Worth the Fall (The McKinney Brothers, #1)(25)

“Really.”

He gave her a look—hot and sexy even with sunglasses covering his eyes. Maybe she was just remembering the look in his eyes last night. Or maybe she was imagining. Wishing.

“What happened to the munchkins?”

“The munchkins are in Kidz Kamp, and I am having some quiet time.”

“Does that mean I have to sit by myself or that I can’t talk?”

A cute fallen angel.

“No. You don’t have to sit by yourself or be quiet, as long as you don’t tell me anyone touched you, looked at you, or breathed on you. And you can’t say you’re hungry or thirsty for at least twenty minutes.”

“I’ll do my best,” he said with a smile that left her a little breathless.

She reached a nervous hand into her bag. “Here. You never have a towel.”

“It’s Princess,” he said, staring at her offering like it was a snake.

“Are you worried people will think you’re a girl?” Her lips curled. “Oh yeah, you were playing with Barbies the other day.”

“Very funny.” He snatched it and laid it over the back of his chair.

The breeze and music played over her skin along with a new sense of peace. She closed her eyes again as Matt stretched out beside her and they lazed away the morning in a comfortable silence she was getting used to. It was an odd feeling she got around him, hard to explain even to herself. But it felt good.

She hummed along to Bob Marley, mumbling the words under her breath. “No woman, no pride…”

“What did you say?”

“Huh?”

Matt turned his head to look at her. “It’s no woman, no cry.”

“No, it’s not.”

“Yes. It is.”

She huffed. “Well, Mr. Smarty Pants, you sing it your way, and I’ll sing it mine.”

His brows arched over his sunglasses. “Mr. Smarty Pants?”

She ignored him and sang the next chorus extra loud. So did he, and they laughed their way through a battle of lyrics. Matt did that—made her laugh, made her smile.

They slipped back into quiet until Matt’s low voice startled her. “You took your ring off.”

“What?”

His fingers slid over the top of her hand where it laid on the armrest. “You took your ring off,” he repeated, smoothing his thumb over the faint white line her wedding band had left behind.

It was the lightest of touches, but she felt a hot rush beginning in her heart and flowing all the way down to the softness between her legs. Slowly, back and forth, he continued the motion, like maybe he could erase it, the shadow. All her life she’d been a shadow. Not so much when she was with Matt.

“It was time,” she finally said. And wearing it in the sun would only make the meaningless mark more pronounced.

Her chest squeezed tight and a lump grew in her throat when he laced their fingers—his, big and tan, alternating with her smaller, paler ones. He said nothing more about her ring. The constant white noise of the surf accompanied by the flapping of the canvas umbrella lulled her into a sense of security. That and the man beside her, hand in hand, just…being, and being together.

“What’s your middle name?”

Without turning her head, she slid him a glance and saw that his eyes were closed. “Are we playing twenty questions again?”

“Maybe.”

“Nicole. Abigail Nicole. What’s yours?”

“Emanuel. Matthew Emanuel. We all have saints’ names. It’s like a Catholic rule.”

She smiled at the thought of traditions and family—specifically his family.

“What are the kids’ middle names?”

She listed them, ending with Annie’s. “Ann Elise. Get it? Ann E.? It’s after a grandmother I never knew.”

“Did you know any of your grandparents?”

“Nope. She was the only one I ever saw, or who saw me. She died when I was a baby.”

“Who did you live with? After your parents died, I mean.”

She hesitated at recapping her sad life story. “You don’t really want to hear all this.” And she didn’t really want to tell it.

“Yes, I do,” he said pointedly. “I already told you. I’m interested.”

—

Way more interested than I should be. And he did want to hear it, though it killed him that her childhood had been anything less than perfect. He wanted to know every trial she’d ever withstood, every person who’d hurt this woman he couldn’t seem to stay away from. Matt again brushed his thumb over her knuckles, shocked by what simply holding her hand did to him.

“Well, sorry to disappoint, but it’s pretty boring. I went to dozens of foster homes I barely remember, then to a group home, then college.”

He didn’t believe for a second she didn’t remember. Teddy’d had a similar childhood, beginning with his mother abandoning him in a bathroom. He’d joked about it during a SEAL exercise called “drown proofing.”

I got this, guys. My bitch of a mother couldn’t drown me when I was five minutes old.

T had acted like he didn’t care, but Matt knew he did. How could he not? To his dismay T had never once accepted his invitations to join him on leave. Said he didn’t do family. Laughed it off like a teen avoiding parental jail, but Matt saw through it. Just like he saw through Abby.