Forbidden Lust: 3 (Lust for Life)

by Jayne Kingston

  “How about we go back to my house and I make a pot of coffee and we catch up instead?” He stood and held out his hand. “I’ve missed you too, you know.”

  “Christ, Leo. How am I supposed to say no to that?” she asked, trying her best to look annoyed as she took his hands and let him pull her to her feet. She wrapped her arms around him as he pulled her close and took a deep breath of his familiar scent.

  “You’re not,” he said, and kissed the top of her head.

  Chapter Ten

  Eva knelt on the floor of her bathroom, the three pregnancy tests she’d just taken arranged like a fan in front of her, every one of them clearly reading positive.

  Leo’s flippant comment about her being pregnant had made her stop and think. She’d been a lot more tired than usual over the past couple of weeks. When she looked at the calendar and did the math she realized she was not a couple of days away from starting her period like she’d thought in New York. She was close to three weeks late.

  She was as regular as Old Faithful, but since she’d started seeing Oscar, days and weeks had flown by in a blur of long days of work and even longer nights of the most amazing fucking she’d ever experienced. She’d been looking forward to the next time they could be together and not much else recently, so it didn’t surprise her the date her period should have started came and went with little notice.

  Of course it was too soon for her to have gotten pregnant in New York, but she knew exactly when it had happened. There had been a night weeks before when he’d made such passionate, gentle love to her that she’d nearly cried.

  At the time it had seemed as if they physically could not stop kissing. He’d stayed inside her too long after they’d both come. The condom had slipped most of the way off and made a mess of her and the bed both. She’d laughed it off at the time, but Oscar had been worried. Turned out he’d had good reason to worry.

  A baby, Eva thought, the tests going blurry as her eyes filled with tears. She wasn’t ready for a baby. Fuck, she was barely ready for the responsibility of having fallen in love—deep, earth-shattering, real goddamn love—for the first time in her life.

  There was a knock on her door and then she heard it open, followed by Leni calling her name. Shit. She’d forgotten all about their lunch date.

  Eva scooped up the tests and shoved them into the cupboard under the sink.

  “I’ll be out in a minute,” she called, shut the bathroom door quietly and stood. “Christ on crutches,” she muttered, getting a good look at herself in the mirror.

  The makeup she’d put on earlier to run to the drugstore was smudged all over her face and her eyes were so red she looked high as a fucking kite. She made quick work of washing her face, but there was nothing she could do about her red eyes, which apparently were not going to stop leaking. She grabbed the roll of toilet paper off the edge of the sink and went to face her sister-in-law.

  Leni’s eyes went wide when Eva came out of the bathroom, and the expression on her face caused new tears to rise. Eva made it no farther than the foot of her bed. She sat down hard, dropped the toilet paper roll onto the comforter and bawled like a baby into her hands. After a second the mattress dipped and Leni put her arm around Eva’s shoulders, cradled her head and drew it to her shoulder.

  “Is it anything you want to talk about?” Leni asked once Eva started to calm down.

  She did and she didn’t. She had no idea what to think or feel. The only thought running through her head with any consistency was this can not be happening to me.

  Eva sat up and swiped at her face with her hands. She drew in a deep breath and looked at Leni. “I’m pregnant,” she said, and the shocked expression on Leni’s face made her want to cry again. Jamie hadn’t told her.

  “Sorry.” Leni took Eva’s hand between hers and squeezed it. “You caught me off guard. I didn’t realize you were even seeing anyone.”

  That made Eva laugh, and even though it sounded strained and ridiculous, it felt good. She drew in a deep breath and confessed, “I’ve been seeing Oscar.”

  Leni bounced a foot away from Eva, her mouth hanging open and her blue eyes huge with surprise.

  “Oscar Gaudin?” she asked, incredulous. “The same Oscar you call ‘that goddamn motherfucking asshole’ on a fairly regular basis?”

  “It started the day after your wedding. Right after you and I were talking in the backyard.”

