He kissed the hand he held, and she went all aglow with a combination of pleasure and stammering vulnerability. His heated gaze served to send the flush to her core instead. “Damn if I’m not impressed with you again. Always. That’s one of the things I appreciate about you, you know? The hell of a way you make your points.”
Heart-stopping man. She swung herself over him and didn’t need the caressing hand at her nape to guide her mouth to his. “Thanks.”
“Mmm?”
“For hearing me. While I labored out how to make my point.”
“It’s never a problem to listen to you, Rachel.”
“Ditto. If you have any points of your own to make.” She accompanied her words with a teasing twist of her pelvis. Next she knew, he’s flipped them and caged her within strong limbs while his mouth roamed her torso.
Wicked, wicked man.
Chapter Twenty
He woke in a dozy mood, stretching half his limbs to the edges of the bed while the other half remained buried under Rachel. Damn but she made his heart thud. And damn if he hadn’t guessed right about the bedhead curls as she snuggled into her pillow.
“Morning.” It was more a mumble than a word.
“Thought you were the early-bird type.”
“Not the two days a month I don’t have a toddler to chase.”
He extracted his arm and smoothed back her hair. Her eyelids were fluttering but never quite open. “Okay if I make coffee?”
She shrugged the shoulder not pressed into the mattress. He tucked the blanket around her before slipping out.
He was a morning person himself, which Annalisa made sure to mention often back when he and Ron were elbow-deep in Elixir’s business plans. She’d dismissed his assurances that the managers would handle closing, and he’d do his side of things during daylight hours. She’d moved to Dallas before his chance to say, “I told you so.” Good thing he never found it satisfying to rub people’s noses in things.
He’d just found his wallet in the lust-trail of possessions down Rachel’s hall when she emerged from the bathroom and went straight into his arms. “What’s up? You ordering me a box of chocolates? I like coconut very much, for the record.”
He tucked his credit card back into place and nudged aside her hand enough to pocket his wallet. “Noted. But, no. I got an email about paying the balance for the soccer camp while Andres is down here.”
They retreated to her little table, and she poured herself a black coffee before joining him. “How long do you have him?”
“Our forty-two days start in two weeks.”
Something silent and displeased crossed her face, which she hid behind the mug as she drank.
“What’s up?”
She shook her head. “Nothing. Not you, anyway. I’m picturing Hannah going with Sergei for that long. He’s taking two weeks at the end of the month; I’m being all valiant here not whining about it.”
“It’s because he lives in Dallas. If y’all keep living in the same city it’ll be shorter, even once she’s old enough for the standard order to kick in. I drive up there every second and fourth weekend, but that and every other school break aren’t much time.” He looked into his own half-empty mug. “Aren’t enough time. So this gives me and him a chance at everyday life together, you know?”
Rachel took his hand. “I get it. And I wasn’t criticizing. I just had a moment.”
He squeezed back. “Makes sense. You and Hannah, it’s different. Andres was older than she is now when we divorced. I’m not saying Sergei’s a bad parent, but you’re the center of her life.”
Electric blue eyes, flashing codes. What was her message? He watched her body cycle through something: shoulders tensing, breath hitching, jaw clenching. Then releasing it all. He pursed his lips, opted against biting his tongue, spoke up. “We need to talk about him.”
She shook her head, but said, “Yeah, I know.”
“I’m not going to do anything to fuck things up with him and you, not on purpose, but—Rachel. I think at some point it’s going to be obvious we’re dating. I mean, if I’m honest, I’d be shouting from the rooftops given half a chance. You....” He bit his lower lip to hold in his feelings. Like that would work. “You’re sort of my ideal woman, okay?”
She examined the depths of her coffee. He lashed out at the brain-imps who’d prodded him into making grandiose statements and then taken off to run gleeful circles round his roiling gut. Why couldn’t he go more than two days in her presence without declaring his undying devotion? Some part of him was determined to sabotage everything before she even knew him well enough to choose him.
He scooted the chair back, ready for a fast exit. “Sorry. Want me to go?”
“No.”
“No?”
“You’re right.”
“I am?” About what? About how desperate he sounded?
“Yeah, I think so. Unless I switch something about custody, I’m going to keep going to Elixir a bunch, and I know Depy’s already clocked how much you and I are talking there.”
He restrained his snort. Depy made a point of watching the door when Rachel and Hannah were due to arrive. “She’s pretty intense.”
“Tell me a surprising thing next time.”
“Ha.”
They both fell silent, and he strove to be patient about it. He’d said more than enough unprompted for one morning.
“So.” Rachel stood abruptly. “Want breakfast? Eggs, cereal, smoothie?”
Here she thought she’d be orgasming her way through her morning, with little breaks for caffeine and snacks. Instead The Talk loomed, and she was so not in the mood.
She’d age and die before locating that particular mood.
Theo slumped some and said cereal suited him and offered to help in a careful voice which he might have thought hid his frustration, but did not. She slid behind him and looped her arms over his shoulders. He released a sigh and captured her hands against his kind and earnest heart. His hair, when she kissed his crown, brushed soft against her lips.
