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  And all this was, this home, it had been a team effort. A team effort of family, however far removed in genetics they might be.

  Though she took great pride in her work, her skills, she tended to forget to look back and remember what she had done.

  It soothed some of the pockets of insecurity and self-pity she’d walked in with. She’d had a part in doing this; she’d built this life for herself out of sheer determination. She wasn’t so badly off.

  “Have a seat. Take a look at our book. It really shows how far this place has come. I’m going to go check and see if Kyle and Grace are here. I’ll be right back.”

  Mom and Dad settled on the fussy couch, Marc in one of the puffy armchairs. It was strange to have them here, but nice. So she sat next to Mom and pulled the book off the coffee table.

  “We show this to customers so they can see what we can do.” She opened the first page. “This is what MC looked like when Jacob bought it. It was our first project. He actually did some work on it before I was hired, so even I didn’t see it this bad.”

  Mom glanced at it quickly, then to where Jacob had been, as if to make sure he had left. She leaned close, resting her hand on Leah’s knee.

  “You’re going to marry him. I just know it.” Mom squeezed her knee, eyes gleaming with joy.

  Any good feelings she’d managed leaked right out of her. “Mom, I’m not getting married. Ever.”

  Mom waved her away.

  “It wouldn’t be fair to...whoever. I’ve...always felt that way.” It was bad enough she couldn’t do the whole kid thing for the stress it would put on her heart, but having a heart transplant at thirteen cut her life expectancy a decent chunk. Add that to all her other issues, and she’d never planned on tying herself to someone that would have to lose her before it was fair. Friends were one thing. Spouses and kids? That was a whole other minefield of hurt.

  Mom leaned in. “He’ll change your mind. I know he will. He’s so perfect and he loves you. And just because pregnancy would be dangerous doesn’t mean there aren’t other options. Surrogacy. Adoption. Jacob does not strike me as the kind of man who’d be hung up on—”

  “Mom, stop.”

  It shocked the hell out of Leah that Marc was the one who spoke. Those words had been in her brain, but she hadn’t been able to voice them because of all the pain clogging her throat. Babies and love and, oh, damn, it all hurt.

  “I’m talking to your sister.”

  “And you’re upsetting her. And Dad. Just...take a step back.”

  Leah glanced at Dad as Mom did; he had a grim look on his face but he didn’t say anything. Marc had barely said ten words the whole two days, but he’d stepped in and stopped Mom. Huh.

  “I don’t know why on earth it’s upsetting. What’s upsetting would be her living alone, but she’s not anymore. She has a good man to look after her and keep her on the right path, keep her healthy and safe. And I think it’s fairly obvious Jacob wants to marry her, if only she’d—”

  Jacob cleared his throat at the entrance to the room. His smile looked pained, but Leah had a feeling he looked way less mortified than she did. Grace and Kyle stood behind him, looking a lot more like she felt.

  “Mrs. Santino, this is my partner, Kyle, and my sister, Grace,” Jacob said, stepping farther into the room.

  “Leah’s told me a bit about you two,” Mom said, smiling. Though Leah had to give her credit for looking at least moderately embarrassed. Everyone stood and exchanged handshakes and introductions.

  Jacob stepped in and led the conversation. Away from marriage and babies and futures, but it couldn’t make Leah forget, unclench the tension in her stomach.

  She’d never been one for forward thinking. The future held little promise; all she could count on was the now. But Mom’s words stuck the way an electrical shock still buzzed over her skin moments after she’d pulled away from the current.

  For who knew what time today, Jacob’s arm slid around her. Shoulders this time, but the gesture was becoming normal almost. Comforting, yes.

  Her heart hurt, so she leaned into him, against all her better instincts. Her head against the crook of his neck. It felt good there. And it felt good to lean, because really? She’d never leaned before. Not really. As a kid, leaning would mean Mom would take away her already limited outside-the-house time. As an adult, leaning meant letting someone all the way in, and she hadn’t done that.

