CHAPTER TWELVE
Coward. Andie berated herself as she brushed her teeth, making faces in the bathroom mirror. Part of her had wanted to prolong the pleasurable torture of her fireside confab with Rhys, but her nerve had failed when he’d looked at her in that unsettling way. Like she was somebody worthy of his esteem. His desire. And then when she stood to leave, and he’d risen with her, standing so close with his hand against her cheek, his intention to kiss her all but emblazoned on his forehead, the intensity of her reaction had startled her.
When his thumb had brushed her lower lip, her stomach had turned over. She’d leaned in, swayed by instinct and the powerful pull he exerted, but she’d been frightened by the answering rush of heat in her blood. The huge room had suddenly become too confining, too humid, too close, and their contact too honest. Too real.
I made up my mind to resist him, and I did. It should have felt like a triumph. Or at least a relief. So why did her escape weigh on her like the bitterest disappointment?
She put herself to bed with brisk efficiency, eager for unconsciousness to claim her. Of course, because she wanted it, her brain allowed her no such respite. When she tried to read, the words jittered across the page. When she closed her eyes, a powerful restlessness took over her limbs, making her toss and turn. When she finally did lapse into a shallow sleep, a dream tugged her back to a place she’d rather not go: her childhood home.
She saw Susan perched in her favorite nook in the kitchen, the yellowed stain of a fading bruise riding high on her left cheekbone. It should have been a scene of domestic harmony. Soup bubbled on the stove, and the voices of the older girls faded in and out. They giggled over something on TV in the den before drifting back into the kitchen to check on how soon dinner would be ready, only to be shooed away again by their father, Jim. Susan clutched a cup of coffee, her knuckles white and her eyes hollow as she stared across the room at her husband, who held Andie on his lap.
Andie could feel the solidity of her father’s arms around her and the gentle tug of his fingers as he stroked her hair, but her body vibrated with tension. She tilted her face up to his, eager for an approving glance, only to see his narrowed eyes beaming their challenge across the kitchen at his wife, his lips curled into a lazy smile. Their silent exchange wasn’t about her, yet Andie was trapped at its center, a particle suspended in a charged field.
It was one of those dreams where you need to get out, but your surroundings are as sticky and intractable as taffy. Jim’s arms, muscle-bound and sheathed in his dark-uniform shirtsleeves, locked around her like the bars of a cage. She smelled the sour blast of alcohol on his breath, felt the malevolent energy that rippled through his body, although his fingers in her hair were deceptively soft.
Susan’s stare flicked over her, and she might have imagined it, but she thought she saw darkness gathering in her mother’s eyes. Andie shivered, in spite of the humid warmth of the kitchen and the furnace of her father’s lap.
It was then that Will’s raw, penetrating wail cut into the dream. Andie struggled to sit up, her heart pounding. She squinted at the clock: 1:57. Superimposed over the afterimage of her dream, Will’s screams made her throat constrict in panic. I have to get him. She swung her legs out of the bed and moved toward the crack of light under the door to the hallway. The sound in the corridor was much louder, hastening her steps. She entered the room to the sight of Will marooned on his bed, tears soaking his face.
The screams abated a little as he saw Andie and reached out his arms to be lifted from the bed. She folded his small body against hers as if it belonged there, bobbing soothingly on the balls of her feet. Tenacious toddler fists gripped the straps of her camisole tank top. The straps were her tether, ensuring that she couldn’t leave him until he released her. She danced in a small circle around the perimeter of the rug, bouncing and weaving, murmuring and hugging him with a steady, reassuring pressure. The soothing motions and the comfort of his solid form snuggled so resolutely against her chest began to work their magic on her as well.
A shaft of light illuminated them as the door swung open, and Rhys, barely awake, swayed at the threshold of the room. He wore flannel pajama bottoms, a loose T-shirt, and a sleepy expression that was disturbingly sexy.
“What are you doing?” He yawned, swiping a hand through hair that stood endearingly on end.
“Will woke up,” Andie stage-whispered, motioning for Rhys to stay quiet.
“I can see that,” he said, padding into the room and gently rubbing the toddler’s tousled curls. “You didn’t need to get him. I said I would.”
“It was automatic. I heard him, I came in.” She continued to rock and sway, angling her head to press her cheek to Will’s sweet-smelling hair. “I was only half-awake, and I forgot that you planned to do night duty.”
“Well, thank you.” Andie could hear, rather than see, his smile. He stood close, his scent magnified by the recent warmth of his bed. Will gave a faint hiccup as he relaxed against her shoulder, his eyelids at half-mast.
“I can take him,” Rhys said. “You should get some sleep.”
Rhys held out his arms, and she angled toward him, beginning the delicate maneuver of transferring a barely sleeping child from one adult to another. Andie hiked Will higher and tried to pry him from her torso, but his body molded tenaciously to her own, sheltering against her in a comfortable doze. Rhys moved to the side, trying to shift his son’s weight. He found some leverage but had to place one hand between Andie’s body and Will’s.
All of a sudden she felt the cool rush of air against her left breast, and a shock of sensation as a warm hand grazed the peak of her bare nipple. In the dizzying mix of confusion and outright embarrassment that overtook her, Andie had to struggle to support Will’s weight before he was lifted out of her arms. What the hell just happened? She took a step back, fumbling to rearrange her tank top.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to . . .” Rhys faltered. “I don’t even know what . . .”
Will must have tightened his fists around her straps and gripped hard, pulling her tank top from her body just as Rhys reached in.
“Uh . . . don’t worry about it. Will has a strong grip.” She laughed uncomfortably, but Rhys had turned away, applying himself with exaggerated focus to the task of settling Will on his bed.
Andie stood rooted to the spot as a scorching flush inflamed her cheeks. She didn’t want to leave the room with things still so unsettled between them. But how could she stay? The accidental touch made a mockery of the stark longing she’d felt for Rhys in the den earlier, and of how right it had felt to hold Will in her arms for those brief, comforting moments.
She could imagine two loving parents involved in the close, physical work of caring for a young child. There would be a kind of beauty to it: the ebb and flow, the casual touches, the affectionate dance of domestic intimacy. If the situation had been different—if she hadn’t backed away from their almost-kiss in the den—the accidental brush might have been nothing but a blip. Easily forgotten in the onrush of their deepening intimacy.
But she had cut and run. And now the atmosphere in Will’s room was thick with mutual embarrassment. It’s a good thing, she reminded herself. That kind of intimacy is off-limits to you. But, at that moment, all the arguments she’d ever mustered to barricade herself from Rhys were no more than dust. She couldn’t even remember why they had mattered. Now she wished—more fervently than anything—that she had kissed him. It had been a crossroads, she realized, and now she was careering down the wrong road, powerless to halt her momentum and find her way back.
“I’m happy to stay and help,” she offered, her voice sounding feeble to her own ears.
His expression, faintly discernible in the dim light, made Rhys look like he would rather be anywhere but there.
“No, please,” he insisted, the lines of his face tense. “You should go. I’ve got this.”
A knot formed in her throat as she shuffled to the door and let herself out into the corridor. That was that, then. The only way Rhys would ever touch her was by accident, and she’d have to make her peace with it.