Free Reunited...With Child by Katherine Garbera Page B

tonight she was lonely and confused and needed a pair of strong arms around her to tell her she wasn’t alone.
    â€œWith what?”
    â€œWith you,” she said.
    â€œI already told you what I want. I want you. I’m not sure what to do with you once I have you but I know I’m not going to let you walk right back out the door.”
    â€œHow about if we try to build a realationship together?” she asked. “Something slow where we get to know each other beyond the sex?”
    â€œThat won’t work.”
    She couldn’t really see his features since he was hidden by the shadows. He stood just out of the light provided by the landscape fixtures.
    â€œWhy not?” she asked. She shook her head and leaned forward to put her head in her hands. “I just need time to breathe.”
    She didn’t hear him move, but a moment later his big hand was on her shoulder rubbing in a circle. “I can give you that.”
    She turned her head to the side and looked up at him. He didn’t have on a shirt, just a pair of low-slung pj bottoms. It was hard for her to see him but she remembered that muscled chest with the light smattering of hair. She reached out and touched him. “I’ve dreamed so many times that you came back to me.”
    â€œYou did?”
    â€œYes. It was so hard doing this alone and I wanted to tell you.” She started crying, surprising herself with how much emotion she’d bottled up since Ty’s birth. “You have no idea…it was only the echo of your words that you wanted a mistress and nothing more that kept my silence.”
    He stroked his hand over her head and then bent down and lifted her up. He sat down on the bench with her or his lap. “You still should have told me, but I understand why you were hesitant to. I’m truly sorry.”
    â€œI am, too,” she said, looking him straight in the eyes. She had no place to put her arm but around his naked shoulder, and she did just that.
    â€œI want to start over. But not from a place of anger,” she said.
    â€œI can try,” he admitted. “But I’m not making any promises. What do you suggest?”
    â€œIt’s obvious we both want to be parents to Ty. I suggest we try to work and live together for his sake.”
    â€œAnd sex?” he asked.
    â€œI’d like to see it develop naturally,” she said. “Not because of some arrangement. Or out of spite.”
    She held her breath. Hoping that Cam was the man she’d glimpsed earlier tonight while they’d played with Ty and made him supper. Hoping he could see that with all this anger between them, they were never going to be able to move on.
    â€œOkay,” he said. “But if you hide anything from me again all bets are off. Ty will be my son alone and you will have no rights to him. I’ll make sure of that.”
    â€œI’m not hiding anything else from you,” she said.
    â€œI’m not kidding,” Cam said.
    â€œNeither am I,” she promised. She wanted that family of her dreams too much to do anything to compromise it. And if Cam was offering her a second chance, she was going to jump on it with both feet.
    He held her in his arms, and they both said little. His hands moved over her as she sat there just listening to the sound of his breathing. She knew that the answers she’d come here seeking were still just out of her reach. But she felt closer to her dreams of a real family and a man who she could trust than she’d ever been before.
    When he tipped her head back and lowered his mouth to hers, she knew she should push away and go back inside. She knew that sex with this man wasn’t safe for her. But she also knew that she’d been alone too long with only her dreams to keep her company—and that every one of them had been of him.

Six
    B ecca might need some breathing room, but all Cam needed tonight was Becca. He’d heard her