by Joy Nash
She scrunched down in the seat. “Okay, so maybe I lied about Jason driving, but, Dad, there really was another car. It swerved onto our side of the road and almost hit us! We didn’t crash because we were fooling around.”
Nick kept his mouth shut. He wanted to believe her; he really did. A few months ago, before Jason appeared on the scene, he would have believed her unconditionally. But now…
No. He just didn’t trust her anymore.
Later, after Leigh had stomped off to her room and slammed the door, Nick shut himself in his bathroom and threw up in the toilet. It was always like this. Rock solid and calm in a crisis, he fell apart once the danger had passed and he was alone.
Stomach emptied, he turned on the tap with a shaking hand and splashed water on his face, still torturing himself with what-ifs. What if Leigh hadn’t been wearing her seat belt? What if she’d been thrown from the car? She could’ve broken her neck.
He leaned on the vanity, arms rigid and trembling. There’d been too many times like this—and not all in that first, horrible year of Leigh’s life. There’d been the time she’d gotten hit in the head with a softball. The day she’d gotten lost at the mall. And all the times her asthma had sent her to the emergency room, her lips turning blue.
He bowed his head. Dragged in a raw breath. His throat burned and his eyes felt like someone had rubbed sand in them. He swallowed a couple of times, trying his best to bury the fear somewhere dark and deep.
But the tears came anyway.
Chapter Eleven
Single parents can have difficulty keeping their love lives and home lives separate.
“Please tell me you didn’t sleep with him.”
“No,” Tori hedged, not quite able to meet Chelsea’s troubled gaze. “Not sleep, no.”
Chelsea shifted Lily in her arms. “Oh, Tori. You had sex with him, didn’t you?”
“No! At least, not completely. Not all the way.”
Her friend sighed and looked around the half-finished shop, as if wisdom lay boxed up with Tori’s unpacked merchandise.
“But you went too far,” Chelsea said quietly. “Farther than you should have. Tori, it hasn’t even been six months since you and Colin split up. And like you said, you hardly know Nick. Even if it turns out he doesn’t have a wife or girlfriend, do you really think you can handle another physical relationship so soon? With everything else you’ve got going on in your life?”
Tori knew her friend was referring to her medical problems, and her decision to have a baby as soon as possible.
“No,” she admitted. “Probably not. And really, he’s not even my type. There’s no way we could have a future together. So that phone call shouldn’t bother me at all.”
“Is he coming over to work today?”
“I guess. At least, he hasn’t called to cancel, and I’m pretty sure he would if he wasn’t going to show.” Nick was nothing if not dependable. It was Saturday, and he’d told her he’d arrive at two. “He should be here in an hour.”
“Then don’t you be here. Come with me and Lily to the beach. You need to put some space between you and that man.”
So that was what Tori did. She went to the beach, then changed at Chelsea’s house and went out to dinner with her and Mags, and then back to their house to watch TV. By the time she got home, it was midnight and Nick had come and gone. She looked for a note, but he hadn’t left one.
It hurt, but she tried her best to ignore the pain. For the next few nights, she managed to invent reason after reason she had to leave the house just before Nick arrived. There was a movie she wanted to see. Shopping she needed to do. She babysat Lily so Chelsea and Mags could enjoy a child-free dinner. When she did see Nick, briefly, he watched her with a wary look. She didn’t ask about the phone call, and he didn’t volunteer an explanation. They spoke only about the progress on the shop. It was as if that searing intimacy they’d shared in the kitchen had set their relationship back a giant step, rather than moving it forward.
She tried her best to think of him as just a contractor. For a few days, it almost worked. She was busy scouring thrift shops for usable shelving and cabinets. In a couple of stores, she came across some secondhand baby furniture. She stopped to check the prices.
She wanted so much to be pregnant again. She wondered what it would be like, feeling the baby kick. She’d been eleven weeks along when she’d miscarried, too early to feel any movement. She tried to imagine the sensation, but it was kind of like a virgin imagining sex. You had to experience it to understand. And she wanted to. More than anything.
But she couldn’t quite bring herself to go back to Choices.
Toward midweek, she thought she’d succeeded in distancing herself from Nick enough to handle an entire evening at home alone with him. She had work to do in the shop, and he was working in the attic now. She figured there was no reason for their paths to cross more than briefly.
She figured wrong.
She was mopping the kitchen when he cornered her. She’d been trying to banish the spackle dust left over from his sanding the new walls. It was everywhere—who’d have thought the stuff could seep under doors, around plastic tarps, into every crevice of a wood floor? For the last several days, she’d swept, wiped, mopped, and swept some more, and she still hadn’t gotten it all up.
She was mopping under the table when he entered the room. She was so intent on cleaning one elusive corner of the floor that she didn’t even hear him come in. He didn’t say anything, just sneaked up behind her and pressed his lips to her neck.
Her mop clattered to the floor. She froze. Without a word, he turned her around, backed her up against the wall, and proceeded to kiss her senseless.
Her mind blanked. Her body, however, had no problem taking over. She kissed him back. Entwined her arms around his neck. Pressed her body against him.
After a while, he broke the kiss and let her gulp some air.
