Cherish Hard
Page 44

The tips of her ears went red again. “I’ve always had big hips.”
Sailor wanted to scratch his head. What the hell had he said about hips?
Deciding to leave that one alone, he snuggled her soft curviness even closer. “So,” he said, “what should we do today?”
Ísa turned so that she was on her back. “Let’s see how Catie is this morning.” Concern darkened her eyes. “I know she was very gung ho about us leaving this morning when we spoke to her last night, but she might feel differently if she wakes stiff and sore.”
Sailor nodded. He couldn’t imagine his younger brothers being without support should they be hurt and scared.
“If she does want me to stay,” Ísa said, “then I want you to go back to Auckland.”
Frowning, he said, “I won’t be going anywhere as long as you need help.” The idea of abandoning his redhead didn’t sit right with him.
A wary vulnerability in her expression before she pressed her fingers against his lips. “Thank you,” she said with a smile so deep that he felt as if he’d watched dawn break right here in this tumbled bed, “but I know you need to get back to work. You’re on a very tight deadline for Fast Organic. Plus there’s nothing here I can’t handle.”
He nipped at her fingers, annoyed with her for making sense. “How will you get back home?”
“I can easily hire a car.” Pausing, she snapped her fingers. “No, I’ll borrow Clive’s car. It’s just sitting in the garage anyway. And he always flies back into Auckland; he can pick it up.”
“Yeah,” Sailor grumbled. “I suppose that works.”
Cupping his face, Ísa kissed him with wild affection. “Thank you for caring.”
He rolled his eyes. “That’s like thanking me for breathing.” She was his; of course he’d care for her and those who were important to her. “Since we’re both up, how about we go rustle up some breakfast?”
His stomach growled on cue.
Ísa laughed. “Early bird?”
Deciding she was much, much better than an alarm, Sailor stroked the warm curve of her thigh as he spoke. “Always have been. I used to help my mom prepare lunch for Gabe and me when we were at school. After Jake and Danny came along, I used to help her with theirs too.” It had been a special time between him and his mom before the rest of the household was awake.
Sailor still did the same the odd night he stayed over at his parents’ after watching a late game on their big-screen TV.
Waking, he would stumble down into the kitchen to find his mother brewing him a cup of coffee, she was so certain he’d show. These days he usually made her sit down and took over the task of cooking their traditional postgame breakfast.
Alison Esera had worked more than enough for one lifetime.
Jake and Danny, they hadn’t seen the hard times that Sailor and Gabe had, and so sometimes they gave Alison a little more back talk than their older brothers. Not much, and it was never disrespectful—they hadn’t been brought up that way, not with Joseph for a father and Gabe and Sailor for older brothers—but it was a type of childhood rebellion their mother had never seen in her older sons.
It made her happy to know her younger sons were growing up in the light—but she still worried about the damage done to Sailor and Gabriel during the early part of their lives. Sometimes he’d catch her watching him with gray eyes awash in concern and love and hope, and he’d enfold her in his arms, safe against the scars of the past.
Ísa’s fingers across his jaw, her gaze searching. “Where did you go?” she asked softly, having turned to face him while he’d been lost in thought.
Used to keeping his secrets from the women who shared his bed, Sailor went to shake his head and change the direction of the conversation… and realized two things.
One, Ísa was far more than a bedmate. She was his redhead.
And Sailor was a stubborn, possessive bastard under the surface.
Also, two, he wanted her to know who he was, wanted her to understand that he was far older than his chronological age. “I was thinking about early mornings helping my mom cook,” he admitted. “They’re some of my favorite childhood memories.”
Face lighting up, Ísa said, “Oh? How old were you when you started?” So much hunger in her, so much sheer need.
25
Bad Friends and Greasy Hair
HER PARENTS, HE THOUGHT FURIOUSLY, had abandoned her without ever actually discarding her. “I can’t remember,” he said through a raw wave of protectiveness, tugging her even closer to his body so he could cuddle her more. “Mom likes to say I never learned to sleep past five in the morning.”
“It sounds like a happy childhood.”
“It was.” He’d been too young to understand as much as Gabriel, had known only that he was safe and warm and loved.
Ísa’s expression changed. “Then why are your eyes so sad?”
He ran his fingers through the glory of Ísa’s hair. “Things changed when I was five.” Sailor never talked about this, didn’t like to remember how desperately that five-year-old boy had hoped, but he could do no less when Ísa had trusted him with her own family. “The man who fathered Gabriel and me walked out on us. Just left one day and didn’t come back. After cleaning out all the accounts.”
Ísa’s anger was a magnificent thing. “How could he do that to his own children?”
“Because he’s an asshole.” And a man in whose footsteps Sailor would never follow, not even if it killed him. “It was always grand plans and no follow-through with Brian.” Sailor remembered enough to understand that. “That’s why the only man I acknowledge as my father is Joseph.”
Sailor felt his lips curve. “He and my mom met a year after the asshole walked out, and to hear my dad tell it, she treated him like a piece of stinking dead fish at first. Every time he asked her out, she’d say no, she was too busy, she had to clean the toilet.” Sailor’s shoulders shook. “So one day he turned up with a toilet brush and said he’d clean her damn toilet for her every week if that was what it took.”
Ísa giggled with him. “It must’ve been hard for her to trust another man. Especially with having two young children.”
“Yeah, but Dad… He knows how to love, and he does it without flinching.” Breathing in the warmth of Ísa’s scent, he told her the rest. “It took Mom months to trust him enough to even introduce me and Gabe, but when she did, he repaid her trust a thousand times over. He’s the man I want to be.”
“You love him very much.” Ísa’s hand stroking his shoulder and arm.
“He put so much love into me, into Gabe, that we had no choice.” Never had they not felt as much his sons as Jake and Danny. “The tattoos on my body? They’re traditional Samoan designs, given to me piece by piece as a gift after I turned eighteen.”
No gift had meant more in his life. “Dad drew each and every line, and his brother inked them. Only reason I’m a Bishop instead of an Esera is because Brian refused permission for a legal adoption when they tracked him down to ask.” A pathetic attempt to hold on to the family he’d thrown away. “Gabe and I were gutted, but Dad sat us down and told us nothing would change the fact that we were his boys.”