Home in Carolina

by Sherryl Woods

  “You don’t have to ask me twice,” he told her. “I’ve waited too damn long for this.”

  In her room, which still had the white eyelet ruffled spread and curtains from her teen years, he set her gently on top of the covers, then drank in the incongruous sight. Annie, all woman and eagerly awaiting him, atop a bedspread that reminded him of her innocence when he’d first made love to her so long ago. He had to shake off the crazy thought that in a way he was about to take her virginity all over again…and might be risking getting caught in the process. Though the former was hardly possible, the latter added a surprising edge of danger and excitement to the moment. Recently he’d made peace with Ronnie, but he had no idea how Ronnie would feel if he found the two of them together in Annie’s bed.

  “I feel like I did the first time I made love to you,” he said as he settled on the bed beside her. “I’m scared to death I’m going to do something wrong.”

  She touched his cheek. “You couldn’t possibly. We always got this right, from the very beginning.”

  They really had, Ty recalled, which made him question himself again. Why on earth had he ever looked at another woman? Stupidity? Immaturity? Availability? Maybe a combination of all three, he decided.

  Pushing that thought from his mind and concentrating on the second chance right in front of him, he slowly, deliberately rediscovered Annie’s body, from the curve of her shoulder to the gentle swell of her stomach, from her now perfectly rounded hips to the pink-tinted tips of her toes. He took his time with the journey, lingering where he drew low moans of pleasure, increasing the intensity of his touches when she writhed beneath him.

  Every uninhibited response made him want to do more to show her how much he loved her. He wanted to make this last an eternity, or at least to be the start of forever.

  When he entered her at last, he kept his eyes on hers, his gaze steady. He wanted her to have no doubts that he knew exactly whom he held in his arms, exactly who was driving him wild with passion.

  “Only you, Annie,” he murmured as his body reached its climax. “Always, only you.”

  She shuddered with her own release then, and when he again looked into her eyes, they were filled with tears. Touching a finger to the dampness on her cheeks, he studied her with a worried frown.

  “I thought I knew what it was like to be with you,” she whispered, obviously trying to explain the tears, “but I was wrong. This was better than anything I let myself remember. If I’d remembered this, I could never have let you go.”

  Annie was terrified to leave her bed, to leave this room where she and Ty had found their way back to each other’s arms. Outside there were so many things that could still tear them apart—Dee-Dee, Trevor, even his career.

  Ty glanced at the clock on her nightstand. “I think we need to get out of this bed. Either your mom or your dad could be home any minute.”

  She clung to him when he would have stood up. “If we’re really quiet, they’ll never know you’re in here. It’s not as if I’m five. They don’t look in on me when they come home at night.”

  Ty grinned. “Is that really a chance you want to take?”

  “The risk I don’t want to take is leaving this room,” she admitted. “I feel safe right here, as if nothing can harm us or come between us. We know how to communicate in here.”

  “Nothing is going to come between us again,” Ty assured her. “I promise.”

  “How can you? Dee-Dee’s still out there.”

  “She’s not a threat to us. She’s not even a threat to me and Trevor anymore. Helen’s got that covered. I have complete faith in her. I may have to make more compromises than I’d like, but I’ll keep my son. I believe that with all my heart.”

  “I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to see you with Dee-Dee and Trevor without feeling a twinge of panic deep inside,” Annie admitted. “The bond you have with her because of Trevor—”

  “Is just that,” he said. “Because of Trevor. There’s nothing else between us.”

  “I want to believe that,” Annie said.

  “Then do. Just take a leap of faith and believe in me, in us. Dee-Dee has a fiancé herself. She doesn’t want me any more than I want her.”

  Annie held his gaze and slowly nodded. After all, what choice did she have, really? She loved him. Nothing that had happened had changed that. After the hell of the past three years, she couldn’t imagine anything worse that could. And sometimes, she’d learned, the only thing to do was take a deep breath and then listen to her heart.

