by Helen Lacey
She scowled. “I did intend to tell him.”
“Of course you did. But, I needed to tell Trevor myself, man to man,” he said, and pushed off the jamb. “If I overstepped the mark, I’m sorry.”
It was a little presumptuous, she thought. “How did he take the news?”
Scott shrugged. “He was surprised at first,” Scott told her quietly as he made his way around the countertop. “And he asked me about my intentions.” He smiled. “But I think he understands. He’s a smart kid. A good kid. You’ve done a great job raising him, Evie. If I’m half the parent you are, I’ll be a happy man.”
Evie fought the heat behind her eyes and pressed her hips against the bench. “Sometimes I forget he won’t be a child for much longer. He’s growing up. So, thank you for explaining it to him.” He chuckled and Evie frowned. “What’s funny?”
“Nothing,” Scott replied as he moved into the kitchen. “But I think we both just agreed on how to parent a teenager.”
It surprised her. It also surprised her that suddenly she didn’t actually mind Scott running interference with Trevor. “I guess we’ll have plenty of practice soon enough.”
Scott was in front of her now. He reached out and placed his hand across her belly. “Do you mind?” he asked softly.
Evie shook her head. “Of course not.”
“Can you feel the baby moving?”
She smiled. “Not quite moving,” she replied. “More like fluttering, I suppose you’d call it. Another month or so and it will be a different story. When I was pregnant with Trevor I felt like I had a soccer player inside me.”
Scott raised his brows. “Do girls play soccer?”
“Are you hoping for a girl?”
He rubbed her stomach gently. “I thought you might prefer it.”
Evie felt the heat from his touch rise over her skin like a bloom. “I’m happy either way.”
His touch changed slightly, shifting to something that reminded her of how it was to be made love to by this man. But she didn’t pull away. His hand trailed around her hip and up her side, lingering on the underswell of her breast.
“Your breasts are bigger,” he said, and moved closer.
Evie colored, good sense tugging at her wits. Only, it was useless to imagine she could pull away. “Of course.”
“There’s no ‘of course’ for me,” he said, and traced the back of his hand across one nipple. “This is all new...your body changing...the incredible way you look even more beautiful, if that were possible.”
“I’m not beautiful.”
“You are to me.”
Evie swayed. “Don’t do this,” she pleaded. “Don’t use my attraction for you against me.”
His expression narrowed. “Evie,” he said softly as he grasped her chin. “Sometimes you say the damnedest things.”
“I don’t want to confuse the lines here, Scott. I want to stay clear about what I need to do.”
He released her abruptly. “You mean by refusing to marry me?”
Evie pushed herself along the countertop. “You know why I won’t.”
“I do?” He stepped back. “That’s news to me. I don’t get you at all, Evie. We have this unbelievable opportunity to be a part of something great together. But you won’t even consider meeting me halfway.”
She bristled and snapped out the first thing she thought of. “You’re too young for me.”
“That’s an old song,” he said. “But if it bothers you so much I’ll dye my hair gray and spend loads of time in the sun so I wrinkle up by the time I’m forty.”
“And I’ll be nearly fifty,” she reminded him. “You’ll still be gorgeous and I’ll be a middle-age, menopausal wreck. You’ll have younger women chasing after you and I won’t have a hope of competing with them.”
“That’s ridiculous. And I don’t believe for one minute that you’re that insecure.”
“I am,” she announced, wishing she was a better actress. She wrapped her arms around her chest and expelled a heavy breath. “This is such a disaster.”
He quickly took three steps back and shook his head as he glanced at her belly. “I’m gonna forget you said that.” He rubbed a hand over his face. “I’m also going to hit the sack because the jet lag is kicking in and I feel like hell. But I’ll see you later and we’ll talk some more.”
She watched him leave and sank back against the counter. What am I going to do? Having Scott so close wreaked havoc on her good sense. With an ocean between them she’d felt stronger, as though she could do it alone. But this was like being a kid and browsing through a candy store, where everything was so close, but locked beneath a glass cabinet. She was the sugar-addicted kid, and Scott was the candy. Wanting him...longing for him in ways she never imagined she’d want any man again. It made her feel exposed and vulnerable.
* * *
Evie didn’t see Scott again until the following morning. When he entered the upstairs kitchen, she’d already pushed Trevor out the door for school and refreshed the lavender bedroom for the guests who were arriving the following day.
He loped into the room in low-flung loose fitting jeans and a red T-shirt and helped himself to coffee. “Good morning.”
Evie stalked across the room and sat down at the table. “You wanted to talk,” she said, determined to be practical. “Okay, let’s talk. First, how long are you staying?”
He sat down opposite her. “Is that a trick question?”
“What?”
Scott put down his mug. “Well, if I say I’m staying forever you’ll give me one of your disapproving looks and tell me it’s never gonna happen. But if I say I’m here temporarily, you’ll hit me with how you’d expect nothing less from me than if I abandoned you and the baby.”
Evie’s spine jerked upward. “I wouldn’t say that.”
Scott raised a brow. “Really? What would you say, then?”
