She set the guitar on the other side of the bench and wrapped her arms around her knees while he looked over her notes, watching him intently and nervously nibbling on her lower lip. He understood the fear of sharing something she’d poured her heart and soul into. He felt that same trepidation every time he sold a piece of furniture—and every time someone new met Phillip.
As he silently read the lyrics, he heard her voice singing them in his head.
They crossed their hearts, swore on stars
Promised to keep you safe, to love you through
Bruised knees, broken hearts, and everything in between
To love and adore you, for forever and a day
You laughed, you played
You filled up their world
With bruised knees, laughter, and everything in between
Your family’s waiting
They’re right here by your side
They’re crossing their hearts, swearing on stars
Can you hear them calling, holding your hand?
Waiting for you
They’ll wait forever
Forever and a day
He swallowed past the emotions lodged in his throat. “This is beautiful.”
She reached for the notebook, but he held on tight, unable to let the embarrassment rising on her cheeks be all she took from his words. He laid his hand over hers, bringing her eyes up to his.
“Tempest, this is really powerful.”
She held his gaze, breathing harder. “Thank you. It’s a little sappy, but if you could see his family and the hope in their eyes.” Her eyes dampened, and she looked away, lowering her feet to the deck.
Wanting to comfort her, he wrapped an arm around her shoulder and pulled her close. “You’re a brave woman. I’m not sure many people could do what you’re doing.”
“Pfft.” She wiped her eyes. “Plenty can and do.”
“I don’t think so,” he said. “It takes a special person to take on someone else’s pain.”
He loosened his grip and was surprised when she held on to his arm and leaned back against his chest instead of moving away.
“Is this okay?” she asked tentatively.
“Yeah.” More than okay. “I’m sorry about before. I wasn’t trying to make you uncomfortable.”
“I know. And I don’t want to lead you on now. I just…” She drew in a shaky breath. “When I write like this, it takes a lot out of me.”
He rested his cheek on the top of her head. “Then you have the perfect housemate, because I’ve had a lot taken out of me over the years. And I will try to be here for you without the threat of taking you to bed.” Oh, man. Did he really say that out loud? Could he keep that promise? He sure as hell would try. He hadn’t realized how much he’d missed something as basic as friendship and human touch. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“About you taking me to bed?” she teased.
“I meant your client, your business. The music.” Grinding his teeth together, he said, “Just talk about something to get that other image out of my head.”
She laughed and looked up at him over her shoulder. “I like you, Nash. You’re all kinds of guys wrapped up in one, and a really sweet father.”
“I like you, too. Now, stop looking at me.” Using his chin, he nudged her face away. “One more second of watching your mouth and I’ll make myself a liar.”
She laughed, letting out a loud, happy sigh. “I can move over if it’s too much.”
“Not too much. Just…stay the line.”
“Oh, now we have lines.”
He held her tighter. “I’m a good guy, not a saint. Compassionate, yes. But never forget, I’m still a red-blooded male.”
“I don’t think any woman could forget that.” She peeked up at him again, studying his expression. “Since we’re defining lines, where’s the line with asking you personal questions?”
“Where do you want it to be?”
“Gosh, you’re easy.” She smiled. “Guess your lines are sort of penciled in, not inked.”
If he got ahold of an eraser, he was going to be in deep shit. “What are you curious about?”
“Phillip’s mom.”
THE SECOND TEMPEST said the words, she felt Nash tense up. “We don’t have to talk about it. I was just curious.”
He didn’t respond, and the therapist in her cataloged his harsher breathing and the tightening of his grip.
“What do you want to know?” he finally asked.
“Do you share custody of Phillip? Are you divorced? I noticed a ring on your right hand, and I assumed…”
She was still leaning back against his chest. He uncurled his fingers, and she sensed him looking at the ring. “It was my father’s.”
She reached up and touched the beautifully rugged, brushed-silver ring. A strip of darker metal stretched around its circumference, secured with two tiny rivets on either side, leaving a small gap of silver between.
