by Becky Wade
“Good to meet you,” John answered, his expression friendly.
The gray streak that ran through the front of Nancy’s hair matched the color of her eyes, eyes that shone with what looked like true affection. She reached out and gave Celia’s upper arm a squeeze. “I’ve been nagging Ty for weeks about wanting to meet you. What a pleasure.”
Celia had no idea how to react in the face of their undeserved grace.
Nancy and John’s attention focused on Addie with fascination, admiration, and tenderness. A shine came into Nancy’s eyes. She placed her hands together and lifted them to cover her chin and mouth.
“This is Addie.” Celia smoothed a hand over her daughter’s hair.
Nancy lowered onto her knees before the girl, bracing her palms on her thighs. She gave Addie a smile of such love-struck joy that the sight of it caused emotion to clutch at Celia’s throat.
“I’m glad you’re here, Addie,” Nancy said. “Thank you for coming.”
“You’re welcome.” Addie pushed her teal glasses higher on her nose.
“It makes us so happy.” Nancy reached out for John, twining his hand with hers and bringing him forward. “It makes us both so happy that you and your mom are going to live here.”
“It makes me happy, too.”
“Oh, sweetie. My, oh my, you’re a beautiful girl.”
“Thank you.”
“Ty says that you like princesses. Will you come inside and tell me about them?”
Addie nodded.
They walked up the pathway parade style: Nancy launching into conversation with Addie, John and the driver insisting on pulling the carry-ons.
Like the exterior, the interior of Ty’s house served up the color brown: walnut-hued wood floors, khaki walls, furniture that wasn’t modern or traditional but somewhere in between. It reminded Celia of a pared-down furniture showroom, with no personal element to it.
“Oh!” Nancy pressed a hand to her forehead. “I was supposed to tell Ty the minute ya’ll pulled in. I got so excited I forgot.”
“No problem.”
“He’s not going to be happy with me. He’s been a bear to deal with while he’s been waiting for ya’ll to get here.”
“I’ll go tell him we’ve arrived.”
Nancy explained where to find the master bedroom, then she and John ushered Addie into the kitchen with the promise of a drink and a snack.
A Berber-carpeted hallway on the far side of the foyer took Celia past what she assumed to be Ty’s home office to a half-opened doorway. Ty’s bedroom. Stopping on the threshold, she peered in. He was reclining on his bed, propped up by pillows against the headboard. He had in earbuds, was reading an issue of Money magazine, and was wearing reading glasses. Glasses?
Light from the lamp on his bedside table shifted through his hair and glinted off his sterling watch. He wore a gray T-shirt that said Under Armour across the front. Since their high school days, she’d never seen him in anything but jeans, but this afternoon he had on a pair of cargo shorts, likely to make room for the bulky brace on his leg that began at some point beneath the hem of his shorts and continued to below his calf.
He’d focused his attention on the magazine, but he didn’t appear at peace. A troubled groove etched between his brows, and his profile had an air of pained darkness to it.
A rush of treacherous compassion washed over Celia. Ty had always been healthy, handsome, and a little too devil-may-care daring. But in some mysterious way, that was how Ty Porter was meant to exist in the world.
They had their issues. Even so, they’d managed to establish an odd sort of friendship. She was sorry he’d lost his bull riding, which had meant so much to him. Sorry, too, because by the looks of his expression, the leg hurt him mercilessly.
Toughen up, Celia. She had a lot of tenderness to give to a man some day. She just couldn’t afford to give it to this particular man.
She pushed his door open.
Instantly, Ty’s face turned in her direction. Those blue eyes, eyes that could twist a girl’s soul into a knot, focused on her intently. For a long moment he said nothing, and neither did she. The air hung between them, thick, but drawing thinner and thinner.
Chapter Thirteen
She was here.
Celia, standing in his bedroom without warning. Real . . . and here. Here, thank God. Finally. Ty took what felt like his first deep breath since his accident.
