With love from rose bend, p.21
With Love from Rose Bend, page 21
Girlfriend?
“Girlfriend?” his mother repeated, plucking the word right out of his head. She turned to him, hope shining in her hazel eyes so brightly he damn near strangled on the caustic laughter that scraped his throat. What? Did she fear another woman would never want him? “Is that true?” she asked.
Beside him, Leo tensed.
It didn’t require a mentalist to know she waited for him to out her as a liar. And hell, as kind as the effort had been, he should end it before her claim took on a life of its own. God only knew how long his parents planned on sticking around. Probably as long as his father believed he needed to convince Owen to come to his senses. In other words, they could be here for the long haul, and he should save her from the act she didn’t sign up for...
“Yes.”
Maybe he imagined it, but he heard Leo’s relieved exhale.
“Really?” Skepticism dripped from his father’s tone. “Why are we just hearing about this? You didn’t mention this...relationship when you first introduced her to us.”
“She’s with me in my house, meeting my parents. Isn’t that enough of a hint?” Owen arched his eyebrow.
“How did you two meet? Owen, I can’t believe you’ve kept Leo from us,” his mother gushed.
Leo’s lips parted, but Owen beat her to it. “We met a little over a year ago. In Boston right after our Super Bowl win.”
Her soft gasp stung him, tattooing him with her shock, her disbelief. And it wouldn’t be long before her hurt joined them.
He finally turned and looked at her.
He shouldn’t have. Now he couldn’t glance away. Those gorgeous eyes, like shattered pieces of overcast sky, stared into his. That same shock. Confusion.
And there. Right there.
Hurt.
I’m sorry I’m a coward.
The apology pounded against his skull, an anvil against steel.
“Are you sure about that?” his father drawled. “Leontyne doesn’t look too certain about it.”
“It’s true,” she whispered, addressing his father though not removing her gaze from Owen. “I was in Boston for a convention, and we were staying at the same hotel. We met in the bar...”
“And ended up closing it down talking for the rest of the night,” he concluded on a murmur.
The hurt and bewilderment didn’t fade from her eyes, but heat simmered there, brightening them like flashes of lightning during a summer storm.
“Where have you been for the last year, then?” his father demanded, threads of doubt still lacing his voice.
Leo looked away from Owen, and he momentarily closed his eyes, releasing a long breath. His chest ached, raw.
“I broke it off with her, pushed her away,” Owen once again answered for her. “But we reconnected again when I came to Rose Bend.”
Silence filled the room. He dared to glance at Sherrod and Celeste, and his friend stared back at him, not a little awe in his eyes. A small, enigmatic smile curved Celeste’s mouth, and Owen couldn’t begin to decipher it.
And didn’t have the inclination to—not when so much damn near vibrated off Leo.
Jesus, he needed this circus of a dinner to end so he could talk to her in private. So he could demand to know what the hell she’d been thinking to claim she was his girlfriend.
So he could beg her for one more taste of her mouth, one more touch from her hands, before she walked away from him for being a lying piece of shit.
Goddamn.
“That was the past, and this is now,” Leo said to his father. “And like I said, I didn’t follow football, so I had no idea about the accident. Because if I had known, you best believe, even he at his asshole worst couldn’t have kept me away.” She glanced at his mother. “Excuse my language.”
His mother smiled, her eyes bright with a suspicious sheen. God, not tears.
“Don’t worry about that, Leo,” Charlene whispered.
Because if I had known, you best believe, even he at his asshole worst couldn’t have kept me away.
For the first time he thought back on the loneliest, angriest and most painful time of his life and wished he hadn’t shut everyone out, hadn’t insisted on suffering through it alone. No, that wasn’t correct. He wished Leo had been there so he wouldn’t have been there alone.
Wished that he could somehow reverse time, could have gotten her name, could have woken up early enough to catch her before she snuck out of his hotel room. Refused to let her disappear out of his life.
