Beneath the Patchwork Moon (Hope Springs, #2) (24 page)

He’d kept the secret of the pregnancy, but this had blossomed into so much more. Sierra and Oscar were leaving Hope Springs. Sierra and Oscar had gotten married. Sierra and Oscar had given their baby away. Without being able to see the entire picture, how could anyone know what to feel, or begin to understand?

Movement in front of him had him pushing off the car where he’d been leaning. The box of Sierra’s things clutched to her chest, Luna walked down the sidewalk from the Gatlins’ front porch to the driveway where he waited, parked on the far side of her car, out of sight. He couldn’t even imagine how close to the edge Luna’s anxiety had driven her. Her head was down, her steps hurried. Then behind her, the Gatlins’
front door opened. Oliver hurried out and down the walk toward her, calling, “Luna, wait, please.”

She stopped. Angelo pushed off his car, took two steps toward the sidewalk before Luna looked up and saw him. He stayed where he was when she held up one hand before turning to Oliver. Stayed and sweated and spewed a hateful tirade in his mind. If these people had hurt Luna, so help him…

But Oliver was hanging his head, his hands at his hips, repentant. His voice was low, leaving Angelo to imagine what he was saying, what he wanted, what wool he was trying to pull over her eyes. But then the other man lifted his head, and Luna reached out with one hand, placing it on his arm and rubbing as if comforting him. They both nodded, an awkward departure, before Oliver returned to the house and Luna continued to her car.

He met her there, asking, “What did he want?”

“Nothing. I’ll tell you later. I need to… go somewhere. Can you come with me? Follow me?”

“Sure. Where are we going?”

“Don’t ask me anything right now, please. I just…” She waved him off, her eyes hidden behind large sunglasses. “I’ll tell you everything, but I need to get out of here. And I need you with me.”

“Sure,” he said, something full and possessive lodged in his chest. “I’ll be right behind you.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

L
osing Oscar killed me, but knowing what he felt for Sierra… It doesn’t make the loss any easier, but I had no idea of any of what they’d planned. How she felt about him. That she wasn’t using him. I can’t believe they had a child. I just can’t.… I’m sorry. I’ve been an ass.

Oliver Gatlin’s words played over and over in Luna’s mind on the drive from his home to the far side of Hope Springs. There the old textile warehouses had stood solid for over a century not far from the Guadalupe River. Oscar had been her friend, but not once had she sensed any of his endearing humanity in his brother. Until today. Today it was as if the pin of her truth had poked through the skin of his loathing and popped it.

I want to help with the academy. Anything I can do. Money. Connections. Cash the check I gave you. If you got rid of it, I’ll write you another. I’ll double the amount. Just tell me what you need. It’s yours, and without my mother getting in the way.

What she needed was to have all of this put behind her: the lies, the waiting for the other shoe to drop. To reach the end of a decade of deception without everyone writing her off, hating her. What she needed Oliver Gatlin couldn’t give her. But Angelo Caffey could. Even if it was just in this
moment, just for today, just this one time. Even if she was the only one in love.

Glancing in her rearview mirror, she saw his rental car close behind, saw one of his hands gripping his wheel, saw the aviator sunglasses he wore hiding his eyes. Saw, too, the hard set of his jaw as he bore down on her. Her stomach began to tingle. The tingles rose, breathing grew difficult, and her chest ached. And then the tiny tickling sensation became bolder, traveling lower in her body to make itself known.

This wasn’t part of her plan for today, but everything inside of her was stirred into a froth and she had to let it out, and she needed Angelo. Oh, she needed him, her Angel, her love. Whether or not he shared the things she felt… she didn’t care. It didn’t matter. Losing herself in him, with him, was the only cure for this anxiety, this alarming sense of consuming disquiet. This debilitating fear that he’d leave her again. She couldn’t bear the thought of that happening.

