As he descended the front staircase, his feet glued themselves to the bottom step as the kids broke into a duet. Dani’s competence on the guitar had improved dramatically since the last time he’d heard her play, but it wasn’t her technique or even her vocals that stopped Nick cold.
Ryan Flynn’s voice was a lot more than merely
okay
, as he’d put it. It was golden. With a little training to refine his talent and a catchy tune, he’d have a decent shot at a professional music career.
Nick hung out in the living room for several minutes, listening. Eventually, he strolled into the family room, and Dani stopped playing. “Hey, Dad.”
He arched his eyebrows at Ryan. “So that’s what you call
okay
? You should be trying out for TV talent shows.”
“That’s what I say,” Dani agreed. “I also told him how good you are. Could you play a little and show him?”
“Sure.” He took the boy’s guitar and sank into the lounge chair near them. “But only if Ryan sings.” Nick plucked the strings for an introduction to
A Stairway to Heaven
, a classic any vocalist in a rock band would know. The kid picked right up on it and crooned the mellow opening lyrics, while Dani joined in, strumming her guitar.
During the next hour, they continued accompanying Nick as he played through a medley of his favorite timeless songs. The boy’s voice was amazing.
At a little after eight o’clock, Samantha wandered through the family room’s archway with a set of sheets and a pillow under her arm, “Wow, the three of you sound great. As much as I’ve been enjoying your concert, I think it’s time to say goodnight to Ryan.”
“But, Mo-m....” Dani whined. “We were just—”
“It’s eight-thirty, and you have school in the morning. And since tomorrow is Friday, I imagine you have a few tests to study for.”
“Da-aad!”
Nick pointed toward the front door. “Get going,
Princesa
. Ryan can visit again tomorrow.”
Dani dragged her bare feet across the family room carpet, ranting, “What good is it having you around if you agree with whatever she says?”
“I have to go anyway,” Ryan told her. “I need to sit with my mom so my sister can grab a nap before she leaves for work.”
“Is your mother sick?” Dani asked, completely without tact.
“Umm, not exactly. An aneurysm burst in her head about six months ago and left her brain damaged.”
“Oh, Ryan.” Sam’s cheeks turned a deep pink, suggesting she felt ashamed about misjudging the boy’s character earlier. “I’m so sorry. If there’s anything we can do to help....”
“Thanks. We’re doin’ all right for now. Cindy’s there during the day, and I stay with my mom while my sister works the night shift.” Ryan waved to them and followed Dani down the hallway to the front door, calling back to them, “Thanks for dinner, Mr. and Mrs. R. I’ll see ya tomorrow, I hope.”
When Nick turned back to Sam, he found her spreading a sheet over the sofa.
“Oh, come on, Sammy. Don’t you have someplace else for me to sleep? That couch is three inches too short, and you know it kills my back. Where’s the gracious hospitality I deserve in return for my investment?”
The family room’s overstuffed furniture had recliners built into the sofa’s two ends, which was great for kicking back and relaxing in front of the television. However, when it came to serving as a bed, the recliners’ framework made the couch far less comfortable to lie on than a traditional style couch.
“Where do you propose I put you? The living room sofa is even worse.”
Worse was an understatement. Samantha had furnished their living and dining rooms with formal Victorian antiques to match the house’s ornate molding and plasterwork. Their Chippendale camelback sofa had spindly legs, hard rolled arms, and a seat that was too shallow to lie on without rolling onto the floor.
“I don’t understand why you didn’t put your workroom in the study down here instead of taking over the guestroom.” Was it possible she hadn’t wanted him to have a place to stay if he flew home to visit Dani?
“If you recall, our daughter was using the computer in the study to do her class work while I was homeschooling her. I didn’t want her having access to the Internet in her bedroom. Or haven’t you read all the horror stories about teenagers and on-line predators?”
“You two are pathetic.” Dani snorted, leaning against the archway’s wall between the hallway and family room. “You slept together for thirteen years. Now, just ‘cause you’re divorced, you can’t share a room? It’s not like you gotta have sex.”
Thank you
, Dani.
~*~
“Butt out and go do your homework!” Samantha snapped. The last thing she needed was her daughter championing Nick’s attempts to reconcile.
