Meant to Be Mine (A Porter Family Novel Book #2) (31 page)

“Good grief,” he growled. “You’re making me sound like a wuss.”

“You’re not a wuss. And you’re not a criminal. On the other hand, you’re not a saint.”

“No.”

“You did break my heart in Vegas.”

At least a mile went by before he spoke. “I know.”

“But until now, I didn’t fully understand that you were sorry.”

“I told you I was sorry at lunch that day in Corvallis.”

“I didn’t realize then
how
sorry.”

“Can we talk about something else? Anything? My funeral plans?
Cancer?” He gestured toward Danny. “Your uncle is literally lying
right here
.”

“Okay.” She took a breath. “But first I want you to know that I’m sorry, too. I’m sorry that I didn’t tell you about Addie when I found out that I was pregnant.”

Her words swirled and sank around them. At length, he nodded. “So it’s agreed. We’re both sorry?”

“Yes.”

“Can you ever trust me again?”

Oh my. That was like asking her to jump across a river. A leap too far to dare. “I don’t know. It’s going to take time.”

His steely gaze flicked to the rearview mirror. She read physical desire there, as well as unflinching determination. “I’ve got time.”

T
he next morning, Saturday, Celia fiddled with Cream or Sugar’s display until she’d positioned each donut and cookie to its best advantage. “I think I might go into the kitchen and make something,” she said to Addie as she slid shut the door to the case. It was near eleven, and they’d hit a lull in business. Plus, Celia had been craving walnut tea bread. “Will you be fine out here?”

“Yes.” Addie stood tall on her stool and settled her palms on either side of her beloved cash register.

“Call me when someone comes in, okay? I’ll help you.”

“Sure, Mom.”

Celia made her way into the kitchen and turned her concentration to achieving just the right blend of flour, baking powder, baking soda, and cream of tartar. Twice, customers arrived. Celia went to assist Addie, then washed her hands and got back to baking.

She stilled when she heard the shop’s door open a third time.

“You don’t have to come out,” Addie called back to her. “It’s Daddy.”

Sure enough. She recognized both the bass rumble of Ty’s voice and the telltale cascade of tingles that started at the top of her neck and swirled like firework sparks all the way down to her pinkie toes.

When they’d arrived at Ty’s parents’ house last night, Nancy
had been waiting to greet them. After transferring Danny to a guest bedroom, they’d gone on to Celia’s, where John had been baby-sitting a sleeping Addie. Celia had said good-bye to Ty with his dad standing there, watching. It had been brief and impersonal and part of her had been glad. She’d needed space from him so she could digest all the things she hadn’t known about him before. And now did.

She combined her dry and wet ingredients while listening to the muted tones of Addie and Ty’s conversation and laughter. Initially, the idea of having to share her child had filled her with selfish worry. Lately, though, the help of Ty and the other Porters had begun to feel like a blessing.

Eventually, Ty strode into Cream or Sugar’s kitchen wearing a black T-shirt and weathered jeans. “Good morning, my darling angel.”

“I’ve no idea who you’re referring to.” Celia didn’t pause in her walnut chopping, though his handsomeness affected her like champagne that had gone straight to her head.

“Addie said something about painting the shop tomorrow.”

“Yes. I sucked up to Donetta so much this morning that she finally agreed to let me paint. I need to get it done before she changes her mind.”

“I’ll call my family and see who can help. . . .” He slowed, his attention on her feet. “Wait. Just. A. Minute. What do you have on?”

She set down her knife and modeled by lifting one heel to the side and then the other. “The boots you gave me.” It was still hotter than the Sahara, so she’d paired the cowgirl boots with her tangerine shorts and a white V-neck T-shirt.

He lifted his gaze to hers. She watched his eyes darken. “You in those boots?”

“Yes?”

“Is the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen.” He vowed it to her with such seriousness that her heart began to knock against her ribs. “It’s about time you started wearing those boots.”

She groped for and couldn’t find a come back. “H—” she began.
Where had her voice gone? Why such a coward? “How’d it go with the cars this morning?”

“It went fine. I sacrificed my pride and drove Danny’s surfer car all the way back from Hugo.”

