Still holding the bottle of wine poised to her mouth, she smiled. “Where’d you learn to talk like that?”
For a second, he thought “like that” meant “like an American.”
“You said you didn’t go to college, and I doubt they teach you romantic poetry in culinary school.”
No, but they did in the Humanities classes at Cambridge. “I read a lot.”
“What do you like to read?”
He shook his head and gave the bottle another nudge. “No stone crab for you until you drink. And make a toast.”
She raised the wine and dropped her head to one side, thinking. “I would like to toast to the first man who made me…ahem…in the dirt.” Lifting it to her lips, she winked. “Guess yours will have to be in the kitchen, since we’re doing each other on our home turfs.”
He didn’t answer, watching her bring the bottle to her lips and sip. After a second, she handed it to him. “Your turn.”
“All right.” He lifted the bottle. “To…” My children, lost and waiting for me to deceive this woman just so I can get them back. “Us.”
He closed his eyes when he drank, deep and long, letting the dry Cabernet cover his tongue and, hopefully, take the sting out of his thoughts and the guilt out of his soul.
“Never been married, John?”
The wine clogged his throat and made him choke softly. “No.” He managed to cough out yet another lie. Then he lifted the bottle and drank again, this time to wash it away.
Tessa settled back on her elbows, relaxed as she studied him. “How’d you go so long without getting snagged?”
He hadn’t gone so long. He’d met Kate in college, at a pub. She’d beat him at darts and downed a pint faster than he had.
“Haven’t met the right person,” he mumbled, the wine good and stuck in his esophagus now. He gave her the bottle and busied himself by opening the box of stone crabs, presenting the array of pinkish claws. “Here we go, all pre-cracked and ready to eat with our hands. It’s like I knew we’d have a picnic.”
“Have you been looking?” she asked.
“For stone crabs?”
She gave him a playful kick with her foot. “For the right person.”
He shook his head, grateful to be honest. “I’ve been focused on me,” he admitted. “Learning how to cook, doing my thing, traveling. What about you?”
“I told you, I was married for ten years.”
“I mean since then?”
“Nah, just working.”
He had to keep the conversation off his past. “What about your parents?” he asked.
A reaction flickered over her face, impossible to read in the dim light. “What about them?”
“Tell me about them.” He handed her a stone crab. “Just peel the shell off the outside and dip it in this.” He popped the lid on the tangy mustard sauce he’d prepared.
It was her turn to pretend to be so involved with the stone crab that she didn’t answer his question. She dipped the edge of the crabmeat in the sauce and slowly put the claw in her mouth, sucking the meat and closing her eyes as the taste hit. A soft moan of delight followed, a lot like the ones he’d heard a few minutes ago.
“Mmm. Perfection,” she finally said, dabbing at the corner of her mouth. “I don’t suppose you included a napkin in your bag of fun.”
He got on his knees and leaned close to her face, giving a swift lick to her lips. “We’ll be each other’s napkins.”
She smiled, running her tongue right over the spot where his had been. “You’re determined to take me to places I don’t want to go, aren’t you?”
“Yep. Your parents?”
Looking down, she played with a piece of the shell, breaking it off to reveal more meat on the claw.
“You don’t want to talk about your parents?” he urged.
“I don’t…” She made a face, obviously struggling with something. Then she reached for the wine bottle, which he’d balanced next to his leg. “Lubrication, please.”
He gave it to her and she took a solid swig. Then another.
“Whoa. Must be some story.”
She eyed the bottle as if she was considering a third, but gave it back to him. “I don’t talk about my parents, to anyone. And I mean anyone.”
He lifted a brow and held his stone crab still without biting. “Even your close friends?”
“Nope.”
“Says the woman who hates secrets.”
She flinched, acknowledging the truth. “It’s not that I want to keep secrets from them, but I don’t like to talk about my mother.” She gave a dry laugh. “The irony is that my mother is the reason I dislike secrets and she’s the reason I made up a story about having parents.” She draped her arm over her face, covering it completely. “I can’t believe I’m going to tell you this.”
He leaned closer, holding the bottle with one hand so it didn’t spill, but using the other to lift her arm and see her face. “Why not?”
“Because it’s letting you…in.”
“I want to be in,” he admitted, a little taken aback by how much truth there was in that statement. Right that moment, looking at her with moonlight on her hair and conflict in her eyes, he wanted to be right inside that whirlwind of emotions.
Where he really had no fucking right to be.
“I don’t tell people this bit of my history. I say my parents were nice and normal but we’re not close at all. End of story.”
“Did you tell your husband?”
“Of course. He met her.”
“Did he meet your father?”
She closed her eyes. “My father is dead.”
“I’m sorry,” he said softly, stroking her face. “Were you close to him?”
Giving her head a negative shake, she brushed off his touch. “Long story. And, honestly, I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to…” She bit her lip, reaching up to touch his cheek as he’d touched hers. “Damn it, yes I do. How did you do that? In this short time? How did you get me here?”