  Not even with the people at MC, the people who’d become her family over the past five years.

  The bottom line was Jacob wouldn’t let her down. Even with...whatever weirdness between them, he wouldn’t drop her. But he might suffocate her, just like Mom.

  Not if he doesn’t know everything.

  Insidious thought.

  “I need some air. I’ll be back in a few.” She had to escape, and it wasn’t fair to leave Jacob holding the reigns, but she couldn’t bring herself to care.

  * * *

  SHE WAS NOT back in a few. Jacob glanced at his phone. It had been at least ten minutes. Grace and Kyle had made their excuses to head out to Carvelle and he needed to do the same. Christmas Eve, and he wanted to be home. Where things made sense. Where he wasn’t going to blab things to Leah he had no business blabbing.

  Because something about talking about all that, especially about the kissing, had led to a whole lot of thinking about kissing. And thinking about the fact he’d been celibate for five months, three weeks and four days. And kissing. And same bed at night.

  And now he was thinking about that in front of Leah’s parents and brother, which was all kinds of wrong, wrong, wrong.

  “Maybe you should go check on her. She wasn’t happy with me.” Mrs. Santino smiled sheepishly. “Can’t say it’s a first. I hope you’re not—”

  “I’ll go find her.” Jacob forced himself to smile his smooth difficult-client smile. One he wouldn’t be able to force if he thought about what he’d walked in on.

  I think it’s fairly obvious Jacob wants to marry her...

  Weird on a whole lot of levels, none of which he wanted to ruminate on. “Feel free to roam. We routinely let clients tour. Any room with an open door is fair game. I’ll be back in a few.”

  “Yes, all right.”

  He wasn’t sure where Leah would have gone, but if he had to guess, he’d go with her workshop. It was private, and she would have had to go outside for “air” to get there.

  He walked across the lawn, shoving his hands in his pockets against the cold bite of chill. When he reached her shed, he didn’t hear any music, but he still had the sneaking suspicion she was in there.

  He could knock, possibly should, but since she’d ditched him with her family, he didn’t feel very magnanimous at the moment.

  Until he stepped inside. Her back was to him, and she was leaning against her stupid Joe Mauer poster, but he didn’t miss the sounds of crying. Not sobs or anything. Just a hitch to her breathing, some sniffles.

  He honest to God hadn’t expected that. “Are you crying?”

  She sniffled again, not turning to face him. “No, me and Joe are just having a moment.” Her voice was squeaky. Yeah, crying.

  “You’re crying into your Joe Mauer poster’s shoulder.”

  She sighed. “Joe understands. And he doesn’t try to cop a feel. Not that I’d mind from Joe.” She patted the crotch region of the poster, causing Jacob to cough out a laugh.

  But when she turned to face him, he lost any and all humor. Her eyes were red-rimmed. Her cheeks were splotched red, too, and not in the alluring way they tended to be when she was embarrassed.

  “Leah.”

  “I just need a few more minutes,” she croaked out. “To...to...get it...together.”

  It killed him to see Leah, of all people, crack like this. He’d never thought she w
as...crackable. Not Leah. He’d figured she’d destroy whatever was in her path first.

  “Leah.” He touched her shoulder. Comfort was something that usually came rather easy to him, but there was something unsettling about comforting someone he’d always viewed as...way stronger than himself.

  Until she turned her head into his shoulder, crying. Then the comfort came as easily as it usually did.

  “Oh, baby, it’s not so bad.” But his heart ached for her, so he ran his hand over the length of her braid, rubbed the other up and down her spine, let her cry against him because she obviously needed it.

  “Why do you keep baby-ing me? You have never once even accidentally called me anything related to a stupid endearment.” She inhaled but it became more of a hiccup, and her head never raised from its spot against his shirt.

  “Yeah, well, you’ve never cried in front of me.”

  “Touché.” She sniffled, and in possibly the oddest moment of his life, she burrowed in. Leah Santino, the woman who he’d always figured would chop her own legs off before she did a thing like need, was resting against him for comfort.

