If I Can't Have You (If You Come Back To Me #3) (14 page)

In his typical fashion, he didn’t bother with chit-chat before he cut to the chase.

“What was that all about with Melanie Rappoport?” Eric added as he caught up to her in the parking lot. The temperature had dropped enough so that vapor clung around their mouths. The earlier rain and sleet had turned to fat snowflakes that flurried around them. They paused next to their cars.

“Melanie?” Colleen asked, tightening the belt of her coat. “Oh—we were just talking about life going on after Cody’s departure.”

“You seemed upset,” Eric said.

She shrugged and avoided his searching stare. “What can I say? I like Melanie. It’s hard to think about what she must be going through, having not one but two fathers leave her.”

He didn’t respond immediately. “I see,” he finally said gruffly. Colleen studied him from beneath a lowered brow.

“Do you?”

“Yes.”

Colleen blinked in surprise, caught off guard by his uncharacteristic irritation.

“I’m not that shallow, Colleen. Cody’s misbehavior broke more than just Ellen’s heart. I’m not close to them, like you are, but believe it or not I have some inkling how hard it must be for those children…some tiny glimmering of compassion in this robot brain of mine.”

“Eric, I’m sorry,” she said hastily, feeling contrite. “Of course you do. I didn’t mean to imply otherwise.”

He shrugged, his shoulders looking especially broad in his overcoat. “It’s okay,” he muttered under his breath.

“Is there something else wrong?” she asked when he didn’t say anything else, just stared at the parking-lot overhead light thoughtfully.

“I wanted to tell you—your mother asked me to join the family for Thanksgiving dinner at her house,” he said in a rush, as though he’d been waiting to tell her this news and wanted to get it over with. “I told her I already had plans.”

“She
did?
You do?” His revelation was news to her. Why hadn’t her mother mentioned it? Why was Eric acting so brusquely all of a sudden? Who were his plans with? Some adoring female, like Delores?

“I told your mother I had other plans, because I knew you wouldn’t want me there.”

“Oh,” Colleen uttered, stunned. She stifled a wild urge to tell him she did want him there, very much. But how could she sound so enthusiastic when she’d spent the better part of the last two weeks making sure they weren’t alone? She shivered and dug her gloved hands in her coat pockets, stalling for time while she thought out this little dilemma.

“Do you really have other plans?” she asked him.

“Sure,” he said. Her heart sank in disappointment.

“What are they?” she asked, not sure she really wanted to know.

“They’re pretty loose at this point, but they might include a TV dinner and football on the tube,” he said solemnly.

Sympathy and concern swamped her until she saw the gleam in his eyes and the hint of a smile shaping his lips. “You’re pulling at my heartstrings, Tiny Tim.”

He laughed, the sound striking her as warm and delicious, ringing in the frigid night air. She chuckled along with him.

“You should come,” she said, suddenly sure. “Natalie will be there. It wouldn’t be right if we stole your only family away from you on the holidays. Think how unhappy Natalie would be, knowing you were alone on Thanksgiving.”

“I’ll be perfectly fine eating alone on Thanksgiving,” he told her, and he seemed to mean it this time. “I was just kidding before. I’m actually working for most of the day.”

“Mom doesn’t serve her Thanksgiving meal until the evening.”

“The meal schedule isn’t really my point.” He pinned her with his stare. “You wouldn’t want me there. You’re avoiding me.”

“No, I haven’t been—” she began, but he interrupted her.

“You don’t have to deny it,” he said. The parking-lot light cast enough luminescence that she made out his small, wry grin. “I’d be an idiot not to notice, and I understand why you’re doing it.”

“It’s good one of us does,” she mumbled, feeling guilty for making her cowardly avoidance so obvious. She wasn’t sure he’d heard her, because he continued.

“I’m just telling you all this because I wanted to let you know you don’t have to be uncomfortable anymore. We have to be around each other for the next month or so. It’s unavoidable. But there’s no need for you to bend over backward to make sure we’re never alone together. I know when a woman isn’t interested.”

Her guilt swelled. “It’s not that I’m uninterested—”

“So you
are
?” he segued smoothly.

“Yes. I mean…no,” she broke off, trying to find the right words. She noticed a few snowflakes had landed on his arched eyebrows—stark white against black. She resisted an urge to brush them away. “I think we both know I’m…attracted to you.”

“You just don’t want it to lead anywhere. I get that.”

She made a sound of acute frustration.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“Eric, do you think you could try not to put words in my mouth for once?”

“I’m sorry,” he acquiesced, his lack of argument flustering her even more. “What did you want to say?”

“I’m just confused right now. Maybe it hasn’t been right for me to be avoiding you, but I didn’t know what else to do,” she said in a burst of honesty.

