To Have and to Hold (14 page)

“Hunter?”

He wasn’t sure how long he’d been staring at the screen. Just—staring. He’d stopped to check his email before they left for the spit, and here he was, some number of minutes or hours, or for all he knew, days later.

“What is it?” Trina came up behind him and touched his hair. His whole body leapt to life at the touch, despite how wired the email had made him feel.

He pushed his chair back a little, gesturing to her that she should read the screen.

“Oh,” she said. “Oh, Hunter.”

“I still feel like it’s something that happened to someone else, though. I mean, I see the story. I get that she was probably scared, crying. But—the way he described me—I’m not that guy. I’m the weigh-the-consequences, think-it-through, figure-out-a-plan guy. Not the guy who starts digging in the rubble like a madman when his men are telling him to get the hell out.”

“You could write back to him. Ask him.”

“Do you think he knows?”

“He might.”

The pain of it was,
he
knew. Somewhere down in the depths of his mind, he knew what had happened that day. But he couldn’t get to it. It was locked behind a wall.

“God,” he said quietly. “I hate it. That there’s all this stuff in there. Buried. That I can’t see. Like it’s waiting for me.”

“Isn’t that kind of true of all of us?” Trina asked. She put her arms around him, pressed her breasts against his back. For a brief moment, the pain and darkness in his head receded.

“What’s buried in your head?” he asked.

“Well, I don’t know, do I?”

“You know some of it. You must have things you push down.”

“I try not to.”

“No buried anger?”

She laughed. “Well, plenty of hostility toward Stefan and his limited contributions toward Phoebe’s well-being. Twenty-three chromosomes—I guess I should be glad that it was the right number, right? Expensive Christmas gifts that mainly serve to make her notice how not expensive most of mine are. And cash when I beg nicely. But that’s hardly buried.”

“You don’t act bitter.”

“I don’t want to be bitter. And I don’t want her to hear me being bitter. If we’re going to make this thing work, we have to go into it with a good attitude.”

“Are you excited about it? The job?”

He turned in his chair so he could see her face. He wasn’t sure, not anymore, what he wanted her to say.

She bit her lip. “Yes. Of course.”

That heavy feeling in his chest—that was disappointment.

“But—there’s a part of me that’s not sure, either. Whether this is the right thing.”

And that was fear.

He didn’t want to let her go, but he was terrified of the alternative. Of her staying.

What if—

What if he couldn’t—

What if he disappointed her the way he’d—

“I’m afraid he’ll let her down. I don’t think he’ll be very involved. I think she’ll be sort of a trophy daughter to him.”

So it wasn’t that she didn’t want to leave him. It was that she didn’t trust Stefan Spencer with Phoebe.

“How could anyone make Phoebe just a
trophy
?” he demanded. “She’s terrific.” For the last week, he’d been teaching Phoebe to use the power tools. She was fearless and full of ideas, wanting to know why things had to be done a certain way, suggesting out-of-the-box alternatives, and then listening intently as he explained why her ideas could—or might not—work. If she were his daughter—

If he’d gotten Trina pregnant, instead of Dee?

Impossible to imagine, of course. Impossible to imagine the world without either Clara or Phoebe. But if he’d gotten Trina pregnant, he would have done the right thing by her, just as he had by Dee. And if Phoebe had been his daughter, he never would have let her out of his sight, up and left to live a thousand miles away. And as for the token gifts and making Trina ask for money…

He would never have let them go. Never have let them find family in
another man
.

If
he’d been her real father.

If
he’d been a man who knew himself capable of love.

“Phoebe is terrific.” She smirked. “It’s my genes.”

He laughed, and it snapped him, once again, out of the dark place he’d been tempted to go.

The ground of the spit wasn’t smooth and sandy but a mix of slippery seaweed, ankle-slaying stones, and pebbles that slipped and slid underfoot. To either side of them, Puget Sound undulated in their peripheral vision, bringing vertigo in waves.

They’d calculated the tide correctly, which meant that it was still going out, and there was enough beach for walking, but not an abundance of it, and what beach existed was canted ever-so-slightly downward to the left.

She’d forgotten how much being out on the spit felt like being at sea in a boat. She felt unmoored, unprotected—but also utterly thrilled by the wind whipping around her, the ocean air moving in her hair—very much as she imagined a traveler setting out on a long ocean voyage must have felt.

Hunter took her hand. The girls had run on ahead, and then stopped to examine the beach detritus, repeating the pattern again and again to keep their distance from the adults. Which was fine with Trina, who squeezed Hunter’s hand tighter and tried to think only of how happy she was in this exact moment in this exact place. If you tucked yourself tight enough into the present, the past and future could go screw.

