His own way of keeping the scary monsters at bay.
The air moved, signaling a presence scented like Poppy. He glanced toward the door as she came to stand in its frame, looking hardly more than a child herself in flannel pajama pants and a tank top.
He shoved away the sense that he was caught doing something he shouldn’t. “Don’t get the wrong idea,” he warned her in a soft voice. Because it was all wrong, how his unconscious had sent him racing to the child, how easily he’d fallen back into the paternal role and how...how much he missed it. But he wasn’t able to love again so it was very wrong, very, very wrong to feed anyone’s dreams, including his own. With Tate gone, so was hope.
* * *
“ALL RIGHT.” POPPY’S eyebrows rose. “What’s the right idea?”
Extricating himself from the boy’s hold, he climbed off the mattress and stalked toward Poppy. He towed her into the hall, then shut the bedroom door. “You should have stayed in my bed.” It was true, wasn’t it? If she didn’t insist on sneaking away from him at night, she would have been the one to go to her son. “He was having a bad dream. I heard it through the intercom.”
She grimaced. “I’m sorry. You could have woken me—”
“It’s all right,” he said, aware he sounded like a graceless ass.
“He’s my responsibility,” she said stiffly. “So forgive me.”
“Christ, Poppy.” Though he’d not asked to play the part of nightmare-eradicator, her apologies still pissed him off. “Relax. It’s not a crime to let someone else step in once or twice.”
Her eyebrows rose. “Someone like you who’s going to be out of my life in just a few days?”
Now she was really trying to make him angry. “Forget all about me,” he said, stalking away.
“I’m trying to,” she called to him even as he redoubled his pace.
Damn woman couldn’t stop herself from underscoring how this interlude was nearing its end. How afterward he’d become just some fleeting memory that she’d most likely regret. Damn him for being so irked by the fact. He’d tried addressing his conscience by the candelit dinner, tried to ensure she knew he didn’t consider her just some kind of convenient fuck buddy, when what he really thought about her was...what? That he couldn’t put his finger on it only made him more nuts.
So he took himself to the pool, hoping to calm his inexplicable anger. As he stroked, his emotions felt as churned up as the water. Fucking March. Good thing he was supremely aware of how the month was his personal disaster or he might be concerned how one fresh-faced little mama was messing with his mind.
A ninety-minute swim did nothing to improve his mood. He exited the pool house, intending to lock himself in his office for the rest of the day. As he walked across the grass, he felt the sun’s warmth on his shoulders. There were boats on the lake, powerboats, party boats and sailboats slicing across the blue. The obnoxious roar of the exhaust pipes of a Hallett boat drew close and he glanced around. There was no reason for someone to enter his bay. Over his shoulder, he saw the pointy nose of the racing-style vessel nearing his dock. He squinted against the sunlight, saw it wasn’t Shay or anyone else he recognized.
It was a man. A paparazzo?
Temper shooting high, he ran toward the lake and onto his dock. The boat floated on the water six feet from one of the tie-up cleats. Ryan grabbed the lifeguard’s shepherd’s crook clipped to a metal lockbox, extending it like a weapon to keep the stranger from getting any closer.
“Who’re you?” He ran an assessing gaze over the pilot of the boat. There was no camera in evidence, so it was unlikely he was a celebrity journalist. Photos or video were the stock-in-trade in that business. They never bothered with interviews as the basis for print articles—those they just fabricated from thin air. “What the hell do you want?”
The stranger was lean, with thinning dark blond hair above a handsome, almost pretty, face. He bared perfect teeth but the smile didn’t reach his eyes. “I’m Denny Howell.”
Denny...Poppy’s ex? “I repeat. What do you want?”
The man made a gesture toward the dock. “Can I tie up?”
“No.” Ryan didn’t relax his guard. “You can tell me why you’re here. Uninvited.” Unless Poppy...? The thought added more kindling to the fire of his temper.