“What are you afraid of?”

She inhaled, trying to stave off the heavy pressure on her chest. Why did this conversation seem so tense…so significant. It wasn’t. A guy liked her and she liked him back. It wasn’t brain surgery.

“I…” She hesitated, swallowing convulsively. “I told you at the engagement party. I haven’t dated in a long time. I’m not really in practice.”

“That’s good, because I don’t like
practiced.
Too predictable. Bores me.” He smiled at her droll glance. “I’m interested in you. Not your expertise. Give it a chance, Colleen. Give
me
a chance,” he murmured, his voice low and earnest.

“I don’t know,” she whispered. He dipped his head in order to hear her. She glanced up at him and managed a weak smile. “I’ll think about it.”

“You will?”

She nodded.

“Will you think about
me?
” His quiet question struck her as highly intimate.

“I can’t seem to help it,” she admitted grudgingly.

“Good. It’s only fair. Between working on
Lucy
and thinking about you, a good night’s sleep has become impossible,” Eric said gruffly.

She crossed her arms above her waist and stared at the snow falling on the concrete, a strange mixture of pleasure and self-consciousness surging through her at his compliment.

She cleared her throat. “Are you coming to Thanksgiving dinner, then?”

“Are
you
asking me to?”

“Yes,” she said, striving for a resolute tone but realizing her voice quavered. She forced herself to look up at him. “I’d like you to come to my mother’s house for the holidays. I’d like it very much.”

His smile caused her to temporarily forget her anxiety. It was like the sun breaking after a storm.

“Then I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” he said. He leaned down and kissed her on the cheek. “Good night.”

Colleen just stood there, her heart pounding in her chest, as Eric walked toward his car. The kiss had been the height of innocence…friendly, filial, casual.

So why would she have sworn the snowflake that landed where Eric’s lips had just been melted into water in a split second?

She left the parking lot before him. He returned her quick wave as she pulled away. He couldn’t help but smile as he backed up a moment later.

Winning Colleen over was a little like handling a skittish colt. Patience was what was required. Rational skill. Subtlety.

But he’d be damned if being logical and methodical had ever been such a grueling challenge in his entire life.

Chapter Eight

T
he first night of her Thanksgiving vacation, Colleen went to pick up her children at her mother’s and found the house empty.

She noticed her mother’s car wasn’t in her driveway, but still went to the front door. Now that Brendan was a little older, both Brigit and Colleen were comfortable occasionally leaving him in charge while they ran a quick emergency errand. Colleen figured her mother had needed to pop over to the store for a forgotten ingredient for the holiday meal.

But the lights in her mother’s graceful, Colonial Revival-style white house were off. The kids must have indeed gone with Brigit. Surely there was a message on her cell phone, Colleen thought as she rummaged in her bag.

There were no messages or texts, however. She was in the process of dialing her mother’s number when she saw a piece of yellow paper caught on the porch railing. She leaned down to pick it up and recognized her mother’s neat handwriting. The brisk autumn wind must have whipped it off the door, where her mother usually left notes when she went out.

Colleen,

I tried to call you at work, but you were in session. Meet the kids and me at Eric Reyes’s house.

Mom

Her eyes widened. The kids were at Eric’s house? Her
mother
was at Eric’s house? She walked to her car, her nerves suddenly jumping with excitement and wariness at once. Thoughts and worries started coming with the rapidity of machine-gun fire. She wasn’t sure it was a good idea for her children to become so attached to Eric. The image of Melanie Rappoport’s wan face as she told Colleen about her adoptive father abandoning them sprang into her mind.

Don’t be paranoid,
Colleen scolded herself. She and Eric hadn’t even gone on a date, and she was already jumping to marriage, divorce and abandonment.

Other worries rushed in to replace that one. At last, she was being forced to confront her negative attitude about Eric’s expensive home. Of course her emotions were all tied up in the usually unspoken knowledge that Eric’s status was at least partially a result of her father’s fatal mistake sixteen years ago. That night, the fortunes of both the Kavanaughs and Reyeses had been altered drastically, and not just in a financial sense. Both families had suffered extreme loss and grief.

But it was foolish to deny that Eric’s house on a beach where Colleen was now banned by law symbolized the Kavanaughs’ fall from grace. Maybe most people wouldn’t see things that way, but Colleen admitted to herself on that drive over to Eric’s that it was precisely what she’d been thinking in some vague, unformed fashion.

She recalled Liam’s incendiary words toward Eric in the parking lot of Jake’s Place about Buena Vista Drive two summers ago.

