Falling for Fitz (12 page)

“
Can I ask you a
question?”

“
Sure,” she said, bright
eyes shining.

“
You could make this a
national business. Several kitchens and distribution centers all
around the country.
Daisy’s
Delights
could be in every grocery store,
every coffee shop, heck, every Target in America. Do you ever think
bigger?”

“
Fitz. I work from five
a.m. until four p.m. every day. I choose how many orders I fill and
which don’t interest me. For example,
Daisy’s Delights
is on hiatus right
now. I got to town on Thursday, and I won’t go back to work until I
find a place to live and settle in a little. I make over one
hundred thousand dollars a year so that I can live where I want and
do what I want and have a little bit of a life. I never missed a
play rehearsal or choir practice, and when a friend wants to grab a
drink, I say yes. Why do I need to make it any bigger?”

“
You know who’s
conspicuously absent from this perfect life you’re
living?”

She didn’t answer.

“
What does Dr. M. think
about your business?”

“
He’s a dentist, Fitz.
Cookies aren’t going to be an organic choice for him. He
disapproves of sweets in general.”

Dr. M. didn’t appreciate
the brains and beauty of this woman because their careers were at
cross-purposes? Man, he was even
more
of an ass than Fitz had given
him credit for.

“
So, he isn’t
supportive.”

Daisy’s cheeks flushed, and she
reached for her wineglass, but Fitz was quick and grabbed her hand
before she could occupy it.

“
If you were mine,” he said
in a low voice, gently stroking the soft skin of her wrist with the
pad of his thumb. “I’d support you in everything. Do you know
that?”

***

Daisy looked into his eyes, trying not
to concentrate on the effect of his softly stroking thumb. She
thought of how she’d only told him of her dream to open a bakery
last night and how here she was today, eating pasta in an intimate
bistro with Fitz, discussing her future. A future he was helping
her secure right here in Haverford.

“
Yes,” she whispered,
drowning in his eyes.

“
Everything,
Daisy.”

She nodded, her tongue slipping
between her lips to wet them. His eyes tracked her movement like a
laser beam, and when he looked back up at her, his eyes were deep
and dark.

“
I’m dying to kiss you,” he
said softly, his thumb warm and hypnotic on her wrist. “Is that
going to be allowed?”

His words sent a shock of pleasure
through her, making her breath catch and her heart race
faster.

“
I don’t know,” she
answered honestly, then remembered her sham engagement. “I’m not a
cheater.”

He nodded, biting his lower lip as he
stared at her, and this time her eyes were drawn to his mouth, to
his ridiculously sexy lips she’d fantasized about for all of her
adult life.

“
You’re calling the shots,
Daze,” he said, turning her hand palm up and leaning forward to
press his lips to the inside of her wrist. They were warm and soft
and after kissing once, he dragged his lower lip over the sensitive
skin, tickling and teasing. She’d been holding her breath, but
finally exhaled as her eyes fluttered closed, and she drew her
bottom lip into her mouth to keep from whimpering loudly enough to
draw attention. Her insides flooded hot and wet and she squirmed in
her seat, wildly turned on by his gentle, seductive ministrations.
When his lips abandoned her skin, she opened her eyes, and took a
deep, ragged breath as he dropped his glance to her breasts, to the
way they heaved and fell against her shirt, proof of her
desire.

His lips turned up as he watched her,
molding her fingers carefully around the stem of her wine glass
before placing his elbows on the table and leaning
forward.

“
I’ve never wanted anyone
woman as much as I want you right now. Not even when you were
seventeen, and I would have sold my soul for a taste of
you.”

Her mouth was open and she closed it,
trembling as she brought her glass to her lips. The bitter wine was
such a poor substitute for having his tongue in her mouth, and she
looked up at him just in time for him to see that thought flit
across her face.

“
Whatever it takes, Daisy.
That was the promise.”

She gulped again, purposely glancing
away before she swiped the table clean with the back of her arm and
offered herself to him on top of it.

She wanted him too. God, she wanted
him so much. But, while the future had been a safe conversation for
dinner, they’d avoided talking about the past, and they really
needed to. As she observed earlier, they had an awful lot of
baggage to settle between them. They couldn’t possibly consider
building a future together until all of it had been dealt
with.

She placed her glass back
on the table and sat back in her seat, searching his face. “If I
let you do this, Fitz—if I let you help me put my bakery together,
I want to make two things clear. First, I will pay back every cent
to
English & Sons
. Probably a lot faster than you think. And second, this
settles any obligation you feel you owe me. I know that you feel
bad about what happened, a-about my pregnancy.”

Her voice had lowered to the barest
whisper, and she paused as tears pricked her eyes. She was shocked
to see his eyes suddenly glisten too, and he swallowed
deliberately, reaching for his wine and taking a bracing sip. She
wanted to keep going—to make him agree that whatever guilt or duty
he felt would be forgiven with this gesture, but she got stuck
watching his face change, and suddenly nothing was more important
than asking the only question circling around in her
head.

“
Did you want
it?”

His nostrils flared and he clenched
his jaw, his wineglass suspended in midair as he stared at her for
a long moment.

“
Did
you
?” he asked.

Her shoulders slumped. “Part of me
did.”

He nodded slowly, placing his glass
back down on the table.

“
Part of me did,
too.”

“
Fitz…” she gasped softly
as a fat tear rolled down her cheek. She shook her head weakly,
staring at him. “I didn’t know.”

“
You were seventeen. It
wasn’t my decision. God, I held back saying so much in my letters
to you because I didn’t want to pressure you or make you feel like
I had an opinion or—or anything. I just want you to—”

“
But it was yours, too.”
She bit her top lip as more tears joined the first. Finally she
added softly, “
She
was yours, too. It was a girl.”