  While Ty was in the shower, Annie whipped up a meal of scrambled eggs with chive cream cheese, toast and turkey sausage for the two of them. She was whistling as she worked, when the back door opened and her mom walked in. Naturally Dana Sue immediately took note of the two places set at the kitchen table.

  “Is your dad home from his night with the guys already?” she asked Annie.

  “Uh, no,” Annie hedged, uneasy about how her mom was going to react to the truth.

  “Then who’s using the shower?” Even as Dana Sue asked the question, understanding dawned and her eyes widened. “Ty’s here? Upstairs?”

  Annie felt heat climbing into her cheeks. “Afraid so.”

  Dana Sue studied her for a full minute and then a grin slowly spread across her face. “Well, hallelujah! Where’s the phone? I need to call Maddie.”

  “Don’t you dare,” Annie said, horrified. “You’re going to be totally discreet about this.”

  “You’re in my house,” Dana Sue reminded her, her expression smug. Sounding like she had when Annie had been a teenager, she added, “I get to decide who knows what goes on under my roof.”

  Annie stared at her. “You can’t be serious.”

  Her mom chuckled. “Okay, no, but the look on your face when I said that was priceless.”

  “You could be even more discreet and disappear before Ty comes down here,” Annie suggested. “Otherwise, he’s going to be totally embarrassed that we got caught.”

  Instead, her mother went to the other end of the table, pulled out a chair and sat. “He deserves a little embarrassment. If I’m going to be his mother-in-law, he needs to get used to it.”

  “Hold on,” Annie said, dismayed. “Nobody’s said anything about a wedding.”

  “Well, why on earth not?” Dana Sue demanded.

  “We’re barely back together, for one thing.”

  “And for another?” her mom asked.

  “His life is pretty complicated at the moment,” Annie said, defending Ty.

  “Life’s always complicated. You make time for the things that matter.”

  “Mom, I do not want you to start bullying him about marriage the second he walks into this kitchen. If that’s your plan, I’m going upstairs right now and telling him to sneak out my bedroom window.”

  “I’ll just be outside waiting for him when he hits the ground,” Dana Sue said, though her lips were twitching with amusement.

  Still, Annie thought she sounded serious. “Mom, please, you and Maddie have to stay out of this,” she pleaded.

  “Stay out of what?” Ty asked, walking into the kitchen without the slightest hint of embarrassment. He even walked directly to Dana Sue and dropped a quick kiss on her cheek, as if this were a perfectly normal encounter.

  “She needs to stay out of our lives,” Annie told him.

  “They’re mothers. It comes with the territory,” he said with a shrug. He grinned at Dana Sue. “I guess we’re busted, huh?”

  “And how,” Dana Sue confirmed. “So, when’s the wedding?”

  Annie groaned. Ty merely reached for her hand and held tight. “We haven’t discussed it yet,” he said. “But we will.”

  Apparently something in his tone, the hint of certainty, convinced her mom, because she stood up, kissed him on his forehead, then kissed Annie. “I am so telling Maddie about this,” she said, her eyes alight with excitement. “Things are finally going to be right between the two of us again.”
>
  “Hey, it’s not about the two of you,” Annie reminded her as she left the room. Her mom didn’t reply.

  Annie turned to Ty in exasperation. “You realize we won’t have a moment’s peace from now until we announce our engagement,” she told him. “Assuming we do.”

  “Why wouldn’t we?” he asked.

  She frowned at the question. “Well, you haven’t asked me to marry you, for starters. And I haven’t said yes. Let’s not start taking anything for granted, okay?”

  “You want me to court you, make a big production out of the proposal?”

  She thought about it, then nodded. “Yes, I think I do.”

  “Okay, then, not a problem.”

  “Just like that?”

  “Why not? You deserve romance and a whole lot more. I can do that.”

  “You are a constant surprise,” she said.

  “That’s the goal,” he told her. “I have it on very good authority that surprises and a touch of romance keep things fresh.”

  “What authority?”

  “Cal,” he said.

  “Your stepfather has been giving you advice on romance?”

