Sugar Springs (28 page)

Lee Ann caught her mom peeking out her kitchen window and tossed her a little wave, but appreciated it when she didn’t come out to join them. It seemed like an evening for only the four of them...and Boss.

“You should have been here Tuesday afternoon,” Cody said. “I’d been so worried I wouldn’t ever win her over, but when she realized what the workers were doing, and that you weren’t going to scalp the both of us for tearing up the yard...” He paused, shook his head in amazement and gazed out at his girls. “I swear, Lee, I thought her wrapping her arms around me that afternoon was the best thing ever, but she called me ‘Dad’ today.”

Goose bumps lit her arms. “I saw.”

She didn’t say “heard” because it had been more than that. She’d seen what it had meant to him. And she’d loved it for him.

“Just remember,” she said. “You don’t need to give her things to make her love you. You can’t buy it, Cody.”

He cut his gaze back to hers. “You saying I still screwed up?”

“No.” She gave him a gentle smile and reached to lightly touch his jaw. She liked feeling the roughness of the day’s stubble under her softer skin. “Not at all. The basketball goal, and the concrete, were perfect. Both of them. I’m just saying don’t make a habit of it, okay? Otherwise...well, they’re kids; they’ll take advantage. That’s what kids do.”

Without warning, the past crowded into her head. Her. Cody. Stephanie. They’d all been barely more than kids themselves.

As if his thoughts had followed the same path, tension became a thick cloud surrounding them. He snagged her hands and held them between both of his. “I made a lot of mistakes in the past, Lee, and hurting you...”

She shook her head and shifted to move her legs off of his lap, but he put a hand on her shin to keep her in place. “Don’t,” he urged. “We can’t go forward without talking about it.”

“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 want 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?