“So. The infamous first kiss. How did that come about?”

Not the safest terrain, when her own feelings had begun their free fall.

She wanted to ask him what the hell they were doing. What they’d been doing last night, kissing like that, touching like that. What they were doing today, playing at courtship in the face of her departure. What they were
doing
.

But he didn’t know the answer any better than she did. She knew that. All she could do was tell the story and
hope.

“We each, separately, took the girls to the same sleepover party. By that point, we’d had a few charged moments, but we’d agreed nothing was going to happen. For all the aforementioned reasons. You were leaving, you didn’t do love, it would confuse the shit out of the girls if they found out, blah blah blah. I pulled up to drop off Phoebe, and I saw you there with Clara, and I decided not to get out of the car because I didn’t trust myself. I already had enough experience to know that my resolve was nonexistent when it came to you and that no matter how good my logic was, if I got within a couple feet of you, it was dead. But you came over and leaned down and peeked in the car window. I could feel—”

She hesitated and he turned, his eyes quizzical.

“That buzz, you know?”

“This buzz?”

He stopped walking for long enough to bring his face near hers and sure enough, there was the electric thrum that always leapt between them.

When she drew back, she saw that his eyes had darkened and his lower lip softened. Her body softened, too, an echo.

“It was a warm summer night and probably a full moon or something. It was the kind of night when things happen, whether you want them to or not. And I did. I wanted things to happen. I’d been wanting it day and night for days and days, and—”

She felt heat roll through her at the memory.

“So yeah,” she said, recovering the power of speech with some effort. “You leaned down. And all you said was, ‘I’m feeling like grabbing some sushi. Wanna come?’ I knew I should say no. I sort of even tried to say no. But you convinced me it would just be a quick dinner. I knew what was going to happen, I think. We were both just waiting for a chance to do the wrong thing, but I went anyway. Maybe because it was that kind of night. Where everything is more intense. All your senses. Everything feels like sex. The air is charged and the food is foreplay—you watched me eat like you couldn’t take your eyes off my mouth, and I’ve
never
thought sushi was sexy, but it was that night. I will probably never eat salmon nigiri again in my life without thinking about sex.”

He laughed.

“You paid for me. I tried to refuse, but you insisted. I kind of knew right then that we were going to blow right by our own rules, but I kept lying to myself for a while longer. Which is why it seemed totally reasonable for me to go back to your house for a drink.”

“And…?”

“There might have been some kissing.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. And it was pretty good.”

“Just pretty good?”

She knew he was going to kiss her before he did it. Deep, his palm strong on the back of her head, till she was having trouble catching her breath. Then he let her go.

“Couldn’t let the other guy get the upper hand?” she teased, because it was either that or fall into his arms and beg him for—for something.

“You just looked so sexy. Talking about it. I could see it all over your face. You get this kind of—dazed look. Your cheeks get pink and your mouth gets soft and your eyes get—sleepy.”

He’d caught her between the reverie of memory and the intensity of the present—his hand had moved from the back of her head to her arm, but it still felt like a strong magnet—and she felt that bone-deep craving move down her gut and between her legs.

“But okay, yeah, maybe I didn’t want the other guy to be your gold standard.”

“The other guy’s toast on the kissing front,” she said. “He was toast last night. Everything else is just icing. Or butter, I guess.”

“Booyah!” he said, and they both laughed. “And then what happened?”

Oh. Right. This part of the story.

No point in sugarcoating it.

“That was when you said it was a mistake and you couldn’t do it again—for all the reasons we’ve talked about. So we called it off for a bit, and for a week or so we avoided each other. Or I avoided you anyway. I did a couple of pickups and drop-offs from the car, we didn’t talk, we didn’t email—and then Phoebe got the stomach flu while she was at your house. Actually, both girls. I couldn’t take her home because she was violently ill, and you offered for the two of us to stay until Phoebe was more stable. And—”

She tripped and he steadied her, an arm snaking around her waist and drawing her close, so it was harder to walk but she didn’t protest because he felt so good. Warm and strong, sturdy and familiar.

“I loved watching you with Clara. I loved that you didn’t avoid her like she was plague-stricken. You held her head when she was sick and you sat by her bed and you brought her sips of ginger ale. And—you must have felt the same, because after the girls were both asleep, you came down to the guest room and—”

“We had sex?”

She snuck a peek at him and saw the slight tilt of his smile grow. “You’re getting ahead of yourself, dude. First you explained to me why you were so gun-shy.”

“Because of Dee.”

