A Marriage-Minded Man / From Friend to Father

He grinned. Not one of his best, but bright enough. “Several times, as I recall.”

“Shut up,” Tess said, her face flaming, her nether regions tingling. Damn them. Fighting the urge to bury her face in her hands, she took a deep breath. “I used you, Eli. And I feel like crap about it.”

His grin died. “And didn’t I tell you this is exactly how you’d feel this morning? Although when you first came at me I sincerely doubted you’d be around for longer than twenty minutes—”

She grabbed a pillow off the bed and threw it at him. It went wide and scared the bejeebers out of the cat.

“It’s not meant as a put-down, okay?” Eli said, swiping the pillow off the floor, tossing it back on the bed. “You were obviously upset. And a little drunk. I knew what you were asking for, even before you made it more than clear my hunch’d been dead-on. And if you noticed, I had no problem stepping up to the plate.”

Too true, Tess thought as Eli came farther into the room, making her back up. A little. “Even so, I gave you plenty of opportunity to change your mind, to let me take you home before things got out of hand. Or maybe you don’t remember—”

“I remember,” she murmured, shutting her eyes.

“You know,” Eli said after a moment, “maybe you wouldn’t feel so bad if you’d just be honest about what happened last night. It was what it was. If I don’t have a problem with that, why should you?” At the sound of Thea’s old Jeep Cherokee pulling up in front of Eli’s house, he nodded toward the window. “There’s your ride,” he said, snatching a hooded sweatshirt off the back of a chair and tossing it over. “It’s cold. Put that on.” Then he stomped off, boots pounding against the old wooden floor.

“Eli, I’m sorry—!”

Too late.

Soon as she heard stuff banging around in the kitchen, Tess scurried down the hall and through the front door, yanking on the hoodie as she practically flew into Thea’s passenger seat. No fewer than three dogs of various sizes, shapes and lineages poked their heads through the gap between the bucket seats to offer greetings and/or condolences.

“Geez, mutts,” the tiny blonde—wearing a down vest over wrinkled pink pajamas—said, shoving back assorted canine heads, “give the poor woman a break.” She surveyed Tess for a few moments through a pair of perky round sunglasses before looking back out the windshield, her mouth twitching. “Rough night?”

Tess slumped down in her seat, snuggling farther into the warm, Eli-scented sweatshirt. Rats. “I seriously owe you for this.”

“Think that’s the other way around, cookie,” Thea said as she backed out of Eli’s drive. “Considering the backside-saving you did a couple months ago when everybody got the flu except the baby.”

“Where is junior, anyway?”

“Back there somewhere, between the dogs.” Startled, Tess twisted around to see the bundled up baby happily snoozing in his car seat. Thea cackled again. “Wow. This is just like high school, gettin’ a girlfriend to cover your butt so your mother won’t find out you went to some party you weren’t supposed to.”

“Yeah, well…I never did that.”

“Never?”

“You weren’t raised by a rabid Latina. My mother had spies everywhere.” Because that was a lot easier and less messy than personal interaction. Gah, at this rate her brain would melt before breakfast. “I couldn’t even look at a boy that my mother didn’t hear about it before I got home.”

“That sucks.”

“Tell me about it.”

Chuckling, Thea tucked a strand of barely combed, pale blond hair behind one ear as they pulled out onto the still-dark highway, the early-morning sun furtively peering through the pinons and live oaks choking the roadside. “So…what happened?”

Tess rolled her eyes in the blonde’s direction.

“I got that,” Thea said, shrugging a dog head off her shoulder. “It’s the how-in-the-hell? part I’m kinda vague on.”

Shivering, Tess zipped the hoodie up higher. “So Ricky had the kids, right? Seizing my freedom, brief though it may have been, I went for a run, it started getting dark, Eli nearly ran me over with his truck, next thing I know I’m in his living room, stripping.”

“Sober?”

“No.”

“Ah.” After a reflective moment, Thea glanced over. “I’m assuming there were bits between the almost getting run over and the stripping?”

“A lot less than you might think,” Tess mumbled, then slumped down farther, palming her face. “I’ve never done anything even remotely like that in my entire life.”

“Yeah, it must be hell, being perfect all the time.”

Tess’s eyes flashed to her friend. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“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?

Worse, though, she thought as she jerked her gaze away from her reflection and stepped into the pounding shower, was that, mixed in with the regret…

Was the really scary feeling it could happen again.

Chapter Three

No less pissed than he’d been an hour before, Eli stormed through the shop’s door, the whining of table saws and pounding of hammers piercing his sleep-deprived brain. Yeah, Tess could play the “it’s not you, it’s me” card all she wanted, but she couldn’t wait to get out of Eli’s house, could she? To put her “mistake” behind her. True, maybe nobody could make you feel like dirt unless you let them—and maybe, considering their past, Tess wasn’t totally out of line feeling the way she did—but that’s exactly what he felt like. Dirt. Worse than dirt, like something disgusting on the bottom of somebody’s boot.