Huffing, Dani stomped up the steep rear servant’s steps.
“What’re you getting ticked off at her for?” Nick asked.
Because the child was right, darn her. Sleeping in the same room with her ex shouldn’t be a problem. But it was.
“Our daughter made an excellent point, Sammy. You never had any trouble holding me off in the bedroom before I moved out,” he said, reminding her of the cold war they’d engaged in after she’d caught him checking her packet of birth control pills one night following a condom mishap. Their ensuing argument over his lack of trust had been the catalyst to her firing the fatal shot in the condom war that ultimately ended their marriage.
“Just like that, you get to dictate whether we have another baby?” she’d hollered at him.
“No. But I should get to decide if I want to become a father again. If you want to get pregnant, baby,”—he’d flipped his hand toward her in mock deference—“be my guest. But you’d better find yourself another stud, because I’m not making love to you without a raincoat.”
“Then you can forget about me taking
El Capitán
on any more midnight rides,” she’d threatened, “until you’re prepared to trust me enough to do it bareback!”
“So go ahead and cut me off. There are plenty of other women who have no problem with having safe-sex.”
“This is what I think of your
safe-sex
!” Sam picked up her embroidery scissors and stabbed every foil packet in his bedside table
.
From that morning on, she’d kept her word as stubbornly as he’d kept his. Nick began staying late at the office—or so the man with the rabbit sex drive claimed. His lack of trust and implied intention to satisfy his needs elsewhere provided compelling evidence that her feelings were one-sided and probably always had been.
She’d lain awake beside him every night, smelling his musky scent, her breasts swollen and aching to be touched. At times, her insides throbbed so insistently her womb actually wept, yearning for him. Not a night had gone by that she hadn’t wished she could take back her ultimatum.
Nick tugged her from her memories as he gently cupped her cheek and turned her face toward him. “You know I would never force myself on you,
Abejita
. So what’s different now?”
She shoved his hand away. “Nothing.”
And there was the problem. She’d derived zero satisfaction from having the final say in their marriage, and she still ached for him as relentlessly as she had over a year ago. Even more so after spending that entire time sleeping alone. Despite how long it had been, she hadn’t forgotten how incredible it felt when he held and touched her. It was all she could do not to tear her clothes off right here and now and throw herself at him.
“If nothing’s changed, then there shouldn’t be a problem with me sleeping in the master suite, should there? Unless....”—he arched one superior eyebrow at her—“you still have the hots for me, and you’re worried you’ll ravish me.”
The rat had done it again. He’d maneuvered her into a position where she was damned no matter how she answered.
He stepped closer and stroked her lower lip with his thumb. “Of course, if that’s the case, I’ll happily submit. Just say the word,
cariño
.”
She was in a no-win situation. If she insisted he sleep on the sofa, she’d come off as spiteful and unreasonable. And if she gave him the bedroom and slept on the couch in his stead, he’d know he could still get to her.
“Is there some reason I can’t sleep on the sofa bed in your room?”
When Dani became ill, they’d bought a convertible couch for the master suite’s alcove so their daughter could sleep close to them on the nights she needed extra TLC, which was quite often at first. As always, Sam had done intensive research for the purchase and found a model in which the sofa’s back folded down to create a bed that was as comfortable as any traditional mattress. “How about because we’re divorced.”
“Is that all you’re worried about? It’s not like I’m asking to sleep in the bed with you.” His cheeks sucked in as if he were struggling to suppress another one of his infuriating, self-satisfied smiles. “All I want is to share the master suite. Or are you afraid you’ll be overcome with passion and attack me?”
More than anything she’d love to turn the table on the big jerk right now.
So why not? Considering his libido, it would be equally torturous for him to sleep in the same room with her. And there was no doubt she still aroused him. Nick had ogled her all evening with that familiar, heated look glittering in his gaze.
She glanced down at his straining fly, and a smug smile of her own tugged at her mouth.
Her ex-husband was a hedonist to the core—not a stupid masochist. If she left the ball in his court, he’d undoubtedly choose sleeping in the family room over tossing and turning all night in frustration. And if he was dumb enough to choose her bedroom, he’d be sorry Dani ever suggested it. This way—she chuckled to herself—she wouldn’t be cast as the villain.
