Seduce Me Tonight (11 page)

I clung to him, resting my head against his shoulder as he slowly lowered me to the ground, worn out from my release, both physical and emotional. He cradled me against his chest, so strong and yet so gentle that I felt tears slipping down my cheeks.

‘What is it?’ he asked, taking my chin in his hands and tilting my head up so he could see my face. He wiped my tears away with his thumb. ‘Cele, did I hurt you?’

I shook my head and smiled. ‘No, sweetheart, you didn’t hurt me. You healed me.’

I knew I shouldn’t be there. I mean, hell, it wasn’t like I had even been invited. I’d broken in, for God’s sake. I’d broken the law – and for what? To sit in the dark and wait for Quentin to come home so he could throw my ass out. Not for the first time, I wondered if he even would come home. It was 3 a.m. and I’d been sitting at his kitchen table for two hours already, running my fingers over the scarred surface and planning what I was going to say to him. Two hours in – make that two
months
– and I still wasn’t sure what words were going to come out of my mouth when I saw him. For the hundredth time, I reflexively pressed the keypad on my phone and watched it light up with the time. 3:17.

Quentin and I were a lot alike. Both of us slung drinks for a living – alcohol for him and coffee for me – and we were both quiet and introspective, which made us good listeners for other people’s issues but not too good at sharing our own problems with each other. Quentin was stoic in dealing with life’s curveballs, whether it was his father’s unexpected death or a tree falling on his truck, and he could get focused on work or helping his brother rebuild that old Mustang of their dad’s, or repairing the fence on that piece of property out in the country, until the crisis passed.

Me, I was more inclined to run away from anything I couldn’t face head on – and sometimes that meant skipping town for a few days. Or a few weeks, in this case. I’d told my boss I had a personal crisis and needed to take as much of my vacation time as he could give me. He said my job would be waiting when I got back. All I could do was hope he was telling the truth. I was going to need a steady paycheck. Especially if Quentin bailed on me.

I knew he was still bartending at Kayla’s – but this wasn’t a city where bars stayed open until dawn. One or two, maybe, but it was getting on to the time when I needed to pack it in and go – that, or plan to make a night of it and hope he didn’t call the police when he found me on his couch in the morning.

I was still debating my limited options when I heard the distinct
snick
of a key in the front door lock. I threw a quick prayer up to the patron saint of stupid, lovelorn women that he hadn’t brought some chick home from the bar, and waited.

I hadn’t wanted him to call the police as soon as he pulled up, so I’d left the place dark when I’d helped myself to the spare key I knew he always kept tucked under the mat. He didn’t turn on any lights either, so he was just a shadowy figure standing in the doorway. Could’ve been anyone, I guess, except I knew it was Quentin. Five years with a man will make you remember the tilt of his frame and the cant of his walk. And a whole lot of other things I didn’t want to be thinking about just yet. It was Quentin all right, and by the tight way he carried himself he had either jacked up his back again or he knew I was here.

‘Little late for a visit, ain’t it, Rebecca?’

He knew it was me. ‘Hey, Quentin.’

Two months of trying to sort through the mess that was my life and two hours sitting at his kitchen table and that’s the best I could come up with.

He flipped the light switch by the door and I blinked in the glare. He looked tired. And pissed off. Not much had changed. ‘What are you doing here?’

Any hope I had of a warm reception evaporated. I could freeze water in his glare. I dropped my eyes and shrugged, spinning my cell phone around on the table. ‘You disappeared. I asked around and found out you were living here.’

He took two long steps and slammed his hand down on my phone to stop it spinning. ‘First of all,
you
are the one who disappeared. Second of all, you could’ve just come by the bar instead of breaking into my house.’

‘I came back in two weeks. You were gone,’ I said, daring to meet his stony face again. ‘No note, no forwarding address, not even money to cover the rent. Just gone. I waited, but you didn’t come back.’

‘You left first,’ he said.

‘You left
for ever
!’

He sighed heavily. ‘I moved one town over to be closer to work and put some miles between us.’

‘I came back,’ I said again, sounding as miserable and lost as I felt. ‘I was afraid to show my face at Kayla’s, I didn’t know what you’d told her and the rest of the guys. You changed your phone number so I couldn’t even call you. What else was I supposed to do?’

