Proving Paul's Promise (9 page)

I motion to the mass of people waiting. “Crowd approval?”

“Not enough.” He shakes his head and sits back down.

I lean over his table, resting on my palms, and ask, “What more do you want?”

The grin falls off his face. “I want everything,” he says. “But I’ll start with a kiss.”

Paul

Friday has paint smeared across her forehead and all over the side of her face, and I’ve never seen her look more beautiful. She leans over the table, and for once I can’t see her cleavage because it’s covered up by that T-shirt. Yet she’s so fucking sexy she takes my breath away.

“You want a kiss?” she asks. She sits back and puts her hands on her hips.

I nod my head. “I want a kiss.”

I watch her throat as she swallows so hard that I can hear it. “If I give you a kiss, you’ll take your shirt off?” she asks.

I stand up. “I’ll do just about anything you want me to do for a kiss, Friday.”

“Off with it, then,” she says. The crowd starts to chant, led by my brothers.

“Traitors,” I say to them. They laugh and rev the crowd up.

I reach behind my back, over my head, and grab my shirt with both hands. Then I pull it forward the way men do, slowly pulling it over my head. Friday’s gaze slides up my body as my shirt goes up, and I feel like her eyes are touching me all the way from my belly button to my shoulders.

The crowd goes wild when I throw the shirt down at my feet. Then I take a step toward Friday. “Time to pay up,” I say.

She giggles and turns like she’s going to run away from me. I hook an arm gently around her waist, pull her back to me, and turn her so that her front is touching mine from top to bottom. I slide my knee between her legs, and hitch her higher with my hands under her bottom. I squeeze her ass and lift her up toward my waiting mouth.

Her eyes meet mine, and I freeze. At the last minute, I kiss her on the cheek with a loud smack and set her back from me. She wobbles on her feet, so I steady her with my hands under her elbows. “You owe me,” I tell her.

“I owe you nothing,” she teases. “You just forfeited.”

I lean down close to her ear. “When I finally kiss you, it won’t be in front of a crowd full of people. It’ll be me and you and no one else.” I kiss the corner of her lips, and she shakes her finger at me. I grab her finger and pull it against my chest. “And it will rock your world.”

“Prove it.”

I nod. “When we’re alone, I will.”

“Believe it when I see it,” she taunts.

Since the five of us Reed boys have our shirts off, Friday, Reagan, Sky, and Emily redirect the lines so that the kids go to Friday and the adults come to us. I’m fine with that. I deal with overly amorous women daily, albeit I don’t usually do it with my shirt off.

A woman who has to be in her eighties toddles up on her walker. She lays her hand on my chest and stares at my nipple piercing. Then she shakes her head and reaches for the top button of my jeans, unbuttons them, and stands back and laughs. “Now, he’ll earn some tips,” she says.

Friday snickers, and she suddenly can’t take her eyes off my stomach.

The older woman sits down, and I give her angel wings on her upper arm with her late husband’s name below it. She tells me the story of how they met, fell in love, and went on to have eight kids together. When we’re done, she sticks a twenty-dollar bill in the waistband of my jeans and winks at me. “Don’t let her get away,” she says, nodding toward Friday.

“I don’t plan to.”

“She’s going to give you a run for your money.”

I laugh. She already is.

Friday

The volunteers came around with water bottles and Paul sent Sam to get us all lunch in the middle of the day, but by five o’clock, I’m starving. The boys put their shirts back on when it starts to cool off, and our line starts to dwindle. We weren’t even supposed to be here this long, but we couldn’t turn down the people in line. They were all waiting so patiently.

Paul dips his paintbrush into a cup of water and rinses it out. “I think I’m ready to be done for the day,” he says.

“Me, too,” his brothers echo.

Everyone helps clean up. Emily bends over to pick up a piece of paper she dropped, and her shirt slips up her belly. I shake my head because Logan has painted a big basketball on her stomach. It looks like the real thing but even bigger. Once she’s down there, she can’t get back up.

“Logan!” she cries pitifully.

But Logan is looking the other way, and he can’t hear her. Paul rushes over to her and offers her a hand, but as she stands up, she scowls and grabs for her belly. “Uh oh,” she says. She looks down at the water that has splashed all over the pavement and Paul’s shoes. “Sorry.”

