Nicole Foster - Sawyer's Special Delivery

While she waited for the clerk to tally and bag her groceries, he used his cell to call ahead to the café and order breakfast, so it was ready by the time they’d stowed the bags in his truck. Making a quick stop to pick up the food, he easily found the road to her parents’ house, and less than fifteen minutes later they were pulling up in the drive.

It was as bad as Sawyer remembered.

The story-and-a-half adobe house looked as if no one had bothered to do anything but live in it for the last fifty years. The peeling paint on the window frames revealed chips of about a half-dozen different colors, several tiles were missing from the roof and a crack in the front window had been mended with duct tape.

He switched off the engine but didn’t make any move to get out of the truck. “Are you sure about this?” he asked Maya. “I mean—” He gestured to the house.

“It could be worse,” Maya said with a shrug.

“How?” Sawyer wasn’t sure he wanted to hear the answer.

She grinned at him. “We haven’t been inside yet.”

“Can’t wait,” he muttered as he pushed open his door and went around to offer her a hand out.

She looked up at him as she started to step down, and her foot slipped against the running board. Sawyer instinctively reached out and grasped her shoulders as she stumbled a little. Another step and she would have landed squarely in his arms. A jolt of awareness hit him of how close she was, the warmth of her against his hands, of how she looked at him, as if caught off guard by the same feeling.

In the next moment cold reality doused him. What the hell was he thinking? She’d just gotten out of the hospital after having a baby. He dropped his hands. “Are you okay?”

“Sure, fine—thanks.” She didn’t look at him as she stepped away from the truck. “Sorry, I’m not usually such a klutz. I guess I haven’t gotten used to the sleep deprivation yet.”

Sawyer tried to match her casual tone. “Take it from me, you never get used to it. At least I have caffeine to lean on.” He glanced at the house. “You still have a key?”

That brought her eyes back to him and she laughed. “What key? Azure and Shem’s doors have always been open to anyone the universe brings to their doorstep. Well, ready or not, I guess I’d better go in.”

The bricked path leading up to the front door was overgrown with a tangle of wildflowers and vines. Blue paint peeled from the decades-old Spanish-style door that someone had embellished with a large yellow plastic peace sign.

“I don’t think I’m ready,” Sawyer said under his breath as Maya shoved open the door to a whirl of dust and a foul smell, some evil combination of sandalwood incense and neglect.

“I think they had a party in here before they left,” Maya said, wrinkling her nose.

“For all we know, someone did, considering the way they let anyone walk in the place,” Sawyer grumbled, fumbling for a light switch in the dim room. Finding one on the wall, he flicked it. Nothing.

“Don’t waste your time. They have this habit of forgetting to pay utility bills.”

Sawyer banked his growing irritation. He scanned the room for windows. Spying drawn curtains, he stopped Maya from going any farther into the room with a hand on her arm. “Wait here a minute while I let some light in this dungeon.”

Maya groaned as morning sun streamed into the room. “Oh, you’re going to wish you hadn’t done that,” she said, stepping carefully inside. “I think I was right about the party.”

Empty beer and wine bottles, ashtrays, plastic cups and paper plates were strewn all over the house. All sizes, shapes and colors of pillows lay haphazardly flung about the small living room. Strings of brightly colored beads hung from the blades of the ceiling fan, and the air hung heavy and cold, as if no one had bothered to bring any warmth or light into the house for months.

“You’re right, it’s worse,” Sawyer said flatly. “This place ought to be condemned. How could anyone live here?”

Maya shrugged as she bent to pick up a pink-and-green-striped pillow she almost tripped over. “Well, what do you know? My happy pillow. Azure made this for me when I turned seven,” she said, absently hugging the worn pillow. “And she made that blue-and-yellow one over there, stuck between those two candles, when I was nine. Every year she made me a new happy pillow out of fabrics with the lucky colors for the number of my age.”

“Nice,” was all the response Sawyer could muster.

“Actually this isn’t as bad as it’s looked after some of their parties. A little elbow grease and a few dozen gallons of disinfectant and the place will sparkle.”

Sawyer lifted a doubtful brow. “Sparkle?”

“Okay, so at least it won’t stink.”

Biting back a curse, Sawyer wondered how she could so casually accept her parents’ complete lack of responsibility. He’d had an idea of what it was like for her growing up with parents like the Rainbows, but it hadn’t come close to this.

“Maya—”

She turned from frowning over the mess as he strode over to her. He took her shoulders between his hands. “You can’t stay here. And you sure as hell can’t bring a baby home to this. Besides the fact it’s a man-made disaster area, you don’t have electricity and probably no gas or water either.”

“There’s a well out back,” she said steadily, although there were shadows of worry and doubt in her eyes. “And there’s a butane tank for cooking. I’ll get the electricity turned back on and things cleaned up. We’ll be fine.”

“Are you telling me you honestly want to bring Joey home to this?”