She looked up at him, dazed. “What…what do you think you’re doing?”
His expression was unreadable. “I finally managed to get close enough to you to do that. Why have you been trying so hard to avoid me these past few days?”
“I wasn’t. I’m just…busy.” It was a lame lie, and they both knew it.
He didn’t call her on it. “You’ve been running around too much. Take a rest.”
She tried to wriggle out of his arms. “I don’t like resting.”
The corner of his mouth lifted. “I’ve noticed.”
She tried to wriggle away again. His arms tightened around her.
And it felt good.
Too good.
Nick’s chest was broad and strong; his embrace was solid and somehow comforting, even after the past week of awkwardness. She sighed. Another minute in his arms, and she’d melt in a puddle at his feet.
She couldn’t let that happen. She pushed at his chest, but it was like trying to move one of the boulders in the rock jetty on the beach. “Let me go. I’ve got work to do. I need to repaint my cloud mural. Set up my shelves. Unpack—”
He nuzzled beneath her ear, insinuating one finger under the scoop neckline of her peasant blouse and tugging it off her shoulder. “You know, you should think about joining a union. Then you’d get regular breaks.”
“Would I?”
“Yep.” His teeth found bare skin and gave a playful nip. “You’re definitely due for a break right now. How about we pick up where we left off Friday night?”
She couldn’t believe her ears. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
He frowned. “Why?”
She huffed. “As if you don’t know.”
He put a little distance between them, his gaze turning wary. “I don’t. I have no idea why you’ve been giving me the cold shoulder. Why don’t you tell me?”
“God. Men.” She marched past him, out of the kitchen and through the shop. She didn’t stop until she reached the porch. The new screen door hissed gently shut. How annoying. She would have given anything f
or the old door’s satisfying slam.
Nick was right behind her. “Tori, come off it. What’s the matter?”
She gripped the porch railing. “Nick, I think you’ve done enough work for today. Why don’t you leave early?”
“Jesus, Tori—”
She marched back into the house.
Nick swore and came after her. He dogged her steps all the way back to the kitchen.
She grabbed her teapot. “Please leave.”
He propped one hip against the counter. “No.”
She turned to the sink and gave the faucet a savage twist.
“You might want to go easy on that,” he said, watching her. “I just fixed it.”
She shut off the water. Sure enough, no drips.
For some reason, that got her even madder. “When did you do that?”
“A couple nights ago, while you were out.”
“Well, I didn’t ask you to.”
“I didn’t do it for you. I did it for my own sanity. The dripping was driving me nuts.”
“I told you, I can’t afford all this extra work.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
She closed her eyes and counted to ten. “I don’t take charity, Nick.”
He studied her a moment. “Are you going to tell me what’s got you so upset? Or am I supposed to guess?”
She stared at him. “How can you not know?”
“I’m a guy. We’re idiots. You have to spell it out for us.”
She drew a breath. “All right. Who called you Friday night? When we were…” She couldn’t finish.
He straightened, understanding dawning. “That’s what this is all about? That phone call?”
“It was after midnight, Nick. And it was a woman who called. I could tell.”
“Oh, for Pete’s—”
“Who was it, Nick? I could tell you were close to her. Was it…” She drew air into her lungs. “Was it your wife?”
His jaw dropped. “My what?”
Her belly cramped. “Well, was it?”
His features hardened. “That’s why you’ve been giving me the cold shoulder? That’s what you think of me? That I’m the kind of man who cheats on his wife?”
“But…that’s just the problem! I don’t know what kind of man you are. I don’t know you at all. It’s only been a couple weeks and already we’ve…” She made a vague, helpless gesture toward the kitchen counter. The site of the orgasm.
“But then you left so abruptly,” she whispered. “With no explanation at all. And all I could think was how little I really know about you.”
He was pissed. She could tell by the way he’d gone completely and utterly still. She realized it was the first time she’d seen him really angry.
His voice, when he finally spoke, was flat. “You don’t know me? Well, here’s a clue. If I was married, I wouldn’t screw a client in her kitchen.”
Ouch. That hurt. And he seemed genuinely appalled that she should think so little of him. Still…
“Who called you that night, Nick? I’m sorry, but I really need to know.”
He was silent for a moment. Then he let out a sigh, and she watched his anger drain away as if someone had pulled a plug on it. “I’m sorry, too. I know should have told you more that night.” He hesitated. “It was my daughter on the phone, Tori.”
She’d run through all kinds of possible explanations, but this was one that hadn’t been on her list at all. She was stunned.
“You have a daughter?” The image of a little girl with Nick’s dark eyes and curls popped into her mind.
“Yeah, I do. She was upset, and she knows she can call me anytime, so—”
Tori lost another chunk of her heart, right then and there. Nick was a father. She was sure he was a wonderful one.
“You don’t have to explain. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have doubted you. You gave me no reason to—”
“I’m not a player, Tori. I wouldn’t do that to you. I have a daughter, but don’t have a wife. I’ve been divorced for a while now.”
“What happened?”
“Things didn’t work out.”
Okay, so that covered a lot of territory. She met his gaze, silently urging more.
