A Sweetheart For The Single Dad (The Camdens Of Colorado Book 8) (14 page)

“That’s all I was thinking. I’m sorry if I made it worse.”

More silence took them all the way to the center where he pulled into the lot and went to the parking spot next to the only other car there—hers.

Lindie had been hoping he might suggest they go for coffee or something—anything—that would give her a little more time with him. Now she wondered if she’d really blown it and he was just going to want her to say good-night and get out of his sight.

But while he didn’t suggest they go anywhere else, he did turn off the engine.

That was better than nothing.

“Are you mad?” Lindie asked.

He unfastened his seat belt and turned toward her, putting his arm across her seatback again. “No, I’m not mad. I can see that you thought this might help. And to tell you the truth, if we had talked about it ahead of time, I probably would have told you to go for it. I want Sam here. Bottom line. But Harm’s family is pressuring him to move to Vermont and I don’t know if anything is going to stop him from going.”

“But we can keep our fingers crossed?”

“We can keep our fingers crossed.” Then he shook his head, frowned at her and said, “You really do have a do-gooder problem, though, don’t you? You just can’t resist getting into the middle of things and trying to fix them.”

“I’m so sorry. I really, really am,” she insisted.

“Men in your life have
wanted
you to do this?” he asked as if he found that difficult to believe.

“For a couple of them it was actually the
only
reason they wanted me,” she said under her breath. It wasn’t easy to admit that. “And with a couple others it just sort of happened in a way that wasn’t planned—those two I fixed right out of my life.” She’d tried to joke but her delivery was feeble because the memories were painful.

“Two guys only wanted you for your fix-its?” he asked.

She hadn’t wanted to talk about her past relationships and she still wasn’t eager to. But she also didn’t want him reaching conclusions that might paint her in an unflattering light. Especially since she was worrying that he might think she was a meddler or a pushover. So she opted to explain.

“I met Jason at the end of him getting his master’s degree when we were both volunteering for Habitat for Humanity. He wanted a foot in the door of Camden Inc.’s executive training program.”

“I’ve heard about that. They’re coveted slots.”

She acknowledged that with a slight nod of her head. “What I guess he didn’t count on was that we do an extensive background check on applicants.”

“And his was different than what you knew of him?”

“Completely. It was nothing like his rags-to-college-on-loans-that-had-left-him-deeply-in-debt story. Jason’s parents were upper middle class, and he didn’t have any student loan debt at all. And then there was the engagement announcement for him and someone I’d never heard of in a Chicago newspaper. Funny thing,” she said facetiously, “but he’d gotten engaged to someone else at the same time he was talking to me about hoping to start with Camden Inc. so he and
I
could get married.”

“Ouch.”

Lindie took a deep, steeling breath and said, “He was just using me.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Thanks?” she said with a humorless laugh, not really sure how to answer that.

“So that was one of the jerks. What about the second?” Sawyer asked gently.

“Ryan James. A guy who seemed to try really, really hard and just never caught a break.”

“Another sob story?”

“Pretty much.” Lindie released a sigh full of self-disgust and embarrassment. “After Jason it would have been a red flag if Ryan had wanted a job. But he didn’t. He had a landscaping business of his own. A struggling landscaping business, but still...”

Sawyer guessed. “You gave him money.”

“He seemed so nice and he never
asked
for it. In fact, he’d always turn down what I offered until I insisted.”

“Why did you insist?”

She shook her head in self-disgust, still angry with herself for the way it had played out. “Well, I had money and he didn’t.”

“So you paid.”

“The longer we were together the more often I’d discover in roundabout ways that his business was on the brink of disaster or he couldn’t make his rent.”

“He never told you outright himself?”

“Never! Instead I’d hear him on the phone bartering for more time to pay a bill. Or we’d go to his place and the power would have been shut off while he was gone. And even then he’d make light of it, say it was nothing. A little glitch.”

“So you paid for more than movies or dinner.”

“Then his business tanked.”

