She closed her eyes, wishing she could lie to her daughter. “We… talked. About what happened and how he was wrongfully accused of something, and cleared of it. Actually, he was helping someone out. He had a lot of explaining to do and I listened to him.”
“Is that what you call it? Because if I did what you’re doing, I’d be grounded for the rest of my life.”
“First of all, I’m not doing what you think.” Because Ashley couldn’t even imagine anything like what went on in the water last night, so that wasn’t a lie. “And, secondly, I’m almost thirty-seven years old, Ashley.”
“And he’s twenty-nine! Don’t you see how gross that is?”
Lacey almost smiled. “Depends on your perspective.”
“It’s gross.”
“Look.” Lacey reached for her daughter’s hands, but Ashley pushed her away, glaring. “Honey, the point is I’m an adult and I can be with who I want to be with.”
“But why can’t you be with Dad?”
“I don’t have feelings for—can you not call him that?”
“Why not? He’s my dad. He’s my father.” She said the word with so much pride it twisted Lacey’s heart. “And I know, I know. He’s been a craptastic father for all my life, but I’ve decided to forgive that and start over.”
“As we’ve discussed, that’s very mature of you, but—”
“Then why can’t you?”
“Forgive him?” Lacey shook her head. “I’m not still mad at him. I have forgiven him,” she said, picking her words like fragile flower petals. One poor choice, and the whole conversation could fall apart. Farther apart. “I understand why he made the decision he did, and went off to live his life instead of settling down.” Instead of taking responsibility for his child. The one he suggested she abort.
But she loved Ashley too much to play that card.
“Then why can’t you give him a chance? Why can’t you be in love with him?” She whined the question. “Then my life would be perfect.”
Oh, no it wouldn’t be. “I can’t make myself love a man I don’t have any feelings for. And, I’m sorry, Ashley, I simply can’t manufacture those kinds of feelings.”
“You’ve been too wrapped up in Clay Walker, that’s why.”
Was that true? “I don’t think that’s it. And, Ashley, it would mean the world to me if you’d give Clay a chance. Talk to him and get to know him.”
She folded her arms, narrowed her eyes, got into full adolescent-anger mode. “Only if you give Dad a chance.”
“I gave him a chance fourteen years ago,” she said softly.
Ashley didn’t answer, thinking long enough to have another idea. “Why don’t you go diving with us? He said we could drive up to this river, the Itcha-something.”
“Ichetucknee. And, sorry, you’re not going. I knew two UF students who died cave diving there.”
“Not with a tether!” She threw back the covers and leaped from the bed toward her laptop. “Let me show you the YouTube videos. Dad’s in one of them, Mom. It’s so cool. He’s done it all over the world, in Indonesia and Africa!”
Her head almost exploded. How dare he talk Ashley into things like this? Fisting her hands, Lacey shook her head. “No, you’re not going. No arguments.”
Ashley turned from the computer to fire a look of pure contempt, Princess Pot-Pie completely morphing into Nastina. “Why do you always say that? All you want to do is be with that stupid loser guy when Dad is right here trying to win you back!”
Lacey gathered every single bit of calm she could find, taking a breath and refusing to get dragged into this argument.
“That’s not true,” she said, purposely controlling her voice. “I’m offering to spend the day with you.”
She curled her lip. “No thanks. Dad and I are going cave diving.”
“No, you’re not.”
“You can’t stop me!”
“Yes, she can.” David stood in the door wearing nothing but sleep pants and a morning beard. “Your mom is your legal guardian, Ashley, and she has to sign a permission form for you to dive up there. So, if she says no, the answer is no.”
Ashley looked stricken, blinking back tears. “You’d really say no? You’d really stop me from having the most amazing day of my entire life just so you can go off and… and… do it with that guy?”
“That’s out of line.” This time David’s reprimand was welcome, because Lacey could hardly form the words as she stared at her daughter.
“Well, it’s true.”
Lacey stood, somehow holding it together. “What’s true is that your comments are way beyond what’s acceptable. You aren’t going cave diving and you aren’t leaving the house for the next three days.”
“Mom!” Tears rolled over those cheeks, not so angelic now.
“Accept your punishment, Ashley,” David said, stepping aside to let Lacey by. “You need to know there are consequences for your behavior.”
Lacey walked down the hall, bracing for the tirade that would surely follow, but Ashley was uncharacteristically quiet. Had David’s presence changed her daughter so much that she would accept punishment without a fight?
She stood in the kitchen pressing her fingertips to her forehead as an Ashley-argument headache started to throb.
“You made the right call in there,” David said.
Irritation and resentment coiled through her, making her want to lash out and remind him that she’d been making calls for years with no help from him.
Instead she just nodded. “Thanks for the backup.”
“Hey, that’s what parents do.”
No, parents stay and raise their kids instead of going to Patagonia. “I’m sorry about wrecking your plans for cave diving.”
“No biggie,” he said. “We’ll go when you’re ready. I’d like you to come with us.”
