Snowfall and Secrets (The Omega Mu Alpha Brothers Book 1) (17 page)

Tess seemed born for this. She also loved kids. For crying out loud, she spent eight hours a day with nine-year-olds. If she did love him, she’d never give up motherhood for him. He had to tell her. Today.

She grinned when they entered the shop.

“It smells amazing in here.” She hopped on the counter while he grabbed an apron from the back room.

“How is it everyone on this island doesn’t weigh three hundred pounds?” she asked.

“Moderation, sweetheart.” He smiled.

He was going to give her a quick kiss before he got to work, but she took the apron from his hands and leaned into him.

“I do have to work.” He laughed into her hair.

“I know, but if I’m going to sit here and watch, I want a nice view.” She grinned and pulled his sweater over his head. He didn’t fight her, interested to see where she was going with this. Her fingers fumbled with the top button of his shirt. He hid his smile. This wild, yet shy side of her was a hell of a turn on.

“Tess,” he said breathlessly.

“Hmmmm.” She deftly undid the rest of the buttons and slid his shirt off his shoulders. Her fingers brushed his abs and with a satisfied smile, she handed him the apron.

“There,” she said. “A nice view.”

He sighed and put the apron on.

“You know if I have to take my shirt off, so do you.”

“No, you have to focus. I don’t.”

He pulled out the ingredients and dumped them into a huge copper pot. The cook time would give him plenty of time to figure out how to tell the rest of his story and hope she didn’t leave him.

L
ukas zoned out while he was working. Watching him stir was hypnotic, and shirtless had definitely been the way to go. The muscles in his shoulders and back constricted and released as he moved.

“Tess, can you grab the butter for me?”

“Sure.”

She pulled it out of the fridge.

“How much do you want me to put in?”

“The whole thing.”

Tess gasped. “That’s…” She looked at the package. “Three pounds of butter.”

He chuckled. “Yeah, I know. Good stuff. Cut it up first then put it in. I’m going to keep stirring.”

She found a knife and cut the butter into chunks. “How do you do this when you’re alone?”
“I usually prep it ahead of time. But you distracted me, and I forgot. Good thing you’re here, right?”

She dumped the chunks of butter in the pot and leaned against the wall, watching him.

“Can I ask you something?” Lukas looked at her with a pained expression.

“Sure,” she replied, nervous.

“This morning, before I got into the shower, did you tell me you loved me?”

His expression was unreadable. She wanted to know what he wanted to hear. He noticed her hesitation.

“Don’t tell me what you think I want to hear. Tell me the truth.”

She sighed. “Yes, I did. But I didn’t think about it, so I don’t know if I meant it or not.”

“Those things are usually the most honest when they are said like that.”

“Maybe. I know I have real feelings for you, and I also know that no man has ever treated me the way you do. I don’t know. I’ve never been in real love before. How am I supposed to know if it’s true or not?”

He moved over to a table, picked up four metal bars, and placed them along the edges. “I don’t know, but, Tess, if you think it’s possible you might fall in love with me, you have to know something.”

She hated conversations like this. This was where he’d say something awful, like he would never love her or he was going to die in two months. But now the cat was out of the bag, she had to know.

He poured the deep chocolate liquid from the large copper pot onto the table. The metal bars kept it from flowing off the table.

“So, what is it?”

He took a large paddle with a four-foot long handle and moved the fudge around the table.

“I don’t talk about this often. People think they know what happened, but those are mostly rumors and only partially true.”

He stopped talking, but continued to move the fudge around. Tess wondered about the warnings she got from the PTA moms. Marie too. She always assumed that he was a heartbreaker. That when spring came, he flirted terribly with the tourists or always had a new girlfriend or something along those lines. She swallowed and steeled herself. This was his big secret.

“Can I help with that?” she asked.

He shook his head. “Sorry, I’ve got a system. Another time, I’ll teach you. Anyway, I had two kids.”

Tess felt the knot in her chest loosen. That wasn’t bad at all. Her own secret wouldn’t be so awful if that’s what he was hiding.

“That’s not a problem. I like kids.”

“No, that’s not it.” His voice was tense and hard. “Six months before my wife left me, I was home alone with them. They were three and four.”

That was not a way anyone started a happy story. She found a stool and sat down, not sure where this was going.

“I was in the house working on some business plans. The kids were watching a movie.” He wouldn’t look at her. “I wasn’t a good dad. It was easy for me to park them in front of the TV while I worked. A little while later, Dio came into the room barking and carrying on. I was in the middle of something, and so I picked her up, set her outside that door, and shut it.” His voice cracked.

Tess held her breath.

“Dio wouldn’t leave me alone though. She barked and clawed at the door. Eventually I went out and yelled to shut up. She grabbed my pant leg and pulled. At least I had enough sense to follow her at that point, but by then it was too late. I found the back door open and two sets of shoes on the shore. I couldn’t even see their bodies. They washed up a little ways down the beach an hour later.”
Tess sat on the stool, frozen in place. The regret etched on his face was clear, but it was the guilt that broke her heart. That was a heavy burden to carry. No wonder his marriage crumbled.

“I’m sorry,” she finally said.

“Me too. I’ve never been so sorry for anything else in my life. You must think I’m an awful person.”