“I really don’t have time for this nonsense, Nicky. I need to get a little more work done.” She spun on her heels and headed for the stairs. “Sleep wherever you like.”
~*~
“So what do you think, pal?” Nick let Chewie back into the house two-and-a-half hours later and locked the French doors to the deck. “Should I sleep down here with you or brave the cold war upstairs?”
Even though sharing a room with Sam again would be an outstanding start toward patching things up with her, he didn’t relish lying awake all night with a hard-on. Then again, if her resistance weakened, it would be a very short trip from the convertible sofa to her bed.
The dog leapt onto the sheet-covered couch and stretched out, settling his head on his paws.
“I guess that answers my question.”
He turned off all the lights, checked the lock on the front door, and climbed the wide staircase. Light still peaked under the crack of Dani’s door at the rear of the house, so he tapped lightly.
“
Venido adentro
.”
Smiling, he entered her room which had been redecorated in varying shades of....“
Purple
?”
“Yeah. What’s wrong with purple?”
“It’s fine.” He chuckled, recalling Sam’s teenage goth period when everything she owned was black. “It’s almost eleven o’clock. Lights out.”
Dani shoved her feet under the covers. “So are you sleepin’ in Mom’s room?”
“It looks that way.” He kissed her forehead and flipped off her bedside lamp. “
Te amo mucho
,
Princesa.”
“Yeah, right.” She snuggled into her pillow as he turned to leave. “Daddy,” she called in an uncertain voice, stopping him. “You are gonna stay, now that you’re home, aren’t you?”
His throat tightened at her pleading tone. “Yeah, baby. If your mom will let me.”
Dani released a breath in a whoosh. “She might not admit it, but she still loves you.”
“What about you?” he asked. When Dani’s shoulders lifted in a noncommittal shrug, he smiled. “I’m glad you think your mom still cares.” Sam’s feelings for him were something of which he’d never been certain. Still, he liked his child believing her mother had been as deeply in love with him as he’d been with her when they’d conceived Dani.
He’d often wondered if Sam would have slept with him that night if his brother hadn’t been so overeager and clueless about girls. He had no doubt she would’ve married Justin if she’d been carrying his brother’s baby rather than his.
After closing his daughter’s door, he leaned back against it and let the memories wash over him. Sam had always blamed herself for their recklessness, but it had been completely his fault.
The evening of Justin and Samantha’s graduation, his brother had brought her home from a party they’d attended in time to make the strict eleven-thirty curfew her aunt had set. After dropping Sam off, Justin stopped in Nick’s bedroom to brag and mooch some condoms.
Apparently two of the hottest girls in Justin’s class had pulled him aside at the party and begged him to drive them to the Jersey shore to go skinny-dipping.
“These two chicks are best friends,” his brother explained. “They do everything together.” He wiggled his eyebrows. “They wanted to know if I’d be able to warm them both up after we finish swimming.”
“Sammy won’t be happy if you do,” Nick said, muting the television on top of his dresser.
“Screw, Sam,” Justin snapped—something he never would’ve suggested if he’d been privy to Nick’s fantasies. “If she cared at all about me, she’d grow up and quit teasin’ me. We’ve been dating for over five months, and the most she’s let me do is cop a feel. Tonight, when I unhooked her bra, she freaked.”
Nick nearly crowed with joy to hear his sweet Sam still hadn’t let his horn-dog brother get past second base. “Give her some time,” he told his brother. “Her bitch of an aunt probably scared the crap outta her and convinced her she’d burn in hell if she let you touch her. Sammy’s simply not ready.”
“I’m sick of waiting.” Justin stepped into the hallway and returned with several towels from the linen closet. “I love her, but I’m sure as hell not passin’ up a chance at a threesome on the beach.”
Nick supposed that would be tough for any guy to turn down.
“Or maybe more,” Justin amended. “The girls said they have a couple of friends they work with at the mall who might want to come too,” he explained, failing to notice his inadvertent smutty pun. “By the way, would you loan me a few bucks for gas?”