She was prettier than in his memory, so pretty he drank in the sight of her like water. He’d forgotten that her curls had a touch of red in them and just how much the disarray of her hair contrasted with the natural, clean-lined features of her face. He’d forgotten her exact height, or in this case, her lack of it. What he’d remembered: how perfectly her curves were proportioned to her slender body.
The forest fairy. It sure had taken her long enough to come to him.
With a slow motion, he twisted a finger into his earbud cord and pulled them free. He’d only been wearing them because his mom was more likely to leave him alone when he had them in.
As Celia moved toward his bed, she arched a brow at him and crossed her arms.
His family, friends, Tawny, and Holley’s church ladies had been treating him like a cracked piece of glass for the past couple of weeks. But based on the look on her face, Celia wasn’t going to go that route. She was about to unload a pile of attitude on him, and all he could think was how glad he was and how powerfully he’d missed her. Celia on the telephone and in his thoughts was nothing compared to her in the flesh.
She stopped a few feet away, took in his brace and then his face. “You went to great lengths to get us here. I’ll give you that.”
His lips hitched up on one side. “It worked, didn’t it? I like to get my way.”
“What’re you going to do the next time you want your way? Full body cast?”
“If necessary.”
“Are the glasses and the magazine a costume?”
“Meaning?”
“You knew I was coming, so I’m guessing you dug up some glasses and bought a Money magazine and waited for me to find you like this so you’d look cerebral.”
“Interesting theory.”
“I feel like Daphne from Scooby-Doo.”
“Is it hard to believe I might need glasses for reading, Daphne from Scooby-Doo?”
“It’s hard to believe that you can read at all.”
Ty tilted back his head and laughed. How long had it been since he’d laughed? Since whenever she’d made him laugh the last time, he guessed. He pulled off his glasses and set them and the magazine aside.
“When I got off the plane,” she said, “the chauffeur was holding up a sign that said Sweet One.”
“Really? I’ve no idea what you mean.”
“Right. And thanks so much for sending a limo that only Conway Twitty and children under the age of ten would love.”
“Did Addie like it?”
“Yes. But she’s under ten. I, on the other hand, nearly died of embarrassment.”
“Good.”
He pushed his upper body to a sitting position with one arm and extended his other toward her. “Would you mind helping me up?” He didn’t need help. It wasn’t like he was uncoordinated. Or like this was the first or even second time in his life he’d had to get around on crutches.
Automatically, she gripped his hand. The moment she did, he leaned back hard onto his pillows, pulling her on top of him. Celia’s forearms landed squarely against his chest, her hips across the mattress’s edge. Her breath gasped inward.
His impulsive decision to tug her down with him might have surprised her, but it ended up stunning Ty. Because in response to the feel of her body braced against his, intense longing flooded him. His senses registered her softness, the scent of lemons mixed with sweetness, the sight of her face hovering inches above his.
Every shred of humor fell from him. His blood began to beat against his wrists, his neck. The doubt and pain of the past couple
weeks disappeared until he could see nothing but her.
“You tricked me,” she accused.
“Yes.” His gaze moved to her lips. “I’m no good. You knew that already.” He pressed a hand up her neck into her hair, drew her to him, and kissed her.
She hesitated and then melted against him, letting him take more of her weight. His streak of five and a half years without kissing a woman—broken.
Groaning, he fisted his free hand into the fabric at the small of her back. He couldn’t believe she was letting him do this. His entire body roared with heat and possessiveness. He’d never felt anything like this, nothing half so—
She yanked back and smack, slapped him.
Ty’s face snapped to the side. He brought it back around in time to watch her take two fast steps away from the bed. A spark caught fire in her eyes and began to blaze.
“Did you just slap me?” Ty didn’t care all that much about the slap—she was tiny and hit like a girl—but he did care that she’d ended the kiss. He felt like a wolf who’d had its food jerked away.
“Did you just kiss me?” she demanded.