Point: Theo. She’d been pricked by Sergei’s coarse hair too many times.
“You remember when we met?”
He nodded, his head rucking up her shirt a bit as he moved.
“I don’t see it anymore.”
“See what?” Theo sounded casual, but she refused to be fooled by him or by any man.
“My ex. In you. That day at the gas station, I was steaming over him being late, and then you showed up and I didn’t have one clue who you were, and you were holding my daughter. And you looked like him, like the worst man I can never get away from.”
His hands tightened on hers. She pressed closer in so he couldn’t swivel to face her. If they made eye contact, her runaway words would halt, and it was well past time for her to set them free.
“When I was younger, back in high school and once again in college, there were some guys who were forceful with me, insistent. Not quite—not.” This conversation always tripped her tongue. Not even from the memories of the guys, but from the futile effort to leap into her own past to shake caution into her reckless younger self. “Coercion. Hard to say no. Using words and peers and the idea that I’d be proving myself worthy if I did ... whatever. Taking off my top. Rubbing against him in public. Sex.
“When I moved down to live with Aunt Johnston, so much changed for the better for me. She understood my dyslexia, knew how to teach me through it, how to deal with schools and catching me up where I was behind and proving to me college was an option. My parents and sister still treat me like it was some big trick I pulled off, got away with, but Aunt Johnston never once from the day I moved in with her treated me as less than.”
He cleared his throat. “How old were you then?”
“Just gone fourteen. She kept me back a year so I could catch up a bit before high school. It worked, you know? Not that I ever made honor roll, but compared to home? Where every grade some teacher would say, ‘Are you Blythe’s sister?’ whi
ch was code for, ‘I expect you to ruin the grading curve for this class.’ My parents would put awards nights on the family calendar as soon as the schools announced the dates, and every time Blythe was invited to the stage, and every time for my class they’d cross it off without a word. Like, okay, I couldn’t read for shit, but some things don’t need decoding to understand.”
“Jesus, Rachel.”
“It’s fine. I mean, I love Blythe, and Mom and Dad, too. I wasn’t a kid they could figure out. Too different from her, and from them. They couldn’t wrap their heads around the idea that it took more than me being willing to try harder, no matter what Aunt Johnston or any of the specialists told them. So when Blythe was off to college and they needed more money for that, they sold the house and I went to live with Aunt Johnston and like I said, those five years with her made all the difference.”
“Except for the boys.” His flat voice was hiding emotions again.
She shrugged, and interlaced their fingers. “Small town, kids who knew each other forever. I was the oddball. And I hadn’t packed any great social skills with me when I moved from Colorado. Never quite fit in there, either. Of all the options I had for acting out, being too eager to please the pushy boys who might tell me I was special wasn’t the worst.”
Despite the wall she’d made of her body, he managed to turn towards her and slide one arm around her waist. He stroked up and down her spine like she was some half-broken thing he needed to smooth into place. Which she was not.
“I’m sorry you were used like that. And lonely. I’m sorry you were lonely.”
Damn man found a crack she’d sworn was plastered over. “It’s fine.”
He kissed her belly, between her breasts. “You’re fine. It’s unfair and rotten, but you’re fine.”
Fuck a duck. All she meant to do was tell him three or four things about her marriage, and instead she cut straight through her own defenses. She gave up and sat down. “Okay, it’s rotten, and I’m fine. I don’t know why I told you all that anyway, I only meant to say I knew better by the time I met Sergei, and wasn’t letting myself fall for the physically controlling types anymore. No more of the half-promises and insinuations and leaping after acceptance. I had my friends—Gillian and the others we roomed with—and I knew how to do okay at college and everything seemed lined up.”
God, she’d been arrogant back then. Maybe no more arrogant than everyone else at twenty-two, but she’d been almost smug with it. Always talking about the challenges she overcame, the things she’d beaten. Like the litany of hurts and abuses and travails were some kind of scorecard proving that she deserved to be as prideful as she wanted. Like she was being modest, all things considered. Such a young fool.
“He wasn’t like the others, Sergei. He told me I could be important to him. He told me I completed him. And that he completed me. That he made up for all my ... my lack of common sense, my getting things wrong.” She cleared her throat. “My bad ideas. And when my friends suggested I take a look at some of his behavior, I dug in. I already knew what abuse was. They hadn’t been through that like I had. And Sergei wasn’t Brent or those others. So that was my pride kicking me down the wrong path, because I wouldn’t let go of my arrogance long enough to consider he was a different kind of wrong for me.”
Somehow she found herself leaning up against Theo, and his stroking had moved to her arm. He rested his temple on her head, and listened, quiet.
She managed a shrug. “You know his smiling face. The whole ‘everyone’s best friend’ act, except it only lasts as long as he profits by it.”
“Jesus.”
“Oh, you’re fine. He’s big on appearances; he’ll never turn off the charm for Elixir.”
“That’s not what I’m stressing about.”
