Les Dimples make a surprise appearance. “I’m going to steal your sister for a few hours.”
I do a double take. “Wait, what?”
“Oooh,” Emmett croons. I turn back to see him tilting his head from side to side, making a kissy-face.
“I didn’t—”
“How will you know,” Harry asks, narrow-eyed, “that we’re all earning our fifty bucks?”
“Photographic evidence,” Luc says without missing a beat. “Of everything. You’re going to keep me updated with pictures all night.”
“All night?!” Mattie’s eyes bug and she gives me a nervous glance.
I shake my head. “I’m not—”
Luc raises his hand again. “I’ll have her home by ten o’clock.”
Mattie blinks twice, her nerves clearly easing.
But mine are just getting revved up. “I’m home now, and I don’t plan on leaving.”
“Does that mean we don’t get the money?” Emmett asks, his panicked gaze bouncing between me and Luc.
I release the latch on my seatbelt. “I’m afraid so.”
The twins pipe up at once.
“But—”
“Can’t you—”
“Guys, would you give us a minute?” Luc asks, avoiding my stare. “Maybe just wait on the porch for a bit?”
“Sure thing, Luc,” Harry answers, already opening his door.
“Yeah,” Mattie says, following suit.
Emmett, stuck in the middle seat, takes his time. My little brother gives me his most earnest look. “I just want you to know that I want a chance to earn that fifty dollars. I know I can do it.”
I open my mouth to answer, but I really don’t know what to say. If I’m being honest, I don’t understand what’s going on.
“Just wait on the porch, okay, jefe?” Then Luc pulls out his wallet and takes out a card. “Here. My cell is on this. Share it with your brother and sister so you can text me.”
Emmett takes the card. “Sure thing, Luc,” he says, sounding just like a mini-Harry. He slides out Harry’s open door and both doors slam shut, leaving me staring at Luc.
“What the hell is going on? Are you trying to bribe my siblings?”
Chuckling, Luc shakes his head. “No, I just want some time alone with you.”
An arc of electricity zings through me, but I do my best to ignore it. “Luc, we’ve talked about this—”
“No, Millie. We haven’t. Not enough.” His smile dims. “Just give me a few hours. All right?”
I want to. I really want to. “I don’t think I should.”
Luc shifts in his seat. He doesn’t move any closer, but I seem to feel him—his presence, his energy, his pull—stronger anyway. “Why not?”
I don’t trust myself.
Instead of saying this, I blather. “I-it’s Thanksgiving. I… I should be with them.”
The corner of Luc’s mouth twitches. “You’re always with them. I’m paying attention, so I know.”
The arc of electricity grows hotter.
He’s paying attention? Why is that so sexy?
His eyelids lower to slits, but I feel his focus intensify. “Other than for work, when was the last time you left them for more than an hour or two?”
I blink. “I…” But my words dry up. The last time I left for any length of time was June 11th. The day I lost the baby. I was at the hospital for about six hours.
Somehow, I don’t think this example will help my cause, so I say nothing.
“You need a break, Millie.”
The urge to tell him I’m fine rises in my throat, but I stop this too. My go-to phrase is beginning to sound ridiculous even to me.
“I want to take you to my place. Just for a few hours. Will you let me do that?”
I sigh. I don’t want to say no, but saying yes would be disastrous. “It’s too risky.”
“Risky?” Luc eyes me like I’m making no sense. “How could it be risky?”
I give him my best stink-eye. “I just told you. And if you don’t believe me, that’s not my problem.”
One side of his mouth tucks back, the look of amusement and heat in his gaze a disarming combination.
“I didn’t say I don’t believe you,” he says, evenly. “I’m just saying it won’t be an issue.”
I shake my head. “It’s always an issue—”
He cuts me off. “But only if we have sex, right?”
The question stops me short. “Yes…” I say cautiously.
Luc’s dimples emerge. “What makes you think we’re going to have sex?”
