The Promise of Love

by Lori Foster

  She searched his face, then nodded. Slowly, her smile came. “So . . . we could get a house?”

  “Hell of an idea.”

  “And we can adopt Abner?”

  Knowing she loved animals as much as he did, Roy said, “For starters.”

  She laughed out loud. “Wonderful!” Pushing against Roy’s shoulders until he went to his back, Sabrina crawled up over him. “Now let’s wrap up this talk so we can move on to”—she kissed his chin—“other things. Okay?”

  Her breasts were against his bare chest, her soft belly over his groin, but he wouldn’t let himself get distracted just yet. “Tell me that you’ll marry me.”

  “I love you, Roy, so much.” She hugged him tight. “Of course I’ll marry you.”

  Roy turned her beneath him.

  Outside, the wind whistled through trees and rain lashed the landscape. Thunder rumbled and lightning fractured the blackened skies.

  But inside, in love and together, neither one of them noticed.

  take me home

  ERIN McCARTHY

  one

  Sara Parker stared at the check Evan Monroe had just handed her for ten thousand dollars and swallowed hard, the numbers on the paper blurring. “I can’t take this,” she said, shoving it back at him.

  “What? Why not? You’ll need it for your expenses until the baby is born.”

  God, he was being so nice and she wasn’t being totally honest with him. Sara, in all her years in foster care and even during her brief stint out on the streets, had never felt this lost, this filled with self-loathing.

  Nor had she ever strode so far from home and the values her last foster mother had instilled in her before she had died. Sara stared at the Formica table in Waffle House, unable to look at the man in front of her. He had made millions of dollars during his career as a stock car driver. She knew ten grand wasn’t really that much to him. Yet she had told him this baby was most definitely his, and the truth was, she didn’t know that.

  It was possible Evan was the father.

  It was just as likely it was the bartender at the Sly Fox who Sara had spent another boozy night with just before she had done the same with Evan.

  Her hand slid down to her firm belly to rest over her daughter. This was a wake-up call. The chance to shift the direction she had been going in. Starting with the truth.

  “Evan, you’ve been really good to me. Here you are just married and everything and you don’t really know me, and you’re being really sweet and kind.” Sara took a deep breath and blew it out, ruffling her bangs that had gotten unruly. “But the truth is, I did sleep with someone else around the same time. I don’t know for certain this baby is yours.”

  She figured he’d probably rip the check up and call her a slut, but she’d feel better knowing the truth was out there. Evan deserved that much, and she needed to be honest with herself and him.

  Evan did stare at her for a minute, before asking, “But it could be mine?”

  “Yes.” She felt her cheeks burn a little. It hadn’t seemed like such a big deal at the time when she’d been slinging back vodka, but now she was ashamed of herself and her behavior. Casual sex was one thing, but she’d gone too far.

  He shrugged. “All right, then. Who is the other guy, does he know you’re pregnant?”

  Sara shook her head. “I don’t have any way to contact him.” She didn’t even remember his last name, and when she’d gone back to the bar, she’d been told he’d quit. She could have pursued it further, but the truth was, she hadn’t wanted to. It was too humiliating. Like this conversation.

  “Take the money, then, Sara. If the baby is mine, great. We’ll work out raising our daughter together. If it’s not, finish school, make a life for yourself. I have more money than I know what to do with, and you clearly need some help.”

  Her lip started to tremble. “I can’t take your money if it’s not yours. That isn’t right.”

  “I want you to.” He tried to push the check back to her.

  Sara felt the tears falling and she stood up in humiliation. “I’ll be in touch, Evan. I have to go.”

  Rushing out of Waffle House, Sara let the tears take over as she dug in her purse for her car keys.

  She knew what she needed to do. It was time to go home to Kentucky, to the one person who could always make her feel better.

  She needed her best friend, Travis Fenway, and the hug he would offer.

  TRAVIS was washing the dust off his truck, his Labrador, Sadie, frolicking around at his feet, when the small sedan pulled into his driveway. Curious to know who was visiting him on a Tuesday without a phone call, he squinted against the sun as he tried to see into the car.

