I was screwed and I knew it.
Jack—good ole loyal Jack—was more than willing to go up against whoever Harrison brought to court the next time. Jack was like Nick, a boy who grew up in this little town, older than me, but close to my parents because my parents befriended everyone they ever met. And after their deaths, he began to have certain ideas about me, about how I was this single girl with this new, overwhelming burden who needed to be taken care of. I’d probably end up marrying one of them. Someday. But now wasn’t that time.
Now I needed a good lawyer, not a small town boy.
What I needed, I couldn’t put into words.
“Penelope?”
I turned and—wouldn’t you know it?—Harrison was standing just inside the back door of the bakery.
“Are you having me watched now?”
“No, I was—“
“I don’t really care what you’re doing downtown in the middle of the night. I just want you to go.”
“We need to talk. You know we do.”
“I know I need you to leave me the hell alone.”
“Are you going to be angry with me forever?”
“I might be, yes.”
I crossed my arms over my chest and stared at him, unable to ignore how incredible he looked in the clothes he was wearing. But, again, he looked good in just about anything. Sweats should be illegal on some men, the way they ignored everything but the good parts, showing off asses that were round and delicious, the kind of ass that made palms itching to touch it. And, despite the slight chill in the air, he was wearing a white muscle tank that showed off more than his muscles. Something low in my stomach tightened as I stared at him, my body betraying me even as anger burned in my chest.
“Can’t we find a way to make this work?”
“What would you like to do, trade him back and forth? I get the weekdays and you get the weekends and every other Christmas?”
A tendon in his jaw jumped a little. “No. But surely there’s a way we can work this out without one of us losing everything.”
“You could back off. He’s going to be eighteen in two and a half years. He could make his own choice then.”
“Then I would lose all of his childhood. Is that really fair?”
“Is it fair to tear him away from his home so soon after he lost his parents?”
“I’m his father!”
Harrison’s voice rose a little and he jammed a finger into his own chest, as though he was trying to convince more than just me. And the look in his eyes, that puppy dog roundness he got when he thought he was being denied something. I could imagine him as a child, turning that look on his parents and getting everything he ever wanted. That look made me want to give him everything.
Except my brother.
I dragged my fingers through my hair, not sure what more there was to say. He took a step forward, but stopped.
“I just…” he began, his voice lower, quieter. “I just want to know my son.”
“You had your chance sixteen years ago.”
He shook his head. “But that’s the thing. I never had a chance.” He took another step forward, but stopped again before he made any real progress. “I didn’t know about him. The people who should have told me didn’t. And the one who should have shared all this with me thought that I had no interest. And that—“
“I don’t want to know,” I said, turning from him. “I don’t want to know your story. I don’t want to care about you or what happened to you. I don’t want—“
“Why?”
He was closer. He was standing behind me, but I didn’t turn. I couldn’t look at him anymore. I couldn’t let my thoughts go to all the places they so desperately wanted to go.
But he wasn’t about to let it go.
Harrison laid his hands on my shoulders, his fingers biting into my flesh. It wasn’t so much the way he touched me, but the fact that he was touching me. There was heat in his touch that woke things inside of me that had only been woken once—the night he lay with me in my bed.
I turned and he opened his mouth to say something more, but I pressed a hand to his mouth.
“Don’t talk,” I said softly.
And then I kissed him.
Men used women all the time. Why couldn’t women use men?
He’d used me the other night. I was only returning the favor. And I so desperately needed to forget. I needed to forget everything that had been happening even if it was only for a few minutes, even if my way of forgetting would only muddy the water that much more. I needed this and I think I had the right to take it.
And he wasn’t fighting it.
He buried his fingers in my tangled hair, tugging me so close to him that there were no secrets between us. I pressed my hands under his shirt, trying to make the difficult choice of going up and running my fingers over those perfect muscles, or going down and smoothing my palms over his hard ass. Or both.