by Dana Nussio
“Yeah. I was so proud of Chase.”
He nodded. “He was proud of himself, too.”
“You were so good with him. Do you work with kids a lot?”
“When I get the chance.”
“Is it a calling?”
“More like atonement.”
She drew her eyebrows together. “Now you have me curious.”
“Chase is the little guy on the team, right?” He waited for her nod before he continued. “Even without his additional physical challenges, he would have been smaller than the boys his age.”
“Maybe,” she said, still not getting the connection.
“I can relate to Chase because I used to be that little guy,” he explained. “The runt. The kid in the front row of the school photo.”
“You? No way.”
“I didn’t start growing until a lot later. So I always had something to prove. I was this little thug, always shaking my fist at kids twice my size.”
“I can’t remember ever looking up to anyone.” She smiled over the memory of her gangly self in the mirror. It was even worse before she’d finally started filling in. “Or ever being called the runt. Or even petite.”
“Why do you do that?”
She blinked, startled by his question. “What do you mean?”
“Why do you always make comments about your height? So you’re tall. Big deal.”
Natalie crossed her arms, but Shane only grinned at her.
“I mean, you’re tall, but not an Amazon or anything.” He took a swig of his beer and set it aside. “You just worry too much about it. You’re pretty perfect—I mean you’re proportionate, and all of that.”
At his surprising words, her heart raced. She couldn’t look at him. Pretty perfect? Either he’d misspoken or she’d misheard.
“You encourage your players to be comfortable with who they are. Maybe you should take your own advice.”
She rubbed her finger along the condensation on her glass instead of looking at him. “I’m just sensitive about it. Like you were about being small.” She shrugged then finally met his gaze. “But you grew.”
“Apparently, so did you.” One side of his mouth lifted.
“That’s what happens when your father was a pro basketball player who measured closer to seven feet than six.”
“So you took after your dad. Did you start playing because you wanted to be just like him?”
Just like him. Now there was a laugh. She didn’t want to be anything like him. “I might have wanted to if I’d known more than the basics about him.”
“You didn’t know your dad?”
“My mom didn’t have much to say whenever I asked about my father,” she clarified. “Oh, I knew the obvious things like that he was African-American. My mom could get sunburned under a beach umbrella with SPF 100 on, and I could stay in the sun all day and never turn pink. But that was all I knew.
“Mom always said it was just the two of us.” She shrugged. “Same old story. Young woman gets pregnant, and the guy bails.”
Shane’s jaw tightened. “Except this guy played pro basketball and could easily have paid child support.”
“Mom always said she never told the guy about the baby. That she chose to raise me alone. She’s an accountant, so we got along fine.”
“I take it there’s more to the story.”
“Let’s just say that I found out a few years ago that Mom stretched the truth. A lot. I didn’t even know until then that he played basketball, let alone that he was some big college star.”
“I thought you said he turned pro?”
She nodded. “Apparently, just after he learned about me—just one of the lies—he took off across the globe to play in a European league. I guess he got traded a few times, spent a lot of time on the bench and then hung up his basketball shoes.”
“Basketball. Great reason for a parent to desert his kid.”
Natalie had to look at him twice to convince herself that the anger in his voice was real. His jaw was tight, and his hands gripped the edge of the table. On her behalf. She couldn’t believe it. No one had ever been that mad at her father for her sake. Certainly not her mother. Elaine hadn’t even bothered to tell her the truth about him. And not Natalie’s college boyfriend, Paul, either. After the accident, and after she’d discovered the truth about her father, Paul had run away as fast as his skinny legs could carry him. Just like her father. Make that birth father. Genetic-material donor. He didn’t deserve a term of endearment like dad.
“How’d you find out the truth?”
Natalie blinked as his question drew her back to the conversation. Did Shane realize just how far she’d traveled in her thoughts? “The truth?”
He lifted an eyebrow over her stalling as the wheels in her thoughts spun fast enough to make her dizzy. How much should she tell him? Strange how part of her was tempted to share the whole story. She couldn’t do that. She couldn’t put that much trust in another human being. Trust was dangerous. It gave people the chance to hurt her. She’d been hurt enough.
“Mom’s journal,” she managed finally, still wondering whether she should have answered at all. “In it, she shared all of the pain she’d shielded me from knowing about.”
From knowing her, she’d almost added.
“Did he claim the child wasn’t his?” he grumbled.
She nodded because it was easier than saying that part of the story aloud. The truth that she wasn’t wanted. “At first, Mom wasn’t all that upset when she found out she was pregnant. They were an established couple. She was more excited as she wrote about the life she assumed they would have together. But then she told him. I’ve never read such gut-wrenching pain.”
She had to pause as recalling it reminded her of how those words had sliced through her the first time she’d read them.
“He said he refused to give up on his dream just because she couldn’t take her pills correctly. Or, worse, that she’d tricked him.”