But what Eli couldn’t for the life of him figure out was why Tess’s reaction was getting to him so bad. Wasn’t like he expected anything more. Or less. And for sure it wasn’t the first time he’d had a go-with-the-flow moment, even if the last one had been a while ago. Still. For somebody who’d been singing the no-strings song for a whole lot of years now, the last thing he’d expected was to…

Was to feel something for somebody he had no business feeling anything for. Not after all this time. Not after what he’d done. Not after one freaking night, for God’s sake. What those feelings were, he couldn’t even begin to sort out. But being with Tess…it just wasn’t what he’d expected, that’s all.

Just like getting his nose whacked out of joint wasn’t what he’d expected, either.

“And what got up your butt?” his father launched at him as Eli strode across the dusty floor to the “kitchen”—a microwave, hot plate and coffeemaker set up on an old card table.

“Nothin’,” Eli muttered, grabbing the coffeepot and sloshing some into his mug. “Just didn’t sleep good last night.”

At least it wasn’t a lie. Especially after Tess passed out, and, instead of crashing, too, Eli found himself watching her sleep, hardly able to breathe through the “What the hell was that?” shock. Now, though, Eli didn’t have to look at his father to see the what-now? squint. A squint not without cause. Not after some of the boneheaded stunts he and his brothers had pulled over the years. How his parents had survived raising four boys was nothing short of a miracle.

“You got troubles, son?”

Forcing a smile to his lips, Eli looked back at the old man. Jowly, balding and paunchier than was probably good for him, Gene Garrett may not have been as physically commanding as he’d once been, but that steely-blue gaze still lasered right through a person, even behind his glasses. His boys might not always agree with him, but not for a second would any of them think of disrespecting him.

“Nothing that’s gonna cause the world to stop spinnin’,” Eli said, clapping his father’s shoulder before heading back to his own area of the shop, where a massive, carved headboard awaited staining. His father followed him, his arms crossed high on his chest. Eli glanced over.

“I’m okay, Pop. Really.”

“No, it’s not that.” His father’s gaze veered to the bed. “Guy called this morning and canceled.”

“What? He can’t do that, this is custom—”

“I explained all that, and he said he knows it means forfeiting the deposit and all, but…he said he was real sorry, but this just isn’t a real good time to be spending big bucks on a headboard.”

On a rough sigh, Eli dropped onto a nearby stool. “It hasn’t been a good time for a while now. I mean, what the hell?” He scrubbed a hand along his jaw and let out another sigh as he glowered at the almost-finished piece. “It’s not like I can just toss it in the back of my truck and go hawk it out on the highway, like Thea Griego does with those awful painted coyotes of hers. And don’t you dare start up about how if I was led to make this thing, then it’s gotta find a home.”

“Patience has her perfect work, son,” his father said, then smiled. “And God knows your mother and I have had ample opportunity to prove that particular passage over the years.”

Sighing, Eli wagged his head, then got up and snatched a manila folder off the battered desk in the corner of the room. “You see this? It’s my order folder.”

“Looks a mite on the thin side.”

Eli opened it and turned it upside down. A single sheet of paper fluttered to the gouged, sawdust-smeared floor.

“That was the bed, I take it?” his father said.

“Yep.”

“Then there’s somethin’ else better waitin’ in the wings, you’ll see.” Before Eli could groan, Gene added, “But we’re doin’ okay—you know what they say, when folks aren’t buying new homes, they remodel. So we can always use you over on this side of the shop.”

Eli glared at his father’s back as he walked away. Yesterday, he’d been happy as a damn clam. Now the clam had just been shipped off to hell in a handbasket…a trip Eli’d taken a time or two before in his life.

Except now he realized it was up to him, whether it was a one-way trip or not. He could sit here and stew, or he could act like a grown-up and actually do something about it. Or at least try. Not about the canceled order, maybe—at least, not now—but about Tess? Yeah.

“Anybody got a phone book?” he yelled to the world at large. Seconds later one flapped to his feet, sending up a cloud of wood dust. With a nod to Jose, one of their employees, Eli snatched it up, elbowing off the cobwebs. Two years out of date but good enough. He flipped open the thin book, found Tess’s number, then dug his cell phone out of his shirt pocket before he lost his nerve.

Maybe last night was a one-time thing—and maybe that’s all it should ever be—but that didn’t mean he and Tess Montoya didn’t have a few things to clear up between them.

Like, now.

