by Dee Tenorio
“I don’t know.” Her voice sounded strangled. He could feel her shaking harder now, as if she were holding a world of pain and agony inside herself by sheer will. “It’s just all too much. You and Chloe and Mother and Julia. Everything is changing. Everything is different and I don’t know what I’m doing anymore. All I’m making are mistakes and I’m losing her. I’m losing everything.”
She bent, as if she hurt, as if she wanted to ball up right then and there. “I’m so angry and scared and lost and I don’t know what to do. You were right, I’m becoming like her. Chloe’s feeling it. I swear, I never meant her to feel like I did. I swear.”
“Shhhhh, you’re not like her.” He rocked her side to side, little more than an inch at a time, realizing that the cold on her skin had gone more than skin deep. Holding her tight, he silently sent yet another unpleasant thought in Lorna Gibson’s general direction.
“Yes, I am. And I’m hurting my daughter. She’s all I have and she doesn’t even want to be with me anymore.”
“All she wants is to be with you, Penelope.” He knew that better than he felt it himself. “She talks about you nonstop. She loves you. You’re not hurting her, you’re just…hurting.”
Deep sobs raked through her, rattling her until he simply picked her up and carried her to the couch.
“I don’t want to feel like this, Raul. I feel like I’m breaking and I can’t make it stop.” She curled on his lap, throwing her arms around his neck and clinging with blunted nails that dug through his old T-shirt to his skin.
He let her cry, still rocking her and pressing kisses he doubted she felt to her temple. Guilt—years of it—weighed on him. There was nothing he could do for her but help her ride it out, but he’d do that willingly, even if every one of her tears felt like a lash on his skin. He’d done this. Not on purpose, but the result was the same. He’d pushed too hard again.
He’d known that the only way to Penelope’s heart was to regain her trust. To respect her limits, which meant not touching her the way he ached to do. Not demanding from her, because he really didn’t have the right and he knew it. Not driving his point home when she looked at him as if she expected an argument. When he knew damn good and well she wanted one.
He couldn’t help wanting her, not that he gave that a whole hell of a lot of effort. Once he’d accepted what he’d been purposely ignoring for so long, he’d had four excruciating weeks to consider what an ass he’d been.
As kids, they’d always been drawn together, no matter how he’d tried to deny it. He’d claimed that she followed him, that she was a nuisance to be tolerated because he was a nice guy, but looking back honestly, he knew he was just as bad as she’d been. If she wasn’t there, he sought her out, irritated that she’d been gone. When she hurt, he’d been the one to defend her. And when she’d gotten into trouble for whatever antics he’d goaded her into, he’d been the one to cheer her on. She was so much of his life that he’d had to invent a way for her to be at his side when he’d gone away, driving himself crazy with dreams about her.
He’d rejected her in their youth because he’d known good and well what would have happened if he’d given in to his want for her. He’d have married her, because that’s what a woman like her wanted in those days. He’d have settled down, just as his father had planned and his family expected, and being caged inside other people’s expectations would have strangled him. And she’d have been faced regularly by his mother’s rejection of anything white, however subtle the snubbing might be. After a few years, his mother might have gotten over her issues with Penelope and Chloe individually, but there was no way to know for sure. That kind of constant rejection would have chafed away at Pen, crushed a part of her no matter how she’d dealt with it. Some happily ever after.
It wasn’t her fault she’d pinned her heart on the sleeve of a selfish bastard who’d seen only a trap in her love. He’d given himself every excuse he could find to walk away from where he’d always belonged and when he’d left, a chunk of his soul had stayed behind.
But just because he’d finally found it again didn’t mean Penelope had found the part of hers he’d torn apart. He had to give her time, no matter how much it hurt to do it. He’d planned to show her how he felt slowly. Give her time to see that he wasn’t going anywhere. That he wasn’t interested in anyone else. That he never would be.
He didn’t think realizing that was what had her crying, trying to catch her breath over his shoulder.
“It’ll be okay, Pen. You’re not breaking. I’ve got you. I’m right here, I won’t let you break.”
She shook her head against his neck. “I didn’t know where else to go.”
He shouldn’t have, he knew, but he smiled, knowing why she had. She’d come to him for comfort. That had to be progress. It’s what she would have done when they were kids. “You can always come to me.”
The sobbing seemed to subside, finally. Did she realize she was rubbing his shoulder with her cheek? He kept running his hand up and down her back, trying not to let the soothing touch turn into the caress he wanted it to be. If he let his imagination run away with him, he’d slip his hand under the white fabric of her tailored coat and let it wander over the small of her back, over the rise of her hip and on down her thigh to the back of her knee. The sleek black fabric of her pants wouldn’t stop him from feeling a single inch of her all along the journey, either. The sweater she wore, while not revealing, gave him more ideas. Every time he caught her in one of those, he itched to sneak his hands up under the hem and remind himself just how curvy she really was. She’d call him all kinds of pervert, but the urge never failed to make him stiff for hours.
Of course, having her on his lap sobbing uncontrollably probably wasn’t the best time for him to be thinking lascivious thoughts about her.
