"I jus' wanted her to pay attention."
Ren straightened and shot Cilla a hard look. "Baby, it's time to take out the trash." His hand reached for Tad.
"Wait," Cilla said. "I've got to do something first."
He glanced at her again. "Cilla, I'm sorry."
"You don't have to apolo—"
"I'm not sorry I hit him. But I'm sorry that I'm not going to let your soft heart into this equation. You are not patching him up. You are not offering him a bag of frozen peas or even a paper towel. He gets nothing but the lesson that you are done with him, finally and forever."
"Please, Ren."
He sighed. "Be quick about it."
Realizing his patience was nearly at an end, Cilla dashed from the storeroom and into Gwen's kitchen. After locating the implement she wanted, she dashed back.
Ren eyed the scissors in her hand as he yanked Tad upright. "Uh, baby..."
She ignored the warning note in his voice and marched right up to her ex, who was swaying on his feet. Grasping that favorite tie of his—now askew—she used the kitchen shears to cut it right beneath the loosened knot. A rush of power filled her veins as she dashed the pieces to the floor.
Then looked at Ren. "Now you can take out the trash," she said.
Ren was still a moment. A smile broke over his face. "As you command, princess," he said.
And that's when she knew that resistance was futile. Retreat was not longer an option. Time rewinds were never going to work. Cilla Maddox was irrevocably in love.
Chapter 12
In a lighter mood than he'd felt in days—hell, years—Ren returned to the storeroom, his gaze going from the broken skin on his knuckles to Cilla's flushed face. "The bastard's gone..." he started, but then his words faded away as he took his first real look at what she was wearing. The romantic dress revealed the delicate rise of her breasts, then clung to her slender torso until it flared at her hips and fell to the ground. A garment fit for Sleeping Beauty. Cinderella at the ball. Rapunzel.
"Wow," he said, with a sweeping hand indicating the fabric and lace.
"What? This old thing?" she asked with a cheeky grin.
The brilliance of that smile set him back on his heels. Images of the night before flashed in his mind. In the kitchen. In the shower. His mouth on her sex. His hands on her hips, his body bent over hers as he took her without holding anything back.
In return, last night she'd given him everything. No suggestion was too intimate, no position too raunchy. Cilla proved herself to be the best, sweetest, sexiest lover ever.
This morning she was five-plus feet of princess and she was looking at him with that brilliant smile that was only eclipsed by the stars in her eyes. Shit, Ren thought, rubbing the heel of his palm over his forehead as a terrible knowledge suddenly struck. Shit.
Maybe it was leftover adrenalin, he tried telling himself, that bright look the natural result of her taking her power back from the asshole ex. Or it could be surplus lust, he supposed, though after last night he thought she'd be at least temporarily sated.
"Ren?" she said, her voice gentle.
Her expression matched it, her face so soft that his heart jerked, waves of both tenderness and remorse rising up to batter the thing. Oh, shit. The evidence was too strong to ignore.
Cilla Maddox fancied herself in love with him.
Before he could move away, her hand brushed his arm, a brief, warm touch. "Hey," she said, with another smile. "Let's start over. Good morning."
"Oh, Cilla," he murmured, a hunger welling in his belly that had nothing to do with food or sex. He cupped her smooth cheek and stared into her beautiful eyes, wishing he could articulate how sorry he was.
Wishing he had words to explain that if he could, he would be the man to deserve those sparkling eyes, that open smile. What irony, that when Cilla finally dropped her armor it was to Ren, of all people.
What irony and what misery.
Because he was best at detachment. Wasn't he already as good as gone?
Stroking her face with his knuckles, he frowned, noting the faint streak of blood his broken skin left on her perfect flesh. Didn't that just say it all? If Ren wasn't careful, he'd wound her.
"Cilla..." What would he say? What should he do? How could he walk this back? "We should—"
"Check out your inheritance from Gwen," she said.
He blinked. "What?"
"I found the box. Or at least I think I did." With a nod of her head she indicated a large plastic bin nearby. Sure enough, his name was penned on top.