“You told me that you’d followed your dick—”

He shot her a look and she grinned. “Your words, not mine. And she’d gotten pregnant, and you had to get married. You said you couldn’t regret Clara. And given Clara, you knew you’d done the right thing. But—”

“But it wasn’t what I would have chosen. I trapped myself.”

“Yeah.”

He held her gaze for a moment, and she saw the same pain there she’d seen when he’d told her the story that night. Regret, and something else. Something she couldn’t quite name.

And just like that other night, he turned away abruptly, closing down her access to what was hurting him.

They walked in silence, the wind brushing damp hair off the back of her neck, making her shiver.

“And then?”

She felt the narrowness of the spit suddenly, the vastness of space and sea on both sides. “You said you never wanted to make that mistake again. Confusing lust and love. And you said—” She hesitated.

“You said your attraction to me was so intense that you didn’t quite trust yourself.”

She finished, and he stopped. He looked at the sky, showing her the long line of his throat, already speckled with stubble, the hollow just above the collar of his T-shirt, where a pulse beat.

He pulled his gaze down to meet hers. Held hers prisoner, her blood thrumming everywhere.

“It still is.”

The world spun around them.

“I lose my breath when you get close to me,” she confessed suddenly. “It’s that intense. Like a hand squeezes my lungs. That’s never happened to me before.”

“Not the first time?” His eyes were bright.

“Not like this. Not like this combination of joy and—” She hesitated. What she was trying to describe was the fierceness and suddenness of her arousal. But the words were unfamiliar, and not meant to be said aloud. “Pull,” she said feebly, but his eyes lit like he knew exactly what she meant. “Like a whole body, every molecule committed, leaning toward feeling.”

Those eyes. So dark, even in the bright sunshine. So
intent
, so
intense
, so full of emotion.

She wasn’t sure he’d looked at her quite that way before. It felt new
.

“I know that feeling,” he said. “That’s how I feel right now.”

And she lost her breath suddenly.

“Trina?”

“Yeah?”

“What was it like when we finally had sex?”

It was killing her. How she was telling him about the past but it was unfolding right this second, too, her breath coming faster, her face hot with it. He was going to be inside her, tonight. And it was going to light her on fire. She was going to burst into flames and burn up, and there would be only a pile of ashes left.

“We barely made it into the guest room. You pushed me back against the door and kissed me. Then you carried me to the bed. And—it was amazing.”

He leaned in close.

Whispered.

“But not as amazing as it’s going to be tonight.”

She was panting. Actually panting, her chest heaving, her breath rasping in her throat.

He brushed his lips across her cheek to her ear and whispered, “Do you want me to kiss you?”

“Yes.” She had barely enough breath to make the word audible.

“I will. But not now. When you can’t stand it anymore.”

They ate at Parelli’s Pizza, brought the girls home, and got them tucked in.

She took a long, hot shower. Her feet ached, but the rest of her body felt strong and limber from the hike. She’d hurt all over tomorrow, but now she luxuriated in the sensation of the steaming water on her bare skin.

She faced the shower, letting the water tease her nipples to standing, as if the anticipation of what Hunter had taunted her with wasn’t enough. She was at least three-quarters of the way to not being able to stand it anymore—the looks he cast her, dirty and full of intention, the surreptitious, light touches, most often in places—like the inside of her wrist—that shouldn’t have set her blood boiling but did anyway.

And just—the fun. Life was better with Hunter in it. More alive, more sunlight glancing off water, more whispered secrets, more laughing so hard her stomach ached.

She’d told herself she’d give it today to let things play out before she made a decision about the future. The decision was made—at least in her own mind. She was incapable of turning away from Hunter.

She toweled off and got dressed and went downstairs to the living room.

No Hunter.

She searched the house but couldn’t find him.

What if—

Doubt whispered, raising the hairs on the back of her neck.

What if after all this, after today, what if he still had second thoughts?

He didn’t remember everything.

He felt guilty about his marriage.

Something had happened in Afghanistan he didn’t understand.

What if she told him she wanted to stay, and he didn’t want her to?

She heard footsteps on the back deck, then the sound of the door opening and closing.

“Close your eyes. I have a surprise.”

Relief, and pleasure, flooded her. He’d come up behind her and whispered it in her ear, his body just shy of touching hers, his presence rustling her clothes and making hairs stand on end and nerves light up. She felt his breath brush her ear and shivered. Her body bloomed.

She pushed aside her doubts. She pushed aside her fears.

She did as instructed and closed her eyes.

“Come with me.”