  The door opened and a familiar blond head popped up. Travis broke into a grin, turning off the hose. It was Sara. He hadn’t seen her in over two years, since she’d headed east determined to get herself a fancy education and marry a rich man, not necessarily in that order. He’d heard from her from time to time but never enough for his liking.

  Heading toward her, Sadie barking in excitement, Travis was prepared to scoop her up and squeeze her in a giant hug. Until her belly rounded the corner of the car door and he saw she was pregnant.

  His heart sank. He should be happy for her if Sara had found herself a man she loved, but he couldn’t squelch the keen jab of disappointment. He had always wanted Sara for himself, even when he’d known how foolish that was, and seeing her carrying another man’s child just drove his stupidity home.

  “Well, look what the cat dragged in,” he said, still damn happy to see her as he crammed his feelings down. He’d take whatever scraps of attention from her he could, just like he always had. And he was still getting a hug.

  His arms were reaching for her when he realized that Sara’s eyes were watering, her cheeks stained with dried tears, her nose sniffling as she tried to keep it together.

  “Baby, what’s wrong?” he asked her, reaching out and wrapping his arms around her.

  She sank against him and burst into tears. “I’ve made a mess of everything, Travis, I’m such an idiot . . . God, what am I going to do?”

  Holding her tight, Travis rubbed a hand gently on her back, taking in her scent, letting his eyes drift closed for a just a split second. “Hey, shh, it’s okay. Nothing we can’t flx.”

  Her shoulders were shaking with her sobs. Pulling back slightly, she lifted red-rimmed eyes to him. “I can’t fix this! I’m pregnant, did you notice that?”

  He had definitely noticed. Holding her close to him, that round belly was pressing against his own abdomen, a noticeable difference. Sara had always been tiny and this was an odd and amazing transformation. “Of course I noticed.” Using his thumbs, Travis wiped her tears off her cheeks. “Want to tell me about it?”

  “I’ve really screwed up this time.” Her brown eyes were filled with tears and worry, her nose swollen.

  “Come onto the porch and sit down and we’ll sort it all out. Did you drive all the way from Charlotte alone?”

  She nodded. When she made no move toward the porch, Travis took her hand and pulled her, just like he had countless times when they were kids. Sara had always been terrified as a girl, her wide eyes watching the other kids in the group home with a naked longing to fit in. Travis had always pulled her along, taking Sara everywhere with him.

  He had a million and one questions for her, all starting and ending with that baby growing inside her, but he was going to let her tell him everything all on her own time. Travis deposited her on a rocker. Sadie wagged her tail and inserted herself between Sara’s knees.

  “Hey, Sadie,” Sara cooed, still sniffling as she leaned down and took the dog’s face between her hands. “I missed you.”

  Travis settled into the chair next to her, wishing he weren’t so pathetic that he wished she’d say the same to him.

  “You’ll always love me, won’t you, puppy? No matter how dumb I am.” Sara kissed Sadie’s head.

  Biting his tongue,
he looked out across as his yard, his truck half washed in the drive. “So, you want something to drink?”

  “I can’t drink, I’m pregnant.”

  Travis frowned. “I meant a lemonade or an iced tea or something. I wasn’t offering you liquor.”

  “Oh.” She gave a small laugh. “Guess I’ve been hanging around the wrong people.” Then she sighed. “Actually, that’s not fair. My friend Nikki has been good to me. I’m the one who found myself going out way too often.”

  Travis leaned forward in his rocker and wondered the right way to circle around to the real question here. “So, are you still in nursing school?”

  “Yeah. I’m going to have to take a semester off, but I’ll be able to go back if . . .” She trailed off and her cheeks stained pink.

  “If what? You know you can tell me anything. I’m here for you.” He always had been, always would be. Hell, if he could lay his head in her lap like his dog was doing, he would.

