“Then why’d you leave the ship so fast?” Nick asked quietly.
“You know why.” Just the memory of the na**d redhead was enough to put a little steel back into her spine.
“I didn’t even know her,” he reminded her with just a touch of defensiveness in his voice.
“Doesn’t matter,” she said, lowering her voice quickly when Jacob began to stir. She hadn’t meant to wake him up. Hadn’t wanted to get into any of this right now. But since it had happened anyway, there was no point in trying to avoid it. “Nick, don’t you see? The redhead was just a shining example of how different we are. She brought home to me how much out of my element I was on that ship. With you.”
He reached out, skimmed his fingertips along her cheek and pushed her hair back behind her right ear. Jenna shivered at the contact, but took a breath and steadied herself. Want wasn’t enough. A one-sided love wasn’t enough. She needed more. Deserved more.
“I don’t belong in the kind of life you lead, Nick. And neither do the boys.”
“You could, though,” he told her, his voice a hush of sound that seemed intimate, cajoling. “All three of you could. We could all live on the ship. You know there’s plenty of room. The boys would have space to play. They’d see the world. Learn about different cultures, different languages.”
Tempting, so tempting, just as he’d meant it to be. A reluctant smile curved her mouth, but she shook her head as she looked from him to the twins and back again. “They can’t have a real life living on board a ship, Nick. They need a backyard. Parks. School. Friends—” She stopped, waved both hands and added, “A dog.”
He tore his gaze from hers and looked at first one sleeping baby to the other before shifting his gaze back to hers. “We’ll hire tutors. They can play with the passengers’ kids. We could even have a dog if they want one. It could work, Jenna. We could make it work.”
Though a part of her longed to believe him, she knew, deep down, that this wasn’t about him wanting to be with her—finding a way to integrate her into his life—this was about him discovering his sons and wanting them with him.
“No, Nick,” she whispered, shaking her head sadly. “It wouldn’t be fair to them. Or us. You don’t want me, you want your sons. And I understand that. Believe me I do.”
He grabbed for her hand and smoothed the pad of his thumb across her knuckles. “It’s not just the boys, Jenna. You and I…”
“Would never work out,” she finished for him, despite the flash of heat sweeping from her hand, up her arm, to rocket around her chest like a pinball slapping against the tilt bar.
She wished it were different. Wished it were possible that he could love her as she did him. But Nick Falco simply wasn’t the kind of man to commit to any one woman. Best that she remember that and keep her heart as safe as she could.
“You don’t know that. We could try.” His eyes were so filled with light, with hunger and the promise of something delicious that made Jenna wish with everything in her that she could take the risk.
But it wasn’t only herself she had to worry about now. There were two other little hearts it was her job to protect. And she couldn’t bring herself to take a chance that might bring her sons pain a few years down the road.
But instead of saying any of that, instead of arguing the point with him, she pulled her hand free of Nick’s grasp and said softly, “Help me get the boys up to bed, okay?”
He drew up one leg and braced one arm across his knee. His gaze was locked on her, his features half in shadow, half in light. “This isn’t over, Jenna.”
As she bent over to scoop up Jacob, Jenna paused, looked into those pale blue eyes and said, “It has to be, Nick.”
Ten
“Here?” Maxie repeated. “What do you mean he’s here? Here in Seal Beach here?”
Jenna glanced back over her shoulder at her closed front door. She’d spotted Maxie pulling up out front and had made a beeline for the door to head her off at the pass, so to speak. “I mean he’s here here. In the house here. With the boys here.”
For three days now. She’d been able to avoid Maxie by putting her off with phone calls, claiming to be busy. But Jenna had known that sooner or later, her older sister would just drop by.
“Are you nuts?” Maxie asked. Her big, blue eyes went wide as saucers and her short, spiky, dark blond hair actually looked spikier somehow, as if it were actually standing on end more than usual. “What are you thinking, Jenna? Why would you invite him here?”
“I didn’t invite him,” Jenna argued, then shrugged. “He…came.”
Maxie stopped, narrowed her eyes on Jenna and asked, “Are you sleeping with him?”
Disappointment and need tangled up together in the center of Jenna’s chest. No, she wasn’t sleeping with him, but she was dreaming of him every night, experiencing erotic mental imagery like she’d never known before. She was waking up every morning with her body aching and her soul empty.
But she was guessing her older sister didn’t want to hear that, either, so instead, she just answered the question.
“No, Saint Maxie, defender of all morals,” Jenna snapped, “I’m not sleeping with him. He’s been on the couch the last couple of nights and—”
“Couple of nights?”
Jenna winced, then looked up and waved at her neighbor, who’d stopped dead-heading her roses to stare at Maxie in surprise. “Morning, Mrs. Logan.”
The older woman nodded and went back to her gardening. Jenna shifted her gaze up and down the narrow street filled with forties-era bungalows. Trees lined the street, spreading thick shade across neatly cropped lawns. From down the street came the sound of a basketball being bounced, a dog barking maniacally and the muffled whir of skateboard wheels on asphalt. Just another summer day. And Jenna wondered just how many of her neighbors were enjoying Maxie’s little rant. Shooting her sister a dark look, Jenna lifted both eyebrows and waited.
Maxie took the hint and lowered her voice. “Sorry, sorry. But I can’t believe Nick Falco’s been here for two nights and you didn’t tell me.”
Jenna smirked at her. “Gee, me, neither. Of course, I only kept it a secret because I thought you might not understand, but clearly I was wrong.”
“Funny.”
Jenna blew out a breath and hooked her arm through her sister’s. No matter what else was going on in her life, Maxie and she were a team. They’d had only each other for the last five years, after their parents were killed in a car accident. And she wasn’t going to lose her only sister in an argument over a man who didn’t even want her.