Her Reason to Stay (13 page)

Daphne stared at the muscle working in his jaw. His eyes, all heat and banked emotion, made her heart stand still.

Suddenly, he pulled her close. “Maybe it’s already too late,” he said.

She held on, wanting to be closer, reveling in the play of his muscles beneath her hands. She breathed in his spice-and-male scent.

“No,” she said. “It’s not too late, but I won’t wait forever, and I won’t play this game of getting close and pulling back.”

“I’ve wanted to see you,” he said, his tone ragged.

“I’ve been worried about you. Raina told me Lisa’s coming back.”

“Daddy, what are you doing?”

Patrick stepped back, but then turned her in front of him. She was unsurprised to find Gloria and Will only feet away.

“Thanking Daphne for bringing you back to us.” Patrick pulled at his tie as if it were choking him.

“Hunh,” Will said. He held out a cellophane bag. “Want some candy?”

“We were actually on our way to lunch.” Gloria lifted the plastic bag from her grandson’s hands. “Maybe you’d join us, Daphne. Patrick’s coming.”

“I can’t.” She looked around her for Raina’s book and caught a glimpse of Patrick’s relief. She must have left the book on the bench. “I was on my lunch hour and I have to go back to work.”

“Awww,” Will said. “I could teach you some soccer.”

“Some other day, we’ll ask Daphne ahead of time,” Gloria said.

“Thanks,” Daphne said. “I seem to have lost something. I need to go back, but it was nice seeing you. Next time, Will, let’s meet under better circumstances.”

Patrick had the guts to look regretful as she walked away.

“What’s cirumstirrups, Dad?” Will asked.

A
T FIRST
,
Patrick thought the woman in Cosmic Grounds was Daphne. She had on jeans and a T-shirt. Her dark brown hair was in a loose knot on top of her head, but she looked up as he came closer, and he saw her eyes.

Raina was beautiful, but life hadn’t colored her gaze with mixed memories of sadness and warmth, regret and a kind of joy he couldn’t ever remember feeling.

“Hey.” She gestured to the piles of paper in front of her. “Sit down. Tell me why I’m perfect for White Rock’s nursing program.”

“You are?” He took the chair across from her. “Since when?”

“Since I decided I don’t have to fill my mom’s shoes. I need some of my own.”

“And nursing is a fit?” He picked up the forms, all neatly filled in. “I can see that.”

“After a few minutes to consider?”

“I was surprised. I thought you’d just slide into your mother’s chairs on all the committees in town.”

“Which you don’t respect.”

“What’s the matter with you and your sister? Do you have to challenge every word I say? I’m not sensitive enough? I don’t respect enough?”

“You’re not very sensitive. Too busy protecting yourself.” Raina went on as if she hadn’t just poked him with a figurative ice pick. “But you should respect the amount of charity work my mother did. She kept half this town in warm clothes every winter.”

“Who’ll do that if you don’t?”

“Her committees.” Raina picked up a pen and poised it over her legal notepad. “She trained them well, and they still feel her influence. They’ve told me so.”

“She was a born organizer.”

“In the best way.” Raina looked up at him. “Daphne thinks you’re not sensitive?”

“Did she tell you that?” He hated asking it. He hadn’t been in high school for a good many years, and even then he’d had the good sense not to play the “Did she say she liked me?” game.

“Daphne doesn’t mention you at all.”

“That explains why you’re so mad at me.” He stood and kissed the top of her head. Whatever it cost, he knew she was always in his corner.

“If she asks, I’ll tell her your heart got incinerated along with your marriage, but you seem so insensitive because you’re afraid of how much you care.”

He laughed. “I’d rather you didn’t. You make me sound so manly I might whip out some yarn and start knitting socks.”

“You’ll have to take care of looking manly on your own.” She turned, making her chair scrape on the black tile floor. “She’s not a bad person, Patrick. She had a problem—has a problem—according to her, but she deals with it every day. She won’t let her guard down.”

His cell phone rang and he pulled it out of his pocket, mostly to keep Raina from seeing his expression. Then he read his divorce lawyer’s number off the phone’s display, and felt as if he’d been punched.

“Mitch?”

“Bad news, Patrick. We need to meet.”

“Lisa’s finished rehab?”

“She’s petitioned for a new court date. She wants to see Will, and her papers say she’ll finish her treatment in less than seven weeks.”

The floor fell out from under Patrick. “Is the date set?”

“Not yet, but we need to prepare a response now.”

“If she’s been successful, I can’t keep her away from Will. He needs her, too.” His heart breaking for his son, Patrick looked at his watch and mentally took stock of today’s calendar. “I can’t meet you until after six.”

