Marry Me Again (The Second Chance Love Series, Book 1) (8 page)

He took the boy's hand in his and tried to smile, but just couldn't manage it. He wouldn't hurt this child. No matter what. He never wanted to hurt his son again.

"I'm sorry, buddy." Tucker watched the eyes flutter back down again. "I, uh... I was out in the car driving around the block because... I was worried about coming in—I didn't know what to say to you, or what you would want me to say."

Rebecca still looked murderous, and Sammy seemed puzzled.

"I didn't sleep much last night, and my brain's a little fuzzy this morning." Silence reigned, and Tucker started to sweat.

Sammy stayed close to his mom and kept quiet.

"I was worried that you might not want to see me," Tucker continued.

The seconds ticked away, and they stared at each other. Tucker racked his brain for something else to say, something that could get through to the boy. He was desperate to do that, but didn't know how.

"You know," Rebecca said, finally jumping in, "we had a little trouble getting to sleep ourselves. We were thinking about you. Right, sweetie?"

Tucker could have kissed her right then, but knew she wouldn't like that, even as a sincere expression of deep gratitude for her generosity.

Rebecca fiddled with Sammy's hair, trying to smooth an errant strand into place. Tucker detected a little nod from Sammy, and that was all the encouragement he needed.

"I wasn't sure what you'd like to do today. I thought maybe the zoo?"

Sammy nodded, barely, then stared up at Tucker through those tear-spiked lashes.

Tucker held his breath and waited, surely more nervous in that instant than he'd ever been in his life.

"You thought..." Sammy looked once more to his mother for reassurance. "You thought I might not like you?"

"Yes."

It was obviously a new idea to Sammy, and he pondered it for a minute.

Tucker inched closer, suddenly aching to take the boy into his arms and hold him forever. But he didn't. He couldn't. If nothing else, he had learned a measure of patience over the years. It was time to use some of it.

"I guess maybe you were a little worried, too?"

Sammy shrugged and looked down at his shoes, scuffing one sneaker against the other. "I guess... yeah."

And then he gave Tucker a shy little smile, one that let Tucker know that just maybe things were going to be okay. It made him damned glad he had come and made him offer up another solemn promise that he was going to do nothing to hurt this child.

Tucker looked down at the boy through watery eyes and wished he'd never left him all those years ago. And he prayed that once Sammy got to know him a little better, got to trust him and maybe even to think of Tucker as his father, the boy would look at him in exactly the same way as he had an instant ago.

"Sammy?" Rebecca said. "It's a little cloudy outside. Why don't you go get your jacket, just in case."

He nodded, took a quick, shy glance at Tucker again and then ran up the stairs.

Rebecca watched him go, and Tucker watched her, watched the slight trembling in her hands, which she'd wrapped around her stomach.

He would have gone to her then, would have tried to reassure her, maybe even taken one of her hands in his, but she saw him coming.

Rebecca tensed before his eyes and pulled away from him without taking a single step back.

He must remember he had no right to touch her.

Tucker shoved his hands into his pockets, kept them there and waited. Finally she looked at him, and again he saw the fury.

"Don't you dare." She said it quietly, but the threat was there all the same. "Don't you dare hurt him again."

Tucker didn't hear the rest of it in words, but sensed the message from her all the same.

Don't you dare hurt me again, either.

Chapter 5

This wasn't going well.

Rebecca put down the phone and wished she'd stuck to cooking out her frustrations.

Some women ate when they were upset. Rebecca cooked, preferably something complicated and time-consuming, something she could beat and stir and worry over.

She'd started on a recipe right after she'd watched Tucker and Sammy walk down the driveway to the car parked at the curb. Such a simple scene, father and son headed off to spend the afternoon together, and yet it was one that she'd never before witnessed, one that she'd believed she'd never see.

And it was a difficult one to watch.

Rebecca felt a new sense of loss for her son, for the things she hadn't given him. She wanted Sammy to have everything a child could have, and yet she'd failed to give him the most basic of childhood needs—a father.

So it was with a heavy heart that she had watched a hesitant little boy take his first steps toward his father.

Where would those steps lead?

Dear Lord,
she closed her eyes and prayed.
Don't let him hurt Sammy. Don't let us hurt Sammy any more than we already have.

She felt tears threaten, and she dared them to fall. She hadn't cried in years, hardly at all since the first year after Tucker left. Now that he was back, it was all she could do.

Disgusted by her own weakness, she'd headed for the kitchen.

She'd been thinking about the water-bottling plant, about the old group getting together to try to stop it. It might not be such a bad thing to be in the middle of it again. It would keep her busy, and a busy mind was less likely to wander to troubling topics like her ex-husband.

So when Brian called, she told him she'd think about helping out with the group. Then she found herself telling him much more than that, things she'd been thinking about for a long time, like the reasons she didn't think she could marry him, not now, not ever.

And before she could tell him to stop, he'd announced that he was coming over. There was nothing left but the noise in her right ear, the annoying sound that the phone made when no one was on the other end of the line.