What’s the matter, Reyes? Worried about bruising those delicate surgeon’s hands? Why don’t you just hurry back to that slick house on Buena Vista Drive that my mom’s money paid for?

Colleen winced at the memory. At the time, she’d wholeheartedly agreed with Liam’s taunt. She felt differently now. Very differently.

Pulling into Eric’s driveway, she turned off the engine dispiritedly. She sat in the car, thinking as she stared at the lovely lakefront home.

Was she
jealous
of Eric Reyes?

She cringed at the thought. His mother had been killed. He’d worked his butt off in order to support himself and his injured eleven-year-old sister. They’d been young, alone and essentially penniless, orphans with nothing but their brains and a willingness to work hard. But Eric hadn’t just done what it took to make Natalie and him survive. They’d thrived.

How shallow could she be to envy him because of his lifestyle? He’d earned every bit of his right to live in this lovely home, to buy his sister a luxurious wedding gift, to occasionally show the staff at The Family Center his appreciation with an expensive catered meal. She knew how smart he was, and not just in his job as a physician. He’d alluded to the fact that he’d done well for himself with investments. In this economy, that showed some real guts and savvy. His financial status might indirectly be related to Derry Kavanaugh’s actions, but Colleen was suddenly sure that the young, intense, hard-working young man she’d known so long ago would have found a way to make a success of his life no matter what had happened to him when he was eighteen.

No…it wasn’t jealousy, what she felt toward Eric. It was something more elemental. It was shame. She’d been putting Eric down in her mind all these years in order to make herself feel better. It was easier to think of him being pompous and arrogant than to face her own guilt, anger and sadness about what her father had done; more comfortable to condemn him than to face how helpless and lost she’d felt as a teenager after the crash.

The profound realization of her selfishness hurt. Colleen was used to being the selfless one with her kids, her family and patients. Tears welled in her eyes.

She was so lost in her turbulent emotions, she didn’t notice anyone approaching and jumped when someone tapped on her passenger window. Her eyes went wide in shock, tears spilling down her cheek when she saw Eric himself through the glass. He peered at her through the window, his facial features tight with puzzlement that quickly morphed into concern. He wore jeans, a white T-shirt and a blue flannel shirt over it. She hadn’t seen him in work clothes since he was a teenager laboring for the landscaping business. Memories of her adolescent admiration of him swamped her consciousness.

“Are you okay?” he asked, his deep voice muffled by the door.

Colleen blinked, and the memory faded. The adult version of that young man looked at her through the window, even more vibrant and compelling than the boy had been. She just nodded helplessly and swiped at a tear.

The next thing she knew, he was opening the car door and sitting in the passenger seat. He mumbled a curse when his long legs wouldn’t fit in the compact car, causing Colleen to grin despite her tears. He moved the seat back and slammed the door shut.

“Where are the kids?” she asked.

“Don’t worry. Your mom is with them in the garage. They’re working on the boat. Brendan dropped by my office last week after a P.T. session and asked if he could help with
Lucy,
and of course Jenny had to come once she heard.”

She stared at him in amazement. “Was anyone going to bother to tell me?”

“We did. This evening is the first time they’ve come. Why are you crying?” he changed subjects abruptly, leaning toward her.

Colleen stared through the front window.

“I always seem to be crying around you,” she mumbled. “I hope you’ll take my word for it that I don’t normally go to tears at the drop of a hat.”

“Does that mean the tears have something to do with me?”

She inhaled slowly and sighed. “Inadvertently, maybe,” she admitted. She avoided his laserlike stare, but she felt it like a touch on her cheek. “To be honest, I was sitting out here in the driveway trying to figure out why I’m so defensive about going into your house.”

“My
house?
” he asked flatly, clearly not understanding.

Colleen sniffed and nodded.

He made a frustrated sound and turned. He grabbed a box of tissues from the backseat. “Here,” he said, offering her the box.

“Thanks,” Colleen murmured, taking one

“So, what’s my house got to do with anything?” he asked after she’d dried her cheeks.

“The house is really just a symbol of it all, I guess. The truth is…” She paused while she withdrew another tissue and dabbed at another falling tear. She felt so ashamed of her idiocy. She could be stubborn at times, but once she’d taken ownership of her failings, her contrition was absolute. Still, this wasn’t easy.

“I…I owe you a huge apology,” she began falteringly. “I’ve held so much anger toward you in the past. I’ve been so unfair. You never did anything to deserve my attitude.”

“I may have been stubborn a time or two myself,” he admitted sheepishly.

She turned to him and smiled. She
really
liked him in that moment.

“No. You’ve been nothing but kind and generous ever since Brendan’s surgery. I wish you’d accept my apology for being so…prickly around you,” she finished in a quavering whisper.