She followed him, surprisingly disoriented even in a house she had come to think of as her own, out the back kitchen door, down the deck steps. Her senses, in the absence of sight, attuned. To his warm hand wrapped around hers, the charge it conveyed, the scent of fir, cedar, soap, and his skin.

“The old tree house?”

“Mmm-hmm.”

He guided her up the steps—a mash-up of true steps and a ladder—his body close behind hers, so close that she found herself swaying toward him as if drawn, trying to feel his hard solidness at her back. He reached around her to open the door for her, and she loved the wrap of that strong arm, the grip and release of muscle against her ribs; she wanted to grab him and turn in his arms and press herself against him to get more of it, full-length.

“Okay. Open.”

She opened her eyes. He’d spread a thick quilt on the floor, lit a ring of squat votives in glasses, and set out two slices of cake, an open bottle of red wine, and two glasses.

“Oh.” She seemed to have been robbed of more sophisticated speech.

“You like it?”

“Oh, Hunter. I love it. Where did the chocolate cake come from?”

The crinkles at the corners of his eyes deepened. “You know how I ‘accidentally’ left the leftover pizza box on the table and had to go back in?”

“Oh, clever!”

“That’s me.”

She searched his face. There was something sad in his eyes. “Hunter. You don’t—you don’t have to compete with him. With the old you. You know that, right?” She waited for assent, but he was just watching. Listening. “I just want you to know that for me—I’m past that. Past where you need to impress me.”

“I know,” he said. “But—I don’t want to feel like I missed it. Getting to
woo
you. You don’t mind?”

“God,
no
, I don’t mind at all. I love it. I don’t think any woman ever
minds
being wooed.”

She sat on the blanket cross-legged and drew one of the plates of cake into her lap. He sat across from her and took the other.

“Do the girls know where we are?” she asked.

“Yup. Told them to text if they need me. But the last time I looked, Clara was mostly asleep and Phoebe’s eyes kept fluttering shut. Wine?”

“Yes, sir.”

He shot her a sharp look, then poured her a glass, handed it to her, poured his own, and raised it in a toast.

“To the best day I can remember.”

Her hand flew to her throat. “Oh.”

He tilted his head, a question in his eyes.

“It’s the best day I remember, too.” She lifted her glass again and touched it lightly to his. The chime of glass on glass shimmered up her arm. “To outdoing yourself.” She smiled mischievously at him. “Last time, we ate the chocolate cake at Parelli’s with the girls.”

“
Damn
. I thought at least the cake was a new touch.”

“I’m teasing you,” she admitted. “There was no chocolate cake last time.”

He laughed. “Guess I’m kind of an easy mark, huh?”

“Yeah, just think how bad I could mess with your head if I wanted to.”

She sipped her wine. She didn’t know crap about wine, except that there were some that went down so easy she knew they had to be expensive. This was one of those. It soothed her mouth and throat, slid down and warmed her all over. She didn’t drink often, had drunk almost never when Hunter was deployed and she’d been in charge of Phoebe and Clara, only girls’ nights here and there with good friends. So she was a lightweight. And in a few sips she could feel the slight hum under her lips and in her feet that preceded the loss of inhibition. Not that she needed any less. Seven-eighths, she thought. Seven-eighths of the way to blazing with impatience. Seven-eighths of the way to crawling across the floor and taking his mouth for her own.

“Oh. Wow. This is good.” She pulled a bite of cake, moist, rich, and flavorful, slowly off her fork, savoring, and caught him watching her mouth.

Nine-tenths.

“Do that again,” he said, eyes dark.

Eleven-twelfths. She did it again, her eyes on his this time. Licked the remaining dark chocolate icing off the fork when she was done, and then, purely for the effect she knew it would have on him, tipped her gaze down to the fly of his khaki shorts, where there was definite action.

“Trina.”

She’d turned his voice rough, into almost a plea. But there was nothing she could do to him that she couldn’t feel, too, no way to give him pleasure without it touching her. Her nipples were tight knots, her skin tuned, receptive. She had turned to something molten, and she wanted to pour her liquid self all over him, into him.

She set her plate on the floor, her fork beside her mostly uneaten cake. Crawled across the floor to him. He stretched his legs out and leaned on his hands, and she climbed over him and straddled him.

She settled herself so she could feel his erection pressing up against the seam of her jeans.

“Hunter.”

“Mmm-hmm.”

He was teasing her, pretending nonchalance, but there was no doubt in her head she was messing with him. Even if she hadn’t been able to feel him shifting restlessly against her through layers of clothing, his eyes wouldn’t leave hers and they were so dark now they were almost black, and there was a flush under his tanned skin.

“I can’t stand it any—”

But she didn’t get to finish. His mouth cut off the last word.