“And you paid for it not to?” Alarm was building in Sawyer’s voice.

“There was no way he would let me keep it going. It just went under. He still didn’t want me to get him a job. He was determined to get one on his own. It was just that he’d been working outside, with plants and dirt and grass, and he didn’t have the right clothes for the interviews—”

“So you bought him new clothes. How long did this last?”

“A little over a year.”

“And by then you really liked him.”

“More than that. He’d actually started to talk about marriage. About how when he was on his feet again he’d buy me the kind of ring I deserved.”

“Do not say that you bought your own ring.”

“I thought about it. But before it got to that he said his mom was sick. I’d met her and really liked her. He said she needed surgery that was going to cost way, way more than her insurance would ever pay and she didn’t have the money and he certainly didn’t—”

“Stop,” Sawyer pleaded. “I can’t take it if I have to hear that you wrote him some kind of huge check and he’s living on a beach somewhere now.”

“I almost wrote him a check,” she admitted. “But I wanted to make sure his mom had the best care so I talked to GiGi and she got Virginia an appointment with one of her doctors. But it was a spur-of-the-moment thing—they were fitting Virginia in. So when I couldn’t get ahold of Ryan, I called Virginia directly. She didn’t know what I was talking about, she wasn’t sick at all, let alone in need of surgery.”

“Goodbye, Ryan!”

Lindie nodded sadly.

“But again, it had to hurt to think the guy wasn’t in it because of you,” Sawyer said sympathetically, backtracking from his victorious good-riddance.

“I was completely gun-shy for over a year after that.”

“And then you weren’t?”

“I met Ray. The nicest, sweetest guy. I had the best time with him and we had so much in common. He just never seemed to want anything...physical.”

Sawyer’s handsome face scrunched up. “He was gay,” he said as if he had no other explanation for that. “You helped him out of the closet?”

“Sort of. I introduced him to a friend who’s openly gay and they hit it off.”

“Well, that was nice of you,” Sawyer said with a small, wry laugh, as if he wasn’t sure what other comment to make.

“Then there was Brad. Who had a great job he was happy in and plenty of money and was clearly heterosexual.”

“Look at you, playing it safe,” Sawyer joked.

“Except for one thing. Brad was fresh from his wife divorcing him. Which Livi warned me about—”

“But you saw this wounded bird and that made him all the more appealing,” Sawyer ventured another guess.

“Maybe,” Lindie admitted reluctantly. “I did see how downhearted he was and I wanted to cheer him up.”

“Of course you did.”

“I suppose in a lot of ways I played shrink with him because we talked and talked about what had gone wrong in his marriage. He analyzed it all and he seemed really determined to do better the next time around. So I was thinking that it would all go into a better relationship with me.”

“Instead?” Sawyer asked as if he saw the answer coming.

“He went back to his ex because he convinced her that he knew how to be a better husband to her.”

Sawyer blew out a long gust of air and smoothed her hair away from her face with the backs of his fingers, lightly brushing her cheek along the way and then settling his hand on the back of her neck. It was warm and strong and comforting and supportive and it felt so good to have him touch her.

“Then to top it all off,” he said, “you got mugged trying to help a homeless guy. I think we can pretty safely say that when it comes to you, no good deed ever goes unpunished.”

“Maybe you can break the cycle by not being mad at me for trying to keep Harm-the-dentist’s practice going?” she said hopefully.

“Are you kidding? After all that I’m pulling for it to work even more just so you can have a win,” he claimed with humor, squeezing her neck. “But truthfully, Lindie, you told me you were trying not to swoop in to fix everyone’s problems and rescue them.”

“And you were right about the Murphy girls. They were all here today and we packed up enough dinner for them to take home to their aunt’s whole family. They’re doing okay there.”

“I know. And their grandmother is out of intensive care and it looks like eventually she’ll be able to go home and take them back with her,” he told her. “So you’re not the sole solution to every problem. And when it comes to me, please try a little harder not to do any swooping in for the rescue. I’m a big boy. I can handle my own problems.”