“Fine. I’ll be in my office. I’ll have a plan and a draft document for retaining as much control as we can. Plus, we can require drug testing. Maybe we’ll even get supervised visitation. You give your okay and we’ll be set.”

Patrick hung up the cell phone. Raina looked anxious.

“She really is coming?”

“She really is.”

“Did she go into rehab?”

“According to Mitch, she’ll finish in about seven weeks, but what does that mean? She can walk out of there and have a new prescription before she gets on a plane.”

“Rehab worked for Daphne.”

His doubts were pounding him full force. “I can’t trust anyone right now, Raina.”

Raina set down her pen with deliberation. “Who’s asking for your trust? First of all, you’re a fool for throwing away my sister. Daphne’s not like Lisa. I’m trying to suggest that maybe Lisa has become more like Daphne. She finally sees she has a problem and she’s making sure it doesn’t hurt anyone else.”

Optimism was one thing, but he’d never put Raina down as someone who could believe in Santa and the Easter Bunny and pie in the sky all at one time. “You saw him in the hospital that day, Raina. You’re his godmother. How can you trust Lisa with him again?”

“The courts won’t just hand him over without making sure Lisa is capable of taking care of him. But if she is well, she deserves a second chance and Will deserves his mother.”

“The courts. How well did they take care of Daphne?” Every time he thought of her, scared and alone the way Will had been, he wanted to hit something.

“You’re a lawyer,” Raina said.

“For the defense.”

“You don’t trust the courts, but you trust your clients.” She picked up her pen again, dismissing him. “And yet, you let my sister believe you don’t care about her because you won’t give her a second chance.”

“I care about Daphne,” he said, anger raising his voice. He felt the heads turn around him. Raina actually smiled.

He walked to the counter, deep in thought. His son, who couldn’t sleep without a night-light, ran to Daphne without a second thought, and Raina had so much faith in Daphne’s recovery from alcoholism that she actually seemed to believe Lisa could also turn her life around.

What the hell?

D
APHNE STOOD BACK
to admire the sage paint on her bedroom wall. Blue had been too intense. Yellow had somehow depressed her. This pale, warm green felt just right.

Someone pounded on the front door and she jumped, flicking paint into her hair.

“Come in, Raina,” she yelled without Abernathy decorum.

The door opened.

“I think this green works. They called it sage at the paint store. Makes me think of Thanksgiving turkey when I say it—I’m kind of hungry—and it’s thick so it coats the roller and I’m a slob with it, but I feel all warm and cozy.”

“Looks nice.”

She turned so fast she slopped paint down the wall. “Patrick?”

“I’m the last person you should let in here,” he said, “and you’re the last I should run to.”

He was wearing an overcoat. The day had been cooler, temperatures hinting of an early fall, instead of staying where they should in mid-August, but an overcoat?

“What’s wrong with you?” Without waiting for an answer, she set down her roller and wiped her hands on the drop cloth. “Are you hurt? Why are you cold?”

She opened his coat. What she expected to find she couldn’t say, but she rubbed his shoulders and his chest, shuddering as her fingers bumped over the hard bumps of his nipples.

He stood in front of her, dazed, allowing her to pat him down. But then, she slid her arms around his waist.

“What’s wrong with you?” she asked.

He swept his arms around her, and he took her mouth as if he owned her.

A traitorous part of Daphne, a small essence she didn’t recognize, wanted to be owned, yearned to be swept away with the passion she’d felt for this man since his eyes had first frozen the air in her direction.

She forgot her anger and frustration as she shushed the alarm bells warning her that Patrick was going to regret what came next.

She opened her mouth and tasted the heat of the first man she’d ever wanted simply because he existed, because something in him seemed to fit with all the jagged edges of the self she’d managed to salvage.

He shrugged out of his coat, never lifting his mouth from hers. But she remembered something was wrong.

“Are you sick?” she asked, hardly knowing her own faint voice.

“Because I want you?”

“Because of the coat. Are you cold? Do you have a fever?”

“Shh,” he said. “Please.” He caught her face between his hands. His fingers searched her skin as if for warmth. His mouth traced every inch of her face. She couldn’t hide the tears he found in her eyes.

She’d had no idea she could want a man with her cheekbones and her temples and the bridge of her nose, but her whole body seemed to ache with longing.

He lifted his head, but only long enough to stare at her before he kissed her again. “You know I care about you?”

After the briefest second, she nodded.

He pressed their foreheads together. His mouth brushed her nose. “How can you hesitate?”

“Because you keep telling me I’m not good enough.”

“Oh, no. I get that I’m the one who should be proving myself,” he said. He pulled her close and she felt his mouth in her hair. Then he straightened abruptly. “What’s that?” He touched his lips.