  “Hey, my mom seems happy, so who better to give me some tips? Of course, he claims to have learned a few things from my grandma Paula.”

  Annie regarded him with amazement and more than a little distress. “So courting me is going to be kind of like a big family project?”

  “Don’t worry. The execution is all up to me.”

  “I’m relieved.”

  He pulled her into his lap. “Never fear. I have a few surprises of my own.”

  “Such as?”

  “Now, they wouldn’t be surprises if I told you, would they?”

  “I’m not that fond of surprises,” she said grumpily. Most of the major ones in her life had fallen more into the shock category. They hadn’t been good.

  “I’ll turn that around,” he told her. “I promise. Now, I should probably get out of here before your dad gets home. He might not be quite as enthusiastic about what went on here tonight as your mom was.”

  “I think that’s a given,” Annie said. She snuggled against his chest, his arms tight around her. “Though, I’m not anxious to let you go. My offer still stands. You can sneak back into my room and spend the night.”

  “Your mom’s already onto us, and she’ll tell your dad,” Ty reminded her. “It’s okay, though. I’ll be back.”

  “Promise?”

  “Again and again, for the rest of our lives.”

  Annie looked deep into his eyes and saw something she’d once taken for granted: commitment. And, for the first time in a very long time, she let herself believe in Ty and the future he was promising.

  23

  Ty wasn’t all that surprised to find his mother waiting up for him when he got back to the house. He’d known she would have questions about whatever Dana Sue had reported to her earlier tonight. What did surprise him, though, was finding Helen with her. Her grim expression suggested they weren’t waiting here to congratulate him for reconciling with Annie.

  He sat on the sofa and looked from one to the other. “Okay, what’s wrong?”

  Helen handed him some kind of official-looking document.

  “What is it?” Ty asked, too impatient to look over the pages. “Just cut to the chase.”

  “Dee-Dee found herself a sympathetic judge in Ohio,” Helen said. “I haven’t figured out how she pulled it off, but that’s a court order demanding that she be given temporary custody of Trevor until further details of a custody arrangement can be worked out.”

  Feeling the worst sense of betrayal he’d ever felt in his life, Ty shot to his feet. “You have to be kidding me! Come on, Helen, how can this be happening? How could Dee-Dee pull this off? She promised me she’d have Trevor back here tomorrow, dammit! She promised!”

  “Well, apparently she doesn’t intend to honor that promise, and now things are going to get really complicated, Ty,” Helen said, her tone calm, but her eyes sparking with her own sense of outrage. “We’re going to wind up with courts in two states warring over who has jurisdiction in the case. Because Trevor’s in Ohio, the Ohio court will claim it should hear the case. And the court here, which has taken over jurisdiction from Georgia, will argue that any further proceedings be held right here.”

  “Why did I let myself get talked into this visit?” Ty moaned. “I trusted her. I felt sorry for her.” He raked his fingers through his hair. “And this is what I get for it? Well, it’s not going down this way, I can tell you that right now. I’ll go up there and get Trevor.” He gave Helen a hard look. “We can use this against her, right? The fact that she broke the terms on which I allowed the visit.”

  “We can try,” Helen said. “It certainly won’t reflect well on her that she lied to you, but it’s going to be a while before it even gets to that stage. It could take some time for the courts to settle the whole jurisdictional dispute.”

  “This is crazy!” Ty exploded, pacing furiously. “Dee-Dee is not going to lay claim to my son. She’s just proved every opinion I ever had about how reckless and irresponsible she is.”

  Helen regarded him with sympathy. “Remember what she told us, Ty, about not being able to have kids. She’s desperate for a family, and she sees this as her only chance.”

  Ty stopped pacing and sat down. “What do I do?” he asked Helen.

  “I go into court tomorrow and file papers to restore full custody to you. We’re going to fight this, Ty.”

  “And in the meantime, what? I just leave him up there? Not going to happen.”

