by Jamie Pope
“But you’re going to.”
“I’m not sure I am. It might be too big of a job. What if I screw up? What if the concealer I use causes the Second Lady to break out in a hideous rash? What if I burn her daughter’s hair off with a curling iron? They’ll execute me.”
“The United States does not execute people for crimes against beauty.”
“I’ll be the first!”
“You are being ridiculous.”
“I’m scared,” she admitted to him. “I wanted a chance to get out of here, a sign that I was good enough.”
“If this isn’t a sign, I don’t know what is. Stop being scared.”
“Easy for you to say. You used to jump out of planes as part of your job. I get so flustered around wealthy people. I don’t belong around them.”
“Do you feel out of place with me?”
“No. But you’re a freak just like me.”
“Rich people are freaks, too,” he whispered. “Just as fucked up as everyone else.”
“Let’s talk about you. When the hell were you going to tell me about the money? If I had known, I would have stayed the hell away from you.”
“Why do you think I didn’t tell you? Besides, I work hard for my money. What my family has doesn’t have anything to do with how I conduct my life now.”
“You’re from old money. You grew up wealthy. I bet you have a trust fund,” she accused. He had probably never worried about where his next meal was coming from. He probably never had to sneak out of a motel room in the middle of the night to dodge an angry manager. Most people hadn’t, but he had always had unimaginable wealth at his fingertips. He had been educated by the best and with the best. He probably looked around her simple little apartment that she worked so damn hard to get and thought he was slumming it.
“No self-respecting Brennan leaves home without one. But if it makes any difference to you, I live off of what I earn. I share a yacht with another family to keep costs down, and instead of eating off of solid gold plates, I settle for plain old china.”
She grinned at him. She couldn’t help it. “I find myself liking you. More than I should. Don’t tell anyone that.”
“I’m telling everyone that. In fact I’m taking out a billboard.”
“You keep your mouth shut, or I’ll have you singing soprano. I don’t want anyone knowing we’re together.”
“So now you’re admitting we’re together?” He grinned at her and gently pushed her back on the bed.
“No! That’s not what I meant. We’re hooking up. Just having sex. No strings attached. No expectations.”
He let out a short sigh and shook his head. “Okay. We’re not together.” He kissed her shoulder.
“You need to call back and tell them you’re taking that job. I’ll go with you if you want. We’ll make a weekend out of it.”
“You’re not trying to push this couple thing on me, are you?” She lost her train of thought as he continued to kiss down her shoulder. “Because I won’t have any of it. No commitments. No falling in love.”
“Okay. I’ll just continue to use your body for sex and save all the money I would have spent on you if you were my girlfriend and spend it on myself.”
“Good. That’s what I like to hear.” It was what she needed to hear from him. She had to give up on her dreams when she fled Texas, and for a long time she thought she would be stuck, but she had clawed her way up again. She had new goals, new dreams, and she was so close to reaching them she could almost taste it. Men had derailed her in the past. She was never going to let that happen again.
“Call them back right now. Tell them you’re taking the job.”
“I can’t.” She swallowed hard as his hand traveled down her side.
“Stop being chicken shit and take the job.”
“It’s not that. I have to get dressed before I call back. I can’t believe I got offered the job of a lifetime with a naked man all over me.”
“Oh, honey, didn’t you know that’s the best way to receive a job offer?”
Chapter 9
The next afternoon Tanner sat in the waiting room of the maternity ward of the hospital. Cass had gone into labor that morning. Tanner had been with Wylie when he got the call. The man lost all color in his skin and stood there for a moment looking like he was scared witless before he snapped into marine mode, barked out orders to them, and then rushed off the job site like a bat out of hell to get to his wife.
It was Tanner’s job to go get Mansi. She was Nova’s grandmother, but she had become Wylie’s family too since he moved here to be near his sister. The old woman moved faster than he had ever seen her when he told her the news.
“Hurry up, Stretch,” she said as she rushed out the door. “If we get there fast, maybe they’ll let us name her.”
Cass was still in labor when they arrived and after an hour of waiting for news of the baby’s arrival, Mansi went to another floor to see her friend who was also in the hospital. When Tanner took the job on the island, he had no idea that he would be here, sitting in a hospital, waiting for someone else’s baby to be born. He sure as hell never thought he would be excited about it. Life had changed so much since he’d left the military.
At first he never thought he would get used to the silence. The inaction. The safety.
He never thought he would have close friends he would see every day. People who would be such a big part of his life. In the army, people got deployed, people got stationed all around the world. People died. Tanner got used to saying good-bye and not expecting to see people ever again. He had gotten numb to the deaths after a while. He had lived enough life for three men, but today he was about to experience something new. Being there when a life was being brought into the world, being able to say hello to someone for the first time instead of good-bye for the last time was refreshing.
“You look like you are deep in thought.” He heard Nova’s voice and looked up to see her standing just a few feet away from him. He hadn’t expected to see her so soon. He had spent all day with her up until the moment Teo came home. He hadn’t wanted to leave then. He liked her kid. He liked eating dinner with them. He liked hearing about Teo’s day. She liked being with him, too. He could tell. It was more than just sex, but she was still keeping him at arm’s length. “I’m not sure that a brain the size of yours can handle all that thinking. It might explode.”