“You have green paint on your mouth.” She lifted the tail of her tank top and wiped it. His half smile faded. When she dropped her shirt, his hands were already there, tight beneath her ribs. He slid one palm up, between her breasts.

She exhaled in a gasp. Patrick caught her shirt and pulled it over her head. He stared at her lacy, white bra as if he were feasting on her.

“You look better than I’ve been dreaming,” he said. “Can I…”

Her blood seemed to slow and surge through her veins with the beat of her heart. This was crazy. It was probably wrong.

“I want to see you,” he said.

“No preliminaries?”

“Please don’t try to be funny.” He leaned down and closed his mouth over her nipple. Lace and tongue, an unbearable, unbelievable combination, but not quite enough, either.

Groaning, she unhooked her bra. Her breasts seemed to swell as the lace dropped to the ground. She hardly felt naked. She wanted him vulnerable, too.

He cupped her breasts, but she reached for his shirt managing a couple of buttons before he jerked the rest and dropped the shirt behind him. He took her hand and pulled her into him.

The slide of his bare flesh against hers was so familiar she might have been touching herself. But oh, this was better. This was heat and life…and delicious.

Her nipples bumped through the sparse hair on his chest. He caught her breasts and lifted them, rubbing his thumbs over her so gently she cried out.

Patrick covered her mouth with his. His hunger, fierce, trembling, anxious to please, swept all good sense from the room.

Before she had time to consider consequences, Daphne undid his belt and found the button at the top of his zipper. She was frustrated with her own jeans when his pants hit the floor and his arousal thrust against her.

“The bed,” she said.

He turned, pulling her with him. As he bent to take her nipples in his mouth again, she managed to undo her jeans.

Patrick threw off the drop cloths, lay back on the bed and reached for her. She pushed her jeans and panties off and then yanked his boxers down his legs, sighing when she saw him.

He smiled in appreciation of her approval and reached for her hands to help her crawl over him. They both moaned as she covered him.

He pressed his palms against her back and pulled her breasts to his mouth, loving first one and then the other. She wanted him with her, tried to reach his chest, but he caught her hands behind her back. Again, his mouth moved over her breasts until her body screamed for him.

“What are you trying to forget?” she asked. She’d made so many mistakes before. Patrick might be the one she couldn’t recover from.

“Forget?” He kissed her, trying to shut her up, she feared.

“Tell me,” she said.

“I can barely speak.” He finally let her go, and his big hands covered her thighs. “Slowly,” he said. “Let me help.” He rocked her against him. His eyes closed as if he couldn’t bear her to see what she did to him, but his nipples were hard. Goose bumps ran across his chest and arms.

He opened his eyes and pushed his hand beneath her hair. He pulled her down, taking her mouth. His legs lifted behind her as if he was trying to regain control, but she liked pushing him. She held him inside, teasing, pulsing, until he groaned as if he was losing himself.

The sensations masked common sense and reality. He lifted her, and only at the last second did self-preservation take over.

“Wait,” she said, practically on a moan. She struggled to find her feet. Patrick reached for her.

“Daphne, come back,” he said.

She couldn’t answer, but she found what she was looking for beneath the bathroom cabinet. A long time ago, she’d learned to take no chances. She came back and put the condom on him. He held her hands, moving them to give himself pleasure, which she also found good.

This time, when he pulled her body over his, she sank against his chest and almost laughed at his harsh breath against her temple.

He raised her by her forearms and looked so deeply into her eyes as he lifted his hips, she had to look away. She straightened, putting instinct in charge.

In the faux darkness, threaded with emotion and need, she wanted to ask why. The word wouldn’t come. She’d needed Patrick for too long, and if this was the only way they could say the things that mattered so much…

He lifted her and let her down again. And again. Over and over until her toes were curling. Sweat beaded on his forehead. She leaned down to lick it off, rocking her pelvis over him.

He grunted her name and caught her hips, holding her where he wanted her. He swelled inside her, and it was almost too much. She felt as if she were flying apart, as if Patrick were her safe anchor in a whirling world.

He held her until she landed, until she could think again and hold him and remember that something had brought him to her place.

His breathing slowly returned to normal. Hers didn’t because fear had replaced passion. She rolled off his chest and went to the bathroom.

Her face in the mirror startled her. Pink stained her cheeks. Her hair stood in a curly nightmare.

Her roused nipples and the reddish marks on her stomach and hip made her reach for the robe behind the door. She slipped it on. She was tying it with firm hands when Patrick appeared.

“What are you hiding?” she asked.

“That you make my life make sense, and still I can’t have you.” He pressed his mouth to her forehead and then stared at her in the mirror, the stranger with those icy eyes again. “Lisa asked for a court date.”

“Lisa?” She barely remembered his ex-wife’s name with lovemaking still flushing her body. “No court is going to give her Will.”