She laid a palm on his thigh. “No. I know. Thanks.”
For a peaceful moment, she focused only on the warmth of Theo beside her, his morning scruff pulling at her curls, her breathing synching up with his.
“So. He set me on a pedestal made of sugar, all sweet and light and refined as could be. And I felt like the queen of the world, and anything he asked of me was easy enough to do, to please him, and didn’t he deserve to be pleased after how well he treated me? So what if he changed his mind from one day to the next, it wasn’t that big a deal. What did it matter if he forgot to tell me about some event; he would go alone if I didn’t have time to spare for his obligation. I was the one who said he was insatiable, so fucking other people was his way of sparing me, even though none of them pleased him like I did.”
He twitched. She squeezed his thigh and he coiled himself back in. Kept listening.
“And there I was, a royal on her sugar tower, reminded and reminded about every sacrifice he made for me, every dinner he paid for and every ride to class and every outing with my friends he went to even though I knew he didn’t get along with them. But he did it for me, because he wanted me to be happy, he wanted me to understand how I was his treasure. How even if I wasn’t quite smart enough to get it, he was the only one who could make my life better.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Fucking hell.
He pictured it all too well, and it snapped so much into place. The consistent way she analyzed their interactions. The laying bare of every perceived flaw in herself and her world. The guardian friends.
And who enters her orbit and refuses to be set aside? A man who hired her ex, who looks a bit like her ex, who’s a non-custodial parent like her ex. It almost was enough to make him laugh, or hang his head in defeat. Or slip away.
Except Rachel opted to tell him everything, and the only reason to do that was because she’d stopped seeing him as a version of her ex. That was a gift worth sticking around to receive. He brought her hand to his lips and kissed the knuckles. “You’re no princess, Rachel.”
It made her shoulders shake, and he lifted his head enough to check she wasn’t crying. “You say the most romantic things.”
“Believe me, you want romance, I’ll go big. But not because I...” How to categorize the difference between him and Sergei? “Not because I am keeping a tally to throw in your face later. Or so you have to come up to any kind of standard. You’re great already. I’m not trying to change you or keep score.”
Whatever incoherent nonsense it sounded to him, she relaxed more into the crook of his arm. So maybe he wasn’t messing up.
“I know you’re not.” She sounded more calm than sad.
“Thanks. I mean, good. That’s great. I don’t mind if you question me, if you get worried about anything. About my reactions or whatever. I’ll try to stay open with you. But tell me if I’m messing up.”
She nudged an elbow to his ribs. “Free rein, huh?”
“Ha. Don’t make too much of it; I’m as apt to screw up as the next man.”
And that statement sure loaded the atmosphere with grim fog. Like he couldn’t wait one single morning to prove his point about screwing up. May as well plunge them back to the topic that kicked off the whole talk.
He cleared his throat again. “Not apt to take after Sergei, though.”
She nodded.
“But...”
With that, she straightened away from him, letting the cool creep between them. “But you’re working with him every day, and we’re not hiding that we’re dating, and it’s like to be wiser to mention it up front to him than for him to speculate and feel upper-handed about it.”
“Yeah.”
She retrieved the coffee pot. Gave them both refills. Accepted his light kiss. “I don’t want to talk to him.”
“Easy enough,” he said. “I’ll do it. Tell me what you want me to say, and when.”
“Just like that?”
“Well. Probably not.” He and Sergei got along, at least so far. Most of the time, Ron liked him, and Ron could be testy. The division of labor worked, give or take Sergei’s aversion to sitting at the desk. Were they friends? Not in the same way he and Ron were friends, but fri
endly, sure. Hard to imagine them getting closer, now he knew more about Rachel’s marriage.
“What are all those thoughts tumbling around your skull?”
He tried for lightness. “Oh, nothing big.”
“Wow. Here I thought we were still new to each other, but already I can tell when you’re lying to me. I don’t know if I’m pleased or pissed.”
Her eyes twinkled. He wanted her to tease him forever, so he could keep seeing those sparks. Instead he figured he was about to extinguish them. “Fine. It’s something I have to figure out on my own. Or with Ron, I mean. About the future of Elixir, and how we feel about someone who’d do all that being in such a key position. Whether we need to act to protect employees or customers. Sorry.”
“Sorry, for...?”
“You look like you want to glue my lips closed.”
The half-smile she gave him kept her own teeth out of sight. “Can’t really tell you what to do about that. Selfishly, I’m hoping he keeps his job, cause I’m still waiting on arrears.” She gestured to a drawing on her fridge.
“What’s that?”
Cute blush. “It’s silly. I mean, it’s utterly vital, but it’s also silly. I keep track of the amount he owes by coloring in parts of that garden.”
He went to examine it. She had a dozen or more pictures held by colorful magnets—thumbprint ladybirds, a series of traced triangles, something that could have been an exploding sun—but only one with flowers that stayed inside the lines. Some of the petals were shaded with crayons, some with marker, some with pen. But close to forty percent still needed some kind of color. “Each one represents an amount?”
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