“You slapped me,” he said slowly, scowling. “I have a blown-out knee!”
“I’ll blow out your other one if you ever try to kiss me again. How dare you!”
“You were enjoying it!”
She opened her mouth but said nothing. Her chest rising and falling with outraged breath, she pushed her fists against her hips.
“You enjoyed it, and you can bet your bottom dollar that I enjoyed it.” With a wince, he pushed both his legs over the side of the bed. “Come back over here so I can kiss you some more.”
“Absolutely not.”
He glanced down at his shirt, where she’d wrinkled the fabric in two places by bunching it between her fists during their kiss. “You plumb near ripped my shirt. Are you going to try to tell me you don’t want to come back over here and kiss me?”
“In my head, I don’t want to kiss you. Not at all.” She sniffed, lifted her chin. “But . . . there for a second . . . my body did want to, I admit.”
He wished he had the use of both legs so he could go after her, corner her against a wall, any wall, and kiss her cheeks, her shoulders, her hands. As it was, he reached for his crutches and pushed to standing on his good leg. He leaned forward on the crutches, watching her intently. Waiting.
“I’m going to be brutally honest with you, Ty. I do have a sort of . . . a weakness for you. I wish I didn’t, but I do.”
“I have the same weakness for you. These last weeks since I hurt myself, I’ve missed you. I’ve about gone wild waiting for you to get here.”
“That doesn’t make sense, Ty. I haven’t been in your life for years. Why would you start missing me now?”
“I don’t know.”
She pressed her palms to her temples. “This is crazy!”
He lifted an eyebrow. “Crazy powerful.”
Her arms dropped, and she regarded him with extreme caution. “What about Tawny?”
“What about her? She’s dating someone else.”
“If you want to marry her, don’t you think you should hold off on kissing other women until she’s free?”
“I did think so. But now I’ve changed my mind.” He hadn’t planned on kissing Celia. But once he’d pulled her half on top of him, he hadn’t been able to stop himself. Tawny hadn’t crossed his mind. And he didn’t want Tawny in his mind now, either. Not when kissing Celia again struck him as the best idea he’d had in a decade. “Come over here and kiss me, sweet one. We’ll see if we can figure everything out that way.”
“Stop saying things like that! We can’t kiss. Not ever again. I’m serious, Ty. Don’t . . .” He read plain truth in her. “Don’t mess around with me. All right?”
“I don’t want to mess around with you. I want to talk straight up about the chemistry between us.” He gestured between them. “Is it possible there might be something here?”
“There can’t be anything here. We’re just friends.”
“We’re married.”
“Only because—” her voice faltered a bit, but she squared her shoulders and kept on— “we haven’t signed the divorce papers yet.”
Since his fall, the thought of Celia had been the only thing that had calmed him during the rotten therapy sessions, the boredom, the regret over his lost career. He felt so many contradictory things for her and didn’t understand any of them. He only knew that he’d never expected her to let him kiss her, but she had, and his strongest urge was to keep on kissing her until sunrise.
Maybe going so long without physical contact with women hadn’t been the best idea. He’d been trying to be honorable. Except he wasn’t honorable and couldn’t buy honorable. He was dishonorable, and now that long stretch of self-denial may have made him stone-cold insane, too. Brutal pain pounded his leg and the muscles in his neck had gone hard as stone.
“We need to think about Addie,” she said.
“You think divorce is the best thing for Addie?”
“At least it would give her closure. You must have noticed that she has hopes for you and me in the romance department.”
Every night on the phone Addie went out of her way to tell him how pretty and sweet and basically eligible her mom was.
“If she saw us holding hands or kissing or anything like that, Ty, it would fill her head with all kinds of false ideas. She’d get hurt in the end, and I can’t allow that.”
“I don’t want to hurt her.”
Some of the starch went out of her. “I know you don’t.”
