Felicia had her doubts about that, but she wasn’t about to argue with him, especially since he was paying for the meal.
When Tatum returned a few minutes later, she was carrying two slices of spumoni ice cream cake, which, put together, looked as if they could form a healthy-sized cake.
“There you go,” Tatum declared, placing one slice of the colorful ice cream cake in front of each of them.
Felicia looked at the plate, then at Tatum. “This is unbelievable.”
Tatum’s eyes crinkled as she smiled. “I’ll be sure to pass your comment on to the chef,” she told her cousin’s companion. “For Suzanne, I know that cooking and baking are both art forms, but she never gets tired of hearing compliments. Well, enjoy,” she told the duo, gesturing at the plates of dessert. “And remember, dinner was on the house.”
Aaron shook his head. “Tatum, that’s not how you make money.”
“If I can’t pick up the occasional check for a family member, what’s the point of having my own restaurant?” she asked. Glancing over her shoulder, Tatum realized that there was somewhere that she had to be at this moment.
“All right, I need to go right now,” she told them, “but remember, we’re family and have finally all found one another. Don’t be such a stranger,” she told Aaron. She turned to Felicia. “Same goes for you. If nothing else, one never knows when one can use the skills of a physical therapist,” Tatum said with a wink just before she melded back into the crowd.
Aaron saw that Felicia had her fork in her hand, but it wasn’t moving. “You’re not eating,” he noted. Was there something wrong?
“I’m not sure how to approach this,” she confided, studying the thick piece of cake.
“My guess would be one forkful at a time.” Aaron was already digging into his slice.
“I guess I can’t argue with that.”
“Good, because the way I see it from here, it’s already beginning to melt,” he told her, nodding at the slice on her plate.
Felicia began to eat more quickly.
Chapter 14
“I’m so full I’m not sure I can move,” Felicia said, suppressing a groan as she finally rose from the table.
Aaron had gotten to his feet moments ago. He went around to the back of her chair and pulled it from the table in order to facilitate her exit. Since Tatum had flatly refused to allow him to pay for their meal, Aaron took out his wallet and left a large tip tucked against his plate for the server.
Amused by Felicia’s comment, Aaron promised, “We’ll walk slowly. Besides, there’s no real hurry to get you back quickly to my mother’s as long as I have you there before midnight.”
She thought that was an interesting way for him to put it. It made her think of the familiar children’s fairy tale.
“Which one of us is going to turn into a pumpkin, you or me?” she asked him.
“Mom didn’t specify,” Aaron said, keeping a straight face. “You do know that she thinks of you as the daughter she never had. Right now, I think that she’s exercising her right to dote on you.”
As he said that, Aaron could remember what that was like when he was in his early teens and his mother insisted on knowing where he was and when he was going to get home. If she wasn’t happy about his answer—and admittedly, he was flippant—she said as much, while he felt stifled, to say the least.
Felicia didn’t strike him as the type to resent having his mother insert herself into her life, but then anything was possible.
“Don’t let it bother you,” he advised her as he unlocked his car doors. He watched her get in, then got in on his side himself.
“Oh, it doesn’t,” Felicia quickly assured him with more than a little feeling. She fastened her seat belt and shifted in her seat to look at him. “As a matter of fact, it’s kind of nice in a way. I never had anyone worrying about me.”
It was true. Her mother had taken off when she had still been a little girl, and her father, between working long hours and losing himself in a bottle when he was home, had never worked at having any sort of a real relationship with his daughter. That was why when Greg came along, sweet and attentive, she had been so ready to take up with him.
But ultimately, Greg had only wanted to control her, making sure to keep a tight rein on every part of her life to the point that she felt as if she was being strangled.
“Well, just remember that she does mean well,” Aaron was saying. “But if you start to feel that she’s overstepping her bounds, venturing into areas where she has no place being, don’t hesitate to tell her so. I guarantee that she’ll back off.”
A nostalgic smile curved his mouth. “She’s good that way. Sometimes she gets a little too carried away, being protective, and she forgets that she’s dealing with an adult.”
“I take it that you’re speaking from experience,” Felicia surmised with a smile.
“Oh, yeah,” Aaron said, laughing. “We butted heads quite a lot when I was a know-it-all teenager years ago.”
“Well, you don’t seem to be any the worse for wear,” Felicia observed. To his credit, he had his own business, handling four gyms in all. And he seemed totally well adjusted. Whatever had gone down between his mother and him during those years hadn’t affected him badly, Felicia thought.
“Oh, I’m not,” he agreed. “Compromise is a great thing. And, to be very honest, I have to give Mom a lot of credit for putting up with me. I was determined to get my way come hell or high water, and for the most part, Mom stepped aside and let me do my thing, even though my ‘thing’ had her sitting up nights, worried sick. To be honest, I’m surprised that her hair didn’t go entirely gray.”
