Always On My Mind

by Kelsey Browning

  “But—” Jenny’s rebuttal was thwarted by a flaky, buttery, creamy, chocolaty piece of heaven, “—mmph.”

  Teague licked a dollop of the cream filling off his finger and everything south of her belly button went on alert. She could practically feel all her girl-gear popping open buttons and plumping up its cleavage. Down hormones, down!

  Still, she couldn’t look away from Teague’s beautiful mouth. The mouth she’d kissed at least a million times. The mouth she now knew she wanted to kiss a million more times.

  But would that be fair to either of them? If the art contest was cancelled because Jesus was still AWOL, she’d have no choice but to return to Boston. The only way she could stay in Summer Shoals was to win the art show. Then again, would a one-year residency allow her to support Grayson, even with Daniel’s child support?

  She lifted her gaze to Teague. Was there a possibility she could build something with him in this little town, or were they both two cups of crazy? At one time he’d been her happy place. Probably the happiest place in her heart other than the spot occupied by Grayson.

  “Jenny,” Teague said, his voice low, mesmerizing.

  “Hmm?”

  “The way you’re looking at me.” He leaned closer, his breath warm on her cheek. He smoothed his lips across her face, setting off a full body shudder. “I’ve never even seen you look at an éclair with that kind of hunger.”

  He could see right through her, as he’d always been able to do. “It’s just hormones. I’m single and lonely and—”

  His mouth made it to her ear, and he whispered, “Don’t make excuses. You don’t want just anyone. You don’t look at Colton the way you look at me.”

  “I doubt that guy would have any impact on my hormones, no matter how lonely I was. But don’t you ever wonder—” her voice broke, “—what we’ve missed over the past ten years.”

  “Only every damned day.”

  The carriage came to an abrupt stop, and the driver twisted in his seat. “Forgot I need to run back to the hardware store right quick if y’all don’t mind staying here for a bit.” He aimed a conspiratorial wink at Teague. “Won’t take me more than half an hour.”

  Who’d ever heard of a carriage ride without the riding part? “If you need to cut the ride short,” Jenny said to him, “you could take us back to the square and—”

  “No problem,” Teague cut her off.

  The man climbed down from the carriage and ambled off, in no apparent hurry.

  Jenny glanced around. He hadn’t even parked them under a street light. They were in a shadowed area a few blocks from the shops and town square. “Teague, it’s dark here. It can’t be safe.”

  His smile was soft and sad. “We’re in Summer Shoals.”

  “Small towns aren’t immune to crime. Mom and the others are a testament to that.”

  “So far as I know, they haven’t taken down any carriage-jackers,” he said. “Besides, you are with the sheriff. Protection is my job.”

  Her skin went cold, and she pulled the lap blanket up to her chest and angled her body away from Teague’s. He hadn’t protected her before, not from the broken heart he’d served up like it was a PB&J sandwich shoved into a cheap paper bag.

  Teague reached under their seat and pulled out the bottle of whiskey. This time, he mixed their cocoa in a ratio that favored the alcohol. He offered it to her, but she shook her head, preferring instead to take comfort in the gooey éclair.

  He settled back, propped his feet on the seat across from them, and took a swallow of the spiked hot chocolate. “It’s time, Jenny.”

  For a flash, she wasn’t sure what he meant, but then he took another drink. If he had to take that kind of swig, he was gearing up to explain that heartbreak he’d packed for her years ago. “Some things are better left in the past.”

  “Not when they’re hovering over your present and possibly screwing up your future.”

  “If I tell you that I forgive you, that I’m over it, will you leave it alone?” She studied a smear of chocolate on her thumb, then licked it off. “For God’s sake, it’s been years, Teague. We’re adults. Adults move on.” And if he bought that, she had some balmy beachfront property to sell him in Alaska.

  “If you’d really moved on—” he touched her chin, urging her to look at him, “—you wouldn’t have looked so guilty when I said you were staring at me like I was an éclair and you hadn’t had a hit of sugar in a year.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with looking at an attractive man.” In fact, she was staring at one right now. Granted, she was scowling at him too.

