Let Me Love You Again (An Echoes of the Heart Novel Book 2) (29 page)

Selena nodded. She clamped down on the rest of what she intended to say once Ms. Walker was gone.

“And I helped with Teddy.” Camille’s wide, innocent eyes, begged Selena to understand. “I’m really good with him. Right, Oliver?”

“Better than me,” he said.

“High praise,” Selena muttered.

“I planned on sending her home as soon as I realized she was
here,” he explained. “But things got a little out of hand. Teddy woke from his nap early.” He turned to Ms. Walker. “Why don’t you take him in and talk with the kids while I finish up with my neighbors?”

Ms. Walker took the toddler.

“I have another appointment this afternoon.” She looked less than thrilled at being dismissed but turned on the heels of her conservative, stylish pumps and struck off for the dining room. “I’d hate for your parents not to get the most benefit from my time here.”

“Thank you,” Oliver said when she was gone—to Belinda and Selena. “I can’t screw up Teddy’s placement for my parents.”

“It’s the least we could do.” Belinda looked down at Camille. “You promised me you’d stay in the backyard, young lady. I was scared out of my wits just now when I couldn’t find you.”

“So you didn’t see her come over?” Selena asked.

Belinda shook her head.

“You had no idea she’s been over here before?”

“No. But I didn’t want to make trouble for Marsha and Joe with their social worker.”

Oliver sighed. “Thank you, both of you, for covering my ass.”

“I’m sorry, Grammy.” Camille hung her head. “But—”

“She really was a big help with Teddy,” Oliver offered.

“Evidently, they’re fast friends,” Selena added.

“But—” Camille started to say again.

“Mom, would you mind taking her home?”

Belinda scolded Camille with an admonishing look. “It sounds as if someone’s not going to get any more outside playtime unless she stays with me or her mother.”

“But—”

“We’ll talk about this at home.” Belinda tried to lead Camille toward the back door.

“No.” Camille refused to budge. “I don’t wanna go. I won’t. I won’t go!”

“Camille?” Stunned, Selena knelt in front of her.

Her daughter’s face was bright red, her breath rushing in and out. She was trembling and close to tears.

“You shouldn’t have snuck over uninvited,” Selena insisted, “even if Mrs. Dixon’s let you before. You shouldn’t have wandered over without your Grammy knowing. But we can talk about it at our house.”

“But this
is
my house.” Her daughter stomped her foot. “I belong here, too. You said so, and I wanna stay. I wanna play with Teddy and the other kids before we move. Why do we have to move? Why do I have to go now, when—”

“This is not your house.” The words choked Selena. Or maybe it was the panic of watching her worst nightmare come true—her child hurt and scared because of something else Selena had screwed up.

She hadn’t stopped worrying over what to do about the Dixons since talking with Belinda last night. She’d stayed gone longer on her run than she’d intended, going over and over things in her mind while she’d rationalized continuing to avoid Oliver. How did she tell Camille? What did she say to Brad and Dru? What if Oliver wasn’t her daughter’s father like Selena had always hoped? What if he
was
and there was no chance for them to be a real family?

And now Selena was gazing into her daughter’s confused expression, wishing there was some way to make the next few minutes less scary than they were always going to have been, no matter what Selena said.

She felt Oliver’s hand on her shoulder. He knelt, too. She saw Belinda’s concern lock onto the three of them.

“When did I say this was your house, Cricket?”

“You told Grammy the Dixons were my family, too.” Two tears spilled from Camille’s eyes. Oliver gently thumbed them away. “Last night, on the porch. I couldn’t sleep. And I snuck up to listen. And you said you didn’t know how to tell me. Or ’splain about Oliver and . . . someone else. You said . . .”

Camille stared at Oliver, her tiny chest rising and falling while Selena’s heart imploded.

“Could you really be my daddy?”

Oliver stared into eyes that looked exactly like his. Or did he just want, badly as it turned out, for Camille to belong to him?