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” He moved toward her.

Too nervous to keep looking at him for fear that she—or he—would do something foolish, she pointed to the small wrapped gift and homemade construction paper card sitting on the metal counter. “For you.”

“Really?” Carefully, he picked up the card that Addie had made for him.

Among the many things Celia had realized last night? That she and Addie had been remiss in thanking Ty for all he’d done for them. She’d set Addie down with art supplies after breakfast, then the two of them had gone shopping at Carrie’s Corner on their way to the bakery.

For long moments Ty stood with his head bent over the card, unmoving. Addie had drawn herself and Ty standing on a hill that looked like an upside-down U. They were holding hands, and Addie was wearing pink boots and a ball gown. Inside she’d wanted to write
To the World’s
Best Daddy
, so Celia had helped her string the letters together.

Celia could sense something gathering in him. It almost looked as if moisture sheened his eyes.

Her heart
really
began to pound.

Without glancing at her, he set down the card and opened the present. A key chain. The charm attached to it had been made out of an old nickel stamped with the image of a longhorn and covered with glass resin. It was tiny in the palm of his strong hand.

“It’s just a little something,” Celia said. A key chain had seemed appropriate, since he kept giving her
Give Peace a Chance
key chains. Also, it had been affordable. Far more so than, say, a house and car. “A token of our appreciation for everything you’ve done.”

He continued to look down at it. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. It’s nothing, really—”

He pushed the key ring into his pocket and then his head came up, his eyes burning with emotion and heat. He came toward her, reaching for her hairnet. This wasn’t the first time he’d tried to snag it from her head. It had become a game.

She sidestepped quickly.

He darted out a hand. She yelped, dodging. He anticipated her reaction, hooking a finger lightning fast under the net and pulling it free. She stilled as her curls fell to brush against the top of her shoulders.

With a flick, he sent the hairnet sailing into the room’s corner, where it splatted like a dead balloon.

Again, he moved toward her, intent in his eyes.
Mercy!
Their relationship had been on a plateau for weeks, but now one card and key ring had pushed him over the edge.

Her rear came up against a corner where two counters met, trapping her. He stopped so close she could see the pulse in his neck. His expression informed her that he’d been patient as long as he could stand to be. That he was about to crush their truce. That the consequences could hang.

“There might be customers out front,” she said weakly.

“There’s no one there.”

“There’s Addie.”

“She won’t leave the cash register. She’s like a soldier.” He closed the space between them even more, until there was hardly a millimeter left. Goodness . . . Her will to resist him was disintegrating. She could not kiss him again! He presented a deadly danger to her well-being. And to Addie’s. And . . .

He lifted her hand and turned it palm up.

“No touching.” Her breath caught. “Remember?”

“You might not have noticed, but I’ve never liked rules.” Light as a whisper, he ran a fingertip from the pad of her thumb to her inner elbow.

“Hate it.” But she murmured it like a benediction, like a plea.

He pressed a kiss to the inside of her wrist.

“Awful,” she whispered.

“What about this?” He kissed the side of her neck.

In the tender hollow there she could feel the rasp of his stubble. “Even worse.” Her lids drifted closed.

He pulled back. Straightened.

She opened her eyes to find him watching her with fierce concentration. His hand lifted and cupped the side of her face. The rough pad of a finger caressed the skin near her temple. Taut silence wound around them, Ty promising her things with his eyes that he had no right to promise and that Celia had no business believing.

She almost couldn’t
bear
the fire inside of her that was such acute ecstasy and need that it felt like pain. Wonder struck, she ran her hands up to his shoulders, memorizing the feel of the ropes of muscle. Then higher, along the sides of his throat, until her fingers finally tunneled into the hair at the back of his neck.

Never had she wanted anything as sharply as she wanted him to kiss her. And still, he waited, staring at her with wolfish intensity. Celia teetered on the cusp of hyperventilating.
Kiss me
, she wanted to scream—

He kissed her. And not lightly.

The feel of his lips! The taste of him. It all came back to her in a rush of memories. The breath-stealing power of it. The wildness of her own reaction.

