Ryder was staring back at her, looking like he wanted to say something to reassure her, but then he nodded slowly. “I understand,” he said, his voice low and gentle. “You were in shock. And I know exactly what you mean about not being able to trust again.”
She tilted her head as she gazed back at him. “You do?”
He drew in a big breath and as he did his nostrils flared. Then he nodded. “There was a woman I almost married…until I found out she was pregnant for my best friend.”
CHAPTER TEN
Blake sucked in her breath. “What did you say?” The words came out in a whispered rush. It wasn’t even that she wanted him to repeat the words. The shock was that Ryder had a story that sounded like it was even worse than hers. “She was...pregnant?”
Ryder gave her hand a squeeze and then he got up and walked over to the sideboard, his back to her. “We’d been together four years. We were engaged and planning to get married next year. Then she got pregnant.” Ryder stopped and for a long while there was silence. He was so still it looked like he wasn’t breathing. Then he shook his head. “I can’t believe I was over the moon when she told me.” Another silence then his shoulders sagged. “Until two days later she worked up the courage to tell me the baby wasn’t mine.”
“Oh, my God.” The whispered words slipped out before Blake could stop them. She didn’t have to guess at Ryder’s devastation. She could see it in the way he lowered his head and in the way he gripped the edge of the sideboard. Ryder was hurting and it tore at her heart to witness his suffering.
Not even pausing to give it thought, she got up and went to him and laid a gentle hand on his shoulder. She didn’t say anything. Sometimes words were not enough. With her touch she was telling him that she was there.
The strange thing was, once she’d heard of Ryder’s pain her own feelings of hurt and loss slid into the background and all she could feel was a new protectiveness toward him. It really wasn’t her affair but she just wanted to make things better.
“Let’s go for a walk,” she said softly. “I think we’d both do good with some fresh air.”
Ryder nodded then turned and took her hand. His face looked surprisingly calm but Blake was not fooled. Beneath that placid surface a storm of emotions raged. The pain reflected in his eyes said it all.
They walked in silence, out of the house and into Peggy’s backyard garden. After the intense conversations in the dining room it was the right place to be. Peggy had filled the yard with shrubs, herbs and abundant flowers of a variety of hues and fragrances. The soft breezes of the Texas night stirred the leaves of the trees that stood sentry at both ends of the back porch and lined the outer edges of the garden.
Blake and Ryder walked slowly along the garden path, still holding hands, drawing in the soothing sensations and giving themselves over to the spirit of the garden. They made it to the concrete bench at the bottom, to the arbor, and there they sat down under the outstretched branches of an old oak tree.
It was only when they were sitting that Ryder finally released her hand. “Sorry,” he said with a crooked smile. “I didn’t mean to crowd you like that.”
“You didn’t.” She smiled back and then she tilted her head to look up at the deep, dark velvet of the sky above. Her smile widened. “We’ve got a crescent moon tonight,” she said. “They call it the waxing crescent, which means we should have a full moon in about three or four weeks. And look at the stars.” She sighed. “There’s nothing so beautiful as a starry night in Texas Hill Country.”
His body relaxed against the arm of the bench, Ryder tilted his head to follow her gaze. “I see Ursa Major,” he said, “and Leo Minor.”
“Where?” She turned to glance at Ryder and then peered back up at the sky. “How can you figure them out?”
“I was into astronomy when I was a kid. I even joined the astronomy club in high school.” He reached up to point at a blur of stars on the other side of the sky. “And over there’s Cygnus.”
“Cyg…what? Where?” Blake was frowning now. She couldn’t see a thing. No forms, no patterns, nothing. How did Ryder make them out? She got to her feet so she could get a better look. “Where is it?”
Ryder got up, too, and came to stand right behind her then he took her hand, raised it to the sky and used her finger to point. “It’s right over there, a constellation of four brilliant stars, standing together. Do you see it?”
He was standing close, his body almost touching her back, and the warmth of his nearness was too distracting for words. She was having a hard time breathing. “I…don’t know,” she said, her voice breathless. “I’m…trying to see it.” She swallowed, her nerves jangling, her heart pounding so loud she began to fret that Ryder could actually hear it. “Is it those stars over there?”
Ryder’s arm circled her waist and he tilted her back against him, making her gaze fall farther north. His arm was still stretched out along hers and he shifted her hand and her pointing finger ever so slightly. “It’s right there,” he said. “Do you see it now?”
Jesus, she was leaning back against him, her body pressed against his, the muscles of his torso imprinted on her back. How the heck could she concentrate on constellations and stars and the heavens when all she could see, all she could feel, was Ryder Kent? “Yes,” she whispered desperately, “I see it. I see it now.” Which, of course, she didn’t. She just wanted him to bring his arm down so he could wrap both of them around her. She wanted him to turn her around and kiss her and make her see stars…not the ones in the sky but the ones that shot off like fireworks when you touched lips with that special someone who could make your body turn electric.
And then, like he’d read her mind, or maybe he was feeling it, too – the sparks of electricity that were making her gasp – he did turn her around, to gaze down into her eyes. “May I kiss you?” he asked, his voice soft and low.
She drew in her breath, her eyes half-closed. “Yes,” she whispered back. “Please, yes.”
And when he lowered his head she was ready. He touched his lips to hers and the electric sparks ignited into a fire that made her reach her hands up to cling to him.
As if her reaction was the permission he’d been waiting for, Ryder tightened his arms around her and his tentative touch now turned insistent. He molded his lips to hers, tempting her, teasing her until her lips parted with a soft sigh and she gave him entry. It was what she’d wanted all this time. It was what she craved. More than that, it was what she needed.