“No I can’t. Coming to you is a mistake, every time.” She rubbed her face with her hands, trying to mop up the moisture.
Opting to let her get away with the denial—for now—he helped her slip off his lap. “Bathroom’s through that door.”
Of course, the door was to the master bedroom area as a whole, a fact she seemed to realize when she hit the light switch and stopped for a telling few seconds before she veered wide to the right, in the extreme direction of the bathroom. He tried not to laugh—did she think his bed was going to up and grab her?
Figuring she might need something to drink when she came out, he wandered over to his kitchen and pulled down two glasses. A quick glance in his fridge had him grumbling. She had her choice of beer, beer, water or beer. Something told him Penelope wasn’t a big partaker of Rocky Mountain goodness.
“You, ah, keep your place pretty neat, don’t you?” she called out from the living room, still sniffing.
Raul stepped into the arched opening between the two rooms and held out a glass. “Spend half your time living in a firehouse and you get pretty used to picking up after yourself.” Not that he didn’t think there was a difference between putting things away and being a clean freak. Even looking at her now, he could see the way she’d rebuilt her poise by fixing her coat and smoothing her hair back with a little water. For a woman who’d just gone through an emotional ravaging, she still looked pretty damn good. Her eyes were red, slightly puffy with a faint bruising underneath. His mouth tightened at the sight. So much for hoping to reach her.
Cautious, she came closer to take the water from him. It was like watching a doe scent for hunters. He let her have the glass without touching her, motioning for her to sit. To his surprise, she didn’t argue first.
Hmmm, maybe not all her walls were back in place.
He sat in the chair opposite her, gathering up his checkbook and the bills he’d been paying. “You ready to tell me what all this was about?”
“No.” She rubbed her finger over the rim of her glass. The simple glass would never hum under her touch, but if she kept that up, he was pretty sure he might. Well, until she changed the subject with the speed of a cobra
. “Why did you tell everyone you’d taken advantage of me?”
He stopped sorting. This was the question he’d been expecting out of her for a month, but all she ever did when he came by her office for Chloe was nod briskly and turn away. Her gaze was steady, the blue cobalt as cool as ever.
He gave the only answer he had. “Because it’s true.”
She shook her head. “No, it’s not. We were both responsible for what happened that day.”
“No, querida, not really.” He set the pile aside and folded his arms on the table to meet her stare. “I knew better. I saw what I wanted most and I took you, not once thinking about your comfort or giving you the respect you deserved. You may have let me, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t take advantage.”
Her lips moved, looking like she might be chewing on them in thought. He itched to reach out and stop her, but he kept his hands to himself. Someday she’d understand what a sacrifice that was for him and repay him accordingly, but for now, he’d just put it on her tab. “Why are you saying that?”
“Saying what?”
“That you wanted me. You could have had me any time you wanted back then, embarrassing as it is to admit. You had to be blind drunk to end up in that closet with me. I can almost guarantee I’m the one who took advantage of you.”
“If that’s how you want to remember it.” He shrugged, because he knew the truth.
“That’s the way it was.”
He shook his head, smiling at her and apparently making her angry again because her eyes narrowed. At least she didn’t look so damn cold anymore.
“Look, rewriting history doesn’t change what it was. It doesn’t do anyone any good to lie.”
“I’m not lying. You have no idea how hard it was keeping my hands to myself where you were concerned. Knowing all I had to do was ask just made it worse. Especially when you were experimenting with micro-minis.” He rolled his eyes in memory. That had been an especially difficult time, filled with long stares at legs that seemed to go on forever…until her mother found out and put a stop to it. He still couldn’t say if he were grateful or not.
Her lips pursed. Yup, still distrusting him.
“Honey, I couldn’t sleep on my stomach for weeks.”
“If you felt that way, why didn’t you ever do anything about it? You never hesitated with anyone else.”
His eye twitched. Exactly how much a man-whore did she think he’d been? “You weren’t just anyone.”
She tilted her head and he knew it was truth time.
“You’re special, Pen. Always were. Why do you think I never let anyone tease you for following me around? Why do you think I always talked to you, always tried to make you laugh?”
“You felt bad for me.”
There was some of that, but not as much as he’d let her believe. Yet another mistake he was paying for. “I liked you. You were my friend. You saw me, not just another one of those Montenga kids. And when you looked at me, I knew you were the only person who saw something good in me just the way I was. Something worth caring about. I was a screw-up at home. I could have cared less about school and they felt the same way. I had no idea what I wanted to be when I grew up and I resented everyone trying to tell me I wasn’t good enough for what interested me. Why would I mess up the only positive thing I had going for me?”
She looked down, tapping her nail on the glass again. “You can’t expect me to believe that. Not after all this time.”
Of course. She would need every bit of truth he had. “And I knew if I touched you, if I let myself love you, I was going marry you.”
“Which would have been bad.” The corners of her mouth pulled down with that weird self-effacing humor of hers.
“About you, no? About everything else, yeah.”
“Everything else being?” At first, he wondered if she was still being sarcastic, but he realized she was just asking. That maybe, she might be giving him the benefit of the doubt.