  She told Leni everything—well, mostly everything—starting with that amazing first kiss in her parents’ bathroom and ending with Leo’s uncanny prediction the day before. When she was finished, Leni closed her mouth and blinked a couple of times.

  “You’re in love with him,” she said, smiling her sweet, pretty smile.

  Eva looked down, picked at a thumbnail. “Yeah.”

  Leni covered Eva’s hands to still her. “What about the baby?”

  Eva’s nose burned as if she was going to start crying again. “I don’t know, Len.”

  “What’s your first instinct, honey?” she asked, giving Eva’s hands a squeeze.

  “That this is the worst thing that could possibly happen to me,” she whispered—and realized the epic fuck-up the instant the words were out of her mouth. “Fuck,” she muttered, catching Leni’s hand in hers before she could pull away. “I’m so sorry.”

  Leni waved her free hand dismissively, but the damage was done.

  Leni Rodriguez, brand new wife to the only one of Eva’s siblings who’d talked all his life about how much he wanted a family as big as the one they grew up in, had been born with a birth defect that made her physically unable to conceive a child.

  For one wild, panicked moment—in a thought that passed through her mind in no more than a quick a flash—Eva considered suggesting giving the baby to her brother and sister-in-law to raise. Which of course was the most horrific idea she’d ever had.

  She jumped to her feet to pace the room, arms crossed tight over her chest.

  “I don’t deserve this,” she said on a choked sob, tears running down her face freely again. “I’m an awful, horrible, ugly person. I don’t deserve a baby.”

  Leni got up and caught her by the shoulders.

  “You’re not any of those things, Eva. Just shocked.”

  Eva could hardly believe the look of pure empathy on Leni’s face.

  “How have you not punched me out? All you want in the world is to be able to have a baby and you can’t. I’m nowhere near ready for a kid and I’m knocked up. Accidentally. And all I can think is…” She couldn’t say it out loud again.

  Leni sighed. “Honey, this has nothing to do with me.” She smoothed Eva’s hair back and held her face, looked directly into her eyes. “This is happening to you, and you have every right to feel however you feel about it. There is no right or wrong way to react to this kind of news.”

  “I don’t deserve to call you my friend,” Eva said, embarrassed her voice cracked.

  “Now I am going to punch you in the mouth,” Leni said with a tender laugh and pulled Eva into her arms. “I love you, you know.”

  Which only made Eva sob so hard she couldn’t speak for a long time.

  “You just need to take a deep breath and give yourself a little time to decide what you want.” Leni wiped at Eva’s wet cheeks when she pulled back again. “You’ll do what’s right for you, no matter what choice you make.”

  Her body, her choice had been something she’d believed in her whole life, something precious passed down from the previous generations of her family. While both sides of her family were the “worship every Sunday, no exceptions” variety of Catholics, they did not see eye to eye with the church’s stance on abortion. But did that mean not having the baby was a choice Eva was going to be able to make?

  She closed her eyes at the memory of that night, that moment when the condom slipped and changed her life forever. Her pulse sped up and her body tingled as she recalled the way she had still been trembling long after her orgasm subsided and how Os
car had been kissing her, so deep but so incredibly tender. The way he’d opened up to her completely for maybe the first time, looking deeply into her eyes and letting her see exactly what he felt for her.

  His name came out on her next exhalation and she paced to the island that separated her kitchen from the living room, pulled out a tall chair and sat.

  “He’s going to want this.” She knew it with a certainty that was so complete there was no arguing, not even with herself.

  Leni went to the stove and checked the water level in the tea kettle.

  “For as quiet and standoffish as he can be, he loves kids.” Eva rested her elbows on the counter and her head in her hands. “When Tammy’s boys were born he sat with the rest of us in the waiting room while she had her C-section. Leni, I’d never seen him smile the way he did when Mark offered to let him hold Louis for the first time, and I’d known him twenty years by then. It was pure joy.”

  Leni listened without comment as she put the full kettle back on the stove, turned the fire on beneath it and went about the business of scooping loose-leaf tea into the infuser on Eva’s ceramic teapot.