He’d lain awake the last two nights wanting another chance to talk with her, get to know her, make her smile and maybe look for himself a little in how she acted and talked. But now she was hurting, the way Selena had said she would. More tears trickled down her cheeks.

“Yes, Cricket.” Selena turned her daughter to face her. “Oliver might be your father. But we’re not sure.”

Camille looked back to him. “That’s what you were asking, when you were looking for someone’s daddy.”

Oliver nodded, his voice a no-show. His heart was a puddle of mush as Selena stroked her daughter’s arm and Camille flinched away.

“Oliver had just found out, sweetie,” Selena explained. “And . . .”

Camille backed into Belinda, and her grandmother’s arms closed around her.

“We wanted to be sure before telling you,” Oliver finally got out. “That’s why we’ve waited to tell you.”

We.

He caught Selena’s surprised glance at him making her decision to delay dealing with Camille’s paternity a
we
thing. Because he didn’t like how Camille was looking at her mom, as if Selena were suddenly the enemy. He took Selena’s hand and ignored the way she tensed at his touch.

“You’re not sure you want me?” Camille looked down at her flip-flops, gutting Oliver when her bottom lip quivered.

“Of course I want you,” he said. “And my parents for sure want you as their granddaughter, whether you’re mine or not. Everyone in this family will be thrilled to have you—look how much Teddy lights up when he sees you. But we’re worried about confusing you. We wanted everything to be okay for you when you found out.”

Camille stared at him. Hope, doubt, fear . . . it was all there.

“I always wanted . . . to be part of your family.” She snuck a peek at Selena and then up to Belinda. “It’s why I came over today, even if I wasn’t supposed to and I shouldn’t have listened last night, and I wasn’t going to tell what I’d heard. But I still wanted to be . . . to have a family like yours,” she said to Oliver. “But you knew and you didn’t tell me. You didn’t want me to know and . . .”

Her attention flickered to Selena before she turned in Belinda’s arms and buried her head against her grandmother’s tummy, crying so hard now she could barely catch her breath.

Belinda lifted Camille into her arms. “I’ll take her home and calm her down while you two talk.” She gave Oliver her full attention. “I really am sorry I lost track of her and set all of this into motion.”

Selena stood once her mother and daughter were gone, her hand covering her mouth. “How did this happen?”

“Fast.” Oliver winced at the memory of the frantic beginning to Ms. Walker’s visit. “It was all happening too fast. That’s why I
sent you the 911. Camille walked into the middle of a complete meltdown. And then I didn’t know what to tell the social worker about her. Family Services might crucify my parents because of how I’ve handled things. But I couldn’t tell Ms. Walker that on top of everything else that I had an unsupervised minor over who’d been told
not
to visit the scary people next door. And I didn’t want to upset Camille. The last thing I wanted was to make her cry.”

Selena dropped her arm. Her hand slapped against the thigh of her jogging pants. “I guess that plan’s moot.”

“Hey, I’m not the one who let the paternity cat out of the bag to your daughter.” He rubbed his temple. “Damn it, I’m trying to do the best I can for everyone. And
not
ruin my parents’ chances to keep Teddy. There was no one else to help me this morning, no one close enough. So, I—”

“Knew I’d come running?”

“I knew you’d do the right thing once you got here. Just like you’ll do the right thing now that Camille’s asking questions about me and my family.”

“The
right thing
being telling her everything?”

He had no idea anymore. “I want to protect her, too, Selena. I want to protect you both. But I’m worried about my parents, and I know you care about them.”

“And?” Selena looked as flabbergasted as he felt.

“And
you
kissed
me
the other night. You agreed to talk things through. Then I don’t hear from you for over twenty-four hours. I’m turning myself inside out, destroying potential business opportunities to stay in Chandlerville for my family—and for you and Camille now.” Staying for himself, too, because leaving felt more impossible by the hour. “Hell, Camille’s already figured out most of it for herself. But I bet you’re still trying to think of a
way to deal with who her father is without
dealing
with whatever this is between us. Meanwhile, we can barely keep our hands off each other when we’re alone.”