  He swallowed at the tightness in his throat. Some mix of fear and concern and...well, enjoyment. Yeah, he was a dick to enjoy her pain, and he didn’t enjoy that, but he did enjoy the fact she was giving a part of that to him, seeking comfort in him.

  “I need to stop leaning on you,” she said in a croaky voice, still pressed against him.

  He rested his cheek against her hair, because it was there. Because it was kind of nice. “Why? I don’t mind. Lean away.”

  “I mind. Leaning is...” She didn’t ever come up with an ending to that sentence; she just kept leaning. Her cheek resting against his collarbone. Her slowly evening breathing making the rise and fall noticeable considering she was indeed against him.

  Which meant it took a lot of noble thoughts not to think about her breasts.

  She kind of pulled away. Kind of because he didn’t let her go and she didn’t make him, so there was some space between them. But his arms were still around her and her hands were still resting on his chest.

  She looked at him, eyes shading toward blue in the murkiness of her shed. It was a long look, but not the kind a man interrupted. Not if he had any sense. And when her gaze dropped to his mouth, he didn’t let himself breathe. It might spoil it.

  She leaned again, but this wasn’t into him so much as against him. Her body pressing to his, trapping her hands between. When her mouth touched his it wasn’t anything like that first time.

  Her mouth remained on his, and because he wasn’t stupid, he returned the kiss. Since she’d initiated it, he didn’t feel the least bit guilty about kissing her back, drawing her closer. If somewhere in the recesses of his brain he knew this was wrong, his brain didn’t speak up. His mouth, though? It spoke metaphorical volumes.

  Because he trailed his tongue across her bottom lip, and then her mouth parted and he didn’t hesitate to taste. To linger. To discover. He smoothed his hands up her neck, cupping her face, inching his fingers into her hair.

  It was a kiss that did none of the things he’d thought it might, because Leah was right. Usually he had a plan. An endgame. A blueprint. Right now all he had was the softness of her lips, her hands grasping his shirt. Liquid heat, desperate want, and it wasn’t just screaming for sex or release; it was begging for Leah in particular.

  Something changed. Maybe she could read his mind, but she ended the kiss, pulling her face away from his. He couldn’t summon enough brain power to let her go, and she had to be at least somewhat similarly affected because her hands were still fisted in his shirt.

  She blinked up at him, lips parted, cheeks pink, hair tousled. He opened his mouth to say something, or maybe it was to kiss her again. Who was to say, but she released his shirt and stepped away fully, shaking her head.

  “Crap.”

  “That wasn’t crap from where I’m standing.” No, everything about that kiss was good words.

  “Jacob—” She glanced at him, looking rueful, and it made him grin because she had kissed and kept kissing him, touching him, pressing up against him. It had been...big.

  Screw whether it was a good idea or not; it was definitely smile worthy. “I mean it was kind of the opposite of crap. If the opposite of crap is awesome and hot.”

  She pressed her lips together, but the corners of her mouth hitched up. “That...was a bad idea.”

  “Really? Felt amazing.”

  “Okay, so maybe it was those things, too, but it was a bad idea. We are a bad idea, and, quite honestly, this is what I do.”

  “Kiss people?”

  She took a deep breath, squaring her shoulders, building herself back into the Leah he recognized. An odd transformation, but one that did nothing to undercut the painful erection he had going on.

  “I seek out things that are bad for me when I feel...suffocated.”

  She looked sad again and his chest ached. He couldn’t blame her for that feeling. He understood too well what it was like to have your family look at you as something other than what you really were.

  “She can’t force me to marry you,” he said gently. “No matter how much she insinuates to either of us. She can’t change your reality.”

  “It’s not...that. It’s...that she’ll never believe I can handle things on my own. My life. My health.”

  And he didn’t have any words for that because he couldn’t fix it for her. She was right. Mrs. Santino wasn’t going to magically stop doing those things if ten years of separation hadn’t.

