Christ.
When she began to work the goop down his arm, he grabbed her hand. “Enough,” he said, his voice gruff.
Their gazes met, and she flushed. Backing away, she spread the excess on her own shoulders, bared by the tank top she wore with shorts.
He kept his eyes off her legs. Those long, slim legs.
Once they reached the beach, he congratulated himself on the great idea. It was still 70-plus degrees by the surf and the gentle breeze was only slightly cooling and smelled salty and clean. Eli and Obie raced along the hard-packed sand, raced back, then went to their knees, using a pair of plastic cups they’d found as digging implements.
Cleo frowned. “I should have bought them beach toys.”
“They don’t need anything special.” To prove it to her, he trolled the beach for other implements he could offer them. After a few minutes he was able to hand over shells, an abandoned metal fork, and a wide, flat rock that made a fine trowel.
Then he found he couldn’t resist joining in. Soon enough he was on his ass beside them, using his hands to scoop a moat for their half-constructed castle. Together, they decorated the turret with broken shells and made a drawbridge from a piece of driftwood. Cleo looked on from a distance, a bemused expression on her face.
Reed decided he didn’t want to know what she was thinking.
Then Obie looked up. “I have to go to the bathroom.”
Glancing around, Reed saw a cinderblock set of restrooms beyond the next lifeguard tower. “It’s over there,” he said, pointing.
“I can’t go by myself.”
Oh, right. Cleo had wandered to the surf line and was gazing out at the horizon. He opened his mouth to call out to her, when Obie spoke again.
“You’d better take me now.”
That sounded dire, so Reed jumped to his feet. Eli followed. “I better go too.”
As they began trotting down the sand, Reed raised his voice to get Cleo’s attention. “Nature’s calling! We’ll be right back.”
Business taken care of, their return trip to the castle was more leisurely. Eli chased some sandpipers while Obie stayed by Reed’s side. “I like the beach,” the kid said, slipping his hand into Reed’s.
“Uh, me, too.” He stared down at where they were linked and waited for the connection to feel odd and uncomfortable.
Obie gave a little skip. “I like you.”
“Um…”
Before he had the chance to reciprocate, the boy let go of him and ran toward his mother, about twenty feet away. As her arms went around her son, her gaze was on Reed. She didn’t look any less beautiful and tantalizing in her role as mother, he realized.
Hell.
To insert more buffer into their circle, he suggested they move on to the playground that butted up against the sand. A dozen kids and about that same number of adult family members were gathered there, and he stood behind the bench where Cleo sat observing the boys. They sped from the slide to the climbing dome to the teeter totter, and then finally climbed aboard the landlocked “pirate ship.” On its gangplank both paused side-by-side to wave at Cleo.
For some reason, Reed waved back too.
“Good-looking sons you have there.”
He glanced over, noting another man about his age was focused on the playground as well.
“I have girls,” the stranger continued. With a finger, he indicated two small, dark-haired girls wearing pink and purple.
“Uh…nice,” Reed said. He was going to follow that up with something about the boys not being his, but that seemed like too much detail to bother with.
“My wife’s pregnant with number three,” he said. “It’s going to be estrogen overload at my house. You two thinking of trying for another?”
Reed stared at him. “We’re not…I’m not…” In Parent World, did people who didn’t know each other ask such nosy questions?
“No decisions yet,” Cleo piped up, saving him.
Then one of the little girls called for her daddy, and the man took off at a lope. On a sigh of relief, Reed came around the bench to drop onto it beside Cleo. “Thanks. I didn’t know what to say.”
“Oh, that kind of stuff is nothing. When I was pregnant people stopped me all the time, telling me they could tell the sex of my baby, or asking me which name I’d picked out, or even putting their hands on my belly.”
For a moment, Reed was distracted by the image. Cleo’s slender body heavy with child. Her breasts would be more lush too, and he’d heard things about a pregnant woman’s sex drive…
He shook the thoughts out of his head. “That’s pretty weird.” Not just what she’d told him, but his own sudden fascination.