My cheeks prickle and then ignite with heat. Why isn’t there a convenient hole in the ground when you need one?
“I…” Am I going crazy? Weren’t we talking about sex just a little while ago? About wanting each other? And, not unrelatedly, can someone actually die from embarrassment?
Luc’s hand closes over my forearm. His eyes have gone earnest. “Don’t get me wrong. I want that. But it’s not happening tonight.”
“It’s not?” The words are out in the air between us before I can stop them. I’ve never sounded more stupid in my life.
Somehow immune or at least ignoring my stupidity, Luc leans in and brushes his lips to mine. My flaming face seems to diffuse throughout the rest of my body. If he’s trying to reassure me that there will be no sex, this tender kiss probably isn’t the best method.
“It’s not,” he whispers. “Will you come home with me?”
Chapter Twenty-Four
LUC
I pull into my driveway and kill the engine, glancing over at Millie. I still can’t believe she said yes.
“Is that your house?” she asks, pointing to my landlord’s twenty-five-hundred-square-foot home.
“No,” I say with a grin. “I don’t need four bedrooms. I’m in the back.”
We leave the truck, and I lead her to the gate that separates my place and my downstairs neighbor from our landlord’s backyard. Millie sees the duplex and gives me a funny look.
“You rent?”
“Yeah,” I say, taking her hand and leading her up the wooden stairs that line the side of the duplex. “Does that surprise you?”
She nods. “It does. Shouldn’t a builder have a house of his own?”
I sniff a laugh. “One day, but right now this works for me.” I slip the key into the lock and deadbolt and hold the door open for her. “No upkeep. No yard work. I’m not here all that much.”
She tilts her head to the side, taking in my sparse furnishings and almost completely bare walls. “Now, that doesn’t surprise me.” Millie faces me again with a pretty, winged brow. “You work all the time.”
“I like it,” I say with a shrug.
“I like my work, too, but I wouldn’t want to do it twelve hours a day.” She drops her purse by the front door, and, for the first time, I realize my apartment is missing a coat rack or a hall tree or something. A place to put purses and coats and shit.
“Sit down,” I say, gesturing to the couch. “Can I get you something to drink? Coffee?”
Millie sits but wrinkles her nose and crosses her arms in front of her chest. “I don’t think I need any caffeine.”
My brows lower. “Are you worried?” Now that I’ve asked, I can see she is. And I don’t want her to be. She needs a break from all that. “The kids will be cool.”
She shakes her head. “I'm not… worried exactly.”
I take her in, her stiff posture. Her balled up fists. She’s not worried. She’s nervous.
I set my keys on the coffee table and sit next to her. Close, but not touching.
“I meant what I said. We can just hang out tonight. You don’t need to be nervous.”
Her cheeks go pink in the way that tugs at my ribcage, and she looks at me under her lashes, all embarrassed. “Gah! You’re making it worse.” Then she hides her face behind her hands.
I laugh—she’s always making me laugh—but I get the idea that without the kids to worry about
and fuss over, Millie doesn’t really know what to do with herself.
“Stop thinking.” I grab her by the wrists to ground her, but I don’t pull her hands away. She can hide a little while longer if she wants to. “Just be.”
She spreads her fingers and peeks through them. “Be how?”
I roll one shoulder. “Be here.”
She blows out a breath and drops her hand. “I wish I could have a drink.”
I have a bottle of wine that has been on top of my fridge for a good six months from when we finished a wine cellar for a client.
“Would one glass of wine be so bad?”
She tilts her head from side to side in silent debate. “Antibiotics are bad enough. No need to stress my liver more than it’s already being stressed.”
“Good point. How about some tea? My downstairs neighbor is kind of a tea fanatic,” I say, dropping my voice just in case my neighbor, Hen, can hear me. “She’s from England. She gave me some chamomile-lavender tea a couple of weeks ago because she said she could hear me walking around in the middle of the night.”
