The Sweetheart Secret

by Shirley Jump

  “Won’t your girlfriend be mad you’re in a motel room alone with me?”

  “I don’t have a girlfriend, Daisy,” he said. “I don’t know what made me say that.”

  Her brown eyes were wide and dark, as rich as good coffee, and just as unreadable. “I don’t know what made it bother me.”

  “It bothered you?”

  She smiled. “A little.”

  “I’m glad.” He reached up, and whisked the crumb away with his thumb, then let his touch linger against her sweet, tempting mouth. Her lips parted in surprise.

  “What are you doing?” she whispered.

  “I don’t know.” Then he leaned in and kissed her. His hand cupped the back of her head, tangling in the dark wall of silk, and his body surged against hers, while his other arm wrapped around her waist and pulled her even closer. She stiffened for a half second, then went liquid in his arms, opening her mouth to his. She tasted of sugar and cream, of sunshine and heat.

  The kiss deepened, her tongue dancing a familiar tango with his. His mind became a foggy blur of memories and fantasies, stored up in their years apart. She nipped gently at his bottom lip, then soothed it with a sweet and tender kiss, the combination that had always sent his pulse into overdrive, and now had him grabbing her, yanking her closer, until he forgot where she began and he ended.

  She curved into him with a familiar ease, breasts to chest, waist to waist, her legs pressing against his. He didn’t think, didn’t pause to find one of those straight lines. His hands roamed down her back, skipping over the tied straps holding the top of the swimsuit in place. The strings teased against his fingers, a thick bow waiting like a gift. He caught a loop, gave it a gentle tug, and the straps unfurled with a soft whisper. There was a hitch in Daisy’s breath, and then she stepped back, her eyes locked on his, a half smile playing on her lips. The fabric held its position for one long second, then waltzed down her skin and slid over her breasts. She stood there, a woman confident in her own skin, her own sexuality, those glorious breasts round and firm and achingly perfect.

  “Daisy. Dear God, Daisy.” Anything more intelligent couldn’t find purchase in his thoughts. He had a vague thought that he hadn’t meant to do this, to come here, to get wrapped up in her again, but just as fast, the thought left him. “You are . . .”

  “The same as I always was.” The smile curved a little higher.

  “Always incredible and always very, very beautiful.” He had a whole other list of adjectives that could be applied to Daisy, but they fell away when he lifted his palms to cup her breasts. Three months ago, they’d been in such a rush, a hurried, frenzied, too-many-years-apart demand to have each other. Now all he wanted was time. Lots of time.

  She mewed, then arched against his hands when his thumbs circled her nipples. “Colt, oh . . . we can’t, we shouldn’t . . .”

  “I know,” he said, pressing his lips to her throat, to the warm pulse ticking wildly beneath her skin. He reached around to the back of her suit, to tug down the rest, to have all of her, have her now, have her—

  No.

  He could write this ending in his sleep. What was he doing? He’d struggled for years to get what he had right now—a nice, quiet, predictable existence. The opposite of life with Daisy.

  Then there was his grandfather. His priority was Earl Harper. Grandpa was the last tie Colt had to—

  To what mattered most. What had always mattered most.

  That was what he needed to remember. Not this . . . fleeting moment of lust. Yeah, that’s all it was. Fleeting lust, gone as soon as it started.

  He stepped back. His body screamed no, his pulse raced like a horse in the final stretch. He shook his head, took another step. “I’m sorry. That got out of hand.”

  Yeah, maybe it would be easier if he put it that way, all calm and measured like the whole thing was just a momentary lapse in judgment, not a detonated rocket grenade in his solar plexus.

  Daisy was already backing away from him, and retying the top of her suit, covering her chest. He couldn’t tell if she was angry or relieved that he had stopped them.

  “It always does between us. And that’s the problem.” She whispered a curse under her breath. “I shouldn’t have gone along with it. I had no intentions of letting things get out of hand between us ever again.”