His inheritance. For days he'd avoided searching for it, and now it sat eight feet away.
It's good, Ren told himself now. Perfect timing. Once I take care of that obligation, I can leave. I can go back to London as soon as tomorrow and then these glittering stars in Cilla's eyes will die a swift and easy death.
Still, he approached the box on lead feet. At his side, Cilla practically hummed with curiosity, and when she grabbed his free hand to draw him toward the bin at a quicker pace, he barely resisted the urge to spin them both in the opposite direction. Then run.
Dismissing his odd misgivings, he hunkered down, and on a deep breath unlatched the lid.
What had he expected?
It certainly wasn't a set of photograph albums, neatly sandwiched by the plastic. He and Cilla exchanged surprised glances. "Have you seen these before?" he asked.
"Never." She wrapped her arms around herself as if suddenly chilled.
He felt cold feet tap dancing down his spine too. "Let's get these to the house. Have some coffee while we check them out."
Even the sun streaming through the kitchen windows didn't dissipate the dark cloud he felt hanging over him as he deposited the box on the table. Cilla disappeared for a moment and came back without her princess garb. But in jeans and a hoodie she didn't look any more comfortable than he felt.
"I don't remember Gwen with a camera," she said, eyeing the box as warily as he.
Ren shoved his hands in his pockets. "Maybe they're not filled with photos. Could be newspaper clippings about the Lemons—"
"Why would Gwen leave those to you?"
He shrugged, keenly aware neither one of them had yet to pull out an album. There were ten of them, their bindings dust-free leather. Feeling foolish for hesitating, he yanked his hand from his pocket and reached into the bin.
The first book made a solid thunk as he set it on the table. "It's heavy," he said. Then, like ripping off a bandage, he flipped open the cover.
Photos. Photos of babies, without identifying names or dates.
He and Cilla stared down at them. "That's got to be you," she said, pointing to an infant with a dark shock of hair lying on a blanket. "And the slightly bigger, bald one beside you is Beck, I'll bet."
Ren squinted, trying to see his grown-up features on that tiny face. "Maybe," he said, then flipped to another page.
More lying-on-blanket poses. This time he thought he recognized Beck in the one without hair. Farther along in the book, other infants joined the first babies who'd graduated to sitting up, then toddling about. "Walsh and Reed," Cilla said, pointing to tiny persons who did resemble Beck's younger brothers.
Why would Gwen leave these to me?
Cilla pulled out the next album and then he paged through the one after that. In shot after shot were photos of the Lemons' sons: Beck and Ren, Walsh and Reed, Bing, Brody, and Payne. First, as babies staring at their toes, then as toddlers sitting beside each other in a sandbox, finally as small children surrounded by towers of colorful wooden blocks.
There was nothing particularly unusual about them as pictures of growing, playing children.
But something about them niggled at Ren.
"Oh, look!" Cilla exclaimed. She'd delved into yet another album. "All you boys dressed as skeletons for Halloween."
Seven small figures in black fabric printed with anatomically correct human bones. Between the ages of two and five, he guessed, they al
l mugged for the camera, displaying various amounts of little kid teeth.
"That must have been so fun," Cilla said.
He didn't recall anything about it. Each of them carried a round plastic pumpkin overflowing with wrapped candy. Puzzled, he continued to scrutinize the photo.
If you'd asked him, he'd have said he'd never trick-or-treated with any of the nine.
Cold trailed down his spine again, even as Cilla continued paging through the albums, pointing out more moments where the gang of little boys cavorted for the camera. They chased one another with sticks, they kicked bright soccer balls on the grass, they paddled in a kiddie pool shaped like a whale.
Ren didn't remember any of that either.
He didn't remember ever playing with the other Lemon kids.
At the base of his skull, pain began a low throb. Taking a step back from the table, he ignored the remaining albums and let Cilla peruse the collection all by herself. As she uncovered more evidence of the Lemon boys' good times, her delight was palpable. "Look how cute you were at Christmas, all of you dressed alike."
He grunted.
"And an Easter egg hunt!"