Millie’s expression softens. “Do you have trouble sleeping?”
I give her a half shrug. “I wouldn’t call it trouble. I don’t sleep much.”
Her mouth tips up in a smile. “That doesn’t surprise me either.” But then she nods. “Tea sounds good.”
I head to the kitchen, fill the electric kettle, and take down two mugs.
“You hungry, Millie?” I call.
“God, no.” Then I hear her mutter, “I may never be hungry again.”
I chuckle, but I check the fridge just in case she changes her mind. I have some leftover grilled chicken. I could make her a wrap or a salad. But after Thanksgiving dinner at Mami’s, even that might be too much.
Having Millie there today felt so right. Holding her hand while we said grace. Pressing my knee into hers under the table. Clearing her dishes.
She felt like mine.
She feels like mine now. She hasn’t even been here for five minutes, and my place feels more alive, warmer than it ever has. It’s not homey at all, but maybe it can be a retreat for her. A place to get away and forget her responsibilities for a little while.
A place to stop being a guardian and just be a woman.
I’d like to give that to her. I don’t really know what to make of her stories about her family—and birth control and babies. I said I believed her and I meant it. But I can tell she’s scared. That’s one of the reasons I assumed she was a virgin.
But if she’s not, and she’s already experienced this curse, as she calls it, then she’s been hurt. Because she’s alone, and there’s no sign of a baby. Maybe that means she trusted someone and he let her down.
Dios, help her to trust me.
The water boils, and I fill our mugs. “Sugar?” I call.
“Just a little,” Millie answers.
When the mugs are ready, I carry them back to the living room and set them down in front of her.
“Thanks.” She grabs hers and blows over the top. “Smells good. Your neighbor must really like you.” Millie grins as she says this, but she watches me closely, waiting for a response.
“She’s friendly, I guess.”
Millie keeps her eyes on me as she takes a tentative sip. “Should I be jealous?”
I want her to be jealous so bad I choke on the tea.
“Um…” I clear my throat. “Are you jealous?”
She presses her lips together to keep from grinning, her blue eyes blazing. God, she’s adorable. And the sexiest woman alive.
She narrows her gaze. “What if I were? Hypothetically?”
¡Éxito!
I take a successful swallow of the tea. “Hypothetically or otherwise,” I tell her, “I’d never give you a reason to be.”
She blushes again, but before I can enjoy it, my phone buzzes. I check the screen to find an unknown number and three pictures. One of the open fridge with Mami’s to-go containers clearly stacked inside, another of Clarence lifting a leg on a sago palm in the Delacroix’s backyard, and other of Emmett pouring food into the dog’s dish.
Chuckling, I show the phone to Millie. She takes it from me, smiling.
“That’s from Harry’s phone.” She swipes through the pictures, shaking her head at the one of Clarence and the palm. “Photographic evidence. Ingenious.”
I smirk. “I figured it was the best way to get you to accept my invitation.”
She presses her lips together, considering. “It helped.”
When she hands the phone back to me, I save Harry’s contact. Having it might come in handy if Millie lets me stick around.
“You’re really good with them,” Millie says, her voice going soft.
“They’re good kids.”
She bites her bottom lip. “Alex is a good kid, too.”
I nod. “But you’re still worried about Mattie hanging out with him.”
“I’m worried about Mattie and every boy on the planet,” she says on a sigh.
I put down the mug and turn to her. “Does she know what happened to you?”
Just like that, the color leaves her face. “What do you mean?”
I lean back against the sofa cushions. We might be here a while. “On the trampoline you said birth control doesn’t work for women in your family, right?”
She blinks and nods once. “Right.”
“And you said you’re not a virgin,” I say, this time more carefully. “Right?”
I watch Millie swallow. “Right.” The word is barely audible.