Toweling her hair, Tess stared at the ringing landline as though she’d forgotten it was there, since nobody called her on anything but her cell anymore, prompting her to wonder why she even kept the darn thing—

“You gonna get that or what?” her aunt yelled from down the hall.

“No,” Tess yelled back.

Seconds later, Flo appeared at her door, phone in hand and speculative look on face. “It’s Eli Garrett,” she said, conveying a wealth of questions in three words. Because not only would Flo undoubtedly remember Tess’s Eli phase, she would know Tess’s and Eli’s dealings since then had been virtually nonexistent.

Still, Tess played it as cool as a woman in a towel with recently applied beard burn across much of her person could. “Now what on earth do you suppose he wants? We haven’t even spoken in years.”

“I’m sure I have no idea,” Flo said, handing over the phone. With a pointed look at Tess’s abraded neck.

“Hot shower,” she whispered.

“Whatever,” Flo said, leaving the room and shutting the door behind her.

“Are you insane?” Tess said into the phone. “Why on earth—”

“Just making sure you’re okay.”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“And maybe that’s not an opening you want to be giving people, just at the moment. But that’s neither here nor there. We need to get together. To talk.”

“Eli…Last night…Nothing’s—”

“Gonna happen. I know that. But there’s stuff I need to get off my chest.”

She tensed. “Then just say it.”

“Dammit, Tess—where’s it written you get to call all the shots? You don’t have to accept my apology—”

“For what?” she said, thinking, All the shots? How about any of the shots? “Last night?”

“Hell, no, not for last night. Got no regrets about that. Never will. No, for what I did a dozen years ago.”

Her chest cramped. “Eli—”

“I’m not offering up any excuses. But I’m truly sorry, Tess, for hurting you. I was then, even if I couldn’t get over myself enough to say it. As for the other stuff…well. I’m not gonna make any excuses for that, either. But I want you to know…I’m not that person anymore.”

“Why would I believe that?”

“I don’t know,” he said, sounding…tired. Sounding much too much like a man looking for comfort…making her much too much aware how willing she’d be to give it. Maybe. Under other circumstances. Like if they were two different people who didn’t have some really bad history between them. “I don’t suppose I’ve exactly given you—or anybody else—cause to believe I’ve changed,” he was saying. “But last night…I guess it shook loose some stuff in my head I didn’t even know was there. Ah, hell, I’m not even sure what I’m saying.”

“Then don’t,” she said, fervently wishing he’d stop. Now. While she still had a grip on her anger. On her control.

“No, I’ve got to get this out.” He paused, then said, “It’s just…being with you again reminded me of what we had, I guess. What I threw away. But it’s not like I was having some kind of let’s-go-back-to-high-school fantasy or anything, okay?” Another pause. “Can I be honest?”

“I thought you were.”

“Okay, more honest.” He blew out a breath, then said, “Look, there’s been a few women in my life—”

“A few?”

“Yeah, well, there were a lot of nonstarters in there. Even so—and I know this isn’t gonna win me any points—most of ’em were…diversions. I’m not proud of that, but I never led any of ’em on, either. Given ’em any reason to think I was offering anything more than I was. I might’ve been a jerk, but I’ve always been an up-front jerk. But here’s the thing, and I know this is gonna sound like a line, and a lame one at that…but it was different with you—”

“Oh, Eli, for God’s sake—”

“I swear, Tess,” he said, forcefully enough to shut her up. She could count on one hand how often that’d happened. “You weren’t a diversion, you were a helluva lot more than that. And I’m not sayin’ that to get you back into my bed, or my life or anything. I know you weren’t looking for anything last night except what happened, and that you’re not likely to be looking for anything in the near future. Least of all from me. And that’s okay, because I’m not, either. But I just couldn’t stand the thought of you goin’ for another second thinking…I don’t know. That I didn’t respect you or something. So. We clear on that?”

Another shudder of something damn close to terror snaked down Tess’s spine. She had absolutely no idea how to respond, not to this…this take-charge person who in no way, shape or form resembled the laid-back, goofy Eli she remembered.

“Yeah, Eli,” she said, startled to realize her voice wasn’t steady. “We’re clear.”

As mud.

“Good. Then I’ll let you get back to it. You have a good one.”

Still wrapped in her towel, Tess sat on the edge of her bed for a long time after Eli hung up, feeling a little like she’d just seen a spaceship land outside her window—a combination of disbelief, apprehension and curiosity, all underpinned with the sneaking suspicion that life as she’d known it would never be the same.

Although there was no earthly reason for her to feel that way. Even if Eli had somehow done a one-eighty, what difference did it make? Like he said, she wasn’t even remotely interested in starting up something. With anybody. Because hope don’t live here anymore, she thought, tossing the phone onto the bed.