She turned to him. “I’m never going to be ready to go on family outings with you, David. I’m not going to change my mind and it has nothing to do with anything going on in my personal life. I’m not interested, okay? You can be her father and forge a relationship with her; I’ve never tried to deny you that. But let me make this perfectly clear: I am not getting back together with you. You have to stop painting that fantasy in her head because when it doesn’t happen, and it won’t, she is going to be heartbroken and it will be all my fault.”
He stood completely still, regarding her. “If she’s ever been heartbroken, Lacey, it’s because I didn’t take responsibility for her.”
The admission stunned her, leaving her speechless despite the fact that she had plenty more to say.
“And the real epiphany isn’t what happened down in Chile. The real eye-opener for me has been this time with an intelligent, beautiful, inquisitive, delightful—”
“I just told you, I’m not—”
“Daughter.” He closed his eyes. “I care deeply for you, Lacey, but the person I love in this house is Ashley, and I only want a chance at being in her life to make up for the pitiful job I’ve done for the last fourteen years. That’s all I want, I swear.”
She believed him, she really did. And who was she to deny her daughter that kind of love?
Chapter 24
Lacey whipped open the bottom cabinet and prayed for a small miracle. And got one. She almost clapped her hands with relief.
“There is a God,” she whispered. “And He has just provided a silver jelly-roll pan without a dent or a nonstick coating. Now if the chocolate in the fridge isn’t ready, I can start a second pan.”
From the living room she heard Clay laugh softly, a sound she’d been listening to and enjoying for almost ten days. And a lot of nights, when she could sneak out.
“Nothing is funny about chocolate ruffle cake,” she called out, pushing herself up to a stand.
“You’re funny when you bake,” he replied. “Do you know how much you talk to yourself?”
“This cake is incredibly important, Clay.” She set the pan on the counter and took a
few steps to the left so she could see him in the living room. “The baby shower is being given by Julia Brewer, who is married to Scott Reddick, son of Paula Reddick, who sits on the town council. She’s someone we have to impress.”
She bit her lip to see if he’d reacted to the we, a word that had popped up between them an awful lot in the last ten days.
He didn’t. Instead, he put down a coral-colored pencil and smiled at her, his grin like a bucket of sunshine in the cramped room. “I’m just laughing at how much you talk to yourself when you bake. I probably do the same thing here in my office.”
And when had the rental-unit living room become his office? Again, things had just morphed in the last week and a half. Instead of an empty, badly decorated living area in a standard beachfront rental unit, the room had been transformed into Clay Walker’s architectural studio.
A giant-screen computer design and drafting system and two other laptops stayed lit with bright green lines and angles and mathematical modelings of floor plans and rooflines and buttresses. Photos of Moroccan buildings were tacked to every available wall space, and a huge drafting table took up almost half the room.
“Well, I’m just happy this apartment came equipped with a decent jelly-roll pan because I don’t feel like driving home to get mine and I’ve got to deliver this cake this afternoon.”
He studied her, his head angled, his eyes bright. “C’mere.”
And, just like that, she did. He was perched on his stool in front of the drafting table and she reached for him, wrapping her arms around his waist.
He flicked his finger on her cheek, then licked it. “Chocolate on strawberry. My favorite.”
She snuggled closer, a familiar warmth folding through her like the satiny cocoa filling she’d just simmered on the stove. “What are you working on?” she asked, looking at the drawing in front of him. Rather than buildings or floor plans, this was a map of sorts.
“The traffic delivery system.”
“The what?”
“Roads. To, from, and around Casa Blanca. But I really need to hear from my sister about those properties. She said she’d have information today about who bought them, and she’s supposed to call me any minute. Knowing if we can have them really makes a difference in how I design the traffic pattern in and out of the resort.”
“What if we don’t know that, Clay? What do we present? Ideas with or without the other two properties included?”
“Definitely with,” he said. “We’ll find out who bought them and we’ll figure out a way to get them. That’s just an obstacle.”
Which never bothered him. If she’d learned nothing else from Clay Walker, it was how to get over brick walls.
“So we are going to present as if we own the land. And we need to address traffic patterns in that meeting.”
That meeting. The pressure of knowing that it was less than five days away almost made Lacey hustle back to her ruffle cake for some baking stress relief. But she stayed against Clay’s warm body, and the anxiety magically lifted. Another small miracle. Who knew a man could be better than baking?
Not a man. This man.
“You look worried,” he said, scrutinizing her face. “I can do this segment of the presentation, no fears.”
She shook her head. “I’m just worried about everything. Including my ruffles. They can be tricky.”
Nuzzling her, he worked his mouth into her neck for a kiss. “I like your ruffles.” Sliding one hand over her breastbone, then lower, he caressed her nipple. “And your ridges.”
“Very original,” she laughed, arching into his touch because she couldn’t stop herself. That’s what he did to her every time. “And there can be no sex until I finish a second pan of chocolate, then make the ruffles, top the cake and—oh, shit!”
He eased his hand away. “What?”
“I forgot shelf liner to keep the chocolate against the sides. Damn, I shouldn’t have agreed to a cake this complicated. No,” she corrected herself, “I should have made it at home where I have everything. Except…”
“Except what?” he prodded, pulling her closer.