Once at her loft, she unlocked the freight elevator and lifted the grate, waiting for him to join her before closing it and punching the panel for the fourth floor. He stood silently leaning against one wall. She stood silently leaning against the opposite. The only sound was that of the ancient car grinding through the torturous climb.

All too soon they’d reached their destination, and she knew there was no going back. She stepped into her new home and crossed the big room, leaving Angelo to follow while she caught her breath. While she thought about having him here with her, not just now but permanently. Did he have any idea how she felt about him? How could he, when she’d only recently admitted it to herself? Unless somehow he’d been aware of what she’d tucked soundly away…

“Is this your new place?” he asked from behind her.

His voice echoed, but she placed him near the long wall between two of the big front windows. “It is. I just got the key on Wednesday.”

“When do you move in?”

“As soon as I find the time.” They were exchanging banalities, nothing more. She owned the loft outright. Her possessions were where they’d always been, in the only home she’d ever known. She could move anytime she wanted to. But she would never have this time with Angelo again. This time filled with deep reds and deeper purples and the deepest of blues. Swirls of passion, ribbons floating and wrapping her up, a dancer’s skirts swishing.

She couldn’t stop herself, turning, walking, then running into his arms, hers going around his neck, bringing his head down, his mouth to hers. She was desperate and she didn’t care, because she needed this, needed him, needed to lose herself for a little while.

He kissed her back, a frantic press of lips and teeth, of tongues seeking and finding and sliding to mate. He was greedy, his hands, his hips, but just as quickly as he started he set her away, his eyes dark and fiery. “Luna, what are you doing?”

Please, please don’t let this go wrong
… “If you have to ask, then I’m obviously doing it wrong.”

“No, baby. You’re not.” He reached up, tugged on the point of hair brushing her chin. “I just need to know why. And that you’re sure.”

“I’m sure,” she said, and then she was finished talking. She held his face, kissing his jaw, his chin, his neck, nipping at the skin of his throat, bruising him. Marking him as
hers. She didn’t want to let him go, couldn’t let him go, and reached for the hem of his shirt, pulling it up his chest, over his head, and off.

Then she buried her face against him and breathed, feeling his heartbeat, feeling her own, her cheeks damp, his skin damp, too, her tears salty on her tongue. Raising her head, she brought her hands to his chest, spreading out her fingers and flexing them. His skin was resilient, the muscles beneath firm. The hair dusting his chest a wedge of soft black.

He reached for her wrists and shackled them. “I need you to be sure.”

“I’ve never been more sure.” It was a promise to him, to herself. “Not of anything. I want this. I want you.”

Desperate mouths found heated skin, and hands reached and touched and grabbed tight. Clothing tore and fell, but only the bits and pieces necessary for flesh to find flesh. Belts and zippers, boots, denim jeans and a pair of rayon-and-wool-blend pants that had cost too much for how they were being discarded on the floor.

Silk panties and cotton briefs, and then skin and a slick condom. Her smooth legs and his roughly haired, and firm muscles—hers—sculpted muscles—his—until her softest parts opened for his hardest and he pushed deep, taking her, claiming her, and stilled. They both stilled, Luna pinned to the wall at her back, her legs around his waist, his feet spread.

He braced his weight against the bricks with one hand, used the other arm beneath her bottom to hold her. She couldn’t move, impaled, filled with him, anchored by him. Breached. Against her neck, his breath was damp, and hot, and ragged. His hair lay against her cheek, glossy strands the
same color as hers, and now almost longer than hers, and so very thick and soft.

He was thick elsewhere, and not soft at all, and he began to move, his thighs and his hips in motion as he rocked into her, pushed against her, held her still as he rubbed and ground and married his body to hers. Her thighs burned, and her back stung from the bite of the bricks through her blouse, and she didn’t care about any of the pain. All she knew was the pleasure. Angelo deep inside her, wrapped around her, holding her, loving her. Loving her.
Loving her.