“Your dad is a real ass.” He paused before asking, “Do you think that was possible? That she planned it?”
She shook her head. “That doesn’t sound like her.”
“So, his dream was a lackluster pro career?”
“Maybe not the dream, but it turned out that way.” She had to smile at his hard tone. It was nice having someone in her corner. No one had been there in a long time.
“What did your mom do after he left?”
“Well, from her journal, I would say she pulled herself together. And fast. She was suddenly determined. Driven.”
In fact, her mother’s writing had changed so dramatically that Natalie had wondered if someone else had authored the entries. The romantic girl had been replaced by an unflappable woman who hadn’t seemed to feel anything at all, even before the accident.
“She was responsible for two people instead of just herself,” he said. “She couldn’t afford to have any romantic notions.”
She nodded. “But I became her whole life. Do you know how hard it is to be anyone’s whole life?”
“I can imagine.”
Could he? She’d been staring at her hands, but she looked up at him now, searching his eyes for...what? A connection?
“Were you ever curious about...him?”
“Not really,” she said automatically. Not anymore would have been a more appropriate answer, but she wasn’t ready to go there yet. Maybe never. She didn’t want to hurt like that ever again.
“You didn’t want to know anything?”
“There were a few things, I guess,” she said, deciding to share at least part of the truth. “I was curious about my African-American heritage. There’s this whole side of me I knew nothing about. It would have been nice to know my paternal grandparents, since Mom’s parents ar
e both gone. Did I have brothers and sisters? Did I have a big family with aunts, uncles and cousins who had potlucks every Sunday afternoon? Did they always live near Lansing, or was my father recruited away from somewhere else to play at Michigan State?”
“So you weren’t curious at all then.”
He grinned at her when she looked at him.
“It’s more than not knowing about one parent,” she said with a shrug. “I’m black and I’m white, but I was raised one hundred percent white. My poor mom didn’t even know how to take care of my hair, so she just combed it until it was a mass of frizz and pulled it back in a ponytail.”
She’d expected him to at least chuckle over the picture she’d painted, but his expression was serious.
“Did you face any racial prejudice growing up?”
“That’s the ironic thing. I experienced it a few times from my white classmates though I had no idea how to even be black. Then the black students weren’t exactly laying out the welcome mat for me, either.”
“So you have spent your life wondering where to fit in.”
“Well, I don’t know if it was as bleak as all that,” she managed, but her chuckle sounded forced.
She couldn’t believe it. This man who barely knew her, one she had no business getting to know, had just spoken her truth more succinctly than she ever could have. She gripped her hands around her juice glass. When she’d tried to talk to Paul about her questions regarding her heritage, he’d told her she should just leave it alone. As if that part of her didn’t exist. Tonight she’d shared a little with Shane, and he only wanted to know more.
“I bet you’re a good interrogator,” she said, stalling. “You probably get criminals to confess to crimes they didn’t commit.”
He simply tilted his head.
Natalie shifted under his even stare. Why did he always seem to see too much? Wasn’t all that she’d told him tonight enough? Did he really expect her to confess pieces she wasn’t ready to admit to herself?
Shane drained his beer and spun the can between his hands.
Natalie found herself trying to fill the silence. “You probably think I’m a cliché. Raised by a single mother. Absentee father. Inferiority complex.” She cleared her throat. “In short, a mess.”
And she hadn’t told him the half of it. That she was tempted to tell him the whole truth, to fillet herself and let the whole thing spill out, scared her to death.
“You’re not a mess.”
She fumbled with her glass. “I wasn’t fishing for compliments.”
“If you were, you didn’t catch a very good one.”
“You know what I mean.” Was it humiliation that made her face burn or her pitiful need to believe his words?
“It’s also the truth. You’re doing well...considering.” He cleared his throat. “I mean with all...you...uh...found out.”
She quirked an eyebrow. His words were odd. She’d probably made him uncomfortable.
“But in the end, I don’t think it matters what kind of family you come from. Even a so-called perfect one like mine.”
“What do you mean?”
“I had a picture-perfect family with parents who were involved in every committee possible to make the community a better place for my brother and me. Dad even coached my Little League team. And yet I got into all kinds of trouble.”
“What kind of trouble?”
“Long story.”
“But wait—”
She would have argued more, but he raised his hand and gave her a pleading look.
“Another time, okay?”
She considered and then nodded. Sharing about the shooting had probably been enough for him for one day.
“Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that we’re all just people. We’re all capable of good choices and terrible ones. We can be kind or hateful. We can make decisions that can destroy our own lives and take others down with us. We can’t figure out our own problems, much less make another person understand us.”
