A Second Chance at Forever (8 page)

“Ten years.” She paused. What made her say it, she wasn’t sure. Maybe it was the soothing beat of his heart. Maybe it was the ease she felt lying there with him this way, like they’d done it every night for years. As her fingers slid up his chest into the thatch of curls covering the center, the words left her mouth on a need to share them. Not with just anybody, but with him. “Then one day he comes home from work and tells me he’s leaving. He’s met someone else, he’s in love with her, and they’re getting married. She’s ten years younger than me and everything I’m not.”

“His loss. I meant what I said last night, Ang. It’s this side of you I find the most tempting. Candy’s a cover. Anybody who cares enough to look can see that. This side of you is real, and I like her.” He hooked a finger under her chin, lifted her gaze to his. “Don’t ever doubt how beautiful you are.”

She searched his face, but found only honesty, and kissed him gently. Then laid her head on his chest again, tucking it beneath his chin. “What made you go the family violence route?”

His choice of specialty contradicted the boy he’d been, the mischievous clown, yet it somehow suited the man she was coming to know. She wasn’t the only one who’d grown up. Seeing the differences between then and now only made her long to know more about him.

“Dated a woman in college.” His voice took on a quiet, wistful tone, like maybe the memories played through his mind, as his fingers idly trailed up and down her back. “Pre-law days. She had a little brother and a very angry father. The first time I touched her she nearly jumped out of her skin. If we argued and I raised my voice, she’d go white as a ghost and crawl up inside herself. Her little brother died about two months after I met her. Her father had beaten the hell out of him.”

The thought of the pain that poor little boy had gone through and the wound his loss left behind had a heaviness settling over her chest. “What happened to her father?”

"Currently serving a life sentence.”

“You must have loved her.” She’d meant the comment as merely an observation spoken out loud, but his body stiffened beneath her. He grew quiet, tension rising in the air between them. Angela suddenly wished she could suck the words back.

She opened her mouth to voice the thought when he very quietly said, “Married her, actually.”

His soft admission surprised her, seeped inside and wrapped around her heart. She took it for the gift it was. In those words she heard others her brother had told her a little over a year ago.
“Alex lost his wife and his daughter.”

She remembered Brock flying out to New York for the funeral. It had been a horrible car accident; a drunk driver had crossed the median on the highway.

Angela lifted up onto an elbow, stared down at Alex. He held her gaze, his face for that moment open to her. For the second time that night he’d let his guard down. The pain shadowing his eyes made her long to somehow take some of it from him.

She worried her lower lip. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything. I didn’t mean to bring up bad memories.”

He slid a hand up her back, soft and reassuring. “It’s okay. Long as I’m being honest, it’s kind of a relief not to have to pretend.”

She offered him a gentle smile. “I know exactly what you mean.”

That seemed to set him at ease, for his body relaxed. Once again that sense of comfort settled between them, warm and familiar.

“I have to get up soon. My flight leaves at eight.” He rolled her over, tucking her beneath him, his weight braced on his elbows. “Shower with me?"

She slid her hands up his back, arched her hips against his in answer. “If we get in that shower together there isn’t going to be any washing getting done, Alex.”

He nipped at her bottom lip. “That’s a problem how?”

****

An hour later, Angela and Alex stood together by the hotel room door. He stared at her, his hands stuffed into his pockets, fully dressed now in khakis and a light blue button-down shirt.

They’d been in this exact spot for several moments now, neither one of them seeming to know what to say to the other. Tension sat thick and palpable between them.

He touched her chin, stroking his thumb over her skin. “Take care of yourself, Ang.”

Despite knowing this night had been everything she’d wanted it to be, the thought of never seeing him again had her chest tightening. She didn’t know what to do with the feeling.

So she leaned in, kissed his cheek, then forced herself to turn and leave.

The click of the hotel room door closing echoed behind her, resounding the finality of the moment. It had been a beautiful night, but it was over.

As it should be.

