A Beautiful Stranger (A Family Forever Series, Book 1)

by Donna Fasano

  The night was still and hot and quiet. He checked the perimeter of the house, the garage and then went into the barn. Both horses were breathing slow and steady, obviously asleep. The only excitement was when Chunky darted from the corner of the barn and curled around his legs looking for some attention.

  Bending down on his haunches, Sean scratched the cat behind the ears. “You out hunting, girl?” he asked. Chunky meowed, her ears pricking up, and then she plunged back into the long shadows cast by the moon.

  When Sean returned to the house, Nicki had obviously gone upstairs to fetch her robe. The delicate curves of her shoulders were no longer visible, but Sean knew that all he had to do to if he wanted to conjure them was to close his eyes.

  Quickly pushing the thought from his mind, he told her, “All’s clear. Everything’s quiet out there. Not a sign of trouble.”

  Appreciation shined in her sparkling green eyes. Sean looked away, forcing himself to breathe slowly.

  “I made us some herb tea,” she said, using a spoon to stir the hot liquid in one mug. “I hope you don’t mind having some company for a little while. I sometimes have trouble sleeping. Not often. But sometimes.” She gave a slight grimace, her voice softening. “Tonight seems to be one of those times.”

  The small apologetic smile she gave him made his heart lurch. The thoughts of her and the state of their friendship that had been keeping him awake were at the very forefront of his mind.

  “Listen, Nicki,” he said, easing himself down on the couch beside her, “I’m awfully sorry if… if the tension between us is upsetting you to the point that you’re losing sleep.”

  He unwittingly rubbed his fingers across his forehead. “I’ve been thinking about… you and me. About how our… friendship has been so up and down ever since we met.” He swallowed. “One minute we’re having great fun together, the next minute I’m… biting your head off.”

  The memory of the words he’d tossed at her after their shopping trip made him flinch. He murmured, “I’m sorry about that, too.” He rushed ahead. “I want us to get along. Sona and I are going to need you for weeks yet. I want you to be comfortable here. I want you to feel at home.”

  She laced her fingers around her mug of tea. “I won’t lie to you. It does bother me to know that you’re angry with me. I should never have tried to offer you unsolicited advice—”

  “But I do understand why you did, Nicki,” he quickly told her. “You had good intentions.”

  Her smile was small as smiles go, but seeing it did strange things to him. His blood seemed to heat up, the muscles low in his gut tightened. Reaching for his mug of tea, he turned his attention from her long enough to get a firm grip on the physical reactions of his body. However, the reactions were autonomic; there wasn’t much a person could do to control rising blood pressure. Or runaway testosterone.

  When he finally did look at her again, he firmly said, “I’m not angry, Nicki. Honest.” Then he said, “And I’m sorry I snapped at you. I shouldn’t have been so… curt.”

  Fully intending to let it go at that, Sean eased back on the couch and stared at the television screen. He simply couldn’t explain himself further. He couldn’t afford to reveal his past to her. She’d never understand. Hell, he didn’t understand how he could have done what he did. How could he expect Nicki to? So, he’d simply say nothing more about it.

  The quiet grew ever more noticeable with each passing second. Darting a covert glance her way, he saw that she, too, was watching the TV. But there was something about her air, something about the tightness in her shoulders that revealed that she really wasn’t as absorbed by the colorful car commercial playing on the screen as she pretended to be.

  He felt an… expectation about her. As though she wanted to talk.

  Sean could easily understand that, seeing how nervous she was when she’d first appeared in the living room. He decided it would be in her best interest if he were to engage her thoughts. Get her mind on something else. Make her forget, at least for a while, about the bad dream that had disturbed her.

  “You know,” he began, “I was raised in this house.”

  “Oh,” she said, lifting her gaze to his, “that’s nice. I know I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating. You do have a beautiful home.”

  He smiled and accepted her compliment with a small nod. “I was born right here in

  Philadelphia. Went to grade school here. And college.” After a moment’s hesitation, he asked, “Where were you born? Where do you call home?”