  “Neither did I.” What was wrong with him? The second he’d seen her, he’d forgotten his reason for coming. Forgotten anything existed outside of Room 112 at the Rescue Bay Motel. That alone was a sign he’d made a mistake coming here. Colt was a planner, a man who didn’t go off course.

  Except he did. Every time he was around Daisy. And when he did that, people got hurt. People he loved.

  She took a step toward him. “Then what the hell are you doing here, Colt?”

  He had come here for a reason, a reason he seemed to have forgotten somewhere between the car and the motel room and her breasts. “You, uh, offered me a deal. Quid pro quo. Remember?”

  “I’m not sleeping with you just to get a loan.”

  “I don’t want to sleep with you. Well, I do—” Damn, his mouth kept running away from his brain. “But it wouldn’t be a smart thing to do. For either of us.”

  She scoffed. “You can say that again.”

  He didn’t know whether to be hurt or relieved that she felt the same way. Either way, sleeping with Daisy would make things messier, and if there was one thing he hated, it was messy. “Mrs. Winslow said you need a job. I need an . . . assistant.”

  “You already have one. And I have no medical training.”

  “Not for my office. For my grandfather. He fired the last two aides I hired. One of them before she even crossed the threshold. The two before that quit within the first two days. He refuses to listen to me, blows off his doctor appointments, refuses to take his medications, and eats like crap. If he doesn’t start taking care of himself . . .” Colt had delivered bad news a thousand times, but never did it burn on its way up his throat like acid. “He could . . . die.”

  Concern filled her brown eyes. “Your grandfather is that sick?”

  “He’s on his way there. Early onset Parkinson’s and heart disease. Both are conditions that require a change in lifestyle and habits, and he just doesn’t want to change. It’s like he’s determined to . . .” Colt shook his head. He refused to speak that three-letter word again. “I can’t let him do that to himself.”

  “But I wouldn’t know what to do if there was a medical emergency.”

  “He just needs someone who makes sure he eats well and he takes his medication. Maybe get him out for a walk once in a while. He’s . . . difficult. And you are the only person who has made him even come close to smiling in at least two years.” Colt could still remember the Grandpa Earl who had joked and fished with his grandsons, the man Earl used to be—before.

  That was how Colt divided his life. Before. And After. But no matter how hard Colt had worked to try to restore the Before, he had failed. Maybe with Daisy around, Earl would regain the jovial spirit he’d had years ago. Would once again be the grandfather who had taken Colt and Henry fishing and camping. Who had taught them how to change a flat and shoot an arrow. It wouldn’t be the same as Before—there was no way to ever get those days back, no matter how much Colt tried—but it would be something. A chance at what he had lost fourteen years ago. That alone would be worth whatever deal Colt had to make. A deal that would keep Daisy here, disrupting his life, his sleep, his world. Maybe with enough time he’d become immune to her and his heart would stop stuttering every time she was near.

  “In exchange for helping my grandpa,” Colt said, “I’ll sign the loan papers.”

  “You . . . you will?”

  “And I’ll pay you. What I would have paid an aide anyway.”

  Confusion knitted Daisy’s brow. “Why not just have your family pitch in and help?
Your parents, your brother?”

  Colt’s jaw hardened. He wasn’t about to explain that his parents had moved to Arizona immediately After, after their lives had changed, after the family Colt once had was irrevocably broken. That his father would rather die than return to Rescue Bay. “They’re not . . . here to help.”

  He didn’t elaborate, and she didn’t press the subject. “You’re the one who got through to him the other day,” he said, before she asked any more of the questions he didn’t want to answer. “I need you, Daisy.”

  She eyed him, her chocolate eyes assessing and probing. “Why are you doing all this?”

  “Because my grandfather matters more to me than anything in the world. He’s . . .” Colt exhaled, trying to push the memories away, but they lingered, persistent, strong. The hole in Colt’s heart had never really healed, and never really would, he suspected. He ached to return to the past, to have a do-over, a second chance to right the terrible wrongs of fourteen years ago. “He’s all I have left. And I can’t . . . I can’t lose him, too.”

