If only they didn’t have to worry about their daughter finding Katie missing from her bed… but he didn’t want to have her thinking the two of them had reconciled. He may want that, but Katie had a way of pulling the rug out from under him whenever he got too close. No sense giving Chelsea false hope.
Intending to distract Katie, he traced a finger around her areola, watching her nipple bunch again. “I could lie like this forever.” He bent to latch onto the peak and sucked. She gasped, clutched the back of his head as if making sure he wouldn’t stop. As if. Flicking his tongue against her, again she squeezed him. If she kept that up, he wasn’t going to last long enough for her to be ready.
When she lifted her hips, he took it as a sign and once again began moving inside her slick passage. “God, woman!” he grunted. “You’re so tight.”
“I haven’t been with anyone since you, but after having Chelsea…”
Hearing those words, he rammed her harder, faster as he neared the summit again. She hadn’t been with anyone else? Dayum. Her panting told him she was close again, too, without any additional stimulation from his fingers. His woman was so responsive.
His. Knowing there’d never been any other man to experience this with her made him feel like a king.
He pumped harder as her mewling sounds increased and she screamed, “Yes! Yes! Oh, please, Travis!”
Her face tightened as she hung on the crest, waiting, waiting…and then she screamed. He couldn’t hold back any longer, and as she spasmed around him, he roared his release, too. The moment seemed to go on for a lifetime—and was over all too soon. He’d never come so hard or so long.
“I love…” The words of love that came to the tip of his tongue scared him, and he finished with “…the way you explode for me.” Thankfully, he had the wherewithal to keep any romantic declarations to himself.
His member throbbed, still surrounded by her tight sheath. He bent to shower her with kisses, their bodies connected skin to skin from her lips to her toes. “That was incredible, Katie. You’re the only woman I’ve ever wanted to be with.”
Her eyes opened wider. Clearly, she didn’t believe him. Not wanting her to escape until they had time to talk, he pulled out. “Stay right there. I’ll just get rid of this and be right back.”
He hurried into the bathroom, keeping the door open to listen for signs that she might be escaping, but he heard nothing to indicate her imminent departure. After washing himself off, he wet a clean washcloth with warm water and returned to the bedroom. She lay with her eyes closed, sated with a half-smile on her face. At least the regrets hadn’t piled in on her yet.
“Spread yourself open for me.”
One eye opened in a question until she spied the washcloth, and she reached out. “Here. I can do that.”
“I said, spread…your…legs.”
Her cheeks flushed even redder. Why she’d think this was more intimate than what he’d just done to her body, he couldn’t understand, but she did as he instructed.
When the cloth rubbed over her nubbin, she jerked her legs closed around his hand. “Careful. It’s still pretty sensitive.”
He grinned. “Sorry.” Not sorry!
He’d finished, got up, and quickly discarded the cloth in the sink. Returning to the bed, he stretched out and wrapped one arm under her as his other hand settled on her breast, playing with her nipple with much less urgency than earlier.
“Why’d you break it off, Katie?” Oh, hell. Why’d he have to go and ask her that at a time like this?
“I messed up,” she whispered, closing her eyes.
He’d expected her to pull away and leave, not to answer him after all the times she’d evaded the question.
“I thought I was doing the right thing back then, but nothing turned out the way I expected.”
His finger moved up to stroke her lips. “Open your eyes and look at me.”
She grimaced before complying.
“What are you talking about?” When she still didn’t meet his gaze, he placed a finger under her chin and tilted her head toward him.
Her eyes sparkled with unshed tears. “I wanted you to finish college and make a name for yourself before we married and started a family. All I could think about was how much you would one day resent my tying you down if I forced you into an early marriage.”
His body tensed. “Seriously?” He withdrew his hand from her face. “God, Katie. How could you think that you’d be forcing me into anything? It took both of us to make Chelsea. I wouldn’t have deserted you when you needed me, and I sure as hell wouldn’t have shirked my duty to you both.”
“I didn’t want to be yet another responsibility for you, Travis.”
Okay, he’d said that wrong.
“You were pursuing a career that wasn’t compatible with living on a horse farm in Midway. When you told me that your life had veered off in a totally different direction than planned, I was heartsick. I’d sacrificed a chance at our being together for something that didn’t even come to be.”
He sighed. “My early plans were immature nonsense dreamed up by a cocky guy who thought he was going to set the world on fire. I never looked back for anything I might have missed—other than you.” He fell onto his back and stared up at the ceiling. “God, I couldn’t wait to come home from New York and convince you that you’d been wrong. But your dad wouldn’t let me see you.”
“I’m sorry. I knew if I saw you again, I’d cave and make your life miserable. So I asked him to turn you away if you came by. He agreed that it would be wrong to tie you down just when your career was poised to take off.”
“Your dad shouldn’t have interfered. I think he secretly wanted me out of your life. He must have been afraid I’d take you away from him forever, even though he only had you a couple years after that. He screwed you more than me.”
She exhaled slowly. He glanced away, running his hand through his hair. “I can’t believe how much we missed out on, Katie.”