“It’s silver and titanium,” he said evenly. “I made it for him, back when I worked with metals.”
“It’s elegant and masculine. Really unique and lovely. You don’t work with metal anymore?”
“A lot has changed since Phillip was born. His mother left when he was three months old.”
She left? Why did she leave? Where is she now? She had dozens of other questions, but the tension in his voice kept her from asking a single one.
“It’s too dangerous to work with heat when Phillip is around, and no, I’m not divorced. Alaina and I were never married,” he said icily. “She hasn’t seen him since the day she left.”
She moved beside him, taking in his tight-lipped expression, the narrowing of his eyes. She’d seen similar looks of pained tolerance on the faces of her clients’ loved ones.
“I’m sorry. I don’t know what to say. I can’t imagine a mother leaving her child like that, but it’s not my place to judge.”
“Sure it is.” He pressed his fingers into his thigh muscles, as if he were trying to channel his anger away from his voice. “She left herself open to judgment the minute she walked out on him.” He leaned forward, as he had the other night, elbows on knees, face tight, and began wringing his hands together.
“She walked out on you.” Who in their right mind would walk out on their family? “That must have hurt. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have pried.”
“It’s okay.” He angled his face toward hers, meeting her gaze head-on. “I don’t have anything to hide. Yes, she walked out on both of us, but I don’t matter. It wasn’t like we were high school sweethearts, desperately in love and destined for a happily ever after. We were two traveling artists, following festivals and art competitions up and down the coast, going wherever our art took us. We met, enjoyed each other’s company, and hung out for a few weeks. And then she got pregnant.” He shrugged. “It happens. People have sex, and sometimes birth control doesn’t work. It’s a fact of life.”
She could tell he’d been over it a million times in his head.
“Neither of us wanted to abort the pregnancy, and like I said, we weren’t in love, so there was never talk of marriage or anything like that.” He looked up at the stars, shaking his head. “When I found out she was pregnant, I told myself I could learn to love her, but…” He shrugged again. “It just wasn’t there for either of us. She was someone I enjoyed being around. We had a lot in common, and we occasionally shared a bed. But I wasn’t in love with her.”
“Was she in love with you?”
He scoffed. “No. She said she didn’t know if she was capable of loving anyone. But that didn’t matter. As I said, we didn’t have that type of connection. We just…We were like friends who sometimes slept together. But from the minute I found out she was pregnant, I loved the baby growing inside of her. I never resented her for the pregnancy, and I don’t think she resented me for it, either. Our relationship wasn’t like that. We kind of took things as they came. But a child? That’s different on so many levels. She want
ed to keep traveling and live as a starving artist, but you can’t raise a kid on the road, not knowing where you’ll be the next day or where your next meal will come from.”
He sat up straighter and waved toward the house. “I bought this place using the money my father had left me because I wanted our baby to have a stable home life, like I had when I was a kid, but Alaina had never had that. She’d grown up in a military family, moving every couple years, and she hit the road when she was eighteen and never looked back. It was what she knew, and in the end, it was what she wanted. She handed me the baby one evening, took off with some guy in a van, and never looked back. A month later I got papers in the mail. She’d formally relinquished all parental rights, like Phillip was an old car and she was transferring a title.”
Anger rose in his eyes, and she wondered if that was a mask for pain, or if he was truly angry—over the situation, over Alaina’s leaving, or even over becoming a father so unexpectedly.
“So, you’ve raised Phillip alone all this time?”
He nodded, a smile forming on his lips. “We’re a team, and I’ve never regretted a second of it.”
“But you sound angry.”
“I am angry, but not about raising Phillip. I’m angry that she left my little boy without a mother. I’m angry that she’s given him a life sentence of trying to understand her inability to be a loving parent. Everyone knows how an absent parent can scar a child. I do everything I can to let him know he’s loved, but I’m not his mother.”