“It’s human nature, I think. We’re hard-wired to have an interest in the propagation of the species.”
“Maybe.”
She glanced at him. “You never want kids? This experience?” Her hand waved to indicate the scene: children at play, watchful parents, doting grandparents.
“I suppose I see the appeal, but for myself?” He shook his head. “I’m trying to imagine Hop Hopkins or any of the Lemons watching over toddlers, their groupie-of-the-day by their side.”
Cleo grinned. “You might be surprised.”
Then a cry sounded from the playground, high and pained.
Moms and dads all around him stiffened, but it was Cleo who vaulted from the bench and raced toward the sand. Reed followed, his heart nearly choking him. Ahead, he saw Eli on the ground, cradling his hand.
Blood dripped from his fingers.
Cleo dropped to her knees beside her son. Reed hunkered behind her, and he put his arm around Obie when the little boy came over and clutched his leg.
“Let me see,” Cleo said in a soft voice to her older son. “Do you know what happened?”
“Something sharp.” Eli’s eyes were wide and wet, but no tears had fallen.
His mother took his hand in hers. “Glass,” she said, and glanced up at Reed. “Do you have a first aid kit in your car?”
He would have flown there, but it wasn’t necessary. Antiseptic wipes and elastic bandages were instantly presented from sympathetic bystanders. Already one father had a plastic toy rake in hand and was drawing it through the sand to find any other shards.
The entire event lasted less than seven minutes, Reed supposed, but by the time the boy’s shallow cut was deemed non-critical and cleaned and bandaged, he felt strung out. When he suggested they sit down for some lunch at the nearby beachside café, Cleo and kids agreed.
To prove the boys weren’t worse for wear, they dashed ahead, leaving their mom and Reed to follow behind him more slowly. “You knew it was Eli,” he said. “From that single cry.”
She shrugged. “Instinct. Practice.”
To Reed, who had never known his mother, it seemed like wizardry. So did her almost supernatural calm about the whole thing. “And you didn’t bat an eye.”
Her gaze shifted sideways. “I fake well.” Then she held out her hands, and he saw they were trembling. “It’s silly, I know—”
“It’s beautiful,” Reed said, taking them in his own.
Her head was bent. “He wasn’t seriously injured, I knew that almost immediately. But I get scared, and there’s only me to take care of them.”
“You’re so beautiful,” Reed murmured. Then he gathered her against him. She wrapped her arms around his back and pressed her forehead to his chest.
There was nothing sexual in the embrace or the comfort and warmth he was offering, but the moment felt as intimate as when he’d had his mouth against her sex. As personal as the slide of his cock into her soft, slick channel.
It scared the shit out of him, frankly, but he wasn’t going to let go first. He found he couldn’t.
Then a distinct buzzing came from where they were pressed thigh-to-thigh. He pushed her away a little, smiled. “Is that your phone or is your vibrator happy to feel me?”
“Oh, you,” she said, flushing as she stepped out of
his arms. Pulling her phone free of her pocket, she accepted the call. “June! It’s good to hear from you.”
He moved away to give her privacy. The boys circled back to him, chattering about the seagull they’d seen stealing food from someone’s picnic. Their exuberance and interest in everything seemed to…refresh him. He felt lighter.
Cleo came up, telling the boys their grandmother wanted to speak with them. Eli grabbed the cell first.
“Everything okay?” Reed looked at Cleo.
“Mm.” The wind ruffled her hair and she peeked at him through her lashes, her mouth curved at the corners.
The look was like a siren’s call. His libido went on alert and he had to shove his hands in his pockets or reach for her again. Dangerous, dangerous.
Not only had he made the promise that nothing overt would happen between them around the kids, but perhaps it was best that they didn’t indulge physically again at all. If he thought avoiding intimacy was best, having sex with her once more was not the way to go about that.
