All I could do was stare at her. Gratitude and something stronger coursed through me. She reached up and wrapped me in a hug that for just a split second made me feel better. She pressed a quick kiss on my mouth and told me that while I was taking care of Phil not to forget to take care of myself. I was exhausted and emotionally drained, but just that little five-minute visit from her, that easy way she had about being in tune with what other people were going through, reached deep down inside of me and didn’t let go.

Maybe it was because my mom had always been so cold and dissatisfied, maybe it was because I had searched for approval that was never coming that when I looked at Saint’s beautiful eyes and saw her empathy and compassion, I knew she was going to be it for me. She was everything I had ever wanted, ever needed. When she looked at me like that, any question I might have had about loving her went out the window. It was more like how could I not love her? She was impossible not to fall in love with.

I kissed her back a hundred times harder than I intended, but I wanted her to feel all the things I knew she would freak out about if I tried to tell her. She told me to call her over the weekend if I got a free minute, and left taking my heart with her.

When I went back inside and offered Phil up the concoction she had brought over, he just looked at me with a knowing gleam in his eyes over the top of the oxygen mask that obscured most of his face. I flipped him off and slumped back in the recliner that I had moved next to his bed. I wasn’t ready to talk about it. Especially when I knew that Saint would run the other way if I tried to tell her how I felt. Not being loved back was something that had hounded me my entire childhood. I didn’t know that I would be able to handle it coming from her.

I stayed with Phil all through the weekend. Saint’s shake was magical, so she sent me the ingredient list and I stocked up on supplies so I would be able to whip it up for him whenever he needed. Phil slept pretty much all day Saturday and I was contemplating going into work and trying to play catch-up while he was out, when Cora showed up at the condo.

I didn’t want her to have to see him like that, to feel sorry for him, but she just used her little body to push past me and told me to get lost. Phil was just as important to her as he was to me, and Rome was home with the baby until later that night. She told me in no uncertain terms I still had a life to live and unceremoniously kicked me out of my dad’s condo. I wanted to be irritated at her. Someone so small shouldn’t be that bossy and immovable, but I had to admit I needed the space to get a breather.

I went to the shop and plowed through a week’s worth of paperwork that had piled up. I rearranged all the appointments I had canceled on throughout the last few weeks. When it was time to close the shop down, Rule wanted me to go to the bar where Shaw and Ayden worked and grab dinner. The two of us hadn’t really spent much time together that didn’t involve working lately, so I was tempted to say yes. But as much as I enjoyed hanging out with Rule, I missed Saint and spending time with her more, so I asked for a rain check and called her.

“Hello!” She was screaming into the phone to be heard over the screeching and childish giggling in the background.

“Hey. Cora is with Phil, so I have the night free. I was hoping you didn’t have to work and we could hang out.”

“Hold on a sec.” She muttered something and I heard more screaming while she found someplace quieter to talk to me. “Sorry, Faith had to go to the hospital and asked me to watch the kids. She was having Braxton-Hicks contractions and freaked out. I don’t know how long she’s going to be.”

That was kind of a bummer since I really wanted to spend time with her, and I didn’t know when the next chance I was going to get was going to be.

“I hope she’s all right.”

“She’ll be fine. Do you want to come over here? I’m making them grilled cheese for dinner and then I’m going to put Finding Nemo on and hope that settles them down.”

I had never really been around kids. I mean now that Rome and Cora had a baby I was getting more used to it. Really, though, I would walk barefoot through lava if that’s what it took to spend time with her, so why the hell not?

“Sure. Give me the address.”

She rattled off an address that was down in Littleton and I took off. I didn’t stop and worry that her sister had made it clear she didn’t like me, that I didn’t have the first idea what one did with a bunch of kids running around. All that mattered was that she was there and that’s where I wanted to be.

When I knocked on the front door, Saint pulled it open looking disheveled and rumpled in a really delightful way. She had a tiny toddler on her hip and a slightly older little girl peeking at me from behind her knees. She smiled at me and blew a loose red curl out of her face.

“I’m happy to see you.” Well, hot damn, that was the best news I had heard recently. “This is Zoe.” She kissed the toddler on the cheek. “Brea is hiding behind me and the boys, Owen and Kyle, are in the living room playing video games.”

I followed her into the house and winked at the little girl who was looking up at me with huge eyes.

“Your sister doesn’t look old enough to have all these kids.”

She snorted and guided me into the kitchen, where the scent of tomato soup on the stove made my mouth water.

“She started young and doesn’t have any plans to stop. She and her husband, Justin, always wanted a big family.”

She looked at the stove, then at me, and unceremoniously plopped the wide-eyed toddler in my arms. We stared at each other for a long moment, the baby deciding if she wanted to scream at me and me trying to decide how to best hold her without squishing her. I guess the little girl decided I was okay, and she proceeded to try and get her chubby little fingers around my nose ring, which resulted in a ridiculous game of don’t touch. Saint just laughed at me while she stood at the stove and made sandwiches.

The other little girl, who was probably only four or five, wandered over and stood by my knee looking up at me. Saint grinned down at her.

