Not unless she wanted to endure a repeat performance—which she didn’t.
But it was hard to look at Cole in such a negative light. Especially when every time they interacted, she was seeing him at his best. Seeing him being so good with the twins.
The solution to that was not to interact with him, Stacy knew that. However, that was much easier said than done because, although Cole worked hard and was away from the house a good part of each day, somehow it felt to her that he was there a great deal more than he was.
* * *
ANOTHER WEEK PASSED and Stacy found that life had arranged itself into an amicable routine for her. Most important of all, although it somehow seemed to happen without her realizing it, she really had become part of a family unit.
Not since her parents died had she been with a family. Feeling so close to the McCulloughs didn’t mean that she loved her Aunt Kate any less. Aunt Kate had been a vital part of her life both before her parents had died and after.
But Kate had been only one person. What Stacy found with the McCulloughs was the same thing that she’d found when she’d first been adopted. People to depend on—who also depended on her. People who cared and whom she was slowly but surely finding herself caring about.
Try as she might to resist and talk herself out of it, it was happening. Happening because she knew that part of her needed this, needed to feel as if she was part of a thriving unit.
During that third week, Connor and Cole had moved the twins’ crib upstairs to Cassidy’s old room. Meanwhile, Stacy had been moved into Cody’s old bedroom, which was next to the twins’ new room. That way, she could get some much-needed rest at night but still be able to hear the twins if one of them cried.
The move to the new quarters did something else, as well. It made the situation begin to feel permanent, and she knew she couldn’t allow herself to get used to that, because despite appearances to the contrary, this wasn’t permanent. These babies had a mother out there somewhere. A mother who, once she came back to her senses, would rush to reclaim the twins.
And, Stacy told herself, she had a life out there, as well. A life that had nothing to do with the McCullough family.
Or with Cole.
She kept reminding herself of that, but she found that it took more and more effort on her part to hang on to that thought.
* * *
FEELING RESTLESS ONE EVENING, Stacy went outside after dinner and after the twins had been put down for—she hoped—longer naps than they’d been taking up to this point.
After checking with Rita to see if the housekeeper needed any help with the dishes—and being summarily turned down—Stacy slipped out the front door to get a little air. She had gone out alone, but it wasn’t long before she had company.
She’d expected that Connor would come out to make sure she was all right—he was like that. She was beginning to think of him as her own big brother, and since she was an only child, it was a nice feeling.
But instead, when she turned around, she found herself looking up at Cole.
Suddenly, she felt her blood rushing through her veins at a speed that would have made a flash flood envious.
Damn it, what’s wrong with you? Stacy scolded herself for being so juvenile. He’s just coming out for some air, same as you.
“Are you all right out here?” Cole asked.
Was it her imagination, or was he standing too close? It was a cold night, but she was far from that at the moment. She felt warm.
“I’m fine,” Stacy told him. “Why?”
Cole shrugged. Maybe he shouldn’t have followed her out here. He thought about turning around and going back in. But it was as if his feet were glued to the ground. He wasn’t going anywhere.
“Well,” he answered, “it’s kind of cold tonight and you went out without a jacket or anything. I thought you might have forgotten to take it with you.”
She struggled to work up some resentment over the fact that he was treating her like a child—but she couldn’t quite do it.
Still, she had to say something. She didn’t want him thinking of her as some hapless adolescent. “I think you’ve been taking care of the twins too long. I don’t need looking after.”
“Humor me,” he told her. Saying that, he produced a shawl. “It was the first thing I could find. I think it’s Rita’s,” he added.
She glanced at it. It looked silver in the moonlight. “She’s not going to be happy that you took this.”
He had a different take on Rita’s reaction. Her first concern was the health and well-being of everyone in her household.
“Don’t let that gruff exterior fool you,” he told Stacy. “She’d be the first one to tell me to get you to wrap this around your shoulders.” He continued holding it out to her.
With a sigh, she took it and threw it over her shoulders. “Okay. I put it on. Happy?” she asked, looking anything but that herself.
His mouth quirked in a grin. “Delirious,” he responded.
She thought it best if she changed the subject to something neutral, rather than go on looking up into his eyes, because she’d wind up drowning here. So she turned to look at the land stretching out to infinity beyond the ranch house.
“You know, traveling around with Aunt Kate and going to all those cities that she wanted to see, I forgot how peaceful and quiet it is out here.”
He couldn’t quite make out if she thought that was a good thing—or a bad one. “Some people would say that translates into deadly dull. A lot of people who grow up in Forever can’t wait to spread their wings and do exactly what you did—see the world.”
She hadn’t left because she wanted to see the world; she’d left because she needed to get away from him, away from the pain of being here. But she wasn’t about to get into that again. She struggled to focus her thoughts and not get caught up in Cole and the way things had once been.