  “You know the story about his mom and dad, right?” Eva asked.

  “Jamie has only told me that they both died when he was little and he was raised by his grandmother,” she answered as she got mugs out of the cupboard.

  “From what I’ve heard, his mom was something of a free spirit,” Eva started.

  “Not a surprise there,” Leni said with a knowing smile.

  That made Eva smile as well. “She moved to California after high school and was living in this hippy surfing community when she met Oscar’s father. His family owned and ran a vineyard in France, I don’t remember where exactly, but he was in the States visiting some of the wineries in California.

  “Anyway, he decided he wanted to learn to surf while he was there. Oscar’s mother was his instructor. They had this crazy-passionate affair and by the time he finally went home to divorce his wife however many weeks later, she was pregnant with Oscar.”

  Leni’s expression was half amused, half shocked. “Very scandalous.”

  “It gets better, and then it gets a lot worse,” Eva assured her. “Apparently his dad’s wife is from an even bigger winemaking family than Oscar’s dad’s, and both families made it extremely difficult for him to get a divorce. It got dragged out in court for two years. His dad traveled back and forth so he could spend as much time with Oscar and his mom as possible, but he was still married when Oscar’s mom drowned.”

  Leni stopped what she was doing and looked at Eva, her eyes wide.

  “She fell and was hit in the head by her surfboard, knocked unconscious and dragged into an undercurrent,” Eva explained. “When his father found out he was so despondent he committed suicide.”

  “And left Oscar without either of his parents?” Leni asked, horrified.

  “I didn’t understand it for a long time either but, until recently, I’d never loved anyone I didn’t want to live without.”

  Leni let the kettle whistle as she gave Eva a long look, another sweet smile replacing her shocked expression. She removed the kettle from the stove, turned off the burner and poured boiling water into the pot. The air instantly filled with the scent of the fragrant sweet orange tea she’d picked. Eva’s favorite.

  “What about his family?” she asked, setting the teapot on a trivet on the counter.

  “I believe they offered to raise him,” she said, drawing on the memory of eavesdropping on a long-ago conversation. Her mom had been friends with Oscar’s grandmother until she’d died a few years earlier. “But he was all his grandma had left of her daughter and she wanted him with her. I think they helped support him, sent her money and paid for his schooling.”

  “So he’s technically the heir to a French vineyard?” Leni asked, sitting next to Eva at the counter before she poured them both a cup of tea.

  “His father had several older brothers, so not really.” Eva turned on her chair so she was facing Leni, thanked her as she passed her a steaming mug. “He’s been there and met his grandparents. I guess he looks just like the rest of the men in the family.”

  “So there was no denying him from the beginning?”

  “Not at all.” She picked up her mug and held it close to her nose, let the smell brighten her mood. “They loved him. His parents,” she explained. “He has a picture of the three of them in his living room, his mom smiling like the luckiest woman in the world, his dad kissing his fat baby cheek. Oscar looking serious as usual,” she said, smiling even though emotion was making her eyes and nose prickle with the threat of fresh tears. “He’s going to want this baby.”

  Leni’s lips tightened into a thin line and she nodded. “I have a feeling you’re right.”

  Eva drew one leg up and hooked her heel on the edge of the seat. She rested her elbow on the counter and tipped her head into her hand. “I love it when he smiles.”

  Leni arched an eyebrow as she took a tentative sip of her tea. “You know, now that I think about it, he has been smiling a lot more lately.”

  The idea pleased Eva more than she would have expected. “You think?”

  “Even Jamie mentioned it not that long ago,” she said with a nod. “He came back from a meeting with Oz and Leo and said Oz seemed really happy. I thought it was odd because, for one, Jamie doesn’t usually offer random commentary on people’s state of being, and Oz is usually so…not unhappy. Just neutral.”

  Eva nodded. She knew exactly what Leni was talking about on both counts.

  Leni gave her a knowing look. “You’ve been a lot happier these days as well.”

