The Street Where She Lives

CHAPTER FIVE

BEN PUSHED Rachel’s chair forward, then hesitated at the base of the spiral staircase in her living room. “Where’s your bedroom?”

Rachel hesitated, too. It just seemed too surreal, having him right here, behind her, his hands so close to touching her where they rested on the wheelchair grips by her shoulders. Plus, he’d leaned down to hear her answer, which meant she could smell him, feel his heat, his strength…

“Rachel? Your bedroom?”

How had this happened? How was he standing here, in control, in her house?

Because she’d been outsmarted by her own child, that’s how! All those years of successfully avoiding him, and here he was. Unbelievable. “This is so not necessary.”

“Your bedroom, Rach. Or, if you’d rather, I can take you to mine.” He shifted her chair around to look at her, so that she couldn’t avoid his dark eyes that had already managed to see past her carefully erected defenses.

She stared at the silver stud in his ear and did her best to ignore the blatant sexuality that rolled off him in waves. “Mine will do,” she said primly.

His sigh brushed over the cap she’d shoved back on her head. Then he straightened, his hands on his hips. His shirt pulled taut over his chest that she remembered being lean, almost too lean.

But he’d filled out. He was still rangy, still tough, but his young body had grown into a man’s.

Not that she was noticing.

“Someone else could help me,” she said desperately. “Anyone else. It doesn’t have to be you.”

“Where is your bedroom?”

She sighed. “Upstairs.”

He eyed the firefighter’s pole, then the spiral staircase. “I don’t think the stairs are going to work.”

“The elevator.”

“You have an elevator.” He let out a low whistle. “Why am I not surprised?”

Since he’d walked in her front door, she’d been holding herself tense, and it hurt. She wanted to be alone, to let go. The only way to do that was to appease him for now. “The place is a renovated firehouse. It came with the elevator. I didn’t add it.”

“You sound a little defensive.”

She ground her back teeth into powder. Hell, yes, she was defensive. She was always defensive. She’d learned young to shut herself down, happily existing in an emotional vacuum. Until Ben had come along, that is. Without a dime to his name, he’d done what no one else ever had-showed her all the things so missing from her own world…passion, emotion. Life. He’d wanted her, not just physically, and had never failed to show her so.

The force of what he’d felt back then, crashing into her cold, impersonal world, had terrified her. With good reason. Their fundamental differences had turned out to be a bridge impossible to cross.

Yet, you’d crossed it, came the unwelcome thought. For six months you crossed it and thrived on it.

Ben pushed her into the elevator. They waited in agitated silence for the doors to slide shut, and once they did, Rachel wished they hadn’t.

The space was small and lined with mirrors, which meant she could see herself, reduced and weak and defenseless in the damn chair. Worse, she could see him standing tall and strong behind her. “This is ridiculous.”

“My being here?” Ben locked his eyes on hers in the reflection of the mirrors. “Get used to it.”

That got a rough laugh from her, and a sharp pain shot through her ribs for the effort. It robbed her of breath, of all thought, and she squeezed her eyes shut, tensing up with a small cry.

Big hands settled on her thighs, surprisingly gentle for their size, as was his low, urgent voice. “Relax. Let it go. Breathe, Rachel.”

No, she wasn’t going to breathe, that would hurt worse. She was never going to breathe or move again. “Go…away.”

“Breathe,” he repeated, running his fingers lightly over her thighs. “Come on, slow and easy. In and out.”

She did and, shockingly enough, it helped. So did his voice, talking to her softly, over and over, reminding her to relax, breathe. Slowly, she opened her eyes to see him kneeling in front of her. “That…was your fault.”

“Undoubtedly. Everything is my fault. Keep breathing now. Slow and easy.”

“I know how to breathe.”

He surged to his feet as the elevator door opened and turned away from her. “What I’m surprised at,” he noted casually, pushing her off the elevator, “is that you still know how to laugh.”

She sucked in a gulp of air and tried to pretend that comment didn’t hurt worse than her ribs. Oh, yes, she knew how to laugh-he’d taught her. Had he forgotten? Forgotten everything they’d once meant to each other?