“She’s been in rehab.” He walked back into the bedroom and picked up his boxers. “I guess someone will believe it’s worked.”

She watched him step into his underwear. “So you wanted to forget.”

“No.” He couldn’t lie. He lifted his head, some guilt in his gaze. “I did, but it was more than that. I wanted to feel safe again. And I wanted to be with you. I wanted to make love to you and pretend everything would be okay.”

“Pretend?” She tightened the belt on her robe. “Well, you did a great job. Now you should go.”

“What?”

She handed him his pants. “Go. I don’t need pretend.”

“I’m telling you everything. I meant to tell you everything.”

“After.” She lifted his shirt with her toes and caught it in one hand. “This is yours, too. Take it and your lies and get out of my home.”

“Lies?”

“I asked what was wrong. You said ‘nothing.’”

“You could have talked then?”

“You didn’t want talk from me. You wanted sex. Now you can find someone to talk, who’ll make it all better.”

“I want to talk to you, Daphne. I wanted to ask what made you change, how you know you won’t drink again. Raina said I didn’t care about you, but I do. I kept saying so, but you wouldn’t believe me. Surely you know now.”

“If you’d said something, that might matter.” She turned away. “But you used me, and I let you. You’re going to kill anything I feel for you.”

“I know I’m not a good man right now, but I need your help.”

“Bad news for you,” she said, her heart shattering. “I don’t know that I’ll never drink again. And neither will Lisa. She can promise. She can cajole. She can bargain with the devil, but no one can make her stop her bad habits except herself. And the same goes for you.”

“My bad habits?”

“Mistrust. Apparently, feeling so superior to me in your fine, sober state that you have no problem using me for sex, pumping me for info on how an addict lives, and then running back to your nice safe hidey-hole.”

All the while, she’d been urging him through her three rooms, plus kitchen area. At the front door, he had his pants in one hand, his shirt and jacket in the other and an annoying, quizzical look on his face, as if he couldn’t understand what made her so unforgiving.

“I expect respect from my friends—and my lovers.” She reached around him to open the door, shoved him out and slammed it in his face.

A
T THE BOTTOM
of the stairs, with his shirt on and his pants finally buttoned, he ran into Raina.

His first thought was to plunge his head into the nearest pile of sand. His second was more to the point. Daphne needed someone. He’d hurt her badly.

Raina looked him up and down.

“What the hell have you done to my sister?”

“She threw me out.” That part didn’t matter as much as the pain that had made her hunch inside her robe. “Will you go up there?”

“I plan to as soon as I chase you to the car with a shotgun. Are you out of your mind?”

“I must be.” How could he explain no one except Daphne would do when he was terrified for Will? No one else could make anything feel right. “I’ll give you my father’s shotgun if you’ll just try to explain I needed—” It was difficult to say to Raina. “I needed to be with her. I didn’t mean to use her. I’m frantic for my son, and I wanted to—”

Lose himself? Forget the fear of the moment when he’d have to put Will’s hand in Lisa’s? Neither were good reasons to make love to a woman who’d made him feel he was the only man who’d ever mattered to her.

“I’ll tell her she’s going to be okay despite you being a complete jerk, for God’s sake. Get your clothes on straight and go home and make sure you can explain this to yourself before you set foot near Daphne again.”

“If I could imagine how to have her and Will and not make any more mistakes, I’d be up there still.”

“Instead you’re running off, half-dressed. Why not tell
her
you care?”

“I tried, but she threw me out.”

Daphne had seen straight through him and so did Raina.

She handed him the sock that had dropped at his feet. “I think you’re wrong. You should give her a break, especially after what you’ve done. You have some nerve talking about what danger Daphne might bring your family. I’m positive you’ve damaged mine.”

“Leave him alone, Raina.”

They both looked up, startled to find Daphne on the landing, her hair in order, her face still glowing, but drained of emotion.

“Please let me come back up and try to explain,” Patrick said.

“You need a good woman, an ordinary, never-been-in-jail, never-slept-under-a-bridge, Honesty kind of girl to keep Will safe. Then you’ll feel safe, too. I’m not ever going to be her.”

He climbed the stairs. “Go away, Raina,” he said. She stayed at the bottom. “Give us a second of privacy.”

At the top of the steps, he faced Daphne, but nodded toward her sister. “At least you got what you came here for,” he said.

“Yeah, but I wanted more.”

“You’re not afraid to say that,” he said.

“I don’t have a son, and I’m not using him to make sure I don’t get hurt.”

“You’re saying this is about me, not Will?”

She touched his cheek. “I don’t ever want to see you again. I don’t want to infringe on your friendship with Raina, but you and I are done.”