“That’s Auntie’s friend Nash. Tell him hi.”

The little girl didn’t say anything to me, so I smiled down at her and bit back a swearword when the baby got her hand on the piercing and gave it a yank. It made my eyes water up, but it had her laughing so hard I couldn’t be mad about it.

“Hot.”

The other little girl was shy, I could tell. She must take after Saint. I lifted an eyebrow down at her and she pointed a tiny finger up at my head and said again, “Hot.”

She was talking about the flames inked on my head and the fire that flowed out of the collar of my T-shirt where the baby was yanking on it.

Saint turned around and looked at me with bright silver sparks in her gray eyes. She walked over and crouched down in front of the little girl and poked her lightly on the nose.

“You have good taste, Brea. He is very, very hot.”

All three of the girls burst into hysterical laugher while I just sat there and watched Saint. She stood and kissed the baby on the cheek and me on the mouth and called the boys in for their simple dinner. The boys, since they were older, had all kinds of interesting questions about my ink, about the gauges in my ears, about what I did and how I knew Saint. They were scary energetic but funny and overall nice kids.

We all ate dinner, and when everyone was done, I told Saint to go get them all settled while I cleaned up her sister’s kitchen. Her eyes had something in them when she smiled at me that I couldn’t identify, but it was warm, kind of melty, and I liked everything about it even if this was the most G-rated date I had ever been on.

The older kids crashed on the floor and Saint and I took spots on the couch with both the little girls between us. I had no intention of staying, I wanted to be gone before Saint’s sister came home, but after the first five minutes of the movie, Brea was asleep with her head on my arm. The toddler, Zoe, had crawled into my lap, curled up like a little cat, and was out like a light. I didn’t want to disturb either of them, so I just settled in and watched the fish try and find his way home. The way Nemo’s dad never gave up, never lost hope, had me running parallels with my own life through my mind and it had me thinking about Phil.

When I looked over at Saint she was watching me with big eyes and there was a bright pink flush in her cheeks.

“What?”

She just gave her head a little shake and turned back to the movie.

“You just always surprise me.”

I blew out a breath because that was tied in to my latest revelation about this relationship and her.

“The person that should be surprising is you, Saint. Trust me, the person you are is remarkable and exceptional. If you get acquainted with her, your entire life will change.”

She just looked at me like she had no idea what I was saying, but I felt better having said it. I would love her unconditionally if she let me, but in order to do that I had to get her to love herself fully, first.

CHAPTER 16

Saint

It was already hard to keep a lid on everything Nash stirred up in me, but seeing a big, tough, tattooed guy hold on to a little girl like she was something breakable and precious, how in the hell was I supposed to keep my heart cloistered from that?

When Faith and Justin returned home, all the kids had been put to bed and Nash was on his way out the door. I didn’t miss the look my sister gave when he said good-bye. She was tired and supposed to take it easy, which is the only reason I escaped getting an earful, I’m sure. The next morning while I was at work she left a voice mail that went on for a solid twenty minutes about how she now had two boys that were insisting on getting skull tattoos when they were old enough. I shouldn’t have thought it was funny but I really did. I wanted to try and take Faith’s concern to heart. I knew she was just worried about me, worried about what would happen if Nash hurt me again, but something about his words to me the night before had stuck with me.

There was a part of me that could never believe that he saw me the way he did. I never recognized myself as a beautiful, desirable creature and so never took him at face value when he said those things to me. I was confident at work, knew what I was doing and that it was what I had always been meant to do, but even though he looked at me like I was the start and end of everything, I just couldn’t find any belief in the idea that Nash Donovan felt that way about me. I still didn’t have enough confidence to be secure in any of the other areas of my life. It wasn’t fair to Nash that I was on pins and needles waiting for him to prove that he was nothing more than a typical guy and would eventually fall to the lowest common denominator, when all I was doing was using my fear and weaknesses to hold all the parts of me that had never really stopped loving him in check and not allowing what was between us now to grow and flourish.

I had never been resentful of my work or my busy schedule at the emergency room. I was always the happiest, the most centered and secure when I was caring for others, but lately I wanted to have time to see Nash. I knew Phil was getting worse, that the end was on the horizon, and Nash was almost always at his side. He was trying to stay on top of things at work and everything else, but he was losing weight, and every time I did manage to see him he had shadows on his face that rivaled the color of his eyes in purpleness and his strong jaw was more often than not scruffy and unshaven.

There were no more overnight stays, no more fun dates that made me laugh, and the only time we managed to hook up was for a quickie during lunch here and there, which felt good and got the job done but lacked all the intensity and emotion behind the sex I was used to having with him. For someone who used to hate being n*ked and everything that typically went with it, I couldn’t wait for there to be a time when I could spend hours sans clothes and under him or over him—I wasn’t particular.

I was heading out after my shift when Sunny asked me to pop into her office. We had been too busy lately to have any real time to chat. I missed her positive attitude and the way she always tried to pick me up. I smiled at her and took a seat across from her cluttered desk.