With This Kiss

by Bella Riley

  A home of her own.

  And a career with which she could not only support her child and herself… but that would feed her mind.

  Those first months, most of the carpenters in town weren’t sure if they were supposed to help her out to please her powerful father or if they should shun her to make sure she failed and had to move back home. She had to cobble together a workforce of newcomers to Emerald Lake, but they were all hard workers, and Celeste got in there with them whenever she could, wielding a hammer until her stomach grew too big.

  Other women watched her, women she’d known her whole life, and while some of them were clearly aghast at what she was doing, many more of them told her that working for the war effort had given them a taste of something they wanted more of. Nights with her sisters, Rose and Evelyn, as they knitted blanket and caps and booties for her baby, sowed the seeds for Lake Yarns. The two Farrington daughters were the last girls the town would have expected to want to get their hands dirty with work.

  But they were more like their successful, driven father than even he wanted to see.

  It had been a struggle to get her construction business off the ground. But bigger than the struggle had been the joy of it.

  She would miss Charlie forever. No other man could possibly replace him, but when the day came that her waters broke and the midwife made it to her cottage just in time to greet quiet, little Bill, Celeste was happier than she even knew was possible.

  Years went by, one then two, and she had a chubby, laughing toddler to chase around at building sites and down the beach.

  That was when the letter came, with the ticket to New York City.

  A dozen different thoughts and emotions coursed through her one after the other. She was thrilled to know that his hands had touched these tickets, to know that he wanted to see her again. She was surprised that he’d reached out like this to her, and yet it was inevitable all at the same time because nothing had ever really been finished—the door had never been closed. She was scared about what she knew she’d have to tell him about how her life had changed since he’d gone. And she was nervous about what he’d do this time, if he could possibly be out looking for another profitable con.

  But she never once thought about not getting on that train.

  She never once considered not going to see him.

  She had to see him.

  Because this time, she was going to be the one to make the decision about the door opening up again… or closing forever this time.

  Charlie was waiting for her at the station. His hat was pulled down low and he was thinner, so much thinner than he’d been before.

  “Celeste.”

  “Charlie.”

  It wasn’t awkward. They could never be strangers. And yet, Celeste knew, somehow, that keeping this distance was important.

  Vitally important.

  “You must be hungry after the train ride.”

  He knew enough about her to know that she was always hungry, and that she often got so caught up in what she was doing that she forgot to eat.

  “I know a place just around the corner. A place we can talk.”

  Walking beside the man she loved so deeply, without touching him, without going to her tippy-toes and kissing him, was the most difficult thing she’d ever done. Far more difficult than telling her father that her husband had disappeared. Worlds harder than giving birth or raising a baby on her own.

  “Yes,” she said softly. “I would like to talk.”

  A table between them, coffee steaming from cracked white mugs, he simply sat and looked. She did the same, drinking him in.

  “Falling in love with you was never the plan.”

  To keep herself from reaching out to touch him, Celeste had curled her hand around the mug, barely aware that it was scalding her skin.

  “My father supposed that was the case.”

  “He was right. Money was what I was after. You were my target. I should have been pleased by how easy you were to woo, how much you liked to hear my smooth words, how quickly you agreed to marry me.”

  Just as she should have been going cold at her husband’s frank admissions of why he’d pursued her, she knew that there were many different truths, weren’t there? And only one had ever been important to Celeste.

  “I loved you right from that first moment,” she told him honestly, knowing there was no sense in pride here in this diner, sitting across from the man she still loved with all of her heart.

  She watched his breath catch in his throat, remembered the taste, the scent of his skin on their wedding night. The one sweet night that had given them Bill.

  “One day,” he finally said in a hoarse voice, “I realized I wasn’t simply saying what I thought you wanted to hear. I was telling you the truth. I loved you. I wanted a life with you.”

  She hadn’t needed him to bring her here to say that. She had never doubted his love for one second. Well, maybe in the dark of night there had been a time or two when those doubts had crept in. But sitting here, across an old Formica table, surrounded by rough-looking strangers, she knew she would never doubt it again.

  “And now you want me to know why.”

  “God, yes.” His grip on his own coffee cup was so tight that the whites of his knuckles showed through his tanned skin. “I’ve barely slept since that night. Since I left.”

  She waited silently for him to gather the courage, the strength, to share the truth with her. Some things, she’d learned since leaving her parent’s house and striking out on her own, took time. Growing a baby. Teasing out a smile from a toddler’s tears. Building a business.

  Speaking the truth.

  “If I had been working for myself, I would have stopped. I would have given up my previous life for you. So many bad decisions led me to you, Celeste. So how can I regret everything in my past? I pulled myself up out of the gutter by working for the wrong kind of people. As soon as I fell in love with you I wanted to pull out of the deal I’d made.” He closed his eyes. “But I couldn’t. Not when it would have put your life, your family’s life, at stake, too.”