No, the day was not going well.

Most of all, she couldn't think of anything but Tucker. She'd thought of little but him since he'd shown up on her doorstep the night before.

She saw his face when he'd asked, painfully, if his son hated him. And she remembered the way he'd touched her face. She could still feel his fingertips on her cheek.

God help her.

She headed back to the stove. The soufflé was almost done. She'd have to start something else.

Rebecca was kneading the bread when the doorbell rang. Only thirty minutes had passed, she noted, surprised.

She'd thought when she and Brian had talked that he was in Naples. He'd moved there four months ago to take a new job. She and Sammy were supposed to follow him, but they hadn't yet. They weren't going to.

Rebecca glanced at the clock again. If he'd gotten here this fast, he must have been in Tallahassee when they talked. His old house hadn't been sold yet, and he spent a lot of weekends here taking care of it and hounding the realtor.

Rebecca took off her apron and gathered her strength. She was going to need it, she thought as she opened the door.

Brian took one look at her and shook his head. "What did he say to you?"

"Who?"

"Who else? Tucker." Brian headed across the foyer and into the house without an invitation.

Rebecca found herself wishing he'd waited until she'd asked. "He didn't say anything."

"Then what's this all about?" He put his keys down none too gently on the coffee table, and she gave a start at the clattering noise.

"Us," she said quietly. "It's about us."

Rebecca was scared to go any further. She'd always had Brian by her side, always, except for that brief period of time when Tucker had stormed into her life and turned it upside down.

Brian had grown up next door. Her mother told Rebecca that she'd been trailing after him since she'd been old enough to walk. She'd had her first crush on him, saved her first kiss for him. When she was twenty, she'd been patiently waiting for him to come back from Belize and a stint in the Peace Corps when Tucker showed up at her parent's house for dinner.

She hadn't thought of Brian for a long time after that, not until things had started to go bad between her and Tucker.

"Brian—" She hesitated, finding it harder than she expected and more frightening than she'd dreamed to send him out of her life.

He'd always been there for her, and she couldn't imagine life without him somewhere close by.

"Don't say it, Rebecca." Brian started across the room to her.

She backed away. She couldn't do this if he was holding her. "I have to. I'm sorry, but—"

"Don't."

And before she could object, he had her in his arms, his mouth covering hers in a slow, soothing kiss. Rebecca closed her eyes and tried to lose herself in his touch, but she just couldn't. Brian must have felt it, too, because he pulled away and stared at her, accusing her with nothing but the look in his eyes.

She wished she hadn't been the one to put that look in his eyes. And she wondered whether her life would have been different if she'd married Brian years ago, if she'd never met Tucker.

Would she and Brian have been happy together? She thought they could have, crazy as it sounded. Because she never would have known something was missing in her relationship with Brian if she'd hadn't already been with Tucker.

But she had.

"It's just not going to work, Brian, not ever."

He swore as he turned away, and she flinched at his anger.

"I never had a chance, did I? Once that man laid a hand on you, I never stood a chance with you."

She froze, knowing it was true, feeling guilty that it had taken her so long to admit it to herself and even longer to admit it to him.

"You know, " he said quietly, "I was twenty years old when I decided that you were the only woman in the world for me. The only problem was I also thought you weren't ready for that kind of commitment then, and I wanted you to be sure. So I went away—a couple of lousy years—and I came back to find you married. Married and miserable and carrying that man's child."

Rebecca approached him cautiously, rested her hand gently against his back.

His muscles tensed beneath her hand.

"And even that wasn't enough to make me give up on the two of us. I was there for you when he left, there for you and Sammy all these years. I waited longer than any sane man would wait for a woman and... "

His voice broke, and Rebecca wrapped her arms around him from behind and laid her head against his shoulder.

"Brian, it's not that I don't want you or need you or love you. I do." She felt him take a ragged breath, then another.

"Then what's the problem?"

"It just..." It sounded so ridiculous, even to Rebecca, but it was true. "It just isn't enough."

Brian untangled himself from her arms and laughed. The sound made Rebecca flinch.

What could she say to him? That she was lonely? It sounded so simple, and it did feel so bad to be so lonely. But as dear to her as Brian was, there was a part of her soul that he had never touched, a part of her soul that yearned to be touched.

And now she didn't know if anyone ever would.

She looked up to find him facing her again, the pain evident in his face, and she couldn't continue to look at him.

She was staring at the ceiling, so she felt rather than saw his fingertips brush across her cheek to find the tears she hadn't known were falling. And his touch set her tears to falling faster.

"Rebecca, if this is the end for us, it's the end. We can't go back to being friends."

She nodded her head to tell him that she understood, then wrapped her arms around her middle, trying to hold herself together.

"Is that what you want?" he asked.

She nodded again, because she was sure she couldn't get the words out.

Brian went to the coffee table to retrieve his keys, walked toward the door, then paused.