“Maybe my sperm is cumulative and supercharged.”
“Fucking fantastic. You need a warning label.”
“Too late.” He kept kissing her, as he peeled off her T-shirt and sports bra. His hands gently cupped her breasts. “God, you feel amazing. I’m a going to become the biggest perv with your breasts now.”
“You were pretty pervy before when they were small.”
“It’s true. You are perfect at any size.”
“How come you’re okay with all of this?” She demanded. “Twins!”
“I’m happy.” He tugged off her jeans under water and then scowled at the omnipresent booty shorts. “Really making me work for it, baby.”
“You’re the one who pulled me in the pool. You could have asked for a striptease on land. It’s easier to strip when dry.”
“I’ll keep that in mind for next time.”
“Seriously.” Her fingers dug into his shoulders as he peeled off the booty shorts and then her lacy panties. Now that she was naked, she wrapped her legs around his lean waist. “Why aren’t you freaking out? You never even wanted kids ever.”
He’d been cupping her ass with his hands and kissing his way across the hollows of her collarbone, which had always turned him on since their first night together. He stopped.
“Why would you say that?”
“Because you never wanted kids.”
“I never said that.”
“Melissa said.”
He let her go and her legs drifted down beside his.
Lock stared at her. “She said I never wanted kids to you.”
Dare nodded. She bit her bottom lip. “She said you never wanted kids ever and to not think about having an oops because you’d go ballistic.”
Lock swore.
Now Dare was soothing him, her long graceful fingers fluttered through his hair, smoothed down his face, pulled him in close to her naked body.
“I had been wondering about my period being late, but I’ve never been the most regular person, and with the pill my periods were always really light, no big deal, and we’d always used protection as well as the pill so I didn’t think it was that, but then when Melissa was so adamant and still bitter about the fact that you never wanted kids, I didn’t want to put you in another situation where you did something you didn’t want to do because you thought it was the right thing.”
Her gaze was steady. “I still don’t want you to do that, Lock. I don’t want you to feel or to be trapped into another situation that was not your choice.”
He swore. Everything falling into place. Well, maybe not everything but Dare’s avoidance made a lot more sense now. He felt like he could breathe, really breathe, since she’d taken the test.
He cupped her cheeks, kissed her lips again and again, whispered her name.
“Yeah, I didn’t want kids with Melissa. We were twenty. I was in school. My brothers were twelve and my sister eight. We hadn’t been married for a year when she started pushing for kids. She wanted to send my siblings somewhere else to live with a relative they barely knew outside Adelaide so that we could be a regular married couple. Of course, I didn’t want kids then. I was floored she’d even think like that. And then we were having so many problems. Instead of becoming an architect, I became a firefighter, which she didn’t think was prestigious and didn’t make as much money. And she was pissed that we lived too tight, that I wouldn’t spend the inheritance, that I was saving everything so I knew I could get my brothers and sister through school and uni, and I began to think that she’d pursued me and married me more for the money than for me, and then—” He broke off because the next part was hard to say, but if he wanted to have a full relationship with Dare, and he did, he had to be totally open with her. “Then I found out she was cheating on me.”
“Bitch!” Dare said, her reaction so quick and angry that Lock felt his heart warm and the sting whenever he thought about Melissa’s betrayal eased a little.
“I’m glad I was parading around only in panties when she snuck in. I always felt a bit guilty that I wasn’t nicer. Now I wish I’d been naked and reading a baby book.”
Lock laughed and pulled her close. “And that is only one of the many reasons I love you.”
“So you’re really not just pretending to be okay with a baby?”
“Babies.” He hesitated, realizing she hadn’t acknowledged the “love” comment. Still. He ran his fingers through her shock of hair. “Truthfully, I’m thrilled that we are going to have twins. I feel like the luckiest bloke in Australia.”
Dare bit her lip. “Really? Melissa seemed so... She said this thing about an oops like she had personal experience.”
She broke off when he swore.
She quickly kissed him, thumbed along his cheekbones. “Tell me,” she invited.
“I caught Melissa in our bed with someone I’d trained with. Your cousin Stephen actually,” Lock felt the wince to his bones, but it had to be said.
Dare’s “Fucker!” Eased his soul a little.
“Literally. Melissa cried and said it was all my fault and that she was so lonely and unhappy and that I was never home. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t spend a lot of time home alone with her because we had so many problems, and I was pissed about Stephen. I didn’t know if we should get a divorce. I was miserable, but I’d been raised Catholic, and my parents and grandparents had all been so happy in their marriages I felt like a failure. And while I brooded and switched bedrooms, she told me she was pregnant.
“At that point, of course, it was the worst news ever. When I demanded confirmation and a paternity test, she went ballistic. It was always drama with her and so much anger and accusations. She was exhausting,” he confessed, hating to admit that he hadn’t been able to handle his wife better, make his marriage work.
“And the baby?” Dare finally asked softly into his churning memories.
“She wasn’t pregnant. She’d just wanted to stay married. I don’t know why. Money, probably, but I gave her a huge settlement just to get clear. I’d barely been able to afford it, and worked double shifts for years just to get out from under the cost of my huge bloody ass blunder.”
