Lakeshore Candy: The McAdams Sisters (By The Lake Book 4) Read online

  “Why would you be scared?”

  Riley straightened, pulling away from her and the break made her stumble. His strong grip effortlessly kept her balance. “Let’s go sit down.”

  Riley led them to a bench on the sandy beach so they could stare across the waves sparkling beneath an almost full moon. Abby wanted to curl her feet up and lean against Riley’s solid strong body, but his tense muscles and the fear she tried to ignore settled her stiff body beside him...not even touching.

  His hand found hers as he spoke. “Abby, this is hard. It’s hard to tell you. It’s hard to even talk about. I haven’t talked about this in years.” His deep, struggling breath worried her, but she felt compelled to give him the support he needed. She placed her other hand over the one holding hers and gently rubbed his goose-bumped skin. “If I start, I can’t guarantee I can continue to the end...”

  “Riley, tell me what you want...or can.”

  His stiff, rigid nod followed the drop of his eyes and another deep breath. When he pushed the breath out and opened his eyes, he spoke. “I had a family before I moved to Willow Valley.”

  Abby’s muscles fell into line with Riley’s tension and confusion blurred her vision.

  A family? What did he mean a family? A girlfriend? Fiancée? Wife...kids? Is that what he meant by a family? That was the definition of a family.

  Abby’s fear twisted into a sadness she’d never known, a sadness only a heart that had opened up so fully to another person could ever experience. Kate’s word kept flashing into her thoughts...love...love...love. But caution slapped the word love around because how could he ever experience love with someone else when he had a family? Had he lied to her? Had he already experienced the desire to hold, comfort, talk and sit with a woman like he claimed he hadn’t? Where were all their firsts that he’d promised half naked with her in the attic? She craved those firsts more than her next bag of candy.

  Abby fought the urge to jump to her feet and demand all her questions be answered in her forceful, I am pissed off tone. But she did turn her body to face him, pulling her leg onto the bench between them.

  His profile was rigid, his eyes staring into the darkness around them like it was swallowing him whole.

  She also had the urge to punch his tense shoulder or slap his firm face...she didn’t like being screwed around, especially when it came to a heart that she’d protected for so long. A heart she didn’t know could be so easily hurt.

  “A family of sorts,” he continued and she breathed in the damp, lake air to keep from following through on any of her urges. “I guess that was what you would call it,” he continued. His elbows moved to rest on his legs, his hands clasped together in front of him staring in the air at nothing.

  I will give you nothing to look at, while I’m walking away you lying son of−

  “I was, for no better word, a player. I knew it. They knew it. It was never a problem until one of them got pregnant.”

  Of all the scenario’s Abby had played through her head about Riley’s past, a drug dealer, a gang member, a hobbit from the mountains returning to civilization for the first time since a child, never had she envisioned him with a family. A family? A family!

  She knew it wasn’t fair, but she was jealous beyond explanation at the suggestion that he had loved someone else before her. She’d gotten attached to the idea that she was for him what he was for her: a first love, an only love.

  Where was this family now? Where had they been for the last two years? In Oakston? Was his heart broken for them? Is he settling for me...

  He continued, completely unaware of the mad-dash direction her thoughts were taking her. “I wasn’t a family man. I wasn’t a one-woman man. I wasn’t ready for any of that and here she was pregnant, and claiming the baby was mine.”

  Claiming? Maybe the baby wasn’t his. She hated that she felt relieved by the notion.

  “So, what did big shot me do?” He laughed into the warm air, sounding sickened by himself. “I made her get a paternity test.”

  Please don’t be his.

  “The baby was mine.”

  Son of a bitch.

  “She didn’t have much money or a house. She was bouncing around on friend’s couches trying to break into the music industry. I owned my own house, had a good career, had a spare couple of rooms, so she moved in.”

  Was she at his house now? What kind of a man was Riley if he didn’t visit his child for two years?

