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Kneeling by her side of the bed, he shook her shoulder. “Emma?”
Her eyelashes fluttered open. As soon as she saw him, she jerked further awake. “Oh, no. Max! Did you test him?”
“It’s okay,” he whispered. “I tested him, but he was only forty-six.”
“Did you feed him?” She tried to sit up, but he pressed her down.
“Of course I fed him. I gave him a can of peaches. I just want to be sure one can’s enough.” He told himself to stop touching her shoulder, but he liked the feel of her bare skin beneath his hand and let it linger. The warmth of her body seemed to spread up his arm like a slow-moving dye, bringing back the memories of a few hours ago.
Slowly the tension he sensed in her dissipated. “It should be enough.”
Preston finally let go of her as she pushed the hair out of her face.
“I’ll have to test him again in a couple of hours,” she said.
“Okay, I’ll set the alarm.” Their eyes met and he smiled. Preston wanted to kiss her, to carry her out into the living room where they could have some privacy. But tomorrow was their last day together. He knew he should leave her alone. “Go back to sleep for now.”
“Preston?”
“What?”
“What’s in Iowa?”
He thought of life as he’d once known it, full of love and laughter and family. Emma seemed to offer him everything he used to have. But Vince was in Iowa. And the past wasn’t finished yet. “An old…friend,” he said bitterly.
“A woman?”
Preston detected a slightly proprietary tone in her voice and felt strangely gratified. Taking her hand, he threaded his fingers through hers one at a time. “No.”
She responded by pressing her palm flat to his.
He stared down at their interlocking fingers. He hadn’t reached out to another living soul since his son died, and he knew better than to form any attachment to Emma. But they were in such a similar place—cast adrift, living a life they’d never expected to live. That connected them already, like two strangers holed up in the same cave to wait out a thunderstorm.
“Can you tell me what happened to your son?” she asked softly.
He didn’t want to talk about Dallas; he never wanted to talk about Dallas. That was partly why he’d alienated himself from almost everyone he’d ever known. There was too much self-recrimination mixed in with his son’s death, recrimination for allowing someone he knew, someone he loved and supported as a close friend, to hurt Dallas. It wasn’t logical. He’d had no idea Vince was the kind of man he’d turned out to be. But that didn’t change the fact that, if Preston had only caught on sooner, he could have changed Dallas’s fate, Christy’s fate, his own fate….
The same thoughts had been whirling through his head for twenty-four months. He was sick of them, sick of the debilitating guilt. Tonight he just wanted to feel—feel Emma close to him, joined to him once again, assuaging that ache in his heart.
Preston didn’t realize he’d squeezed his eyes shut until she tugged on his hand. When he looked up, she slid into the middle of the bed and pulled him toward her.
He could tell she wasn’t offering him anything sexual. But it was crazy for all three of them to be in the same bed. What if he started dreaming and woke up in another cold sweat? Or what if he forgot about Max being there and let his hands wander?
“Preston?”
Her open, honest expression begged him not to say no.
Succumbing to the exhaustion that had settled into his bones several hours ago, he lay down next to her. He’d move to his own bed in a few minutes he told himself, and faced away from her so he wouldn’t be tempted to take more than she was offering.
He assumed he’d be too distracted and cramped to sleep. But when her smaller body cradled his, and she wrapped her arm around him, pressing her cheek to his back, he wasn’t uncomfortable at all. Soon he grew so relaxed, he was incapable of thinking about anything beyond the soft warmth that enfolded him. She held him fast, kept him from drifting, from dreaming, from tossing and turning. By blocking the memories and the past, by keeping him safe from himself, she gave him refuge.
Finally he slept.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
THE ALARM WAS about to go off. Emma wanted to catch it before the noise could disturb the other two people in her bed. But she was sandwiched between her son and the man she’d made love with in the bathroom last night, and even though she barely had room to breathe, she liked being where she was. Cocooned in their warmth, she felt strangely content—considering the state of her life.
Thinking back to the mornings she’d faced every day in her house in San Diego, with empty hour piled on empty hour, and only Manuel’s unwelcome, probing calls to break the tedium, she could scarcely believe she’d managed to flip her life around so completely. No more mansion. No more Jaguar. No more days spent lounging by the pool. But she didn’t miss any of it, because there was also no more Manuel. No more isolation. No more helplessness. Manuel had told her so many times that she could never get by without him. Wouldn’t he be shocked to see how happy she was!
She didn’t need anything. Just her son and—
She turned over to stare at Preston’s whiskered jaw. She hated to admit it, since they’d be separating in Iowa, but he was an integral part of the peace she felt at this moment. She could smell the fabric softener in his freshly laundered T-shirt, hear the steady thump of his heart, and was grateful for the opportunity to snuggle closer to him without his knowing. She’d slept deeply for the first time in a long while, and it was because he made her feel safe despite everything.
Max began to stir. “Mommy?”
Emma rolled over to scoop her son into her arms and kiss his forehead. “What, baby?” she whispered.
His eyebrows knit together when he realized they weren’t alone in the bed. “Did Preston get scared in the night, too?”
Emma laughed at the thought of Preston needing that kind of security and couldn’t believe how carefree it made her feel. How long had it been since she’d found humor in anything? Too long. She’d become old far too soon. But things were going to change.
Her smile lingered as she followed her son’s gaze. She, Preston and Max might be a ragtag bunch of misfits, but together they did okay.
“I knew a beast like you could protect me,” Preston muttered, letting them know he was awake.
Emma’s happiness immediately turned to an acute awareness of the muscular legs entwined with her own, the strength of the male body so close to hers. Waking up with Preston after a night in his arms felt almost as intimate as what had happened between them….