  His smile wavered when he saw her stiffen. She was quick to try to hide her reaction, but not quick enough.

  “Well, I was born in Elkhart, Indiana,” she told him. “But home is wherever I happen to be.”

  Was it his imagination, or did she place an extra bit of emphasis on her final statement?

  “So you’re a midwestern girl, huh?”

  Nicki only smiled, then busied herself taking a sip of tea.

  “What did your dad—”

  “I don’t have a dad.”

  She seemed just as surprised by her blurted statement as he was. Color flushed her cheeks with obvious embarrassment.

  “Of course I had a father,” she corrected. “What I meant to say was that I never knew him, never met him.”

  Her nervousness was apparent.

  “Ah, so you were raised by your mother?”

  Nicki’s gaze slid from his. “No.” The tiny word was barely discernable. “I was raised in foster homes.”

  “Oh,” was all Sean could think of to say, and he’d been helpless to keep his surprise at bay.

  Then the most peculiar thing happened. Nicki sat up straighter, fixed a bright smile on her face and allowed her usual happy-go-lucky persona to shine through.

  “It wasn’t a bad life,” she told him. “In fact I’d say, all in all, I had a pretty good childhood. I learned to deal with all different kinds of people by living in all those homes. With all those—”

  There was the shortest of hesitations here, but Sean couldn’t help but notice it nonetheless.

  “—families. I learned independence. I learned that I can count on myself. That I can be my own best friend.” She nodded happily. “I learned I can survive. Just about anything.”

  The easygoing, upbeat rhetoric seemed somehow… off. Something wasn’t right. Her positive show was just that. A show. Sean got the distinct impression that Nicki was desperately trying to cover something. And her efforts were nearly successful. Nearly.

  He should back off. He knew that. If she wanted to hide behind a smile, then he should let her. But there was something about her eyes. A sad light that glistened in her green gaze. A poignant aura needing release. It touched Sean. Called out to him. And he felt he simply had to reach out. To answer.

  “It really wasn’t all that wonderful. Was it?”

  For a moment, her features hardened into a fierce, protective mask, and he thought she had every intention of remaining hidden behind the shield of blithely optimistic energy she’d erected.

  But then his gaze was drawn to a small movement of her creamy throat as it convulsed with a tense swallow. Her shoulders slumped, and the sigh she breathed overflowed with weariness.

  Chapter Seven

  The vulnerability radiating from her was nearly his undoing. He wanted to reach out to her. Touch her. Assure her. Let her know that, no matter what she might have endured, everything would be okay. That he’d make it so.

  But he battled the overwhelming urge to make physical contact. He knew doing so wouldn’t be appropriate. However, he intended to connect with her in other ways. With concern. Kindness. Caring. As much as he was able to, anyway. Because these were the things he sensed she needed now.

  “You, um,” she finally offered, “you’re absolutely right.”

  Her voice sounded so young, so assailable. When she swallowed and tucked her bottom lip between her teeth, his impulse to protect her increased tenfold.

  “My c
hildhood wasn’t all that wonderful.”

  The tightness in her shoulders, the discomfort in her expression clearly conveyed to him that this hard-wrought admission went completely against the grain of her normal easygoing, affable nature. Sean recognized at that moment that she hid a great deal behind that gorgeous smile of hers and his curiosity kicked into high gear as he wondered what she had gone through during her adolescent years.

  Her obvious uneasiness made his gut churn. He actually felt the need to grip the tea mug in both his hands to keep from touching her, soothing her, even though he didn’t know yet what she was about to reveal.

  “I went into foster care at such an early age,” she continued, ‘‘I have no memories whatsoever of either of my parents.”

  Nicki was an orphan. Just like his little Sona. The revelation created a frown on his brow that bit deeply into his forehead.

  Almost as if reading his thoughts, Nicki clarified, “I wasn’t actually an orphan. Not in the strictest sense of the word, anyway.” She looked away as if it were painful for her to admit. “I was abandoned.”