  “Well,” he said, “there’s looking, and then there’s looking. And that, sweetheart, was looking.”

  “Fine,” she snapped. “So I’ve had a thought or two about stripping you naked, smearing cream filling all over your body, and then licking it off.”

  He dropped his head into his palm. “Jesus.”

  “You’re the one who started this.”

  “My point is you’re not the kind of woman to look at a man like that when you don’t have any feelings for him.”

  Jenny snatched the drink from his hand and tossed it back. Whoo-ee. Jameson was smooth, but in that volume, it burned like the cheap stuff she and Teague had snuck from his dad’s liquor cabinet in high school. The way they’d giggled like loons and lay on their backs in Teague’s backyard, flapping their arms and legs to make grass angels, his parents had to have figured out they’d snuck some adult beverages. Once she caught her breath, she wheezed, “Of course I have feelings for you. We grew up together.”

  He grabbed her free hand, surrounded it with his bigger one. “We were in love, Jenny.”

  And by the way her heart tightened, it was obvious the past tense he’d used wasn’t completely right. She still loved this man, but she didn’t know him anymore. Not really.

  “And I hurt you.”

  “Yes.”

  “And then once I fixed everything I’d screwed up, you’d moved on.”

  And didn’t that turn her heart to a big old lump of coal? “What was I supposed to do?”

  “God, I don’t know.” He sighed and slumped back into the seat. “I realize now that sometimes life sends us on detours to get us where we need to go.”

  “Is that what she was to you, a detour?” She still couldn’t think of Teague marrying another woman without a dull ache pounding in her chest. “What was her name anyway?” What a crock of a question. She knew exactly what Teague’s ex-wife’s name was. Melinda Alvarez.

  “Melinda was more of a pothole than a detour.” Rather than taking back the cup for another drink, he simply uncapped the bottle and tossed back a slug. “I went to a frat party one night.”

  Suddenly, all the milk and butter from the éclair curdled in her stomach. She wanted to put her fingers in her ears and chant na-na-na-na-na. Which was downright cowardly. She was a grown woman. She could handle anything life threw at her. And whatever Teague was about to spill was an old mess. One that couldn’t hurt her anymore.

  “We’d had that fight—”

  “Don’t you dare blame me for—”

  He squeezed her hand. “Just listen. You and I were having that ongoing discussion about what to do after graduation. You were still so in love with Boston, and I couldn’t understand what the hell was wrong with Texas. Why you didn’t want to come home.”

  He’d been her home, and she’d figured as long as they were together, everything would be perfect. As an only child who’d never known her father, she hadn’t had much tethering her to Houston. Her mom was still working like a demon for the newspaper back then, which meant she wouldn’t have had time to provide the kind of emotional support Jenny had needed.

  She’d pushed and begged and cajoled Teague to move to Boston. A few firms had already been courting her for a handful of coveted staff photographer positions, and he could’ve been a cop anywhere. A million times over the past ten years, she’d regretted her childish behavior, trying to sm
other his hopes and dreams with her own. If only she’d—

  “There she was at this stupid frat party…”

  “Melinda.”

  “Yeah.” Another swig, and he sighed. “I was stupid and slept with her, but I didn’t care about her.”

  Didn’t matter that it had been a decade. The words still arrowed through her heart and sliced it into a jagged mess. “I figured as much.”

  “Jenny…” He paused so long she wasn’t sure if he’d changed his mind about telling her everything. “She came around a month later saying she was pregnant.”

  She remembered everything about the night Teague had called to tell her he was getting married. And not to her. She’d been working on a project for her Marketing Research class, humming along to the Black Eyed Peas and thinking about the kind of wedding dress she wanted. Her roommate was getting married the weekend after graduation and had chosen a traditional gown with a train the length of a football field.