“I saw photographers at your front gate. Our conversation needs privacy, so I borrowed a boat.” He tried another of those fake smiles. “Did Poppy explain the situation?”
That she’d invited this smarmy jerk to Ryan’s home? But she wouldn’t have done that, he thought, commanding himself to chill. “What situation is that?”
“I knew it.” Denny shook his head. “That girl...”
That woman. Sexy, strong, delicate, independent, maddening, prickly. So pliant once he had her in his arms. Ryan shoved all that out of his head and narrowed his eyes. “Why don’t you tell me what you think I should know.”
A breeze put a little chop in the water and Denny had to grab the wheel to maintain his balance. “Well...uh...see, I bet the boy is kind of important to Poppy.”
Ryan stared. “You think?”
“And, uh, I have this bit of a problem.” Denny hesitated.
“Jesus,” Ryan said. “I don’t have all day. Spit it out.”
“I owe some people. Fifty large.”
Fifty large? Ryan stifled an impulse to laugh. Did the dude think he was starring in a gangster movie? “How does this involve Poppy?”
“It involves the kid,” Denny said. “I gotta get the money from somewhere. I think if I brought him to my parents, showed him around a little, they might give me some cash for his upkeep.”
Ryan wished he’d let the guy onto the dock, just so he could knock him off of it now. “Cash that would go to your...creditors, I presume, not to the mother who has cared for him on her own these last five years.”
Denny frowned. “Haven’t you been listening? I owe fifty large.”
“Jesus.” Ryan shook his head. “Poppy’s not going to let you take her son so you can parade him around like that.” He turned to walk away.
“She won’t have a choice,” Denny called out. “I’m the father. I can get a lawyer. Maybe me or my parents want custody.”
Ryan turned, something in the other man’s tone sending ice slithering down his spine. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
“You can make all that go away, though,” Denny said. “I told Poppy she has a choice.”
More cold cascaded down Ryan’s back. “You discussed this proposal with her?”
“Yesterday afternoon,” Denny said. “I laid it out. I’ll leave her and the kid alone. I promise I won’t pursue custody or visitation. You just get me the fifty, and I’ll go far, far away and stay there.”
* * *
POPPY WAS RUNNING the vacuum in the family room while Mason played with his Mickey doll, dancing him over Grimm, who lay sleeping in a yellow patch of sunshine streaming through a window. The nightmare seemed to have left no lingering effects...except in her conscience. Not only had she slept through the moment when Mason needed her, but she’d also been unkind to Ryan after he’d been there for her son.
The visual of that moment was permanently branded on her brain, she supposed. She’d come awake and some sixth sense had sent her to the other room. There had been bare-chested Ryan Hamilton in all his former movie-star glory, with her sleeping son glued to his side. Duke on the job.
Doing a job on her. The sight had made the heart she’d given over to him—the heart he’d broken the night before by offering to merely hold her—tear into even more pieces. So she’d struck out at him, upset at having to absorb yet more pain.
With only a few days left in their stay, though, she regretted lashing out. He was going back to his real life then, and wouldn’t it be so much be
tter if the remainder of their time together could be spent in harmony? Then he might remember this March differently.
A shadow crossed the glowing jewel tones of the rug, and she looked up. Ryan, in jeans, sweatshirt and running shoes, was pacing toward her, his face an expressionless mask. Still, her nerves jittered. Was something up?
He pointed toward the vacuum, clearly signaling she should turn it off. Swallowing, she held up a finger. Okay, she was stalling.
Instead of waiting her out, Ryan crossed the room and yanked the cord from the wall. The sudden quiet hurt her ears. “Poppy, I told you I don’t expect you to work here like this.”
“Unless you want to knit a sweater from Grimm’s hair, it’s got to be sucked up on a regular basis.”
At the sound of his name, the dog came out of his morning stupor, jumping to his feet and shaking so that his jingling collar drew Ryan’s attention. Looking on the dog and the boy on the floor beside him, Ryan scraped his hand over his bristled jaw. “Kid, I need another one of your maps.”