He deepened the kiss, leaning into her, one hand supporting her upper back, the other raking into her hair. She kissed him back, wishing he could be hers and hers alone.

“Mommy?” Addie called from the front of the shop.

Celia reared back.

Ty’s arms, like iron bands around her, didn’t budge. He lifted his face just enough so she could see that his features were stark, his color high.

“Yes?” Celia answered Addie with a voice embarrassingly high-pitched.

“No one’s coming in.”

“Okay. Thanks for letting us know.” She should push him away.
Instead, she rested her palms on either side of his ruggedly beautiful face, a face a million women loved.

He gripped the fabric across the back of her shirt.

She lifted up onto her tiptoes and kissed him. A string of light kisses, separated only by shimmering glimpses of space and time to drink in the sensations.

“And I need to go to the bathroom!” Addie yelled.

With a groan, Celia angled toward the doorway that linked the front room to the kitchen. “Then come on back.”

Footsteps answered.

This time Celia did push Ty away, even though he still seemed inclined to stay right where he was, as if he didn’t care who saw him holding her. She extricated herself from him a bare second before Addie burst into the room. Their daughter shot them a look on her way past toward the bathroom. “If anyone comes in, don’t use the cash register without me, please.” The bathroom door closed behind her.

In the abrupt quiet that followed, Celia could feel the weight of Ty’s stare. Um . . . they’d just been kissing each other as if this was their last hour on earth. She couldn’t think of anything pithy to say or do in the face of that. Gathering her courage, she looked into his pale blue eyes. The air thickened. Her temperature climbed.

Addie returned from the bathroom. “Did anyone come in?”

“Nope,” Celia answered, and Addie rushed from the room.

The pause between them lengthened, full of physical longing and the thousand-pound realization of what they’d just done.

She opened her lips to say . . . something. Then pursed them. Knit her brow.

Unlike after their last kiss, she would not be flying into an offended huff and insisting he could never kiss her again. A few hours from now she might regret what had just happened between them, but she didn’t at the moment. Nor could she see an ounce of regret on Ty’s face.

“Aren’t you going to rip into me?” he asked.

“To be honest, I’m having trouble thinking straight at the
moment.” She cleared her throat. “Once I can think straight,
then
I might rip into you. I usually have no trouble finding a reason.”

He chuckled.

She faced her chopping board and, very inanely, resumed chopping walnuts. Even in her daze, she was aware that there
were
reasons not to launch herself back into his arms. Just because she didn’t care about those reasons currently didn’t mean they didn’t exist.

Celia heard Cream or Sugar’s front door open, then the sound of voices. Customers had arrived, which meant Ty needed to go help Addie.

“I’m glad you’re taking this so well,” Ty said, ignoring the customers.

“Mmm hmm.”

“We’re adults, after all. And married to each other. We’re allowed to kiss.”

If the authorities knew how he kissed a woman, she was pretty sure they wouldn’t allow it. “Right.”

“No harm done.”

She laughed out loud. Even to her own ears it sounded a little nutty.

“Uh-oh.
Now
are you going to lose it and rip into me?”

“No, no. As you said. We’re adults. We’re allowed.”

He regarded her with confusion. “I’m not used to you acting so normal.”

“Daddy! Come help me, please.”

He left. Celia continued to chop.
Chop chop chop
. She felt like a stranger in her own body. Her hands looked like they belonged to someone else.
Chop chop
. As she relived every second of their exchange and the kiss that followed, warmth unrolled within her. She paused to fan herself, then went back to chopping. She had walnut dust now, and still she kept on.

Ty’s kiss had incinerated thought. It had stolen from her the responsible mother side of her personality and replaced it with . . . she didn’t know what. The infatuated young woman she’d been in Vegas—

Only, no. That was a cop-out. She hadn’t reverted back to that girl just now. She’d kissed Ty as a grown woman. As herself. Not Celia the high school freshman, or the besotted fool from Vegas, but the mom, the person who moved money around trying to pay the bills. She’d kissed him as an adult who had a complete understanding of all his faults and all his strengths and who had wanted him anyway.

Did their kiss herald mass disaster? Or was it possible to kiss Ty Porter from time to time without her life falling down around her?