She was silent as he wheeled her down the hallway lined with collages of photos from the years past, starting with Emily’s birth. One shot of Emmie-small and red, wrinkled and furious, howling as she told the world how she felt about being born. Another of Rachel holding her bundle of joy, smiling with wet eyes at the now quiet baby, who stared right back at her. The two of them. Even then, it had been just the two of them against the world.

Later photos of Emily learning to walk, sitting on Rachel’s lap while Rachel drew a Gracie comic strip on her easel, another of Emily putting candles in a homemade cake for her mother’s birthday.

There was a shot of Melanie on one of her visits from Santa Barbara, puckering up for Emily’s four-foot teddy bear. A picture of the firehouse when they’d first purchased it, before renovations. And then subsequent pictures of Rachel and Emily and Melanie, covered in paint as they worked on the place. There was a picture of her neighbor Garrett with Emily riding on his shoulders. A picture of Gwen, Rachel’s agent, her arms around both Rachel and Emily, who held Rachel’s first impressive royalty check.

Behind her, Ben said nothing, and she wondered if he was even looking at the pictures, looking and feeling odd for not being in a single one. Did he feel left out?

Strange, but she didn’t want him to. Despite everything, she didn’t want that. She had Emily, her greatest gift, her greatest joy, because of him. She owed him for that, which was why, whenever he’d asked, she’d sent Emily to him via Melanie.

Bottom line was, she had this house and Emily. This was her world-stable, safe and secure. It meant everything.

In comparison, Ben had a duffel bag and a few cameras to his name. That was it as far as she knew. He liked it that way, or he had.

That they’d made it together for even six months so long ago seemed amazing now.

“Rach?” As if she were the finest, most fragile piece of china, Ben set a light, careful hand on her shoulder. “You okay? You’ve gone quiet and pale on me.”

His fingers brushed her collarbone like a feather, and a shiver raced down her spine. Not signifying cold, but something far more devastating. “I’m…fine.”

Another brush of those fingers, a testing one this time, while his eyes held hers. “Rachel,” he murmured. “It’s still there. Can you feel it?”

“I-” No, she wanted to say, but lying was ridiculous when surely he could feel the blood pounding through her body at just a single touch. Again, he squatted in front of her.

“You still have those eyes,” he murmured. “The ones that make me melt.”

She let out a nervous smile.

He smiled back.

“I have no idea why I’m smiling at you.”

His fingers traveled up, up, cupped her face. “I don’t care. Just keep doing it.”

She stopped breathing. His gaze was locked on hers as he slowly let his thumbs stroke her jaw. Her body responded, giving her a jolt of pleasure instead of pain for once, as if it recognized that this man, and only this man, had given her such incredible pleasure.

Ben let out a rough, disbelieving sound, then cupped the back of her head, gently holding her still as he shifted his mouth toward hers.

Move, Rachel told herself, and she did-closer, matching up their lips. It was unfathomable, unthinkable. He had no business touching her, and she had no business wanting him to, but she did. Oh, how she did.

The first light touch of lip to lip dissolved her bones, and all the pain with it. Needing the balance, she put out her right hand, gripping his chest. Beneath his shirt, his heart thumped steadily. A bit dazed now, she simply stared up at him.

With a soft murmur of her name, he changed the angle of her head and connected again. His mouth was warm, firm, giving, so beautifully giving that her eyes drifted shut and she lost her ability to put words together, to do anything but feel.

His tongue lightly stroked her lips. Struck by a familiarity and strangeness all at once, she moaned, then again when a slow, deep thrust of his tongue liquefied her. She fisted her fingers in his shirt, holding him close, making him groan deep in his throat.

The sound was raw, staggeringly sensual, but then he was pulling back, letting out a slow breath.

She did the same, but it didn’t change the fact she could still taste him and wanted, needed, more.

But that had never been their problem, the wanting.

“Your bedroom,” he said a little roughly.

“The next room down.”