“Honestly?” Maya lifted her chin. “Of course not. But right now I don’t have a choice. We’ll make do.”

Maya waited for his next argument, but instead he stood for a moment, still holding her, his expression clearly saying he wanted to scoop her up and carry her out of this place, compelled to rescue her once again. And it was tempting right at this minute to throw herself into his arms and let him do it. Since she’d been a kid, she’d been the one taking care of others, fixing their problems. It would be a new experience to let someone take care of her.

Someone with great hands and a killer smile, who could make her warm inside with just a look and who attacked her defenses with his determination to help her.

Tension breathed in the silence between them. From their argument. Had to be. From words, not feelings. Yet she was so close now that one step, the smallest move and she would be touching him and…

And don’t even go there. How crazy was she for even thinking like that? New single mothers with four-day-old babies and a life to reorganize had fantasies about undisturbed sleep and winning the lottery, definitely not about men who inspired wicked cravings.

Besides, there was no way she could believe that Sawyer Morente, who surely could have his pick of any woman in New Mexico, would ever see her as anything more than just a needy single mother. Even ignoring the fact he’d delivered her son a few days ago, in her baggy clothes, with her hair a mess, with her face colored with bruises and still moving stiffly, she hardly qualified as a temptation.

“Care to share the joke?”

Maya blinked, startled out of her musings. “Joke?”

“You were smiling,” Sawyer said. He let his hands slide away from her shoulders. “I figured I was missing something, because there isn’t anything remotely funny about this place.”

“Give it up. I’m staying. Which means I need my groceries.” She made to turn toward the door.

“Hold on a minute.” Sawyer raked a hand through his dark hair, trying to quickly come up with a compelling reason for her to get as far away from this dump as possible. “You don’t have to stay here. You have a choice. You and Joey can stay with me.”

Maya stared at him. A faint pink flushed her pale skin. “You…I don’t quite know how to answer that,” she said finally.

Sawyer was beginning to feel he really had lost his mind where she was concerned. But it was too late to retrieve it now. “It wasn’t a proposition. You’d be on your own most of the time. I’m hardly ever there, ask anyone. Besides, I’ve got the room and electricity and running water. It’s a much better place for Joey than this.”

“No retro decor, though, I’ll bet.” A smile tugged the corner of her mouth. She touched his arm. “Thanks for the offer, but I can’t. Joey is my responsibility, not yours. Besides—” her smile broadened into a grin “—what would people think if they found out you were living with the hippie girl?”

“That she had more sense than to raise her son in a place like this,” Sawyer snapped back, earning a frown from Maya. He took a breath. “I’m sorry. I know it’s not my business and Joey is not my responsibility. I just wanted—” What? He couldn’t find any words for what he wanted, because at this moment nothing made any sense anyhow.

“You’ve already rescued us once,” Maya said, her eyes and mouth soft again, as if she knew what he didn’t. “Listen, this is only temporary. As soon as I’m working again, I’ll find us our own place. Trust me, I had enough of the love shack growing up. I mean, my parents were really good to me in their own way, but I don’t want that kind of life for Joey.”

Sawyer didn’t understand her parents. But he kept quiet, not wanting to bring her frown back.

She seemed to read his thoughts all the same. “They weren’t abusive. They’re…who they are. They’re good people. I have some really happy memories of this place. You just can’t count on them for anything. But I always know they love me even if sometimes it seems they forget they have a daughter.” She glanced around the room with a rueful smile. “I guess that’s hard to understand, looking at this and comparing it to your family.”

“There’s no comparison,” Sawyer said shortly. Avoiding her eyes, he started toward the door. “I’ll go and get your groceries. I’m sure you’re starving by now.”

How could he compare living on his grandfather’s estate with Maya’s chaotic commune life? he thought as he hefted the bags out of the back and retrieved his own breakfast from the front seat of his truck. Somehow Maya had felt wanted and loved even though her parents had never bothered to marry or give her any stability.

His mother, on the other hand, had been the complete opposite of the Rainbows. She’d been a woman driven by her determination to provide her sons with everything their father would never give them. Teresa Morente could never have been accused of neglecting her sons, at least when it came to material things. But neither she nor his grandparents had ever been warm and nurturing, had ever looked at him or his brother with the soul-deep tenderness and love that he saw in Maya’s eyes every time she looked at her son.

Joey would always have that even if he never knew his father. And that would be enough. Because it was obvious, as far as Maya was concerned, it would have to be.

Shouldering his way into the house, he found the living room empty. Sawyer followed the sound of banging and scraping to the kitchen, where he found Maya pushing the litter of cans, bottles and candle stubs off a battered oak table into a garbage bag.

“I think we might be better off eating in the living room,” she said, indicating with a helpless wave of her hand the dirty dishes heaped up on every available counter space, along with what looked like dead weeds optimistically planted in clay pots.

Sawyer set the bags down on a square of table she’d managed to uncover. “I think you’re right.”