Mother, Please! (22 page)

“Oh, Mom.”

“Shh, sweetie. Let me finish.” Suzannah took a deep breath. “What I don’t love is wondering if you’ve given up living your life to the fullest out
of a sense of responsibility to me. I haven’t stopped living my life at all.”

“I know.”

“I see the friends I want to, take the trips I want to. The only status quo being kept is your own.” Suzannah then lifted the brow that had inspired compliance in decades of students.

“I think it’s time you let the past go and stepped into the future.”

L
ISTENING TO
L
ESLIE
and Suzannah’s laughter as they made their way down the staircase, David closed Avery’s front door and turned toward her.

She wasn’t there. She’d been standing beside him until moments ago, having seen her mother and Leslie to the door. The second the older couple stepped from the apartment onto the landing, Avery had obviously flown the coop.

He barely restrained himself from rolling his eyes. Such typical Avery behavior, backing away when the heat was on. And more often than not, backing into the kitchen. It was as if she found whatever comfort she needed in food.

Not in eating, but in the preparation and the presentation. The familiar routine. The expectation of having things go her way and turn out exactly as planned.

He’d wondered why of all the things she could’ve done with her life that she’d chosen to open a bakery. In the light of her food fetish, the business made sense. Avery Rice was a creature of
habit, one at home in her element, one who had done everything in her power to secure her safe harbor—a harbor she was about to have buffeted to the ground.

He headed for the kitchen, where he heard her banging around, and stopped in the doorway to watch as she flipped on the switch for the garbage disposal and began to shove a perfectly good and barely half-eaten loaf of French bread down the drain.

The motor ground and whirred, chugging hard as the bread became nothing more than wet floury goo. Undaunted, Avery continued to feed the loaf to the unforgiving blades. It was time for an intervention.

David crossed the kitchen and flipped down the disposal’s switch. The motor halted mid-grind. Avery looked up, her eyes wildly bright and red rimmed though as dry as the proverbial bone.

“What do you think you’re doing?” she demanded, her anger palpable though he didn’t know the source.

“You have something against leftovers?” he asked, using his height to advantage as he towered above her.

“No, I’m just cleaning up.” Mouth clamped shut, she waited for him to move his hand from the switch. When he didn’t, she tossed the rest of the
loaf into the sink and returned to the table for the casserole dish of lasagna.

David moved to intercept the food before it suffered the same grinding fate. “Avery, destroying the rest of dinner isn’t going to make anything better.”

A dark blond brow went up. “Who said I’m trying to make anything better? Unless you consider cleaning up this mess making things better.”

It was the way she said the word
mess
that got to him. She wasn’t talking about the leftover food or the dirty dishes at all. She could’ve ground the salad, the lasagna, hell, even the wine and salad dressing into oblivion, and nothing would change. She would still be caught up trying to fix what she thought was broken, to put her insular world back to rights.

She needed to understand that time had moved on without her. Or perhaps that was exactly what was going on. The very reason she was bent on destruction. God, but he hated seeing her hurt.

He reached up and tucked her hair behind her ear. “Avery, listen to me. I ate way too much and I need about twenty minutes on the couch before I can move. Then I’ll help you with the dishes.”

“I don’t need help with the dishes.”

“Maybe not. But I need to help you with them.” He took hold of her arm just above the elbow, yet
he didn’t move until she made up her own mind to follow. They headed for the living room, and when she tried to sit in her overstuffed chair covered with blue-and-white mattress ticking, he guided her onto the matching loveseat and into his lap.

He snuggled back into the corner and took her with him, his legs extended and hers nicely draped over his. He liked the weight of her, liked it a lot. With one arm around her back, the other resting above her knees, he decided he could sit like this for a very long time and be a happy man.

Having a happy woman, though, would be even better. And to get there they were going to have to talk, no matter how much he enjoyed digesting in silence. With his eyes closed. And too often with his mouth open while he snored.

“Avery?”

“Humph.”

Not quite a full snort. He supposed that was a good sign. “Talk to me.”

“About what?” She settled farther down into his lap.

Another good sign. “Dinner went well, don’t you think?”

“I suppose,” she said, her tone not as petulant as before but still pensive.

“What did you think of Leslie?”

She hesitated for a moment, pushing her hair
back from her face. “I thought you would’ve given me an I-told-you-so by now.”

“Gloating’s not really my style.”

She cast him a sideways glance. “What is your style, David? Just your average sneaky bastard type?”

“You think I’m sneaky?” He gave himself the benefit of the doubt and left out the bastard part.