  She and Teague wanted something lower key. No huge church wedding for them with half a dozen bridesmaids and groomsmen. Just a couple of close friends. She’d been daydreaming of the perfect dress. A simple sheath. Maybe a few seed-pearls hand sewn along the neckline.

  Then she answered the phone, and that wedding dress had become tattered scraps falling on the floor of her heart.

  The next morning, she’d dropped her cherished camera pendant into an envelope, addressed it to Teague and shoved it into a mailbox. Five months later, she’d met Daniel and moved on.

  “And with a name like Alvarez,” Jenny said, “she was probably Catholic.”

  “Very.”

  “You were stupid not to use protection.” Jenny’s hands clenched around the paper sack when what she really wanted was to launch herself at Teague and wrap them around his neck. “Were you that drunk?”

  “I used one,” he said. “But they’re not fail proof.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me then?”

  “I can’t even express how miserable and ashamed I was. I’d cheated, Jenny. Cheated on the woman I loved more than anything else in the world. Because I was a whiny twenty-two-year-old boy who wasn’t getting his way.”

  Even now, with his drawn-down lips and slumped shoulders, he was the picture of misery. “So rather than come clean with me and ask me for help, you just married her.”

  “How the hell was I supposed to come to you for help?” His head jerked up, and he glared at her. “‘Hey, Jenny, I knocked up some chick because I was pissed at you, and guess what? I’m gonna be a daddy. Want to go to the movies this weekend?’”

  Yeah, that wouldn’t have been a particularly good tactic. “I bet you were pretty scared.”

  His glare melted into an open-mouthed stare. “Scared? I was sick and guilty and terrified.”

  “So you did what any good Catholic boy would do and married her. Tell me,” she said conversationally, “how long was it until she miscarried?”

  “What?”

  “Unless you’re an even better liar than I thought—” she swept her arms through the dark as though to encompass the entire universe, “—it’s pretty obvious you don’t have a ten-year-old kid.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “Were you with her at the hospital or doctor’s office when it happened?”

  “No,” he said, “I was in an all-day law enforcement seminar.”

  “Who asked for the divorce?”

  “I did.”

  “She didn’t count on that,” Jenny mused. “She figured that you’d marry her out of guilt and stay with her for the same reason.”

  “Are you saying—”

  “I’m saying I’d bet my left arm that she was never pregnant in the first place, Teague.”

  “But…but she showed me that thing. You know, the stick.”

  “Sharpie marker.”

  “Huh?”

  “I knew a couple of girls at Boston University who used the marker trick on their boyfriends.”

  His hand tightened around the neck of the whiskey bottle, and Jenny feared it would shatter in his fist. “Why would she do that?”

  All the hurt Jenny had been carrying inside her heart for so long sounded as though it had landed square in Teague’s chest. She scooted closer to him and rubbed a hand down his thigh. “Probably because she knew you were a good guy. You were about to graduate and get a steady job. You were handsome.” She laughed. “Handsome? You were hot as hell. There were probably a lot of girls trying to figure out how to snag you.”

  “I didn’t want them. Only you.”

  She squeezed his knee. “Which probably only made you that much more enticing.”

  “I ruined our lives,” he said hoarsely.

  And by the time things changed for Teague, she’d moved on.

  The resentment she’d harbored for the past decade fell away. She had to forgive him because it was obvious Teague would never forgive himself. “I forgive you, and I hope you’ll forgive me. We both let something special go. We deserved better.”

  “I’d do anything to roll back time.”

  “Things happen for a reason. They make us who we are.”

  He jerked around in the seat and loomed over her. “We weren’t supposed to be apart.”

  “I have one word for you,” she said. “Grayson.”

  “I would’ve given you all the babies you wanted.”

  She smiled, and even on her own lips she tasted the sadness. “You’re a hell of a man, Teague Castro. But even you couldn’t have given me Grayson.”

  “Does it make me horrible that I wish you were wrong?”

  “No, it makes you human.” Jenny dropped the empty thermos lid to the carriage floor and slid a hand to the back of Teague’s neck to pull him closer. “Just like this does.”