He gasped softly, blinking furiously
at this information, wetting his lips with his tongue before
dropping her eyes. “How do you know?”

“
They offered to test her
DNA.”

He nodded, still staring at the table.
He sniffed once, exhaled audibly before using his fingers to swipe
the wetness from under his eyes. When he looked back up at her,
they were still bright with tears.

“
I’m so sorry,
Daisy.”

“
Me too.”

He extended his hand down the side of
the table and she placed hers in his, watching as he curled his
fingers protectively over her knuckles.

“
Thank you for telling
me.”

“
Thank you for wanting
her.”

“
We can have more,” he said
softly.

His words, which were sad and gentle
and hopeful and defeated, tugged at her heart as no words ever had.
Daisy was rational. She knew that a seventeen-year-old and a
twenty-year-old would have been challenged to make things work, and
maybe having a baby would have ruined them in the end. But he
couldn’t possibly know how many times she’d dreamed of their little
daughter. At the time, she loved him so much, all she could wish
for was another chance to carry his baby one day. And here it was.
Her wish from so long ago was finally coming true. It was just so
much more complicated than her adolescent dreams.

“
Fitz,” she sobbed softly,
looking away, trying to draw her hand away.

“
Whatever it
takes.”

“
Please.”

“
Okay.” He took a deep
breath and sighed, offering her a small smile. “No pressure. Just a
chance.”

She gave him the bravest
smile she could, relaxing her hand. It had been a hard topic to
discuss, but at the same time, it felt good. It felt
really
good to open that
suitcase and re-pack it together. A little less baggage between
them. He’d wanted her baby. He’d been willing to make it work. His
letters from England had been aloof because he worried about
pressuring her. Knowing all of this meant so much more than she
would have guessed.

“
Ready to go?” he asked, as
the waiter dropped the check at their table and he placed several
neat bills in the wallet.

She nodded, taking a deep breath,
reaching for his hand for the first time as they left the
restaurant to walk back to the car.

***

It was dark by the time
they locked up the future home of “
Daisy’s
Delights
” and drove back to the gatehouse
at Haverford Park.

They were both quiet on the short ride
home, and Fitz wondered if Daisy was as lost in thoughts about
their baby as he was. He couldn’t help but picture an
eight-year-old little girl with a blonde braid over her shoulder
and sparkling dark blue eyes. She’d have been very beautiful and
very loved by her young, inexperienced parents. But would he and
Daisy have survived? The chances weren’t good, and he knew it. They
would have had a daughter, but they very likely would have lost
each other. His heart clutched, grateful that the decision had been
taken out of his hands.

“
You know,” he finally said
as he turned onto Blueberry Lane. “You never finished what you were
saying before. You said you’d pay back
English & Sons
quickly and then
you started to talk about my guilt and obligation.”

“
I know that’s part of
this.”

“
A lot smaller part than
you seem to think.” He rolled down his window for fresh air, a fall
fire carrying the smell of burning logs on the breeze. “I do feel
guilt about the pregnancy. About leaving you to go to London. About
the miscarriage. I have always felt like I let you down, but
Daisy…”

She had turned to look at him as he
spoke, and as he pulled into her uncle and aunt’s driveway, he cut
the engine, leaving them sitting in the quiet darkness only broken
by moonlight and porch light.

He rolled his neck to look at her in
the quiet of his car.

“
To be clear… this bakery?
Setting it up and helping you with it? It’s far more about
courtship than debt. You’ve told me there’s no debt between us, and
I believe you. I cared about you then, and I care about you now,
and I want you to be happy. And yes, part of that is because I
hijacked some of your seventeen-year-old happiness and I’d like to
replace it. But, so much
more
of it is because it’s a way for me to let you
know how I feel, and it makes me feel good to do
something—
anything
—for you. And that’s the way it’s always going to
be.”

Her eyes searched his in the darkness
and he felt the mood shift between them as she cupped his cheek
with her palm. “I want to believe that.”

“
You don’t have to believe
it today. I have a month to prove it to you.”

She nodded and a small smile crept on
her lips, mesmerizing him, making him desperate to touch her. He
closed his eyes, turning his cheek until his lips touched her palm
and he kissed her gently.

He heard her suck in a gasp for breath
before lowering her trembling hand to her lap.

“
Something else, Daisy.”
Her chest heaved lightly as her eyes met his. “When you’re ready,
call Dr. M. and tell him my intentions. I don’t want you to cheat
on him. But there’s something between us, and it’s big, it’s held
on for nine years, and it deserves a chance. And if you’re going to
give it a chance, I need to know that I can reach for you, that I
can touch you, that I can hold you in my arms and lay you out on my
bed. It’s up to you, but there’s a line I won’t cross unless I know
you’re free to be with me.” He cleared his throat because he wished
he was the sort of man who would take something that belonged to
someone else, but he wasn’t. “You decide. You let me
know.”

She tucked her lips between her teeth,
her forehead furrowing. Finally she released her lips with an
intoxicating pop that made his blood rush south with startling
speed, making him the slightest bit light-headed.

“
Okay.”

Her acquiescence surprised
him, but then, all night he’d been making a study of her flimsy
engagement. She might not have realized it, but earlier at the
shop, she’d informed him that she didn’t need him to save her
from
bad
marriages, and at no point had she checked her phone like she
was hoping for a text or phone call from her fiancé. Though he
couldn’t quite put his finger on it, something didn’t feel right in
their relationship, and whatever it was Fitz was grateful because
it made him hopeful that he had a genuine chance with
her.