He moved behind her, gripped her chair. Once inside, he stopped. There was a picture hanging on the wall, an eight-by-ten from two years before, of Emily wearing a sundress, beaming from ear to ear, holding up her elementary school diploma. Her eyes sparkled with such joy, such life, it hurt to even look at her, but Rachel looked anyway, just as she sensed Ben looking.

Did he see it? The resemblance, not so much physical, though that was there, too, but the very essence? The soul? It must have been like looking in a mirror.

God knows their daughter hadn’t gotten her sense of adventure and spirit from Rachel. Before Ben, she’d had nothing like that until he’d come along and had shared his. He’d done more than share: he’d somehow gotten so close, he’d breathed his very being into her, bringing her to life during the time they’d had together.

But Emily…she’d been full of life from day one.

“She’s beautiful,” Ben said quietly. “Like you.”

“Ben-”

“Let’s get you into bed.”

For a moment she thought he’d said “let’s get into bed,” and her heart jerked. Yes.

No.

But when he came to stand in front of her, his face was grim, so obviously her brain was messing with her again. “Don’t try to move,” he said. “I’ll lift you.”

She stopped breathing, realizing just that very second what his being here really meant. He was going to have to help her, look at her.

Touch her.

Before the panic fully gripped her, he moved, not toward her, but to her dresser, where he randomly opened one of her drawers. Shaking his head at the rows of socks, he closed it and opened another.

“What are you looking for?”

He lifted a loose, flowing silky camisole and matching bottoms, and his eyebrows at the same time. “Wow.”

The two pieces were the palest of blue, softer than baby’s breath, and her favorite thing to sleep in. And yet dangling from his long fingers, the innocent pj’s suddenly seemed like the sexiest things she’d ever seen.

She was not putting them on.

“You used to wear buttoned-up-to-the-chin flannel to bed, remember?”

“I was a kid.”

Something flickered in his eyes. “Not so much.”

Before she could come up with something to say to that, he’d tossed the pj’s on his shoulder and started toward her.

In spite of the exhaustion, the pain, she managed to shake her head. “I am not putting that on for you.”

He turned down her bed and laughed, a low, husky sound that grated at every hormone in her entire body. “You’re right about that. You’re putting it on for you.”

“Ben.”

“Rachel,” he mimicked, then in opposition to his easygoing toughness, he slid his arms around her, making her breath back up in her throat, making every single thought dance right out of her head.

“Easy now,” he murmured. “It’s loose and stretchy, so it should go on easily.” And gently, so gently she felt like she was being lifted by air, he rose with her in his arms. “Okay?” His eyes roamed her features, his mouth tight in concern.

A concern she didn’t want. “Put me down.”

He did, on the bed, and a myriad of things hit her at once. Pain from the jarring, no matter how careful he’d been. Comfort from the feel of her own bed after so many weeks. And sheer overwhelming devastation from the feel of his hands on her.

Then he reached for the buttons on her short-sleeved blouse. She let out a sound that make his gaze jerk up to hers.

“You can’t undress yourself,” he said reasonably.

“I’ll- I’ll sleep in my clothes.”

“Oh, that’ll be comfortable.” He looked into her stubborn face and sighed, stroking a light finger over her cheekbone. “You’re wearing your exhaustion like a coat. Just let me help you.”

She opened her mouth and he put his finger to it. “There was a time you let me help you with anything. Remember?”

She didn’t want to remember, but somehow his touch, like his kiss, insinuated itself past her bone deep weariness and pain, and struck her like a bolt of awareness lightning. “Get Emily. She’ll help me.”

Slowly Ben shook his head and removed the bunny slippers Emily had put on her feet at the hospital. “She’s making you dinner. Mac and cheese. She’s under the impression you’re going to bounce right back now that you’re home. Bringing her up here now, when you look half a breath away from death, would only scare her.”

She closed her eyes when his fingers brushed over her buttons again, squeezed them tighter as he pulled the blouse open and gently off her shoulders, past the cast on her arm, taking such slow, aching, tender care with her broken body she felt her eyes burn.