  Don’t go down that road, you don’t even know the whole story yet. Could this whole story take any longer?

  Abby couldn’t help wondering all the, what if’s while he was busy trying to gather up the words to tell her. Maybe this nameless woman left him and took the nameless baby with her. What were their names? What did it matter? Where were they now? Did that matter?

  Maybe he was heartbroken after the disappearance of the unknown mother of his child. Abby hated that the latter of the possibilities seemed closest to the truth and would explain his distance in getting attached to her or anyone.

  Slow down, let him talk. What if I don’t like what he has to say?

  “Our arrangement was simple. We weren’t together as a couple or sexually at all. We lived in the same house and agreed to raise our baby and try to be friends.”

  Try? Try to be friends? What did that mean? Was there more between them? Had more congregated during their living arrangements?

  Could he possibly explain his past any more slowly? Her mind was shooting questions off in streams like malfunctioning fireworks blasting in every direction.

  “It seemed to be working. Kind of. I worked a lot of late hours while she was pregnant. Sometimes I spent the night at work...most nights. We had a daughter and she was amazing. She was this small bundle of joy that didn’t know what was going on between her parents.”

  Had? Why was he using the past tense?

  Suddenly guilt washed over her, erasing all her selfish wishes and her heart went out to Riley relating to the turmoil of the last couple years.

  “I wasn’t there for them the way I should have been. Cece was always there for them, at my house between work, calling me, sending me photos, and insisting I come home and spend time with my daughter. Cece loved that little girl and tried everything in her power to make me bond with her.”

  Abby wanted to touch Riley’s heavy shoulders, rub her support across his back, but she feared he would leap out of his skin.

  “I was confused and piling more work on my plate, bringing in more business, going out and overloading my time so I wouldn’t have any time to stop and think about my life. The life I didn’t want at the time. I wasn’t ready for it. I didn’t search it out. I had no idea how to do it.”

  He stood up abruptly, startling her and leaving her hands alone. She clasped them together needing something to keep them from trembling as he spoke. Riley took a few large steps and stared across the water. Abby watched his shoulders rise, pause, then drop again. She was unsure if she should join him. Then he turned and came back, collapsing beside her.

  “It’s a terrible excuse, I know. It’s unacceptable. It’s childish, immature, everything. I know that now.” He rushed the words out in a breath and was left gasping for air before he could continue. “There was an accident one night and they both...” He took the breath right out of Abby in fear of the words that were to follow. The truth that had him hiding in Mrs. Calvert’s bakery. “...died.” The word barely escaped his lips, soft and quiet breathing into the night’s air.

  Abby tried to blink away the tears stinging her eyes, but there were too many and they washed over the rims of her eyes. She tried to catch them as they ran down her cheeks.

  “I wasn’t there for them the way that I should have been, ever. I never got to say goodbye or to hold her again.” Abby’s jealousy was lost in his tragic words. “I was left with this guilt, so strong, I couldn’t do anything. My concentration was lost with them. I couldn’t work or wake up without it crushing me.”
>
  Abby couldn’t keep from touching him any longer. He was in pain, suffering from the death of his family and Abby understood death. She suddenly recognized how Riley was able to console her after Gran’s passing...why he understood.

  Abby wrapped her arm around his hunched back to find his body trembling beneath her touch. She rested her head on his shoulder and tried to rub away his pain, even if she knew it was impossible. “I’m sorry Riley.”

  He stiffened. “Abby, it was my fault they were on the road that night. It was my fault she got in the car and drove. We had a fight, one of many, and I told her to leave. That I couldn’t handle it anymore. We were always fighting. That night there was a snowstorm and I called her a cab because she’d been drinking, but I didn’t wait to make sure she got in the cab. I should have waited.”

  It all made sense to Abby now and nothing he said scared her or made her jealous. He’d been hiding away at Mrs. Calvert’s, away from the city, away from his sister, because he blamed himself for their death...a death that was not his to take the blame.