  “If Evan is the father. If he’s not, then I’m shit out of luck.” The blush on her cheeks deepened as she struggled to meet his eye. “Won’t know for sure until the baby is born.”

  Ah. So that was the rub. Travis struggled to control his own emotions. He was angry at both himself, for letting her go off to Charlotte in the first place, and at Sara, for giving herself away so easily to men who didn’t give a damn about her. Unlike him.

  Then again, maybe he was wrong. “Is Evan your boyfriend?”

  Sara forced herself to shake her head, so embarrassed that she wanted to crawl under Travis’s front steps and die. That he could sit there so calmly on his tidy, freshly painted porch, while she told him she was a bad talk-show episode, just made her feel even more ashamed, if that were possible. To her, Travis had always been the person whose opinion of her mattered the most.

  “No. It was a onetime thing on a camping trip . . . but I told him about the baby and he’s being really cool about it, all things considered. He’s a stock car driver and he offered me ten thousand dollars.”

  “To do what?” Travis’s voice had taken on a steely tone of outrage.

  “No, I don’t mean that.” Sara reached over and touched his jeans covering his knee. “For me to live on, get through school. But I refused it because I just don’t know for sure if he is the father.”

  Travis’s jaw worked, like he was debating what to say.

  “There’s only one other possibility,” she said. “I’m not that big of a slut.”

  “I didn’t say anything. And you’re not a slut, that’s not what I was thinking. I don’t want to hear you talking like that.”

  It made her feel even more awful knowing exactly how Travis felt about casual sex. Being dumped at the orphanage by his prostitute mother had left Travis with a resolve to never use women the way his mother had been used. He respected the women he was involved with, and he didn’t approve of sex for sex’s sake. Sara had been the recipient of that respectful attitude since the day she’d met him, and she was beyond grateful for his friendship. She wasn’t sure what she would do if she lost his approval.

  “I don’t even know who I am anymore, Trav. I left Kentucky thinking I was meant for bigger and better things, never wanting to see this place again. Why did I hate it so bad here anyway?”

  Travis had a cute bungalow with a wide front porch and a green plot of land surrounding it. He was clearly about to plant a substantial garden, the earth freshly tilled behind the fence designed to keep out critters. Travis was a teacher and a football coach here in Boone County where they’d grown up and he seemed happy. Why had she thought chasing after labels and married men had mattered? She couldn’t even wrap her head around why it had driven her to take off two years earlier.

  “You didn’t have a fabulous childhood, Sara. It’s natural you’d want to go off and see a little of the world.”

  He was calm, unruffled, like he always was. He just rocked in his chair, his T-shirt pulling across the muscles of his chest and biceps. His hair was longer than it had been the last time she’d seen him, and the wind ruffled it a little. The air smelled sweet, like the spring flowers blooming in front of his porch, and a longing rose up in her, desperate and fierce. She wanted to have her act together like Travis did, she wanted to be a good mother and be able to provide her baby with a home.

  The home she’d never had.

  His eyes widened in alarm. “What? Why are you crying again? I didn’t mean to . . .”

  Sara pressed her eyes, trying to get a grip on herself. “No, it’s not you. I just . . . I don’t know what to do. I really don’t.”

  “Let me get you a cookie.” Travis stood up, his rocker banging the wall behind him as he hurried to placate her.

  Giving a watery laugh, Sara swatted at his leg as he moved past her. “You still think a cookie fixes everything, huh?” That had always been his solution when she had gotten upset. He’d find a way to pilfer a cookie for her, knowing how much Sara loved sweets.

  When a bully had knocked her into the dirt at age nine, Travis had found her a cookie. When her mother had flnally overdosed and the social workers broke the news to her, Travis had scored Fudge Stripes for her. And when Billy Pratt had broken her heart at sixteen, Travis, who was a grown man by then and off at college on a scholarship, had shown up with three boxes of Girl Scouts Thin Mints.

  “Hey, it always made you feel better, didn’t it?”

  “Yeah. Yeah, it did.”

