“The furniture and walls are all going to be white,” Wendy said, “so I figured I could go a little crazy with the rest of it. And I’ve already hired an artist to come paint a border of the same flowers on the opposite wall.” Then she laughed. “When I was little, my room was princess pink. Every square inch of it. It was like waking up every morning inside a glob of cotton candy.”
Christina smiled, the image mercifully blotting out the memories. She seriously doubted if Wendy could even fathom what some of Christina’s sleeping arrangements had been like. “Were your sisters’ rooms pink, too?”
“Heavens, no. Emily’s was all yellows and creams, and Jordana’s was pale blue. Of course, they might have been pink at the start, but that didn’t last long. Any more than it did with me,” she said with another giggle. “I marched into my parents’ room on my tenth birthday and announced I wanted a red room. Or else.”
“Oh, dear. How did that go over?”
“Oh, I got my red room, all right. Except then I started having nightmares about vampires attacking me in my sleep. So I ended up with a nice, soft periwinkle.”
“Sounds perfect.” Christina skootched back to rest her back against the wall, itching—literally—to remove the cast. “And…your brothers? What were their rooms like?”
“Typical boy, I suppose, I never paid much attention. And I was still really small when Mike and Scott went off to college and Mom turned both of their rooms into guestrooms. Very Atlanta traditional, dark wood furniture, striped wallpaper, floral bedspreads.” She made a face. “Tasteful but boring. Blake’s, though—I remember his, since I spent so much time in it. Über high tech. A fish tank large enough to hold a shark. Okay, a small shark…hey. You okay?”
Jerking up her head, Christina nodded, not about to let on that listening to Wendy talk about the family had taken her back to those hours she’d spent trapped with Scott after the tornado. Despite their wealth, in many ways the Fortunes sounded like your average American family, some of the bonds between various members stronger than others. Still and all, what they had—and she didn’t mean their money—was far more than she could’ve even imagined—
“I’m fine, I just wonder where Scott is.” At Wendy’s raised brows, she smiled. “You must be very ready for me to go home by now.”
“Don’t kid yourself. This is the most fun I’ve had in ages. I cannot wait until this little peanut is outside and I can walk more than three feet without getting winded. And drive. Nobody tells you when you’re short that if you adjust the steering wheel so it doesn’t stab you in the stomach, your feet won’t reach the pedals!”
But the young woman’s can’t-hold-it-in happiness certainly tempered the moaning and groaning. Yes, more than a few vestiges of her privileged upbringing still clung to her—the baby girl’s nursery was not being done on the cheap, nor were the silver bangles that softly clinked every time Wendy gestured with her left hand, Christina didn’t imagine—but all the trappings couldn’t hide the real sweetheart underneath. Wendy, too, was “good folks,” as Enid liked to say.
Then Wendy said, “You mind if I ask you something?” and a faint prickle of alarm tracked up Christina’s spine.
“Depends on what that is, I suppose.”
Rubbing her belly, Wendy glanced out the window to the backyard beyond, then returned her gaze to Christina, a tiny wrinkle etched between her dark brows. “Did something…happen between you and my brother when y’all were trapped together after the tornado?”
Christina’s face flamed. “What—what do you mean?”
“I’m not sure. That’s why I’m asking. And I know the question sounds totally out of line…” She huffed out a sigh, then a little laugh. “I know it’s not possible, but I swear sometimes it feels as if the baby’s pushed everything inside me all the way up into my brain! But if you’d known Scott before…”
She wagged her head. “Everything he did, even when he dated, it all felt so…controlled. Calculated. I never once saw him do something on the spur of the moment. I mean, okay, so all my brothers and sisters live, eat and breathe that business. Just like Daddy. But I always got the feeling Scott was like that because he thought he had to be. Not because that’s who he really was.”
Christina picked up a fabric swatch again, smoothing it over her thigh. “And now you think something’s changed?”
“Oh, I know something’s changed. There’s a light in his eyes I don’t ever remember seeing before. Only thing is, I can’t quite tell what’s put it there.”
Lifting her eyes—and running smack dab into Wendy’s pointed look—Christina nervously laughed. “And you think it’s me?”
A devilish grin spread across the young woman’s cheeks. “Can’t think of another reason why he’s still here. Blake says Daddy’s about to have five fits that Scott’s not home yet.”
And you’re young and in love and running on pregnancy hormones, Christina thought, not unkindly. Because maybe only a few years separated them, but what Christina lacked in privilege and wealth she more than made up for in experience—a treasury that easily trumped the younger woman’s a hundredfold.
“Even if that was true,” she said carefully, “no way would I come between him and his father. Because I’ve been there before, and it wasn’t pretty.”
“Oooh…” Wendy’s brows lifted. “I’m guessing there’s a story behind that comment.”
There was—a long, sorry one—but Christina had already said more than she should have. Through the open window she heard the SUV pull into the driveway. Praise be.
“Nothing worth resurrecting,” she said lightly, hauling herself to her feet and grabbing her crutches at the same time Wendy got to hers and pulled Christina into a hug.
