In Full Bloom [Second Chances 1] (Siren Publishing Classic) Page 14
“Maybe another time. We have plans for tonight. You’ll meet her on Thanksgiving, if not before then,” he said.
Her eyes wide, she asked, “You’re bringing her to Mom’s house? On a holiday?”
He lifted his hands and said, “Mom invited her.”
She raised her eyebrow at him and he squirmed.
“Shit. You’re getting just as good as Mom at that.”
Maddy turned to him and said, “Shit, shit, shit!”
Christina narrowed her eyes and said, “Thanks, Ev.”
“Sorry,” he said, wincing. He redirected his attention to his niece and said, “Maddy. Those are adult words. Don’t use them.”
“Kay,” she said, basically ignoring him. He shrugged. Oh well. He’d tried.
“So she’s only going because Mom invited her?” Christina asked, clearly seizing on his moment of guilt.
Again, he winced and said, “I was going to ask her when it got closer to time.”
“Tell me about her,” his sister asked.
He gave her the abbreviated version that she’d given Mom, then he added, “I really like her. I think that she might actually be the one.”
“Holy shit,” his sister said, wide eyed. “Really?”
Maddy shouted, “Shit!” again.
Evan held up his hands and said, “Not me, that time!”
Christina just sighed and said, “Couldn’t help it. That’s huge, Ev. Are you sure?”
“It’s way early yet, but I’m pretty sure.”
His sister smiled and said, “I really can’t wait to meet her, then.”
“Soon,” he promised. “And I’d really appreciate it if you didn’t blab to Mom.”
“My lips are sealed. She’ll be tenacious if she even suspects.”
“No kidding,” he said. “That’s why I asked.”
By the time he got home, his stomach was grumbling. It was almost six. He’d finally gotten out of his sister’s house, but it had taken an hour longer than he intended. Doug had come inside from mowing and they had gotten to talking about football.
When he walked through the door of his apartment, the first thing that hit him was the smell. There was a rich, earthy smell in the air that he couldn’t quite place. Taryn was in the kitchen chopping something.
She looked toward the door and smiled at him almost shyly. She gestured to the counter and said, “I hope you don’t mind. Your kitchen has a lot more space than mine.”
“Of course not,” he said. Walking over, he wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her back against his chest. He pressed his mouth to the side of her neck, then said, “This smells amazing.”
She tilted her neck, so he continued to press light kisses against her skin until she eased forward. She said, “We’ll never eat if we start that.”
“You’re right,” he said, reluctantly easing back. “I’m starved right now, too. Is there anything I can do to help?”
She resumed chopping some parsley and said, “Nope. Dinner should be ready in ten, I think.”
“Okay. Did you want wine with dinner?” he asked, moving to the rack in the dining room.
“I went to the store earlier and picked up a Riesling. I thought it would go nicely with the pasta. It’s already chilling,” she said as she dropped the pasta into boiling water.
“How long did you sleep?” he asked, curiously.
“Oh, only an hour or so,” she said. “I didn’t even mean to fall asleep.”
“You were out, baby,” he said as he moved to grab plates and wine glasses from the cabinet. “The phone rang, then I got out of bed and showered. You didn’t even budge.”
She laughed and said, “You wore me out.”
He grinned, albeit smugly, and said, “Oops.”
While she worked on dinner, he set the table. He moved a white pillar candle from the shelf and set it on the table, then lit it. He went downstairs and snagged a fresh lily from his stock and put it in a bud vase.
He walked back into the apartment as she was dumping the pasta into the strainer. He moved the flower to the table and then walked into the kitchen to grab the wine. He uncorked it and poured some into each glass.
By the time the table was set, she was rounding the half wall with a large bowl in her hand. He watched as her eyes softened. She took in the table and then moved to set the bowl down. She moved toward him and stretched up on her toes to press a kiss to his lips.
“The table looks beautiful,” she said. “Thank you.”
She went back into the kitchen and grabbed the truffle and what he assumed was some sort of slicer off the counter top.
He waited until she’d sat down before he served them both some of the pasta. It had a creamy sauce on it, and it looked amazing. There were large chunks of the mushrooms that she’d purchased earlier in the day.
She reached across the table and started slicing pieces of truffle over his pasta. He sniffed the air and said, “Wow. That smells awesome.”
She grinned and said, “It tastes even better,” as she sliced the remaining portion of the truffle over her own. She looked at him expectantly.
She’d put some parsley in the pasta so it looked almost too good to eat. It looked like one of the plates you’d see in a magazine.
He speared a large hunk of mushroom, twirled some pasta onto his fork, and then scooted a piece of the truffle onto it. He took a bite and moaned, “Oh my god. This is so rich.”
She smiled at him and said, “Good, right?”
As he finished chewing, he said, “This is amazing. Thank you so much. I know how much that little lumpy thing cost, but I have to say, totally worth it.”
They sipped their wine and took their time as they ate the decadent meal. When they were done, she pushed away from the table and grabbed her plate.
