“I love you. Isn’t that enough?”
He scowled like it pained him to hear my words. “For now,” he murmured and then shut his eyes and turned away from me.
The next morning was Christmas Eve. After three cups of coffee, I was a jittering fool, so it might have been a bad decision to call Paul Sullivan back, but I did.
“Hello.”
“Thi—thi—this is Kate Corbin returning your call.” I couldn’t help but feel nervous. This guy knew my mother, but I didn’t know him.
“Hello, Kate. I was trying to find the whereabouts of Ann Corbin. I was going down a list of Corbins in the city, calling each one, and landed on you.”
“Ann was my mother,” I said quickly. “She died in 1994.”
“Oh.” He sounded stunned. “I’m so sorry.”
“Did you know my mother?”
“Briefly. In the Eighties.”
“How brief?”
“We dated right up until she met Samuel.” Who the fuck was Samuel? Was he my dad? Oh god. “Kate, are you there?”
“Can I meet you? I mean, can we meet for coffee or something? I don’t know who Samuel is. My mother never spoke of him.” Jamie was watching me from the kitchen with concern. He stood, eyes wide, with the coffeepot suspended in the air. I held my hand over my heart in some futile attempt to physically slow the rapid beats down.
“Yes, we can meet. Are you free this afternoon?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, how about the Starbucks on State at three o’clock?”
“Perfect, see you then.” When I hung up, Jamie was at my side in a second.
“What did he say?”
“He just said he knew my mom and that they dated until she met Samuel. I never heard that name from Rose or my mom.”
He wrapped his arms around me and brought me to his chest. “Maybe this will be good for you. Maybe you’ll get to know more about your mother.”
“I asked my mom about my father once. It upset her so much she could barely speak. I figured he was a deadbeat or something, but maybe Paul will be able to fill in some of the blanks. Rose always said if my mom wanted me to know, she would have told me. That makes me think my father, whoever he is, is a very bad person.”
“You don’t know that, and you don’t know what your mother’s reasons were.”
“You’re right, but I wonder if I’m going against her by digging into this. I guess she’s gone, and it doesn’t matter now. But still . . .” I leaned up on my tippy-toes and pecked his lips. “I’m going to do some laundry. Do you want to get lunch before we meet Paul?”
“I can go with you?”
“Of course.” I slid my hand down the back of his flannel pj’s and squeezed his butt. “Wanna do it in the shower to take my mind off of things?”
He scooped me up and carried me to the bathroom before stripping my clothes off in record time. He turned the shower on, took a step back, and scanned me from head to toe. I pulled his pants down as I knelt in front of him. He shivered and then clutched the back of my head.
“Baby, you don’t have to do that,” he said and then moaned. After he was thoroughly turned on, he lifted me up and kissed me while he backed me into the shower. “Turn around, sexy,” he said. When I turned my back to him, he instantly grabbed my hands and pressed them onto the tiles above my head. He leaned in and whispered, “I love you,” into my ear. I parted my legs and gasped when he pushed into me forcefully.
“You okay?”
“God, yes, just go.” He slid his hands down my arms, reached around with one hand, and began circling the sensitive skin above where we were connected. He gripped my neck hard with his other hand and continued his strong thrusts until we were both breathing loudly and moaning. I threw my head back, and his mouth instantly went to my neck and sucked and kissed and tugged. Then he gently bit my earlobe, and I fell apart, shouting, “I love you, too!”
After a lengthy tryst in the shower, I joked with Jamie about how much water his environmentally conscious ass wasted while he worked me over. He laughed and then tried to lick the water droplets off my body.
“See, the water isn’t totally wasted.”
I dressed quickly while Jamie spread out on my bed in just a towel.
“I’m gonna get used to having you in my bed all the time.”
“So.”
I just looked back and shook my head at him. After collecting my laundry and some of Jamie’s, I headed for the door.
“I can do that,” he said. He had dropped his towel and was standing naked by my dresser, about to give himself a shot. He pinched the skin and jabbed the needle in.
“I’ve got it. You’ve been doing my laundry for weeks. I can do it now.”
“It’s Christmas Eve. You shouldn’t be doing laundry on Christmas Eve.”
“It’s just one load. I’ll throw it in and be back in a sec.”
The washers in the basement laundry room were full. Irritated, I turned on my heel and ran right into Dylan coming toward me.
“Hey, chica.”