Over her shoulder, he saw an image of him and Beck, carting a full basket of candy between them, their grins gap-toothed.
"Oh, I wish we'd played like that when I was little."
Somehow Ren had forgotten that he had. Weird. Those photos were like images of someone else's childhood.
Cilla pulled the last album from the bin. "Maybe I'll be in this one," she said, glancing at him with eyes glowing with anticipation.
His gut tightened, and instinct screamed at him to yank that from her. They needed to put those photos away. Hide them. Bury them.
Oblivious to his uneasiness, Cilla continued turning pages. "What?" she murmured, as she landed on a blank page. "Oh," she said, clearly disappointed as she ruffled through the rest, all of them empty. "I guess Gwen got bored before I showed up."
Ren's heart twisted. "You didn't bore Gwen, baby."
Cilla tossed him a sad little smile, so sad that he wished he could snap his fingers and a chronicle of her childhood would appear—a happy childhood filled with Easter egg hunts and kiddie pools and a tribe of other kids to share them with.
But he couldn't do that. He couldn't give her anything beyond goodbye and the good intention to get out of her life as soon as possible.
Rising to tiptoe, she peered inside the bin. "Envelopes," she said. One was of the manila type and fat with whatever it contained. The other was letter-sized, and she offered it to Ren. "This has your name on it."
With reluctance, he took it from her hand but deferred opening it to watch Cilla dump the contents of the other onto the tabletop. Loose photos spilled onto the wooden surface.
Ren's sixth sense started screaming at him again. But when Cilla pounced upon a picture with a little crow of pleasure, he couldn't help but step close to see what she held in her hand.
"You," he said, drawing his hand over the back of her hair. It was definitely infant Cilla with her delicate features and a few candy-floss curls on the top of her head.
She didn't respond, but began sifting through the snapshots piled on the table. When she found another showing her sitting up in a tiny pink dress with a big bow tied around her topknot of curls, she went still.
"Hey," Ren said, tucking her hair behind her ear to better see her face. "What's up?"
"I've never seen myself as a baby before," she said, her voice low. When she glanced over at him there were tears in her eyes.
She was killing him. "Cilla—"
"Someone—Gwen, I guess—cared enough to want to remember these moments."
"Of course people cared," Ren said. "People care." Damn the Lemons! And damn himself for being just like them...unwilling—unable—to be anyone's anchor.
She ignored his reassurance. "I wonder why Gwen quit putting together the albums." With a fingertip, she spread the remaining photos until they were a single layer. As she studied them, Ren watched her lovely face, punishing himself with her beauty because he was going to walk away from it instead of giving her everything she needed—a man, a home, a family.
Cilla plucked a photo from the table. "Who's this?"
He gave it a cursory glance. A toddler dressed in pink. "If it's not you, Cami, I guess."
"No. This girl has dark hair, Cami's the one with the carrot top."
Ren gave the picture a second look. Pain surged into his head. His stomach churned. His knees weakened and he grabbed for a chair to keep himself upright.
A cold voice sounded in his pounding head, its stark tone making his whole body quake. You can never speak of this. You can never speak to each other about this.
Another voice sounded from far away. "Ren? Ren. Are you all right?"
He blinked, his gaze focusing on Cilla. "I'm..." His throat was so dry he had to swallow twice. "Fine. I'm fine."
"You look like you've seen a ghost."
"No!" The word spilled from his mouth. "I didn't see anything. Nothing at all."
There was a frown line between Cilla's downy brows. "Okay. But you look kind of pale."
Each passing moment lessened the pain and soothed the nausea. He took in a deep breath, blew it out, and nearly felt normal. Nevertheless...
"Let's put the photos away."
Cilla was already gathering them up. "I wonder if the rest of the nine would like to see them," she said, her voice pensive. Ren's wistful rock princess, still longing for ties that had never been...or had they? At the question, he felt a resurgence of his earlier pain. Fighting against it, his hands tightened into fists. The envelope crumpled in his grip.
At the sound, Cilla looked over. "Aren't you going to read what's inside?"