  His hands were shaking, now, little drips of coffee spilling out across his fingers, running down to make little puddles on the tabletop. “I had to take the money. I had to leave, even though I knew that if I left I could never come back. I could never risk your life because I selfishly wanted your love for my own.”

  She’d been planning to tell him all along. Now, she said, “You have a son.”

  His mug of coffee tipped, would have spilled, but Celeste caught it before it could go all the way over. Her fingers brushed his, then, and she let them still over his hand.

  Their eyes locked. Held.

  “Bill is two and full of energy. He looks like you.”

  She pulled her hand back to reach into her pocket. She handed the photo to Charlie.

  “My god.” Tears were streaming down his face, the tears that she’d watched him hold back so forcefully from the moment she stepped off the train. “He’s beautiful.” His eyes lifted from the picture. “So are you, Celeste.”

  She could taste her own tears on her lips as she smiled back at him. And she could see, as clearly as she’d ever seen anything, that her husband wanted desperately to start a new life with her and his son.

  Celeste would have risked herself in a heartbeat for Charlie’s love. To be with him. But she could never risk her own son.

  Not even for the only love she’d ever know as a woman.

  “I will never regret my love for you, Charlie.”

  She pushed back her chair and made herself say, “Good-bye.”

  “My mother gave me a New York City paper the following year. Your father had passed away.”

  Bill was stunned by everything his mother had said. He knew he’d have to ask her to repeat it to him. Another day, when it wasn’t all such a big shock.

  “I never really understood what it was to have a father or lose one.” Not until he’d become a father. Not until
he’d realized the very last thing he ever wanted to do was fail his children.

  Anger, that rare emotion that he’d been feeling more and more lately, came again. “The people he worked for stole everything from us!”

  “Well,” his mother said slowly, as was her way, “not everything. I still had you. You had me. There were siblings and cousins and grandparents and Elizabeth and Sean and Stu.” She paused before adding, “And now, perhaps, Rebecca.” Her kitchen clock clanged eight a.m. “Your men must be expecting you at the building site.”

  Knowing he was being dismissed—and how difficult telling this story had to have been for his mother—Bill forced himself to stand up.

  “I’m not done with your faucet yet.”

  She smiled and it took a decade, at least, off her age. “I’ll fix it myself.”

  Of course she would, as they both knew the only reason he ever helped her with anything around the house was rarely because she was too old to take care of it herself, but because it gave mother and son an excuse to be together.

  “Besides,” she continued, “you have plenty of things of your own to fix, don’t you?”

  She gave him a hug and he hugged her back tighter than he ever had before. His mother had been everything to him as a child, and she was still the best person he knew, along with his sons.

  As he walked back down the beach, the sun was much higher in the sky now than when he’d walked toward Celeste’s cottage earlier that morning, and it worked to warm him. The urge to take off his shoes and socks soon had him standing on the sand, feeling it between his toes. Amazingly, rather than being upset by his mother’s story, he was filled with new hope.

  His mother had no choice but to give up her true love.

  But he had a choice.

  Elizabeth—his Betsy—was still there. It was simply the love they needed help finding.

  Chapter Twenty

  Many times throughout the early-morning hours, Sean had tried to make himself slip out of Rebecca’s bed. Finally, he gave in to her warmth, knowing he didn’t have a prayer of forcing himself to leave.

  Not when she was so soft.

  Not when she was slowly waking and shifting in his arms to kiss him.

  Not when her hands were sliding over his shoulders and the pleasure in her eyes was the sweetest thing he’d ever seen as he came into her again.

  When, he wondered later as they lay panting in each other’s arms after falling over the peak again together, would he be able to savor her? He’d need his control back for that.

  Only, where Rebecca was concerned, his self-control was clearly in short supply.

  “Good morning.” Rebecca’s first words of the day were husky. Lazy with fulfilled pleasure.

  But he could hear the uncertainty in them, too.

  Sean couldn’t give her the words she needed to push that uncertainty away, but he could kiss her again, just the two of them safe beneath the sheets even as the rest of the world waited outside her front door… a world full of people who would eventually find out about the two of them, even if they did their best to hide what was between them.

  If control had been there, Sean would have felt confident in his ability to keep his feelings for Rebecca to himself. But given that he couldn’t seem to look at her without wanting to touch her, kiss her—or just plain keep drinking in her beauty—he knew there’d be talk.

  Questions.

  That was why he forced himself to stop kissing her. And to say, “We won’t be able to hide our relationship.”

  She reacted to his statement as if it were a bucket full of icy water poured over them both. Her muscles immediately went from loose to stiff and she scooted from his arms, pulling the sheet over her naked skin.

  Did she have any idea how beautiful she looked sitting there, her silky hair tumbling over her shoulders, her mouth full from his kisses, her eyes big and so green they could have named Emerald Lake for her?

  “Sean?”

  He shook his head, trying to clear it. “I’m sorry. I got lost for a minute.”

  “Lost?”