Shit. If wishes were fifths, he’d be fucked up instead of torturing himself fantasizing about what-ifs.
The rest of the evening wrapped up quickly, but each minute dragged as if time itself conspired against him finally getting to Leo.
When Celeste offered to show his parents up to one of the guest rooms, Owen could’ve kissed her and risked Sherrod’s wrath. Leo said good-night, and he guided her out of the house and to his car. Since Celeste had picked her up from the inn for pageant practice, Leo had no choice but to accept a ride home from him. And from the hard set of her jaw as she rounded the hood of his Range Rover, she knew it and wasn’t happy about it.
He followed her, opening the passenger-side door. But when she moved forward, he didn’t do the smart thing and step back. Instead, he shifted closer until only a breath of space separated them. If he bowed his head, he could bury his face in her thick, silken strands, inhale her scent. If he lifted his hands, he could cup her beautiful breasts, feel her nipples harden under his teasing fingertips, triumph in Leo arching into his grip. Because she would. He harbored zero doubts that she would gasp and grind that beautiful, tight ass against his cock, begging without words for more.
“Leo...”
“Not now, Owen.” She shook her head and slid into the SUV.
Inhaling a deep breath that contained her lilac-and-rain fragrance, he dipped his head and closed the door. Within seconds he climbed inside the vehicle and pulled away from his house.
Several minutes passed. The shadowed, quiet residential streets of Rose Bend passed by before she demanded, “Where are you going? This isn’t the way to the inn.”
“I don’t really want to have this conversation on the front lawn of your family’s establishment. Do you?”
“I don’t want to have this conversation at all.”
“Liar,” he said softly. “You want to have this out. And I’m going to give you a chance to do it. To lay it all out and let me have it. But I don’t want an audience. This is between you and me, Leo.”
He fell silent, and so did she. When he pulled up into the vacant lot next to the empty Glen, she barely waited until he shifted the car into Park before whipping the door open and jumping out of the vehicle. He braced himself for her fury, opening the driver’s-side door slower and stepping free. Once he closed the door, she whirled on him.
“You son of a bitch.”
He slid his hands into the front pockets of his pants. Didn’t say a word.
Thrusting her hands into her hair, she dislodged her ponytail, thick strands falling over her shoulder. Her anger beat at him, and his heart ached to soothe it, to ease the hurt that throbbed underneath. But his palms... His palms dampened with the need to curl her hair around his palms and haul her into him until he could feast on that rage directly from the source.
“You knew. All along you knew and yet you didn’t say a word.” She laughed and the harsh sound rasped in the night air. “You looked me in my eye and pretended not to know me.”
“Yes, I did.”
“You lied to me. Reduced me to a nameless, faceless fuck who wasn’t worth your memory. At least that’s what I left your house believing. And you let me.”
He didn’t answer. Couldn’t. Horror choked his vocal cords. If he’d known that was how she’d perceived his silence—no, dammit, his deception—then he would’ve come clean. Nothing about Leo could be cheapened to a random fuck. She was... She was... Undefinable.
She was...Leo.
“I would’ve never let you walk out that door if I’d—”
“Save it, Owen.” She slashed a hand through the air, jerking her head and sending more hair sliding over her shoulder. “Weeks. It has been weeks since we became friends. You’ve had plenty of time to tell me the truth, and every day that you’ve seen me and didn’t, you made the decision all over again to lie to me. Even during your request, your request, for honesty. What bullshit.”
Tunneling her fingers through her hair again, she pivoted sharply on her heel and paced away from him. She whirled back once more, facing him, dropping her arms to her sides.
“Did you get a kick out of making me look like a fool? Or did you...?”
Her voice trailed off and her pain propelled him off the car and toward her. “Did I what, Leo?” he grated.
“Nothing.”
“Nothing, hell.” He abruptly halted several steps away from her, but his upper body didn’t receive the memo, and he leaned forward, his chest rising and falling, breath pitching like a shipwreck victim on a storm-tossed sea. “Say it. Did I what?”
