Hold on My Heart (32 page)

He’d already admitted he loved her. He may as well throw it all out on the table. Being alone and sad had become a habit for him, just like
getting dressed or drinking coffee. But Libby had shattered all that monotony. She’d lifted the fog, and he could finally see the sun again.

She traced her thumb over his lip. “I know what you mean. For me, too, but it’s a little overwhelming. I never planned on you. I didn’t even particularly like you at first.”

He laughed at this. The moonlight was bringing out the honesty from both of them.

“You didn’t like me? You sure flirted a lot for a woman who didn’t like me.”

“I wasn’t flirting. I was just trying to be nice. Plus you were cute. But oh, my God, you were such a grouch.” Libby pulled the blanket up and tucked it under her arm. “And arrogant.
You can’t run around here in those floppy shoes, Miss Hamilton
.” She lowered her voice, trying to sound gruff, and he laughed even harder.

“You were wearing flip-flops at an industrial work site!”

Libby chuckled, and her breasts jiggled against him. His body stirred, but exhaustion chased his arousal away. For the moment.

“I’m not saying you were wrong,” Libby said. “I’m just saying you were kind of a dick about it.”

He’d been called worse. “Well, I’m sorry. I just didn’t want you to get hurt.”

“I know.”

“I still don’t.” His meaning had shifted, and when her gaze turned solemn he knew she understood him.

She leaned over and kissed his mouth, warm and soft and tender. “That goes both ways, you know. I don’t want you to get hurt either. You’ve had enough of that.” She kissed him again, and his heart thumped hard against the wall of his chest.

He’d spent so much energy trying to protect other people, and failing miserably, but at last, here was Libby wanting to shelter him.

“Will you stay until morning?”

“I don’t have much choice. You’re my ride, remember? But it’s going to be a little awkward strolling into my parents’ house in my wench dress.”

“You can borrow something of mine, but I hope Nana’s there to give you a hard time.” Even the mental image was enjoyable, and laughter rumbled deep down in his belly. “Maybe you can sneak in through the
back door. Anyway, I’m picking Rachel up at eleven thirty, so I’ll take you home in the morning.”

“Rachel.” Libby said her name softly, and let it dangle out there between them. “We haven’t talked about her lately. And you know, we’ve kind of skipped past the whole taking-it-day-by-day thing. I think you could say we are officially dating.”

They had skipped forward. But that didn’t mean he knew where Rachel fit into the equation. Dr. Brandt had said he had every right to a private life, and he understood that now. He’d even come to terms with moving on from Connie. But if Rachel moved back home, things would change again. For all of them.

He’d talk to her about it tomorrow at brunch. Nothing formal, just a casual mention to ease her into the idea of him seeing someone. Rachel liked Libby, after all. This shouldn’t be a big problem.

A wave of fatigue swept over him.

“No, we haven’t talked about her lately. But let’s do that tomorrow. You’ve tapped me like a maple tree, and I’m very, very sleepy.”

Libby chuckled, and he pressed his lips against her temple. Life was good again.

R
ain pelted against the window, and branches scraped along the siding of the house as Libby walked into Tom’s kitchen. He was making coffee wearing nothing but boxers and a T-shirt.

“I don’t think these pants are going to work.” She let go of the waistband, and his jeans slid down her legs and into a heap at her feet.

She hadn’t wanted to nose around in his closet too much that morning. It felt like a slight invasion of his privacy, so she’d just grabbed the first pair of pants she’d seen on top of a pile, along with a faded flannel shirt. She had that on now and knew it was one of his favorites. He wore it all the time.

He turned round in time to watch the pants land on the floor.

“Oh, I don’t know about that. Looks like they’re working just right to me.”

He set the coffeepot back in place, pushed the brew button, and walked over to her, looking adorably scruffy with his pillow head and whiskers.

Tom scooped one arm around her waist and clasped the other as if they were dancing.

She warmed straight through from her toes to her smile. “Oh, that’s right. You’re a morning person, aren’t you?” She’d learned that at the ice-cream parlor. She’d stumble in at nine thirty with a double-shot espresso, while Tom was already halfway into his day.

He started spinning her around slowly. “Don’t worry. I’ve got your coffee started.”

“Ah, thank you. Just one more thing to love about you.”

The pants around her feet were cumbersome, but his body was warm and inviting. She lifted one foot and then the other, effectively kicking the denim out of their way. They shuffled in a tiny circle. The storm raged outside, but in the little kitchen it was sunny.

“I didn’t expect you to be a dancer, Mr. Murphy.”

His laugh was rich and warm against her ear. “This is about the extent of it, Miss Hamilton. Don’t get your hopes up.”

“This is all I need.”

She meant to be flip and funny, but the words came from somewhere deep, and he paused. Tom lifted his head from the crook of her neck and gazed down at her.

“You could do better, you know.”

She lifted up on her toes and kissed the corner of his mouth. “On the contrary, I think you’re quite the catch. Marti says so, too.”

He started shuffling them again. “Does she now?”

“Yes, because you have a truck, among other admirable attributes.” She hadn’t shared the best with Marti, but there had been some guessing.

“If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather you didn’t discuss any of my attributes with your sister. It’s likely to end up in Dante’s documentary.”

She breathed in, catching a hint of yesterday’s cologne. “That would make it a whole different kind of movie now, wouldn’t it?”

Tom’s arm around her middle tightened.

