Sugar Springs (21 page)

“Nothing was put on hold. I changed my path. People do that all the time.” Again, she pushed the check back in his
direction. The thought of depositing that much money in her account gave her a vicious thrill. She could do a lot for the girls with that, and he was right, she could quit the diner. But it didn’t feel right. It felt as if accepting it would tie the two of them together in a way she wasn’t comfortable with. “I’ve been making it just fine on my own.”

“And now you don’t have to. I’ve already arranged for a monthly check to come to you.”

“Cody.” Exasperation had her voice tightening. “I’m making it fine.”

“Quit the diner, Lee. Pursue your photography.”

She shook her head. “You can’t just come back and start directing things.”

“No?” His voice had sharpened in a similar manner to hers, indicating he was equally annoyed. He picked the check up, grabbed her bag and shoved it back inside. “Watch me.”

“You can’t—”

“Try and stop me,” he gritted out. “They’re my kids. I will make sure they have everything they need, and I will not sit around watching you work yourself to death anymore when I can do something about it.”

“
I
am not your priority.”

“Yet...you are.” His tone changed, and she sensed that he’d gone away from thinking solely about the girls. Suddenly, she didn’t want to hear whatever else he was about to say. Her breathing grew deeper and she pushed to her feet again. She felt more comfortable around him when she was standing up.

“Fine,” she said. “I’ll accept the check. But I, personally, am nothing to you. The only things between us are those two girls.”

She moved to the other side of the table, putting it between them while at the same time mentally reconstructing her wall.
She silently watched her children move through the store and wished Cody would just walk away. He used to be good at that. There could not be anything more between them. He’d hurt her too much the first time.

“You’re lying,” he said.

She jerked around to glare at him, but he’d risen, his height now taking the sting out of her look. “I am not,” she muttered.

“There’s something there. You feel it just like I do.”

She turned her back to him. “Whatever we had ended the day you dropped your pants for my sister.”

“Or maybe it was only put on pause.” His deep voice came from right behind her now, sparking goose bumps across the base of her neck.

“There’s nothing left, Cody. You might as well give that thought up.” How had they gotten back here?

“I can’t. I feel it.” He pressed his fingers to the small of her back and her traitorous body shivered. “You feel it, too. The question is, what do we do about it?”

“I don’t feel a thing.” If ever she needed strength, it was now. She bit down on the inside of her lip and forced herself to remain stiff against his touch. Why did it have to still be him who had this effect on her? She did not need this in her life.

He pressed his hand fully to her back, spreading his palm wide until every inch of it burned through her lightweight top. She fought the urge to close her eyes and lean into him. “You always were the worst liar,” he murmured.

With a gentle caress of his thumb directly beneath the back strap of her bra, her knees locked in place to keep her from collapsing at his feet. His hand felt so perfectly right on her body. She curled her fingernails into her palms and reminded
herself that they were there for the girls, not for the two of them. The two of them had ended. Years ago.

As the girls crossed her mind, they burst from the store and raced for the table. Cody removed his hand from her body.

Sliding to a stop, Kendra spoke. “We’re ready to check out, Mom. Can we use your debit card?”

“I’ll get it.” Cody’s voice was deeper than normal, and Lee Ann shivered again, but this time he wasn’t looking at her. He pulled out a credit card, and the girls’ eyes widened.

“Will the store let us use your card?”

He shrugged. “No problem. I’ll come with you.”

“No!” both girls shouted, causing several people to look at them. They ducked their heads in embarrassment, pink tinting their cheeks.

Cody looked to Lee Ann for help, clearly not grasping the severity of the issue. If he paid, he would have to go into a sexy underwear store with his daughters. But she refused to help him out. After all, he’d just made her admit to herself that she not only wanted to see his butt
out
of those sexy jeans, but she also wanted his lips all over her as well. She shrugged as if she wasn’t standing there with only half a functioning brain.

He looked from the girls to the store and back, still not getting it. Then his neck almost snapped as it twisted quickly back in the direction of the store. “You want something from there?”

The girls both groaned. “Never mind.”

They put several feet between themselves and the grown-ups, clearly hoping no additional embarrassment would befall them, and Lee Ann finally felt bad for everyone. She picked up her bag and eyed Cody. “You stay here. I’ll handle this.”

“But that’s a store for adult women, Lee Ann.” His whisper wasn’t nearly quiet enough. “Not kids.”

Nearby laughter turned the girls two deeper shades of red, and guilt ate at Lee Ann for letting her pettiness with Cody cause them embarrassment in the first place. How he’d missed what store they’d been in all this time, she had no idea. Maybe because he’d been too busy trying to make time with her.

She shot him a harsh look. “Take the packages and we’ll meet you back at the car.”

He opened his mouth as if to argue, but she shut him up with a look.

“At. The. Car.” She marched off to take care of her girls. Without Cody. As it should be.

They didn’t need anyone else. Only they did. And she feared it was all of them who did.

Twelve-year-olds could pack away some food.

That was the theory Cody had come up with as he’d watched his daughters put down pizza that night. Following the mostly successful day they’d had at the mall the day before, he’d talked Lee Ann into letting him hang with them after the clinic had closed today. With a low fire now burning in the patio fireplace, they all lingered in the rapidly growing dusk. November or not, when it hit almost eighty during the day you took advantage of the heat.

He’d offered to pick up dinner, and from the looks of the single, remaining piece of pizza, he’d chosen well.

“Mom, did Dad tell you about the procedure he let me watch at the clinic this morning?” Kendra had moved to sit on the back steps with her grandmother, and the two of them were playing a card game. Reba had shown up when the pizza did and had yet to leave. Cody suspected she was there as much to pick up something juicy to share with her friends as to simply hang with her family.

