Snowbound with the Boss(23)

“Yeah, it is.” He pointed, and her gaze tracked in that direction. “When it’s clear like this, you can see all the way up the coast. Sometimes you can see Catalina, too. On a foggy night, it looks like something from out of a dream. Most nights, though, are like tonight and from up here, the beach city lights don’t look too bright, too harsh, too crowded.”

Listening to him, Kate could see him as a teenager, out here in the dark, alone, watching the world. Hadn’t she done the same thing when she would go to the lake as a kid and watch the moon and stars dance over the surface of the water?

“It’s a lot more lights than I’m used to seeing at night.”

“You have lights, too,” he said, with a half smile. “They’re called stars. I’ve never seen so many, and I’ve been camping in the desert.”

“It’s true.” She looked up and saw maybe a quarter of the stars she would have seen at home. There were just too many lights here to let the sky shine as it should.

She shivered in the wind and shifted her gaze to the bottom of the cliff, where waves slapped hard against the rocks and sent frothy spray into the air.

“Cold?”

“A little.” A lot actually, but when he dropped his arm around her shoulders and pulled her in tightly to him, cold was just a memory.

“When I was a kid,” he said, “I’d come here, and no one would know where I was. This place was my secret.”

There was that word again, Kate thought, looking up at him to find his gaze fixed on hers. “You keep talking about secrets. What is it, Sean?”

His eyes narrowed against the wind as he stared at her. After a few seconds, Kate thought he was going to ignore her question. Then he asked, “Why didn’t you tell me you were married? That your husband died?”





Nine

Kate felt all the air whoosh out of her lungs, and it took her a second or two to refill them. His arm around her tightened in response to her instinctive push to back away from him. Her father. Kate closed her eyes briefly when she realized her dad must have told Sean about Sam.

She should have expected it. Anticipated it. Harry Baker was not happy that his pregnant daughter was unmarried. She probably should have been grateful that he hadn’t come after Sean with a shotgun. Instead, he’d done what he could to convince the father of his grandchild to do what Harry would think was the “right thing.”

Now, Sean’s arm around her felt like a cage, keeping her where she didn’t want to be. She needed a little space, a little breathing room. “Let me go.”

“No. Talk to me.”

“About what?” She shook her hair back from her face when the wind tossed it across her eyes. “Sounds like my dad already told you everything.”

“Not everything,” Sean argued, turning her in his arms until she was facing him, pressed up against him. “He couldn’t tell me why you kept Sam a secret from me.”

She looked everywhere but into his eyes. How could she have told him about her late husband? “Because my marriage had nothing to do with what happened between us.”

“That’s what you think?” He took her chin and tilted up her face until she had no choice but to meet his gaze. Kate didn’t like the shine of anger there, but she was surprised by the layer of hurt she saw over it.

“Okay, when was I supposed to tell you, Sean? Before sex or directly after?”

“It wasn’t just sex, Kate.” His grip on her tightened. “What happened between us was more than that, and you should have told me. God knows there was plenty of time when we were snowbound.”

Yeah, he was angry. But instead of convincing her to back down, his anger served to kindle her own. “Just how was I supposed to work that information in, Sean? I know, ‘Help me pull out the carpet upstairs and oh, by the way, did I mention I’m a widow?’” She set both hands on his chest and gave a shove. “Let me go, damn it.”

He did, and Kate stalked off a few steps before she turned around to face him again. He hadn’t moved. Just stood there, a tall presence whose features now looked as if they’d been carved in stone.

“I don’t talk about Sam,” she blurted out. “Not to anyone. He’s gone, that’s all, and when he died, a piece of me died with him.”

“Kate...”

“No,” she snapped, holding one hand up to get him to be quiet. She’d done this. Opened herself up to this. Memories of Sam tangled with new ones of times with Sean and twisted her up into knots of pain and regret.