  His mother spoke for the first time. “Maybe you should go up there and reason with her, Ty. If everything you and Helen have said is true, then Dee-Dee is probably scared. It sounds to me as if she’s so desperate for a child that she felt this was the only way. Get her fiancé involved. If he’s the kind of upright man Dee-Dee claims he is, he’s not going to want to be part of some messy custody battle. He’ll be anxious to settle this.”

  “How do I even know they’re where Dee-Dee said they’d be?” Ty asked wearily. “She could have taken Trevor anywhere.”

  “The papers have a Cincinnati address listed,” Helen told him. “I compared it to the one she’d given to you, and they match.”

  “You really think she’ll stick around there?” Ty asked, not buying it. “This guy’s supposedly rich. He could send them anywhere in the world.”

  “The fact that she filed papers in court tells me she wants this to be legal,” Helen said.

  Ty wanted to believe her, but panic triumphed over reason. This couldn’t be happening, not now when his life was coming back together, when he and Annie had a real shot at finally becoming the family he’d always dreamed of. Now every ounce of his energy had to be focused on getting Trevor back. Annie would have to take a backseat. She’d have to understand.

  “Ty, try not to overreact,” his mother urged. “Let Helen handle this through proper channels.”

  “That could take forever. I told Dee-Dee I wanted my son back here on Tuesday, and by God he’s going to be back here,” he declared fiercely, heading for the door.

  “Where are you going?” Maddie asked, coming after him.

  “To Cincinnati, and so help me God, I’d better find Dee-Dee there with my son, or all hell is going to break loose.”

  Blinded by rage, he sat behind the wheel of his car for a few minutes, drawing in deep, supposedly calming breaths, but they didn’t do any good. This was all his fault. He’d let Dee-Dee get to him. And, face it, he’d wanted some time to work things out with Annie, so he’d let his guard down and okayed this trip. He was an idiot, and now his son was paying the price.

  Even as he sat there berating himself, Ty was wise enough to know he shouldn’t be driving in this condition. He pulled out his cell phone and hit the speed dial for Annie. Maybe it was selfish, but he needed her now more than he ever had.

  As soon as she answered, he explained what ha
d happened. “I need to go after my son, but I’m too furious to be behind the wheel of a car right now.”

  “I’ll be there in ten minutes,” she said without hesitation. “Sit tight. And, Ty, try not to worry. Trevor’s just fine. Dee-Dee loves him. That’s the whole point of this. She’s not going to let anything happen to him.”

  “I know, I know,” he said. “Just hurry, please.”

  Because right now, every second that passed felt like an eternity.

  The two of them drove all night in alternating shifts to reach Cincinnati by daybreak. Ty located the address that Dee-Dee had given him, but when they reached the house, it was obviously deserted. There was no car in the driveway, no evidence of anyone around, no lights, not even a night-light in whatever room was intended for Trevor. That was when Ty nearly lost it.

  “How could she keep him when she doesn’t even know that Trevor can’t sleep without a night-light on?” he asked, choking back a sob. “She doesn’t know what books he likes to read before bed or what his favorite pajamas are.”

  Annie reached out and laid her hand over his white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel. “Don’t,” she pleaded. “I might not know much, but I do know she’ll get him whatever he needs. You have to stop thinking the worst. You’ll make yourself crazy. Now, let’s sit here and try to come up with a plan.”

  Her calm, reasonable attitude made him want to snap at her, too, but she was right. The situation called for logic, not hysteria.

  “Why don’t we get some breakfast?” she suggested. “You’ll feel better once you’ve eaten.”

  He regarded her incredulously. “I’m not budging from this driveway.”

  “Okay, then. I saw a fast-food place on the corner when we turned onto this street. I’ll walk there and bring something back. It’s only a couple of blocks.”

  “You shouldn’t be walking around alone at this time of night,” he argued.

  “It’ll be daylight any second now,” she assured him. “And it looks like a perfectly respectable, safe neighborhood.”

  “You have no idea whether it’s safe or not,” Ty said. “I’ll take you and we’ll order at the drive-through. It’ll be faster.”