The woman in Tempest was right there with him, upset for the sweet boy sleeping inside the house. But the therapist in her wondered if Alaina had done the right thing. Not all people were meant to be parents, and as much as it sucked for Nash and Phillip, there was something to be said about Alaina knowing herself well enough not to burden others with her shortcomings.
“If that makes me a bad person,” Nash said, “then so be it.”
“It doesn’t make you a bad person. It makes you human.”
The tension drained from his face. “Thanks. I do the best I can.”
“You’re great with Phillip, but you should tell people when they call him the wrong name.” She smiled, hoping to lighten the air.
He huffed out a soft laugh. “Thanks. I guess I should slow down when I say his name. But I really did think it was cute, and apparently he thinks of himself as Flip, too, so…” He shrugged, and his face grew serious again. “It means a lot to hear you say that. He’s my life, and I’ll do whatever it takes to keep him safe and happy. What about you, Tempe? Why are you here in Pleasant Hill, starting over? You said you had no crazy or sane boyfriend or exes to worry about. So why is a gorgeous, smart woman like you still starting over, and still single?”
It was her turn to shrug. Her cheeks burned with his praise.
He leaned closer. The tension she’d seen moments earlier was gone, replaced with a softer, and somehow more intense, curiosity. “I just unzipped my baggage and let you rifle through it. You can do better than a shrug.”
“I guess I felt trapped in my old life. I wasn’t going anywhere or meeting new people. I wanted to change the direction of my business. Back home I mostly worked in the hospital, and I wanted to build a child-centric business in a lighter way. But it’s hard to reinvent yourself when you’ve carved out a niche for yourself as a certain type of person, in a certain job. It seemed like a good time to make a fresh start.”
“And you’re still single because…?”
“I don’t know. I work a lot, and I help my sister-in-law, Leesa, run a Girl Power group. I spend time with family.”
“And that prohibits you from finding a great guy?”
“No, but when you grow up in a small community, you rarely meet someone you don’t know everything about, and I knew more than I wanted to about most of the guys my age. It was just time for a change.”
“I know all about small towns.” A haunted look flashed in his eyes, and just as quickly, they were clear again. She wondered if she’d imagined it. “And what’s a Girl Power group? Do you get together with women and bash men? If so, maybe we’ve discovered the issue.”
How could he go from serious to teasing so quickly? “Please. Do I seem like a person who bashes guys? We help young girls gain self-esteem through group activities. We meet about every six weeks or so, depending on our schedules. I really enjoy it. It’s hard to be a teenage girl. There’s a lot of pressure to fit in, dress and act a certain way. Just getting through each day can be traumatic.”
“There’s a lot of pressure to fit in for guys, too,” he said uneasily. “Teenage years are hard.”
“I bet you had no trouble fitting in during school.”
“Wanna bet? I was gangly and weird, because I was more interested in art than sports.” He brushed her hair from in front of her eye with his index finger, and her whole body seemed to flame to life with the intimate touch.
“But you?” he said quietly. “Surely you were popular in high school.”
“I had a lot of friends, but I was the nerd girl playing her guitar on the beach in her parents’ backyard Friday nights instead of going to parties.”
“So, basically you were the mysteriously sexy, artsy, good girl who half the guys in your school probably fantasized about.” His low voice was as smooth and warm as velvet. “And now you spend your time helping others. That really doesn’t explain why you haven’t been swept off your feet yet.”
“You make me sound so interesting, and I can assure you, I’m not.”
“I like talking to you, and I find you very intriguing.” His gaze intensified, and his fingers moved over her arm.
Her stomach quivered, and she grasped for a response. “Maybe I’m not easily sweepable.”
“Maybe you’re just careful.”
“I am,” she admitted, breathing a little harder.
“Too careful?”
His fingers moved in slow, mesmerizing circles on her arm, sending shivers of awareness streaming through her.