He was the first man she’d been attracted to who didn’t want or need something from her. Who was actively opposed to her doing anything for him or giving him anything.

There was something about that that appealed to a part of her that was separate from the do-gooder in her. A part of her that had never been appealed to quite that distinctly before. And somehow it made him even more sexy.

“From here on,” she swore, “handle your own problems.”

“You being one of them?” he asked as if she had delivered an invitation.

“Does that mean you consider me a problem or that you want to
handle
me?” she challenged, very aware of the sensuous heat on the back of her neck and the confines of the SUV that had them only inches apart.

“Both?” he said, his voice gravelly as he closed the scant distance between them to kiss her.

That initial press of his lips to hers told her how much she’d been on hold since Saturday night. It was the real homecoming that she’d been inching toward every minute since then.

She closed her eyes and parted her lips in answer to his, raising a flattened palm to his chest to make it all the more tangible.

And then she just let herself go and she thought he did, too. Because almost instantly they were making out as intensely as they had Saturday night, falling immediately into the throes of mouths locked together and tongues toying with each other in wet, wild ways.

There were only the lights of the community center’s parking lot and the streetlamps beyond it, and there in the dim glow nothing existed for Lindie but Sawyer and the sweet taste of his mouth, the clean scent of his cologne and the potency of the indisputable masculinity of him.

Her other arm snaked around him, her hand splayed to his back and rode the hills of every muscle, following the valleys they dipped into and drinking in the pure expanse of him.

His hand went from her neck to her back and brought her in closer as his other hand went to her bare shoulder.

That brought a new sense of intimacy to things. Maybe because of the way he was cupping her shoulder, caressing it, rubbing it. And the ripple effect of that was that Lindie felt her breasts swell within the cups of her lacy strapless bra as if they were jealous, as if they were straining for that same attention.

Then his fingertips moved their massage under the first inch or so of fabric over her shoulder blade and that caused her nipples to tighten as if even that slight adjustment meant more.

Suddenly the heat turned up another notch in their kissing and wanting to feel his hands on her breasts was the only thing Lindie could think about.

She sent her hand from his chest to join the other one on his back, holding tightly enough for their fronts to make contact, hoping that might help appease some of the longing for more intimate contact gaining ground in her by the minute.

Then Sawyer flipped his hand over so that his fingertips ran along the edges of her cut-in sleeve. It was the backs of those same fingers that stayed against her skin as he used the fabric as his guide, tracing it up and over her shoulder, then down again to stop near the hollow of her arm, at the very upper and outermost curve of her breast.

He was thinking the same things she was, Lindie thought. He had to be as that scant contact lingered. And if he was waiting for her to pull his hand away, that just wasn’t going to happen because she wanted more, not less.

He seemed to understand because he slid his hand farther down and forward a little more so the backs of his fingers pressed against the full side of her breast.

The deep breath Lindie took expanded her chest in his direction—an involuntary response to how good that felt and how much more she wanted.

How much more she wanted so badly that she pulled one of her hands away from his back and began to unfasten the buttons on the high collar that wrapped her throat so prudishly.

They were still kissing and yet she felt him smile just before his mouth opened even wider over hers, his tongue thrust fully inside and he took her hand away from those buttons so he could do the job.

So many buttons just to get to breast level...why had she ever chosen this jumpsuit?

But then the buttons were unfastened and in came his hand to cup her breast over the lacy bra and it was the bra she cursed. She’d considered going without because of the cut of the jumpsuit but had decided against it since Tyler and Eric would be in her cooking group.

So then it was the boys she was cursing in her mind when Sawyer expertly maneuvered that very adept hand of his into one cup.

The distraction of bra-thoughts made the touch come as a surprise and heightened the sensation, spurring a tiny moan from her. A moan that he answered by clasping her breast more firmly, filling his hand with it to overflow between fingers that delved into her flesh as his palm became the cradle for the nipple that was growing granite-hard.