His expression hardened and his eyes widened slightly, as if he wasn’t really sure how to take her shift in demeanor.

“Colleen,” he muttered. He touched her jaw. His fingers felt pleasantly cool and dry next to her skin. His hand shifted and he palmed her neck, his fingers rubbing just below her scalp. Her entire body stilled in awareness, as if every cell had just gone on high alert at his touch. “If it makes you feel any better, I always understood why you felt the need to go on the defensive around me.”

“You did?” Part of her was surprised by his admission, but most of her was completely focused on his massaging fingertips on her nape.

“The cards were stacked against us. Our history saw to that. It was inevitable things were going to be prickly between us, as you put it.”

She lowered her gaze, staring at his nose. “Then Sunset Beach happened, and things got even more complicated.”

He made a sound of agreement and bent his head toward her. He continued to stroke her muscles with talented fingertips. “I probably should admit that I was attracted to you before what happened there…before the accident, even.”

Her gaze bounced up to his. “You were?”

“One time when I was a teenager, I saw you in front of the library. You smiled at me and said hi.”

“You remember that?” she blurted out, amazed.

His arched his eyebrows incredulously. “Are you kidding? I was an outsider looking into your world. In the summers, I worked fifty…sixty hours a week. In the hockey off-season, I was a geek who spent whatever spare time he had with his nose buried in a book—”

“You were not a geek. You were brilliant,” Colleen insisted, but he continued as if she hadn’t interrupted him.

“One day I unexpectedly come face-to-face with a bunch of pretty girls as I’m leaving the library loaded down with books, and I’m sweating it big-time, and suddenly the prettiest one in the pack—Colleen Kavanaugh—smiles at me. I’m surprised I didn’t do a header on the pavement.”

She snorted with laughter. “You are so full of it.”

His gaze narrowed on her smile. “I meant every word,” he murmured. “Your smile still gets me, Colleen.”

Her lips trembled in anticipation when he leaned forward and placed his mouth on them. He caressed her firmly…sweetly. Somehow, his tender kiss stirred her just as deeply as his ravishing ones. Something swelled inside her, warm and golden. Disappointment flooded her when he leaned back a moment later and studied her with smoldering eyes.

“Maybe we better go inside before I do something we both might regret,” he muttered.

“I’m not one hundred percent positive I’d regret it,” she whispered.

“If you keep staring at me like that, you’re going to find out quick enough.”

She smiled. He smiled back, even though the hard glint of arousal remained in his eyes.

Colleen hadn’t realized how warm the interior of her car had become until she stepped into the frigid Lake Michigan wind a moment later. Eric held out his hand and led her up the walk. She slid her gloved hand into his.

“You must be freezing,” she said apologetically, referring to his coatless state.

He shrugged and hurried her up the stairs and through the front door. Colleen stepped into an attractive, high-ceilinged entryway that included a marble-tiled floor and a rustic, elegant chandelier. He stepped in front of her when she curiously tried to peer farther into the house.

“You’re sure you’re ready for this?” he asked, placing his hands on her upper arms.

“Seeing your house?” she asked doubtfully. Something about the intensity of his question made her wonder if he’d been asking about something more serious.

A smile tilted his mouth. “For starters.”

“Yes, I’m ready.”

“Excellent,” he murmured. He dipped his head and kissed her again. She could tell he’d meant it to be a chaste kiss, just like in the car. When he felt her step into him, however, seeking out his hardness, his heat, he groaned and deepened the kiss.

So Colleen had no one to blame but herself for the fact that when she greeted her mom and children several minutes later, her cheeks were flushed pink and her pulse throbbed, fast and furious.

Three and a half hours later, Colleen sat on the plush carpet in Eric’s family room before a large coffee table littered with the various pieces from a board game, several soda cans and a few candy wrappers, mostly distributed in front of Brendan.

Like the rest of the house, the room where they sat was luxurious, spacious and yet comfortable all at once, a place where it was just as easy to entertain as it was to cuddle up with a book and blanket. Colleen had asked him if he’d hired an interior designer earlier, and he’d said Natalie had orchestrated the decor. Colleen had seen Natalie’s darling town house and knew her plans for the beachside cottage she’d soon share with Liam, so she’d not been surprised to hear she was behind the tasteful decor in Eric’s home.

A fire crackled cozily in the large fireplace. Eric, Colleen, Brendan and Brigit each sat one side of the coffee table, engaged in a heated contest of Trivial Pursuit. Brendan and Eric were beating Colleen and her mother hands down, but the ladies were not accepting defeat easily. During the commercials of her favorite television show, Jenny came over to ask about the score and join temporary forces with the female contingent.