  But what she said, the way she referred to her “health,” it poked at him. All those pieces not quite a clear picture. “Speaking of...”

  “No, I—” For the first time since the kiss, she turned her back to him.

  “I’m missing some of the story, aren’t I?” Quite honestly, the question scared him because...he didn’t want to know. Whatever it was. Whatever obvious big picture he was missing, it would change things. He could tell. It wasn’t just the asthma or the allergies. It was bigger, and it was the core of the issue she had with her parents.

  And he’d asked, but he really, really didn’t want to know. Because the only thing he wanted to change was the fact he’d never seen Leah naked, but whatever this was, he had a sinking feeling it wasn’t going to lead to that.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  LEAH KNEW A lot of curse words. She was educated and trained in a male-dominated industry and for a while there she’d hung out with a pretty sketchy crowd. Curse words were like commas to her.

  All of those words failed to express the magnitude of what she’d just done. And the achy longing somewhere around her lady parts was worthy of a lot of magnitude.

  What on God’s green earth was she doing? That was...that was...well, in Jacob’s words, hot and awesome. But also bad. Bad, bad, bad. Kissing him. Oh, such good kissing.

  “Leah.”

  Ugh, he wanted to know about her health issues, and that pretty much killed any lady-parts action. “It’s just not important.” It wasn’t, because aside from a few lifelong complications, her day to day was pretty much normal, healthy adult. Minus all the trigger-avoiding she had to do.

  “Right.” Silence settled over the shed and Leah had to clamp her mouth shut. Words she’d never wanted to speak threatened and only remembering how things would change kept them inside. Sure, Jacob was great for leaning on, for a favor, for kissing—oh, boy, was he—but how would that change if he knew...everything?

  Maybe it wouldn’t.

  She went for the door, ignoring that voice because it was the same one that used to say, What’s one drink? What’s one cigarette? You deserve to be normal. “Jeez, we really need to get back. We just ditched my parents and—”

  Jacob folded his arms. “I told them to loo
k around. We probably have a few minutes left. Your mother understood you were upset. I think they’ll give us some time.”

  “I don’t want her to understand I’m upset.” She squeezed her eyes shut because, damn it, she felt like crying again. Because even with all her mother’s ridiculous notions, Leah didn’t want Mom knowing how bad it made her feel, how it felt as if she was being shrunk into nothing. Overlooked. Ignored. Waved away.

  Her body was faulty, so she needed a keeper. A male keeper. Jacob the Great. Why couldn’t she just roll her eyes and say, “Sure, okay, Mom,” and do whatever the hell she wanted? Why couldn’t she just not care or care enough to change or anything other than stand there in a pool of her own misery?

  Well, sadly, the answer to that was easy. She wanted her mother to love her again. Unconditionally. Like when she’d first started acting out. Mom had been there. Sure, she’d tried to lock her up in the house and keep her from trouble, but no one else had been blamed for her bad behavior.

  Jesus, this was a level of self-analysis she wasn’t at all comfortable with.

  “Leah, talk to me.”

  “I can’t,” she choked out.

  “Why not?”

  “Because. Because...I...I don’t know what to say or how to say it. I don’t know how to process all this...” She gestured to her chest because that was where everything squeezed and ached. “Feeling crap. I don’t know what...how... I don’t know!”

  “Shh.” And he was holding her again and she was leaning again.

  “Damn it, Jacob.” She kind of wanted to punch him because he was being all understanding and sweet and she didn’t have the defenses for that right now.

  Maybe it would feel good to tell him. Maybe it would be okay. Maybe it would ease some of this pressure. “I was born...with a defect.”

  “Defect?” His body tensed, arms tightening around her, and she immediately regretted saying anything.

  Ease the pressure? Jacob knowing she was a ticking time bomb would do nothing but cause more problems when her parents left, and she couldn’t give up the life she’d created for herself. If she had to stifle everything for her family, she wasn’t going to have to do it with her second family.