Sugar Springs (32 page)

She nodded and reached for the door handle, but before she got it opened, his words stopped her. “You know everyone will know if I go in there with you, right? Are you okay with that?”

All was quiet on the street, and the few houses around them even had their lights out. That didn’t mean one of her neighbors wouldn’t wake in the middle of the night and notice Cody’s car parked there or see it sitting right out front as they made their way to church in the morning.

Only thing worse than skipping church in a small town was skipping it to frolic with a man. Though she really thought she had a pass because, from what she heard, most bets were on her to win him over. They wanted to see her settled down with a “nice man,” and the consensus was that Cody had grown up to be a nice man.

But everyone knowing also meant that the girls would find out. Not that they wouldn’t guess anyway—they didn’t live in the dark about such things—but she’d always been so careful to uphold good moral standards around them. She hated to
relent on that now, yet there was no way she wasn’t spending the whole darned night with Cody.

Her shoulders slumped as she plopped back against the seat and looked over at him. “What are we supposed to do, then?”

The streetlight caught his smile as he leaned across the cab and pressed a hard, quick kiss to her lips. “I need to run up to the apartment and let Boss out anyway. Why don’t I let you out here, then I’ll go get Boss, and he and I will walk back down. Either that or we can just go to my place. I just hate to leave my car in front of your house all night. It might embarrass the girls when they hear about it.”

She liked that it was the girls he was concerned about and not merely the fact people would be talking about him. “Sounds perfect. I’ll go in and...” She shrugged. “Freshen up.”

He brushed his lips across her cheek, starting a trail of heat that quickly wound down her body, and she couldn’t help but push closer and turn her face into his for a full kiss. He didn’t disappoint. Too soon they were both overheating.

Getting caught making out in the car would be about as bad as having his vehicle parked in front of her house all night. “Go,” she whispered, pushing him back from her. “Hurry. And bring back a toothbrush. I’m not letting you out of here until tomorrow.”

His grin was lecherous. “Just don’t plan on getting much sleep.”

She fell one step deeper in love when he reached over and opened the door for her, then turned a serious face to hers. “Thank you,” he said. “For giving us a chance.”

Twenty minutes later, Cody neared Lee Ann’s house, his feet dragging to the point that it almost made him laugh. He was a
thirty-two-year-old man about to head inside and make love to the woman he’d never been able to get out of his mind, and he was more nervous now than the first time he’d been with a girl.

But these nerves weren’t about performance anxiety or not knowing what to expect. They were about discussing the past, which he planned to do before they did anything else. He could see the love shining in her eyes. Love, he’d realized tonight as he’d sat across from her, enthralled by every move she’d made, that he felt equally as strongly. And because of that, he needed to share. He needed to let her see the real him if he ever hoped for this to turn into more.

He slipped silently inside the unlocked front door, Boss following at his side.

A light spilled out into the hallway from Lee Ann’s bedroom, and after he got Boss settled in the front room, he glanced into the den where the Christmas tree glowed, white lights twinkling, and found Lee Ann standing there, waiting for him. He lost his breath at the sight.

She may have worn plain cotton under her clothes, but the thin robe that now draped her body did a fantastic job of molding to exactly the right curves. And if he wasn’t mistaken, those curves were now unencumbered.

She stood nervously, her spiky hair looking as if she’d run her fingers repeatedly through it, then she pointed to the couch. “Let’s sit. Talk.”

Surprise registered as he realized she’d picked up on exactly what he had planned. He nodded and entered the room. They settled, both of them on the couch, and he grabbed her feet and tucked them in his lap as he’d done only the night before on her front porch. He knew she wouldn’t think less of him when he was finished telling his story. She was too good a
person to think that what happened to him was in any way his fault. But he couldn’t help but worry she’d look at him and see someone different afterward. And he didn’t want her to see the person who sometimes stared back at him in the mirror. The one no one wanted.

The lights on the tree cast the room in a romantic mood of soft light and shadows, but until he got everything off his chest, he had to ignore the ambience.

“You know I’m crazy about you, right?” he said. What a lame way to start. He almost apologized when her legs tensed under his hands, but he stroked a hand over her calves, soothingly, and plowed ahead. “I meant to say that...”

He paused. He actually wanted to tell her that he loved her, but found he couldn’t quite put it out there like that. Something held him back. He switched gears, deciding to start another way.

“My first memory is with a couple whose last name was Franklin. I was four, and they had six other kids at the house, four of them like me. Foster kids. One of the real kids didn’t like me and spent so much time harassing me that they finally had to send me back.”

She scooted in closer and tucked herself against him. He felt himself relax. He dropped his head back to the couch.

“The second family wasn’t much better. They had as many dogs as they had kids, and this time, it was one of the dogs that didn’t like me. The rest of them were great, though. Even at that age I loved animals. I could escape the loneliness by hiding away with them, but every time I was in the same room with this one dog, he would almost take my leg off. Looking back, I suspect he had serious mental issues, because he did some other odd things, but nevertheless he and I didn’t get along.”

“What did they do?”

She asked as if she couldn’t guess. He tucked his chin in and looked down at her. “They gave me back.”

