Romancing My Love(5)
Rebecca walked with him, protectively holding one of his arms while they crossed the road. When they got to the other side, the man thanked her, and she rejoined Pierce without a word.
“That was nice of you.”
“What?”
He shook his head. “Helping that man.”
“Oh. Anyone would do it. If I didn’t, you would have.”
Would they? He wasn’t so sure.
“Tell me something about yourself,” he said as they followed the footpath into the dimly lit park. “Not about work or school, but…” He shrugged and let her fill in the gap.
She leaned toward him. “Tell me about you, Pierce Braden.”
He laughed. “You don’t like to give up control, do you?”
“It’s not a very comfortable thing for me. Do you like to give up control?” She blinked up at him with a lascivious look in her eyes, and Pierce fought the urge to reach out and touch her cheek.
“Not easily.” He lowered his voice. “And certainly not in public.”
She held his steady gaze. “Well, then, I guess we have something in common.”
He’d like to see just how much more they had in common. They walked in silence for a few minutes as they passed beneath old-fashioned streetlights that illuminated the path.
“What did you do before bartending?” They crossed a narrow bridge, and Pierce stopped in the middle and took off his suit coat. He placed it over the railing and looked out over the water.
“Whatever I could.” Rebecca stood beside him and her gaze turned thoughtful. “Caretaking, mostly.” She ran her thumb over a slim silver ring with a channel of blue stones running down the center that she wore on her index finger.
“Caretaking?”
Her smiled faded and her lips pressed tightly together. Rebecca’s chest expanded as she drew in a deep breath, and as if the breath was exactly what she needed to tear herself from whatever she’d been thinking, she blew that breath out and turned toward him with a semi smile. Her hair fell over one eye. Pierce reached up and tucked it behind her ear, and her smile widened.
He wondered what would make such a strong woman look so vulnerable in seconds, and why she would reveal that she’d been a caretaker if she didn’t want to talk about it. What type of internal reserves did Rebecca possess in order to push aside whatever she was hiding and flash a smile that made Pierce once again want to take her in his arms and make the pain go away?
“Are you okay?” His voice sounded oddly quiet.
She dropped her eyes to the ring again and waved a hand in dismissal. “Oh, yeah. I’m fine.” She turned away from him, and though he couldn’t see her face, he sensed her gathering her wits about her like a bird gathers pieces of its nest.
He folded his jacket over his arm and, wanting to comfort her, reached for her hand. “Let’s walk.”
When she took his hand, he was both relieved and surprised.
“So, to answer your question—”
“It’s okay, Rebecca. You don’t have to tell me anything you’d rather not.” She didn’t respond, but again, he sensed her fighting some sort of internal battle. Her hand was soft and her grip relaxed, but as they strolled around the lake, her hand tensed several times, then relaxed again. He noticed that each time her hand tensed, a flash of worry passed over her face.
“You’re a pretty nice guy,” she finally said.
Her observation made him smile. “I’m not sure everyone would agree with you.”
She shifted her eyes to his with a coy smile. “Because you’re a womanizer or because you’re a shrewd businessman?”
He drew back and couldn’t hide his wide-eyed surprise at her brazen question. If she were anyone else, he might dispute the first accusation. Despite her earlier innuendos that he was sure she was oblivious to, he had the impression that she was streetwise and savvy. He had a feeling she’d see right through his cover.
No one saw through Pierce but his family.
“Probably a little of both, I’d imagine.” He watched her smile grow.
“Honesty. That’s refreshing.” She slowed by a grassy knoll beneath the umbrella of a tall tree. “Do you mind if we sit for a few minutes? I like it out here.”
Before sitting, she leaned on his shoulder and slipped off her heels; then she sat in the grass with her knees to one side, leaning her weight on one hand in the grass. Pierce sat beside her. He leaned back on his palms—his hands close to hers—and crossed his feet at the ankle.
“I think the last time I sat in the grass was after wrestling my brothers.”
“When you were a kid?”