No. No falling apart until you’re alone.

He unhooked her bra and slid it off before pulling the stretchy, laced pj’s top over her head, very tenderly guiding her casted arm through the wide armhole. The material tugged at her nipples, and a shocking bolt of desire streaked through her.

Her eyes flew open, met his. Once upon a time he’d caused that reaction, in quite different circumstances. Did he remember? Judging from the strain in his face, the slight tremble to his hands as he dragged her loose pants down her legs, hardly shifting her casted leg at all, he did remember.

Determined to feel nothing as he pulled on her pj’s bottoms, then covered her up with the comforter on her bed, she concentrated on breathing, concentrated on not going down memory lane every single time she so much as glanced at him.

He moved off the bed and opened her bedroom window, letting in some of the early evening breeze. And unbidden, another memory hit her. Him crossing her bedroom just like he was now, his tall, lanky form turning to shoot her a crooked grin as he eased open her window and swung a leg over the sill at the crack of dawn, preparing to leave after a long, forbidden night of touching, kissing, talking, loving.

Now, Ben’s mouth curved wryly with the same memory. “I guess this time I can use the door instead of nearly killing myself climbing down the trellis. Remember?”

Her body shuddered. It was damn hard to feel nothing, to refuse to go down memory lane with him saying “Remember?” in that sexy voice every two minutes. “Tell me again why you have to do this, Ben. Why you have to stay.”

He turned away. “Do you really think that little of me, that you believe I wouldn’t?”

“I think you’re crazy if you expect me to fall for the reasoning that you want to be here, in South Village, tied to one house, one spot, when everything within you yearns to be on the move.”

He moved to the door. “Well, then, call me crazy.”

“But why? You can’t want to be here.”

“This has nothing to do with what I want.” He glanced at her over his shoulder. “Just get better. Get better and it’ll be over before you know it. Then you can go back to your safe, sterile life and forget I bothered you for one moment of it.”

The door shut behind him, and before she could obsess, sleep took over her battered body, releasing her from thinking, aching, wondering.

But not from dreaming.

TWO MONTHS BEFORE high school graduation, National Geographic contacted Ben. They wanted him to intern with one of their photographers for the summer in Venezuela. If that worked out, he’d have an assignment waiting for him in the fall in South Africa.

“Come with me,” he said to Rachel.

They sat in their hidden-away spot in the botanical gardens behind city hall, their common meeting place, halfway between their respective houses.

Rachel lifted her gaze off the letter in his hands and stared at him. He was more animated than she’d ever seen him, even in the throes of passion, and she knew why. He’d been waiting his entire life to leave this town, and now he had a chance.

But she’d been waiting her entire life to stay in one place longer than it took to order and cancel cable service. She’d moved once a year for as long as she could remember, and she was weary, so damn weary.

She loved South Village; loved the joyous crowds, the urban streets, the sights, the smells, everything. This town was her life, her heart. She loved it here and didn’t want to leave, not even for Ben. If she left, her life with him would be no different than it was now-just a blur of moving, moving, moving, when all she wanted was a home.

“Rach?”

“I want to stay.”

“No, we have to go. There’s nothing for me here, you know that.”

Actually, she’d only guessed, as he never told her about his family. It was the one thing he’d always refused to discuss.

“It’s my future,” he said hoarsely, telling her only how much this meant to him, but not why.

Oh, God, letting him go, watching him walk away, would be like ripping out a part of her, the best part. “I can’t.” Her heart got stuck in her throat because she knew. He was destined to go.

And she was destined to stay.

“You’ll come,” he said confidently. But they didn’t speak of it again because shortly after that Rachel caught the flu-a nasty bug that dragged on and on, weakening her, tiring her.

After watching her throwing up every afternoon at four o’clock on the dot for a week running, Ben took her to a clinic. “Does she need antibiotics?” he demanded of the doctor, squeezing her hand as they waited for an answer.

“Nope.” The doctor shook his head. “What you’re cooking isn’t contagious. It’s a baby.”