“Except that isn’t home. It’s my mother’s house and she probably doesn’t have shelf liner, either.”
“There’s a hardware store five minutes away.”
Of course, he’d get right over the hurdle. He slid off the stool, wrapping her in both arms just as snugly as she planned to wrap that cake.
“Relax, Strawberry. It’s all going to be okay. You’ll finish the cake and we’ll finish this presentation and we’ll even get to sneak into bed later this afternoon and”—he tipped her chin—“we’ll finish what we started when you walked in here this morning loaded down with bags of baking equipment.”
She tried to swallow but couldn’t, choked by desire and disappointment and happiness and hope and fear all at the same time. How was that particular mix of emotions even possible?
“I’m homesick.” The admission popped out before she gave it a moment’s thought, but the minute it did, all the emotions made sense.
She expected him to scoff, but he didn’t, just looked at her with a very understanding expression.
“I miss having my own house. My own stuff. My own mess and special places to keep things. I want to bring you home, not to my parents’ house where my ex is hovering like a helicopter and I don’t even sleep in a room I can call mine.” Her voice cracked again, and this time she couldn’t fight the tear that spilled. “You can’t imagine how hard it is not having your own place.”
“Of course I can,” he said. “Look around. You think I want to work like this? But you’ll get there.”
“Will I? I’m working so hard to build a business and this resort. But that’s just a place for other people to have a vacation. Is that any kind of home? How will I raise Ashley there? How can I give her a—”
“Shhh.” He put a finger over her lips. “I bet I know how to make you stop crying and start smiling. Come with me.” He started walking toward the hallway, but Lacey stayed put.
“You can’t take this feeling away with sex, Clay.”
“Come on, Lace.” He tugged at her hand. “I want to show you something.”
“Oh, I know what you want to show me, and I’m telling you, that’s not the answer to everything when your heart is breaking. And I need to finish my cake.”
He turned, still holding her hand. “Please come in the bedroom with me.”
“No.”
He closed his eyes, almost fighting a smile. “Okay. Then wait here. This was going to be a surprise after the town council meeting, but I think this is a better time.”
He dropped her hand and walked away, leaving her to stare after him. Then, burning with curiosity, she followed, peeking into the bedroom to see him on his knees, reaching under the bed.
He pulled out a few tubes of paper, folded back a corner to read something, then selected one of the rolls, shoving the others back under the bed.
For a moment she thought he was getting her shelf liner, since the paper looked thick enough to use. But then he unrolled the rubber band and spread a large blueprint over the bed. “This is something I’ve been working on for you.”
The sketch of a building was similar in style to what he’d done for Casa Blanca, but this structure looked a little bigger than the villas yet still within the traditional Morocco-blended-with-old-Paris motif he’d captured for the resort.
But this was different, homey somehow. Intimate and inviting. This was like a…
“A house?”
“A home. For you and Ashley.”
“Oh. Clay.” She brought her hand to her mouth, as if she could contain the feeling welling up inside of her.
“You know that little corner, way at the end of the Tomlinson property line, just off the beach?” he asked. “I think we could build this right there, sort of at an angle facing southwest. You’d see Barefoot Bay and the resort, but be tucked away from the action of the business.”
&n
bsp; This was perfect. Too much. Too perfect. “How could I afford this?”
“Some creative financing,” he said. “I’ve been talking to my sister about some mortgage options. In fact, that’s another thing she’s supposed to call me about today.”
She looked up at him, a new waterfall of feeling cascading over her. “You talked to your sister about my house?”
“Of course I did. I’m close to her. She’s the only family I have now.”
“You have—” Me. She stopped herself before the word was out. “You have really blown me away with this,” she finished, turning to the drawing, kneeling just to get closer to it. “This is just incredible.”
“That’s just the front elevation,” he said, coming right down next to her to turn to the next blueprint. “Here’s the back.”
“It’s even prettier. Is that a balcony?”
“I thought that would be Ashley’s room. I gave her the whole upstairs, for, you know, teen privacy. But we could do anything to the floor plan.” He flipped another page, and her heart went with it.
We could do anything. Yes, yes they could. Couldn’t they? Her eyes filled again, making her vision too blurry to make out the clean lines of a kitchen and family room, a dining room and laundry. It was too much. He was too much.
“I thought we could—”
She cut off the suggestion with a kiss, hard and hot and as forceful as she could make it.
Under her lips, he laughed softly. “I take it that means you like it.”
“I like it. I like it. I like you.”
He chuckled again, the words having become a secret message between them. “I thought you said no sex until you do something to that cake.”
“I need to do something to you first.” She pressed herself into him, her fingers already grasping for more of him, dragging down his chest, over the delicious muscles, down to the zipper on his shorts.
Heat and desire pooled between her legs as she pushed him back to the floor and he tugged at her top to slide it up and get to her breasts. The instant his hand slipped under her bra her nipple budded in his hand, fireworks crackling through her, a molten ache building for more.