CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
We ate bacon wrapped jalape?o poppers, and then, because he harassed me into doing it, I gave him a tour of my house.
I’d forgotten that I’d let the neighbor’s orange
tabby
in
earlier,
but
I
remembered as I was showing him my small home office, and we found him, passed out on his back, sleeping under my desk.
Tristan,
who
loved
all
cuddly
creatures, went for him with a smile, picking up the cat, and stroking it without even seeming to disturb the animals limp sleep. Magic hands and all that.
He looked up at me, cat cradled in his arms like a baby. “What’s its name?” My mind went blank. It was over all the time, but I just called it kitty, and thought of it as the orange tabby.
I improvised. “I call him Ginger, on account of the orange hair.”
He laughed, and sent me an odd look.
“Um, Danika, this cat is a girl. How on earth do you not know that you have a girl cat?”
I chewed my lip, not wanting to tell him. It was embarrassing, but oh well.
“It’s the neighbor’s cat. I just let it hang out here when I’m around.”
He set Ginger down, laughing so hard that he stayed doubled over. “Oh my God! You stole your neighbor’s cat?” I was defensive. “Borrowed. And she has, like, thirty cats. I doubt she even misses her. I travel too much to get any of my own pets.”
He just kept laughing.
After a while, I was laughing with him. Even I could see that it was funny as hell, and that was with the joke at my expense.
“See, this is why it’s handy to have a man,” he finally said, moving to sprawl out in the chair behind my desk. He looked ridiculous in it, it was so small, and he was the opposite. In fact, the whole room suddenly looked as small as a closet, with his larger than life presence dominating it.
“I’m not following,” I said wryly.
“Well, I’ll just throw this out there.
Crazy cat lady next door is single, right?”
I nodded. “What, you think the cats scared all the men off?
“She’s not single because she has thirty cats. The one happened after the other, I guarantee it. And if she had a man, he would have stopped the crazy cat train after, like, four, five tops. So you see, men can be handy to have around.” He wiggled his eyebrows suggestively, sending me into peals of helpless laughter.
“That’s an interesting way to look at it,” I gasped. “Are you getting at something in particular?”
“Yes. You should let me live with you. I know you love pets, and I’ll stifle the crazy cat urges before they even start. And I cook.”
I shook my head at him, still smiling, as I backed out of the room. “You’re impossible,” I called out to him, as I moved down the hall, towards the next stop in the tour.
I didn’t even have to look, I could feel his presence behind me.
My mouth twisted as I showed him my room. I hadn’t cleaned it, hadn’t made my bed. I wasn’t messy, but it was messy tonight, due to all of the wardrobe changes and the masturbation session.
His eyes were glued to the bed from the second he stepped in the room. I looked with him and knew instantly what had him transfixed.
They were cheap cotton sheets, but the wonderful thing about cotton was that, if you abused it with enough washing it got really, really soft.
And I loved those sheets. I’d been using them for years. Just how many years, I refused to think about.
I had other sheets, nice sheets, much nicer sets, in fact, than these, but those were only used when I laundered the good stuff.
Unfortunately, the cheap ones were also distinctive sheets, white and patterned with bleached out yellow rosebuds.
I’d known when he said he was coming over that we’d end up here at some point. Why hadn’t I changed the sheets?
And of course, he’d noticed right away, the overly observant bastard.
“I remember these,” he said, reverence in his tone. He moved right to the bed, running his hands over the fabric, bending down to bury his face in it.
“We were on these the first time we…” he trailed off.
“I know.” I sighed. I should have put the sheets away. Now he was going to want to talk about things that I wasn’t ready to talk about.
“Come here,” he said huskily.
I shook my head, but he wasn’t looking at me, his cheek pressed to one of the yellow rose pillowcases.
“Come here,” he said again.
Biting my lip, I went to him.
Slowly but firmly, he pulled me down to lie beside him, both of us on our backs, the sides of our arms touching.
“Remember these sheets?”
I swallowed.
“Of course I do.
They’re my sheets.”
“Remember the first time we made love?”
I shouldn’t have indulged him in this, I knew it, but my mouth refused to listen to my brain. “I remember being on top, and it pissed you off.”
He smiled, rolling on his side to look at me. His eyes were so soft that my whole body went soft with them. “I remember that. God, you were riding me so good, and I knew that you were just trying to drive me wild, but even knowing it, it f*cking worked. Best f*cking ride of my life.”
I blushed and started smiling.
I
couldn’t help it. And I also couldn’t help asking, “Yeah?”
“Up to that point. You weren’t done blowing my mind, though, and you know it, because the next time was even better.”
“We put these things through their paces.”
He tensed suddenly. “Have you been using these the whole time we’ve been apart?”
I knew what he was asking. “Only when I was by myself.”
I’d kept the sheets faithful to Tristan.
Bully for me.
We were so freaking screwed up.
So freaking screwed.
His hand moved to my stomach, stroking with a light touch through my thin shirt. “I love these sheets. I’m going to steal them from you when you’re not looking, or, you know, when you are.”
I laughed. “They wouldn’t even fit your bed. They only fit a queen.”
“I don’t care. I’ll use them like a blanket.”
I laughed harder, then stopped abruptly as he moved to loom over me.
I stared up at him, wondering when I had lost this fight. It was likely before it had even begun. No wonder Andrew had never stood a chance. No wonder no one had. Who could compete with this beautiful, larger than life specimen of a man?
He didn’t make a move on me, or at least, not in the way I was expecting.
Instead of bending down to me, he lifted the hem of my shirt, exposing my belly, and then pulling my shorts down enough to unearth my skin, from my navel down to my pelvis.
Several long, jagged scars marred the skin there. They’d faded more than I had ever hoped for, but still, they were impossible to miss.