Mickey was paused midcartwheel. “You do?”
“Yeah.” Ryan rubbed again at his beard. “Why don’t you go into my office. There’s plain paper by the copier. Pens in the holder on the desk. Work there.”
“Okay.” Mason clambered to his feet, his gaze shifting to her. “Mommy?”
“That’s fine. Don’t touch anything but the blank paper and the pens, okay?”
“I won’t.”
“And kid,” Ryan called after his retreating figure, “make sure you don’t leave the house.”
Poppy frowned. “He won’t. Is there a problem?”
Now Ryan palmed the back of his neck. “Poppy...”
She recalled she wanted to put them back on a friendly footing. “Wait, let me go first. I need to apologize for earlier. My dad was a great monster chaser and I’m sure Mason appreciated your assistance. I was just a little...taken aback.”
“That makes two of us,” he muttered. Then he blew out a long breath. “Look...is there something you want to tell me?”
“Something like what?”
“Okay. I’m trying to give you a chance here.” He inhaled and exhaled again, as if trying to get a hold of himself. “Something about yesterday?”
He couldn’t know about yesterday. In case her expression might give something of it away, she grabbed the microfiber rag she had tucked in her back pocket and began dusting the fireplace mantel.
“What the hell are you doing now?” he asked.
“This is dusting. You do it with a rag, or in this case, a special cloth designed to capture the dirt.”
“That snotty tone of yours isn’t improving my mood.”
Her nerves weren’t just jittering, they were waving now, operating like semaphore, signaling danger ahead. “If you have something to say, just say it.”
“Damn it, Poppy, that should be my line.”
Ignoring him, she continued running the cloth along the mantelpiece, then focused her attention on the deeply carved surround. When he snatched the microfiber cloth from her hand she gasped.
He threw the rag into the fireplace. “Denny paid me a visit.”
Her head jerked toward Ryan. She took a quick step back. “Wha—?”
“Met him down at the dock.”
She felt her palms go damp. “He shouldn’t have come here.”
Ryan shook his head. “The man doesn’t seem to have boundaries.”
Shame rolled up from her toes and she stared at them. “Just forget about him.”
“Not going to be so easy, given that I’m part of his plan to meet his gambling obligations.”
Poppy’s gaze lifted.
“Yeah,” Ryan confirmed. “He’s got terrible luck. First losing you, and now that money.”
Unsure how to respond now, she busied herself by gathering the abandoned electrical cord. Winding it in figure eights around the pegs at the back of the vacuum gave her something to do, even as she felt the intensity of Ryan’s gaze on her.
“When were you going to bring up his blackmail?” he finally asked, his voice tight.
“I wasn’t planning on discussing it with you at all.”
“Poppy—”
“In a few days you’ll go back to L.A. and your not-March life and he and everyone else in the world will realize they were mistaken. There’s nothing between us. What is it that they say? There’s no here, here, so he’ll give up on getting something from you.”
“And then what? Denny’s still going to want money. Were you planning on asking Brett to use his muscle to shut him down?”
“Sure.” She realized she’d said it too fast.
“Shit, Poppy.”
Guilt burned her face. “There’s nothing for you to worry about.”
“You know what?” he asked, sounding exasperated. “You are a knucklehead.”
Instead of listening to this, she decided to move along. But he caught her arm before she’d managed three steps and shook her a little. “Poppy, you’re going to need help with this situation. You can’t survive on your optimism and your ridiculous independent streak alone.”
“You mean my knuckleheadedness,” she said bitterly.
“In a word—yes.”
She wrenched her arm from his hold. “Well, I don’t need you.”
“You need someone, Poppy.”
Whirling, she pinned him with her stare. “Who do you need? You seem to think you’re just fine living with no one besides your ghosts and your grief.”