Then Eli began crowing in delight, leaping about the sand. He handed off the phone to his little brother and grabbed at his mom’s arms. “Can we? Can we?”
Obie went into similar spasms of joy. “Say we can!”
“Say they can what?” Reed asked.
“Go on a short vacation with their grandparents,” Cleo told him. “Three or four days to the Grand Canyon.” Then she turned to her boys. “Yes, you may.”
Meaning Reed and Cleo would have those three or four days all alone.
Eli and Obie’s grandparents were scheduled to arrive at the compound the next morning. Reed didn’t discuss the trip or anything else with Cleo. She and the boys rushed around in preparation, washing clothes and packing a small bag for each of them.
Just before 7 a.m., Don and June Anderson arrived at the gates of the compound. The boys raced out of the cottage to greet them and Cleo trailed them out the door, a wide smile on her face. Hugs and kisses were exchanged. As the boys ran back to their room to get their luggage, Reed stood aside to allow the older couple inside.
Cleo made the introductions. “Reed Hopkins, who has been a very good friend to me and the boys.”
He shook hands with them both and made the usual small talk about the trip they’d had from Tulare and the road conditions they’d find on the way to the Grand Canyon. If the older couple were curious about Cleo’s “friend,” they didn’t let on. Before they left, they actually thanked him for providing their daughter-in-law and grandsons a safe haven.
That didn’t mean Reed was completely at ease with them. Clearly they adored Cleo and wished her only the best. They didn’t venture into his and Cleo’s plans while the boys were gone, which was damn fine, because he didn’t have a clue what would happen once their pint-sized chaperones left the premises.
It remained a bitter struggle between what he wanted to do and what he thought he should do.
Cleo had her game face on when she said goodbye to Eli and Obie. Neither seemed to sense anything amiss, but now that Reed knew what a faker she was, he could see she was already having a hard time with them leaving. But he guessed she knew the opportunity to be with their grandparents was not only good for the older people and her kids, but a way to put them farther from their father’s possible reach.
As they stowed their things in the bed of the extended cab pick-up, Reed watched from the cottage doorway. When both Eli and Obie trotted back toward the house, he expected they’d left behind a beloved dinosaur or that stuffed dog that Obie often dragged around. Imagine his surprise when they each gave him a hug.
Of their own accord, his arms wrapped around them in turn.
The boys must have inherited some of their mother’s wizardry.
As Cleo waved them off, Reed retreated into the house where he called up the newspaper online and pretended to read it at the kitchen table. His ears were tuned to the sound of Cleo returning, but he went on alert when several minutes passed without the telltale sound of the front door opening and closing.
Rising from the table, he peered out the French doors to what he could see of the compound grounds. All seemed quiet, no one about. His gaze tracked from Hop’s house, to Mad Dog Maddox’s castle, where Cilla, Bing, and Brody had grown up, and finally to the Colson place. When he still didn’t spot her, he let himself out.
Then a movement in the orchard caught his attention. Cleo moved among the fruit trees and something about her solitary state called to him.
His shoes crunched on the gravel paths as he made his way to her. Without the benefit of the other Rock Royalty or Cleo’s kids as distraction, a dozen personal memories of compound life bombarded him. Even the days hadn’t been peaceful, with the band or friends of the band always somewhere about jamming. The nights had been downright noisy.
Drugs and booze and cigarettes had littered countertops and tabletops and the parties had gone on for days. Food had been delivered at all hours and if fish sticks and applesauce were absent from the Hopkins pantry, he and his brothers would end up eating leftover foie gras on soda crackers or caviar spread on frozen waffles.
It had been so screwed-up.
He passed by the pool and the faint smell of chlorine and the steam rising from the adjacent hot tub brought back even more salacious recollections. Before he’d gone to Oceanview, he’d witnessed sex in nearly every form. When he’d returned, a strapping fifteen, he was no longer a mere witness to the carnal games. No one had thought it the least bit wrong for the teenage rock princes to partake of the pleasures offered.