All too quickly they finished, caught up in the moment’s fierceness and their need. Angelo pushed hard, shoving her tight to the wall. She swallowed the gasp of pain as her shoulders met brick, and gave in to the sensation sweeping her away, crying out his name, gripping his neck for fear of falling. He slipped from her soon after, and lowered her slowly to the floor, standing with his forehead on hers until his legs started to shake, too.

They sat side by side after that, leaning against the wall, Luna in the crook of Angelo’s arm as she curled into his body, her knees bent and braced on his thigh. She spread her fingers over his belly, feeling the cord of muscles there, feeling the crisp hair, the smooth skin. She wanted him naked, not to make love with, but to touch, to feel, to learn. She wasn’t looking for his reaction; she knew how to elicit that.

What she didn’t know was how sharp to the touch his hip bones would be, how rough the soles of his feet. Silly, maybe, but she wanted to know these things as well as the more obvious… the pressure of his lips, the texture of his beard, the curve of his ear and the lobe. They needed a bed, and more
time, and no clothing. They needed aeons to discover each other, and she feared even now the blocks between them were being mortared back into place.

She couldn’t let that happen. She refused to let that happen. Not when she had within her grasp exactly what she wanted. Angelo. Her Angel. Her love. “How long can we stay here?”

“You’ve got the keys. I’d say that’s up to you.”

“I don’t have food.” Or dishes or blankets or more than water from the faucet to drink.

“It’s still up to you.”

He was warm and solid, and she didn’t want to move. “Forever? Until we wither up from dehydration and start looking like those little dolls made of dried apples?”

He let his head roll toward her. “There are little dolls made of dried apples?”

She reached for his hand and aligned their palms. “I take it you never wandered through the booths at your mother’s craft shows?”

He snorted at that. “I helped her cart her things to her booth. Then I took off for the river with a six-pack. Nothing better than floatin’ down the Guadalupe half numb.”

“I can’t even remember the last time I was on the river.”

“I can’t believe you ever were,” he said, pulling away to look down at her.

Just because she hadn’t been there with him…? “Why not?”

“You never seemed like a party girl.”

“I wasn’t. That didn’t mean I couldn’t have a good time.”

“Did you? Just now?” he asked, clearing his throat and closing his fingers over hers.

He was worried. “It’s been so long you couldn’t tell?”

“I was kinda caught up and hoping I wasn’t leaving you behind.”

“I had fun,” she said, her blush seeming out of place after what they’d done. “Trust me.”

“You gonna tell me what that was all about?”

“Does it have to be about anything?” She bounced their joined hands on her bare thigh. “Besides the obvious?”

“The obvious being…”

Why was she having so much trouble saying it? “Sex.”

“Yeah,” he said, his chuckle coarse. “That part I got.”

“There’s more?”

“Not always. Not all women. But you. Yeah. There’s more.”

“Everything. All of it. Today. The last few. It’s been… stressful,” she said because no other word came to mind.

“So I’m stress relief.”

“That’s not what I meant,” she said, and he laughed.

“It’s okay, Luna. I don’t mind.”

“You don’t mind being used? Even though that’s not really what that was?”

“I don’t mind, no. Not by you. But when you do figure out what that was, I want to know.”

“Because you can’t just let it go?”

He waited one heartbeat, two, then asked, “Do you want me to let it go?”

She wanted to get dressed. Right now, strangely, unaccountably embarrassed, that was all she could deal with, and she got to her feet, Angelo following, adjusting himself into his shorts and his jeans. Her things were a bit more tangled. She scooped them up and headed for the bathroom, so glad she’d worn a tunic today and wasn’t having to walk away with her bottom bare.

While Luna freshened up in the loft’s bathroom, Angelo stood in front of the windows at the far end of the cavernous space, staring through the gap between two louvers across the treetops of Hope Springs. Luna’s new home was on the fourth floor, giving her a pretty much unobstructed view of the town. From here he could see Second Baptist’s bell tower, and realized he hadn’t heard it ring once since he’d been back. A funny thing to notice, but he’d grown up with it chiming at noon every day.