  Actually, what had made her feel better was knowing that Travis would always be there for her.

  two

  Travis watched Sara dunk her chocolate chip in the glass of milk he’d given her and raise the soaked cookie to her lips. Her eyes were still puffy and she looked like she needed a good night’s sleep, but she looked less fragile, less on the verge of tears.

  “See, told you you’d feel better.”

  She gave him a smile, sitting next to him at his rickety kitchen table. Glancing around, she licked the dripping milk from her cookie. “You’ve done a nice job with this house, Trav. It feels like a real home.”

  Pride swelled in him. “Thanks. It’s been hard work but worth it. It’s not much, but this is all mine.”

  It had been a yearning he’d had his whole life as he had bounced from sofa to sofa when he was still living with his mother, to his aunt’s for a while, then finally into the orphanage at twelve, to have a home. A place to set down roots, to create a life for himself that no one could take away.

  Sara had wanted to run away from the past, from their difficult childhood, but Travis hadn’t felt the same call to leave. He had wanted to stay here in Rabbit Hash, Kentucky, and prove to himself and everyone around him that he was more than his mother’s son. That he was a good man, who had built a life for himself. He craved stability more than anything, life’s simple pleasures. His world only lacked a woman to share it with. He did date a high school classmate of Sara’s, but he could never bring himself to take it to the next level because, unfortunately, he had spent half his life casting Sara in that role in his mind, something she had never wanted, and never would.

  This simplicity didn’t appeal to her.

  Or it hadn’t, anyway.

  Seeing her at his table, contently munching cookies, made him wonder if somehow that had changed.

  “It’s a lot more than you give yourself credit for,” Sara told him passionately. “This—” Her arm swung around. “This is the kind of house you stay in forever.”

  It suddenly occurred to Travis to wonder why she had driven all those miles alone. “So what are you doing here? I’m really glad to see you, but it seems like a helluva drive for a drop-in visit.”

  She just shrugged apologetically. “Tell you the truth, I don’t know . . . I was staring at that check that Evan gave me, knowing I hadn’t been completely honest with him and I felt sick. So I told him that I didn’t know if he was the father or not, and he was really kind about it, and I just stood there wondering, what am I doing? I didn’t kn
ow, and so I just knew I had to come home. To you. Knew that you would help me.”

  His chest tightened. That meant the world to him, that she had reached out to him, over anyone else, when she was scared. It was almost a little bit like love. “Of course I’ll help you. You can stay here as long as you like, now and after the baby is born.”

  She looked pleased, but skeptical. “You don’t know what you’re offering. Babies cry.”

  Travis rolled his eyes, swiping one of her cookies. “Like I don’t know that? Of course they cry. In case you hadn’t noticed, a few tears don’t scare me off.”

  Sara gave a small laugh. “I guess that’s true. But I don’t have any money, how can I just mooch off you?”

  “It’s not mooching if I offer. You can cook dinner for me. I hate to cook. And beyond that, I don’t give a damn, Sara. I just want you and that baby to be healthy and happy, do you understand me?” He couldn’t stand the thought of her going back to Charlotte where no one could take care of her the way he could.

  “You’d really do that for me?”

  “Yes.” Why was that so hard for her to comprehend? “That’s what big brothers do.”

  “Is that how you think of me?” She looked wistful, her eyes glassy, cheeks bright, fingers turning her cookie over and over. “As a sister?”

  No, that wasn’t how he thought of her. Travis thought of her as his everything, as the girl he’d cherished and protected, as the woman he wanted more than anything to be his lover, his wife, his future. But he couldn’t tell her that. Not knowing she didn’t feel the same way. He couldn’t risk damaging their friendship. “Yes. Isn’t that how you think of me?”

  “I’ve always thought of you as my best friend.”

  He’d take it. “So you’re saying you wouldn’t let a friend help you out? You wouldn’t stay with a friend?”

  “Are you sure you don’t mind?”

  “Don’t be dumb. You can stay here as long as you need to in my spare room. We’ll even go buy a crib and a car seat and all that other baby stuff.”