Damn it, why did she have to love him? Losing Sam had hurt so badly, and she knew that losing Sean was going to be worse—not only because what she felt for him went deeper than what she’d known with Sam. But because she would also be losing him and still have to live knowing that he was alive and well—just not with her.

So she struggled against the misery curled in her heart and said, “You wanted to hear it, so just be quiet and listen.” She had to take a deep breath and steel herself against the flood of memories that swept through her. “We were happy,” she finally said. “Sam was a sweet man with a kind smile and a big heart. We were married a couple of years, talking about starting a family. Then there was an accident on a job site and he was killed.

“He’s been gone two years now. And when he died, my dream of kids, a family of my own, went with him.”

Sean’s eyes narrowed, and a muscle in his jaw twitched as he ground his teeth together. She felt the power of his stare slamming into her, heard the rawness of his voice when he said flatly, “Until you found out you were pregnant.”

“Yes.” She curled her arms protectively across her belly. “This baby is a miracle for me, Sean. Dreams I let die are alive again because of her.”

“That’s why you didn’t tell me,” Sean said, taking two long strides that brought him right up in front of her. “As long as you didn’t tell me about my kid, you could pretend that it was Sam’s.”

Kate’s head jerked back as if she’d been slapped. Her throat filled, and her stomach churned. She fought for air and thanked God for the sharp, cold wind that batted the tears from her eyes before they could fall. Staring up into the face of the man she thought she knew and seeing none of the warm humor and charm she was so used to, Kate could only think...he’s right.

She had done that. And now she was caught with the truth and what it had done to Sean. She had played mental games with herself. Pretended that the baby she carried was the child she and Sam had wanted so badly, because she hadn’t wanted to involve Sean at all. What they’d shared had been so momentary—how could she call him later and say she was pregnant and expect anything from him?

But it hadn’t been momentary at all, her mind whispered, and that’s what had really scared her.

Those snowbound days with Sean had opened up her heart, her mind, her soul. He’d touched places inside her that no one else ever had, and it had scared her. Scared her enough that she’d found a way to avoid seeing him again. And now, being called on it, she could understand Sean’s anger and the hurt she’d caught such a brief glimpse of.

She wanted to argue with him, tell him he was wrong, but she couldn’t. The truth was hard, but lying wouldn’t solve anything at this point.

“God.” Shaking her head, she said, “You’re right, Sean. I did try to pretend that this was Sam’s baby. We wanted a family, and I felt cheated when Sam died.” She threw up her hands. “We had a few days together, you and I, and what we felt and did was so far out of my normal universe that I had to find a way to protect myself, I guess.

“Plus, you made this huge point about not wanting a family and I thought, why tell him? Why bring him into this at all? And I was wrong. I should have told you.”

“Yeah,” he said tightly. “You should have. But some things are hard to talk about. To remember.”

Was he talking about her now, or did he have secrets of his own? Was he going to tell her? Would he hold that part of himself back in some kind of retaliation for what Kate had done?

“Do you still love him?”

Her gaze snapped to his. “What?”

“Sam,” Sean said, his gaze burning into hers. “Do you still love him?”

“I’ll always love him, Sean,” she said, knowing Sam deserved that much at least. “He was my husband, and he died. That’s not something I can just tuck away and forget.”

Kate had loved Sam with all the sweet promise of first love, and she would always treasure those memories. But what she felt for Sean was so much bigger, deeper, richer, there was simply no comparison. Sam had been as soft and gentle as a candle’s glow. Sean was the sun—searingly bright, all-encompassing and so hot you risked being incinerated by getting too close.

Yet she couldn’t stay away.

He moved in on her, and Kate shivered. It wasn’t the wind, not the sea-scented cold; it was the heat in Sean’s eyes that affected her. God, she loved him, and she knew she shouldn’t. Knew she should find a way to stop.

He set his hands at her waist and whispered into the wind, “Who are you thinking of when I kiss you, Kate? Sam? Or me?”