“Listen, I can be a good friend,” she said, her expression earnest. “I also know how to keep my mouth shut. What I’m saying is…you need somebody to talk to, I’m your girl. But I swear on my life not one word would get back to Scott if you don’t want it to.”
Oddly, Christina believed her. Or at least she believed Wendy’s good intentions. But she’d been that route before, too. So all she did was hug her back and thank her for the offer, just in time to look up and catch Scott’s bewildered expression from the nursery doorway.
“What was that all about?” Scott asked mildly after they were on the road again. Christina frowned over at him. “I heard you thank her for her offer.”
“Oh.” She faced front again. “To…give me some of her recipes.”
“You are one lousy liar, you know that?”
She was quiet for a moment, then said, “Not to be rude or anything, but it was girl stuff, okay? No boys allowed. So…did you have a successful afternoon?”
The gentle, but firm, rebuke hit its mark. Although considering he wasn’t ready to come clean to her yet, either, this time he could hardly fault the woman for playing her cards close to her chest.
“Not entirely, no. But there’s always tomorrow.” And yet, when she didn’t say anything—in other words, didn’t play the game the way he wanted it played—it mildly ticked him off. “Aren’t you even remotely curious?”
“Not even remotely,” she said. Staring really hard out the window.
That’s my girl, he thought, grinning. “As I said. Lousy liar.”
She scratched the side of her nose, then tightly folded her arms across her ribs. “Bein’ curious and thinking you have the right to pry into somebody’s private business are two different things. Especially when that business has nothing to do with you.”
“What makes you think it doesn’t?”
The car bumped over some debris in the road. “In that case, I really don’t want to know.”
Scott chuckled. “You are one strange bird, you know that?”
“Never said I wasn’t…why are we tu
rning off here?”
“Don’t you recognize it?”
“Well, yeah, it’s where the old barn used to be, but—”
“Then you probably know there’s a pretty little stand of pines by a pond on the other side of the property. It’s a beautiful day—I thought you might like to go sit by it for a bit.”
She looked like a little girl being teased by somebody holding a favorite doll out of her reach. “Whoever owns the land might not take kindly to us trespassing, you know.”
“The owner’s in New Mexico. Has been for twenty years. I doubt she’d care.”
“How do you know all this?”
“I make it my business to know these things. What is it they say about nature abhorring a vacuum? So does my brain.”
“You do realize how scary that sounds?”
“Does it scare you?”
After a moment’s apparent contemplation, she shook her head. “Not especially.”
This time he didn’t call her on the fib. Especially since, this time, he wasn’t amused. Odd, how all his adult life he’d worked the intimidation factor, figuring if a little fear got him where he wanted to go, it was all well and good. Even in his personal life—the minute he felt a woman was getting too comfortable, felt his control of the relationship slipping, she was history. But it was different with Christina. He was different. The idea of her being afraid of him, even a little, made him sick to his stomach. Sure, he still wanted what he wanted, but what he wanted…
Was for her to want him, too. Every bit as badly as he did her.
On her terms. Not his.
He drove the SUV to the end of the dirt road, Gumbo bursting from the backseat the instant Scott opened the door to bound across the field like the jackrabbits he probably hoped to find. Then, an old blanket purloined from Marcos’s car in hand, he helped Christina out. Her eyes grazed his for a moment, questioning, before she turned away. Shielding her eyes from the sun, she scanned the landscape, bright gold under a clear, cloudless sky. And let out a long, slow breath.
“Now this is what you call pure Texas,” she said. “Standing here, with all this sky and sun…it’s like being reborn.”
He couldn’t have said it better himself. Smiling, Scott let his gaze wander further west, over the sweet seven hundred or so acres nobody but he—and his Realtor—knew he had an eye on. And until it was a done deal nobody else was going to know he’d finally made the decision that would change everything.
“Come on, sit,” he said, shaking out the blanket and smoothing it over a bed of needles underneath one of the pines. Christina sat, folding up one leg to hug her knee while Scott stretched out beside her on his side, propped up on one elbow. In the distance, Gumbo let out a happy bark, bounced into view as if to say I’m okay, Mom, see? then bounced off again.
“So you gonna tell me the real reason why you brought me here?”
“Just thought you’d like it. That’s all.”
“Apparently I’m not the only one who’s a lousy liar.”
Scott plucked at a pine needle that had blown onto the blanket, twirling it in his fingers. “If I told you how much I’d like to kiss you right now,” he said, “would you be a, flattered, b, annoyed or c, ambivalent?”
“What is this, one of those questions on OkCupid?”
He looked up at her. “You’ve been on a dating site?” To his immense delight, she blushed.
“Never you mind about that—”
“Answer the question.”
“What’s annoying is that I can’t simply get up and stomp off right now.”
He grinned. “Yeah. I know.”
On a groan, she dropped her head onto her folded-up hands, then lifted it again, staring off into the distance. “Scott…you don’t want to kiss me.”
“I sure don’t want to kiss Gumbo.”