Chapter Six

Angela spit the water out of her mouth and eyed herself in the bathroom mirror. Six weeks had passed since she’d last seen Alex. Since that weekend she couldn’t forget no matter how hard she tried.

She
had
tried. She’d lengthened her morning run by two miles, had buried herself in her work at Harvelle, offering to do the late night upgrades on the servers. Stayed later than usual at the club on the weekends, until it closed at four a.m.

None of it had worked. Her nights were still crowded with bittersweet images of him, of
them
.

Six weeks may have passed, but she was still every bit as caught as she’d been then. Every day she wondered…did he think of her at all? Did he linger over their night together the way she did? It made her feel too much like the teenager she’d been once, just a girl with a crush on her big brother’s best friend.

Shaking off the familiar melancholy seeping into her chest, she dried her face with a towel and left the bathroom to wind her way through the house. She stopped in the kitchen to grab the potato salad her mother had made that morning along with two serving spoons and carried it all out to the backyard.

Being Wednesday, their family had all gathered for their weekly dinner at her mother’s house. Since she and Brock both worked the entire weekend, what began as a Sunday night tradition had morphed into a mid-week.

Tonight they’d decided on a cookout. Music played from a small boom box seated on an overturned milk crate in the corner. All three of Brock’s kids—two boys and a girl—wielded squirt guns and ran circles around each other, screaming and giggling as they attempted to soak each other. His wife Melanie, six months pregnant, sat at the patio table, one hand on her belly, calling out over the din, “Braden, don’t hit your sister!”

Angela’s mother sat quietly in the corner, watching the children play.

“You should get that checked out, sis,” her brother called as she stepped out the sliding glass doors onto the cement patio that lined the backyard.

Angela followed the sound of his voice to where he stood manning the grill on the opposite side of the patio. His blond head was bent over his task as he flipped the burgers and hotdogs lining the hot grates in front of him.

“Get what checked out?” she asked, wishing she could pinch her nose closed as she moved toward the table.

It was warmer than usual for mid May in Vegas. The heat had been high that day, in the upper nineties, the air bone dry. Summer had set in early this year. Gentle breezes blew through the trees now, cooling her skin, but also carrying the smoke from the grill right at her, along with the acrid scent of cooking meat. It all served to turn her stomach. Again.

Brock peeked up at her, one eye still on his task. “That’s the third time in an hour you’ve thrown up, Ang.”

“Oh. I’m fine.” She set the potato salad down onto the table, beside the macaroni salad, chips and condiments already there. “It’s the smell of the meat. It’s turning my stomach.”

His head came up, brows drawn together. “Since when does cooking hamburgers turn your stomach? They’re your favorite.”

The last two days every tiny smell seemed to make her throw up. Yesterday morning it had been the scrambled eggs her mother had made for breakfast.

“Must be a bug going around.” She shrugged as she set the serving spoons into the salads, then moved to the chair beside her mother.

“You don’t look sick, Ang.” Brock shook his head as he bent to his task again. “Every time smells start turning Mel’s stomach, she usually tells me she’s pregnant.”

Angela froze, plopping unceremoniously down into her seat. Her mind took what her brother suggested, fast forwarded, and began to frantically do the math in her head. Her period was two weeks late. How was that even possible? They’d used condoms for crying out loud!

The shower she and Alex had shared that morning before she left him flashed through her thoughts.

Oh God I can’t be.

“Excuse me.”

Hands braced on the arms of the chair, she pushed out of her seat and ran into the house. She dove into her purse on the kitchen counter for her cell phone. Clutching it to her chest, she raced up the stairs two at a time. Upon entering her bedroom, she slammed the door shut and paced the length of her bed. Her fingers shook so much it took her four tries to remember to hit speed dial 2 for Stacy’s number.

Stacy picked up on the second ring. “What’s up?”

“I need you to do something for me. Can you come over? Bring Lucas with you.…”

Twenty minutes later, Angela stood beside Stacy in the upstairs bathroom, both of them staring down at the plastic stick on the counter. Every limb shook as she watched the liquid pass across the small view screen from left to right. Sixty seconds. Sixty very long seconds that could change her life forever.

