Page 19 of Shielding his Legacy
“I’m fine.” She’d almost kept her voice steady, but a tiny squeak at the end of ‘fine’ held a telltale wobble.Fuck.Getting up, she put Abby into her car seat—not because the baby needed to be there, but because Eva needed to busy herself with something and hide her face from this man.
She didn’t want him to know she was upset, didn’t want him to understand how uncomfortable she was staying here with him, or how he made her feel inadequate and unwanted on top of endangered and desperate.
Hell no, she wasn’t okay.
She was about as far away from okay as she’d ever been in her life—and that included the day her parents had learned of her pregnancy and kicked her out of the only real home she’d ever known. Single mothers might be “a thing” in the rest of Phoenix and the whole damn United States, but in her daddy’s house, preacher’s daughters didn’t have children out of wedlock, period.
Better to not be their daughter at all.
The emotion she’d barely kept in check was building behind her eyes like a lake filling behind a glass dam. She was about to break, and she needed to get away from him so he wouldn’t see the flood as it overwhelmed the tiny villages downstream.
“I’ll be back,” she said, not looking at him as she bolted for the doorway. He called her but she didn’t stop moving, desperate to escape.
“Eva,” he repeated.
She was aware of him on her heels as the tears spilled from her eyes and dripped onto her cheeks. She silently thanked God for the growing darkness of the foyer and stairway. He grabbed her hand from behind, and she shook him off with a flick of her wrist. “Just leave me alone,” she snapped.
“Damn it, Eva, wait.”
Her feet stilled at the aggravation in his voice, but she didn’t turn around. The staircase was right in front of her, escape so close yet so very far away. Tears wet her skin, and she swiped at them angrily. “What?”
When he spoke again, he was closer—his body a mere foot behind her, close enough that the air between them was charged and warming. “Please let me help,” he said, his voice deep.
“You are helping.” She gestured to the room in the dim light, to the house, to the horrifically large impact she and her daughter had made on his life in a ridiculously short period of time. Gavin had his shit together, and she and the baby were nothing but an unforeseen complication, a reminder of a night he obviously wanted to forget.
Worse yet, she was indebted to him, and that was the least palatable emotion she could think of in this entire plane of human existence. Because how could she everrepay him? What could she do to release herself from the tight bounds ofsorry-I-fucked-up-your-lifeandhey-sweetie-I-owe-you-one?
Then his hands were on her upper arms, the grip of those strong fingers light but certain, and the connection between them hummed. It was as if he’d closed the circuit on a live wire he’d left exposed the last time they’d been together.
“Please,” he murmured, the timbre of his voice taking hold of her nervous system like a snake charmer’s flute commanding the twist of a cobra. “Talk to me, Evie.”
The shortening of her name brought the memories back with a rush of blood down low. But her tears were flowing freely now, sexual desire held in check by the stress of what it had cost her to survive these last few days, and what it might cost her to regain the progress she’d made toward independence.
His hands slipped down her arms and she thought he might release her, but he only wrapped them around her middle and pulled her snugly against his chest. The scent of him was so familiar, it was consuming her ability to think.
“You don’t have to do this alone,” he whispered in her ear, making goosebumps rise on her arms. “Let me in, Evie.”
Sheer force of will was the only thing keeping a loud, ugly sob from escaping her mouth. It wasn’t fair that she needed to confront him again, wasn’t right that it was he who’d swooped in to save the day—no matter that it was fate and her own two feet that had dragged him back into her life, kicking and screaming. “I can’t.”
His cheek brushed the top of her head, the stubble on his face raking through her hair like a comb. “Yes, you can. I want to help you. I want to hear all the things that are weighing you down, making you scared. You can trust me.”
Tears fell from her jaw to his forearm, completing her humiliation. No sooner did she think it than the dam broke, her stomach muscles clenching and releasing in time with her ragged breaths. She could no longer resist the comfort he was offering, no matter if she knew better and should run the other way.
“Come here,” he said, releasing her just enough for her to turn in his arms and face him. She settled against his chest and let it all go, her arms coming around his torso as she sobbed, hands grabbing at the fabric of his shirt.
Damn it all to hell, it felt so good to be held by him, to release every bit of horror and shame and fear she’d been holding onto since the moment she held that positive pregnancy test in her trembling hands.
His wide hand stroked her back as he murmured soothing words into her hair. “It’s all right. I’ve got you.” The fabric of his shirt was wet beneath her face. “We’re going to take care of this. It’s going to be okay.”
She cried so long she lost track of time, her hanging onto him for dear life and him gently rubbing her back and cooing soft reassurances against her scalp. It occurred to her she no longer smelled eggs, and that he must have taken them off the heat before pursuing her. If their roles had been reversed, she might have burned the entire cabin to the ground.
“Thank you,” she said when she trusted herself to speak. Leaning back, she met his stare in the dim firelight that spilled into the foyer, surprised to see the clear mark of desire displayed in their deep green depths.
An answering urgency leapt to life at her core. How easy it would be to go up on her tiptoes and take his mouth with her own. She imagined their kiss, the heady power thatwould lace itself around her spine when he gave in to her with a groan of urgency and need.
She was just about to do it when he abruptly released her and ran a hand through his hair, leaving it disheveled. “Jesus,” he said quietly, crossing his arms over his chest like he was considering his strategy going into war. “I forgot what it’s like to be near you.” He appeared dazed before finally gesturing back toward the living room. “We should sit.”
His words echoed in her mind as she took a seat.I forgot what it’s like to be near you.He wanted her, still—and that knowledge dug into her heart like a climber’s ice pick on a frozen mountain. Lots of men had expressed an interest in her physically, but only Gavin had orchestrated an answering crescendo in her very soul. And he felt it, too—even now.