Boss had settled down on the other side of Kendra. The kids had chased him all over the yard as they’d waited for
dinner, and now the dog seemed perfectly content with the occasional pat Kendra tossed his way. If Cody wasn’t careful, his dog would want to stay there when it was time to go.

“He did,” Lee Ann said, answering her daughter’s question.

Cody cut his eyes over to Candy, who’d picked up her basketball and stood several feet away, dribbling. Occasionally she tried a move through her legs, but given her height, her main skill was shooting. Still, she wasn’t bad.

As Kendra proceeded to tell her grandmother about the procedure he’d done that morning, he headed over to Candy. He scouted out the area, then pointed to a level spot in the corner of the yard. “How about I put up a basketball goal there?”

Dark eyes glowed up at him for a second before Candy frowned and scrunched up her nose. She shook her head. “It’s in the yard. Mom wouldn’t like it.”

“What?” He looked around to ask why not, but Lee Ann hadn’t heard the comment. She was busy picking up paper plates, empty cups, and the three beer bottles the adults had drained. She dumped everything in the proper receptacles as he turned back to his daughter. “Why wouldn’t she like it?”

“It’ll kill the grass if we play in one spot like that.”

“So?” That was the most ridiculous thing he’d heard. Kids needed a place to play. “Then we find another spot. Or we pour concrete on top of the grass and take away that argument.”

Candy grinned at him then, giving him one of the few honest smiles she’d turned his way since learning who he was, and he went a little weak at the knees. She was a tougher nut to crack than her sister, but he hoped to eventually win her over. The thought of one of his daughters not liking him was not pleasant.

He nudged his chin toward the ball. “Pass that over. Let’s see if I still remember how to dribble.”

Not that he’d ever played on a team; he’d rarely gone to the same school for more than a year. But he had played in enough pickup games over the years to know his way around a ball.

She bounced it to him, and they proceeded to get into a heated battle of keep-away. She was quite good.

“So tell me more about the birthday party coming up.” He’d wanted to bring the subject up for the last couple of days, the thought of dancing with each of them on their big day meaning more to him than he’d ever imagined, but fear had made him keep his mouth shut. What if Candy refused to let him attend? He’d said he wouldn’t go unless both of them wanted him there.

She took the ball away from him and went into a protective dribble. “It’s just a party.”

“You said before that it was a dance.”

“Yeah, a boy-girl dance. Not like Sadie’s party.”

Apparently Sadie’s party had been a big deal.
But theirs was better.
He grinned with the thought. Lee Ann was sweet and polite and took care of whoever needed it, but she was also subtle, and she liked to win. Throwing the girls a party that would be better than their friend’s bash had made him realize that it really was the Lee Ann he’d once known who was still driving matters these days. He’d thought she’d changed a lot, but the more he got to know her again, the more he saw he’d been wrong. She was still the strong, independent yet attractively vulnerable woman he’d once fallen in love with. She’d merely adapted to changed circumstances.

He and Candy played through a few more minutes of silence before he got up the courage to ask, “Would you let me come to the party? I’d really like to.”

Candy stopped bouncing the basketball and looked at him. He felt like an insect trapped under a microscope. She studied him as thoroughly as he’d ever seen Lee Ann do. She may have been another woman’s biological child, but Lee Ann ran through her with clarity.

Finally, she lowered her gaze and nodded. She went back to dribbling. “You can come.”

Relief washed over him, and he took a step toward her, wanting to hug her. He stopped before allowing himself the luxury. No need scaring her off when he’d just taken a giant step forward.

“Thank you,” he said, sincerity filling his voice. “I’m very much looking forward to it. I’d love to dance with you, too, if you’d like that.”

She nodded but didn’t say anything else, only dribbled some more.

They played a few more minutes, and then he yelled over for her sister. He wanted both his girls around him. “Want to join us? Your sister is kicking my butt over here.”

Kendra looked up from her game but then glanced down at her watch. “Uh...actually, I have some homework to do.”

“Oh,” Candy said, then stood straight and shot a look at her mother. “Yeah. Homework.”

Within minutes, she and Kendra had disappeared inside with Boss, Reba had made her way across the yard to her own house, and he found himself alone on the patio with the woman he hadn’t managed to stop thinking about since seeing her again.

It wasn’t that he minded being alone with Lee Ann in the growing darkness—hell, he loved it, especially given the conversation they’d started at the mall the day before, before he’d freaked about the girls buying something at Victoria’s Secret. He shook his head at the thought, still uncertain why he was the one wrong over the whole matter. He couldn’t help feeling like right now he’d done something else to send them scurrying.

He straddled the bench Lee Ann had settled down on and faced her, pleased when she didn’t get up and move to the other side. Fresh beers appeared from out of nowhere and she passed one over to him. Grateful, he opened it and touched the neck to hers.

“Thanks,” he murmured. “When did you sneak these out?”

She smiled. “I grabbed them when I took the extra slice of pizza into the house.”

The sounds of the night started up around them, adding to the ambience of the candles in the middle of the stained wood table and the lazy evening, and he couldn’t help but want more out of the night than what he suspected she was willing to offer.

“What exactly just happened here?” He motioned with his bottle to the emptiness around them. “One minute everyone was content, hanging out, and then as if a bell rang, they all scattered. And you can’t convince me they’re really going in to do homework on a Saturday night.”

Soft laughter made its way out of Lee Ann, and he leaned in closer to hear it better. He loved making her laugh. He feared there had been too few moments of laughter during the last thirteen years. He would make that up to her if she’d let him.