He hung his head needing to finish it. Needing to have the last ghost of Melissa exorcised.
“Later I learned there were more men she cheated with.” He could barely get the words out, and he tried to suck in a proper breath.
Dare tilted his chin up forcing him to meet her guileless, aquamarine gaze, and she quickly kissed him. Then she deepened the kiss. Relief swept through Lock. He’d always felt so emasculated that his wife had turned to other men, even though he’d tried to rationalize his part in the infidelity and her personality and needs, it had made him feel like she’d cut off his balls and laughed about it.
As if reading his mind and his hurt, Dare cupped his balls, thumbs stroking circles, and he instantly hardened. Her face remained serious, thoughtful. He groaned trying to stuff down his desire because they still had things to talk about.
“I’m not there yet,” she whispered the confession. “Happy my birth control failed.”
“It could have been mine.”
She kissed his shoulder. “What happened to you with Melissa seems like someone else’s Karma. You are an amazing man, deserving so much more, and Melissa was a stupid, dishonest bitch, and if she shows up again uninvited I will personally kick her ass to the curb.”
“It’s a little scary that I have no trouble picturing that scenario.”
He’d meant to make her laugh, instead her eyes were shadowed. “I know I shut you out a lot, and it bothers you. But I’m honest,” she said. “I’d never cheat...” He broke off her sentence unable to handle the separation for another second. His kiss demanded, and Dare gave and gave sinking into his body as if they were one person.
“I love you,” he told her again, needing her to know and to trust that it was for always.
Love not just lust. And maybe if he gave—kept giving in a way
he’d been unable to with Melissa, Dare would finally be able to trust that she too could love again.
“It’s not that I don’t believe you,” she said. “I just don’t know how it’s going to work.”
“It will.” Lock was confident. They were talking. They were together. He had a future with her. “Give us a chance, Dare. I won’t let you or our kids down.”
They made love in the pool and then showered and made love again in his bed. Lock woke up around midnight. Dare wasn’t beside him and the sheets were cool. Heart pounding, he flung off the doona and stalked out to the main room of his apartment, his mind racing. He settled when he spotted Dare in the corner curled up in a chair, her face angled so she could look out the window. The moon was full above the river.
“I’m scared,” she said turning to face him.
“I know.” He came across the room, but she held out her hand.
“No, you don’t know. Not really. I didn’t tell you.”
“What is it?” He squatted down in front of the chair, taking her hands in his. They were ice cold. “Talk to me, baby. You have to talk to me.”
“I’m not quite right,” she said. “I want to be. And I try every day, but—” She broke off and tried to tug her hands out of his. He held on.
“I’m not the woman you think I am, Lock, not really.” She tugged again and this time he let her go. She smoothed some of his hair away from his forehead. “I love life. I love what I do, but I wasn’t always this brash adventurous person. I used to be really quiet and shy and introverted and into reading and writing poetry—probably really bad poetry. But I hated change, and I was a million miles tall and skinny and I had these big eyes and big lips and was called alien in school.”
She waited for him to contradict her, but he didn’t. She loved that about him. Loved it that he let her talk and express herself and didn’t interrupt.
“When I was thirteen, my dad got a job in Los Angeles. We moved to California near the beach. It was terrifying, all that water and sun and all the people and everything was new. I used to always hike around the woods of our small town Sweet Tea, Tennessee with my two older sisters—Blue, who took photos of birds, and Sutter and we’d write songs. Sutter stayed behind to finish her senior year of high school, and I felt so lost without her. The first day of high school was going to be awful. I knew it. I ran and hid and threw up but my dad tossed me out of the car in front of the school and drove off. He wanted us to be tough, and my sisters are, but I was always the weak link. Always. And as I was standing there, sick and terrified and pretending to be invisible, with everyone staring at me. Ryan walked up. He smiled at me and introduced himself and everything was fine after that.
“We were best friends from that day on. I’d never had a friend just my sisters. But he was so positive. Charming. Everyone loved him. He was kind and helpful and smart and responsible and he forced me out of my head and out of my shell. I still feel like I’m betraying him being so happy with you.”
She saw Lock swallow hard, but he didn’t look away. That had to suck having the future mother of your children confessing undying love to another man. A boy actually. A boy who’d died ten years ago. Lock really needed to dump her ass.
“I know that doesn’t make sense.”
“It does, Dare,” Lock said, his thumb caressed her cheek. “Feelings don’t have to be logical but they are real. I’m not asking for you to forget your feelings for Ryan. He was a huge part of your life. He will always live in your memory. I’m just asking for my own space so we can be a family. I want that big heart of yours to include me.”
Could it be that easy? Was Lock really going to be able to handle that? Could she handle that? Make space? She felt like she’d already made too much space for him. She’d shoved Ryan aside. She hadn’t looked at his picture since that afternoon at the bushfire. She hadn’t been able to. And she hadn’t really wanted to. He was a teen. Dead. She was alive. A woman. Going to be a mother of another man’s babies.