His expression went grim. “We’re not talking about me.”
“Maybe we should be,” she muttered.
He ignored that. “I’m not facing a desperate ex who appears to have some wacky ideas about how he can fill his wallet. You should have talked to someone about this situation yesterday....” His eyes narrowed. “No, before that. He contacted you a while ago, didn’t he?”
She shrugged a shoulder. “He expressed an interest in getting to know his child. I was considering it.” She’d been taken in, she saw now.
“Without discussing that with anyone? Not Mac or Shay?”
“I don’t need other people resolving my problems for me.”
“Christ, Poppy!” He ran his hand through his hair. “You make me nuts. How hard is it to be honest? But you don’t do that. You don’t tell your family about your troubles. You don’t tell them what you want for the cabins—”
“They know.”
“No, they don’t. You keep saying you want them to stay out of your way, let you proceed with your plans for the place, but what you really wish is for it to be a family project. For you to be a family focused on making that legacy something good again. By all of you. For all of you.”
She stared at him, disturbed by how clearly he could read her. “It’s none of your business.”
“You’re right, the cabins may not be. But by God, when a man is threatening your child, threatening something that will hurt you, it sure as hell is my business.”
“What? Why?”
“Because...” He forked his hand through his hair again, making it stand up in a very un-Ryan Hamilton manner. “Because...”
Poppy waved a hand. “Never mind. I got it. It’s your hero-complex at work. You’ve beaten yourself up for four years for not saving your son and his mother from the fire. Even though you had nothing to do with it. Even though you had no way of anticipating it or of preventing it. Even though no one in the world could ever lay the blame for that at your door. It wasn’t your fault, Ryan.”
“Don’t bring Tate into this.” He sounded furious.
“Why not? Because I’m right?”
“Poppy—”
“Let go of your guilt,” she said. “Let go of your rigid sense of r
esponsibility. For Tate and his mother, and now for Mason and me. The first are gone, may they rest in peace. For me and mine...we’ll find our way without you.”
He shook his head. “You’ve taken this to the wrong place. I’m talking about being honest, about asking for help when you need it. About asking for what you want.”
Looking at his beautiful face and perplexed expression, all the emotion drained out of her. “Ryan. I’m sorry, but you don’t know what the heck you’re talking about.”
“Meaning?” he said, gazing at her with wary eyes.
“Sometimes people don’t want to hear the truth. They really don’t want all that up-front honesty you’re talking about.” Weariness made her reckless, and she tilted her head. “Shall I prove it to you?”
Now it was his turn to step back. “If this is about Tate again...”
“Absolutely about Tate again. But I won’t repeat all that. You heard my thoughts on him the first time. This is about me.”
At his next step, his heel hit the couch and he dropped onto the cushions, his eyes never leaving her face. “You?”
Everything her family accused her of was true. She was the soft-hearted screwup, the feather-brained knucklehead, a sometimes foolish woman with no sense of self-preservation. Because she was going to tell Ryan Hamilton the truth. And even though she was a cock-eyed optimist, too, she didn’t imagine it was going to change the outcome of anything.
But Poppy was Poppy, and accepting that, she looked on him with pity and felt it for herself, as well. “Yeah. Me. I’m pretty certain you don’t want me to be honest about my feelings. But I’ve fallen in love with you, Ryan. And I’m pretty certain you don’t want me to ask for what I want from you.... Which would be an April, by the way. And a May. Maybe a whole summer and another season after that. For me, and for you, and for Mason I might even want a forever.”
He put a hand over his eyes. “No,” he said. “I can’t... I won’t... There’s no more love inside me. I’ve got nothing to give back.”
“Maybe. Maybe not.” She thought of him throwing sticks for Grimm, rolling markers to Mason, taking her in his arms. Let me just hold you, Poppy. Freesias at play on her skin. A sleeping Mason on his chest. Silly conversations with his brother about krill.
Take My Breath Away Page 26