’s roof. “What about the Christmas tree?”
Now the grin was downright sassy. “Somehow I doubt they’re gonna sell out in the next hour.”
* * *
Sometime later, watching April bop from tree to tree in Sam’s lot like a demented Energizer Bunny, Patrick realized that whereas some women got drowsy after sex, it apparently had the opposite effect on the one he’d made cry out twice in twenty minutes.
And talk? Yowsa. The woman had practically gabbed his ear off on the ride over—about the couple she’d hired who were going to be absolutely perfect, she already loved them to bits, about how she still hoped her parents would come for Christmas, about how Mel and she were going to have a booth set up in the to
wn square for the festival to drum up business. Gal always had been bubbly, but now she was fizzing over like a can of warm soda.
And I did that, he thought with a slight jolt to his midsection—
“Come hold this one for me so I can see what it looks like,” she said, wrestling with a nine-foot Noble fir partially tangled with a bunch of its cousins.
Patrick ambled over, feeling kind of fizzy himself, truth be told. Not to mention more mellow than he’d been in a long, long time. And if the shadows hadn’t been banished entirely, at least they’d become porous enough for the light to work through in places. He grabbed the tree, easily yanking it upright, unable to hold in his grin as he watched April give it a slow, careful once-over, looking a lot like Lili when she was concentrating on something or other. A thought that clawed at his brain like a pesky mutt wanting inside, how much April and Lili would hit it off.
If he let them.
“Put it in the ‘maybe’ pile over there,” April said, waving toward a growing collection of trees that’d made her short list. April had many fine qualities—many fine qualities—but making snap decisions was not among them. By rights, Patrick mused as he plunked the tree up against the chain-link fencing segregating the trees by type and height, he should’ve been at least moderately irritated by now. That he wasn’t probably had a lot to do with the sex.
A lot, but not all.
He thought of how Natalie had always been complaining, always unhappy, always looking at him like he was to blame for everything that had gone wrong in her life. And damned if he hadn’t bought into the whole gloomy picture. The few times they had made love after his return—although using that term for what they’d done was a stretch—her heart had not only clearly not been in it, it’d been nowhere to be found. Sex had been a chore, something she’d had to endure, not enjoy. Even when he’d brought her to climax, it was almost like she somehow resented it—
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