Sugar Springs Page 21

  “We can’t go forward, period.”

  His eyes hardened. “Why not?”

  Why not? Wasn’t it obvious? “We’re two different people now, Cody. You have your life and I have mine. There’s nothing left between us.”

  What a lie, and they both knew it. There was a lot left between them.

  She ducked her head, hoping he wouldn’t call her on it. He twined their fingers together and brought their hands to his chest, tucking them inside the open zipper of his jacket.

  “You’re wrong,” he said. “We have two kids. Chemistry. A past and a future.” He spread her fingers flat against his chest and held her hand there, his heart thudding strongly under it. “And we have this. My heart goes wild just being near you.”

  Her brain screamed at her to remove her hand. Instead she rubbed her thumb back and forth over the cotton of his shirt. She shook her head. “That doesn’t mean anything.”

  “Yours goes wild, too.”

  “No, it does—”

  Cody put a finger to the pulse hammering in her neck, cutting off her words, and whispered, “Every time, baby.”

  She concentrated on taking steady breaths. “We’re too different. It would never work even if we did want it to.”

  “I do want it to.”

  The words were spoken urgently, forcefully. He put her hand back in his and curled her fingers over the top, then kissed the tip of each one. She could feel herself being pulled under.

  “I don—”

  “Don’t lie.” His entire body grew taut. “Don’t lie about it. You know it’s still there. After all these years, we’d be fools to let it go again without even seeing what it is.”

  “I didn’t let it go the first time.” She hated the whiny sound of her voice.

  “I know.” He forced her to look at him. “I did. I was weak. I was an idiot. And up until those two girls barged their way into my office last week, I’ve regretted those actions every day of my life.”

  “You no longer regret them then? Hurting me?” The words didn’t cause the pain they once would have because she knew what mattered now was the kids, not the past.

  He pressed a kiss to her palm. “I’ll never quit regretting the pain I caused you,” he stated. “Never. You deserved so much better than that. But I also can’t regret the action that gave me those two daughters.”

  Her heart exploded at the quiet admission. His love for them shined bright. She nodded, letting him know she understood, and looked away.

  “I need to ask you for something, Lee. Three things.”

  She was terrified to ask. Everything suddenly felt too intense. “What?” Her heart thudded.

  “The girls.” That was all he said for a moment, and she glanced back at him. The intensity in him trapped her. “Don’t let me mess up. Nothing big. I know I will with little things, but stop me before I do anything major. Will you do that for me?”

  She nodded. The darn man was going to bring her to tears if he didn’t quit saying all the right things. “You do great already without any help from me, but yes, I will do my best not to let you go too off course.”

  She pushed out of his grasp and off of the swing. She needed space to breathe. He followed.

  They ended up on the other side of the porch, standing near the trellis where her Don Juan rosebush bloomed late into the summer. They now stood where neither their children nor her mother could see them, and an itchy feeling began inside her. She should have stayed on the swing. It was safer than being tucked away in the corner with him.

  He leaned against the house and looked out over her yard. “I also need your forgiveness,” he stated flatly.

  The tone had gone hard, causing her to tense. She was unsure if he was referring to the past and his sleeping with Steph, or to something else.

  “It was purely innocent, I swear, but I did actually tell Stephanie there was a perfectly good foster care system if she was pregnant.”

  “What?” Lee Ann jerked around to face him, but her vision was as blurry as her brain.

  He continued before she could reconcile his statement with the man she was learning him to be. “She was taunting me. Asking if I planned to marry her if I’d just gotten her pregnant.”

  She took a step back, but Cody’s hand closed around her forearm to keep her from going farther. She didn’t know if she wanted to get away from Cody, the memory of what he did, or simply the hurt of all of it.

  “No excuse on my part—I know I did wrong—but she pushed everything that day. And I didn’t for one second believe she would have had sex with me without being protected.”

  “And would you?” Lee Ann gulped in a deep breath, eyes burning from unshed tears. “Would you have married her had you known? Would you have said the same thing about the pregnancy?”

  “No way would I ever have said that about the pregnancy. Absolutely not.”

  She wanted to shove him away from her, tell him he didn’t deserve those girls after what he’d just said, but his recent actions told the truth. He was a natural father and likely would have been even then.

  “What about her? Would you have married her?” She had to know. Somehow, she suspected that hearing that he would have would hurt more than catching them together in the first place.

  Cody pulled her against him, wrapping an arm around her to keep her in place when she pushed against his chest. He pressed his mouth to the side of her head, his warm breaths ruffling the hair at his mouth, and she stilled. Fear held her immobile.

  Finally, he lifted away from her enough to speak, and his voice came out scratchy. “I honestly don’t know what I would’ve done concerning the girls. Not foster care, but looking back at who I was then, I have no idea how exactly I would have handled it. But there’s no way in hell that marrying Stephanie would have ever crossed my mind.”

  Her body was so rigid as it pressed up against his that it was beginning to hurt. She forced herself to relax. He was not a bad man. He’d proven that many times over since he’d been back. But he had made bad decisions in the past. “How can you be so sure?” she asked.

