Chapter 8
CHAPTER EIGHT
TOBIAS
“Chelsea.” I pushed her away before she could do more than brush her lips to mine.
“Oh, dang.” She deflated. “Bad time?”
“Yeah.” I gave her a sad smile. “I think... we’d better call it quits. Sorry.”
“It’s fine. I’ll get out of your hair.” She waved it off, her car keys rattling in her hand as she spun for the door.
But before she could step out into the bright afternoon sun, I caught her elbow. “Happy New Year.”
“Happy New Year, Tobias. Call me if you ever want to start this up again.”
I nodded, stood in the cold and waited until her car reversed out of the driveway. “Shit.”
Of all the weeks for Chelsea to arrive, this was the one she’d picked. But even if she’d come next week or the next or the next, I would have sent her away.
With Eva... everything was different now. There was no going back to cheap hookups and casual flings. Chelsea was a nice woman with a pretty smile and kind heart. She’d kept me company.
But she wasn’t Eva.
No one was.
I closed the door, ready to retreat to my office for a few hours of work in the hopes of getting my mind off the shit swirling in my personal life, but as I turned, a pair of angry hazel eyes halted my escape.
“Chelsea?” Eva tapped her foot in rapid succession. Pat. Pat. Pat. Yep, she was furious. “Really?”
Fuck . “It’s nothing.”
She arched an eyebrow.
“It was casual. Just an occasional...” Hookup . I stopped myself, fear for my testicles if I finished that sentence. “She lives in Billings. Every few months she comes here for work andwe go to dinner.”
“Like the dinner we went on.” She scoffed, then spun and stormed down the hallway.
“Damn it.” I hurried to follow, finding her sitting on her bed, legs crossed, arms folded and a death glare on her face. She was the epitome of livid, quivering chin and all. “Eva. It’s nothing. It’s been months. Before you and I had dinner.”
“Don’t.” She closed her eyes. “I don’t want to know.”
“Okay.” I held up a hand, ready to leave, but her eyes snapped open and that murderous glare found me again.
“Chelsea? How many other friends of mine have there been?”
Here we go. “Just Chelsea.”
“I—grr.” She huffed. “I can’t even be mad.”
“Then why are you?”
“Because.” She tossed out a hand and leapt off the bed, marching to the bathroom. Drawers were ripped open and slammed, one after another. When I braved the threshold, I found her brushing her hair in a rage.
“Talk to me.” Was I always going to have to beg for her to tell me how she felt?
She kept on brushing. “Because it’s not fair.”
“What’s not fair?”
“That you’ve moved on.” The brush went sailing to the counter, clattering as it slid and dropped into the empty sink. “It’s not fair. I don’t want you to move on. The idea of you with another woman, with a Chelsea or Tiffany or, or, or whoever, makes my skin crawl.”
“What do you want me to say?” I raked a hand through my hair. “You left. You left me.”
“I know!” Her eyes flooded. “I know I left. And you moved on. But I didn’t.”
“Wait.” I held up a finger. “What are you saying?”
“Never mind.” She blew past me through the door, and before I could make sense of what she’d just told me, she was gone.
The garage door opened and closed, followed by the crunch of her tires on the snow as she drove away.
She hadn’t moved on. Seriously? So she hadn’t been with anyone else? But it had been years. What the fuck did that mean?
“Son of a bitch.” I unglued my feet and followed the path she took. Out the door, into my truck and away. Just away.
I’d asked Eva to fight with me. Stupid fucking idea, Holiday . I sure as shit didn’t feel like doing it again.
So I drove around town for hours until the sun had long set and my tires led me to my brother’s house. Heath had been calling me for days. I’d avoided him, mostly because I still wasn’t sure what to say.
Or maybe because I suspected what Heath would say .
He’d tell me to go with her.
Before I could knock or ring the bell, Heath opened the door. “Hey. What’s going on? I’ve been calling you.”
“Yeah.” I stomped my feet and walked into the house, straight to the kitchen. It smelled like dinner and my stomach growled. An open bottle of cabernet rested on the counter.
Heath stood behind me, arms crossed and his forehead furrowed. Apparently, Maddox and Mom hadn’t told him what was happening with Eva.
