Currant Creek Valley(59)
“I think I read about that case,” she exclaimed. “It must have been ugly.”
“You could say that. I guess it’s also safe to say J.T. and Margeaux won’t be inviting me over to any family barbecues in the near future.”
She didn’t miss the pain in his voice. How hard it must have been for a man who had grown up in chaos and probably craved a family to make choices he knew would cost him dearly.
Despite knowing it probably wasn’t the wisest thing she’d ever done, she reached a hand out and placed it over his fist curled on his thigh, compelled to offer comfort.
“Losing them must have been hard for you.”
He seemed to freeze at her touch and she could hear the quick inhalation of his breath. He held himself stiffly for just a moment and then seemed to relax on a sigh. He even turned his hand over and entwined his fingers with hers.
The sweetness of the moment nearly took her breath away, sitting here in the darkness with him while the breeze ruffled the new leaves of the big elm beside his house and the dog snuffled softly at their feet.
“It was harder on Ethan,” he said. “He loves his grandparents and doesn’t quite understand another loss.”
“Kids are resilient. They learn to bounce back.”
Ethan would always have a hole somewhere in his heart for his mother and the grandparents, just as she did for her father. People learned to patch up those holes and throw on a little drywall mud and tape until it was almost as good as new.
“I hope so. Being a parent is just about the toughest thing I’ve ever done, especially without Kelli.”
She thought of a tiny baby she had loved inside her for a few short months, that magical time when the world had seemed full of joy and possibilities...until all the pain and hurt came later. Sometimes all the patch jobs in the world couldn’t cover some holes.
“I’m sorry,” she murmured. For so many things. For his wife’s death and her parents’ betrayal, for a boy who had grown up without a home he could call his own but had been determined to give first his little brother and then his son something more, for her own mistakes and the chances she had lost because of foolish choices.
The swing continued its endless rhythm, like life, and a soft, tender intimacy swirled around them.
“What am I going to do with you?” he asked, his voice low.
It seemed the most inevitable thing in the world—natural and sweet and perfect—when he shifted that big, rangy body to face her, cupped her cheek and lowered his mouth to hers.
She sighed, so very drawn to his strength, to his heat, to this hunger that blasted away every thought in her head but more. He kissed her softly, his mouth firm but easy as he delivered slow, tender, barely there kisses that left her achy and trembling.
He pulled her against him, until she was half lying across him on the swing, her legs tucked up beside them. She wrapped her arms around his neck and let him sweep away all her fears about the next day, every doubt, every qualm, every fretful thought.
He held her close while the swing swayed, while her dog snored, while the night seethed with quiet life around him, and she never wanted the moment to end.
In his arms, she felt this strange sense of safety, peace, comfort.
This wasn’t merely physical desire. Yes, she wanted him in a hundred different ways, but this was something more, something so wild and bright and terrifying she was almost afraid to examine it.
She had to, though. She couldn’t run away from it, couldn’t hide under her bed and pull the covers over her head and pretend this wasn’t happening.
She was falling in love with him.
CHAPTER TWELVE
THE IDEA BURST across her mind like the sun exploding over the snow-shrouded mountains on a winter morning.
Wild panic fluttered in her chest and everything inside her seemed to go cold.
No. Not now. She had so much going on at this point in her life. She didn’t have time for another heartache.
Like it or not, she was very much afraid she was too late.
She was falling in love with Sam Delgado—his sweet smile and that strong sense of goodness and honor and his longing for home.
Throw in that adorable, motherless little boy who completely tugged at her heart and it was a miracle she had resisted the Delgado males this long.
Oh, what a disaster.
Though it sliced at her more acutely than her best knife, she slid away from him on the far corner of the swing. He was breathing hard, his eyes slightly dilated in the dim light.
“I thought we decided it was a bad idea to make out again.”
His laugh was rough-edged and sexy. “You might have decided that, but I’m a guy. For us, it’s never a bad idea to make out.”
She wanted so much to nestle back into his chest—or better yet, go inside his half-finished house and work out her restlessness the very best way she could imagine—but she had already made a mess of things. Making love, no matter how much her body craved him right now, would turn a disastrous situation into a catastrophe of epic proportions.