When the liquid finally reached its destination, a symbol appeared on the view screen in bright vivid blue. She quickly glanced at the back of the box for the instructions. “Oh God…”

Stacy threw an arm around her shoulders, her voice soft and gentle as she said, “I think you’ll make a great mom.”

****

Angela dumped the potatoes and carrots she’d just finished slicing into the roasting pan and shook her head as she set the meat on top of them. A week had passed since she’d found out she was pregnant. She had no idea how in the world to tell Alex, but she couldn’t put it off much longer. The man had a right to know.

The problem was, she wasn’t looking forward to the conversation. Given how they’d left things the last time she’d seen him, she had no idea how he would respond. The thought terrified her.

She was going to have to stop being such a chicken though, and call him. Today, she supposed, was as good a day as any.

When the doorbell sounded through the house, Angela quickly stuffed the roasting pan into the oven. “Coming!” she called out, taking off at a jog for the front door.

The sight that greeted her when she pulled it open a moment later froze her in her spot. “Alex.”

He stood with his arms folded across his chest, feet set apart, a deep scowl etched in the lines of his forehead. He’d been glaring at the floor, but looked up when she opened the door, turning that glare on her. “How come I have to hear from your brother that you’re pregnant?”

Oh God…

She darted a glance at the stairwell behind her. Grateful when the silence of the house echoed back at her, she braced her hand on his chest and shoved. She pushed him out onto the porch and pulled the door closed behind her. She hadn’t told her mother yet, hadn’t figured out how to drop this particular bomb, but she did not want her mother finding out this way. When the time came, she would figure out how then.

Out on the porch, however, she once again came face to face with Alex’s glare.

He looked angry, disappointed. Her stomach twisted with nervousness. She remembered too well the exact look on David’s face the one time she’d had to tell him she thought she might be pregnant. Birth control sometimes failed. It wasn’t a hundred percent effective. She’d taken her pills religiously. The one month she’d had to take antibiotics for a strep infection, they’d used backup. Luckily her scare had been a false alarm. Still, he’d gone ballistic.

Part of her refused to back down again, to be that weak person who’d been married to David.

Her stomach twisting itself into knots, she forced herself to hold his gaze. “When did you talk to Brock?”

Alex opened his mouth, but immediately shut it again and pivoted away from her. He paced to the end of the porch, dragging both hands through his hair as he went. Meeting the railing, he dropped his hands to his sides. As abruptly as he’d turned away from her, he faced her again. “A week ago.” He leaned back against the railing and gripped it in his hands, those dark eyes narrowed in accusation. “He called me on a lunch break. It’s been a week since Brock dropped that tidbit into my lap. You haven’t been answering my calls.”

Brock. She turned her gaze to the weathered boards beneath her feet and glared at the picture of her brother that popped into her mind. She should have figured once her brother had discovered her secret that he might decide to share it with Alex. The two had been glued at the hip since Alex and his parents moved in down the street all those years ago.

“Brock needs to remember to mind his own business,” she mumbled half to herself.

“Would you ever have told me?”

She jerked her gaze up, met his glare with one of her own. “Seven days isn’t exactly waiting a long time, Alex. I work two jobs.”

“I’m sorry, but it’s a fair question, Ang,” he said, a hard edge to his voice. “We weren’t exactly careless. You weren’t even going to tell me who you were that night.”

She folded her arms across her chest. “Was I alone in that shower, Alex?”

A flush rose in her cheeks, but Angela clenched her jaw. Angry at him for all but accusing her of trying to trick him. And at herself for the predicament she found herself in. She wasn’t a hormonal teenager anymore. She knew better. The pull-out method was a ticking time bomb. The man seemed to make her lose her mind. She would never have even considered spending the night with a stranger let alone “riding bareback” in the shower. Yet somehow she’d lost her head all the same. She’d gotten too caught up in
him
.