He exhaled. “The only reason Cindy and I got married was because she got pregnant. Business was in a slump, and I was working like a dog to keep afloat. She hated that. She hated clipping coupons, hated counting every penny.” He paused. “She was mad the baby ruined her figure, and she didn’t like being tied down with an infant.” He rubbed a hand over his face. “And that about covers it, I guess. I wasn’t what she really wanted.”
“She left you?”
“Yeah. For another man. A casino manager, actually. She went with him when he got transferred to Vegas and she hasn’t been back since. Not once. Not even to visit her own daughter.”
His voice was completely devoid of emotion. That told her a lot. “You loved her.”
He shrugged. “I got over it.”
She touched his forearm. “Thank you for telling me.”
His expression was strained. Wary. For all his teasing and flirting, she could tell Nick hated talking about his problems. He was a very private person.
Maybe she was starting to know him better than she’d thought.
“I don’t have a girlfriend, either,” he said.
“You must date.” Jersey women weren’t blind, after all.
He rubbed the back of his neck. “Sometimes. Not for the past year, though. It’s been busy at work. If I’m not home, I’m at the office.”
“You like your work, don’t you?”
He grimaced. “Not the paperwork. But I like building things.” He gave a rueful smile. “I started a long time ago, with sand castles.”
Tori had no trouble at all picturing six-year-old Nick fortifying his castle against the coming tide.
She smiled. “You’re good at what you do.”
“Doesn’t stop my clients from complaining,” he quipped with a grin, and the last threads of tension between them vanished as if they’d never been.
He took her hand, wove his fingers through hers.
“Come on,” he said, tugging her toward the door. “I’m hungry, and we both need a break. Let’s get out of here and find some dinner.”
“Dad hasn’t cooled off a bit,” Leigh told Jason. “He’s being a total jerk.” She scowled across the picnic table at the Lucy-the-elephant snack bar. “He even told me I couldn’t see you anymore.”
Jason swallowed a hunk of his hot dog. “It won’t last. He’ll come around.”
“I’m practically eighteen, but he thinks I’m still a baby.” She jabbed a curly fry into her ketchup.
“Leigh, chill. Nothing your dad says or does is gonna stop us from seeing each other.” He leaned across the snack bar table and kissed the corner of her mouth.
“There,” he said, smiling.
“What?”
“You had ketchup on your face. It’s gone now.”
“Oh.”
He went back to his hot dog. Leigh watched him eat. He’d worked on the beach today and still had traces of white zinc on his nose. With his red bathing suit, white muscleman tee, and sneakers with no socks, he looked yummier than her burger and fries.
And he was hers. For as long as she could keep him. Every hour she was stuck at home, Karla would be circling like a buzzard, getting closer and closer.
“He still doesn’t believe me about the other car,” she said. “He thinks you went off the road because we were fooling around.”
“We were fooling around, a little.”
“We kissed, but it had nothing to do with that other car running us off the road. My dad’s out of his mind.”
“He hates me,” Jason said, “and I don’t even know why. You’d think we’d get along. Wasn’t he a lifeguard once, too?”
“Yeah.” Leigh twisted her napkin until it tore. “I think…I think he’s afraid you’ll get me pregnant. Like him and my mom
, back when they were in high school.”
“Hey.” Jason’s fingers brushed her chin, urging her to meet his gaze. “You know I wouldn’t let that happen. When we make love, everything’s gonna be perfect.”
When we make love.
As if she’d already agreed to do it…
Jason’s dark eyes went darker, more intense. He didn’t look away. God. Whenever he looked at her like that, a hot, restless feeling made her want to squirm. The tips of her breasts tingled. Something fierce and inevitable unfurled in her stomach.
He caught her hand. Bringing it to his lips, he kissed her fingers. “You do trust me, don’t you, Leigh?”
If he’d asked her whether she loved him, she’d have answered yes right away. But trust him? That was a different thing entirely. Jason had always been one of the popular kids. Leigh hadn’t ever been—at least, not before he’d noticed her. Sure, she was his girlfriend right now, but there were a ton of other girls who wanted him. Girls who would have sex with him in an instant.
Like Karla.
A gull landed on a nearby picnic table, lifted its wings, and squawked at Leigh’s fries. Jason shooed the bird away, but the intense moment was lost. He stood and threw his trash in the garbage. Leigh’s shoulders relaxed. Thank God he wasn’t going to press her for an answer.
Yet.
She dumped her fries and what was left of her burger in the trash. “Walk me home?”
“What about your dad?”
“He’s not there. He hasn’t come in before midnight all week. He’s working late. He’s got some big job.”
Jason laced his fingers with hers. When they reached the corner, Leigh turned toward home, but Jason’s tug on her hand had her looking back. “What?”
“Isn’t that your dad’s truck?”
Leigh followed Jason’s line of vision. Yep, her Dad’s white pickup was parked halfway up a small street that opened onto Atlantic, in front of a tiny pink bungalow. There was a trash Dumpster in the driveway. “Yeah, it is.”
“Doesn’t look like a big job,” Jason commented.
“No,” Leigh said slowly. “What could he possibly be doing there?”