“No. I think it was a tragic accident. You didn’t mean for that to happen.” Her voice clogged with tears. His pain was so visible, but she was afraid he would take her crying as pity, and he wouldn’t want that.

“Well, you should know that there are people on the island who still won’t speak to me because of what happened. Stacey left me because of it.”

“It wasn’t your fault.”

“How can you say that? I neglected them.”

She approached him and took his hands. “I dare you to find me one parent who hasn’t put a movie on to get a few moments of peace.”

He took a deep breath. “But I should’ve taken them down to the beach and played with them. I was a horrible father. You should know I’m never having kids. I can’t bear the thought of screwing up that bad again. If we’re going to be together, you’ll be giving up motherhood.”

So that was it. He assumed because he didn’t want kids she would bail on him. She nearly ran her hand over her belly, but curled her fingers into a fist in her lap instead.

“You think we’ll be together that long?” she asked.

He stopped what he was doing and stared at her hard. “I see it,” he said. She squirmed. Now would be a perfect time to spill her secret.

He set the paddle on the edge of the table and pulled her off the stool, into his arms.

“I’m madly in love with you,” he said, his breath fluttering across her cheek. “You’ve stolen my heart in way that no one ever has. I don’t want you to leave.”

She smiled tightly. This was the last opportunity to be honest with him. After today, she’d be living a lie. But she looked at his grin and the hope in his eyes, and she lied.

“Okay. I can live with that.”

“Are you sure?”

“No. But I can for now. If I ever change my mind, you’ll be the first to know. Is that okay?”
“I’ll take you for as long as you’ll have me. And if you leave me someday because you want to become a mom, I’ll fully support your decision.”

He didn’t know it, but that day could come sooner rather than later.

L
ukas didn’t mean it. He would fight tooth and nail for her if she ever decided to leave him. He felt guilty for keeping her from having kids. But he was a horrible father, and he wouldn’t put any kid through that ever again.

He watched her as she packaged the fudge up. He loved the way her body moved. He was pretty sure he never even felt this way about Stacey. Maybe at first. That had deteriorated quickly once the boys were gone. There was nothing left.

Tess accepted him without hesitation. That was more than he could possibly ask for. Relief swooped through him. He truly expected her to run away screaming when he told her what happened.

“Truthfully, you hadn’t heard my story?” he asked. “About the boys?”

She shook her head. The PTA moms must be getting soft. Or maybe time did erase things. It had only been two years though.

“Mrs. Hinshaw did tell me to watch out for you, but I figured she was trying to warn me you were a womanizer.” She laughed.

If several years down the road she asked him to have kids, he wondered if he would agree to it. He didn’t know. It was possible.

Her phone rang, and she pointed at it. “Can you get that?”

“What if it’s your mom?”

“Then you can talk to her.”

He picked up the phone.

“Hello,” he said.

“Oops, Lukas, I meant to call Tess,” said Marie.

“Yeah, this is her phone. How are you guys doing?”

“Good, going stir crazy. You two lovebirds want to come down to our house later and play canasta?”

He creased his eyebrows. “What makes you think we are lovebirds?”

“You’ve been stuck in your house for the past five days all alone. The chemistry between you two was undeniable. How long did it take before things exploded?”
“You know, Marie, I’m not real comfortable talking to you about this stuff. Why don’t you ask Tess?”

She laughed. “She’ll say the same thing you did. You two in or not?”

He sighed. “Yeah, of course. We’re at the shop now and should be done in an hour or so. Does that work?”

“See you then.” She hung up the phone.

“Who was that?” asked Tess.

“Marie. She wants us to come over and play canasta. Have you ever played?”

“Nope. That’s a new one. I’m sure you can teach me though.”

“That I can, but Marie plays dirty. We’re going to get slaughtered.”

He fidgeted with the phone. “You know what the first thing Marie asked me was?”

Tess shook her head. “What’s that?”

“If we had hooked up.”

Tess laughed out loud. “That sounds like Marie. What’d you tell her?”

“That she should ask you.”

“Thanks a lot.”

“No problem.”

He boxed the fudge she packed and put the shipping labels on all of them. He set them in the back room and sent a text to his delivery guy that they were ready to be picked up.

“I told Marie to give us an hour. I want to show you something.” Lukas grinned. He’d been waiting for enough melt to show her the ice wave.

They locked the shop, and once she was safely tucked in front of him on the sled, he took off on the slick streets. The plows were out. They were smaller than anything she’d have seen on TV, made especially for the island and the narrow streets. They looked like golf carts with plows attached to the front. But she was from Miami. Snowplows were all probably the same to her.

Gavin Chambers honked as they flew by. Lukas waved.

“You work with Sara Chambers, right?” he shouted into her ear. She nodded. Anything she said would have been caught in the wind. “That was her husband back there.”

The plows had done an excellent job. The streets were passable. Lukas turned off toward the docks.

The ice wave rose over the ferry office. Tess pointed. Lukas was thrilled it was so impressive this time.

He drove out onto the ice and turned off the snowmobile about thirty yards from the frozen wave.

Tess pulled off her scarf.

“What is that?” She removed her goggles and looked at him.

“Ice. Here.” He climbed down and reached for her. She’d been reluctant to ride in front of him at first, but he was glad she gave in. Holding her tight, instead of feeling her on his back, had been a thrill.