  “Yeah, I’m having a lot of really fucking amazing sex these days,” she said nonchalantly. “Sorry. That’s not fair. I won’t talk about my sex life since I don’t want to hear about yours. With my brother,” she added, then shuddered for emphasis.

  But the small, secretive smile on Leni’s face said it all—Jamie was definitely taking very good care of her behind closed doors. Eva’s heart broke all over again that a child would never come from the deep love they obviously had for each other.

  Leni checked her watch. “I told Jo I would sit with Frankie for a couple of hours later this evening, but we could still go get lunch and maybe a pedicure if you want to get out of here and take your mind off things for a little while.”

  Eva sipped her tea and considered that. That paralyzing fear she’d initially felt when that first test instantly showed a positive result threatened to take over again and her eyes filled with tears.

  She brought her other knee up and swiped tears away. “God, I fucking hate to cry.”

  “Not me. I love a good, all-out blubber-fest,” Leni told her matter-of-factly. She stood and got the roll of toilet paper off the foot of Eva’s bed. “Jamie teases me all the time for it, but I love turning on the Hallmark channel and curling up on the corner of the couch with a bowl of popcorn and a box of tissues.”

  She handed Eva the roll and she pulled off a long enough piece she could dry her tears and blow her nose. “I’m afraid to go out in public looking like this.”

  Leni propped her hands on her hips and gave Eva an assessing look. “We could order pizza and give each other pedicures here if you’d like.”

  “The only nail polish I have is a bottle of black from Halloween three years ago.”

  Leni’s expression turned droll. “You’re really not making this easy for me.”

  Eva laughed. “There’s a drugstore in town,” she said, meaning the small town a few miles from the Smiths’ property. “We could get pedicure supplies, pizza and ice cream while we’re out.”

  “Now you’re talkin’.” Leni put her hands on Eva’s shoulders, looked into her eyes, completely serious. “You think you can keep it together long enough to pop in and out of the store or do you want me to go by myself?”

  Eva rolled her eyes. “I think I can handle a quick run into town.”

  “Good.” Leni
hugged her tight. “Get your shoes and we’ll go.” She didn’t let go right away, and Eva didn’t mind the extra few seconds. “You’re going to be all right, you know that, don’t you?”

  Eva sighed, skeptical even as she felt a little of the weight of her situation lift.

  “I’m glad you’re so sure.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Oscar had been to the Rodriguez house so many times in more than thirty years there was no way he could possibly count them. The only other time he could remember being as nervous as he was about walking up to the front door was the first time Diego had dragged him home after their first day of kindergarten.

  By then he’d been living with his grandmother for three years. Before that, his only real experience with other children had been in Sunday school, one hour a week. And even then he couldn’t recall having interacted with the other kids unless he’d absolutely had to. He’d stuck to the back of the room as much as possible, only answering questions or sharing projects when the well-meaning teacher called on him.

  He could clearly remember sitting on the narrow strip of lawn at the edge of the playground, watching the other kids play when Diego—who’d been chubby and highly energetic—ran up and told him he was sitting in molten lava and he’d better get his ass up if he didn’t want to die.

  Oscar still wasn’t sure if it had been Diego’s absolute self-confidence that Oscar would get up and play along or Oscar’s sheer awe for the fact that Diego had said the word “ass” out loud, but he’d jumped up and followed him to safety. They’d been saving each other from lava and other dangers from that day forward.

  On the way home they’d discovered they walked the same path to and from school, and when Diego asked Oscar if he wanted to meet his mom and dad, he’d liked the sound of that. His stomach had been a riot of knots as he’d followed Diego up the front walk with a mixture of reluctance and excitement.

  Jamie and Tammy had been a couple of rambunctious toddlers back then. Diego Sr. had been quietly intimidating in his way at first, but he remembered thinking Brenda was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen—young and fresh and smiling the way he sometimes imagined his own mother would look if she was alive. She’d made him feel as if he was as welcome in her house as one of her own right from the start.