  “Too? What are you talking about?”

  He didn’t want to answer that question. He’d closed that chapter of his life a long time ago, and all he could do now was hold on to what he had left. “Will you help me or not?”

  She hesitated a moment longer, then nodded. “Okay. I’ll do it. Do you want me to start tomorrow morning or—”

  “Now.”

  “Now?”

  “You can’t live in this . . .” He waved at the threadbare, depressing room. “Hellhole. And I can’t leave my grandfather alone. Sometimes I get called out in the middle of the night because a patient falls ill. Sometimes my day runs longer than I expect. The only solution is someone who is always there. For this to work, I need you to . . .” He paused, questioning the wisdom of his plan. Especially in light of that kiss. But what choice did he have? He needed help, and so did she. “You need to move in.”

  “Move in?” She considered that for a moment, her gaze skipping over the room, then lingering on his face.

  His heart stilled. He held his breath, sure she was going to say no. Half of him wanted her to say no, because he wasn’t so sure he had the strength to live in the same house as Daisy and not want to carry her off to his bed.

  “Okay. I’ll move in tonight. But this”—she waved a hand over her body—“is off limits. You leave me, and my Oreos, alone, Colt Harper, and we’ll get along just fine.”

  Eleven

  Emma was ripping weeds out of the front flowerbeds when Roger’s car pulled into the driveway. She was on her hands and knees, covered in clumps of dirt and sweat. Of course. He couldn’t show up when she was wearing a killer dress and a slinky pair of heels or had her hair at least brushed, not tangled in a messy ponytail using the rubber band that had come wrapped around the Sunday paper.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  His voice was smooth and dark, like coffee on a cold morning, and even after everything that had happened and everything she had long ago given up on, his voice still slid through her with the same warmth as the day she’d met him, nine years ago. She felt that same flutter of attraction, the lilt of hope, that he was here for her, that he wanted her. Just as he had all those years ago. They’d met when he’d come up to her in a bookstore in downtown Jacksonville, holding up two cookbooks, one by Bobby Flay and one by Julia Child, and asked Emma which one was a better gift.

  For a girlfriend? she’d asked.

  He’d laughed, a rich, deep sound that seemed to come from somewhere deep inside him. My mother. I don’t have a girlfriend.

  For the first time in Emma’s life, she’d been flirtatious, spontaneous. It had been because of his eyes, wide and kind and almost ebony, and that delicious voice of his. I’ll tell you over a cup of coffee, she’d said, and that had been it. One latte later, she was in love.

  “Pulling weeds,” she said to him now and turned back to the gangly green plants trying to take over her flowers. “Getting rid of what doesn’t belong here.”

  Roger didn’t say anything for a moment. “I came by to get my golf shoes. I went to play golf with Larry this morning and realized they were still . . .”

  “In the garage. Second shelf. I . . . moved them out of your closet.” She’d moved everything out of his closet and put it in the box on the shelf because it was easier to do that than to see his things still there, mocking her.

  “Thanks.” Roger headed into the open garage, disappearing for a moment in the darkened interior, then emerged a few minutes later with a shoebox and a statue. “Why is my samurai in the garage?”

  She yanked out a plant, and too late realized it wasn’t a weed. “It didn’t match.”

  “I thought you loved this statue. Remember when we bought it? That day in—”

  “Chinatown.” She yanked another plant but her vision was starting to blur and again, she grabbed the wrong stalk. She sighed, sat back, and put her hands on her knees. She sucked back the tears, because she refused to let him see how much this bothered her, how much she still cared, damn it. “I remember us buying that samurai in a little shop from that owner who barely spoke English, and shipping it home in enough bubble wrap to hold a collection of Fabergé eggs. We said it was to remind us of the sushi and the music and the hills and everything we loved about San Francisco. I remember all of it, Roger. I remember us dating, I remember us getting married, I remember us promising forever and ever.” She turned to him. He looked good, damn him, in a pressed blue shirt and faded jeans. But looking good and sounding good didn’t make up for the fact that he had checked out of their marriage a long time ago, and then moved out when she’d tried to save them. Two months ago they’d had one night, one wonderful night when she’d thought everything was finally coming together for them, and then like turning off a switch, Roger was gone. “It’s too bad you forgot.”

