Risking It All (5 page)

“Surely you don’t expect me to sleep in there with you.” He flashed a teasing grin in the hopes of dissuading her.

“Please. I don’t want to be alone tonight.” Her whispered plea lodged itself in his heart, denting his resolve. “It’s kind of why I came.”

“I don’t know.” He shook his head as he reached into the closet again and pulled the blanket down from the shelf. Careful to keep his tone light, he tossed a smile over his shoulder. “You’re a cover thief. Not to mention a bed hog.”

She had no idea what she asked of him, how hard sharing the bed would be. All too well he remembered the last time she asked, right after her grandmother had passed away. That was when he discovered his feelings for her had changed. That night had been the cruelest form of torture he’d ever experienced. He’d lain in the dark, holding as her as she alternated between crying jags and sleep. Her gran’s words a week before echoed through his mind, like a CD with a scratch.
I know you love her . . .

Laying there in the dark, holding her so close he took every breath with her, her soft, slender curves molded to his length as she wrapped herself against his side, he couldn’t deny the validity of her grandmother’s words. He’d expected the realization to hit him like the slug of a .45-caliber handgun, but it hadn’t. It had slid before him, quiet and soft. An acknowledgment of truth rather than a freight train. He
did
love her, and holding her was as right as rain, as natural as drawing a breath.

But night after night for those two weeks, he’d lain with her, and he began to notice things. Things he couldn’t be certain he hadn’t noticed before. The soft, feminine shape of her body. She fit against him like she was tailor-made for him. God, the feel of her against him was . . . heaven. His heart skipped a beat when she smiled at him. Her silent tears and shaking shoulders as she wept made his gut ache. And slowly over the days, his body began to respond to her, whether he wanted it to or not. He recalled vividly waking one morning as hard as steel to find her wrapped spoon-style in front of him. Suddenly she wasn’t just the girl next door but a full-fledged woman, and God how he’d wanted her.

He’d felt like a heel and swore never to share a bed with her again, to find any excuse possible not to. He tormented himself that week because she was his best friend. She had to bury her only living relative, and she needed him. What kind of friend would he be if he denied her something as simple as holding her at a time when she needed him most?

She needs you now.

The voice of reason sounded in his head. Kyle gritted his teeth but couldn’t deny the truth of the thought. She’d admitted as much. And here he was, thinking only of himself. It was a fine line he walked, between insanity and torment.

“I had the nightmare again tonight.”

This time her voice wobbled, tugging at that part of him that would die to protect her, and he turned, gazing back at her. A streak of moonlight fell across her face, allowing him to see her eyes. They pleaded with him, fear shining like a beacon.

His shoulders slumped. He was toast. His resistance went up in a puff of smoke when she looked at him like that.

It didn’t help that he knew what those nightmares meant for her. They terrified her. Of course,
he
knew they were part of her PTSD. She’d described them to him enough to realize they weren’t just dreams. They were memories, moments in time she didn’t realize she remembered. The day she did . . . His gut knotted. It killed him to think about what she’d go through.

From the research he’d done, remembering a buried memory could take its toll. She’d be forced to face things her mind had locked away for a reason. The psychologist he’d spoken with said some people went into those memories and never came out. They ended up in psychiatric hospitals with the mentality of a child because they became locked in time.

He dropped his arms to his sides and blew out a quiet, defeated breath. He couldn’t resist her, and right then, he couldn’t think of one good reason why he should. To do so would be selfish at best. “All right. Let me go change first.”

He took his sweet time doing so, too, neatly folding his clothes and brushing and flossing his teeth. Only when he didn’t have any more stall tactics left did he rejoin her in the bedroom.

His heart pounded as he stood at the side of the bed, eyeing the tiny space she’d left for him. An entire queen-size bed, yet she hovered a foot from the edge. There was no way he’d be able to climb in without touching her. With a deep breath, he gingerly slid beneath the quilt but kept the sheet between them. It wasn’t much of a barrier, but it made him feel better.

“’Bout time.” With a blissful sigh as sweet as it was torturous, she snuggled back against him.