Ahead, he saw Cleo, facing away from him. Her jeans were faded and stuffed into a short pair of sheepskin boots. Her T-shirt came from a thirty-year-old Velvet Lemons concert. She’d found it stuffed in a drawer and he’d told her she could have it.
Now he wished he’d burned the damn thing instead of letting it touch Cleo’s skin. He thought perhaps he shouldn’t touch her either. The Lemons lifestyle had left him tainted. His childhood and teenage experiences had led him to cut himself off from the warmer human emotions.
Sure, he wanted to fuck beautiful Cleo, his libido was alive and well, but it didn’t seem right to only offer orgasms to someone so genuine and loving and good.
Then she turned, stiffening as she caught sight of him. Hastily, she wiped away the wetness on her cheeks.
His noble intentions were drowned by the sight of a single tear.
Striding forward, he took hold of her shoulders. “What’s wrong?”
She looked down, rubbing her face with the backs of her hands. “Dumb stuff again.”
“Tell me.”
“I miss them already,” she whispered.
“Of course you do.”
“They’re all I have. My only family.”
“Ah.” He drew her to him and cupped the back of her head with his palm. Christ, she made him wish so many things, not the least of which was how to ease her heart. But he didn’t have the right emotions available for that. He could only offer diversion. The expertise gained in all those years of debauchery. The entertainment that a practiced imagination could bring to the table.
He pushed her a little away from him. “You should go take a bubble bath.”
“What?”
“Something you don’t often get to do as a busy mother, right?”
“Reed—”
“Enjoy yourself.” He bussed her on the nose. “Unless you’d rather I pick you up and drop you in the hot tub.”
She smiled a little. “Do you mean I’m damp if I do or damp if I don’t?”
Oh, God. She was killing him. He pasted on a stern expression. “I think we should nip this silliness in the butt.”
Then she laughed. “All right. I’ll do as ordered.”
As she took off in the direction of the cottage, Reed headed for the shed in one corner of the compound where he knew there were all sorts of supplies.
When Cleo emerged from her bedroom’s attached bath, wrapped in a towel and flushe
d from the warm water, he was standing in her bedroom, dressed only in a pair of jeans and wearing a new pair of leather work gloves. She stared at him.
“Ma’am,” he murmured, not moving. “I pulled the weeds and trimmed the hedges and I wondered if there was anything else I could do for you today?”
Her nostrils flared. “I…um…you…”
“Leif,” he reminded her helpfully.
Cleo had a dimple. When she was trying hard not to surrender to a smile, it dug itself near the right corner of her mouth. “I’m just surprised to see you…Leif.”
“I’ll go away if you have no use for me.” He rubbed a gloved hand over one pec, across his abs, and then down to cup the heavy bulge in his jeans.
Her gaze had followed every inch of the slow path. “Um, I’m sure I can think of something that needs to be done.”
“I want to do you,” he murmured.
“What’s that?”
He smiled. “You heard me.”
“I’m shocked,” she said, widening her eyes.
“Oh, not so much.” He approached, slow and steady. Cleo backed up until her knees hit the mattress.
Reed caught her before she toppled, and he took her face between his leather-clad palms, tilting her head for his kiss. She moaned into his mouth, accepting his thrusting tongue and going on tiptoe for more. He inserted two fingers beneath the towel at her cleavage and yanked, causing the tucked fabric to fall with a soft plop.
Her hands clutched at his shoulders as he insinuated a jean-clad knee between her legs. They parted, and he pressed his thigh upward, fitting it to the hot notch. “Wet already,” he murmured lifting his head.
“From the bath.”
He arched a brow. “You know what happens to fibbers.” One of his hands slid down her back and he squeezed a bottom cheek.
She moaned, and then again, when he gave it a slap. The leather muffled the sound and likely the sting, so he made the next smack harder.
Her yelp was sweet and surprised and when he rubbed the soft skin to ease the small pain, she melted against him. “I think you’re very bad,” she whispered against his throat.
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