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Her lips parted, then tilted between naughty humor and something that struck him as rueful. His heart swerved.
“Do you remember that?”
“What? No.” She stepped away and bent to pick up his crutches. “Are you staying for dinner? It’s Molly’s night to cook. We should let her know if you are.”
Slowly, Sasha was coming to terms with things she should have addressed years ago. Or, rather, she was beginning to believe what she had known in her head but hadn’t been able to accept in her heart. Her affair with a married man hadn’t been her fault. Her “lover” had exploited a troubled teenager and played the victim when his actions had consequences.
Deciding to keep her pregnancy a secret, then placing Libby with Patty, had been the only real agency she’d had at the time. She had taken control of her circumstance and her future to the best of her ability. She shouldn’t feel ashamed of the decisions she’d made.
Sometimes she even listened to Molly talk to Libby and felt really good about what she’d done.
Then Molly came out to where she was lazing by the pool and announced starkly, “That was Mom. Gio went to see her. He was looking at family photos and figured it out, Sash. He knows you’re Libby’s birth mom.”
“What?” She sat up, scrambling to keep her sunglasses in place. “Rafael can’t hear that from someone else.”
“Gio won’t say anything. Mom impressed on him that it’s not his place. I genuinely don’t believe he would do that to Libby. He’s met her during our chats and seems to like her. He’s not malicious.”
Even so, the possibility of being outed hung like a storm cloud over her.
The next time she spoke to Rafael, she asked when he would be home.
“I’ll be here at least another week. I was able to get my cast off so at least one thing is going in my favor. Why? Do you miss me?”
She hesitated, surprised at the question, no matter how cocky he’d sounded as he delivered it. He had never asked for confirmations of affection in the past.
But they had started having much deeper conversations, especially now that they were apart. She talked to him about the baby and her growing excitement for its arrival. He said he wished one of his mothers had lived to meet her grandchild.
One night, she asked him why he was so determined to expand his father’s business.
“Spite,” he replied.
She still couldn’t use screens, so his voice was in her ear, and maybe that was why he filled the silence that she deliberately left for him to continue.
“The day my father died, I came into the office to find the local gang roughing him up. He couldn’t breathe. I got into it with them and was on the floor myself when I realized he had collapsed from more than a gut punch. They took my phone and yanked out the landlines. I went to three different businesses, but none would call an ambulance. They’d been there ahead of me, intimidating them against helping us.”
“That’s horrible.”
“It was. By the time I got an ambulance to him, he was gone. But I wasn’t,” he said with grit. “And I made sure they knew it.”
The growing openness between them gave her the courage to admit, “Yes. I do miss you.”
Every time she spoke to him, she thought, Come home.
“I miss you, too. I wish you were here.” He sounded tired and maybe something else that she couldn’t quite put her finger on. Homesick? “You always charm people’s socks off.”
“Including yours?” It was a lilt of flirtation she tossed out to lift him from his brooding.
“They’re already off,” he retorted. “I’m fresh out of the shower wearing only a towel. Why? What are you wearing?” The way his voice dipped into smoky and wicked sent a pulse of temptation deep between her thighs.
She swallowed. “Just a sundress.”
“Just?”
“And underwear.”
“Are you in your room? Alone?”
She glanced out the window to see Molly was at the gazebo. She hurried up the stairs to her bedroom. “I am now,” she said, breathless from more than the climb.