Water under the bridge, but what about the future? He met her gaze, his fierce with a passion he’d never felt before, perhaps because he hadn’t really thought they could turn this thing around until tonight. “The important thing now is, what do we plan to do to fix it?”
“Sometimes things can’t be fixed.”
“Bull. We both just exploded for each other, didn’t we? I’d say we still share strong feelings for one another. And we’ve had some good times since I’ve been back. Why don’t we stop fighting long enough to see what possibilities there are, if for no other reason than to be a family?”
* * *
She hadn’t realized what a dreamer Travis was. Apparently, he hadn’t lost that despite the way his life had veered off track. But she needed to keep her focus on what was best for Chelsea, not for Kate. They hadn’t really resolved the issue of that damned horse yet.
“Let’s get back to something that we need to fix right now. Chelsea’s not ready to handle a horse of the caliber you’re talking about buying her. Why set her up to fail?” Kate hoped that Travis would take the bait and move on to discussing Chelsea rather than their future. She needed to distance herself from whatever had just happened here.
“What if I’m setting her up to succeed?” he whispered, grinning as he grabbed her hand and held it against the beating of his heart. “On a level playing field with the kids whose families have more money?”
All the fight left her as she fought the urge to play with his chest hair. She’d tried to give Chelsea everything important in life. To have Travis show up and to see Chelsea happier than she’d been in a long while made her realize that perhaps this was about Kate’s ego.
If only she could lay in bed with him for hours and pretend they were a married couple sharing in pillow talk following an intimate respite. But when she met his gaze, the fire reigniting in his eyes made her realize the time to return to reality had arrived. The only thing his throwing money at the problem would do would be to make her look inadequate in h
er daughter’s eyes.
“I don’t want us to get into a competition for who can give her the most.” Because I could never win. “She needs to go up the ranks and start out with more academy-level shows. There’s a national one held in Murfreesboro every November that I could prepare her for. If she does well and wants to continue, you could consider giving her a performance horse for her birthday in January. Can we agree not to rush into anything about the horse right away? She has enough change going on in her life at the moment.”
“Fair enough.” He nodded, his gaze lighting on her lips before returning to her eyes. “I’ll admit I can be impulsive at times. When I heard what she wanted, I just blurted out my offer without thinking.”
“We’re going to have to decide how to deal with her expectations of getting a new horse now that the promise has been made. You’ll have to tell her this isn’t going to happen right away.”
Travis’s face grew grim again. “I haven’t changed my mind yet, but I’ll consider your request for better timing. We’ll talk about it some more in the coming weeks.”
Negotiating wasn’t something she’d ever had to do when it came to Chelsea. “Will you agree to run major decisions like this one by me first in the future? Then we can discuss them together and decide what’s best for her before dashing her hopes by taking something back?” At least that’s what Kate assumed other parents did. She’d never had to share parental control before—and didn’t particularly like having to start doing so now.
“Since her hopes are already up this time, why not just let me buy her a good horse with the stipulation that she doesn’t ride it until you determine she’s ready?”
Had he not heard anything she’d just said? Why did the man have to be so stubborn? So infuriating?
“Having a horse in my barn that she knows is hers for the taking is going to make it impossible for me to live with her begging me to let her train on it. She’s many months away from being ready for that. What’s wrong with waiting until January?”
“That’s six months away.”
Closer to seven, actually, since Chelsea’s birthday was at the end of the month. “She’ll be able to hit the ground running. I can train her to ride Chula in some upcoming shows—”
“All right, I don’t want to have to disappoint her.” He shrugged, hitching up the corner of his mouth for emphasis. “She’s expecting me to come through for her on this, but you’re making it damned hard for me to do that.”
Clearly, he wasn’t about to let this promise go or be the bad guy in Chelsea’s eyes. Unable to say anything more, Kate sat up and swung her legs over the edge of the mattress. She stood and crossed the room to retrieve her clothes. She quickly donned the T-shirt, slipped into her flip-flops, and picked up her jeans before facing him, clutching them to her chest like armor. His gaze bore into her lower body, but she tamped down any response that might lead to more lovemaking.
“Travis, your life is four hours away. You can’t just breeze in here every weekend, or however often you intend to visit, and throw money and promises at Chelsea to make yourself out to be some kind of hero. You’re her dad. That’s hero enough in her book. Just tell her you and I talked and you realize now that it was a mistake to make that offer to her.”
“All you have to do is say the word and we can work on finding a way to blend our lives together.”
“I have no intention of leaving this farm until they carry me off in a hearse. That hurdle isn’t going away. But we aren’t talking about us. We have a long way to go until we’re on the same page as parents, first.”
“I agree we have a lot to sort out there, but I’m not giving up on us getting back together. Especially after what just happened in here.”
She’d made a colossal mistake to let her guard down with him. “Let’s not bite off more than we can chew. Right now, I want you to focus on Chelsea.”
* * *
Travis couldn’t argue that there was a lot they’d have to work out, but if they didn’t discuss things they weren’t going to get anywhere. “Katie, tell me one thing.”
She glanced toward the door, no doubt ready to make a hasty retreat, but met his gaze. “What?”
“Will you give this spark a chance?”