“Yep. But it could certainly start the same. A woman walks into a room and drops her pants.”

Libby laughed. “Technically those were your pants.”

“Whatever. All I know is that right now neither one of us is wearing pants. And that seems like a terrible opportunity to squander.”

He pressed his lips against hers as if it had been weeks instead of moments since their last kiss, hungry and thorough. He scooped her up and set her bottom on the counter. She wrapped her legs around his waist and twined her arms around his shoulders. Even through the fabric of his shirt she could feel his muscles bunching. The thrill of that would never get old.

“Aren’t you supposed to pick up Rachel?” she asked as he started on a button of the flannel shirt.

“Not until eleven thirty. We’ve got time.”

He popped the first button and kissed her neck again as the windows shook against the storm. It was exotic, feeling his warm mouth and his whiskers scrape across her skin while the thunder rumbled outside. Libby gave over to her senses.

A muffled
bang
sounded off in the distance, familiar but unrecognizable as Tom’s kiss clouded her awareness.

Then she heard it again, and she opened her eyes.

Time stopped.

Libby saw it all from a distance. Everything in slow motion.

Rachel pushing open the door, bursting in from the rain in a bright red coat, like a stop sign in the middle of the road where you least expect it. Her smile fading and turning to astonishment. The sound of a backpack hitting the floor.

An older woman coming in just behind her, with pale blond hair and Rachel’s features.

Tom lifting his head and twisting his upper body toward the sound, even as he pulled the edges of Libby’s shirt back together.

Her legs around his waist went slack, and her head bumped back against the kitchen cabinet.

“Rachel?” Tom gasped.

His daughter stood frozen, nothing moving but her eyes. She looked to him and then to Libby, and Libby had never felt so small.

“Dad? Miss Hamilton? God, what the hell?” Rachel turned away then, toward her grandmother’s outstretched arms, for certainly that’s who the other woman was. She glared at Tom with such contempt, Libby felt him wince.

“Jesus, Rachel,” Tom said. “What are you doing here?” He tugged on the edge of his shirt, but it didn’t help. He was still standing there in his underwear.

Rachel looked up at the ceiling. “You told me I was always welcome, remember? It never occurred to me you might be busy screwing someone in Mom’s kitchen.”

“Honestly, Tom. How disgraceful,” Anne said, a frown cutting deep into her skin.

Libby wanted to disappear. She worked to close the buttons of her borrowed flannel shirt, but her fingers were shaking and clumsy.

“This is why you stopped pushing me to move home, isn’t it?” Rachel said, still not looking at him, her voice stretching thin. “Because of her. Because you’re up to this kind of shit. God, Dad, you are so gross.”

Tom reached over and grabbed the jeans that Libby had left on the floor. He struggled to put them on as Libby slid down from the counter like a reptile, wishing she could slither into the other room and not be any part of this.

“Clearly I wasn’t expecting you, Rachel. I was supposed to pick you up at eleven thirty. So what are you doing here?”

His daughter turned back around, her eyes flashing, her cheeks stained red. She sneered at her father as he zipped up his pants. “I asked Grandma to drop me off here after church. I wanted to surprise you. But I guess the surprise is on me, huh?”

“Surprise me?” His voice was flat and hollow.

Libby’s heart felt hollow, too. As if it might pop like a bubble and disappear forever.

“Yeah, I was thinking I’d stay here for a few weeks,” Rachel said. “Give us kind of a trial run, you know? Glad I didn’t bother bringing my suitcase in from the car.” She picked up the backpack and jerked open the door. “Take me home, would you please, Grandma? I’m not staying here now. I’m not staying here ever.”

Rachel walked out into the storm.

“Rachel!” Tom tried to follow, but Anne stepped in his way, blocking his path with her palm to his chest.

“You haven’t changed a bit, have you? I kept telling George you’d finally grown up. But now I see I was wrong. I gave you too much credit. Connie would be so ashamed of you.”

Tom wouldn’t talk to Libby at all on the drive to her parents’ house, and she struggled with every breath to hold it together. She just didn’t know what to say. The venom in Anne’s voice had poisoned her, too.

She and Tom hadn’t done anything wrong. They were adults, and she loved him. But that didn’t matter. For Rachel to learn about them that way, to discover them in that situation, was unbearable, even to Libby.

Tom was in flames on the inside. She could feel it. But he wouldn’t say a word. With every mile he retreated, away from her, away from all the goodness they’d found.

Because now it was tarnished. Even she could see that. No matter how much he might care for her, no matter how much love they might have built between them, she’d just cost him his chance to get Rachel back.

She was still wearing his flannel shirt, and a pair of drawstring exercise pants he’d pulled from the closet after Anne and Rachel had driven away. Her glorious wench dress was stuffed into a black plastic garbage bag.

He pulled up in front of her house and didn’t even shift the truck out of drive. He just pushed his foot against the brake with all his might.

“I’m sorry, Libby.” His voice was scratchy as sandpaper.

She turned his way, clutching the plastic bag. “I wish you’d talk to me about this.”

“There’s nothing to talk about. It’s a total clusterfuck. All of it. I forgot my priorities. I’m sorry you got caught up in that, but this isn’t going to work.”

“That’s not true. Rachel will come around. She was surprised, that’s all.”

He looked at her as if he wasn’t sure why she was still there. “She’s not your daughter. It’s really none of your business.”