Going back to what he’d just said, Stacy asked him, “Didn’t you ever want to do that?”
He looked at her for a long moment, as if weighing whether or not to answer her. Trying very hard not to get lost in eyes that had always been his undoing. Finally, he asked, “Honestly?”
“Of course.”
“No,” he told her. “I like it here. I like knowing everyone who lives near and around Forever. Like the feeling of accomplishment when I can help someone—not some anonymous stranger, but a neighbor, someone I know. And everyone’s a neighbor around here.” He smiled to himself, thinking of how that had to sound to her after her extended European vacation. “I guess that someone as sophisticated as you probably finds that kind of simplistic.”
“No,” Stacy answered. “Since we’re being honest—” She took a breath, then said, “I find that kind of heartwarming.”
“No you don’t.”
His response made her temper flare. Before she could tamp it down, she heard herself saying, “Don’t tell me what I think or don’t think. You don’t know me as well as you think you do.”
That brought up old wounds. “I found that out eight months ago.”
The moment was ruined. She wasn’t about to rehash their past. There was no point to that and it wouldn’t change anything that happened.
“I think you’re right,” she said, her voice taking a distant, formal tone. “It is cold out here. I should be getting back inside.” She grasped at the first excuse she could think of. “It’s probably time to feed or change one of the twins.”
“Connor said he’d watch them.”
“That doesn’t make it any warmer out here,” she told him, turning on her heel to go inside.
“Maybe not,” Cole agreed.
But instead of following her inside, Cole moved and blocked her path. When she looked at him in confusion, he made no verbal response, tendered no excuse. I
nstead, he took hold of her shoulders and did what she’d been aching for him to do from the first moment she’d seen him in Miss Joan’s diner.
He kissed her.
And she knew instantly that she wasn’t over him.
Damn it, Stacy thought as she laced her arms around his neck, she really wasn’t over him.
After all the hurt feelings, all the promises she’d made to herself about never opening up her heart to Cole again, she wasn’t over him. Because if she were over him, she’d be pushing Cole away from her as hard as she could. And just as he would have looked at her, startled by her display of combined anger and strength, she would have told him what he could do with himself and those lips of his.
Those lethal, lethal lips.
But instead, Stacy found herself melting against him, kissing Cole back as hard as he was kissing her. Holding on to him when she should have been doubling up her fists and punching him, instead.
But she couldn’t.
And didn’t.
Because for the first time in more than eight very long months, she felt alive again. Eight months filled with going to museums and cafés, of seeing sights that others only read about, of touring places where history had once been made. She’d done all this and none of it made her pulse rush and her head spin the way both were doing right at this moment.
Where was her strength? Her self-respect?
Where the hell was she? Stacy silently demanded of herself.
She was absolutely lost in a kiss that not only took her breath away, but blotted out her mind, whisking her off to a place that only Cole could create for her.
This wasn’t right. And yet she couldn’t make herself pull free—and a part of her was praying that what was happening right now would never end.
Chapter Twelve
Cole could feel his heart slamming against his chest, making it hard for him to breathe. His pulse was racing, just the way it used to whenever he and Stacy were together like this.
Right at this moment, all he really wanted to do was pick her up in his arms and take her to his bed so they could make love. But even in his growing ardor, he knew that wasn’t really possible. He’d left Connor upstairs with the twins in their room. His brother could come out at any moment.
And heaven only knew where Rita was. The woman had an uncanny knack of popping up at the most inopportune times, not to mention that in all likelihood Connor would hear them once they were upstairs in his room.
Much as he hated to admit it, this couldn’t go any further.
Not tonight.
And he knew that if he continued kissing Stacy like this, despite his common sense, it definitely would go further. He was only human and had just so much self-control before he cracked. Every single fiber of his being wanted to make love with her.
What makes you think she wants to make love with you? the voice in his head mocked.
It was the voice of logic, but right now logic had very little to do with the way he was feeling.
Still, at least for now, he had to back off. Better to wait than to be shot down.
So, with the greatest reluctance, Cole ended the kiss and drew back his head. He had a feeling that an apology was due her, but it wouldn’t come. All he could say was, “Lord, but I’ve missed you.”
Stacy desperately tried to steel herself. A little more than eight months ago, Cole had pushed her away. Not physically but verbally. Even so, she was the one who had disappeared, not Cole.
And she’d left with just reason, but still, the act of actually leaving Forever—and him—had been hers. So, maybe, on some level, she should be explaining why—or at least telling him she was sorry.
But all that came out of her mouth now was, “I guess maybe I missed you, too.”
Not exactly the greatest words of love to go down in the annals of history, Cole thought, but he knew that for someone like Stacy, who had a great deal of pride and trouble accepting fault, this was nothing if not a huge step forward.
Bending slightly toward her, Cole inclined his head and leaned his forehead against hers.