“Probably.” She hoped she said the word aloud, because she was too lost in his feathery touch to be sure she’d actually spoken.
“What are you looking for, Tempe?” he asked, just above a whisper.
She wasn’t sure if he was asking what she was looking for in a man or in Pleasant Hill, but she didn’t have a solid answer for either. “I’m not sure.”
“Sure you are,” he said seductively, and if she wasn’t too out of her mind to be able to read him clearly, a little nervously, too. “You’re the only one who knows what you want.”
The breeze, his touch, and the heady sound of his voice blurred together as they gazed into each other’s eyes. They both leaned forward, or maybe she imagined it, but his minty breath drifted over her lips. His fingers stilled on her arm, and her mouth went dry.
“Tell me what you want, Tempest,” he whispered.
“Right now I want to kiss you.” She couldn’t believe she’d said it, but she didn’t want to take it back, not for anything in the world.
His hand slid to the nape of her neck. Neither one of them blinked. She wasn’t sure she was even still breathing as his warm, strong fingers cupped the back of her neck, feeling oh so good. So right. He brushed the tip of his nose along her cheek, and she closed her eyes, anticipating the first taste of his lips.
“I promised not to make you uncomfortable,” he whispered.
She opened her eyes, captivated by the raw emotion looking back at her.
“Tempest,” he pleaded. “What have you done to me? I haven’t kissed a woman since the day Alaina left.”
She held her breath, conscious of how hard her heart was beating and trying to think past the desire drawing her mouth closer to his. “It’s been a long time for me, too.”
His fingers pressed into her skin, his eyes brimming with tenderness and passion. “I really like you. I don’t want to screw this up.”
“Maybe we shouldn’t kiss.” She grabbed the front of his shirt, kee
ping him close, her lips tingling with anticipation. “It’s probably a bad idea, but I really want to. Do you w—”
He smothered her words with a press of his lips, pulling her closer as his tongue delved into her mouth. The first taste of him was heavenly, and when he deepened the kiss, her thoughts spun away. He kissed her harder, more demanding, his tongue searching and prodding, as if he wanted to inhabit all of her. Then he was shifting their bodies, lifting her over his legs and onto his lap. One muscular arm circled her waist, holding her so tight she couldn’t tell where he ended and she began, and his other hand moved under her hair, cupping the back of her head and angling her mouth so he could intensify the kiss. Oh Lord, did she like that. He was so big, so hard, so gloriously delicious, she wanted to savor every second of their kisses. Her hands moved on their own accord, over his arms, along his shoulders, and into his thick, soft hair. She’d never kissed a man like this before, abandoning all restraint without regard for the message she sent. Her consciousness ebbed and flamed with each stroke of his tongue. Pleasure radiated through her limbs, coursing through her veins, bringing rise to unfamiliar noises—moans. She’d only known him three days, and yet she felt like she’d been waiting for this kiss her whole life.
There was no end, no beginning. The kiss went on and on, and when he slowed their pace, he didn’t break away, as if he wanted to savor it, too. His hand moved up her back, along her side, his fingertips brushing her breast, sending pulses of heat to places that hadn’t pulsed in a very long time. She arched into him, fear and excitement battling for domination. When their mouths parted, she was barely breathing. Or maybe she was panting. She couldn’t be sure because his lips found hers again in a series of slow, intoxicating kisses.
“God, Tempe,” he whispered.
Their eyes met for a heated second, and then he smothered her lips with demanding mastery, shattering the last of her thoughts. She clawed at his shirt, ate at his mouth, as wanton sounds poured from her lungs. His hips rose beneath her, his arousal pressing against her damp sex, and she was right there with him, grinding with every lift of his hips. She touched his face, wanting to feel more of him. His rough whiskers scratched her palms, and she became aware of the burn they caused on her lips and cheeks as he kissed the edges of her mouth.
Whisper of Love (The Bradens at Peaceful Harbor, Book Five) Page 8