Paul looks everywhere but down. “Either you just spilled your water or that baby’s ready to make an appearance.”

She holds up a full bottle of water that still has the cap on it. “Sorry about your shoes,” she says. She sits down, clutching her belly like the baby might try to crawl out her belly button. “Can you get Logan for me?”

Sam smacks Logan on the shoulder and points to Emily. Emily crooks her finger at him. “I think it’s finally time,” she says.

“Holy shit,” Logan says as he runs his fingers through his hair. He drops down in front of her. “Are you serious?”

She smirks at him. “Either that or I just peed all over Paul’s shoes. And I kind of think I’d never be able to live down the latter, so I’m hoping it’s the former.”

Reagan jingles her keys at them and says, “Take my car.” Logan pulls his keys from his pocket. “Ours is at our apartment. Go get it if you need it.” Reagan takes them, but I know she won’t use them. She’s going to be just like the rest of us who will be sucking up space in the hospital waiting room.

“We’ll meet you there,” Paul says, but Logan is focused solely on Emily. He doesn’t even see Paul’s comment.

Emily waddles to the car with Logan holding her elbow.

I grab Paul’s arm. “You don’t think she overdid it today, do you?” I ask.

He leans down and kisses the bridge of my nose. “I think it’s just time for the newest Reed to make an appearance.”

“Is her mom still here?” I ask. I look around, but she must have left after she made the big donation that made all the boys strip.

“She’s gone. Logan will text her.”

“Should I call her?” I ask.

He smiles and lifts the brim of my baseball cap. “I think this is Logan’s show. We should let him ask us for help when he needs it. He will. Eventually. When he can think again.”

Paul’s phone buzzes in his pocket. He pulls it out and smiles when he reads the text. “He wants one of us to go to their apartment and get Emily’s bag with her clothes and stuff in it.”

He was right. He knows them so well.

Reagan holds up the keys Logan already gave her. “We’ll go.”

Paul nods. “We’ll meet you at the hospital.”

Sky drops down in in a chair. “Oh fuck,” Matt says, squatting down beside her. “Not you, too,” he says.

It’s too early for Sky. Way too early. “No,” she says. “I’m just tired.”

Matt looks up at Paul like he’s waiting for assurance. “This is a first baby,” Paul says. “It could be awhile. You should go home and sleep for a couple of hours. Take a nap. I’ll call if things go faster than that.”

Sky shrugs. “We need to go check on the girls and Seth anyway.”

Matt nods. “Call us if anything goes wrong. Or faster. Or just goes.”

Paul takes my hand and pulls me toward the exit. The volunteers have agreed to dismantle our tables and hold on to our tips from the day. I already counted it twice, and we made just over eleven thousand dollars with tips and a few very generous donations. It was a good day.

“You should be very proud of yourself,” Paul says as we go down the stairs to the subway. “You made a lot of money for the charity.”

He squeezes my hands, so I squeeze his back. “
We
made a lot of money. Not me,” I correct. “Couldn’t have done it without you.”

“That’s what family is for,” he says. He watches my face closely as we get on the subway. There are no seats, so he stands up, grabs one of the handles, and wraps his free arm around my waist. He pulls me against him, and I am so close that I can feel the beat of his heart against my chest. “Where’s your family?” he asks me quietly.

“Right here,” I say. I look up at him, and his blue eyes are clear and bright. And curious. But not in an intrusive kind of way. In an intimate kind of way.

“I like that answer,” he says, and a chuckle moves through him and into me. “But before us, who did you have before?”

“No one,” I say. I look everywhere but at his face. I lay my head against his shoulder so I don’t have to look into his eyes. Because he might find the truth in them, and that’s the last thing I want Paul to know. He cherishes his family, and if he found out that mine gave me away, and then that I did the same thing, he might hate me. I really don’t want him or his brothers to hate me.

“One day, do you think you could tell me?” he asks. He turns me in his arms and leans down by my ear.