  Chapter 10

  With the feel of Jenny’s mouth on his, everything in Teague’s world went tumbling. Bright colors, crazy lights and fragmented thoughts. Yes, she’d let him kiss her, but this was the first time she’d made a move. Where were all her protests about small-town living now?

  Shut up, Castro, she’s kissing you, not marrying you.

  Maybe this was just a friendly I-don’t-hate-you-anymore kiss.

  Jenny drew back an inch and said, “Teague?”

  She’d had her lips on his, and he was sending them through couple’s therapy in his head. So he pulled her back to him and said, “It’s nothing” against her lips.

  Her tongue darted out to skim his bottom lip, and Teague groaned. Jenny touching him was like finding a cool running creek after years of drought. He wanted to cup his hands around her and drink her down.

  The kiss deepened, a hot meshing of tongues and teeth and lips. Every muscle in Teague’s body responded to Jenny’s nearness. The feel of her thick hair clenched in his fist. The scent of vanilla and flowers on her skin.

  But the muscle contracting into a hard knot was his heart.

  After all, his heart was what he stood to lose.

  Who the hell was he fooling? He’d lost his heart to this woman more than two decades ago, when she was in pigtails and he popped wheelies on his Huffy bike to impress her.

  PICK YOUR PASSION™

  Sweet - continue to next page

  Heat - skip 8-10 pages

  Chapter 10 - Sweet

  Her hair felt like fine silk in his grip. Cradling her head in his palm, he kissed her softly on the mouth, then her nose and her eyelids.

  She smiled. Which meant she hadn’t forgotten how good it could be between them.

  His heart was as full of hope as all the lights on that Christmas tree. Jenny scooted closer, turning in and pressing against him. But sitting side by side, they could only get so close. Teague’s skin vibrated with the need to have all of her touching all of him. She shoved at the blankets covering their laps.

  Desperate for her touch, he wanted to make love to her in a rush. But that wasn’t how he wanted their first time back together to be. He loved her. He wanted it to be
special and tender. But his hormones sure were cheering for more.

  Jenny took control and pulled him closer, sweeping her hands over his body. She’d always known what she wanted and gone after it with whatever weapon she had handy. And right now, she was about to kill him with the light stroke of her fingers.

  Teague rested his forehead against her temple. “Jenny, I wasn’t lying before when I told you I never, in all these years, stopped loving you. I want you, there’s no hiding that. But what I want isn’t just your body. I want your intelligence. Your…hmm…think I’ll call it your wit.”

  She huffed a little laugh and snuggled into his arms. “That’s one way to phrase it if you’re soft-peddling the truth.”

  The air backed up in Teague’s lungs, and he leaned his head on the carriage seat back, trying to catch his runaway breath. “I want your smile. I want everything about you.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “That I want you back in my life.”

  “We’re not kids anymore,” she said, her hand coming to rest on his shoulder. “We live over a thousand miles apart, and I have…complications.”

  He cupped her cheek, turned her face to his. “Grayson’s not a complication in my eyes.”

  “I may not be married to Daniel,” Jenny said, her eyes both sad and pleading for understanding. “But he’ll always be Grayson’s father.”

  Yeah, there were some things in this world that couldn’t be undone. “You’re strong and smart. I’m good-looking and not quite as smart as you.” He grinned, trying to lighten the mood. “I bet we could work this out. I even know where the airport is for when Grayson needs to fly up to see his dad.”

  “You would raise another man’s son?”

  His heart went into overdrive. He’d been hoping to convince her to consider moving, but she’d leapfrogged ahead to marriage. He wanted to jerk her out of the carriage and drag her to the Justice of the Peace’s house this second. But he told the adrenaline speeding through his system to pull over. If he didn’t watch out, he’d hit the wall. He couldn’t afford to crash and burn this time. “I would happily raise the son of the woman I love. He’s a part of you, Jenny. How could I not love him too?”