Ty didn’t need Celia to spell out why Addie was a relationship killer for them. He got it. Frustrated, he frowned at the view beyond one of his bedroom windows. Addie was almost five years old, obsessed with princesses, and innocent enough to put stock in happily ever after. She believed him to be better than he was, so of course she wanted him and Celia to become a true husband and wife. If the two of them started down that path only to have things fall apart again, she’d be crushed.
He pushed a hand through his hair and wished for Vicodin. How long had it been since he’d taken his last dose?
“Ty?”
He turned his attention to her. Beautiful, maddening her. Who somehow, since his accident, had become important to him.
She looked edgy and mistrusting.
He could put her back at ease with charm, he knew. All his life he’d used it to get himself out of scrapes. It was as old and comfortable as one of his custom-made saddles. “Are you going to put that no-touching rule of yours back in place?” He regarded at her with wry humor.
“Yes.”
“What about for medicinal reasons? Like, right now, for instance, I could use some support to get to the living room.”
“There’s no way I’m falling for that a second time.”
“What if I touch you real respectfully? Like if I run my fingertip over your wrist or something?”
“No.”
“Well, just so we’re clear, you can touch me anytime you want.”
“Thanks, but no. I’d rather . . . um . . .”
“Drink high-fructose corn syrup?” he supplied.
When she released a huff of unwilling laughter, he knew he’d gotten their relationship back on its usual footing. He started from the room, swinging his brace smoothly, making fast progress on his crutches. Celia followed.
“I’m ready to show you your new house,” he said.
“Don’t you think Addie and I need to spend some time visiting with your parents first?”
“Ten minutes?”
“At least an hour.”
Ty groaned.
Addie must have heard them coming, because when he rounded an archway and spotted her sitting at his kitchen table, her head had already turned in his direction. “Daddy!” she cried.
That one word stopped him in his tracks and stole his voice.
Her face bright with excitement, she ran to him and hugged his goo
d leg. He hugged her back as much as his crutches would allow. Love for her swelled within him. My little girl, he thought with fierce pride. He’d missed the first years of her life, but she’d called him daddy anyway because her heart was big and generous enough to make room for him.
He’d liked just about every female he’d ever met, starting with his mother right on up. But no child had ever greeted him with such happiness, and none had ever called him daddy.
She looked up at him.
He smiled at her. “Hi, Addie.”
“Hi.”
He wanted to be her daddy. It was true, what he’d just been thinking—that Addie believed him to be better than he was. When she looked at him like this, though, he wanted to be the man she thought he was.
He’d accomplished some things in his life, but when it came down to it, none of it amounted to anything compared to this. No matter what, he was dead set on being Addie’s protector, provider, and biggest fan. The one who’d be there for every important moment in her life from now on, clapping and believing in her. Her daddy.
“Are you doing okay?” She patted his arm softly.
“Yes. How about you?”
“Doing good.”
“I see you’ve got your boots on.”
She beamed.
“If this car were any smaller, it’d be a jelly bean.”
“Jelly bean!” Addie giggled from her booster seat in the back of the Prius.
“Ha ha ha ha ha!” Celia pretended hilarity.
“From now on I’m going to call this car the green jellybean.” Ty attempted to straighten his good leg. “I think Toyota made this car for those short people from The Wizard of Oz.”
More laughter from Addie.
“This car is a perfect size.” Celia wasn’t about to let him cast aspersions on her car, even if it did insult his masculinity to ride in a small hybrid and, worse, to let a woman drive.
Ty and Addie launched into a conversation about The Wizard of Oz, a movie Celia hadn’t yet deemed Addie old enough to watch.
Celia gripped the steering wheel at ten and two. They were on their way from Ty’s house to her new house, and she’d just come off an hour-long visit with Ty’s parents. Ty’d spent the whole visit staring at her and failing to keep up his share of the conversation. She’d had to compensate for him even though her own thoughts were in a complete clamor. The whole time she’d been answering Nancy and John’s questions, in her mind she’d been pointing a finger at their big, handsome son and shrieking, He just kissed me! He just kissed me!