“I think you have an agenda, yes.”

Well, yeah. He did. He wouldn’t be here otherwise. “That’s a pretty broad observation. I actually have several.”

“So you admit it?”

“Sure. Why not?” He shrugged, resting an elbow on the loveseat’s padded arm and playing with the ends of her hair. He was going to die if he didn’t get to feel her hair on his skin—and soon. “Doesn’t everyone have one or two? You included?”

This time she shifted away in order to face him straight on. “And, Mr. Know-It-All, I suppose my agendas are obvious to you.”

He shook his head, feeling his pulse pick up speed as he took this conversation deeper. “Only the one that’s kept you in Tatem all these years.”

Her expression blanked. “And that one would be, what?”

“Staying connected to your past, though I’m not
sure of the why,” he added, then waited, expecting her to jump up and show him to the door.

When she didn’t, he began breathing normally again. He wanted so much from her, with her, yet knew he couldn’t force what she wasn’t ready to face.

“Where did you go when you left Tatem?” was what she finally asked.

“El Paso, why?” And why did he think she’d known that?

“Was it easier for you there than it had been when you’d come back to school here, you know,” she added with a hitch of her shoulder, “after your suspension?”

That suspension had been the hardest thing he’d ever had to face in his eighteen years. He’d never fit in; that was true enough. But school had always been a breeze. It was returning with a new reputation that had put stars in his eyes.

Yeah, he’d been cool. But he still hadn’t had Avery. “Easier? In a lot of ways, yeah. I blended. Didn’t stand out as a brain, or as the troublemaker that had my father moving us out of Tatem in the end.”

“But did you hate it?” she asked, yet what he heard was,
But did you hate me?
She was still caught up in their senior year because of what she
thought she’d caused to happen to him. Damn, but why hadn’t he seen that?

He moved his hand from her hair to the back of her neck where he began to massage. “Avery?”

She stiffened. Her gaze slid away. This time he wasn’t going to let her go until he said what he needed to say.

“It was my choice that night. My choice, to go after Johnny. I could’ve gone for help.”

She frowned, looked back at him, softly asked, “Why didn’t you? You wouldn’t have been hurt. Or suspended. You could’ve stayed in Tatem.”

“You think Johnny wouldn’t have gone after what he’d wanted if I’d ran?” He tried to keep the emotion from his voice, but his words came out strangled. “Do you think I could’ve lived with myself if I’d been too late getting back?”

“But I went with him—”

“No,” he said, cutting her off as tears welled in her eyes. “It was not your fault, do you hear me? Nothing that happened that night was your fault.”

“But if I hadn’t gone. If I’d told him no.” She closed her eyes, bowed her head. “I should have told him no.”

He wasn’t going to argue that. But he wasn’t going to let her accept responsibility for what he’d had to do. “Avery, you need to let it go. It’s been over and done now for fifteen years. Hell, I’m the
one whose life was upended and I’ve gotten over it.”

“Have you?” she asked, moving her far hand to his chest and resting it there in the center where his heart had started to thud.

“Sure.” He tossed off the answer, sure of nothing but the way her touch was causing his blood to stir. “Why would you think I hadn’t?”

“Because you’re here. In Tatem. A tiny dot on only the most thorough road atlas.” She offered him a sadly wry smile. “Not a lot to see and do here. Even Mom and Leslie had to go to Alpine, for God’s sake, to have a decent night out.”

“I didn’t come back because I was looking for a decent night out.” He moved one hand to cup the back of her head, the other to cover hers on his chest. He watched her eyes widen, felt his own heartbeat thunder into their hands.

This was it. A moment fifteen years and ten months in coming. “I came back for you.”

For a moment, he thought she believed him, then the sad tinge to her smile deepened. “I don’t know why you would.”

He wanted to growl with frustration. “Are you still thinking I was serious? That day in your kitchen when I told you you’d ruined my life?”

She shrugged, twisted her mouth into a grimace. “No. I know you weren’t serious. But I’ve won
dered so long about how things might’ve been. It’s strange, but that moment and all the ‘what ifs’ that followed have been hard to let go.”

“The ‘what ifs’ don’t matter, Avery. Nothing matters but here and now.”

“Give me time?” she asked so hesitantly that his aggravation stirred.

Time was one thing he wasn’t going to let her have.

“I can’t,” he said, before he pulled her toward him and ground his mouth to hers.

He poured all that he was feeling—the irritation and the desire—into the kiss, giving no quarter as he demanded she respond. He was desperate for her to respond.