“Oh.”

He put an arm around her and returned to staring at the ceiling. It was easier to think about the past if he couldn’t see the sympathy in her eyes. “By family three, I was six. I started first grade with them. I was actually with them for a couple of years, me and another boy. And then they had a kid of their own.”

Blue eyes looked up at him in question. He nodded.

“Yep, they sent me back. Both of us this time.”

“Cody, I’m so sorry.”

“Nah, nothing to be sorry about. It taught me a good lesson, made me tough. I learned early on not to depend. Not to want too much. It got me through.”

“But it turned you into someone who eventually left the homes yourself, didn’t it? Instead of waiting for them to tell you it was time to go.”

Yeah, he thought. That’s exactly what it had done.

“It had to have been tough,” she nudged when he didn’t answer her question. “Their sending you back. As a kid, I know how much you want someone to love you. How much not having that can mess with your life. Just like...” She stopped abruptly.

He glanced down at her, unsure what had caused her to stop speaking, and then he got it. “Like you wanted your dad to love you enough to come back?”

She nodded. “Yeah,” she said but didn’t elaborate.

“Tell me what happened,” he urged. He had more to tell her, but he knew she needed to talk as well. That was the thing about the two of them, they’d always been so in sync
with what the other did or did not need that it was scary. “I know he left when you were four.”

She didn’t speak for so long that he began to think he’d been wrong, but then she started, and his heart broke at the sadness in her voice. “He left because of me. I heard him tell Mom that. I’d been crying and throwing a fit about something earlier in the day, and that night I overheard him telling her that he couldn’t take it anymore—screaming kids, everything a mess. He just didn’t want to do it anymore, so he left. There one minute, gone the next. He didn’t even say good-bye. And it was all because of me.”

“Oh, Lee.” Cody scooped her up then and pulled her fully into his lap. He pressed a kiss to her cheek and eyelids, wanting to comfort her, wanting to show her what he couldn’t yet say in words. “It was he who had issues, babe. Not you. Never you.”

One shoulder moved against him as she dipped her head and tucked her face into his neck. “Steph heard him, too. We were listening through the vent and heard everything. That’s why she never quit hating me. I made him leave.”

“No,” he whispered. He closed his other arm around her and held her tight. “It wasn’t you. Never could have been you.”

The way his voice drifted off, Lee Ann knew he’d gone back to thinking about something else in his past. She hadn’t meant to change the subject to herself, but she liked him holding her as she thought about her dad. It somehow made the memories hurt less.

And he was right. Her dad had been the one with the issues. But that didn’t stop a little girl from wondering for
years exactly what was wrong with her that someone who was supposed to love her could so easily walk away.

“Finish telling me about you,” she whispered. She liked sitting there with him, and pressed a light kiss to his throat. “I remember you telling me about some of your later foster families one time, and I was struck by the fact that you always left within the first year. I thought you might have overreacted to a few of the situations, as if looking for a reason to blow up and walk out. I see why now—because of the pain of your early years. But I was right, wasn’t I? At some point you started looking for excuses to leave.”

He got the oddest look on his face before shifting his gaze to hers. “I never thought of it like that. I always believed I had perfectly good reasons to leave, but yeah, with years behind me now I can admit that maybe I blew some things out of proportion. I probably could have handled the situations better. You may be right.”

She was pretty sure she was. His telling her about his early years had sealed it. The fact he still traveled from place to place now told her that not a lot had changed. Only this time he had his reasons lined up for leaving before he ever showed up in the first place. That way he didn’t have to come up with one after he got there.

“Tell me about that day, Cody. I need to know what made you do it. What made you hurt me? What made you...” She sighed.
Walk away just like my dad.

“Leave you?” he asked. “Aside from the fact that I messed up so bad you wouldn’t want me around anyway?”

She nodded. “You didn’t even stick around long enough to try to give me an excuse. You just left, almost as if relieved. I watched you from my bedroom window. You didn’t look back. You walked out the door, got in your truck and drove
away. I thought you’d come back later that day. Call me at least. But then I heard about what you were doing in town, and I knew. I knew before you even got out of town. You were making sure it was bad enough you couldn’t stay. But why? Did you not want to be with me so bad that you’d have to do something like that?”

“No,” he said, his voice heavy. “God, no. I loved you.”

“You didn’t. You couldn’t have. Love doesn’t hurt someone the way you did me.”

“I did. I swear I did.”

She shook her head, the sadness of years of loss filling her up inside. “You broke my heart, Cody. You destroyed me.” And she wasn’t sure she’d survive it if he did it again.

He pressed his lips to her temple and held them there. When he finally pulled back, his expression was grim. “I didn’t like me very much back then. And even less that day. I loved you as much as I could, but maybe it’s not possible to love someone enough if you don’t like yourself at all.”

Her vision blurred as she sat there watching him. He’d never made a habit of lying to her, but she felt as if he’d just been more honest than he’d ever been in his life, maybe even to himself.

“Then tell me what happened.” It was no longer a question.

He paused, closed his eyes briefly, then opened them and locked his gaze on the tree.