‘Get on with your life like you obviously wanted to do when you decided to leave me.’

Dammit, I was crying already. I scrubbed at my eyes, determined I wasn’t going to let him get to me, but I knew it was already too late. He’d gotten to me the minute I’d fallen for that crooked smile of his almost seven years ago.

He sat down in the chair opposite me, crossed his arms and dropped his head down to the table. When I finally dared to look at him, the anger was gone. He looked as weary as I felt.

‘Why’d you leave? Where’d you go?’ he asked quietly.

‘Does it matter?’

‘Yeah, Becca, it matters. You might’ve left a note, but it wasn’t much comfort to read, “I need to think about things.” You didn’t answer your phone, you didn’t respond to texts. After a week I was freaking out, thinking you were dead by the side of the road, so I called the coffee shop. They said you were taking a leave of absence, but no one could tell me how long that might be. After two weeks, I figured you weren’t coming back.’ His voice had started as a whisper and finished on a growl. ‘You broke my fucking heart.’

‘I came
back
,’ I said. ‘I was gone sixteen fucking days, Quentin. I left most of my clothes, all of my furniture and everything else. You had to know I was coming back.’

‘Maybe I did. Was I supposed to wait around and see how long it took? Or see if you only came back to pack your stuff and go for good? Or hear about how you found someone else who was better for you?’

And there it was. His masculine pride. I might have broken his heart, but first I had hurt his pride.

‘So you packed up your stuff and left for good before I could do it to you,’ I said. I resumed spinning my cell phone on the table and he didn’t stop me this time. ‘How do you think that felt, coming home to a half-empty closet and your phone number disconnected?’

I could hear the bitterness in my voice, but seeing his face close up drove it home that two months had passed and we were still two very broken people. What the
hell
was I doing here?

‘Probably the same way I felt. Shitty, I’m guessing.’

I deserved it. I knew I did. But it still stung. ‘I’m sorry, Quentin.’

He spread his hands out in an expansive gesture. ‘For what? For leaving? For not coming back until I’d given up? For not talking to me?’

‘For all of it. I didn’t know what else to do.’

‘Where did you go?’ he asked again.

‘I went to Florida to see my sister.’

‘Why?’

I hesitated. I knew I had to tell him. I had come here for that very reason. He had a right to know, after all.

‘I’m pregnant.’

Whatever he’d expected, it hadn’t been that. I could practically see the wheels turning in his brain and then grinding to a halt. He blinked at me. I stared back, giving him time to process it. He ran a hand over his jaw, scratching at the stubble there. He was impossible to read. I didn’t realise I had been holding my breath until he finally spoke.

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

Quiet, no anger. No happiness, either. I felt something inside me collapse in on itself, my hope snuffed out. ‘You’ve been saying since the day we met that you didn’t want kids. I didn’t want any either. I was careful –
we
were careful – but accidents happen.’

He nodded. ‘Yeah, they do. And then the two people involved talk about it and decide together how to handle it.’

I shook my head. ‘Why? What was the point?’

Something fluttered behind his eyes. ‘The point is I love you,’ he said softly. ‘The point is you shouldn’t have had to deal with this alone.’

‘I needed to figure out what I wanted to do. I never planned on having kids, much less being a single mother.’

The tears started again. You’d think I wouldn’t have any left at this point, given how many I had shed in the past two months. I brushed them away, the cuffs of my shirt already damp. Quentin got up and left the room. He came back with a wad of tissues and handed them to me without a word. He returned to his chair, watching me with that steady look of his.

I did my best to clean myself up, but I knew I looked like a mess. ‘I’m sorry. I really am. I should’ve found some other way to tell you. Or not tell you at all, maybe. But I thought you had a right to know and I couldn’t show up at Kayla’s and have everyone watching while I broke down –’

‘What did you decide?’ He interrupted my near-hysterical ramble. ‘What do you want to do?’

My laugh sounded maniacal even to my own ears. ‘I’m going to have a baby, Quentin. I’m going to be someone’s mother.’

‘Then I’m going to be someone’s father. We are going to be parents.’