Probably a good thing. Maybe if I said it out loud again, I’d find a way to make sense of it all.
So I nodded to the bottle. “Got any more of that wine?”
“Where the hell is she?” I muttered, glancing out the living room window for the hundredth time.
I hadn’t seen Eva all day.
Last night, I’d lingered at Heath’s place, mostly because I didn’t trust myself after dark with Eva under the same roof. Either we’d pick up the argument, sit in awkward silence or fuck.
Every moment with her was laced with an undercurrent of desire. I craved her more and more, and the other night had barely taken the edge off. If she gave me the slightest opening, I’d take it.
So I’d sat on my brother’s couch, mindlessly watching a game on TV, and thought about everything he’d had to say.
Talk to her. Go with her.
We’re your family no matter where you live.
There’s no reason you have to live here to help run the company.
Every time I’d voice a concern, whether it be distance from family or working remotely for Holiday Homes, he’d countered with advice I hadn’t wanted to hear.
Could I move? Could I live in London for a year? Then bounce to wherever it was she went next? What the hell kind of life was that?
“Not for me.” My hands fisted as I paced the length of the living room. My eyes once more drifted to the windows and black sky beyond.
Her suitcase was still in the guest bedroom so at least she hadn’t moved out. She had to come back sometime, right?
It was ten. Twenty more minutes and I was calling. This close to New Year’s with ice on the roads, I didn’t want her out alone on a Friday night. Would she keep these kinds of hours in London? She needed sleep. Our baby needed her to be well rested.
The seconds ticked by so slowly I was about to lose my shit, until finally the flash of headlights bounced through the glass and the garage door rattled open.
I was at the door before she could get out of the driver’s seat of her sedan. “Hi.”
“Hi.” She walked toward me with her eyes on the floor.
“Are you okay? I was getting worried.”
“Fine.” Her eyes stayed on my shoulder, not my face, as she slipped past me into the house. “Tired. I’m going to go to bed. Night.”
No. We weren’t going another night without talking. “Eva.”
“Please, Tobias.” Her shoulders slumped as she turned. “I can’t argue with you.”
“I don’t want to argue.”
“Then what? What do you want?”
You. To stay. The words I couldn’t bring myself to say. “I don’t want to miss this. I want to be able to tell our kid stories about when you were pregnant. I want to be the nervous dad at the doctor’s appointments. I want the ultrasound photo to carry in my wallet. I’d like to figure out a way to make that happen.”
“I’m open to ideas.”
“I went to Heath’s last night. He suggested hitting up Maddox for a jet since he can afford it.”
A ghost of a smile crossed her pretty lips. “What else did Heath say?”
“That we both want the best for our kid. So we’ll figure it out.”
“We will. Maybe not tonight, but we will.”
For a man who loved long-term plans and five-year goals, the unknown was unnerving. But the dark circles under her eyes made my chest squeeze. “We’ve got tomorrow, right?”
She nodded. “I’m going to see Dad. Say goodbye. I’ll probably swing by Elena’s too.”
“Then tomorrow night. You and me. We’ll ring in the new year. I’ll get some sparkling grape juice, and we’ll make a real party of it.”
Her eyes dropped to my lips for a split second before she tore them away, looking to her tennis shoes. “Okay. Good night.”
God, I hated seeing her walk away. Even if it was just to another bedroom in my own damn house.
“Eva.”
She stopped and glanced over her shoulder. “Yeah?”
“Did you find it?”
“Find what?” She turned fully, her head cocking to the side.
“Whatever it was that you were looking for in New York.” Whatever dream she’d needed to chase.
“I don’t know.” She lifted a shoulder. “Living there was an experience. And because of my job, I’ve had the chance to explore a lot of places I otherwise wouldn’t have found. ”
“Which city was your favorite?”
“Nashville.”
“Because you love country music.”
She smiled, moving to the island and pulling out a stool. “Any chance I got, I did all the touristy stuff with no shame. It was a blast.”
“How long were you there?” I went to sit beside her. Right beside her. There was no stool to keep us apart this time because I couldn’t bear the distance.
We’d have plenty of distance soon enough.
“Three months,” she said. “Sort of the same assignment as I’ve had here. I stepped in to help with a project in trouble.”