“My dad had my whole future planned. I was going to start in the house painting business, earn my way up to management, and since my brother was already planning to take over when he retired, they figured I could either help him run it or marry some girl from among his friends’ kids and start servicing another part of the county. All I knew was that I’d never be happy that way. Working the houses in the summer was one thing. Doing it for the rest of my life? No, and that’s something he refused to understand.”
“So you ran away?” The hard angles of her shoulders and expression softened just a tiny bit. Who the hell would have guessed this honesty crap would work?
“As far as I could get. But something kept dragging me back here, reminding me that this was where I belonged.”
“Guilt?”
“You.”
She stared at him, definite shock there on her face. Her lips parted, she blinked, but she didn’t say anything. Which was fine, because he still had plenty to say. Plenty for her to hear and actually listen to for once.
Chapter Nine
“I’m here to stay, Pen. And this time I know exactly what I want.” He wanted his family. The daughter who made him laugh and reminded him a little too much of himself. He wanted Penelope. Wanted to have her look at him, unguarded. He wanted to hold her when she was ecstatic and when she was hurting. For her to keep telling him, no holds barred, when he was wrong and give him that wry twist of her lips when he was right. To laugh with her again and see that sparkle in her eye, just to know she was happy, the way she deserved. He wanted every day, every color and shade of his life, right next to her, because nothing was right when he wasn’t.
She closed her eyes and shook her head tiredly. “You can’t keep doing this to me.”
“Doing what to you?” She had no idea how much effort it took not to do things to her.
“Making me want things I can’t have.”
“Am I?” He leaned forward, though she was too far away to touch. To kiss. “Seems the only one saying no around here is you.”
“Because you don’t mean any of this.” She sounded so sure, even with everything he’d just explained. Which meant he had a bigger uphill battle than he’d expected. “My life without you really was fine. It was quiet, but I didn’t get hurt. I didn’t want anything different. I didn’t get my hopes up because some man made promises he couldn’t possibly mean. I was happy that way.”
“I wasn’t. My life without you is lonely as hell.” The admission probably should have cost him more, especially when she jerked her head in surprise, but it wasn’t a secret. Everyone knew he wasn’t satisfied. “I mean, yeah, I did the things I promised myself I would. I found out what I was meant for, I saw more than the part of the world I was born in. But seeing places, meeting people, trying things…something was always missing. I never connected to anyone. I never had anyone I could share secrets with. No one I could just sit next to. No one who made me wish I was good enough for her.”
“Raul.” Her eyes shimmered again. “Don’t.”
“I have to, querida, because the way things are right now…they’re not working. Not for you, not for me, not for Chloe.”
“That is so not fair.”
“But it’s true. We’re miserable, wanting each other and pretending we don’t. We’re making her miserable. We need to figure it out.”
“Fine.” Uh-oh. The prissy face. “We’ll accept that nothing can come of it and get on with our lives.”
“Penelope.”
She folded her hands in her lap, blinking at him blandly. “It’s what I want.”
He snorted. “No, it’s not.”
“Yes, it is. I want you to let me go. No more of your little private notes. No more looking at me like you can see me naked all the time.”
“I can.” And damn if his mouth didn’t water every time.
She kept going as if she hadn’t heard him. “Chloe can spend time with you and your family, I won’t get in the way of that—except for a few restrictions—”
Oh, he c
ouldn’t wait to hear what those would be.
“And if we let it, this…attraction will fade away. We did just fine for twelve years ignoring it.”
“Yeah, a thousand miles of distance tends to help.”
“You could move again.” She smiled, a little bit of kitty coming out in her tone.
“I could, but I won’t. I don’t want to move again.” He rapped the table with his knuckles. “How about I tell you what I do want. It’s a pretty simple list.”
She leaned all the way back in her chair, eyes wide. “I don’t—”
“I want you, Penelope. I want my daughter. I want to be part of your lives. In your life. In your bed.” He couldn’t help a chuckle when her eyes grew so wide they almost swallowed her face. “I want to spend my life making you happy. I want to watch our kid, hell, every kid we have, grow up and go to college and drive some other poor bastard absolutely crazy. I want to hear your hopes and dreams. I want to help you achieve them. I want to be there for you and I want you to be there for me. What I’m saying, Pen, so that you can’t possibly confuse this, is that I want you to get your hopes up about us, because this time I don’t have any intention of letting you down.” He rose from his seat and circled the table. He could feel her eyes on him, searing him even as he crouched in front of her and took her limp hands into his. “I want you to want me as much as I want you.” Love me the way I love you.
She didn’t answer, just watched their fingers twine together as if he were doing it all by himself. But he wasn’t and that gave him hope.
“Do you know why you feel like you’re breaking?” His voice was almost gone, he spoke so softly, unwilling to scare her now. When she shook her head, he rose enough to press a kiss to her lips. “Because those walls you hide behind are falling down, querida.” Another kiss, one he thought she leaned into. “You don’t want to go back to feeling dead inside any more than I do.”
Her hands tightened on his and she definitely leaned into him this time. He felt the gentle pressure against his mouth. If this was her way of trying to shut him up, she’d gone the wrong way about it.