When her full lips curled in, as if trapping the truth inside, he stalked closer, and he flexed his fingers, reminding himself to keep them at his sides. That he couldn’t grab her, drag her to him and force her to confess it. On his tongue.
“Say it, Leo,” he growled. Or pleaded. Maybe both.
“Did you want me to go away so badly, regretted that night so much, you were willing to lie so I would disappear? Only I didn’t. I didn’t go away. I didn’t disappear. I kept coming back.” Another one of those terrible chuckles. “You must’ve thought I was a serious level-ten clinger. Pathetic.”
“Stop it.”
One moment he stood watching her shiver with the emotion that coursed through her. In the next, he gripped the disheveled mess of her ponytail, destroying the rest of it. The band tumbled to the ground, and he groaned as the thick, cool fall of her hair streamed over his hand and wrist. He surrendered to the need that had called to him earlier, and he buried his face in the fragrant strands, inhaling deep.
“Stop it,” he repeated. Lust and desire ground his voice to the consistency of sand. He lifted his free hand to cup the sweet curve of her hip. Tried to tame his strength so he didn’t grab when every instinct howled at him to clutch her close, mark her so any motherfucker who dared to touch—
Goddamn.
He shuddered.
He was reverting to a fucking caveman.
“Feel me shaking, Leo? Just lower your head, sweetheart, and press your ear to my chest. Hear my heart pounding?” He bent his body around her, wielding a control that had to be divinely inspired. “If you’re feeling brave, take that perfect little hand and feel me like you did in Boston. Feel me, sweetheart. Feel me, hear me and touch me, and you tell me if I regret you. Don’t want you. Think you’re pathetic. There’s only one pathetic person here, and it’s not you.”
With his fingers tangled in her hair, he used that leverage to tug her head back so she couldn’t hide from him. So for once, he couldn’t hide from her.
“You’re right. I did want you to go away. I did want you to disappear.” When she jerked against him, a soft cry escaping her, he tightened his grip on her hair, her hip, holding her steady. Holding her closer. “But not for what you believed. I couldn’t look at you and not remember how you wanted me a year ago. The me then. Not the man I am now. Scarred. Brok—”
“You’re not,” she snapped, irritation mixing with the anger. Irritation for him, not at him. And damn, if that didn’t send warmth pulsing through him with each heartbeat. Even mad at him, she defended him. Even from himself.
“I’m not telling you this for sympathy, Leo,” he said softly. “I don’t deserve your sympathy. Yeah, I panicked, but I still made the choice to sacrifice your feelings for my pride, my insecurities. Fuck yes, I remembered you. As soon as I opened the door. I’ve never forgotten anything about you in fourteen months. Not your scent. Or the dusting of freckles here.” He abandoned her hip and lifted his hand to her face, his fingertips hovering right over her check. “And here.” The bridge of her nose. “And here.” Her other check.
The night air carried the whisper of insects’ songs and her short, jagged puffs of breath that crashed on her parted lips. He loved that sound. And when he returned to New York, whether to come out of retirement or find a new path for his life after football, that sound would stay with him forever. His keepsake from Rose Bend. One of many.
“I haven’t forgotten how sensitive you are here,” he murmured, dipping his head until his lips almost but not quite brushed the fragrant place where neck and shoulder met. “Or the sharp catch of breath when I kiss you there. Or here,” he breathed, dropping his hand again in another of those non-touches over her rapidly rising and falling breasts, the hard tips clearly delineated under the white cotton of her shirt. Briefly closing his eyes, he lowered his hand to the small of her back, fisting the hem of her top. “But what’s haunted me most? What follows me into sleep and makes a joke of my self-control when I’m awake? It’s that low, hungry sound you make when I push into you. Like you can’t get enough. Like you won’t let me go until I give you everything you desire, you demand.”