Her refusal to get closer made him think back to all the little things she had said to him; they were little snapshots of the life she had before she came here. Someone had hurt her when she was a kid. Her husband didn’t want to be close to her after he’d been intimate with her. Life with her mother had been a wreck.
She hadn’t been loved properly. She didn’t know how to be loved properly. Not that he loved her. He liked her. A whole hell of a lot. But he didn’t love her.
Somebody should.
Tanner wasn’t sure he was even capable of loving someone that way. His childhood had been a wreck, too. In a much different way, but there was something missing inside of him, that thing that made people want to connect to each other. A scarred single mother was the worst possible woman to get involved with. He should find some sweet girl with no baggage and no demons.
And she should probably find a man who had always been stable at love and knew which path he wanted his life to take.
He stared at her for a moment. Her long thick hair was bone straight and cascading down her back. She was dressed in all black again. Tight black skinny jeans. Tight black short-sleeved shirt. Sky-high leopard printed heels. His damn heart beat a little harder. His nerves began to tingle.
Yes, they should find other more normal people to be with, but those people wouldn’t be able to light the spark that burned inside each of them. If there was one thing that he and Nova had in common, it was that neither one of them ever took the safe route.
“Big life events make you think about shit, you know?”
She sat down next to him. He cursed t
he armchair he was in because he couldn’t feel her pressed against him. “I know. Teo asked me if I was going to have another baby. He says he wants a sibling.”
That made Tanner’s brows go up. “Do you want another baby?”
“I was firmly no on the subject. I was too much of a mess to have one kid much less two. But if somehow I had another kid, I wouldn’t be upset. I took one look at Teo and my heart kind of exploded. It’s the only way I can describe it. I made something so perfect with so much potential and it scared the hell out of me because I knew I could screw him up. It’s crazy to know that you have that kind of power.”
His hand had somehow merged with hers. “I think Teo would be a good big brother.”
“I told him that maybe we could get a pet. A cat to be precise.”
“Ah, that’s how the cat conversation started.”
“My lease says no pets, but I’m wondering if my landlord will let me. I don’t want to promise Teo something I can’t deliver. I hate letting him down.”
“What time does he get out of school? He’s going to want to see the baby.”
“Three-fifteen. I can’t bring him here tonight. There’s some kind of icky kid germs going around the school and he came home yesterday all snotty and congested. I have to dip him in disinfectant first.”
“He’s going to be disappointed.”
“No kidding. He told me he didn’t want us to move because we had to be here to meet the baby.”
“You told him you were moving?”
He was there when she got the job offer, and there when she got the phone call of a lifetime, but thinking that she was actually moving away bothered the hell out of him. Things had just started up between him. He didn’t want to think about the ending so soon. It shook him a little more than he wanted to admit.
“No. He’s a smarty-pants and he overhears conversations. If we do move, I definitely have to get him a pet. It will take away a little of the misery I’ll be inflicting when I tear him away from his uncle.”
“Then don’t take him away from his uncle.” Don’t take yourself away from me.
“You know I can’t improve his life and my life for that matter if I stay here on the Vineyard. My kid is going places. I’m going to give him the opportunities I never had.”
He knew that. It was absolutely true that she could make a bigger mark on the world if she was out in it instead of on this tiny island. She had to go. She had to lead the life she wanted for herself.
They were in search of different things. He had come to this island in search of a quieter, simpler existence, and she wanted to leave it to find bigger and better things, to lead a more exciting life.
“I don’t like the thought of you being somewhere away from your family.”
“I’ve relied so much on them these past few years. But things are changing. Mansi is getting older. Wylie and Cass are starting a family. I’m going to have to do things on my own again. I’ve spent so much time trying to get myself together that I left my kid with other people. If we move, then he’ll have only me. I can get back some of the time I missed with him.” She shook her head. “I need to shut up. Why don’t you tell me to shut up, Brennan?”
She might be able to give her son more, but Tanner knew that it wouldn’t make Teo happy. Tanner had everything a kid could every dream of and it didn’t make him happy at all. What he craved was a real family. Teo had that, even if it wasn’t the definition of perfect.
“Give me a kiss, Nova.”
“No!”
“Yes.” He leaned over and placed his lips on her ear. “I think about your mouth more times a day than one normal man should. I’ve started to think that every woman should wear red lipstick because all lips should be that color. But then I realize how stupid that would be because all other lips pale in comparison to yours. They can’t look like yours. They can’t taste like yours. They can’t feel like yours. And the knowledge of that makes me want to feel them against mine even more.”
“I’m not going to kiss you,” she said softly after a long minute. “Because if I do, I’ll want more than a kiss from you and frankly we don’t have time for what that entails.”
He smiled and leaned in to kiss her cheek. His lips lingered there, taking in her scent, which was surprisingly sweet for the bold woman.
