Sugar Daddy (Travis Family #1)(37)

"Easy," Hardy whispered, lifting his head, gripping my shivering body against his. "Take it easy, honey."

I fought for breath and sat there with the wooden rail digging into my backside, my knees clamped on his hips. He wouldn't give me his mouth again until I quieted, and then his kisses were soothing, his lips absorbing the sounds that climbed in my throat. His hand moved up and down my spine in repeated strokes. Slowly he brought his palm to the undercurve of my breast, caressing me over the fabric of my shirt, and his thumb swirled gently until he found the hardening tip. My arms became weak, too heavy to lift, and I lent more of my weight to him, resting on him like a Friday-night drunk.

I understood how it would be with him, how different from the times I'd slept with Luke. Hardy seemed to drink in every nuance of my response, every sound and shiver and respiration. He held me as if the weight of me were precious in his arms. I lost track of how long he kissed me, his mouth alternately gentle and demanding. The tension built until low whimpers broke from my throat, and my fingertips scrabbled over the surface of his shirt, desperate for the feel of his skin. He took his mouth from mine and buried his face in my hair, struggling to control his breathing.

"No," I protested. "Don't stop, don't—"

"Hush. Hush, darlin'."

I couldn't stop shaking, rebelling against being left high and dry. Hardy folded me against his chest and rubbed my back, trying to ease me into stillness. "It's okay," he whispered. "Sweet girl, sweet...it's all right."

But nothing was all right. I thought when Hardy left me, I would never be able to take pleasure in anything again. I waited until I thought my legs would support my own weight, and then I half slid, half fell to the ground. Hardy reached out to steady me, and I pulled away from him. I could hardly see him, my eyes were so blurred.

"Don't say goodbye," I said. "Please."

Perhaps understanding it was the last thing he could do for me. Hardy kept silent.

I knew I would replay the scene countless times in the years before me, each time thinking of different things I should have said and done.

But all I did was walk away without looking back.

Many times in my life I've regretted the things I've said without thinking.

But I've never regretted the things I said nearly as much as the words I left unspoken.

CHAPTER 10

The sight of a sullen teenager is common no matter where you go. Teenagers want things so powerfully and can never seem to get them, and to add insult to injury, people make light of your feelings because you're a teenager. They say time will mend a broken heart and they're often right. But not where my feelings for Hardy were concerned. For months, all through the winter holidays and beyond, I just went through the motions, distracted and gloomy and of no use to anyone including myself.

The other thing feeding my sullenness was Mama's flourishing relationship with Louis Sadlek. Their pairing caused me no end of confusion and resentment. If there was ever a moment of peace between them, I never saw it. Most of the time they got along like two cats in a sack.

Louis brought out Mama's worst tendencies. She drank when she was around him, and my mother had never been a drinker. She was physical with him in a way I had never seen before, pushing, slapping, poking, she who had always insisted on her personal space. Sadlek appealed to a wild streak in her, and mothers weren't supposed to have a wild streak. I wished she wasn't pretty and blond, that she would be the kind of mother who wore aprons and went to church socials.

What bothered me as much as anything was the vague understanding that Mama and Louis's arguing and tussling and jealousies, the small damages they did to each other, were a kind of foreplay. Louis rarely visited our trailer, thank God, but I and everyone else at Bluebonnet Ranch knew that Mama was spending nights at his red-brick house. Sometimes she came back with bruises on her arms, her face worn from lack of sleep, her throat and jaw scraped red from unshaven bristle. Mothers weren't supposed to do that either.

I don't know how much of Mama's relationship with Louis Sadlek was pleasure and how much was self-punishment. I think she regarded Louis as a strong man. Lord knows she wouldn't have been the first to mistake brutishness for strength. Maybe when a woman had been fending for herself as long as Mama did, it was a relief to submit to someone else, even if he wasn't kind. I've felt like that more than a few times, aching under the weight of responsibility and wishing anyone was in charge of me except me.

I'll admit Louis could be charming. Even the worst of Texas men have that amiable veneer, the soft-spokenness that appeals to women and the flair for storytelling. He seemed to genuinely like young children—they were so ready to believe anything he told them. Carrington giggled and grinned whenever Louis was near, thereby disproving the notion that children instinctively know who to trust.

But Louis didn't like me at all. I was the only holdout in our household. I couldn't stand the very things that impressed Mama so, the masculine posturing, the endless gestures meant to convey how little things meant to him because he had so much. He had a closet full of custom-made boots, the kind the bootmaker starts by asking you to stand in your sock feet on a piece of butcher paper and trace around the edges. Louis had a pair of eight-hundred-dollar boots made of elephant hide from "Zimbab-way." They were the talk of Welcome, those boots.

But when Louis and Mama and two other couples went dancing at a place in Houston, the men at the door wouldn't let him bring his silver liquor flask inside. So Louis went to the side and drew out his Dozier folding hunter knife and cut a long slit right through the top of that boot, so he could wedge the flask inside. When Mama told me about it later, she said it had been a stupid gesture and a ridiculous waste of money. But she mentioned it so many times in the months afterward that I realized she admired the flamboyance of it.