And finally she did, tossing off her reticence, her hesitation, the uncertainty of her mood as she matched each stroke of his tongue, scooting around until she straddled his lap and wrapped his neck in her arms.

He’d never known a woman so mercurial yet so free with her passion when stirred. Tiny whimpers spilled from her mouth to his, and he felt the vibration of the sound all through her body.

He spread his legs and she shimmied even closer, then released him, her arms moving from around his neck to her blouse’s first button. Her eyes went glassy with desire.

It took the strength of Atlas for David to stop her from undressing and offering him heaven.

“Avery, wait.”

Her expression grew cold. “I’m beginning to think you’re a tease, David Marks. How many times now have you stopped me from jumping your bones?”

“Trust me,” he said with a less-than-steady growl. “You jumping my bones is the stuff of fantasies.”

“So…what, then?” She backed off his lap, got to her feet and looked down. “The reality’s too much for you?”

He managed to work himself up to a standing position without his erection snapping in half. Stifling a groan wasn’t as easy. And so he didn’t even try, though he toned down the sound from the were-wolf howl he felt like letting go.

“Here’s the reality, Avery. My reality,” he said once he stood in front of her. “I love you. I want you. But I don’t want a one-night stand. Or a cheap roll in the hay.” God, what a liar! At this point his body was ready for either of those.

He stepped closer; she backed toward the door. “What I want is for you to come to me because you want me. Not because you’re all revved up and need what I can give you. And not because you feel
you owe me, or think sleeping with me will be a twisted way to make amends for the past.”

“I didn’t say—”

He cut her off ruthlessly. “I want you to come to me because I’m the only man you want. The only man you need. If that’s the case, then I’ll be at my place. I think you know where it is.”

B
Y THE TIME
Avery knocked on David’s door, her palms were slick with sweat. This was the first trip she’d made to the third floor since he’d lived here. She couldn’t name another time in her life when she’d ever been this nervous.

Not even that night beneath the bleachers when she’d narrowly escaped certain rape.

He was right. None of that mattered now. All that mattered was climbing the staircase without falling on her backside and letting David know how she had spent the past fifteen years holding on to the past because that was where she could find him.

God, how she loved him. She hadn’t carried a torch all this time, no. But the kindling for this fire had been laid so very long ago when he’d put his life on the line to save her from a harm that could’ve been irreparable. Now she was ready to strike the match.

The climb seemed to take forever. She supposed the fact that she was trying to keep David from hearing her had a lot to do with her snail’s pace.
And not wanting him to hear her was really dumb since she was coming up with the intent of crawling into his bed.

Ugh, but this love business was so confusing.

Finally she was there, and she took a deep breath before she knocked once, twice, figuring if he was already asleep she didn’t want to wake him and two knocks should be enough even if she hadn’t knocked hard and maybe she should just forget it and go back—

The door opened. David stood there wearing ragged gray sweat shorts and a faded navy T-shirt with a Penn State logo. The shirt barely stretched over his chest or his biceps and the only thing she could think to say was, “When did you go to Penn State?”

He laughed cautiously, stepping back and gesturing her inside. She entered, watching as his expression ran the gamut from relief to pleasure to an emotion much more intense. One that seemed to mirror her own sense of her heart being unable to contain all she felt.

“I didn’t go to Penn State. I went to University of Texas in El Paso.” He could have gone to Harvard. To MIT. To any of several bastions of higher education.

“David, here’s the thing,” she said quickly, turning to face him without taking in a single detail of
his apartment, knowing she had to get this out before she lost her nerve and scurried back downstairs. She felt so much safer when on the second floor than she did facing him now.

“The thing?” he echoed, closing the door while his gaze remained on her face.

“Yes. The thing.” She twisted her hands at her waist. “It’s killing me that I never lifted a single finger to intervene when things for you started going so badly downhill—”

And that was all she got out because he was there and his arms were around her and his mouth was there seeking out hers. The force of his kiss left her unable to breathe. He wrapped himself around her until she wasn’t sure a shadow could squeeze between their bodies.

She wasn’t truly aware that her feet had left the floor until she felt the back of her knees hit the edge of his sofa seconds before he followed her down to the cushions. His weight above her felt simply like another part of herself, and she pulled him down to cover her.

He shifted to the side; she urged him back, loving the bulk of his body, the press of his strength that took her deeper into the cushions. His chest was firm, the one shoulder pinning her rounded and hard. Their legs tangled, as did their arms, a hand
stroking a hip, a shoulder blade, fingers twining together.