“Excuse me,” they heard and looked up to see Wylie standing there with a tiny pink-wrapped bundle in his arms.
Nova jumped up. Tears came to her eyes immediately. “She’s here. I’m an auntie.”
Wylie grinned at them. Tanner had never seen a smile so wide. “Come meet Sunny.”
“Sunny!” Nova approached. “How incredibly perfect.”
“You like it?” Wylie asked her. “Cass and I went back and forth over names. We wanted something with meaning, but then we saw her and it just popped out of Cass’s mouth.”
“I’m so happy for you, Wylie.”
“Stop crying and hold your niece.”
“You trust me with her?”
Wylie handed his new daughter over. “I’m sure you have had more practice with this than I do. Cass asked to see you. Why don’t you take her back to her mama?”
“I love you, Wylie James.” She kissed his cheek.
“I love you, too. Just make sure you don’t trip walking down the hallway in those monster heels.”
“Do you think I’m some kind of amateur?” Nova disappeared down the hallway with an extra swish in her step.
“Congratulations, man!” Tanner walked over to him and slapped him on the back. “She’s gorgeous. Looks just like her mother.”
“Thank you. She’s about the most perfect thing on the planet. Cass and I are so happy.”
“Mansi went to visit her friend on another floor. Do you want me to try and find her?”
“I’m sure she’ll be here soon. I have a question for you, though. What the hell is going on between you and my sister?”
Tanner knew this was going to come up eventually. He couldn’t stay away from Nova, and he didn’t want to; he just didn’t know how to tell his friend. “I’m not sure what’s going on with us. Can you ask Nova and then tell me what she says?”
Wylie didn’t look impressed with his answer.
“I want to be with her. There is no other way to say it. She drives me absolutely insane and half the time she makes me want to bash my head into a wall, but I want to be with her.”
“She’s been hurt. I think it goes without saying, but if you do anything to my sister to cause her pain, I’ll murder you and have your body spread around this island in so many pieces that they’ll never be able to put you back together.”
“Understood.” Tanner nodded.
“Good.” He smiled. “Let’s go see my kid.”
* * *
Nova pulled into the parking lot of the coffee shop where her appointment was taking place and sat in her car, unable to make herself get out. Elijah had just given her this car. He actually bought it. It stunk of cigarettes and had already broken down twice this week, but it was hers. A little piece of freedom he had gifted her because he knew she was growing increasingly unhappy. He had actually cleared the apartment of all his friends and sat down to tell her that he didn’t want her to leave him.
She wondered why. He used her body for sex. He liked her cooking, but that was it. He didn’t spend any time with her. It’s not like it used to be when they were dating. She was sure that any woman could step in and take her place. She was sure that he would be happier with a quieter woman. One who didn’t question him, or yell at his friends for being too rowdy.
She was positive that he would be much better off with a woman who didn’t mind that he had started using hard drugs. She hadn’t seen him do it yet. She had banned drugs in the house and surprisingly enough, he and his friends had listened, but that didn’t mean Elijah wasn’t using. He would come home too amped up, fast talking, almost manic. She told him that she would leave him. He told her that he would follow her, tha
t he would find her and make wherever she went a living hell. She believed him. He was insanely jealous. He broke the nose of one his best friends for looking at her behind. He smashed the windows of another man’s car after he learned that the man kept asking her out. She couldn’t imagine the kind of destruction he would bring to Aquinnah, to the quiet town that Nova had longed to go to. When she got in the car today, she imagined taking off for there, leaving Florida and the life she’d foolishly locked herself into behind.
But her car would never make it. She only had twenty bucks on her and she was serious about making this appointment she had set up.
A knock on her window jolted her from her thoughts. She looked up to see and young couple standing there. She had recognized their faces from the pictures they had e-mailed her.
“Nova? Is that you?”
“Yes,” she said, her voice cracking.
“I didn’t mean to scare you. I’m Chris and this is Kelly. We’re excited to meet you.”
Nova opened the door and got out. She couldn’t say she was excited to see them. In fact she had been dreading this day since she first arranged this meeting. “It’s nice to meet you.”
“You’re very beautiful,” Kelly said. “Even more so than your picture. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone who compares.”
“Thank you.” Nova shut her eyes and leaned against the car. “I know we’re supposed to go inside, but do you mind if I stand here for a few moments. I’m feeling a little queasy.” It wasn’t a lie. She was feeling queasy and light-headed and disgusted with herself. She had known the moment that she had gotten pregnant that she couldn’t bring a baby into this world. For a moment she thought about ending the pregnancy, but it was only for a moment. She knew that decision would haunt her. She had gone to the library and researched adoption. There were thousands of couples who couldn’t conceive, looking for a baby to love. They had money and stability. They could raise her baby to be happy and healthy.
Her unborn child would have the shot she never did, a life that would help the baby grow into something special. But being there, seeing the hope on these people’s faces, had the exact opposite effect on her than she had expected. She was feeling selfish. She wanted to see her baby’s face. She wanted to watch her infant grow up. She wanted someone she could love unconditionally.