Aaron glanced at her as he stopped at a light. “Mom did put up with a lot,” he admitted. “Not many other mothers would have gone along with the career path I picked for myself. She not only put up with it, she was very supportive.”
Felicia could easily see that happening, given the relationship that existed between Aaron and his mother now. “Maybe she was proud of you.”
“Oh, she was,” he assured her with a note of pride in his own voice.
“Then how do you know that it was hard on her?” she asked.
His smile was slightly lopsided as he thought back to that day.
“Because the day I decided that maybe I should give up being a human punching bag, my mother cried. It was the first and only time I ever saw her do that. And then she threw a huge party. To be very honest, I have never seen her looking happier,” he confided. “Except maybe the day you helped get her back on her feet and walking comfortably.”
Felicia laughed at the image he had projected of his younger self. “Having her cry would have definitely been a sign.”
“Actually, looking back, I think my brother Nash is the only one of the three of us who didn’t give her any reason for concern. He’s an architect now and was always known as the calm one.”
Felicia was trying to keep his family members straight. “You have another brother, right?”
Aaron nodded. “Damon. He works for the DEA.” He refrained from telling Felicia that a good deal of Damon’s work lately had involved being undercover. What that ultimately meant was that at any moment, Damon could wind up being exposed and ran the very real risk of being instantly in danger.
No one in the family had come out and said as much to his mother, but Aaron knew how her mind worked. Nicole had intuited that fact shortly after Damon had told her that he had taken the job. He had referred to it as a desk job, but Nicole seemed to know better.
Felicia put her own interpretation into the silence that had passed between them. “Given what two of her sons are, or ‘were’ involved in,” she said, referring to his boxing career, “your mother seems incredibly calm and laid-back. At least on the outside,” Felicia qualified, thinking that the woman might just be good at hiding things. “In her
place, I think I would be a total wreck.”
“I know. Sometimes I worry that she’s actually a ticking time bomb and that she could go off at any moment.” He looked at Felicia intently. “That’s why I want to do whatever I can to make sure that she’s happy.”
The next moment, the light turned green again and he took his foot off the brake.
She couldn’t explain exactly why Aaron’s words about his feelings concerning his mother created such a warm, vibrant feeling within her, a feeling that seemed to spread and encompass everything that it touched, but it did.
Felicia decided to not try to analyze it. She just wanted to enjoy it while it lasted.
“Looks like we’re here,” Aaron told her.
They had reached their destination without her realizing it. He pulled up in front of the old Victorian house he had called home, parking to the side so his vehicle wasn’t blocking the entrance to the front door. Turning off the engine, he sat back in his seat for a moment and needlessly repeated, “We’re here, and it’s not even midnight.”
He winked at her, sending another unnerving, warm wave undulating through her stomach. It was all she could do not to press her hand against it to try to make it calm down.
“No, it’s not,” she finally said, the words hardly a whisper.
Felicia realized that she was tired, but at the same time, she also felt an excitement stirring in her.
She recalled that feeling. It was the same one she had experienced when she had first begun dating Greg. A nervous-down-to-the-tip-of-her-fingers feeling, she remembered, that continued for almost the first two years of her marriage—until it suddenly came to a screeching halt.
Because that was when Greg started changing.
The memory of those days nearly caused her to shiver before she could put a lid on those feelings.
“Are you all right?” she heard Aaron suddenly ask, concerned. He was looking at her.
“Sure,” Felicia answered a bit too quickly, hoping that Aaron wouldn’t notice that her voice had also gone up by an octave. Clearing her throat, she asked, “Why would you ask that?”
“Because,” he told her, his voice low, soothing as he crooked his index finger and ran it slowly along her cheek, “your complexion just turned really pale.”
She willed herself to breathe, damning Greg’s memory and the way he kept infiltrating her mind. “Must be your imagination,” she told him, trying to sound offhanded. But she was all but whispering the words.
She could feel her scalp growing warm. The entire world had just shrunk down to include only the two of them.
Just Aaron and her.
She could hear her heartbeat resonating in her ears. And her skin continued to feel as if it was growing progressively warmer as anticipation seemed to take possession of her entire being.
“And now,” he told her, never taking his eyes off her face, “it seems to be growing a very interesting shade of pink.”
“Maybe you need glasses,” she told him, her mouth growing drier by the moment. She could hardly breathe now and she was unable to look away.
“Maybe I just need to take a closer look,” he told her, managing to shift even closer to her despite the bucket seats.
“Maybe,” she heard herself agreeing just before his lips touched hers.
And then the whole world suddenly went spinning totally out of control.
Felicia’s heart was pounding now and her pulse raced wildly through her entire body. Arching closer to him, Felicia realized she had woven her arms around Aaron’s neck.
The kiss grew stronger, more demanding, and she fell headlong into it.
It didn’t even occur to her to resist.