His mouth warmed her skin when he trailed kisses from her ear along her jaw to her chin. She nudged him, wanting his lips on hers, his tongue on hers, but he made her wait, nipping at the edges of her mouth just enough to make her want to hit him, and hard.

And so she did, smacking a hand as close to his bottom as she could manage. He chuckled, the sound rolling through her like thunder in the air, and then the lightning followed as he aligned their bodies hips to hips.

Bracing himself on his forearms, he kissed her the way she’d wanted, but he kissed her even more. Deeper and stronger yet with a tenderness she had never thought to feel. His tongue stroked along the length of hers until she swore she felt sparks pop and sizzle over her skin.

She squirmed beneath him, not seeking her freedom, simply wanting to touch him, to get him out of his clothes, to shed her own. She couldn’t wait to feel his skin, his strength, his beautifully hard body in all the places that mattered.

Right now she felt him most of all in her heart. The beauty he showed her body paled in comparison to the flood of emotion bringing tears to her
eyes as he began to move, sliding down her body until his mouth hovered over her chest.

He raised his gaze then, his heavy-lidded eyes asking permission for more things than she knew to imagine. She nodded. She wanted them all, wanted him, David, and willingly surrendered.

The expression on his face darkened intensely. He slid farther down the length of her body, took hold of her shirt hem and raised it slowly, his tongue circling her navel as he bared her belly’s skin.

Blowing warm breath over the dampness he’d left, he made his way back up, taking her shirt with him. Once the hem reached her breasts, she grabbed hold and pulled it over her head. David slipped an arm behind her, releasing the clasp of her bra before returning to slowly uncover her.

The room’s cool air breathed across her skin. Her nipples grew taut in anticipation as she waited for his touch.

“Do you know how beautiful you are?” he said, before swirling the barest tip of his tongue around one hard peak then moving to the other.

She arched her back. She didn’t want to talk. She only wanted to feel. “Shh.”

He chuckled against her skin. “Not much of a talker, huh?”

“Oh, I can talk,” she whispered breathlessly,
gasping as he sucked harder. “I just can’t walk and chew gum at the same time.”

David raised to one elbow and stripped off his shirt. In the next second, she found herself breathless, faced with the broad expanse of his bare chest and shoulders instead of only teasing glimpses.

“Do you know how beautiful you are?” she asked, overwhelmed, swept away, by nothing more than looking at him like this.

His face solemn, he lowered himself to kiss her, his mouth opening to hers as he made the skin-to-skin contact she’d been dying for. He was warm, so incredibly warm. She shivered, feeling goose-flesh prickle her skin, feeling so much more, the smooth resilience of his bare flesh as she ran her hands all over him.

He lingered to kiss her, nipping, sucking, nibbling along her jaw, her neck, her collarbone to her shoulder, yet she was greedy for more. Heat built deep in her belly, between her legs, growing itchy and insistent. She swore she was going to scream.

She settled with slapping him on the backside. “You’re taking way too long.”

“Ah, darlin’. Judging by that love pat, I’d say I’m taking just long enough,” he said softly, his tone starting her to shivering all over again.

But finally he moved, sliding down her body, kissing his way around and beneath her breasts
without paying the least bit of attention to the taut peaks of her nipples in spite of the way she arched upward and begged him to do. He just continued on his way to unbutton the waistband of her pants.

Once he’d released the button and slid the zipper down, he raised up to his knees and stopped, staring at her with an expression she wasn’t sure she could name. It was almost as if he wasn’t sure he should continue—which was ridiculous.

Making love to him, with him, was the fulfillment she’d been looking forever to find.

She pushed up to her elbows. “What’s wrong?”

David’s gaze swept her from belly to breast before settling on her face. His voice was a gruff tremor when he asked, “Why are you here?”

She longed to be flip, to continue their teasing banter of earlier but knew playtime was long gone. The next few moments could possibly be the most important of her life and deserved her full honesty. Yet she wasn’t sure she could give it. She was too lost to trust what she might say.

“I can’t talk now. I really can’t talk now,” she pleaded, lifting her hips and urging him to finish stripping her of her clothes. “Please, David. We’ll talk. I promise. But later. Later.”

He wasn’t happy about it. She was certain he wanted to hear of her feelings, yet she feared she
would say anything to get her way. And that would hardly be fair.

He gave in at last, pulling both pants and panties from her legs. She lay bare before him, and his chest heaved with his effort to breathe. He muttered a curse as he shucked off the rest of his clothes, and then it was Avery’s turn to struggle and gasp.

She’d thought him beautiful before. Now she was without words to describe the gorgeous perfection of David’s body. She wanted to cry, moved to tears by the sweet and tender emotion of wanting him.