He raised his hand and said, “No. No. Seriously. Sit down. You just made me the best meal I’ve ever eaten. You’re not doing the dishes. Sit. I’ve got them. Do you want more wine?”
He rose when she shook her head and picked up the plates. Within a few minutes, he had the dishes in the dishwasher and joined her in the living room. She was lying on the couch, her hand on her stomach, completely relaxed.
He smirked and said, “That’s okay. I’ll just take the chair.”
She smiled and said, “No. I’ll sit up.”
“I’ve got a better idea. Lean up for a second,” he asked.
When she complied, he slid into the seat and then pulled her gently back so her head rested on his leg. He stroked his hand through her hair and said, “Thank you again. That meal was indescribable.”
“The whole day has been filled with a lot of indescribable,” she agreed as her eyes slid closed.
“I had no idea you could cook like that. You’ve never made me a bad meal before, but that was outstanding, baby. What other secrets are you hiding? Tell me something else I don’t know about you.”
Her eyes flickered open and she said, “You first.”
Just like that they were sharing little bits of themselves. They sat there for hours, just talking. He had never felt that close to another human being than he did in that moment.
Around eleven, she started to make noises about going back to her apartment. When he asked her to stay the night, she hesitated.
“I’ve got an early staff meeting. I’m getting up at 5:30.”
“Ouch,” he said with a wince. “I’ll just set the alarm, Princess.”
Her face somewhat incredulous, she asked, “Really?”
“Really,” he said. “Stay with me.”
* * * *
The silence in the SUV was deafening. They had just dropped off Jamie and Cora. Under normal circumstances, he would have expected to be taunted the whole way home. The Panthers had utterly destroyed the Hawks. They had been going back and forth over it the whole week.
He had a pretty good idea of what was currently weighing on her mind, though. He couldn’t blame her. It was on his mind, too.
She hadn’t seemed at all pleased to be there, so he had headed toward them. Even over the loud conversations from the hockey fans around them, he managed to catch a small snippet of the discussion as he had approached them.
“Wow. You put on some weight, Tare.”
Little asshole. He’d been ready to haul off and deck the guy at that point. Hell, it made him angry even now. The comment had been purposefully mean. Also, fucking stupid, he acknowledged. Taryn was gorgeous.
Evan had managed to restrain his temper at the time but there was no way a comment like that could be allowed to slide. Before he’d been able to open his mouth to speak, she had told the kid to fuck off.
When he heard her reply, though, he realized there was some definite history between the two. She’d basically told him that he didn’t get to speak to her that way anymore. Which would mean that he’d been allowed to talk to her like that at some point.
The guy had opened his mouth to respond, but had spotted him, and apparently thought better of it. Evan had been none too friendly, and also towered over him by at least six inches. When Evan had made the suggestion that he walk the fuck away, quickly, the asshole had taken the advice.
As they had walked back to their seats, he didn’t say anything else about it. She was obviously shaken. He had wanted to press the issue, then and there, but realized that it wasn’t the time or place.
The closer they got back to their seats, the more the tension had drained out of her shoulders. By the end of the game, she’d been on her feet, screaming just like everyone else had been. Well, except for Jamie and himself. The Panthers had scored two goals in under a minute with only four minutes left in the period.
Taryn tended to bottle things up. This time would be no exception, he realized, if the complete silence was any indication. The tension was almost unbearable in the car.
“Can we talk about what happened tonight?” he asked.
She sighed and said, “I guess we need to.”
“I’m not going to force you to talk about it. You’re clearly thinking about it, though. I know that I am.”
She nodded and said, “That was my ex, Jeremy. We dated my sophomore and junior year of college. He wasn’t a very nice guy.”
“I can see that,” he said.
“I was very shy in high school. I studied a lot. I didn’t get a lot of attention from guys. I don’t know, looking back, if he was interested in me because he knew I’d be easy to manipulate or if he was genuinely attracted to me. I guess I was naive at the time, but it was an emotionally abusive relationship. He would always make digs about me. Suggestions about how I shouldn’t wear certain things or maybe I shouldn’t eat that or that maybe I should drop some weight. Small things that eventually undermined my self-esteem.”
Evan tightened his hands on the steering wheel, wishing that he’d gone with his instinct to haul off and hit the guy. He couldn’t understand why anyone would want to deliberately hurt someone like Taryn.
“I don’t know if it was the whole orphan thing, or what, but I was just happy to have some sort of attention. It was negative attention, but it was attention.”
Clearing her throat, she continued, “So one day during my junior year, this was right after I had started hanging out with Cora again, I dropped by his dorm to surprise him. It was so cliché. He was banging some questionably legal girl. Naturally, I freaked out. He ended up turning it around on me. He said that I was always busy studying, that I didn’t pay him enough attention, that I wasn’t inventive enough in bed. Like every single one of those terribly trite excuses that you’d expect.”
“Please tell me you didn’t fall for that,” Evan said. “Or better yet that you punched him right in the dick.”
“I wish I had,” she said dryly. “Mostly I was in shock. I went home and regrouped. Then went and got myself tested. I sincerely doubt that was the only time he’d cheated on me, so it was a concern.”
