A Marriage-Minded Man / From Friend to Father: A Marriage-Minded Man / From Friend to Father

“Honey, you know I love you—but sometimes it’s like you’ve set these impossible standards for yourself, like you’re afraid anybody might find out you’ve got weak spots. So instead of occasionally releasing steam like any normal person, you let it all build up until you do something stupid.”

“Like having meltdown sex with my old high school boyfriend.”

“That would definitely qualify.” Thea reached over, giving Tess’s wrist a squeeze. “These things happen. No sense beating yourself up over it.” She paused. “Although if you end up pregnant, that could be awkward.”

Tess let out a dry laugh. “No worries there. My period’s due in a couple of days. Which probably at least partly accounts for the meltdown. And we used condoms.”

“Condoms?”

“Shut up.”

“So,” Thea said, clearly ignoring that last thing, “does this mean you and Eli, are, you know. An item?” Tess glared at her. She shrugged. “Had to ask.”

“Would you recycle a high school boyfriend?”

“Good point. But maybe…”

“What?” Tess said, on guard.

“You could just…you know. Do the fling thing. Why not?” she said to Tess’s snort. “He’s hot, he’s personable, he’s obviously good with his hands…”

“You are so dead. And anyway, wasn’t it just last year you were saying that Eli wasn’t exactly the ripest apple on the tree?”

“True. But since he’s now my stepdaughter’s brother-in-law—”

Tess rolled her eyes.

“—I’ve gotten to know him some. Sure, he’s still a goofball, but…” The blonde’s eyes flashed to Tess. “He’s not a kid anymore. There’s a lot more beneath the surface than you might expect.”

“Whether that’s true or not, I’m not exactly keen on becoming another notch on Eli Garrett’s bedpost.”

“Hate to break it to you, honey,” Thea said as she pulled into Tess’s driveway. “But you just did.”

And damned if she hadn’t helped Eli do the carving, Tess thought on a sigh as she got out of the car, giving Thea a dejected little finger wave before she drove off.

“Mama!” Miguel dashed out the front door, throwing his small self into her arms like he hadn’t just seen her the day before. About to drown in her own self-reproach, Tess yanked him close, breathing in that sweet-musky scent of little boy, thinking Never, never, never, never again as curly-topped Julia—not to be left out—carefully clung to the porch railing as she navigated the stairs. Singing “Jingle Bells.” Sort of.

“Told you they missed you,” Enrique said from the doorway to the stucco-and-brick facade house, his hands bunched in the pockets of his Arizona Diamondbacks baseball jacket. For an instant a trick of the light made him look like the man she’d once loved with all her heart, only to torque back into the bastard who’d shredded that heart into a million pieces. A moment later her Aunt Florita—frowning, arms crossed—appeared behind Enrique in spiked boots and tight everything else, despite her lack of boobage and surfeit of years.

“I’m so sorry,” Tess said, to anybody and everybody, her arms full of her children, her heart of remorse. She kissed both kids, then rose, grabbing little hands before starting up the flagstone walk. “Obviously if I’d known,” she said to Ricky, “I would have made other…arrangements.”

“Don’t worry about it,” he said, then frowned. “Nice sweatshirt.”

“Picked it up at a yard sale,” she lied, ignoring her aunt’s raised eyebrow. “I know it’s way too big, but it’s cozy as all get out—”

“You cut your hair?”

“Yeah,” she said, thinking, Geez, now nothing gets past you?

He stared at her head for another couple seconds, then dug out his car keys. “One thing about hair, it always grows back, right? Hey, cabritos,” he called to the kids, squatting, “come give Daddy a kiss.”

Honestly, Tess thought, it was like a wire had worked loose in her ex-husband’s brain over the years. Sometimes the connections worked, and sometimes they didn’t. Mostly, though, they didn’t. And apparently hadn’t for a long time.

His children duly kissed and hugged, Ricky stood, gave her what passed for an apologetic look, then started out to his truck, only to turn when he got there. “Oh, I forgot—I can’t take the kids for Thanksgiving. I got…a conflict. That a problem?”

Tess crossed her arms. “For me? No.”

Ricky looked at his son. “You don’t mind spending the holiday with your mom, right?” Miguel shot Tess puzzled eyes, then shook his head. “See?” her ex said with what a poor imitation of his “old” smile. “So, Micky—you be good, okay? And I’ll call you—”

“Tonight?”

“Not tonight, maybe tomorrow. Soon, okay?”

The boy hugged his father’s thighs; to his credit, Ricky gave him another kiss before getting in his car and driving off. Flo wrapped her arm around Tess’s waist, muttering, “Pen-dejo,” under her breath. And Tess highly doubted Flo meant dumbass, the most PG definition of the word.

Then her aunt’s eyes dropped. The bandage had fallen off at some point during the evening’s activities; although Tess had cleaned the scrape up, she hadn’t bothered to redress it. “Dios mio—what happened to your leg?”

“I tripped over something while I was running,” Tess said slowly making her way up the stairs with an I-can-do-it-myselftoddler beside her. At the top, though, avoiding her aunt’s X-ray eyes, she swung Julia up to pepper her soft little neck with kisses, making her giggle. “No biggie.”

Once inside, she set her daughter down on the still-newish sculpted carpet she’d had installed before Enrique’s last leave, a warm beige that was perfect with the light tan sectional she’d bought at the same time, its built-in recliner positioned so he could watch football on the flat-screen TV she’d gotten him for Christmas.

Nobody could say she hadn’t tried. Nobody.

“Have the kids had breakfast yet?” she asked softly as old memories blurred uncomfortably into newer ones, a set of deep brown eyes morphing to hot, dark gold ones, welded to hers—

“Knowing Ricky? Probably not. How about you?”

“Um, no, I’m good for now,” Tess said, backing away from her aunt’s narrowed gaze, if not from the memories. “I had coffee and toast at Thea’s. You know how early they eat on the ranch—”

“You know, you don’t sound so good. Like maybe you’re coming down with something?”

“Nothing a hot shower won’t fix.”

“Sure, then,” Flo said, suspicion dripping from every word. “Take your time. I’ll feed the kids.”

Tess closed her bedroom door, thinking, You’re home now, everything’s back to normal, just put last night’s craziness out of your pretty little head…

And there were Eli’s eyes again, holding hers captive as he did things to her, for her, that, truth be told, Enrique had never even thought to.

Giving her head a hard shake, Tess twisted on the shower in the remodeled bathroom Ricky had hated on sight, saying it looked like somebody else’s house, never mind that they hadn’t lived here long enough that he should have thought anything one way or the other—

Moaning, Tess sank onto the whirlpool tub’s tiled edge. Because, in the cold light of day, she had to admit…she hadn’t been that drunk. Oh, she sincerely doubted she would have jumped Eli’s bones sober—as in, no way in hell—but she hadn’t exactly spaced what’d gone down after the bone-jumping part.

Or how many times.

Or how much, each time, she thought as she caught her haggard expression in the rapidly fogging mirror over the double vanity, a little more of the deadness around her heart she’d mistaken for stoicism had sloughed off, leaving in its place something tender and new and raw and frighteningly vulnerable. She really wasn’t upset with herself simply because she’d had sex with Eli. It was what having sex with Eli had done to her that had left her shaking. And shaken.

Tess stood and stripped, daring to trace with a trembling hand the still-reddened patches left by Eli’s late-day stubble across her belly and thighs and breasts. Who was this person who’d ceded so much control to another human being? Who’d known, at the time, exactly what she was doing? And who the hell was the man she’d allowed such power over her?