I don’t want to answer him, so I step onto my tiptoes and press my lips against his instead. He freezes, and I immediately think that I have made a huge mistake. But then a growl vibrates against my lips, and he kisses me back. He licks across the seam of my lips, and feeling like I have never been kissed before today, I tentative reach out my tongue to touch his. His hands bracket my face, and he makes little noises as he kisses me. I can feel him all the way to my toes. I grab his T-shirt in my fists and lift myself up higher, pressing against him as I try to crawl inside his heart.

A loud cough jerks us apart. I startle, and he looks into my face. His eyes search mine, and I’m worried that he’ll find my fears there, all my anxiety about my past, and then I worry even more that he’ll find my feelings for him shining back at him. Then he’ll know too much. And he could use it against me. I don’t ever want him to be able to go that deep.

“Damn,” he grunts.

A grin tugs at the corners of my lips. “Something wrong?” I ask.

“I like it when you kiss me, but I don’t like it when you use your kisses to evade my questions,” he says quietly. He squeezes me in a gentle hug.

“I wasn’t evading,” I choke out. But I swallow hard trying to get past the lump in my throat.

“Yes, you were. And I don’t hate it.” He chuckles softly. “I might even understand it, if you’d let me in. But don’t use my feelings for you as a smoke screen for what’s really going on between us, okay?” He squeezes me again.

“What’s going on between us?” I ask, my voice cracking only slightly.

“I’m getting to know you,” he says, very matter-of-factly. He tips my face up with the gentlest of touches. “I want to know you,” he says directly. “Everything.”

I shake my head. “You wouldn’t like what you find out.” He would hate me. Family is everything to him and I gave mine away.

“Try me,” he says.

I hold on to his waist—he still has his arm around me—as the subway comes to a stop. He looks down at me for a second too long, long enough for me to see his brow furrow and the little vee form between his eyebrows.

“What are you hiding?” he asks.

“Everything,” I whisper. But I say it more to remind myself than to tell him anything he doesn’t know. I’m hiding everything.

I pull him out the door and into the station, and we race to the top of the steps. “Friday,” he calls when I’m a few steps in front of him. “You have to at least give me a chance.”

I pretend like his voice gets caught on the wind, but it doesn’t. It sinks deep inside my heart, and hope blooms. Hope blooms in a place where no light has lived in a really long time.

I thought it was difficult being on the subway and having Paul ask me so many questions, but that was nothing compared to the memories that swamp me when walk into the maternity ward.

Paul

I let Friday walk ahead of me into the hospital because I feel like she needs to take a break from my probing. Don’t get me wrong. I want to know everything about her. But I don’t think she likes my prying.

I feel as though I’m opening the plastic top on a brand-new can of coffee grounds. I open it and the sweet essence of what’s inside seeps out and makes everything smell nice, but then someone comes along and slams it shut again. The bad thing is that Friday is the one who keeps slamming her own fucking coffee can lid closed. I get one second of the essence of her, and then she slams it shut again. Then the wonderful smell of her is gone, and all I can see is this really pretty can. The can is full—I know that much. But opening the can and having it stay open… That’s going to be a lot harder.

We meet Pete, Sam, and Reagan on the way into the hospital. “Did you just get here?” Pete asks. He has a bag filled with what I assume are Emily’s things over his shoulder.

“Just walked in the door,” I tell him, and I clap him on the shoulder. “We need to find out where they are.”

But Friday nibbles her thumbnail and motions us toward an elevator. We follow her and go up to the floor she punched. We get out, and there are pictures of babies on the walls and nurses walking around in scrubs with pacifiers and rattles on them. And dogs. And cats. Lots of cats. But I’m pretty sure we’re in the right place because pregnant women are walking by us pushing IV poles.

We stop at the desk and she asks, “Emily Reed?”

The nurse smiles and motions us forward. We follow her to a small room, where Em is sitting on the edge of the bed wearing a hospital gown. She jerks the rear of it closed, and Logan walks around behind her to tie it. He smiles, but she doesn’t really look that happy to see us. I hand Friday the bag and motion for Pete and Sam to follow me. Reagan and Friday walk into the room, and the door closes behind them.

“Why can’t we go in?” Sam asks, looking like a kicked puppy.

“Because she’s going to have a fucking baby, numbnuts,” I tell him. I shove him into the waiting room. A minute later, Logan comes out, wringing his hands.

“She kicked me out,” he says.