“Ah. What was your least favorite place?”
“New York,” she whispered.
I sat up straighter. “What?”
“It was a hard year. I was new to the job and had a lot of learning to do. The hours were brutal. The client was a complete jackass. And I was lonely. I missed you.”
Well... fuck. That hit me square in the chest. “I missed you too.”
“I never wanted to hurt you.” She looked up, her hazel eyes full of regret. “To hurt us.”
“I know.”
“You do?”
I nodded. “Not gonna lie, I was pretty angry at you for a while. And I sort of nursed my anger because it was the only way I could keep a part of you.”
A flash of pain crossed her face.
“Then I ran into your dad.”
“You did? When?”
“About two years after you left. You were in Florida.”
“Tampa. For about eight weeks. I was so busy that I didn’t get to visit the beach once. ”
“Maybe we could go one day. The three of us.” Our strange little family unit could take a vacation together.
“I’d like that,” she whispered.
“Anyway. Back to your dad. I was downtown, meeting my parents for dinner. They were running late so I was sitting at the restaurant’s bar and he came walking over. I guess he was on a date.”
“He was?” Her mouth fell open. “I had no idea that he went on dates.”
“This one was not a good date.” I chuckled. “Probably why you never heard about it. I was his excuse to get away from the table. Apparently, his date picked her nose right as their salads were delivered and the booger was put in the cloth napkin, as green as the lettuce they were about to eat.”
Eva laughed. “Eww.”
“He was so funny about it. He leaned in close, told me the whole story, and asked if it was rude to dump her before dessert.”
“What did you say?”
“I told him to pay the check and scram.”
“Did he?”
“He stayed the whole meal, even bought her a piece of chocolate cake.” Eddy wasn’t the kind of man who cut a date short. He treated women the way he wanted men to treat his daughters.
“That’s sweet.” She smiled. “I can’t believe he never told me about that. Or that he saw you. What else did you talk about?”
“You. He told me you were living in Tampa but traveling all over. That you were kicking ass and taking names at your job. That he was so proud of you for taking a leap of faith.”
Eddy was the first one to talk to me about Eva after the breakup. He hadn’t pandered to my broken heart like my parents. He hadn’t avoided bringing her name into a conversation like my brother. He’d bragged about his daughter, unabashedly.
“It was hard to stay angry at you after that. MostlyI just wanted you to be happy.”
“Thank you,” she breathed. “I worried for a long time that you hated me.”
“Never.” Angry, yes. But I’d never hated her. It just wasn’t inside me.
My only hope was if I pushed for the baby to live here, she wouldn’t be able to hate me either.
“That’s good because you’re stuck with me now.” She forced a too-bright smile, lifting her chin. Then she slid off the stool. “I’d better let you get some sleep. Night.”
“Wait,” I blurted. “Earlier, when Chelsea was here. You said you weren’t with anyone. Why?” I could probably guess, but tonight, I wanted to hear it.
“I just... wasn’t.” She shrugged. “Work was busy. And no one compared to you.”
“Eva.” My hand reached out and caught hers. A zing raced up my forearm at the touch. “They’re always electric, aren’t they?”
She nodded, her lips parting. Was that an invitation?
This was only going to get more complicated. The right thing to do would be to let her go. Leave her to her room while I locked myself in my own.
Instead, I leaned down and brushed my lips across hers, the hitch of her breath my reward.
Reward enough for one night.
It took restraint to let her go. It took every ounce of willpower to stand and take a step away.
Maybe I would have made it behind my closed door. But before I could slip my fingers free from Eva’s, she tugged me back.
That string between us was as tight as ever.
This time there was no mistaking her body language as her tongue darted out and licked her bottom lip.
“Fuck it.” I slammed my mouth on hers, my tongue sweeping inside. I devoured her, exploring her mouth, memorizing every corner. I held her to me, hoping that if I held tight enough, this might all make sense.
She broke away first, her eyes hooded and her lips swollen.
Fuck, but I wanted her. I wanted her for good. To keep.
But she wasn’t mine.
She was her own woman. That was what Eddy had called her that night years ago. Her own woman.
So I took one step away. Then another. And this time, I made it to my bedroom without looking back.