  Heaving a deep sigh, she continued, “I was shuffled from foster home to foster home. That’s all I remember. Making new friends and having those friends ripped out of my life after a few months or a year. Sometimes a couple of years.”

  Her gaze shifted from the far corner of the room to the tea in her mug. ‘‘I did have some good experiences. Most of the adults who cared for me were kindhearted, generous people willing to open their homes to homeless kids. But some of the foster homes were run by people just looking to make a buck off the state. Taking in foster kids was a way to do it. And they’d make a profit by feeding us the most inexpensive food they could find, supplying us with faded and worn out second-hand clothing and shoes.”

  Sean watched as her eyes glazed over with the unpleasant past. He doubted that she was even aware that he was sitting next to her, so absorbed did she become in her story.

  “I have to say, I was very lucky,” she continued. “I was only in one abusive home. The foster parents were very strict. Disciplinarians, they called themselves. I guess I deserved the punishment I got.” Her voice grew faint and far-off, and Sean knew she’d become totally lost in the past.

  “I remember one spanking well,” she whispered. “I hadn’t made my bed. I knew it was an important rule. The law, really. You didn’t come down to breakfast unless your bed was made. But I’d overslept and I would have gotten into trouble if I’d been late for school.”

  Her beautiful face scrunched up with the indecision she must have felt as a child. Which rule should she break? Not making the bed? Or being late for school?

  Sean’s heart split as he contemplated the rock-and-a-hard-place Nicki was describing herself stuck in.

  “My third-grade teacher noticed the welt that the belt had left on my leg and she called Social Services.” Her chin tipped up a fraction. “I was taken out of that foster home immediately.”

  “Good.” Sean couldn’t contain the blurted response. “I hope the state closed down the home.”

  She blinked twice, as though his voice jerked her back to the present.

  “Oh, I’m sure that didn’t happen,” she was quick to answer. “The need for foster parents was too great. Probably still is too great. Too many kids. Too few homes. I’m sure the people were warned, but—” she shrugged “—that probably changed nothing.”

  “But that’s ridiculous!” He felt angry. Outraged. At the people who had hurt Nicki. At the state for allowing the treatment to continue on other innocent children.

  But these things had happened to Nicki so long ago. His anger drained away until nothing was left but a nagging sadness.

  “Something wonderful happened when I was in the seventh grade.” Her face brightened considerably with a smile. “I had a teacher who played some Spanish tapes for the class. The next day, I came to school speaking some Spanish. Even putting some words together to make sentences. For some reason, the words and phrases just stuck in my head. Mr. Callahan was amazed. So was I, actually. He ended up working with me all year. We listened to French records and cassettes. And then Italian. Russian. All kinds of languages. It seemed very easy for me to pick them up. It felt like a game to me.”

  The wonder expressed on her face made her more gorgeous than ever. Sean sucked in his breath, waiting for her to continue.

  “I moved out of the school district,” she said, “so I lost track of Mr. Callahan. But I never lost my love of languages. I studied French and Italian in high school. The counselor didn’t want me to. She tried to tell me the classes would be too much. That one foreign language would be enough for me to handle. But I proved to her I could do it. And I continued to learn other languages on my own.” She grinned. “I earned a full scholarship to state college.”

  Setting her tea mug down on the coffee table, she said, ‘‘Whoever gave me this wonderful gift—God, or Fate, or Mother Nature. The Universe…” She shook her head and shrugged. ‘‘It saved me. Gave me something to focus my energy on. It gave me direction. And a way out.”

  There was something hauntingly sad in her last statement, he thought, something that needed pondering. But he didn’t take the time to think it through. His urge to respond was too great. He quietly said, ‘‘And now you use your gift to teach other kids.”

  She nodded, and went silent. But her mind was still churning with the past. Sensing that she had more to say, he waited.