“So, th—”
“I got pregnant,” she blurts, leaning forward and setting down her tea. A splash of dark liquid sloshes over the side of her mug onto the coffee table. “Shit—”
Millie moves to clean it up, casting around for a towel, but I reach out a hand to stop her.
“Leave it. Tell me what happened.”
Her eyes are on the spreading spill, but her hands clench at her knees. She breathes for a moment, not speaking.
“I got pregnant last spring.”
Last spring? I say nothing, but it feels like I’ve been punched in the jaw.
“I lost the baby in June.”
“Jesucristo,” I cover her clenched right hand with my left. Pain and loss tighten the lines of her face and wash away the bloom of her color. “I am so sorry, Millie.”
And then it hits me. June. Her parents died in May.
“Oh, my God.” I say it aloud in English. Slowly. And in Spanish to myself. Dios mío. Begging God to listen. To comfort the woman I love. To spare her suffering. To make me worthy of her trust. “I… I…”
But there aren’t words for this. So instead of making senseless noise, I pull her into my arms, and she falls into me, surrendering. Her body shakes with sobs. Heartbreak spills out of her, and it’s like torture. Because there’s nothing I can do. Nothing.
I don’t need to ask. I know she’s dealt with this alone. All of this. Anger burns through my skull and across my shoulders. Because there’s a man out there who left Millie to manage alone. I’d pay money for ten minutes with him to show him what it’s like when life kicks the shit out of you.
Millie cries in my arm, her small frame shuddering with each breath. When I key in on this, the anger leaches out of me. Because if there had been a man who deserved her then, he’d be holding her now instead of me.
The thought leaves me hollow. I think back to the moment I first saw her. Sitting behind me at the soccer field. I couldn’t stop looking. She pulled me like the tide. She would have still been the one to answer the door that day I showed up with her mother’s plans. I would have still been the one she hired.
I would have still seen her. Maybe not every day. But enough. Enough to admire her. Enough to want her. Enough to fall for her, and she’d be his.
Damn.
I will make it up to you.
“Te lo recompensaré,” I whisper into her hair. And for a moment, I think I’ve go
tten away with it, telling her what’s on my mind without her knowing, but she sniffles twice and pulls back.
“You’ve got to stop doing that,” she says, her voice husky with tears.
“Doing what?” I give her my best innocent look, but she just wipes her eyes and glares.
“Saying things I can’t understand.”
I shake my head. “I can’t stop speaking Spanish. It’s my first language.”
Her wet lashes bat twice, and she sniffs again. “I don’t really want you to stop,” she says, looking surprised.
I frown down at her. “You just said—”
“I said you had to stop saying things I can’t understand,” she says, her expression clear, sure. “I think, sometimes, you’ll say something in Spanish so I won’t know what you mean.”
She’s got me there. But I keep my mouth shut to see where this goes.
Millie tilts her head to the side and looks to the ceiling. “I mean, half the time, I think you’re just cursing or exclaiming—”
I laugh because it’s true.
“But the rest of the time, I think you just don’t want me to know what’s going on inside your head.”
I still. “You want to know what’s going on inside my head?”
Millie’s eyes glisten. “Yeah.” She nods, sounding kind of awed. Maybe even surprised. Her smile lights a hidden place in my chest. “I want to know. More than I want to know anything else.”
More than I want to know anything else.
That light in my chest spreads in all directions. It warms every cell. My arms encircle her, and I draw them in a little tighter.
“Let me show you what’s inside my head,” I whisper. I melt closer to her, moving slowly so she knows what’s coming, giving her a choice, the chance to refuse. But she doesn’t, and my lips land on hers like they’ve been called home.
At first, I just let her feel the heat she’s given me. Her lips are cool, her face still damp from her tears. She sighs at the contact, and I know she can feel it. Heat builds, and then I part her lips with my tongue, taste their silken sweetness.
Her breath goes choppy. It passes over me, speaking words all its own, saying again what she’s just spoken out loud. She wants to know.
She wants to know me.
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