The words Stella had spent her entire childhood desperate to hear had finally been said.
Gloria wiped her eyes. “Goodness I haven’t cried this much since my hamster escaped and got eaten by the neighbor’s cat.”
Stella chuckled, despite the heaviness hanging around the room. Leave it to her mom to crack a joke in the middle of sniffling into a tissue.
“Did you bury it?” Stella asked.
Gloria laughed and dabbed her eyes. “There wasn’t anything to bury. My mom made the cat’s owner buy me a new hamster. Sadly, that one, Richard the Third, died two weeks after I got him.” She blew out a wistful sigh. “He was the last hamster I ever owned. Actually, he was the last pet I ever owned.”
They sat in silence for a moment, nothing but the ticking of a wall clock making noise. “I’m sorry,” Stella said again.
Gloria placed a hand on Stella’s knee and squeezed. “Honey, you have nothing to be sorry for. I’m the one who’s screwed up.”
Stella knew those words would be the last of their heartfelt talk or any kind of journey down memory lane. As painful as it had been, Stella couldn’t help but feel a moment of relief that the two of them had aired their feelings.
“Hey, what’d you say we go buy a hamster and name him Richard the Fourth?”
Gloria gave Stella’s leg another squeeze. “Oh, sweetie,” she said with more tears in her eyes. “There was no Richard the Fourth.”
Typical smart-ass comment from her mom. And yeah, Stella kind of liked it.
Seventeen
Brandon eyed the pink satin shoes dangling from Stella’s slim fingers, unsuccessfully trying to hold back the distrust that was mingling the horror in his gaze. “Not just no,” he told her, “but hell no.”
She offered a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. Was it just him, or was something up with her this morning? “Relax, they’re not for you.” She held the shoes out for Matt.
Matt blinked but didn’t take them. “Uh…”
Brandon yanked the shoes from Stella’s grasp.
Stella’s bright blue eyes narrowed at him. “Will you calm down?” She jerked the odd-looking shoes back. “They’re not for him to wear.”
With a hesitant reach, Matt accepted the shoes and turned them this way and that. “Not that I don’t appreciate your…gift,” his son said, “but what am I supposed to do with them?”
Stella clasped her hands behind her back. “Just think of them as a token of our time together. Most dancers take years and years to get into a pair of toe shoes. I’d say you’ve earned them.”
“Toe shoes?” Matt repeated while still scrutinizing them. “They’re so odd-looking. And they look like they’d kill.”
Stella shrugged. “They’re not so bad if you have enough padding shoved around your toes. You eventually get used to the pain.”
Brandon eyed Stella as she spoke with Matt, thinking she was different this morning. The feistiness that lit up her eyes whenever she was around him wasn’t there. What had changed since they’d seen each other last? Her guard was thrown back up and he didn’t know why.
“Matt, give us a minute.” Brandon wrapped his palm around Stella’s bicep, loving how cool and soft her skin was. He ushered her outside so Matt wouldn’t overhear.
Stella’s eyes hardened as she pulled her arm out of his grasp. He thought about holding on, because he loved touching her, but he didn’t want to piss her off further. “What’re you doing?”
“What’s up?” he prodded.
Her cool eyes blinked. “What’d you mean?”
Brandon crossed his arms over his chest and braced his feet apart, fully prepared for a battle. Nothing was ever easy with this woman. “I mean the attitude. The blank stares. The fake smiles. What’s up with you, Stella?”
Something flashed across her eyes for a brief second. If Brandon hadn’t been looking, he might have missed the fear that darkened her gaze. But he was too good, knew her too well to dismiss whatever walls she was trying her hardest to throw up. “Nothing,” she said.
“Nothing,” he repeated.
She nodded. “Yep, nothing.”
It was a bullshit answer if he ever heard one, but he didn’t call her out on it because he didn’t want to scare her off. Because he knew she’d run scared if she had any idea what was going through his mind or what he wanted to do to her.
Except…yeah, screw it.
He got all up in her personal space, practically wanting to pound his chest in triumph when her narrowed eyes widened. Yeah, he had her right where he wanted her. She pretended she was such a good actress, but her gasp gave her away when he snaked one arm around her waist and tunneled the other in her thick hair.
She opened her mouth, probably to tell him to go to hell, but Brandon cut her off with a fierce kiss. The sort of kiss that stole her breath and cemented the reality that he could never let her go. Hell yeah, this was what he’d been fantasizing about since being at the hospital with her. Actually in the entire time he’d known her, he’d wanted this. To mess up her hair with his fingers and make her lips swell with kisses so deep that neither of them could think straight.
And as her tongue tangled with his, that was exactly what happened. Brandon lost all train of thought, forgot why he’d dragged her out to the sidewalk and left his confused kid behind. Forgot why he’d demanded to know what had killed the light in her eyes. Because all that mattered was the heat of Stella’s mouth and the bite of her sharp nails in his shoulders. The way she wedged a leg in between his and sucked the breath right out of his lungs.
Damn it was good; she was good; the whole thing was—
“Hey, buddy, this is a family town.”
Stella immediately jerked away from him as though they’d been caught red-handed. He supposed they had and Brandon scanned the faces passing by them for whoever had destroyed a perfectly sexy moment.
Stella stepped back and shook her head. Panic slammed through him as she reached for the studio door. “Nope,” she said. “Not doing this with you.”
Damn if he was going to let her walk away after she’d just kissed the shit out of him. He grabbed her arm to stop her hasty retreat. “Do what, Stella?”
“Whatever it is you’re doing,” she shot back.
Brandon spared a glance inside the studio to check on Matt. The kid was leaning against the wall, playing on his phone. “And what is it you think I’m doing?”
She spun around and tugged her arm free. “I don’t know what you’re doing, Brandon. And that’s what pisses me off. Because whatever game you’re playing with me—”
“Whoa, what the hell?” he demanded. She thought he was playing with her? She was the one who blew hot and cold so often that he didn’t know which way was up.
“You’ve made it clear from the very beginning that you don’t want a relationship with me,” Stella told him. “Then you go around kissing me and making me feel like…” She shook her head as her chest heaved. “Like…”
He crowded her again, needing to hear her say exactly how she felt. “Like what, Stella?”