  “She got into her little car, didn’t strap the car seat in right and went flying through Oakston, losing control and...”

  He didn’t have to say it. He didn’t have to tell her.

  Unable to not handle seeing his face, his eyes, talking to him face to face, Abby pushed him back, surprised how easily his limp body moved to the back of the bench giving her access to crawl on his lap. At the current moment, under all the poignant emotions it wasn’t a sexual move, with her leg on either side of him. Their most sexual areas might have met in the middle like that morning at the kitchen table, but Abby was too worried about Riley to notice. His back hit the bench without solidity and he bounced like he was weak. This man was not physically weak. He was emotionally drained after two years of carrying the weight of these two lives. Her knees stung as they scraped across the bench, but she hardly noticed so enthralled with the fact he didn’t even look at her, instead his eyes fell to their lap.

  He was scared to tell her because he blamed himself for their death. Not because he had lied to Abby, already experiencing everything he’d told her he hadn’t, but because he thought she might also blame him for their deaths.

  Abby gripped the sides of his face and forced his eyes up to hers, inches away. “Riley, do you know that was not your fault?” It broke her heart that he’d ever considered it his fault.

  “Yesterday.”

  Yesterday? Yesterday what?

  “Yesterday, for the first time since their death, I acknowledged that maybe it wasn’t my fault.”

  Maybe? Maybe! It one hundred percent wasn’t his fault. He did not get behind the wheel drunk and he did not drive away without securing the car seat.

  “It was not your fault. You called her a cab.”

  “I sent her away...”

  “A lot of people fight Riley, and a lot of people choose to wait for the taxi. You can’t blame yourself for her decision. It was her decision. It doesn’t matter what led up to it. She got behind the wheel. Not you.”

  “You’re right, I know. But at the time I didn’t see that. I couldn’t see it because I was so lost in my guilt. I thought I could drown my pain in work, but I couldn’t even get through a day. I hit the bottom hard, the hardest I ever had, getting into some serious drugs and when I saw a light to stand up it was Mrs. C holding her hand out. She saved me when I couldn’t save myself.”

  Abby settled down, letting Mrs. Calvert work her magic, even if it had been years ago, it was replaying across Riley’s face.

  “She did everything for me. When I gave up on my life, she took me to rehab. When I decided life wasn’t worth living, she made me live it. Even if living it was just going through the motions in her bakery. I don’t know why she did it. I don’t know why she cared or what she saw in me to give me a second chance, but she did.”

  Abby knew exactly what Mrs. Calvert saw and it was the man Riley was, the man he wouldn’t give himself credit for...the man Abby’s feelings ran so deeply for she hardly recognized herself.

  Riley didn’t give her a chance to tell him and continued. “But, Abby.” His hands rested overtop of hers on the sides of his face and she tried to ignore the tiny desire trickling through their skin. “It was you that reminded me what life is. What life feels like inside when I thought I was empty.” He took one of her hands and placed her palm flat over his heart, pressing his against it. “It was you that opened my soul to the emotion I’ve been burying inside, covering with guilt, fear and sadness.”

  Her?

  More of those unfamiliar teardrops fell down her face.

  “Riley, you are a good man.” She didn’t need to hear his story to know what her heart told her. “We all get confused when life throws us unwanted, unasked for, and unsure paths. Just because you were trying to figure yours out when they died doesn’t make their deaths your fault.”

  His eyes fell closed and his shoulders sagged. “It still feels like my fault. Like I wasn’t a good enough person, a strong enough man, to take on my responsibilities.”

  “No matter how confused you were before they died, you wouldn’t have felt guilty if you weren’t a good man. You’re a good man, Riley Boyd and I am not scared or running because you have a past. I’m right here by your side.” She grinned. “Or on your lap...”