  He met her confused gaze, knew that he was a fool for saying it aloud, but there was no keeping it inside. “You’re beautiful, Rebecca.” At her flustered expression, he moved closer, picked up her hands, kissed them. “I’ve screwed up every second with you since waking up.”

  He was glad to see a small smile work its way onto her lips. “Not every second.”

  Sean knew the easiest thing would be to pull Rebecca back into his arms and make that flush of desire spread across her skin. And it was tempting, so damn tempting, to do just that.

  But for all the pleasure it would bring him—the pleasure it would bring both of them—he’d spend the rest of the day hating himself for avoiding the truth. And knowing that he was a coward.

  He’d never been so tempted to chuck everything in for sex. Still, despite how much he wanted her again, he knew this conversation was more important.

  Sex would come again. It was inevitable given their attraction. Their physical connection to each other. But words, important things that needed so badly to be said… he’d learned so long ago that the longer one waited to have a difficult conversation, the more difficult it was to ever have it. Until the day when there was no way to talk anymore, at all.

  “I’ve never been with anyone from town.”

  He watched as Rebecca took a deep breath. Finally, she said, “We’re not together, Sean. We simply slept together.”

  It should have been what he wanted to hear. She wasn’t trying to hold him down to anything more than physical attraction. So then, why did her words grate at him, at his heart more than anywhere else?

  Still holding her hands, he tugged her closer, close enough that the sheet slipped and slid from her curves.

  “I want to take you out. Tonight. On a real date.”

  “Why?”

  Her blunt question had him smiling. If this conversation had been with any other woman, he’d be itching to get out of bed. To get on with the day. To get away from the woman’s hopes. Her dreams.

  Instead, he was the one asking for more. And making sure he got it.

  “Why am I asking you out?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  “Because I like you, Rebecca.”

  So much.

  Too much.

  And she deserved more from a man than one night—and morning—of scorching sex.

  Something flashed in her eyes as she murmured, “I like you, too, Sean.”

  His chest clenched at the simple words. Liking each other was perfect. Ideal.

  Liking her would be enough.

  It had to be.

  “So we’ll like each other during the day and have sex at night?” she asked. “For as long as you’re in town?”

  Telling himself, yet again, that he didn’t want more than that, he nodded. “Exactly.”

  Rebecca slid from the bed, pulling the sheet with her. “You’re right, you know. People are going to have a field day talking about us. You’re Stu’s brother and I’m his ex-fiancée. It’s a gossip goldmine.”

  Her eyes, her expression, were clouding over more and more with each sentence. “It’s one of the reasons I tried to stay away from you. But I couldn’t.” He blew out a breath. “I just couldn’t.”

  Just like that, her pretty smile returned as she shrugged. “Who cares what people think? People are already talking about me. Might as well give them something fresh to gossip about.”

  She said it so easily, but he already knew her well enough to know how sensitive she was. Strangers were simply friends she hadn’t met yet. The urge to protect her from being hurt throbbed inside of him.

  And the worst part of all was the sure knowledge that the person who was going to hurt her most of all wasn’t a gossip… it was him.

  Sean knew a hell of a lot better than to get involved with her. But then she was kissing him and it didn’t matter what he knew.

  He could focus only on what he f
elt. Not just desire, but the kind of peace he hadn’t known for two decades.

  When the phone rang, she pulled back, her eyes dilated, her breathing uneven. “It could be Alice. Downstairs.”

  “You have to get it, don’t you?”

  When she nodded, he reached over for the phone beside her bed and handed it to her.

  “Oh, yes. Sure. Thanks for letting me know, Alice. I’ll be right there.” She gave him the phone to hang up. When he had, she said, “Your mother is waiting for me downstairs.” Her voice dropped to a hush. “She’ll know. She’ll see me and know about you.”

  Sean didn’t doubt that she somehow would. “I’ll come meet her with you.”

  She jumped out of his lap. “No!”

  “No?”

  She shook her head. “Whatever she wants, you’ll only make it worse.” As if she realized what she’d said a beat too late, she grimaced. “I just mean that because the two of you don’t really get along—” She pressed two fingers to her lips. “I’m going to shut up now and get in the shower so that I can meet your mother without looking like I’ve been having crazy sex all night long with her son.” Her mouth quirked up on one side for a split second. “All morning, too, I guess.”

  But Sean couldn’t stand the thought of their night together ending so suddenly. Especially not if his mother was the reason it had to end.

  Standing up, he reached for Rebecca before she could lock herself in the bathroom. “Last night, this morning… they were perfect.”

  She blinked up him, before echoing, “Yes, perfect.”

  “You never gave me an answer about tonight,” he reminded her, lightly caressing the pulse point at her wrist, dizzy with wanting her… even though he’d just had her. Surely there would come a day when he’d have had his fill of her sweetness, her smile, the silk of her hair between his fingertips as they made love. “Will you let me take you on a real date?”

  Rebecca was silent for a moment before saying, “I like Thai food.” She pulled out of his arms and was halfway into the bathroom when she turned back to him. “Just sex would be easier, you know.”