Another thing that would make Lacey uber-skittish when it came to Ashley dating.
“Please don’t tell my mom.” Ashley’s voice cracked with a mix of plea and fear.
“Ashley, you and your mom have never had secrets.”
She finally looked up, her eyes brimming with moisture. “But that was before.” Her voice cracked, and so did Tessa’s heart.
“Before what, honey?” She took Ashley’s hand between hers, dying to pull the girl into her arms but knowing that might stall whatever she was about to admit.
“Before…”
Before Clay? Ashley and her stepfather had a great relationship. Before the resort? Her life was a thousand times improved now. Nothing had changed, except…
Oh, of course. “Before the baby,” Tessa said.
Ashley’s face confirmed the guess. “It’s like their whole lives are consumed by twenty pounds of screaming, shitting, wide-awake-in-the-middle-of-the-night monster!”
Tessa almost laughed at the description. “He’ll get better, Ash, and you love Elijah.”
“Of course I love him.” She swiped at a tear. “I feel awful even saying anything, but my mom’s barely looked at me since he was born.”
A total Ashley Exaggeration. “You know that’s not true.”
“Everything is Elijah. He needs to be fed. He needs to be changed. He needs to be picked up. And, then, there’s the resort. And Clay. She’s out of time and I think she…” The tears were streaming now as they got to the heart of the issue. “She forgot about me, and we used to be so close.”
Tessa’s whole chest swelled with sympathy. No, not sympathy. Empathy. There was nothing worse—no emptier, achier feeling—than being ignored by the one person you count on to pay attention to you. God, she knew that.
“Please, Aunt Tess.” Ashley’s mouth quivered. “Just for a little while, let me figure this out.”
She didn’t know what to do, but her heart folded enough to give Ashley that much. “Okay. But don’t do anything stupid, and let me think about how to handle this.”
“You don’t have to handle it. Don’t do anything.”
At least she could ask John to keep an eye on that boy.
“If I don’t tell your mom, I’ll be…” Doing the thing she abhorred: keeping secrets.
“You’ll be an awesome aunt who loves me so much.” Ashley smiled. “And pays attention to me.”
Of course, that got to her. “For now, Ash. Just for now. And, please, whatever you do, be careful.”
Chapter Fourteen
Tessa had no idea how long she sat on the beach, halfway between Lacey’s house and the resort, halfway between certain she knew what to do and total indecision. Long enough for a few sanderlings and terns to pitter around her, their bird feet etching prints in the sand as they pecked for food she didn’t have.
Rubbing the silky smooth inside of a duck-clam shell, she stared at the undulating navy water of the Gulf, watching the blue morph to fiery orange as the sun slid closer to the horizon. The colors faded in her mind, though, replaced by images of mothers and daughters, and a poignant awareness of how much damage and love and emotion could be folded into one complex relationship.
Did she think her relationship with a child would be any different? Of course, it could—
“Hey.”
She startled, pulled back from her deep thoughts and drawing in a quick breath at the sight of John walking toward her, his silhouette and long shadow spotlighted in the burnished-gold rays like some kind of sun god casting a long, strong, daunting shadow.
“Hey.” Really, it was all she could manage. The T-shirt clung to broad, strong, endless muscles and the sun highlighted the smattering of artwork on corded forearms.
“I thought you forgot about me.” He approached slowly, giving her a chance to appreciate every inch, from the soft waves of milk-chocolate-and-hot-caramel hair all the way down to the bare feet that left a wake of sandbursts as he walked.
“I kind of did,” she admitted.
He thumped his chest as though her words had stabbed him. Slowing down, he searched her face, glancing around for clues, or maybe a sign of Ashley, and then he crouched next to her. A hint of kitchen aroma clung to him, floating toward her on salt air along with that raw scent of masculinity he seemed to exude.
“You okay?” he asked.
And then there was that
“Yeah, I’m fine.”
“Need some help? Advice?” He reached into a breast pocket on his T-shirt and whipped out one of the after-dinner candies Lacey had ordered with the Casa Blanca logo on the wrapper. “Never met a woman who didn’t think chocolate could cure all ails.”
She laughed softly, taking the candy. “Do you have to be so utterly perfect?”
He eased onto his backside, right next to her. “Your bar is low, my dear. What’s going on? I missed my sous-chef.”
He missed her. Why did that make her stomach do incredibly stupid things? What was it about this man that made her as gooey as this chocolate would be if she held it much longer in her hand? “What’d you cook?”
“Delicious in a dish. Come back with me. We can have my very first chef’s kitchen dinner. It’s private and, evidently”—he lifted a brow—“quite the romantic setting.”
“So it seems.” She attempted a laugh. “Sorry I disappeared. I had a little disciplining to do.”
“What’s the problem? You don’t approve of her choice of friends?”
“It appears to be far more than friendship,” she replied, unwrapping the candy. “He’s a little old for her and she’s…”
“Naive and innocent?” he suggested.
“Yes, but that’s not why I’m troubled.”
He inched closer, managing to let their shoulders and thighs touch, somehow inviting without being invasive. “Tell me.”
And, just like that, she wanted to tell him everything. Dark, light, happy, sad, personal or public. He somehow drew her out that way. She took a bite of the chocolate, the creamy, minty flavor sweet on her tongue. As it melted in her mouth, she held the rest up to him. “I can share.”
He closed his eyes and opened his mouth enough for her to slip in the candy. She stole the opportunity to look at his lips, his teeth, the sexy growth of beard…and remembered how all that felt against her throat and cheeks.
“Waiting,” he murmured, eyes still closed.
“Watching,” she replied.
He opened his eyes and held her gaze. “Watching what?”
“You.” She leaned a little closer, so attracted to his mouth she couldn’t even pretend to not want to kiss him. But she slipped the chocolate onto his tongue instead, and before he tasted it, he closed the space and kissed her lightly.
Bathed in sunset, warmed by chocolate, close to a man who made every cell want to dance, Tessa grabbed the two seconds of pure bliss and tucked them into her heart, to be relived soon and often.
After a moment, he nudged her. “So? What’s the problem?”
“Ashley asked me not to tell her mother about him.”
“Difficult for you, I’d imagine.”
“Mmm.” She nodded, combing the sand next to her and closing over the duck-clam shell she’d dropped when she saw him. “Very difficult.”
She ran her nail along the shell’s ridges, mentally counting in tens, then multiplying that by a hundred.