He ran his fingers over each one, his expression going very blank, but not as blank as mine was. “Will you tell me what these are?”
I wasn’t happy to talk about this, but I was anxious to get it over with.
“They’re
nothing.
Completely
superficial,” I lied.
Not remotely superficial.
Just the opposite.
Profoundly detrimental, that’s what those scars were.
“From the accident?” he asked, face still blank.
“Yes. I just got scratched up a bit.
Like I said, totally superficial. Didn’t hurt a thing but my vanity.” Slowly but firmly, I pulled my shorts up, and my shirt down to cover the marks.
He sat up, rubbing his palms into his eyes. “I know it’s not your favorite thing, but there is some stuff we need to talk about.”
That pissed me off. Couldn’t we go even a few weeks before we delved into that? Couldn’t I just enjoy myself, for once? But even as I had the thought, I recalled several things that I’d just been dying to have him clear up for me.
I stood up and began to pace.
“Okay you want to talk? Let’s talk.” My tone was tense, my arms folded in front of me like I was ready to do battle.
Because I was.
I kept pacing as I asked, “Did you beat up Milton back when I was dating him?” I snapped my neck around to look at him.
He tried to give me a very innocent look, but I was not buying it. “Excuse me?”
“Don’t play dumb. Answer me.”
“When are we talking about, exactly?”
“Oh, did you beat him up more than once?” I shot back, voice dripping with sarcasm. “I went out with him on a Friday. Some charity event. There were photographers there. The next time I saw him, on a Monday, he looked like he’d lost a fight. Was that fight with you?”
I spoke slowly, sharply,
determined to get a square answer.
“Oh, that…” He gave me an engaging sort of grimace that turned into an audacious smile. “Yes. That was me.
In my defense, I was provoked beyond all sanity. And the next time, well, he was asking for it. Don’t get all pissy about it. He’s a big boy, he can handle it. I was literally picking on someone my own size.”
I shook my head, beyond exasperated, because he clearly wasn’t sorry, and moreover, perversely, I found his shameless confession sort of endearing.
And worse still, I couldn’t keep myself from asking, “You weren’t hurt, were you?”
I was a stupid, stupid girl. Hopeless really.
He stood and approached me, and I got the tightest hug for that one, his face buried in my neck. “You’re such a sweetheart, you know that? He didn’t hurt me. Not at all. It was kind of a letdown, really. He looked like he’d be more of a challenge. Do you know that second time was the last time I’ve been in a fight?”
“You beat him up a second time?”
“I knew he kept calling you, after you’d said to leave you alone. Before you ask how I knew, I made a point of finding him and asking him. That was the second time. He stopped calling, right?” I didn’t have a clue what to say to that, so I just stared.
“Okay, my turn,” said Tristan.
He pulled back and all of the happy bled out of his face as he pondered his question. A twitch started pulsing in his temple, but he plunged ahead. “Did you sleep with Milton?” The words churned over in his mouth, like he didn’t have the stomach for them.
I rubbed my temples. “Tristan,” I warned him.
How quickly we’d wandered out of safe territory.
“I’m not going to interrogate you about the last six years. I just want to know about him. Consider it my one free question.”
I stood and started to pace, getting more agitated by the second.
“He
bothers you more than, say, someone more faceless? Someone you don’t know?”
“Yes,” he said simply.
“Fine. No. I never slept with him. It never got that far. Now, my turn.”
“Your turn,” he agreed warily.
“Tell me about you and my sister.” His brows shot together. “Dahlia?”
“Yes. That sister. Tell me what happened between you two.”
“Nothing. Nothing happened. I tried to help her and Jack out whenever I could, tried to be a phone call away if she ever needed help, but that’s all.”
“Bullshit. When Jack was three, he told me he’d seen you two kissing. I confronted Dahlia, and she as good as confirmed that it was true, though she stubbornly refused to give me any more information. I want to know exactly what happened. Did you date her?” His breath puffed out in an agitated sigh. “No, of course not. You really thought I’d do that?” His voice was full of chastising affront.
I set my jaw stubbornly. No guilt trip was going to keep me from hearing what had happened. Not even a very good one. “Tell me what happened. Did you kiss her? And if you didn’t, tell me why Jack thought you did.”
“I started checking in on her, as soon as I found out that she was pregnant and alone. Like a big brother would do.
Because that’s what I was. I’d married into her family. You know I take family seriously.
And she, well, she always had that silly crush on me. Frankly, it was annoying. She never even knew a thing about me when she started with that nonsense. But I always tried to be nice to her, because she was your baby sister, and I tried to look after her, because she was your baby sister. I guess she was reading more into it. One day she kissed me, planted one on me right in front of Jack. I let her get it out of her system; let her see that there was nothing on my end to feed whatever delusions were happening on her end. That was it. She got the picture. The end.”
“Why wouldn’t she just tell me that?”
“Who can say? She always resented the way I felt about you, the power you had over me. Maybe she saw it as a small way of getting back. The point is, there was nothing between us. Of course there wasn’t. I’d never do that to you.
Your baby sister? Come on. Never.” I felt such a wave of relief I nearly staggered with it.
I believed him. I just did. Moreover, I wondered how I’d ever been so certain he could do such a thing.
Perhaps I’d wanted to believe it.
Perhaps I’d been looking for more reasons to bring him down in my esteem.
I had been in survival mode for a very long time. And whatever was happening to me now, well, that could only be the opposite.
It had only taken a few questions to get Tristan out of his fishing for information mood. I’d known that would work, had counted on it.
He wasn’t the only one with an arsenal in this war of ours.
What I didn’t plan on, though, was him behaving himself. He left not much later without even kissing me, or even trying to, and I told myself that was good.
Maybe we were getting better. Maybe my theory (Familiarity breeding self-control) had been correct.