  His silence went on for so long that waiting to hear what he had to say became painful. Finally, he wrapped his other arm around her, as if the first one didn’t have her locked tight enough. “I couldn’t have, Lee. I couldn’t have done that to you. Ever.”

  A car drove down the road, and she gave a halfhearted tug back against his arms. “Let me go. People are going to see.”

  “No.” The simple statement left no room for argument. “We aren’t finished. Will you forgive me for that, Lee? And will you help me be a good dad? I want to share things with them, teach them things.” He lowered his voice. “I want them to be as proud of me as I am of them.”

  Her heart melted. How could she say no to that? While staring at his chest—she couldn’t stand to see the honesty in him at that moment—she nodded. “Of course. To both questions.”

  “Thank you.” The words were full of emotion as he pressed another kiss to the side of her head, and she melted into him. She laid her head on his chest as if it had suddenly grown too heavy to hold up. It would be so nice if the past wasn’t in the way.

  Silence permeated the air as they stood there, both thinking about the past and all it might have been, and she couldn’t help but wonder if things could be different now. If they could somehow make something work. But it felt like too much time had passed. There were too many hurts between them. She would do best to put an end to the moment and move on.

  “There was one other thing I wanted to ask from you.”

  “What’s that? Birthday gifts for the girls?” She hoped to lighten the mood with the suggestion, but his body tensed against hers.

  “Dang. I haven’t even thought about buying gifts.”

  She laughed, unable to help herself. He sounded like such a boy.

  “I love that sound,” he murmured, as if talking to himself. He lowered his head, and his next words vibrated against her ear. “I wan
t you to give us a chance, Lee. To see what we have.”

  Hair stood at attention down her arms, but not because of the words so much as the brush of his lips against her ear. “It’s a bad idea.” It was a token argument, and they both knew it. She had no real protest left in her.

  “And I don’t want to hide our feelings from the girls.”

  She stiffened. “They can’t get their hopes up for something with so many odds against it.”

  “Why can’t it work?” He slid the fingers of one hand along the curve of her throat. “We have chemistry, Lee. We care for each other. We have kids together. What doesn’t work?”

  It sounded so easy.

  Fighting the urge to turn her head and reach for the lips still hovering near her ear, she silently counted to ten to get herself under control. When she succeeded, she spoke normally, trying to break the seductive spell he was weaving. “The girls and I live here. And you don’t live anywhere.”

  “That’s purely logistics. We can figure it out. I’ll be here another four weeks, and then I have a three-month contract in Florida. While I’m there, we could see each other every other weekend or so. I’ll have to see the girls anyway. I want to know that you’ll be there for me, too. I want to try.”

  “But what if it doesn’t work?” she asked. “I don’t want to hurt the girls.” Or herself.

  “But what if it does?”

  She struggled with that question because she knew the answer. If it worked, she could have everything she’d ever dreamed.

  But if it didn’t...she’d have another heartbreak. A grown-up one this time. Her chest ripped down the middle at the thought.

  Attempting to keep a sensible head, she compromised. “We make no promises to each other or the kids. Not yet. Nothing but that you won’t disappear for good out of their lives.”

  He didn’t immediately answer, then gave a single nod. “Agreed.”

  His lips moved in, and she shut down her brain and lit on fire. With a moan, she leaned into the kiss, reaching for what she wanted, and let him show her with actions what his words had yet to completely convince her heart. He cared for her. A lot.

  Wanting more, she opened wider, and he touched her with reverence. His groan reverberated through her as he held her against him, trapping her arms against his chest, and loved her mouth with a touch so heartfelt she wanted to cry. He was perfect—hard and taut and strong enough to protect her forever, if only she could be certain that he would.

  She strained for more, wanting the kiss to never end. This was the most poignant moment of her life, and she didn’t ever want to let it go.

  Too soon, Cody’s lips pulled back, clinging until the last second, but he didn’t remove his arms from around her body. She couldn’t bring herself to open her eyes and let him see inside her at that moment. Instead, a row of tears slipped from beneath the outer corners of her lashes and tracked toward her chin.

  He released one arm from around her, and long fingers lifted to caress along the path of each tear, breaking her heart as much as making it soar. She was so scared.

  “Say yes, Lee. Tell me you’ll give us a chance.”

  She shook in his hands. Opening her eyes, she studied his serious face, wanting nothing more than to accept everything he seemed to be offering.

  “There are rumors you’re dating Holly,” she stated. She didn’t believe them, but she also couldn’t let herself totally ignore them.

  The corners of his mouth lifted. “And there are rumors I’ve already had you in my bed. More than once. Apparently you sneak out of your house at night, babe. People like to talk. You know that. But you also know I would never date someone else when it’s your heart that I want.”

  That was a bold statement considering his past. But then...She blinked. Had that been the problem? Had he not been ready for her heart back then? Even though she’d already given it to him?

  She met his gaze, and the brown of his eyes burned steadily into hers. “Say yes,” he whispered.

  She took in a deep breath. “We agree to nothing long-term? We’ll see where this goes, then if the time comes, we’ll reassess?”