He steeled himself for the contact and wrapped his body around her, settling his arm over her waist. Holding her like this was another double-edged sword. He treasured the time with her, the closeness, but the intimate way her backside settled against his pelvis had his mind wandering to places it shouldn’t. Every inch of her warm, feminine curves molded to his, and try as he might not to let it, every inch of him lit up like a bonfire.

It didn’t help that she kept shifting and wiggling her backside. No doubt attempting to get comfortable, but the excruciating sensation set fire to his groin. He gritted his teeth and froze, afraid to move for fear she’d feel his uncontrollable reaction. He didn’t even want to know what her response would be then.

Ceci kept shifting, and it slowly drove him insane. Finally, unable to stand it, he gripped her waist hard, ceasing the movement.

“Oh, for the love of Mike, Ceci, quit moving.” Despite his best effort not to let it, a strain etched his voice. To cover the tension that held him bound and praying it kept her from noticing his body’s reaction to her, he forced an easy laugh. “You remind me of Sparky, having to circle his spot five times before he lies down.”

Sparky was his oldest brother’s dog. A scraggly mutt with more energy than all three of Evan’s kids combined. He was a friendly, if not slightly quirky, dog.

“Hey.” She twisted free of his embrace and flipped over to face him, jabbing a finger into his chest. “Watch it, buster. You may be bigger than me, but I can still kick your butt.”

“I’d like to see you try.” He grabbed her finger in his fist, somehow resisting the urge to use the purchase to pull her closer, and swallowed a sigh of relief. She was damn sexy when she was feisty, but at least if she faced him, their bodies didn’t touch quite so intimately.

In the silence that followed, tension rose over her. She lay still for a moment, her gaze working over his face, searing into him. “How do you do that?”

“Do what?” What she wasn’t saying, the small, metered silences, spoke volumes.

She’d looked at him like this a lot lately, as if she had so much she wanted to say. It often made him wonder what she saw. Would she ever stop thinking of him as the boy next door and see him as a man? Had he put so much distance between them they couldn’t talk to each other anymore? Had he already ruined what he cherished?

Ceci laid her hand over his, where it rested on the bed. “You always make me feel better. I come over here feeling like crap, but somehow you always manage to make me smile. How do you do that?”

He smiled and waggled his brows, hoping, somehow, it would make her smile again. “Face it, Ceci. I’m good.”

A ghost of a smile flitted across her face, but her heavy emotions, her uncertainty, hung on her. She made herself comfortable again, tucking a hand beneath her pillow. “I don’t know what to do.”

“About the baby?”

She looked down at the bed, splaying her fingers against the sheets. “Babies need so much. What if I can’t do it on my own? How will I know what to do? What if I’m no good at being a mother?”

Anger roiled in his stomach. If the baby was his, that thought wouldn’t even have entered her mind. She wouldn’t have to worry about being a single mother.

He put a finger to her lips, silencing any more worrisome thoughts before they could leave her mouth. “Forget about all that. What do
you
want?”

“I want this baby. I will
not
put him up for adoption. I won’t have my child growing up wondering if I loved him, or why I gave him up.”

“The way you think your parents did with you. Ceci, you don’t know that’s what happened.”

“Yes, but I hate not knowing. I know I had Gran and she was wonderful, but I hate not knowing if my parents are dead, if they left, and if they did, why? I have questions, and I want answers.”

Pain and confusion etched her tone, shining in her eyes, and a memory slid before him. The look would forever be engraved in his mind. The first time he laid eyes on her, he was ten. She and her grandmother had moved into the empty property adjoining theirs. Despite being three years his junior, Ceci was every bit as tall as the girls his age. All legs and arms.

He remembered her eyes the most. Those big honey-colored orbs were wide and wary, like she’d seen too much in her short life and wasn’t sure who to trust anymore. Even then the overwhelming need to protect her had grabbed him. Only now did he understand why.

“You don’t know your parents didn’t want you.” He stroked a hand down her cheek, reveling in the softness and the way she leaned her head into his palm. A tiny reaction that had him dreaming of “what if.”

“Then why aren’t they here? Why wouldn’t Gran tell me what happened?” Her head snapped up. “It’s a childish thing, to still wonder, to still feel abandoned after so many years. I know it is. But I can’t get past it, and I can’t help feeling as if Gran knew something she wasn’t telling me.”