  His lips lifted the tiniest bit and she kissed them softly and quick. “Don’t ever feel rushed with me. We’ve only admitted our feelings not even twenty-four hours ago. Talk about rushing it.”

  He squeezed the hand still covering his slow heartbeat. “I feel like I’ve been holding these feelings in since the day I met you.”

  “You didn’t like me the day you met me.” She sent him a smug look.

  Riley’s free hand encircled her waist and pulled her body against his solid frame, her knees hit the back of the bench. His other hand slipped through her hair, slowly grazing her scalp, stopping at the base of her neck, firmly. His dark eyes were no longer haunted by his past but were now instead consumed with lust. “It was quite the opposite.” The drop of his low, deep tone mixed with the words made her swallow past the lump in her throat and she was suddenly aware of his growing manhood against her growing wetness. “Yes, you were a little...excited...but besides that, I felt a pull toward you.” I felt it too. “I felt a connection with you that was new to me.” I have never felt this connection before. “And it kind of scared the hell out of me.” It excited me!

  “I felt it too Riley.” It had been there all those years ago, strong and sure, just like now, only she’d masked it. “I feel like I’ve been lying to myself since the day I met you and last night everything I wouldn’t let myself believe or feel exploded. Now it feels like we’ve been together forever.”

  “Talk about not rushing me.”

  Abby flushed, rare as a rainbow.

  “I’m teasing.” He pulled her forehead against his. “You give me strength to face what I’m running from. I want you to be by my side when I go to Oakston. I want to go to Oakston with you tomorrow, if you’re still going.”

  “I would love that.”

  “We could stay at my house.”

  What a huge wonderful step. “That sounds perfect.”

  That haunting look washed over his face again. “I want to tell you everything.”

  She wanted to know everything, but he’d already shared so much with her that she felt exhausted and could only imagine what he was feeling. Right now, with his lips so close, his body pressed against hers and desire creeping up between them, she didn’t want to talk.

  “Later,” she told him. “We have all the time in the world.”

  The haunted look washed away as quickly as it had come and Riley kissed her lips softly, touching the back of her head and running his tongue across her lower lip before pulling away. The whole touch was tender, gentle and not what she would have expected from Riley and surprised at how much she enjoyed this side of him, the side he showed no one, his tend
er side.

  “You’ve changed so much in the last couple days,” she told him when he finally let her up for air.

  He pushed her hair away from the side of her face. “You’ve changed too.”

  “I have not.”

  Riley cupped her face, his strong fingers directing her head to his stern, but now soft eyes. “You didn’t run. That’s a big one for Abigail McAdams...the runner.”

  Run. That word hadn’t crossed her mind where Riley was involved, not like the other men in her life that she couldn’t get away from fast enough.

  Abby’s hand found his holding her chin and she wrapped her fingers around it. “I don’t want to run from you.”

  “I don’t want you to run either.”

  His words excited her, his fingers were driving her skin wild, his voice was causing her legs to go numb and her lips wanted to reach up and kiss him...everywhere.

  “What if it’s running to your apartment?” she asked.

  “What about the concert?”

  “I’ve seen plenty.” What she hadn’t seen enough of was his naked body and she was ready to tear his clothes off and touch, kiss and explore every part of him like he’d done to her the night before. It was her turn.

  ***

  THEY DIDN’T MAKE it to his apartment.

  The second Riley shut the alley door he reached for Abby, whose feet were already two steps up and pulled her back down and against him. He’d spent the day running through his routine, doing nothing but thinking about how to talk to her and now he wanted to feel every inch that had popped into his mind all day. He hadn’t told her everything, but they could talk afterwards.

  Swirling in the smell of fresh baking, his mouth feasted on every exposed area of her skin starting with her neck. His lips couldn’t get enough, his tongue couldn’t taste enough. His hands kneaded her skin through her clothes until he couldn’t handle it anymore and tore her jacket away. It landed at their feet at the bottom of the stairs and her hands slid under his own, sending it to join hers.