“I don’t see the point of—”
“For good, Evie,” he said quietly. “I might have to go back to hand in my resignation and put my apartment on the market. But I can’t see that taking too long. My parents made sure Callie and I had dual residency since we were kids. I can live here or the States.”
“And then?”
“And then I’ll get a job so I can support you and the baby.”
“I can support myself,” she pointed out. “As I have done for the last ten years. The B and B is lucrative enough and I recently sold a few paintings.”
“You’re painting again?”
Evie nodded. “Yes. My muse is back.”
“So your heart isn’t broken anymore?”
She gripped her teacup. “Not like it was.”
He pushed his mug into the center of the table and stood. “Good. Because I want your heart, Evie, and I’ll do whatever it takes to get it. And I fully intend to support you and our baby, and be a stepdad and friend to Trevor. So get used to me being around. Get used to being loved. I’m not going anywhere.”
Evie’s heart lurched forward. “You can’t stay here...I can’t do this. I won’t be manipulated into—”
“I have no desire to manipulate the mother of my child. But I know you’re running scared, Evie. And I’m not sure why.”
“You think everything’s black-and-white,” she said statically. “Nothing’s that simple. You said you’re going to quit your job with the LAFD and look for work over here. But as what, a firefighter?”
“I haven’t—”
“Of course it will be,” she said, her heart and body filled with so much pain and fear she could barely get the words out. “That’s what you do...that’s who you are. You’ll join the fire department here and keep running into those buildings and the only difference will be geography. And I know I don’t have any right to ask you to be someone other than who you are. You are a firefighter. And maybe for a little while you could try doing something else, but we both know your heart wouldn’t be in it.”
He looked at her and there was raw trut
h in his eyes. “I’d sweep streets for you, Evie.”
“But you’d be unhappy,” she said. “And because of that you’d be distracted. It would be like your friend Mike all over again. You’d be distracted and I’d be worried sick every time you left the house, every time I heard the sirens wailing.” Evie stood up and pushed her chair back, fighting the tears batting against her lashes. “And then one day, something would happen, and you’d get injured...or maybe worse...and our child might be left without a father...and I’d...and I’d be left without...and I can’t...”
She stopped speaking and closed her eyes. It was harder than hard. But she needed to say it. She needed to hear herself say the words.
The admission came out as a whisper as tears fell. “I just don’t have the strength to bury another husband.”
* * *
Scott moved out of Dunn Inn that afternoon. Evie didn’t know where he went and she didn’t ask before he drove off in his rental car. She had her life back. Sort of.
But true to his word, he didn’t abandon her.
In fact, he became a permanent fixture in her daily routine over the following week.
At first he dropped by to see how she was doing, and not once did he repeat his marriage proposal. He hung out with Trevor some afternoons and at other times discussed the baby, or when they’d start decorating the upstairs guest room into a nursery. They talked colors and wallpaper and booster seats and cribs and pretty much everything to do with the baby and nothing about their relationship.
She should have been happy about it.
Instead she became more miserable with each day. He didn’t touch her, didn’t try to kiss her and didn’t do anything even remotely intimate. He just talked. When he wasn’t talking he was doing things around the B and B. He fixed anything she asked to be repaired and didn’t voice one complaint.
At her parents’ house one Sunday to celebrate her father’s birthday, Evie prepared herself to endure the scrutiny of her family’s curiosity about their relationship. But their relationship had developed into something so lukewarm it barely rated mentioning. More to the point, no one seemed to care. She was pregnant; Scott was the father of her baby. Even her mother, who would normally be gushing over the idea that one of her daughters was in a relationship, even if a slightly dysfunctional one, only smiled and patted her shoulder and mentioned what a nice man he was and how she was looking forward to being a grandmother again.
Nice...sure...more like a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
And that was exactly how she felt. As if his indifference was deliberate. Her declarations about fearing something might happen to him had clearly struck a chord with him and he’d backed off. Or at least that’s what he wanted her to think. Yeah—some disguises were used for camouflage and some for hunting. Evie wasn’t fooled. He was on the hunt...and she was the prey.
Scott had said he didn’t want to manipulate her. But she felt manipulated.
And by Sunday afternoon she was a mass of nervous energy, waiting for him to pounce. She would rather have met him head-on and deal with his marriage proposal and the attraction they had for each other than play this waiting game.
Fortunately, Evie found an ally in her sister. Grace was back from New York for a few days for the party, and Evie was grateful for her sister’s support.
“You know he’s staying with Hot Tub, don’t you?” Grace told her, sitting down to share the love seat by the pool, which Evie had occupied for the past lazy hour because it was sheltered and quiet and away from Scott, who was playing pool with her brother and Trevor. Her sister handed her a long glass of iced tea.
Hot Tub. Cameron Jakowski. It made her grin. Grace and Cameron loathed each other, and their private war had been going on for years. The ultracharming police officer was the only person Evie had ever known who was able to ruffle Grace’s supercool composure.
“I didn’t know that,” Evie admitted. “But we’re not exactly talking about things that matter at the moment.”
“No more declarations of love?” Grace inquired.
“Not one.” She’d told her sister what had transpired between them in the eighteen hours he’d stayed at the B and B.