“I guess maybe we should go in before Rita comes out to find out what happened to us.”
Stacy didn’t really want to go inside. She wanted to stay out here, with him. But she’d be far safer going into the house.
Safer, not from Cole, but from herself.
Because she could feel herself succumbing to him, just the way she had the first time. But as glorious as that felt then, there would be consequences in the aftermath. And this time, she felt she had obligations. She couldn’t just run off. Not until the twins’ mother turned up.
“What if she doesn’t turn up?” Stacy asked suddenly as they walked into the house.
“Rita?” he asked, slightly confused. Was she talking about the housekeeper coming out to look for them?
“No.” Stacy’s tone was impatient. “The twins’ mother,” she clarified. “What if the twins’ mother doesn’t turn up and the sheriff can’t find her? What then?”
“It’s been less than a month.”
“What if she doesn’t turn up?” Stacy repeated more insistently. “What are you going to do with the twins?”
Cole paused. He knew how Stacy felt about going to social services so soon, and now that he’d had time to think about it himself, he had to admit that he agreed with her on that score. That didn’t exactly leave many options open to him.
Still, he shrugged away Stacy’s concern. “I’ll think of something. Something’ll come up.” Cole knew that sounded vague and nebulous, but it was the best he could do for now.
“And if it doesn’t?” Stacy pressed.
“It will,” Cole countered. Right now, he couldn’t promise any more than that.
Coming up to them, her hands on her hips, Rita regarded both of them critically. “If you two are going to argue like this, go back outside.”
Remembering that Cole had given her the housekeeper’s shawl, Stacy quickly removed it from her shoulders and held it out to Rita.
“I think this is yours,” she told the woman. “Thank you for letting me use it.”
Rita’s expression temporarily softened long enough for her to murmur, “Don’t mention it.”
Time for her to make her retreat, Stacy thought. “Well, I’d better go check on the twins,” she said, one hand on the banister as she was about to go upstairs.
Rita’s words stopped her in midstep. “They are asleep.”
Stacy looked at the housekeeper, curious. “How can you tell?”
“When they are awake and need something, they cry. You can hear them through the floor,” Rita told them, pointing toward the ceiling above her. “Do you hear anything through the floor?”
Stacy listened for a moment, then shook her head. “No.”
“Then they are asleep,” Rita concluded. A warning look came into her eyes. “Don’t you go in now and wake them up, you hear me?” she told Stacy. “Not after all of Mr. Connor’s hard work,” the woman added as Connor came downstairs at the tail end of her words.
“I didn’t work that hard,” Connor assured the two women.
Rather than accept the man’s protest, Rita gave him a withering look. “Do not contradict me.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Connor assured her.
He flashed the housekeeper a smile, the same one that always professed to the woman that they were on the same page and that he would never go against anything that she said.
“Good,” Rita declared. “Then we understand each other—as we always do,” she added, a slight twinkle coming into her eye. “If none of you require anything, I think I will go to bed. It has been a long day—and there is a book that I would like to finish.”
“A book?” Stacy echoed, curious. She couldn’t pi
cture the woman immersing herself in anything other than the day-to-day realities of life at the ranch. “What kind of a book?”
“The old-fashioned kind. One with pages in it,” Rita replied, her tone signaling that the conversation was going no further.
With that, the housekeeper turned on her heel and went to her quarters, which were at the rear of the house behind the kitchen.
“I didn’t know Rita liked to read,” Cole commented, turning toward his brother. “Did you?”
“No, but I suspect that there’s a lot about Rita that we don’t know,” Connor told him.
“Aren’t you the least bit curious what she reads?” Cole asked.
“Sure,” Connor freely admitted, “but Rita deserves to have her privacy. She’ll tell us if she wants us to know something,” he added. And then he turned toward Stacy. “The twins are both sleeping at the same time for a change. I suggest that maybe you should turn in, too, and take advantage of that rare situation while you can.”
“Maybe I will, at that,” Stacy decided.
She was careful to avoid looking in Cole’s direction, afraid that he might think she was talking about something other than just going to sleep.
Stacy had to admit that she’d been tempted—sorely tempted—earlier, but once she came back into the house and the full impact of what she’d been thinking of doing hit her, she knew that she couldn’t give in to Cole—or herself, for that matter.
As much as he stirred her blood, there was no reason to think that this wouldn’t all blow up on her again. A little more than eight months wasn’t exactly a huge amount of time. There was no reason to think that Cole had actually changed his thinking when it came to what might be their future together.
He’d told her that he needed his space then. He probably still did. The fact that they were both under the same roof now only gave him the opportunity to give that classic old saying a try: having his cake and eating it, too.
Well, she wasn’t a piece of cake and she wasn’t about to let him sample anything more than he just had out on the front porch. If she did, she was convinced that she’d be the one to regret it.
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