“No.” He laughed. “We pretty much wrestle whenever we see each other.”
“Really? How fun. How many siblings do you have?” An easy smile lifted her lips, and she sighed, seeming more at ease than she’d been earlier, which added to her complexity.
“Four brothers and one sister, and yeah, we do have fun.” He thought back to the last time they were all together, at his brother Luke’s house when Jake came for a visit. Jake had jumped Pierce the minute he’d seen him, and their other brothers had been quick to join in on the fun. They’d rumbled on Luke’s lawn like teenagers until they were covered in grass stains and laughing like fools. They were always laughing like fools when they got together. Good times.
“Wow. I don’t have any siblings. I can only imagine how fun that must have been. Where did you grow up?” She ran her finger along the seam of her skirt.
“In good old Trusty, Colorado, a typical small town, where everyone knows everyone else’s business. The local diner should be called gossip central. We lived in a slightly bigger town for a few years, Weston, Colorado. I still have family there. How about you? Where did you grow up?” He didn’t want to think about Weston, the town in which he was born. He had fond memories of spending time with his uncle Hal Braden, and his six cousins when he lived in Weston, but the memories he had of his father were not all peaches and cream.
“I grew up here. Talk about polar opposites.” Rebecca smiled up at him. “I would have given anything to live where people watched over me.”
“Oh, it gets old; trust me. When you’re a teenager, it’s a nuisance that everyone knows your business, and as an adult…well, it’s always a bit of a nuisance to know that anything you say or do might be the daily dish the next day. But it’s a friendly town, and there is a certain comfort that takes away the annoyance of the gossip. Most of my family still lives in Trusty. How about your parents? Are you close with them?”
She rubbed her thumb over that ring again. “I was super close to my mom.” Her voice cracked. “But I don’t know my father.”
Pierce inched his fingers over and settled them on top of hers in the grass. She lifted her eyes to his. The air between them heated, but not with the burn of desire, with something more ethereal, something Pierce had never before experienced. It pulled at his chest and made the pit of his stomach clench tight. His protective urges returned, and he didn’t try to figure them out. He simply reached up and cupped her cheek, his thumb brushing the column of her neck. Her skin was soft and warm, and he felt her swallow against his thumb. He didn’t move to kiss her, though he wanted to more than he wanted his next breath. He just held her cheek, as if to say he was sorry she never knew her father and to let her know she wasn’t alone. When he opened his mouth to say just that, he was surprised by what came out.
“My father left a few days after I turned six.” Pierce withdrew his hand and looked away, trying to figure out why he was talking about his father, Buddy Walsh, whom he never spoke of. Not with his siblings, not with his mother, and certainly not with a woman he’d known only a few hours.
She leaned closer to him. “That must have been so hard. Do you ever see him?”
Pierce shook his head. “No, and I don’t have any interest in seeing him. He was a bast—” He drew in a deep breath. “He wasn’t a very nice man.” Buddy was a bastard and a thief, but Pierce wasn’t a man who publicly disparaged others. His mother, Catherine, had seen to that. Love came first in their house, but wrapped in that love, he and his siblings learned respect, manners, and valuable work ethics. His mother had set her feelings about their father aside, which as an adult, Pierce now knew must have taken tremendous willpower, especially since Buddy had run off with another woman.
“That’s what gets me about life. The people we love are taken away forever, and the ones we could live without still get to walk on this beautiful earth.”
Her words sent a chill down his spine. He was beginning to put the pieces of Rebecca’s life into place, and Pierce hoped his interpretation of what she was saying was wrong. “You mentioned caretaking.” He moved the fingers that had been covering hers in the grass to cover her whole hand. “Your mom?”
She looked down at their hands and drew in an uneven breath. “Yeah. My mom.”
“I’m sorry, Rebecca.” He lifted her chin with his index finger so he could see her eyes. He wanted her to know that his words weren’t empty, as they might have been to any other woman. When their eyes connected, the tether between them was as strong as a cable.