  “I did try looking for my parents,” she told him. He could see the sorrow and rejection she’d so very obviously experienced even before she spoke.

  “When I was eighteen, I went to Child Services.” Her jaw tensed. “What I discovered is that there’s no known information about my father at all. Not a name or an address. Nothing. My mother listed my father’s name on my birth certificate as John Doe. She gave me up to the state the day I was born. She’d signed a paper refusing to have information about herself released. To me. To anyone. Ever. The state’s hands were tied. They couldn’t tell me a thing. I tried searching social media. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. But I couldn’t find her.”

  She suppressed her anguish well. But Sean couldn’t help but perceive it, be deeply affected by it. This woman needed to be held. Needed to be hugged. Needed some physical consolation.

  Setting down his mug, he slid over and gathered her up in his arms. And there was not one nuance of hesitation in her as she allowed herself to be enfolded in his embrace.

  “It’s okay,” he whispered against her sweet smelling hair. “There’s not a whole lot you can do about the choices two people made all those years ago. Who knows what kind of circumstances they were in? It could be that they were very young and unable to…”

  He let the sentence trail, realizing that nothing he could say would lessen Nicki’s pain. There were no words that could take away her feeling of rejection. No matter what situation he might explain, no matter what sympathetic picture he might try to paint to explain her parent’s behavior. So he simply shut up and hugged Nicki to him, not really understanding what he hoped to accomplish. Maybe this close contact would somehow make up, just a little, for all the love and compassion she’d missed throughout her childhood.

  Long minutes passed, and Nicki seemed content to take refuge in his arms. She didn’t cry, but he could feel the sorrow fairly oozing from her. He rubbed his palms up and down her back in a slow, rhythmic motion.

  Soon, Sean became aware of the softness of her skin beneath his fingertips, the warm, meadow-flower fragrance of her body so close to his, the feel of her firm breasts pressed against his chest.

  This wasn’t the time for him to feel aroused, but, heaven help him, that’s exactly what he felt.

  And this was no gentle, slow-growing germination of passion. Fiery desire reared its head seemingly out of nowhere. Rolling over him in a flash. Nearly crushing him, like a huge wall of water. One instant he was full of concern, the next he was brimming with a need so fierc
e it almost stole away his breath.

  His blood pulsed thicker and hotter with each passing second. He wanted to tip back his head, to savor the sight of her pale-as-porcelain face, gaze into her gem-green eyes, kiss her rose-wine lips, until there was no trace of sadness left in her.

  But he couldn’t do that. This wasn’t the time. Or the place.

  Then he remembered that there wouldn’t ever be a right time or place. Not with Nicki. She was too good, too fragile, for the likes of him. The few women he had chosen to date knew up front that he didn’t intend to commit himself. He favored women who could take care of themselves. Who were just as… selfish and self-serving as he. That way, when he was ready to end a relationship, which he invariably did, he felt comfortable that the woman would be okay. That he wouldn’t leave her feeling broken and floundering.

  Nicki wasn’t in that class. She was vulnerable. Loving. Caring. He’d end up hurting her for sure. So he had to rein in these physical feelings. He simply had to.

  The flat of her palm pressed against his chest as she gently pushed herself away from him. Lifting her chin, she looked into his eyes. Sean thought he was going to melt under the heat of her gaze. She studied his lips, then raised her eyes to his once again.

  Passion enveloped her, too. That fact shined as clear and bright as a beautiful spring morning.

  The urge to kiss her hit him like a sucker punch to the gut. He all but doubled over from its force. But still, he refused to surrender. This woman meant too much to him. Meant too much to his little girl.

  The soul-wrenching hunger reflected in Nicki’s exquisite expression matched his own. They both wanted this moment to develop into… something more. Yet neither followed through on the need that was so obviously pulsing through them. Neither was willing to cross that line. To take that first step.

  Nicki’s motives for hesitating weren’t completely clear to him. He had lots of pieces to the puzzle of who she was, how she thought, but he hadn’t quite put them all together.