“There’s more,” she said softly, wanting Lock to have the truth, all of it. “There’s always more, right?” Her voice was sad. “After Ryan died, I was a mess. Not a mess like I sat around and moped or cried, but I was gone. I was so... I can’t even describe it. I was numb. Lost. Not really aware of anything. It was like being shrouded in cold mist and sometimes I’d see things or hear things but they weren’t real. My family didn’t seem real. My dad wanted to hospitalize me. He was out of his mind with worry. My mom kept me home. She kept feeding me like I was a baby. Sutter moved back for a few months. Blue left her graduate program to come home again. My grandfather came out and talked to me even though I never once said anything back. After work, my dad would drag me down to the beach. Throw me on a surfboard and tow me out to the waves where I would float around and then one day finally after my grandfather had kept telling me all I had to do was stand back up, I tried to stand up on the board. I fell, but I tried.”
She searched his eyes to try to gauge if he understood what she was telling him. The problem he was taking on if he really wanted to try to make a go of any kind of relationship with her.
“One day after months of being mostly absent from my body, I was on the deck of our small house, and I looked up and saw a hummingbird. Really saw it. The iridescent blues and greens. And that night when my dad took me down to the beach, I paddled out with him instead of him towing me or Shane or Sutter or Blue pushing me. And then I stood up on my own and caught a wave back. And I went back out again and again.”
He stood up, taking her with him. He led her back to the bed and she lay down beside him. He pulled her close, and Dare curled around his body. His heart was strong under her cheek.
“As I got stronger again, I was different. It was like I wanted to live, not just for me but for Ryan. I wanted to be a different person to honor his memory so I remade myself into a stronger, braver person. Instead of accepting my placement at UCLA and starting in the spring after my dad had deferred my acceptance, I joined the army. I loved being a medic because it was so life and death and fast and intense. And then the firefighting made me feel close to my grandfather and Aussie roots.”
“And admit it, the adrenalin is addictive.” He kissed the top of her head and his fingers brushed through her hair that was growing out.
The feeling was soothing and made her think about letting her hair grow out longer and making other changes as well.
“True.”
The silence was comfortable. “What if it happens again?” she asked. “What if I have another depression episode?” She’d read the stats. If a person had one serious episode of depression, another was more likely and pregnancy hormones wreaked havoc with the body. “I always eat well and exercise to try to keep it at bay in case it comes creeping up again, but it could happen, Lock. I could get lost and not be able to find my way back to you or take care of our children.”
That was the biggest fear, wasn’t it? That she’d be lost only her family wouldn’t be there to drag her back.
He rolled over and looked down at her. She could see the intensity of emotion on his face.
“You won’t get lost,” he said.
“You don’t know that. It’s not just willpower.”
“I know it. I would never leave you alone. You’re a fighter, Dare, and you would fight your way back like you did before, and I’m a fighter too. I would never leave you lost. You will always have me and your family.”
She wanted to believe him. She did. How did people take that leap of faith? And if she did, what would happen to Ryan’s spirit? She would be far away, busy with her new life. Happy. Loved. She’d have Lock and their sons or daughters. That still seemed so surreal to her. But what about Ryan? His spirit would be abandoned, floating lost on a sea of emptiness.
Dare’s fingers played lightly on Lock’s chest as his breathing deepened. There was still so much to sort out. What Lock wanted. He hadn’t said anything other than he was happy about the babies. Did he want
her to live here at the house or in his apartment? Where would she work? Could she stay at MFB? Would she switch back to the truck after? What about her life in Montana? Her family, Ryan’s family. What did she want? Dare needed answers to questions that she hadn’t yet asked.
She’d been independent for the past ten years. She’d had time and space to direct her life. Now she just felt out of control. And Dare needed control.
Around midnight his cellphone buzzed. He called in automatically before he’d even registered that he was awake. Warehouse fire. He wasn’t on call, but it had the potential to involve more stations so Lock quickly got up and dressed. Dare jumped out of bed too.
“I can come.”
“I know,” he said, quickly. “But you’re not on call. It’s a warehouse, and we need to get you off the truck.”
“I can help on the outside,” Dare said. “I won’t go in. I promise.”
“You’re not on call tonight. Get some rest. You’ve been under a lot of stress. You’re moving over to MFB in a week, and since you’ve taken no leave, you’re off the schedule except two days in communications. Let’s just play it safe, baby.”
Dare watched him go, knowing he was right, but not liking it.
The fire took longer to put out than anticipated. One of the buildings had exploded in a huge fireball and two other units arrived to help with mop-up. Lock met with the arson investigators, who arrived early on the scene, and showered at the station. Ordinarily, he would have stayed at the station. He thought about calling Dare, but he wanted to see her. He didn’t feel comfortable with how things had settled last night. While he felt like they’d finally been honest about their feelings about becoming parents, they hadn’t discussed their future and Lock wanted to get that nailed down.
Now.
He opened the door to his apartment and knew immediately she wasn’t there. Not out for a run or an errand but not there. Still, heart pounding, he ran back down the stairs to the main house. His mouth tasted like he’d been sucking on metal. Fear. Dare was gone. He knew it. He could feel it. Knew the house would be empty even as he entered.
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