He turned to kiss her palm. “Same way I got you to drink with no glass and eat with no napkin and have an orgasm under the stars.”
“How did you do that?”
Lowering his head, he kissed the answer. “Now that’s my secret.”
She curled a hand around his neck, nestling her fingers into his hair. “You’re a professional apple-cart upsetter,” she said with a smile. “You know that?”
“Mmmm.” He kissed her. “That I am.”
She pushed him before he could deepen the kiss. “You did it again.”
“Did what?”
“That accent. ‘That I am.’ The way you said it was…English.”
Actually, it was British, and troubling. She made him relax and forget and share far too much. “You’re imagining things, pretty Tessa.” He got the kiss accomplished, and kept it long and slow and a little bit dirty. But she pushed him back one more time.
Damn it, he didn’t want to keep making up any more lies. “Tessa, please I—”
“I want to tell you.”
He stopped the plea, looking at her. “About your parents?”
“Yes. I want to tell you,” she repeated. “I don’t want any secrets between us. None at all. I’m going to tell you everything and then…”
He would tell her nothing. “And then?”
“Then I’ll feel better about that fake wedding business.”
And he’d feel worse when he somehow made it real. But he forged on, kissing her again. “You keep letting me in and you know what’s going to happen, don’t you?”
She shook her head.
“It might not be a fake wedding.”
Her eyes popped open and he kissed her long and hard, until he was certain they were closed again.
Had he really just said what she thought he said or had the wine hit?
By the time the kiss was over, Tessa was good and confused again, and ready to share anything. Including her past.
“It’s not a huge deal,” she said, confirming she was at least a little tipsy even to say that. Her issues with her mother had always been a huge enough deal that she’d buried them and thrown away the shovel.
Until now.
“I was raised by a career-crazed single mom who put her job before her daughter and basically lied to me for almost seventeen years about who my father was.”
“How’d that happen?”
Good question. “Well, she was never home,” she said softly. “She was always, always working. Which meant she was always, always with him.”
Frowning, John shook his head. “I thought you said he was dead.”
“He is now. He wasn’t then. He was my mother’s partner.”
His expression grew more confused. “They lived together?”
“Law partner. Look, it’s complicated, which is one of the reasons I don’t tell people, even my friends.” She gnawed her lip, thinking about the vacuum of information she’d kept from Lacey, Zoe, and Joss. “I’ve always planned on telling them someday,” she added quickly. “At first, when I met them in college, the wounds were still so raw I couldn’t be straight with strangers. After a few years, after we were so close, the whole subject embarrassed me because they knew I hated secrets. But only because my mother’s secret hurt me so much.”
“Tell me the whole story.” He repositioned himself next to her, aligning his large, strong body along hers, sliding a leg over her, as if they were lying in bed together.
Taking a slow breath, she closed her eyes and leaned her cheek against his head, a few soft hairs tickling, the lingering scent of food on him and the garden in the air like a balm over her old wounds. Maybe telling him would erase the scars completely.
“My mother is a lawyer in Seattle. In her first year out of law school, she got involved with another lawyer in her firm. I was the result.”
“Why didn’t she marry him?”
“Because his wife would have hated that.”
He grunted softly.
“Yeah. So, she had me and promptly returned to work, and her affair, which lasted for another sixteen years.”
“Seriously?” He lifted his head as if he hadn’t heard that right. “He was married the entire time?”
“Oh, yes. Married, with children.”
“Did you know he was your father?”
That was probably the thing that hurt the most. “No. When I was old enough to understand, my mother told me I was an accident, the result of a one-night stand whose name she didn’t know.”
“Did that other lawyer know you were his?”
“Uncle Ken? Of course he did.” Another aspect of her screwy life that always irked. “And I knew him quite well, only I never had any idea he was my father. When I was about five, they started their own firm, Donnelly & Galloway, and it was hugely successful. My mother was the quintessential workaholic, putting in long days and”—she gave a dry smile—“lots of out-of-town trials that she and her partner handled together.”
“Who raised you?”
“Nannies when I was little, then I pretty much learned to fend for myself.” She’d been the original latch-key kid.
“How did you find out he was your dad?”
“He died and she was…” She shook her head, remembering the dark, dark days of her mother’s grief. “Devastated would be an understatement. That’s when she told me, in the throes of her grief.” Damn it, her voice cracked.
Instantly, he was up on one elbow and his grip around her waist tightened. “That must have been rough.”
“I think the hardest part was I had a father and didn’t know it. No, no, the hardest part was I shared him with another family and my mother…” The lump in her throat made it hurt to swallow, even to get air. “No, it was all hard. Including the fact that my mother was willing to settle for second best and live a lie. And, of course, she kept that secret from me and from the world. To this day, his family doesn’t know.”
For a long time, John stayed quiet and still. She waited for a reaction, a question, some sympathy. But he didn’t say a word.
“Anyway, she’s fine,” Tessa said, as if he’d asked. “Still runs the law firm, still works long hours.”
“Only now she’s alone.”
