Yes, this was it. Being able to get to the very core of Elisa, kissing her and tasting her was what he’d been waiting for. Last time, he hadn’t taken the opportunity to explore her this thoroughly. Now she was his. Lying like a goddess on her girly comforter, she was all his.
Brody nudged her thighs wider apart, so his shoulders could fit in between them. He glanced up to find her watching him: those big, deep brown eyes gazing back at him with unadulterated passion. With a grin, he placed a light kiss on her inner thigh. Her gasp pleased him, filled him with male satisfaction. He’d just moved higher, almost to the sweet spot, when his cell phone rang.
Elisa lifted her head off the pillow and glanced to the floor, where his phone was tucked in the pocket of his pants. Brody had no intention of answering the thing. Not when he was moments away from experiencing the most delectable woman on Earth. He placed another kiss on her thigh when she stopped him.
“Brody, wait. Shouldn’t you get that?” Her voice was deeper and huskier than usual.
He didn’t move from his position in between her thighs. “Are you insane?”
A shadow of uncertainty crossed into her eyes. “What if it’s Tyler?”
He forced his brain to function normally, and he glanced at the clock. Tyler would just be getting out of school, so he could be calling.
Shit.
Here he was bare-ass naked, seconds away from losing himself in Elisa’s tight body, and he had to take a damn phone call. But he would never ignore his son for anyone or anything. Elisa and her tight body would have to wait.
He reluctantly dragged himself off the bed, fumbled around for the cursed phone, and answered it.
“Hello,” he answered with a sharp tone.
“Brody, we really need to talk,” his ex-wife announced in a no-nonsense tone, as though she expected him to say “yes, ma’am,” like some fucking kid.
He snatched his boxers off the floor and stepped into them. “I really don’t need this right now, Kelly.”
“Tough shit, Brody. This is not going away just because you don’t want to talk about it.”
From behind him came the rustling of sheets, as though Elisa didn’t want to lie around exposing herself. He glanced back just as she’d pulled a cream-colored sheet over her glorious breasts. Goddamn Kelly.
Elisa’s eyes remained fixed to his, a sort of compassion and understanding softening her features. His heart melted a little and he dug for the strength to deal with his ex-wife and her inopportune phone call. He stepped from the room and walked down the hallway.
“I already told you, you’re not taking Tyler out of Wyoming. I’ll never see him.”
Kelly’s heavy sigh reverberated through the phone. “And you haven’t taken the time to really listen to me. Colin and I don’t have a lot of choices or a lot of time. We need to make a decision, and we can’t take Tyler out of state without your consent.”
The dog Elisa had been nursing trotted over on its gimpy leg and nudged Brody’s thigh with his cold nose. He ignored the animal and paced to the sliding glass door. “You don’t have my consent. Decision made.”
“I understand your concern, Brody—”
“I told you, I can’t talk about this right now.”
“You keep saying that.” Her words had taken on a desperate edge, very similar to how she often spoke to him during the final months of their marriage.
Brody leaned his head against the cool glass of the back door. “I said not now, Kelly. You can’t expect me to make this kind of decision over the phone. I need more time.”
“You said that the other day. I don’t know how much more time I can give you.”
“You’ve only given me a few days to process this. I promise we’ll talk about it, but not now. Not over the phone.”
Kelly didn’t respond for a moment and he heard Tyler’s voice in the background, something about a book he needed to check out from the library. Something inside twisted at the sound of his son’s voice. Brody could picture him now, his blond hair clipped close to his head, his mother’s green eyes lighting up with laughter or looking up at Brody with hero worship.
Those days are over, dickhead.
The thing that had twisted inside him grew sharper, more painful, like a living creature had crawled inside his gut.
His eyelids dropped closed and he inhaled a deep breath. He couldn’t lose his son. Brody couldn’t live a world that Tyler wasn’t a part of. Living a few streets over, he could handle. But three states away? Once-a-year visits and a few phone calls a month? Brody would rather drop dead.
“All right,” Kelly finally said. “Come over later and we’ll talk.” She disconnected the phone call without giving him a chance to respond. Kelly had gotten good at that toward the end of their marriage. Sometime before their divorce, she’d lost her ability to give a shit what he thought. Brody had always known how much in love with him Kelly was. At one point she’d worshipped the ground he walked on. That had changed, and he was one hundred percent to blame.
So is the situation you’re in right now.
He wrapped his fingers around his cell phone in a death grip, wanting so badly to crush the thing until it was nothing but jagged pieces.
Damn Kelly for doing this to him. Was she still punishing him for what he’d done? If so, he deserved it. He’d been a weak bastard, hell bent on drowning his sorrows and too stupid to think about the consequences. But even if he deserved Kelly’s anger, it didn’t mean he was going to allow her to take Tyler so far away. And Tyler didn’t deserve any of this. He’d been an innocent bystander of his parents’ dysfunction. Was Kelly even thinking how moving so far away would affect Tyler?
Brody pushed away from the door and headed back toward the bedroom. The scene was exactly how he’d left it a moment ago: clothes scattered on the floor and Elisa on the bed, covering that sinful body with a sheet.
“Sorry about that,” he said as he tossed his phone on the dresser.
“It’s okay.” She blinked up at him with those big eyes of hers, as though trying to break through his stubborn-assed mind to the thoughts beneath. “Do you want to talk?”
He stood there, staring at her, half naked in his boxers and coming dangerously close to sporting another boner. But his dilemma with Kelly chased away any erotic feelings he’d had.
Elisa sighed. “You won’t scare me away, Brody. No matter how hard you’re trying to, I won’t be scared away.”
And for the first time in a long time, Brody found himself wanting to spill his guts.
SIXTEEN
BRODY’S ANGUISH HAD BECOME SUCH a burden for him, following him around and clouding his everyday thoughts. In the past, he’d become a master at masking over the shell of the man he’d once been, at making his family believe he hadn’t changed. He’d once been honorable, marrying Kelly because it had been the right thing, providing for his child, defending Lacy when Chase had thrown out a muddled marriage proposal. There was none of that left in him anymore. The truth was he hated himself. He hated the reality that he was solely responsible for.
So, yeah—without a doubt, he deserved the hell he was going through.
For some insane reason Elisa saw the man he once was. It was evident just by the way she looked at him, very similar to the way Kelly had once looked at him. Elisa believed in him. Hadn’t she said that to him once before, at the restaurant? That she believed in him? How had he not managed to scare her off? He didn’t deserve her admiration.
“Brody, are you all right?”
He sat next to her on the edge of the bed and tried to ignore the sheet that was barely covering her breasts.