Selena smoothed both palms down her thighs, drawing his attention to her toned, trim body. She looked like she could run for days. But she couldn’t run from them now. He found himself closer. He reached for her shoulders. He held fast when she went to pull away.

“You don’t distrust me nearly as much as you want to.” It had been a stunning conclusion he’d come to somewhere in the middle of last night. “And you don’t like it one damn bit.”

“No,” she admitted. “I don’t.”

“You’ve wanted me far away from
you
from the start,” he said, “not just from your daughter. This has never been entirely about Camille, has it?”

“Of course not.”

“Because you still feel guilty about things you did seven years ago?”

Selena shook her head, looking like she despised the both of them for her weakness.

He aligned their bodies until her heart beat next to his. She was warm from her run. She was looking up at him, seeing and feeling him. She was soft against him, like she’d been a lifetime ago, like in his dreams of her ever since.

“Because you wouldn’t have been able to stay away from me,” he said, “whether Camille was involved or not. And it terrifies you, what that could mean. There’s something in you for me, Selena Rosenthal. There’s something between us still.”

She nodded in silent agreement.

“And you don’t want to trust me again,” he repeated. “Even if this—you and me—could help Camille feel safe and happy?”

Selena tensed against him. “Parker started out saying he wanted to make me and my baby happy. Almost as soon as I limped into New York and met him in some club I’d heard I could get a job doing whatever clubs paid girls my age to do. I’d screwed up any chance I had to have you in my life. I couldn’t face my mother, not knowing whose baby it was. I was desperate. And there Parker was, acting smitten, ready to take over.”

The way Oliver had tried to their last few months of high school. The way he was pushing her now to deal with Camille’s paternity.

“Take over what?” he asked.

“Me. My
education
, Parker called it, while I learned to be something besides eighteen and pregnant, though college was always out of the question, because no one could know a wife of his had no degree. He was ready to be responsible for my child, though. He’d raise her as his own. A man of a certain age should settle down, he said, and make his life look more stable. And I was so grateful at first. He was going to slay all my dragons. Camille and I were going to be safe, forever, the way I’d once dreamed you’d make life better. All I had to do was better myself and keep Parker happy.”

She looked ready to run again. She settled deeper into Oliver instead.

“Except I was never going to be able to make Parker want the kind of family Camille and I deserved,” she continued. “Not when there was a big city of other women out there panting to make him happy without the added baggage of being a husband and father. So, good riddance. Now my daughter will be happy because of me. Not because we need someone else to decide whether he loves us enough to walk through the door at the end of the day.”

“You think I could still hurt you.”

Oliver couldn’t keep his hands to himself, sliding them up and down her curves and feeling her body warm for him. He desperately wanted to meet Parker and wring the man’s cheating neck. He still wanted to slay every dragon Selena was determined to face on her own. He wanted that chance with Camille, too. But . . .

“No matter how much we might still feel for each other,” he said, “you think I could still hurt you. So you’re determined not to give this a chance.”

“You could destroy me,” Selena whispered.

Then she pressed her lips to his.

He took the kiss he’d wanted since she’d driven away from him two nights ago. Once again she’d initiated it, when he’d half expected her to shove him away. To tell him to go to hell. He wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d bitten him, given her current state of mind. Instead, she was all over him.

She still expected the worst of him. But she was rising onto her toes to give him more, take more, want more with him. Just like when they’d been kids, only better now. She was still afraid. But not in this moment, while she arched, stretched, luxuriated in his hands sliding from her waist up her ribs, his thumbs caressing the sides of her breasts. Her hands slipped under his T-shirt, her nails scraping across his belly and then around and up, down, smoothing over his butt, the backs of his thighs, as if she’d never stop.