A wry grin spread across her face. “I’d say we just did, but sex obviously is not going to be enough.”
“Yeah, but it’s sure a great start.” He probably had a silly-assed grin on his face, and she wasn’t buying it judging by the narrowing of her eyes. He sighed. “Look, I want us to build a deeper relationship this time. For you to allow me inside that place you’ve shut me out of since the day we met.”
She reached behind her for the doorknob. “I can’t change who I am, Travis.”
And with that, she was gone.
What the hell did that mean? How could they go from making passionate love to her battening down the hatches for whatever storm she always seemed to expect to blow into her life?
He almost got up to follow her, but thought better of it. Katie had been running from something her whole life, and until she faced it, they weren’t going to get anywhere as a couple—much less a family.
Speaking of family, he hadn’t called Mom yet to ask her about Sunday. Knowing she’d want to plan a feast and do deep cleaning in the house and yard, he got up to find his boxer briefs and put them on before retrieving his phone from his jeans pocket.
He texted her first to make sure she was awake. Mom never kept her ringer on at night, so he wouldn’t wake her. Within seconds, though, she texted him back telling him to call her. She answered on the second ring.
“Hi, Mom. How’s everything going?”
“Great. Just finished beating your dad in a late-night game of canasta. Speaking of which, isn’t it a little late for you to be up on a work night? You okay?”
“Everything’s…fine. I’m taking the week off.”
“Well, it’s about time. I hope you went somewhere relaxing. You work too hard.”
Relaxing would be the least accurate adjective he’d give this past week—well except for maybe the last hour or so. “No, Mom, it’s not a vacation. That’s what I’m calling about. I’m in Midway…visiting Katie Michaels.”
The silence on the other end made it impossible to judge her reaction. “Well, how is she? I always loved Katie. Most down-to-earth girl you ever brought home to us.”
Other than a few girls he’d dated in high school and his freshman year in college, Kate was the only one he’d ever brought home.
“Well? Don’t keep me guessing.”
Mom, you’d never guess this in a million years.
“Are you seated?”
“Why?”
“Because I have some news for you.”
“Joe, come back in here! Travis has some news!”
He waited for his dad to ask what was up and for Mom to put her phone on speaker.
“We’re here. What’s wrong?”
He grinned, knowing they were expecting the worst. “Nothing, actually. Everything’s more right than it’s been for me in a while.” Since Danny’s death for sure, but even before that. “Katie has a daughter. Her name’s Chelsea. Mom, she has your eyes and Clint’s high forehead. She’ll turn thirteen in January, and…well, she’d like to meet her grandparents.”
“Oh, dear Lord.” His mom’s voice had grown thick.
“What are you trying to tell us, son?” Dad asked.
“Appears that I left something behind when Katie and I split up.”
“I can’t believe what you’re saying. You haven’t been drinking, have you?”
He laughed. “No, Mom. I’m stone sober. I can’t wait for you to see her, Mom and Dad. She’s beautiful. Hold on! Let me send you a couple pics.”
He texted them several of the selfies the two of them had taken earlier tonight.
“Oh, Joe, she’s gorgeous! We have another granddaughter!” He waited for her to address him again but judging by the sniffles and blowing of her
nose, she was crying. “When can we meet her?”
“Would Sunday be soon enough?”
“No, but if that’s the best you can do, I’ll round up everyone for a family cookout.” His mother had probably planned half the menu already.
“Mom, Dad, I want Katie to come, too.”
Silence again. “You know we’d love to see her again, but you also know your sisters don’t think much of her after she dumped you.”
Thanks, Mom. “Don’t worry. I’ll have a talk with each of them first. If they can’t be civil, then I’d rather they not be there.”
His father’s stern voice reminded him of some of his scoldings as a boy. “Son, you need to remember who your family is. They come first.”
“Dad, Katie and Chelsea are my family now, too.”
His dad hadn’t said much at all about the break-up, but it sounded as though he might harbor some negative feelings toward Katie, too.
Travis may need to lay some groundwork before Sunday to make it go as smoothly as he possibly could. Last thing he wanted was for Katie to get skittish and run him off again.
“We’ll talk to the triplets. And if you want Katie here, then she’s welcome.”
“Thanks. I do. I’ll see you Sunday, late morning. Is there anything I can bring?”
“Chelsea, you, and Katie. We’ll take care of everything else.”
He still had nearly a week to build a stronger bond between him and Katie, not to mention getting to know Chelsea better. He hoped that, by the time they showed up in Pleasure Ridge Park, he’d have forged a family bond that would withstand anything his sisters could dish out.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Early the next morning, Kate found herself standing on a stepladder in the guest room dusting and trying not to think about what had happened in the apartment last night.
Good luck with that.
She and Travis had come together as if all the years apart never happened. Her playfulness with the condom surprised her a bit, but they’d always joked about them after that first time in college when they’d made love without one. Neither of them particularly liked them, but she appreciated that he’d bought some, just in case. That he’d been thinking in that direction before the news of Chelsea came out made her wonder if perhaps they might have rekindled their romance if not for her keeping the secret from him.
Kate's Secret (Bluegrass Spirits Book 2) Page 28