“Probably a smart move,” he acknowledged.
“Well, as you know, all that turned out fine. He came around later that night, apologizing and trying to smooth things over. I had spent the majority of my day in a free clinic and I didn’t have any of my test results. I was tired, stressed out, scared out of my mind, and completely done with him at that point.”
“Understandable,” he said, suspecting that the story wasn’t quite over yet.
“He continued to follow me around for a few days, even though I told him to fuck off. One night he barged into my dorm room. I don’t know if he had been drinking, or what. He got into my face, started getting really nasty because he wasn’t able to get me to go back to him. At one point, he grabbed me and shook me. I managed to get him off of me. I grabbed a trophy. It had this marble base. I hit him in the head with it. He bled all over my carpet until I kicked him out and then I called the campus police.”
“Oh, Jesus, baby. I should have decked him like I wanted to,” Evan said.
“I would have enjoyed that. It’s been years, but I’m certain I’d still enjoy that,” she said, a smile in her voice.
“Anyway, after that, I took a long break from dating. I realized that I wasn’t even mad about the cheating. I didn’t have any expectation at all with regards to what I wanted for myself out of a relationship, other than that I wanted attention. That being my only requirement.. it just seemed too dangerous. So I focused on school until…now.”
“That guy was a piece of shit, but at the least it sounds like you learned from the experience,” he said, trying to find anything positive to say about the story she’d just told him.
“I did,” she acknowledged. “I still feel so foolish when I look back on it, though.”
“Not foolish,” he said. “Inexperienced. He sounds like he was manipulator, too. The way that he spoke to you tonight, he was deliberately trying to hurt you.”
“I know he was. That was how he operated back then, too,” she said, annoyance lacing her voice.
He reached over the console and gave her knee a squeeze. It seemed like a completely inadequate way to express the way he was feeling right now. Every time she opened up to tell him more about her life before they met, it seemed to be filled with so much pain.
She put her hand over his and laced her fingers through his. The remainder of the car ride, they both sat in silence. Every so often, he’d give her hand a gentle squeeze, not knowing what else he could really do.
When they walked up the stairs to their apartments, she edged toward her door and said, “I think I’m going to go to bed early.”
He weighed the options for a moment before he asked, “Can I stay with you tonight?”
“If you want to,” she said. “I’m just exhausted.”
It wasn’t exactly brimming with excitement, but he’d take that as agreement. He knew, if left by herself, she’d probably continue to stew about it. He could see the tension on her face again and in the way she held herself. There was no way she was going to be able to sleep any time soon.
After changing, he knocked on her door. When she opened the door, she was dressed in a pair of Hello Kitty boxers and a tank top. A smile pulled across his lips as he said, “Last time I saw these, you had a plastic tiara tangled in your hair.”
She pulled the door open farther and stepped back to let him in, a faint smile on her face. “Not my best look,” she said.
As he stepped inside, he said, “That was the moment that I decided you were going to be trouble of the best kind.” Once he’d made it through the door, he reached out, pulling her up against him, and gave her a hug.
He felt her stiffen for a moment, then relax against him. He pressed a kiss to the top of her head and asked, “Sleepy?”
He heard a muffled, “Exhausted,” against his chest.
He released her and said, “Then let’s go lie down.”
She looked up at him, hesitation written on her face. Finally, she asked, “Are you sure? It’s pretty early.”
“If I leave you to your own devices, you’re going to sit here and stew about all that shit we talked about in the car, aren’t you?”
She smiled wryly and said, “That sounds about right.”
“If you want me to go so you can do that, then I can. I just don’t like to see you unhappy,” he said, at a loss.
She shook her head and said, “No. Please stay.”
As soon as they slid into bed, he urged her to roll over on her stomach. Gently, he kneaded the tension from her neck and shoulders. Other than the occasional sigh of pleasure when another group of muscles became unknotted, she was completely silent.
Eventually, she said, “Thank you. That was amazing.”
He flexed his hands and then moved to snuggle in behind her. Pressing his lips against her shoulder, he said, “You’re welcome.”
They lay there for a few minutes, until he felt her breathing even out. She had fallen asleep. Mission accomplished. If only he could turn off his own mind now.
Chapter 13
Taryn stepped out on to the roof of the building, two cups of coffee in hand, and made her way to the greenhouse. Adjusting the mugs in her hand, she gripped the handles carefully in one hand, then opened the door, only sloshing a little bit over her hand.
Evan looked up, a sleepy smile on his face, and said, “Morning.”
She said, “Morning. I brought coffee. Interested?”
She set them down on a nearby shelf, then watched as he set the flower pot down and slipped the gloves off his hands. As he approached her, he said, “You’re amazing. Thank you.”
Instead of going for the cup, he shoved the gloves into his back pocket, then slid his arms around her and said, “Morning, baby. How’d you sleep?”
“Great,” she said, snuggling into him.
“Feeling better this morning?” he asked.
“Definitely. Thank you for last night, by the way.”