  His eyes softened, and he pressed warm lips to her forehead. “However you want to do it, babe. Just say yes.”

  She couldn’t overlook the fact that as she stood there in his arms, kissed senseless, she was happier and more optimistic than she’d been since that day when she’d headed home as a teenager thinking her world lay happy and perfect before her. The irony was that he was making her see the very same sight, all over again. And it terrified her. But what was life if you didn’t go for it once in a while?

  She nodded, jumping off the ledge in a giant leap of faith.

  “Yes,” she whispered. “Yes.” She then reached up and kissed the man, who now had complete power to break her heart into a million shattered pieces.

  Cody climbed the steps to Lee Ann’s house early the next morning with two bags in hand and knocked on the door. She wasn’t expecting him until after he got off work at noon, but he’d been unable to wait. They were going to tell the girls that they were dating. And then he had to actually wrangle a promise of a date out of her. He wanted to get her alone. The sooner the better.

  When she didn’t answer, he pounded on the door again and glanced at his watch. It was only six thirty in the morning, but as she was someone who was at work by six every day during the week, he’d expected her to be up. It had never occurred to him that her schedule would allow her to sleep in on a weekend morning.

  When there was still no answer, he dug out the key he’d been using during the week, knowing it would tick her off when she found him inside her house, then quietly let himself in.

  All was still, with filtered light just barely starting to make it through the windows into the rooms. He held the door and let Boss in, then pointed him to a spot by the couch and told him to stay. No need to wake anyone just yet. He’d get breakfast set out and then call them.

  As he passed through the living room and turned left to head to the kitchen, he couldn’t help but look back over his shoulder, hoping to catch sight of Lee Ann in her bed, rumpled in sleep. Instead he found the bedroom door open to a perfectly made bed, and no one in sight.

  Well, dang.

  He set the diner bags on the kitchen counter and went back to peek into her room. The adjoining bathroom was just as empty and spotless as the bedroom. He retreated and glanced up the stairs. The kids’ bedrooms were up there, but would Lee Ann have also slept upstairs for some reason?

  And then it occurred to him where she would be.

  Of course she wouldn’t have slept in. He’d known that wasn’t like her. She would be in her darkroom, and chances were good she’d been there for a couple hours.

  Breakfast could wait. They used to have some good times in her darkroom. He wanted to see if that option was still open to him today. Making his way back through the living room, he closed and locked the front door, then went into her studio. Sure enough, the lights were on, and the darkroom was locked tight. He rapped softly on the door and waited. If she was in the middle of something, she wouldn’t be able to let him in, but he had to at least try.

  “I’ll open the door in a just a minute” came through the door. “Is something wrong?”

  Only that he wanted to put his hands on her and get a few more minutes like they’d had the night before on the porch.

  “Can I come in?” he asked.

  There was a charged pause from the other side, and then a slight noise as if she’d put her hand to the door. “Cody?”

  “Uh-huh. Let me in. I want to give you a ‘Good morning’ kiss.”

  The thought was almost enough to make him forget breakfast. If he’d been thinking straight, he would have known this was where he’d find her early on a Saturday morning. He would have skipped the food altogether and come down solely to “help her out.”

  “I can’t until I pull this last picture out. Did you use your key and let yourself int
o my house?”

  And here it came. “I did.” He paused. “But I brought you breakfast. Should I turn around and leave?”

  He could hear her breathing. He couldn’t help wondering if she was having the same illicit thoughts as he.

  “Are you okay in there?” he asked. “You sound a little...winded. Not thinking naughty thoughts are you, Lee?”

  Light laughter filtered through the door, and his shoulders relaxed. She wasn’t going to send him packing just yet. “What makes you think I’d be doing any such thing?” she asked.

  He pressed the side of his face against the door and imagined her on the other side doing the same. He needed to touch her. “I saw the way you watched me in my apartment the other day, babe. I know exactly what kind of naughty thoughts run through your head these days.”

  Her laughter sounded again, but this time it came out tight. “Give me a few seconds and I’ll be right out.”

  “I’ll be here.”

  While waiting, he shrugged out of his jacket and tossed it over the seat at her desk, and the photo on her computer screen caught his eye.

  “Wow,” he murmured to himself. He stepped behind her desk to get a better look as she came out of the adjoining room. He glanced up at her and pointed to the monitor. “This is amazing.”

  She stood beside him. “Thank you.”

  It was a shot of a mother dog licking the head of a newborn while at the same time eyeing the camera. Lee Ann had captured the pure exhaustion of the dog, along with the maternal instinct most females seemed born with. No one had better come near her puppies. “I want that.”

  “What?” Her eyes widened with surprise but then she shrugged. “Okay. I’ll give you a copy.”

  He turned to look at her then and like always, she took his breath away. With one long step, he closed the distance between them and slid a hand along each side of her face. He leaned down and gave her a proper hello. Loving the fact she didn’t discourage the kiss, he took more, roaming slowly over her lips until both of them were more out of breath than two people with kids in the house should have been.