  “I didn’t forget, Emma. We drifted apart.”

  “I hate when people say that. It makes it sound so soft and easy, like two boats in the water. We didn’t drift apart, Roger. You changed.” She propped a hand on her knee and looked up at him. “When is it enough? When have you made enough, worked enough, done enough? All along, you kept saying, once I sell the book, I’ll take a sabbatical, we’ll work on having a family . . .” She shook her head. “Instead, you work more. You’re gone more. Now, you’re gone entirely.”

  “Do you think I want to work all these hours? It’s about security, Emma. Knowing we have something to fall back on, if things go south.”

  “You had me to fall back on,” she said softly. “And you chose your job.”

  She went back to the plants, yanking and adding to the pile of refuse beside her, not caring what she was pulling out. “Don’t forget to get the rest of your things.”

  He hesitated for a long time, so long she thought she might run out of weeds before he left. “What happened to us, Emma?”

  She reached into the garden and wrapped her fist around a thick clump of goosegrass. “A weed grew in the flowerbeds, Roger. And nobody bothered to take it out before it killed everything that was good.”

  * * *

  Insane.

  That was the only word for what Daisy was about to do. Insane, or desperate. Or both. She parked her Toyota in Colt’s driveway on Thursday night, grabbed the two bags of her belongings from the back—trying not to think about what it meant to be over thirty and have her entire life enclosed in two beat-up suitcases—then headed up the walkway. Colt’s Honda wasn’t here, which meant he had most likely gone back to work after he’d come to the motel.

  Part of her was relieved not to see him. Part was disappointed.

  She was doing this entirely to secure funding to renovate the Hideaway Inn. This wasn’t about rekindling her relationship with Colt or giving their marriage the old college try. It was business, plain and simple. So she shouldn’t c
are one way or another if he was here, at work, or harvesting rocks on the moon.

  Uh-huh. Tell that to the stone of disappointment in her gut.

  She needed to stop indulging in some decade-old romantic fantasy of riding off into the sunset with Colt. It was as if a part of her had never gotten past that day on the steps when he’d dropped down beside her, shared her package of cookies, and made her feel, for the first time in her life, like a smart, pretty, interesting person. Like someone who mattered.

  Until he left her, alone and crying. Twice.

  Only a fool had to get three strikes before calling an out.

  She stood on the crushed shell walkway, holding one bag in each hand and debated—should she ring the bell? Or just go in?

  She was saved from that choice when Earl emerged, holding the door for her. He was tall, a couple inches taller than Colt, and filled the doorframe with the authority of a man who had earned his place in the world. In the bright sunlight, she could see the wear in his features, the toll taken by getting old and battling illness. She could also see kindness in his eyes, and laugh lines around his mouth that spoke of a good man who’d lived a good life.

  “Welcome to the bachelor pad, such as it is,” he said.

  “Home of late-night pizza and bad manners?”

  “Of course. It’s just like being in college, only with doctor’s visits and medication alarms. Old men really know how to have fun.” Earl let go of the door to reach for one of her bags, but Daisy shooed him away.

  “You know very well that I’m here to help you, not vice versa.”

  “Doesn’t mean I can’t be a gentleman.” He gave her an imaginary tip of his hat. “I’m not so old and decrepit that I can’t be chivalrous, you know.”

  “Okay, then. But you get the light one.” She handed him the smaller of the two bags, and followed him into the house. They were heading down the hall toward the bedrooms when the back door opened and Colt stepped inside.