A shudder rippled through him, and he didn’t care that she felt it. He was past concealing his need from her. Hell, he didn’t know if he possessed the power to do it even if he wanted to.
“But the instant I looked at you on my doorstep, I also remembered the look of pity—that fucking pity—on everyone else’s faces when they saw me after the surgery. And I couldn’t handle that from you. Of all people, not from you. To see the same eyes that had filled with pleasure now darken with disgust? I couldn’t...” He shook his head, his voice broke off, throat working.
“I would ask you what bitch did that and what’s her address, but I think it’s best that I don’t know,” she said, mouth flattening and a light he could only call unholy entering her eyes.
God, how could she stir laughter in him at this moment?
“That’s not the point, sweetheart—”
“It is,” she insisted hotly. “It damn well is. Maybe if the people in your life had spent more time letting you know just how special, gifted, brilliant and just damn good you are—all of you, not only your arm or your face—then I wouldn’t be here, in the middle of the night, in a dark parking lot telling you, you are fucking enough, Owen Strafford.”
Then I wouldn’t know you. Then I wouldn’t be in Rose Bend.
And I wouldn’t trade that for this scar. For that accident.
For foot—
Fuck.
He scrambled back from the dusty, crumbling ledge of that thought. His heart raced a hundred-yard dash for the back of his throat. Where the hell had that come from? She was a woman. A remarkable, gorgeous woman, yes. But not one he would change his entire life for. Not one he would place on the same level as the sport that had been his sanity, his purpose...his freedom.
But not one woman—not one person—in his life had ever told him he was enough. Just him. Not because of his arm. Or his money. Or his fame. Or his face.
But just him.
No one but Leo Dennison.
More emotion crowded into him. Too much. Too huge. It filled every bit of him, finding every crack, every crevice, until a visceral fear clenched him. He might not be able to contain this.
A strangled sound shook loose from him and when he would have hidden from her again, she tunneled her fingers in his hair, drawing it back from his face. Giving him no choice but to look at her. He might have been bigger, taller, heavier, but she held all the power here.
“I’m going to kiss you, and I want you to let me,” she whispered. “And not because I claimed to be your fake girlfriend to shut up your parents. Not because we once shared the hottest sex of my life. Not because you’re an ex-or soon-to-be-again football player. I want you to let me kiss you simply because when you look at me right now you see how much I’m dying to have your mouth on me.”
With a groan, he lowered his head, but stopped just short of taking her mouth. She’d declared she was going to kiss him, and he wanted it.
“Show me how much, Leo. I promise you it’s not as much as I dream about fucking your mouth.”
Her eyes widened, shock flaring in the bright depths before she tugged, pulling him closer.
She didn’t make him wait.
Didn’t go slow.
Didn’t tease.
Leo delivered.
She owned him with her kiss. Did she know? Could she tell that with each glide of her tongue over his, with each lick to the roof of his mouth, each wet tangle and suck, he surrendered more of himself to her? His fingers straightened and flexed in her hair, against her back. Restlessly. Hungrily. He opened wider for her, bending his head lower, cocking his head farther, granting her easier, deeper access.
Whatever she wanted from him, of him, she could have.
In this, she could have everything.
“God, I can’t get enough of kissing you,” she rasped. “I could’ve done it for hours that night.”
“Then you shouldn’t have left,” he growled, nipping her damp, swollen bottom lip in punishment. “We’re going to talk about that. But not right now.”
Not when too many decisions bombarded his mind. Like whether or not to draw her nipple into his mouth through her shirt or strip her half-naked so he could finally taste her flesh again. Like whether to lay her back on the hood of the Range Rover, tug her pants off and bury his face between her slim thighs or finger-fuck her first.
Yeah, so many decisions.
Gripping her waist, he jerked his head up, breaking their kiss. He turned and hiked her up in the air. Her surprised cry echoed in his ear, but her legs clamped around his waist. Satisfaction zipped up his spine.