It wasn’t a question. It was a statement of fact. Quentin had a way of saying things that gave them weight and meaning. I knew I was pregnant, had seen the positive signs and smiley faces and the word ‘Pregnant’ on three different brands of home pregnancy tests. I had even seen the flutter of a heartbeat on an ultrasound monitor at the gynaecologist’s office. But until Quentin said it, it hadn’t seemed real. Now the truth of it hit me square in the chest and I gasped as if the wind had been knocked out of me. The tears started fresh, accompanied by great wailing sobs.

I held my face in my hands, as if I could contain the waterworks with the press of my palms, and heard rather than saw Quentin slide out of his chair. I felt his hands on my shoulders, squeezing, kneading, working out the tension that was knotted so tight even as I kept crying. He didn’t say anything. That was Quentin’s way. A bartender to the core, letting people work through their problems without interfering. It was a good thing – except when it wasn’t. Like now. I needed to know what was going on in his mind, and in his heart.

I covered his hands with mine. I hadn’t seen him in two months, hadn’t touched him. It felt good. But I needed to talk. No, I needed to listen.

‘How do you feel about this?’

He threaded his fingers through mine, still standing behind me so that I couldn’t see his expression. ‘How do you feel about it?’

I squeezed his hands. ‘Don’t twist it around, Quentin. I need to know what you’re thinking.’

‘I’m thinking I’ve missed you,’ he said in that low growl I knew so well. I felt the knot of tension in my belly tighten, but in a different way. A familiar way. A way I longed for.

‘I’ve missed you too.’

His kneading fingers turned softer, as if his longing could reach through skin and bone and touch the part of me that longed for him too. I sat there, waiting. Waiting. Two months.
Waiting
. Not knowing what he’d say or do or how he’d feel, but showing up here anyway, waiting.

I was tired of waiting.

He pulled me out of the chair, his big arms around me even as my legs gave out from sitting in the same place for so long. He scooped me up like I was no heavier than a tray of glasses at the bar. I was still catching my breath at the suddenness of it when he strode down the narrow hall and into his bedroom. I must have made a sound because he paused at the bed and looked down at me.

‘We’re still together, right? You didn’t leave me, you just went away to get your head straight?’

I nodded. ‘But you left me.’

‘Like hell I did,’ he snarled, and it would’ve sounded mean if not for the smile that transformed his expression into one of joy. Weary joy.

He deposited me on the bed carefully, as if I were the most fragile piece of bar glass he’d ever handled. Then he set to undressing me. Slowly.

He unbuttoned my long-sleeved shirt, his big hands making easy work of the small buttons. He kissed the beauty mark on my neck as he leaned in to strip the shirt down my shoulders. Then he went to my waist, hesitating at the stretchy waistband of my newly purchased maternity pants. I was afraid he was taken aback by the swell of my belly – still small at fourteen weeks, but a lot bigger than it had been when we’d last been together. He put my concerns to rest with his words.

‘Talk about easy access. I think I like your new wardrobe.’

I laughed as he stripped my pants down in one smooth move only to tumble me back on the bed when they wouldn’t come free of the boots I still wore. He unlaced my boots and took them off along with my socks and then finished the job with my pants. I lay there watching him in just my plain beige bra and panties that curved under the swell of my belly.

He sat down next to me, his hip touching mine. He stared at me long enough to make me blush. He brushed his hand along my shoulder, pushing my hair up and back so that I was exposed to his steady gaze.

‘I guess I should ask if you want this. Are ready for it,’ he said. ‘I mean, I don’t know how you’re feeling or what you need. I don’t know about this stuff. You’ll have to teach me.’

‘I need you,’ I said. And it was true.

‘Good.’

He took his time removing my bra, reaching under me to release the clasp, then sliding the cotton cups over my breasts. He stared at me, a smile tipping the corners of his mouth as he ran his hands over my breasts, fuller now and with darker nipples than when he last saw them. He circled each nipple slowly with just the pads of his thumbs. They pebbled under his gentle touch, aching for more. Aching for him. I squirmed on the bed, pressing my thighs together.

He tucked his fingers in the sides of my panties and slipped them down over my hips. I knew they were already damp, I could feel the moisture growing at the juncture of my thighs. He’d hardly done more than undress me and I was already wet for him. Not much had changed in two months, pregnant or not.