So very much alone. “We talk, but not often. Mostly by e-mail. She came to see me when Billy left me, and it only made things worse.” She snorted softly. “Like she was a good role model for marriage.”
“And the fact that she didn’t tell you about your father is why you hate secrets,” he stated, as if he’d snapped the last piece of a puzzle into place.
True enough. But was that the reason she’d shared this one? So he knew that about her? Because something about this man, this night, this…possibility…had taken down a wall she’d always kept up.
If he was going to push this to the next step, then so was she.
“That’s why…” Her voice trailed off as she struggled with the admission. “I want a child so much. I think the worst way you can end up in the world is alone. And, honestly, I’m headed right there.”
“Your mother had a child and she’s still alone.”
“I’ll do better,” she said without hesitation. “I learned from her mistakes.”
He nodded, considering that.
“Aren’t you afraid of being alone, John?” she whispered, fighting the urge to touch his face to punctuate the question.
“No. I’ve been alone for a while—no.”
So he hadn’t always been alone. “You know what I think?” She lost the battle and grazed his whiskered cheek with her fingertips.
He didn’t answer, but slowly closed his eyes.
“I think”—she turned onto her side, facing him—“that there is much more to you than brawn and good looks.”
Still, silence.
“I saw it in your eyes the very first night we met. Something deep, something real, something…pained.”
He squeezed his eyes shut as if he couldn’t take the words. Or didn’t want her to see that pain.
“Will you share?”
His only response was to angle his head down, as if he couldn’t face her, even with his eyes closed.
She’d shared her deepest and darkest. Wouldn’t he?
He finally looked into her eyes. “No.”
There was more, and he didn’t deny it. But he wouldn’t share. And, really, that told her all she needed to know about how “real” this was.
He let out a soft sigh. “I’m sorry, I can’t.”
Can’t or won’t? Either way, it hurt.
Chapter Twenty-one
This time, nothing would stop her. Tessa waited until late afternoon the next day, when it cooled down a bit, kneeling in the soil behind her tractor, threading the three-point hitch. The vines would be cut come hell or high water. Plus, a good long ride could clear the confusion of—
“Hey, Aunt Tessa! Whatchya doin’?”
Or not. With a nearly silent grunt of frustration, she turned, smiling at Ashley as the girl loped over a row of English peas, her long stride surprisingly easy and fast considering that her jeans had been sprayed on.
Tessa wouldn’t demand to know what was going on, but any opportunity to talk could only help Ashley. She hoped.
Standing straight, Tessa took a moment to watch the younger woman approach, a deep-seated love swelling inside her. Ashley hadn’t been the easiest child to raise—and still wasn’t—but Lacey, a single mother for every minute of the first fifteen years of her daughter’s life, had done a remarkable job.
“I’m harvesting sweet potatoes,” Tessa called back. “Want to help?”
Ashley made a face, then brightened. “I’ll drive the tractor!”
“Not a chance.” The soil was soft and, despite the fact that she used a fairly small gardening tractor, it was top-heavy and required a deft touch and experienced driver.
Ashley’s expression fell again. “Can we talk before you start?” she asked as she g
ot closer.
“Of course,” Tessa answered without a second’s hesitation. She stood, yanking off her oversized gardening gloves. “I always have time for you.”
Ashley gave a dry smile. “Good thing, since Mom is MIA.”
“Ash, come on. She’s running a business.”
“She’s at the pediatrician.”
Tessa drew back. “Is Elijah sick?”
“No, he needs some shot thing. I don’t know. Clay’s with her and they left me a note on the kitchen counter. Not a soul in sight.” She sounded defeated, and Tessa immediately wanted to defend her friend, in spite of the age-old resentment that rose.
“Well, you’re seventeen, Ash. It’s not like you’re coming home from kindergarten to an empty house.” Though Tessa knew that feeling, too.
Ashley leaned against the tractor, looking over Tessa’s shoulder. “You know, I’m a little sick of it. It’s annoying to always come in second. Or third.”
“Did you come all the way out here to complain about your mom?” Tessa asked gently. “’Cause if you did, I will make you dig in the dirt.”
“No, I just want to talk to somebody.” Kicking the soil with a bright-green Converse sneaker, she kept her eyes cast down. “Did you decide what to do about, you know, telling my mom about Marc?”
“I’m still thinking about it,” she said, remembering John’s sage advice to keep the lines of communication open.
“What are you thinking about?” Ashley asked.
Nothing but myself and my own crush. “Well, are you still seeing him?”
“Uh, yeah.” She choked softly on the word. “Was with him all last night.”
“All last night?”
“No, but until one in the morning. We were out on the beach.”
So she hadn’t been the only one kissing under the stars last night. Except—had Ashley stopped things the same way Tessa had? How could she find out without prying too far into Ashley’s privacy?
“You were out until one on a school night?”
Ashley let out a sharp laugh. “Aunt Tessa, I’m almost in college.”
“You’re a junior in high school,” Tessa said quickly. “What did your mom say when you got home that late?”
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