She laughed softly, then said, “No, I mean…you want to kiss who you think I am. Or who you think I could be. Take your pick.”
“And you think my brain is scary?” He reached up to curl his fingers around her hand. “Honey, I—”
“Now, see?” she said, pulling her hand from his. “You can stop right there with your ‘honeys’ and ‘sweethearts’ and ‘trust mes.’ Because they’re nothing more than words a man uses to make a woman think things she has no business thinking.”
Scott felt his forehead pinch. “And what is it you’re so sure you have no business thinking?”
“Not important,” she said, even as Scott thought, Says who? “But…but your sister said she thinks everything that happened with the tornado and the aftermath, it all messed with your head, somehow. That you’re acting different from what she’s used to. No, wait, let me finish.”
After a little rustling around she stretched out next to him, mirroring his position, eyes locked in his. Her hair had worked loose, tumbling in soft waves around her shoulder. “I’m not saying it didn’t. In fact, I have no business saying otherwise, seeing as it messed with my head, too. Big-time. But if anything it made me see things more clearly. Made me more sure of what I wanted. What I needed. But you…”
Sighing, she rolled onto her back, her hands resting on her stomach. “From everything your sister tells me, it sounds like you’ve been focused so hard on your work all these years that you lost sight of you somewhere along the way.”
She angled her head to look at him. “Then this crazy storm comes along and shakes you up. Throws everything out of whack. But the thing about storms is, eventually they end. And when they do, you look around and realize…everything’s messed up. Not new. Not better. Just…messed up. Maybe I’m different from every other woman you’ve ever known, but that doesn’t mean our getting stuck together was some kind of sign. All of this…it’s a novelty to you, Scott. I’m a novelty. Or a project, I haven’t quite decided which yet. So I meant what I said, about you not really wanting to kiss me. Because you’re only seeing who you want to see. Not who I really am.”
Scott looked at her for a long time, then said, “You could have just said ‘no.’”
She blinked. “About what?”
“This,” he said, then closed the few inches between them and lowered his mouth to hers.
Chapter Eight
There were, Christina knew, hot kisses and mediocre kisses and kisses so boring you found yourself contemplating what was on TV that night. But never, not even during that period of her life she thought about as little as possible, had she ever experienced a kiss like this.
Oh, my, yes, she thought, as Scott wrapped his hand around her neck, possessive and gentle and warm, angling their mouths to go deeper, this kiss was in a category all its own.
This kiss was Ferris wheels and warm summer breezes and spinning around and around with your arms held wide until you fell over, dizzy and laughing. Bubbles of delight scurried along her skin, through her blood, making things tingle and curl and sweetly ache and her brain feel like it’d exploded into a thousand sparkly bits underneath her skull.
Scott broke the kiss and eased away, his fingers toying with the hair at her temple, the lopsided grin on his face making her want to smack him. And/or kiss him all over again.
And she thought she’d been in trouble before.
“I never did answer your question, you know,” she said, her heart whomping so hard against her sternum it almost hurt.
“I took a gamble,” he said, still grinning. “And I think I can safely say that first kiss? Wasn’t a fluke. Or terror-driven.”
Apparently worn out from his exploits, Gumbo trotted up and wedged himself between them, exhilarated and panting. Scott let go of Christina to scratch the dog’s head.
“The kiss was okay,” she said, sitting up again. Frantically searching for her composure. If not her common sense.
“Like hell.” Scott sat up as well, cupping her jaw to bring her face back around to his. Thinking he was gonna kiss her again—and not at all sure how she felt about that—Christina sucked in a breath. But all he did was stroke his thumb across her cheek, over and over, and stare into her eyes like he all but knew she was hiding something in there.
She looked away. “Don’t.”
Because she was. All kinds of things she didn’t talk about, ever, because they hurt too much. Made her feel weak and vulnerable and dumb all over again. Or worse, would make him feel sorrier for her than she suspected he already did. And that was one card she refused to play.
He dropped his hand. “I have no intention of hurting you, Christina.”
“I’m sure you don’t. Doesn’t mean you won’t.” She grabbed her crutches. “Can we leave now? My foot’s beginning to give me fits.”
Another lie. And he probably knew it. But she desperately needed to get back to reality, to what she knew. What she could control.
Nodding, Scott helped her up.
Neither said a single word the whole way back to her place. Until, when they turned into the complex’s parking lot, Christina spotted her mother’s bright red Ford Fiesta parked next to her new car. And, on her porch, the woman herself, all decked out in a too-low top, too-tight pants and too-big hair.
“Your mother?” Scott said beside her as he pulled up.
“None else. Although why she’s here I couldn’t tell you.”
“To make sure you’re okay?”
Christina reached around to grab her crutches from the back seat, briefly meeting Scott’s eyes. “After two weeks? The saying ‘day late and a dollar short’ comes to mind.”
She waited until he’d come around to help her out. Pride was one thing. Making herself look like a blamed fool was something else again. But before he offered her his hand, he leaned close enough to say, “You don’t have to face this alone. Not if you don’t want to.”
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