“I’m sorry, sis.” The crack in his voice tightens my chest. “I know what you went through. I also know what he went through… what we all went through. You need to come together and deal with your past. For Dove.”
We hold each other a few beats longer before stepping apart. He clears his throat, and I wipe my sleeve across my damp eyes again.
This man never left my side as I grieved, then he stepped right up to help raise my daughter. He has never let me down.
“So about those rats…” I point to the back door.
“Where are they?”
It’s late when I finally decide to call it a day.
I only took a break to eat the food I’d grabbed on my way out the door, and I texted the guys—lunch is on your own.
Dove ran up the hill a few times with Akela to watch me on my hands and knees scrubbing “like Cinderella with the singing bubbles”—her words.
She pretended to sweep while actually dancing with the broom to her version of the Angelina Ballerina opening theme, and when she got bored, Akela ran with her back down the hill to the house.
Sawyer had disposed of the rodent carcasses before my little princess had a chance to see them. Then, when it finally got too dark to see, I dragged my exhausted body the quarter-mile back to the house, weary from a full day of cleaning.
A full day of avoiding the giant elephant in the orchard.
The shed actually looks pretty good since I removed the decades of dirt. The floors are a pretty yellow pine with dark lines of character in them. The walls need a coat of paint, and that huge box needs to be sorted. It seems to be mostly old letters and family things, and I need to take it to Miss Jessica.
Dove is in my bed with Alice the mouse cuddled at her side when I emerge from the shower. My hair is damp and wrapped in a towel, and I’m in sweatpants and an oversized shirt that falls off one shoulder.
Going to where she sleeps, I trace my finger along her little hand curled into a loose fist at her cheek. Sawyer’s accusation this morning is heavy in my chest. Why didn’t I just tell him? How do I tell her now?
A solid day of cleaning and avoidance didn’t clear my head. I still have no idea what to do about this, the man or the perfect gift we’ve been given.
One thing I know for certain: I will not fall in love with Taron Rhodes again.
I will not let him destroy me like he almost did…
I’m rubbing the towel in the length of my hair when a tap on my window makes me jump. Akela lifts her head off her paws, where she’s lying at Dove’s feet, and when she sees him outside the glass, her ears lie back and she seems to smile.
My silly heart tries to beat faster—the same heart he ripped out of my chest.
Stop being a sadist, heart. He killed you once, remember?
I buried those feelings and paved a road on top of them, but clearly they had tree roots, so deep you can never get the last one. His blue-green eyes hold mine through the glass and everything inside me heats right up. Old feelings break through my defenses like baby trees growing in concrete.
I go slowly to where he waits, lifting the glass so he can swing his legs into the room. I almost expect him to catch me by the waist and pull me to him, cover my mouth with his and kiss me senseless.
“Hey.” His voice is low, warm, sexy. His hair’s longer, and a piece has fallen over one eye, daring me to thread my fingers in it… Crossing my arms over my chest, I feel very exposed in only my sweats, fresh out of the shower, with my hair wet.
“Sorry to bother you. I thought we needed to talk.”
“Okay.” I’m cautious, guarded. He might still have the power to shake me, but I stopped being impulsive a long time ago. “What do you want to talk about?”
“Seriously?” His sexy grin lights his hypnotic eyes, and my stomach tightens. His eyes never change, even if he does.
When I went to Nashville, he was thin, weak, and wounded. He was haunted, and darkness hovered around him like a cloud.
Not anymore.
Now he’s his old self again—but more. His forearms are lined, and his shoulders stretch out his shirt. I’m sure under his clothes he’s the same physically, and I can tell inside he’s more confident, more relaxed, surer than he’s ever been before.
“I heard you made a lot of money in Nashville.” Is being rich the difference?
He looks down, almost as if he’s embarrassed. “Patton had this idea for his dad’s company. He wanted to make it the Air BnB of commercial real estate. It was actually pretty brilliant.”
“I guess that’s why I never heard from you again?” Yeah, it’s a jab. It jumped right out of my mouth.
He scratches the side of his beard with his thumb and cuts those eyes up at me from under his brow. I wonder if he knows how fucking hot he is—especially when he looks at me that way. “I didn’t trust myself with you.”
My eyes narrow. Whatever that means.
He stands, taking a step into my room, and at six-foot-two, muscular and healthy, he completely fills my space. “We have a daughter.”
That old magnetic energy between us is in his eyes when he looks at me, and I feel it in my core, in my hardening nipples. Even if I try to fight, my body remembers everything.
His voice is tender as he steps over to watch Dove sleeping in my bed. “She’s so beautiful.”
“She looks like her daddy.”
He winces, then cuts his eyes at me. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
My heart beats faster, and I do my best to fight my tears, to summon the strength he’s always taken so easily. “We are not doing this right now.”
“I had a right to know.”
“And I was going to tell you…” My hands tremble, and all the emotions I struggled with so long ago are right at the surface, like they never left. “I started a letter a hundred different times… I-I guess I didn’t know what to say after what happened.” After you screamed in my face and threw me out.
“You could’ve called me.”
“No.” It’s a barely controlled snap. “Not after the way you left it.”
Going to my closet, I climb inside to where a box sits in the very back… A box filled with one letter wishing me happy birthday, a wooden Día de los Muertos mask, a pillowcase I slept with every night, and a box holding a turquoise ring I promised I’d never take off.
Moving these mementos aside, I dig out the crumpled sheets of paper.
I don’t even read them.
I don’t have to.
Climbing out of the closet, I return to where he stands and push the sheets of paper against his chest. “Here.”
Tears threaten, but I will not cry in front of him. “I wasn’t trying to hide her from you. I really didn’t know what to say. I didn’t want you to think I was trying to trap you with a baby.”
His large hands close over mine, taking the sheets of loose-leaf paper from me.
“That’s not what I meant.” His voice is quiet. “I never thought that.”
“What did you think?”
“My dad was never there when I was a kid… I’m not sure if he even knew I existed. I never wanted to be that guy.”
Pain like shards of glass slices through my insides. I lift my watery eyes to his and tell him the truth. “You hurt me, Taron. You hurt me more than I’ve ever been hurt in my life… You made me stop believing in love. You almost made me stop believing in anything.” A wobbly inhale helps me to finish. “Then she was born. She brought me back… She gave me hope. She gave me peace. It’s why I named her Dove.”