Staring down at it, Ren weighed the pros and cons. In a morning full of ups and downs, did he need to potentially surf another emotional wave? No.
But until he took care of business here at the compound, he couldn't leave for London. He couldn't leave Cilla and those stars in her eyes behind, and both were a must.
Without allowing himself time to have second thoughts, he tore into the envelope. A single folded sheet was tucked inside.
A single sentence was scratched onto the paper. He stared at the words, instantly understanding what Gwen was asking of him. Oh, sweet irony again, that she'd present her appeal to the member of rock royalty who'd left the compound first. Who'd stayed away the longest. Who had settled the farthest away.
But who now had one sweet reason to fulfill this last request.
Dear Ren: It's time to bring everybody home.
He stared down at the line, breathing deep. All right, Gwen, he thought finally, ignoring the heavy weight in his gut. He was going back to London, but before he left he'd gather a tribe for Cilla.
Ren had wrought a miracle. All but one (Beck) of the nine Lemon kids were going to be at the compound for an afternoon barbecue. So, two days after finding the inheritance box, Cilla rose from the bed she'd been sharing with Ren, leaving him to continue sleeping. In order to make the rock royalty reunion perfect, she needed to start early.
Two steps down the hall, her feet turned around of their own accord. In the bedroom doorway she ran her gaze over him as she'd done before, this time etching him into her memory. He lay on his back, the sheets in a tangle at his waist to reveal his olive-toned skin and chiseled chest. If she wasn't afraid it would wake him, she would love to smooth back the hair tumbling over his brow. She longed to press a secret kiss to his soft lips surrounded by that rough beard.
They hadn't discussed the decision to continue sleeping together (or the hot pleasure they shared before sleep). When darkness fell the past two evenings, he'd held out his hand to her and she'd put her fingers in his, allowing herself to be drawn to the bed.
She was in love with him and though self-preservation might dictate otherwise, she couldn't deny herself further intimacy.
If—when—he left, she'd have to deal with heart
break, regardless of whether or not he delivered more orgasms (which he did, in ways that were almost scarily raw but always searing with passion).They'd gone to sleep the night before, his head pillowed on her bare breasts. She'd stroked and toyed with his hair until she'd felt all rigidity leave his muscles and he'd relaxed into sleep.
His continued tension was another reason she went so readily into his arms. Ever since they'd gone through Gwen's box, during his waking hours he often lapsed into heavy silences. She'd turn to catch him staring at her, his expression troubled until she skipped over to cajole a kiss or a smile from him.
Nope, she couldn't resist keeping him close.
"Whatcha doing, baby?" Ren murmured now, his eyes still shut.
She frowned. "How do you know I'm standing here?"
His lashes lifted and he gazed on her with his sleepy, silver-green gaze. "Wishful thinking," he said. "Because you're not here." He patted her side of the bed.
Oh. Sweet.
As if he wasn't the Ren of the charged silences and the brooding moods, he sent her a lazy, easy smile. "Come on back, honey."
A woman had to have some will-power. "Can't," she said. "Things to do, baked beans to start, brownies to bake. I want everything to be just right for this afternoon."
His smile died. "Cilla. Promise me you won't expect too much. Promise me you won't expect too much from anyone."
"Sure," she said, reading between the lines. Don't expect too much from me, Ren was saying. "I get it."
And she did get it, she assured herself, as she made her way to the kitchen. She knew that maybe too much time had passed, that they'd all gone their separate, adult ways for so long that a new closeness between the Lemon kids might not be forged, despite the hope that had blossomed in her once they'd accepted the invitation. They might fail at forming those stronger, lasting connections that Gwen had always wanted for them. Still, Cilla would do her best to make this afternoon a special one.
By four in the afternoon, she was a mass of nerves.
"Cilla, baby," Ren said. "You've chased down those napkins three times now. Find a rock, put it on top of the stack."
He stood with his back to her, tending the fancy barbecue. They'd commandeered Bean Colson's house and its elaborate outdoor kitchen for their Lemon kids' reunion.
Light My Fire Page 17