“The day I turned eighteen, I walked out of my final foster home with a couple suitcases to my name. I went to college on a scholarship and lived in a tiny apartment, still working and trying to save. I didn’t bother to get close to people or make any friends. But I love books, I love literature, and I love the quietness of the inside of a library, so I became a librarian.”
“You didn’t make any friends? Not even one?”
“Not even one,” I replied, tilting my head back to look up at him.
“My father never wanted to know me and my mother left me. I know she hadn’t wanted to leave me that way, but it still left a gaping hole in my life. The people in the foster system always sort of looked through me instead of at me. And so I decided I would rather spend my time with fictional characters than real-life ones.”
“That sounds real lonely, Freckles.”
I loved the way his chest rumbled when he talked. It vibrated against my back.
“I was happy,” I said with a small shrug. “I had built a pretty good savings by the time I graduated college. And with the money my mother left me when she died, I was able to buy my house.” I smiled a little to myself. “It was a nice house. Yellow siding and flowers in the yard. It even had a pool.” I looked up at him. “You remember the pool? It was the one you threw me in.”
He laughed.
“Anyway, I finally had somewhere that was mine that no one could take away.” I fell silent, thinking about the charred remains there today.
“But someone did,” Holt said, a hard edge coming into his voice.
“Yeah.”
“So what do you think about Tony Diesel?” As he spoke, he rubbed his palm along my bare arm, almost as if his touch would make his words easier to hear.
It did.
“I don’t know what to think. I suppose it’s possible. I mean, Mr. Goddard said he wasn’t interested in being a father and that’s exactly what my mother told me.”
“He left you a hell of a pile of money.”
“I can’t understand why. Is it some sort of apology for ignoring me my entire life? Was it because he felt guilty? If I take the money, then it would be like saying the way he behaved was okay.”
“What else?” he asked, inviting me to spill more.
“Why wouldn’t she tell me?” I whispered, the words ripping from the deepest part of me. That’s the part that hurt the most. Feeling like my mother lied, like she withheld information that I deserved to know. She was my best friend; she was the one person I trusted over everyone else.
“Maybe she thought if she did, you would only be hurt.”
“He’s not even listed on my birth certificate,” I said. Sadness and anger fought within me. Anger for not knowing if any of this was true and for being kept in the dark. But sadness, too, because I didn’t want to feel this way. I didn’t want to think negative thoughts about a woman who spent her whole life taking care of me and then died far too soon. Her memory deserved more than my anger.
“You wanna know what I think?”
I sat up and turned, tucking my knees into my chest and fitting my body between his thighs. “Tell me.”
“I think the real loss is his. Whoever he is. Anyone who passes up the chance to have their life touched by you is an idiot. And I never had the chance to meet your mother, but I know she was amazing because she raised you.”
I rested my chin atop my knees and smiled. “You make it sound so easy.”
He shrugged. “From where I’m sitting, it seems that way.”
“Would you take the money?”
He pursed his lips, then grinned. “Probably.”
“Money changes people. It changes things.”
“You’re not one for change, are you?”
I shook my head. “No. I like stability. I like to know what to expect.”
“Seems like you always expect the worst out of people,” Holt said, his voice sounding very wise.
I wanted to deny it. But I couldn’t because it was true.
“Ever wonder what would happen if you expected something good out of someone?” The wind blew as he spoke, and instead of carrying his words away, it brought them closer, wrapping them around my head. Around my heart.
“Not until recently.”
He moved quickly, shooting forward and grasping me, tumbling us backward so I was lying across his chest and he was lying in the sand.
Most of my body was across his, with the bottom part of my legs and feet still in the sand between his legs. I rested my arms on his chest and leaned down, initiating a deep and thrusting kiss. His hand wrapped around the back of my head, holding it in place, keeping me from breaking the kiss. Like I would.
His tongue was incredible, the way it seemed to find all the secret spots inside my mouth that unlocked my desire like some ancient, magical key. Our tongues twisted so fiercely together, so deeply into the each other’s mouths, I had trouble knowing where one stopped and the other began. One of my hands gripped a fistful of his T-shirt and the other found the hem and slid up between the fabric and his skin.
He was warm, the kind of warm that made my toes curl in the sand, the kind of warm that an electric blanket radiated in the dead of winter and made you reluctant to crawl out of bed. I snuggled in a little closer, wiggling against him, and a groan erupted from the back of his throat.
His hand left the back of my head and cupped my butt, pressing me ever farther against him, grinding his throbbing erection against the flimsy fabric of my dress.
I wiggled some more, liking the way it felt to rub up against him. And then the cool night air was brushing against my upper thighs, gliding against skin that had previously been covered. Holt was slipping my dress up around my hips and guiding my legs so I straddled his lap, the hard ridge in his jeans pressed firmly against my dampening panties.
I looked down at him, my hair blowing over my shoulders and hiding some of my face. I felt like there was a giant bubbling volcano inside me and it was on the verge of erupting with insanely hot lava.
He caressed the inside of my thigh with his hand, whispering to me about how silky smooth my skin felt against his. And then his hands began to move higher, sliding up beneath my dress all the way up to cup my breast, yanking down the soft cups of my bra and pinching my nipple lightly, rolling it between his fingers.
I cried out. The sensation was incredible as I began to rock my hips against him.
His other hand joined the one already up my dress and he fondled me, pinching and teasing until I thought I might go mad with need. I felt like I was going up a hill, going up and up and up and all I wanted to see was the crest—the peak of the hill—so I could go plunging right back down.