“Are you in love with him?” Grace asked frankly. “I mean, besides being full of hormones and the emotions tied up with being pregnant with his baby. Do you actually love him?”
“Yes,” she whispered.
“And that’s not enough?”
“Logically it is,” Evie replied as she drank some tea. “But I’m afraid of who I’ll become if I let myself go there.”
Grace tutted and tapped her perfectly manicured nails together. “And I thought I was the closed-off neurotic in the family.”
“I don’t think there’s any doubt about that, Princess.”
They snapped their necks around instantly. Cameron stood by the pool fence, beer in hand. He smiled at them both and raised his drink in salute.
“What do you want, Hot Tub?”
He grinned. “To see what a five-hundred-dollar pair of shoes look like.”
Evie immediately looked to Grace’s feet and the Jimmy Choo sandals she wore.
Grace stood and glared at him. Evie watched as her sister gave Cameron a murderous look and then took off back to the house. “You know,” Evie said, “one day you’re going to go too far and she’ll come at you in all her fury.”
He chuckled. “I look forward to it.”
“Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
Cameron laughed again and asked Evie if she needed anything before he returned to the games room. Evie languished beneath the Balinese-style hut overlooking the pool and closed her eyes for a moment.
“If you fall asleep in that chair you’ll get a back cramp.”
Her lids fluttered open. Scott had approached with all the stealth of a leopard. “I’ll have a spa when I get home to take the kinks out.”
His eyes darkened. “Be careful getting in and out of the tub.”
“Are you offering your assistance?” she asked, smiling.
Scott sucked in a breath. “I’m saying be careful you don’t slip and hurt yourself.”
“I won’t,” she said. “I have no intention of doing anything that might harm the baby.”
He looked at her with blistering intensity. “Me, either.”
Clarity washed over Evie like a wave. “Of course—that explains the Mr. Nice Guy act you’ve had going all week.” She pulled herself straight in the seat and then stood up. “I’m not fooled by it. And I’d rather you simply be yourself.”
He shrugged. “I don’t want to upset you.”
“Too late,” she snapped. “Do you think talking about teddy-bear wallpaper and prenatal vitamins are such neutral subjects that I won’t be tempted to burst into tears and act like a hormonal lunatic?”
Scott stared at her and shook his head. “I can’t do anything right with you, can I?”
“I’m only—”
“Your way or no way,” he said stiffly. “And no way in between.”
Evie bristled. “That’s not true.”
“It is true. There’s no middle road with you and it’s so damned frustrating.” The air around him was filled with pent-up emotion so powerful Evie could only watch, fascinated and mesmerized. “I asked to be your husband and you turned me down... I’m trying to be your friend and that’s not good enough. The only place I’ve ever felt marginally welcome in your life is between the sheets...and that...and that just...kills me.”
Evie gasped. “Scott, I—”
He reached for her and took hold of her shoulders, molding her bones with his big hands. “Is that what you want from me?” he demanded, and Evie was suddenly so turned on, so hungry for him and so ashamed to admit it she could hardly draw breath. “Is that all you want from me?” His body was hard against hers and he stared down into her upturned face. “Just this?” One hand swept down her back to cover her behind and urge her closer. “Is that really all this is to you?”
<
br /> Before she could say a word his mouth came down on hers. It was hot and hard and had ownership stamped all over it. But Evie didn’t mind and shocked herself by kissing him back hungrily.
“No,” she said when he was done, when their breathing was ragged and their mouths were finally apart.
He released her gently. “But it’s not enough for you to marry me, right? I know you’re scared, Evie... I know you think I’m gonna die on the job and leave you. And you know what—maybe that will happen. Because there are no guarantees in any relationship. But if you can’t get past that fear and keep refusing to marry me and let me take care of you and all we’ll share together is that baby inside you—then, that’s okay. Because that in itself is an incredible thing.”
He stepped back, took a long breath and then left her alone without another word.
* * *
“You look like hell.”
Scott jerked his gaze upward. He was sitting in Cameron Jakowski’s living room, and Cameron and Noah were loafing back in a pair of recliners. He felt their scrutiny and shrugged. “Whatever.”
And his brother-in-law was probably right. He felt like crap and figured he probably looked worse.
“Are you sleeping?” Noah asked, and grabbed the remote from Cameron. He flicked off the motor sports program none of them were watching.
“Not much,” he admitted, and suddenly felt like spilling his guts to these two men who had quickly become friends. “Who knew, huh?” he said, and laughed at himself. “That it would feel this bad,” he explained when he saw Cameron frown.
Noah looked heavenward. “I did.”
Scott grinned. “Yeah—I guess my sister put you though the wringer a few months back.”
“And then some,” Noah said, and looked as if he was thinking stuff Scott was certain he didn’t want to know about his sister. “But it was definitely worth it.”
“Schmucks,” Cameron said, looking mildly appalled.
“He thinks he’s immune,” Noah explained, grinning. “I keep telling him the harder the resistance, the bigger the fall.”
“Not likely,” Cameron replied. “I don’t ever want to have that pathetic hangdog look on my face. Next you pair will be wanting a group hug.” He scowled and took a long swallow of Corona. “Forget it.”