He dug his fingers into the butter-soft leather to keep from stroking the length of her hair, to see if it was as silky as he remembered. He needed to bide his time. He had her and the baby with him. That was a huge victory, especially after their stubborn year apart.
And now?
He had to figure out a way to make her stay. To go back to the way things were...except he knew things couldn’t be exactly the same. Not after they’d slept together. Although he would have to tread warily there. He couldn’t see her cheering over a “friends with benefits” arrangement. He’d have to take it a step at a time to gauge her mood. She needed to be reminded of all the history they shared, all the ways they got along so well.
She tucked a homemade quilt over Eli’s tiny legs before shifting to sit beside him. Elliot knocked on the driver’s window and the vehicle started forward on their journey to the airport.
“Lucy Ann, you didn’t have to stay up late packing that suitcase.” He looked at the discarded cashmere baby blanket she left folded to the side. “I told you I would take care of buying everything he needs.”
His son would never ride a secondhand bike he’d unearthed at the junkyard. A sense of possessiveness stirred inside him. He’d ordered the best of the best for his child—from the car seat to a travel bed. Clothes. Toys. A stroller. He’d consulted his friends’ wives for advice—easy enough since his buddies and their wives were all propagating like rabbits these days.
Apparently, so was he.
Lucy Ann rested a hand on the faded quilt with tiny blue sailboats. “Eli doesn’t know if something is expensive or a bargain. He only knows if something feels or smells familiar. He’s got enough change in his life right now.”
“Is that a dig at me?” He studied her, trying to get a read on her mood. She seemed more reserved than yesterday, worried even.
“Not a dig at all. It’s a fact.” She eyed him with confusion.
“He has you as a constant.”
“Damn straight he does,” she said with a mama-bear ferocity that lit a fire inside him. Her strength, the light in her eyes, stirred him.
Then it hit him. She was in protective mode because she saw him as a threat. She actually thought he might try to take her child away from her. Nothing could be further from the truth. He wanted to parent the child with her.
He angled his head to capture her gaze fully. “I’m not trying to take him away from you. I just want to be a part of his life.”
“Of course. That was always my intention,” she said, her eyes still guarded, wary. “I know trust is difficult right now, but I hope you will believe me that I want you to have regular visitation.”
Ah, already she was trying to set boundaries rather than thinking about possibilities. But he knew better than to fight with her. Finesse always worked better than head-on confrontation. He pointed to the elementary school they’d attended together, the same redbrick building but with a new playground. “We share a lot of history and now we share a son. Even a year apart isn’t going to erase everything else.”
“I understand that.”
“Do you?” He moved closer to her.
Her body went rigid as she held herself still, keeping a couple of inches of space between them. “Remember when we were children, in kindergarten?”
Following her train of thought was tougher than maneuvering through race traffic, but at least she was talking to him. “Which particular day in kindergarten?”
She looked down at her hands twisted in her lap, her nails short and painted with a pretty orange. “You were lying belly flat on a skateboard racing down a hill.”
That day eased to the front of his mind. “I fell off, flat on my ass.” He winced. “Broke my arm.”
“All the girls wanted to sign your cast.” She looked sideways at him, smiling. “Even then you were a chick magnet.”
“They just wanted to use their markers,” he said dismissively.
She looked up to meet his eyes fully for the first time since they’d climbed into the limousine. “I knew that your arm was already broken.”
“You never said a word to me.” He rubbed his forearm absently.
“You would have been embarrassed if I confronted you, and you would have lied to me. We didn’t talk as openly then about our home lives.” She tucked the blanket more securely around the baby’s feet as Eli sucked a pacifier in his sleep. “We were new friends who shared a jelly sandwich at lunch.”
“We were new friends and yet you were right about the arm.” He looked at his son’s tiny hands and wondered how any father could ever strike out at such innocence. Sweat beaded his forehead at even the thought.
“I told my mom though, after school,” Lucy Ann’s eyes fell to his wrist. “She wasn’t as...distant in those days.”
The weight of her gaze was like a stroke along his skin, her words salve to a past wound. “I didn’t know you said anything to anyone.”
“Her word didn’t carry much sway, or maybe she didn’t fight that hard.” She shrugged, the strap of her sundress sliding. “Either way, nothing happened. So I went to the principal.”
“My spunky advocate.” God, he’d missed her. And yet he’d always thought he knew everything about her and here she had something new to share. “Guess that explains why they pulled me out of class to interview me about my arm.”
“You didn’t tell the principal the truth though, did you? I kept waiting for something big to happen. My five-year-old imagination was running wild.”
For one instant in that meeting he had considered talking, but the thoughts of afterward had frozen any words in his throat like a lodged wad of that shared jelly sandwich. “I was still too scared of what would happen to my mother if I talked. Of what he would do to her.”
Sympathy flickered in her brown eyes. “We discussed so many things as kids, always avoiding anything to do with our home lives. Our friendship was a haven for me then.”
He’d felt the same. But that meeting with the principal had made him bolder later, except he’d chosen the wrong person to tell. Someone loyal to his father, which only brought on another beating.
“You had your secrets, too. I could always sense when you were holding back.”
“Then apparently we didn’t have any secrets from each other after all.” She winced, her hand going to her son’s car seat. “Not until this year.”
The limo jostled along a pothole on the country road. Their legs brushed and his arm shot out to rest along the back of her seat. She jolted for an instant, her breath hitching. He stared back, keeping his arm in place until her shoulders relaxed.
“Oh, Elliot.” She sagged back. “We’re a mess, you and I, with screwed-up pasts and not much to go on as an example for building a future.”
The worry coating her words stabbed at him. He cupped her arm lightly, the feel of her so damn right tucked to him. “We need to figure out how to straighten ourselves out to be good parents. For Eli.”
“It won’t be all that difficult to outdo our parents.”
“Eli deserves a lot better than just a step above our folks.” The feel of her hair along his wrist soothed old wounds, the way she’d always done for him. But more than that, the feel of her now, with the new memories, with that night between them...
His pulse pounded in his ears, his body stirring.... He wanted her. And right now, he didn’t see a reason why they couldn’t have everything. They shared a similar past and they shared a child.
He just had to convince