For his part, Aaron wasn’t quite sure how it all happened. It almost felt beyond his control. Granted he was attracted to her. He had felt that subtle pull almost from the very beginning. But attracted or not, he had always been able to exercise restraint and control over himself before now. That meant being able to clamp down on his inner desires if they flared up.
Up until this point, he had been able to isolate them and keep them separate so that his thought process wasn’t affected.
But no such restraint was there for him to draw on right now, no inner strength that he could exercise. There was just this wave of desire that had washed over him and taken over his very soul, loudly urging him on.
And growing stronger.
Although it wasn’t comfortable for them, sitting in the front seat like that, he had his arms around Felicia, holding her. And as he kissed her, he could feel her melding into his heart.
His kiss grew stronger in its intensity, as if there was no end in sight.
Any moment now, he knew this feeling would explode, propelling him to another plateau. He wanted her with an overwhelming desire that nearly stole away not just his breath, but every part of him.
For a very long moment, he entertained the idea of taking her over to his loft and showing her just how much he truly wanted her.
But then a very small part of his brain realized how making love with her would wind up complicating things. That working part of his brain told him he needed to back off for now, even though he didn’t want to.
Besides, he reasoned, if this was meant to be, then it would happen. All in due time. For now, he would savor this kiss and think about where it would lead them—eventually.
Aching for her, Aaron forced himself to draw back and then look at her.
“It is true what they say,” he finally murmured.
She struggled to get her longing under wraps, stunned at what had very nearly transpired just now.
“About what?”
“About still waters running deep,” Aaron told her with effort. There was a great deal of affection in his eyes as they washed over her. And then he smiled. “I’d better take you in before Mom calls Damon and asks him to go looking for you.”
For just a fleeting, intense moment, Felicia felt bereft. She had come so very close to making love with Aaron just now. But then she told herself that it was better this way. There was no future for her with Aaron, no matter how attracted she was to him.
Still, she let out a long, shaky breath before she finally nodded and told him, “I wouldn’t want to worry her.”
“Neither do I,” Aaron said as he walked with her up to the massive front door.
Felicia took out the key that Nicole had insisted she accept and inserted it into the lock. Before turning it, she looked at Aaron. “Do you want to come in?”
The question struck her as odd the moment it was out of her mouth. She was asking him if he wanted to come into his own house, a house he had more right to be in than she had. He probably thought she was a little strange, if nothing else, asking him that.
He looked as if he really wanted to say yes, but instead, he said, “No, I’d better not. I’ve got an early day tomorrow and if I go in with you, I’ve got a very strong feeling that my mother is going to want to ask a lot of questions about the food, Tatum’s restaurant and the evening in general. Once my mother gets going, she can go on endlessly, and while I do like her company a great deal, I really don’t have that much time to spare tonight.”
Felicia grinned, seeing the humor in the situation. “So you’re throwing me to the wolves—so to speak.”
“Mom won’t get carried away with you. And even if she does, all you have to do is yawn and she’ll quickly take that as her cue to let you go upstairs to your room. That’s not to say that she might not want to interrogate you come morning,” he added, “but at least you’ll get a break.”
She looked at him. “You seem to have this all down pat,” she marveled. “I take it you’ve been through this drill before.”
“No.” He didn’t want Felicia thinking that his mother questioned him about his romantic activities on some sort of a regular basi
s. “But I do know how her mind works,” he told Felicia. “She used to do this kind of thing before every one of my bouts. You see, Mom likes getting a handle on everything.”
Felicia nodded. “So I guess this is good-night,” she said, trying to find a way to politely extricate herself before she gave in to the growing desire to talk him into coming in and staying with her a little longer.
He smiled into her eyes, thinking he could easily get lost in them. “It is.”
She squared her shoulders. “Well, I had a lovely time, so thank you.”
“Don’t thank me, thank Tatum,” he told her. “She was the one who covered the meal.”
“Yes, but you were the one who thought to take me out for the evening in the first place,” she reminded him. “And I don’t mind telling you that it’s been a very long time since I’ve been out for pleasure anywhere. Thank you for making me go.”
He smiled at her warmly. “My pleasure,” he told her. And then he added, “If you don’t make good your escape into the house this minute, I’m going to be sorely tempted to kiss you good-night again.”
What makes you think that I wouldn’t want you to? Felicia silently asked. But then, as much as she wanted a repeat performance of what had transpired earlier in his car, she knew that would be a mistake—and asking for trouble.
So, offering Aaron a wide smile, Felicia told him, “Good night,” and, opening the front door, quickly went inside before she wound up weakening.
He watched her wistfully, then forced himself to go. Quickly.
Chapter 15
Aaron hadn’t expected his mother to be the one to open the door when he rang the bell around noon the next day, especially since he could see from Felicia’s and Vita’s parked cars that they were both home. He had actually been hoping that Felicia would be the one on the other side of the door, opening it to admit him inside.
Colton 911: Secret Defender Page 13