He returned to her then, settling his weight fully, his sheathed erection probing between her thighs. She opened for him, adjusting the angle of her hips, the position of her legs, shifting and squirming until he found her entrance and pushed slowly inside.

She cried out softly as he filled her, panting sharply in order to hold on. His gaze remained locked with hers, and she saw him waging the same battle for control. His jaw popped, his pulse throbbed in his temple. And just as she saw his eyes grow damp and redden, he buried his face in the crook of her shoulder and began to move.

She held him tightly, her heels pressed to his hips, her hands roaming his back in loving strokes. Her heart was so full, so full, and when joyous tears fell from her eyes she knew she could hold back no longer.

As David loved her, she loved him back. Their bodies moved together. The completion they reached came as one. She cried his name. He groaned in response, his hands beneath her bottom holding her tight for his finishing strokes.

And then she shuddered and collapsed, knowing that she had reached her future and would never return to the past.

E
ARLY THE NEXT MORNING
, having come awake to an empty bed, David dressed and left the house. In the end, he and Avery had never talked. They’d done nothing more than move from couch to bed, where they’d spoken only with their bodies.

It had been a hell of a bad way to wake up, finding the side of the bed that she’d warmed all night ice-cold. Her scent remained on his pillows, in his sheets and blankets. He hadn’t even stopped to make a pot of coffee. He’d just gotten the hell out of Dodge.

Now, for the first time in fifteen years, he stood beneath the bleachers on the scruffy grass field behind Tatem High. The field wasn’t in a whole lot better shape now than it had been then. Such was the reality of the West Texas heat.

The bleachers, however, were new. They were still constructed of metal rather than the heavy-duty concrete found in larger school districts, but the
wooden seats had been replaced with the same galvanized aluminum as the frames.

With the school year winding down and summer on the way, the grounds had been manicured to within an inch of their life for the upcoming graduation ceremony. He didn’t know why, when the dry heat baked graduates and attendees alike, the powers that be insisted on the tradition of sending seniors off into the big bad world with the setting sun at their back.

He could appreciate the symbolism, just not the temperature. And damn if he didn’t wish that he’d been able to graduate with his classmates from Tatem High.

No wonder Avery was hesitant to have anything to do with him. She’d finally bedded Tatem’s bad boy and now she could get on with the rest of her life. This sure as hell wasn’t the full circle David had hoped to complete when he’d returned last year to the town in which he’d grown up.

Having now taught in that same environment, he better understood his father’s decision to move them away from the rural area to one more urban, one where David wouldn’t stand out as either a prodigy or the troublemaker he’d become. Once in El Paso, he’d easily blended into the crowd; he’d run up against kids a hell of a lot smarter as well
as a hell of a lot meaner. The experience had put Tatem into perspective.

Yet he’d never gotten over Avery Rice.

And here he stood, wondering what he was going to do now that it looked like she didn’t return his feelings. Move out of her house for one thing, he grumbled, hands stuffed in his pockets as he kicked at dry clods of dirt that went
poof
when he did.

He knew Yvette Lapp had a garage apartment for rent, except Yvette worked at Avery’s bakery and renting from her instead of Suzannah wouldn’t be a whole lot better. Since he obviously wouldn’t be showing Avery the West Coast this summer, moving while he had the time wouldn’t be a bad idea. Yeah. That’s what he’d do this next week. See about finding a place.

Packing wouldn’t take him much time at all since he’d never done more than a cursory move-in. He’d certainly never settled in, as if he’d been waiting to do so until he knew how things would go down between him and Avery. Judging by the past few days, they’d pretty much gone down like crap, he admitted, just as he heard the rumble of a diesel engine.

He looked up in time to watch Avery pull her big black Dodge Ram to a stop, and was hit with the incongruity of this woman driving this truck. Yes, it made perfect West Texas sense, but it was
the only thought that came to mind that he could manage. Everything else was a blur.

When she cut the engine, he thought his heart had stopped as well. He couldn’t feel a single beat. And then he could feel nothing else, the pounding ringing in his ears as she climbed down from the monster, slammed the door and headed his way as if she’d known exactly where she’d find him.

“What are you doing here?” he asked when she stopped only a few feet away.

“I could ask you the same question,” she said, her hands shoved into the pockets of her denim shorts.

He shrugged. He wasn’t going to let her get to him. Not today. Not after last night. “Visiting old haunts. You know, remembering the good ol’ days.”

“You do seem to be getting the hang of small-town life again.”