He stopped as if deciding whether to say more, and then he did. “Sometimes we’re just grateful that someone is willing to try.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
NATALIE COULD ONLY stare into Shane’s soulful eyes, the room around them so still that it amplified the uneven rhythm of her breaths. And his. He’d spoken about a person making an effort to understand someone else. Hadn’t he done just that for her tonight? He’d done his best to figure her out when no one had bothered to even try in such a long time. Strange how she’d never felt more understood.
It could have been surprise, or maybe just the want of a connection she hadn’t realized she craved, but something powerful held her in place as the seconds ticked on.
Shane’s gaze was unwavering. Steady. A contradiction to the riotous feelings battling inside her, some calling for a poorly plotted charge and others a hasty retreat. She should listen to the one telling her to run for safety. That would be the reasonable decision, and if anything in these past eight years, she’d learned to be rational.
But then, as Shane stared at her lips, heat built somewhere deep in her chest, sliding up her neck. Her gaze moved in the opposite direction, following from his eyes along the straight line of his nose to that softly curved mouth she’d noticed the first time she’d met him. But instead of smiling in that sexy way that liquefied her bones, Shane appeared serious now. Those amazing lips were slightly parted, as if he was either asking or answering a question.
She had time for neither.
When exactly she’d leaned closer to him, she wasn’t sure. One moment she was tracing with her gaze the fine line that separated the pale skin of his face from the salmon color of his mouth, and the next she was brushing hers over his. He stilled, his lips feeling like those of a marble statue, perfectly formed yet icily impenetrable.
She froze right along with him as her swell of courage collapsed upon itself. What had she done? Had she misread his signals? Had there been any signals, or had she only wished for them? But just as she started to pull away, a hand came to rest lightly on her shoulder. Seconds ticked by in an interminable pause as their lips lingered only a breath apart.
Shane bridged the distance between them with a shift of his head. Far from her timid advance, he swooped in with an urgency that made her gasp. She might have even swooned if she wasn’t almost certain that they were already seated.
She could have predicted that Shane Warner would know his way around a kiss. He’d probably been writing manuals about making the right moves since he was in his early twenties. But nothing could have prepared her for the strength, the finesse, the pure sensuality of his simple touch. Two days’ worth of stubble blazed a trail of its own, abrading her sensitive skin as his lips moved from her mouth and over her jawline to her neck, but she didn’t care if it left a mark.
Was he that amazing with everyone, or was it just with her? Everyone. She knew she should cling to the notion that there were probably others, but it rolled away on a wave of sensation.
With lips alone, he’d managed to touch every inch of her as effectively as any skilled lover’s hands ever could. Her skin came alive, tingling with the need for touch. But then he pressed his tongue to the seam of her lips, and she opened for him, sighing as a curl of pleasure unfurled within her.
She knew she should think, should take a breath and bat away the fog that draped over her clarity. Only she didn’t want to see clearly. She didn’t want to breathe. Or think.
Or wait.
As his hand slipped from her shoulder to tangle in her hair, Natalie scooched to the edge of her chair to move deeper into his kiss. But that only made her more restless. It just wasn’t close enough. She needed to touch him, to feel that amazing chest pressed against hers and allow him to enfold her in the cocoon of his arms.
So
when his other hand curved over her rib cage, his fingertips accidentally skimming the lower curve of her breast and then tugging her forward, Natalie didn’t even pretend to resist. She carefully shifted around the table leg and slipped over the arm of his chair. She was kissing him again before she’d even settled with her legs draped across his lap. His tongue was in her mouth again, and she welcomed it with a hunger she’d never experienced before.
She didn’t care that they were cramped in that chair. All she could think about was this man and this moment. She wanted—no, needed—more. From the heavy pressure of him, obvious and enticing beneath her bottom, she was thrilled to realize that she wasn’t the only one who wanted.
Was that her voice, moaning in protest when he slid his mouth away from hers? Where would he kiss her next? Her neck? Ear? Breasts? Oh, let it be there. She strained against the flimsy material of her bra at the possibility.
Only he didn’t kiss her again. Anywhere.
Her mind still swirling with delicious thoughts, Natalie slowly opened her eyes. Shane had leaned back as far as his chair would allow and stared at her with wide eyes. Her face flooded with heat as quickly as it fled from her nether regions. What had she done? How had she ended up here, and how was she supposed to politely withdraw with a shred of her dignity intact?
She looked away from him and shifted back carefully. The last thing she needed to do now was land on the floor. The moves that had placed her on his lap might have lacked finesse, but they were downright smooth when compared to her jerky motions now.
He cleared his throat. “Sorry about that.”
Sorry? Was he kidding? He’d said it like he’d hadn’t just kissed the breath out of her and given her the ideal to which she would compare any make-out session from this point on. He’d said it like he’d just bumped into her boobs in the hallway instead of setting them on fire.
“I mean...oh, man...that was a mistake.”
“What—” Somehow she managed to stop before saying more. Yeah, that was a mistake, all right. Only she was the one who’d made it.