His heart twisted with the familiar helplessness. They’d discussed this many times. No matter how he’d tried to reassure her, it always came back to her feelings of abandonment. She was so sure the secret her gran kept was that her parents had simply left, that they hadn’t wanted her, and he couldn’t tell her the truth.

The need to protect her, to keep her safe, was an automatic reaction. It hit him swift and strong, rising even above the desire. He hated hearing the pain in her voice. It killed him that he could do nothing to ease it, but he’d give his life to keep her safe. That included protecting her heart.

He stroked his thumb across her cheek, wishing like hell he could forever erase the uncertainty from her face. “There could be any number of reasons. You don’t know they didn’t want you or that they abandoned you. Maybe—”

She squeezed his hand. “I need to find them, Kyle. One way or another, I have to know what happened. It’s the only way I’ll ever be able to put this behind me.”

Her words jolted through him, and he released a heavy breath. He didn’t have to ask to know what she wanted. She’d asked before, many times over the past three years. He’d hoped, prayed, she wouldn’t ask again. “We talked about this when I searched before your grandmother died. I told you then I didn’t find anything.”

“Don’t give me the damn excuses.” Tension and frustration etched her voice, her brow furrowing. “There have to be other ways. People do it all the time.
You
do it all the time.”

He shook his head. “That’s where you’re wrong. Sometimes the answers just aren’t there. Like these damn cases Marsha and I are working on. The pieces aren’t adding up, nobody’s talking, and we can’t find this guy, let alone put the son of a bitch in jail. Despite the best of my abilities, sometimes, they slip through the cracks.”

She was silent for a moment. Finally, her voice drifted through the darkness in a bare whisper, soft and vulnerable. “How can I give my child a future when I don’t even have a past? There’s this emptiness inside, and I don’t know what to do with it.”

He sighed in defeat and decided to try a more honest tactic. “Suppose you don’t like what you find?”

He knew she wouldn’t like what she found. It ate at his insides even now thinking of the pain it would cause her. He hadn’t been able to read the case file on her. For Ceci and her grandmother’s protection, it had been sealed, but he’d seen enough crime scenes to imagine what happened. Ceci’s dreams were essentially memories. She was a strong woman, but he agreed with her grandmother. She’d forgotten for a reason.

Unfortunately for him, her determination never wavered. He’d lost the last argument they’d had over this. She always came back to him with it, almost like clockwork. The last time was about a year ago. She’d put up one hell of a fight, too. He always said she should’ve become a lawyer. The woman loved to argue. It had caused a rift between them. She hadn’t spoken to him for weeks.

“If I don’t find out, then how do I know . . .” She paused and let out a shuddering sigh, then looked down at the bed, her fingers stroking idly over the sheet. “How do I know what kind of mother I’m going to be? Genetics play a big role in who you are.”

Her tiny voice made his heart ache, but a stronger emotion seized him. Memories of his father drifted through his thoughts and with them came the stubborn determination that had fueled his life.

“Uh-uh.” He lifted her chin with two fingers, forcing her focus back to him and not her pain and confusion. “Do you think I’d be where I am today if I believed that? Like my deadbeat father? I might as well make a vow of celibacy now and hide myself away. He was a drunk and a selfish son of a bitch. And he left. No way. You are who you choose to be. Your life isn’t defined by the people who left it. It’s defined by the people in it. You had your grandmother, and she loved and cherished you. Just like I had my mother and Evan, Chase, and Becca. We had each other, and we had you and your grandmother. That’s who I am.”

“Do you really believe that?”

His thumb traced the edge of her stubborn chin. “Yeah, I do. Otherwise I have no hope for my future. I was there the day my father walked out on us. I’ll never forget the look on his face, like he didn’t give a damn. And he never came back. Never called. Nothing. Damned if I’ll become anything like him.”

Despite the darkness, Ceci’s gaze burned into his, in that way that drove him crazy. Reaching. Searching. Completely oblivious of the torment she wrought within him. It reminded him too much of what they’d lost. A year ago she wouldn’t have hesitated. She’d have told him, whether he wanted to hear it or not.