Just because I was with Peter…did he think that I owed him something? All that talk about working something out between us…?
I wasn’t a prostitute. I wouldn’t be like my mother, going from man to man just to find the one who could give me what I needed. I could stand on my own two feet. I just needed a job and some money and some clothes and diapers for the baby and…shit! How was I going to get a job when I had a two-week-old baby depending on me for everything? How was I going to get out from under the thumb of the Bradfords if I couldn’t even leave the damn apartment?
“Amber…”
I glanced at Cole. He was studying me in the darkness of the car, only the occasional street light illuminating his profile as he navigated the interstate.
“I’m sorry about what happened back there. I didn’t mean to make you feel like I was asking for more than was my right.”
I turned back to the window, my thoughts still whirling. I didn’t know what to say to that.
“That wasn’t part of the deal. I know that. I was just carried away.”
I wished he would just stop. I didn’t want his explanation.
I curled into myself on the car seat, thinking about the baby, wondering if he was getting by all right at his grandparents’ home. It was amazing to me, the thought that my baby even had grandparents. I never did. My mother’s parents were long gone by the time I came along. And I didn’t know who my father was, so I never met his parents, either. The concept of grandparents was fodder for fantasy when I was a kid. But PJ had everything I’d ever dreamt of having.
Was I really sitting here feeling sorry for myself when I was on the verge of having everything for my baby that I never had? Was it really worth stealing all that from PJ for my own self-worth?
“I don’t expect anything of you, Amber,” he continued. “What happened back there was just…it won’t happen again.”
“You don’t have to apologize.”
Cole glanced at me, tension radiating from every inch of him. I wanted to touch him, but I also wanted to pull away. This part of me that had responded to his kiss wanted nothing more than to crawl into his lap and do things that I’d only read about in the steamy romance novels I sometimes got from the library. But when those thoughts moved through my mind, I felt this overwhelming sense of shame that was connected to all those times I heard my mom doing those things so that she could get a couple of dollars for her next bottle of gin or her next hit of heroin. I so desperately didn’t want to be like her that even thinking about Peter, about how gentle and kind he’d been, made me feel a little ashamed that I enjoyed it so much.
But Cole…it was so different with Cole.
I was in over my head, and I felt like I was drowning. I didn’t know what I was going to do.
We passed the Houston city limits and turned west, quickly leaving Houston for the suburb of Katy. I watched the streets become less commercial and more residential, the houses become classier and classier as we drove deeper into the suburb. When Cole stopped the car at the curb in front of this tall, brick house that was something of a cross between a colonial and a Victorian, I couldn’t stop myself from staring at it with my mouth half open. Seeing the house Cole’s parents lived in was impressive enough—but I’d been expecting something impressive. But this house, Megan’s house, was just as impressive.
I wondered where Peter lived, what his house looked like. What kind of life did he live that I wasn’t a part of? What would it have been like if he’d known about the baby, if he’d done what they all thought he would have, if he’d taken the two of us in? Where would we be living now? I’d dreamt of living in a house like this one.
Cole came around and offered a hand to help me out of the car. I was less clumsy than I was during my pregnancy, but I was still recovering my balance, my grace. It was nice to have a helping hand, but touching him, even something this innocent, was almost overwhelming.
He held the envelope as we walked up to the front door, walking politely just behind me. I was suddenly very conscious of everything I did, every move I made.
But then Megan opened the door with a wine glass in her hand. She was clearly several glasses in, if the glaze to her eyes told me anything—and it told me a lot because I’d seen it nearly every day of the time I spent in my mother’s life. And that surprised me a little. Megan seemed pretty together. I didn’t think she’d be the kind of person to lose herself in a bottle.
“What have you been doing?” Cole demanded the moment we walked into her living room and he spotted the satchel and other things spread over her coffee table. I recognized the sweatshirt on the couch, blood splattered lightly across the light gray fabric. It was Peter’s.
“I had to look through his things, find out if there was anything there that could help us.”
“Alone? Megan—”
There was raw concern in his voice, concern that cut like a knife through my heart, making me wish that someone would care that much for me.
“Not alone,” Megan said. “Sam was here. She just left a few minutes ago.”
“Still, Meg, you shouldn’t have done that.”
He went to his sister, towering over her as he gently brushed a hand over her cheek. Again, there was so much affection there that it just about killed my soul. My mom had never cared that much about me. I was a nuisance to her, an inconvenience. I was just another reason why she never had enough money for her booze and, later, her drugs.
To be cared for like that must feel amazing.
Megan pulled away and settled back on the couch. She finished what was in her glass and leaned over to get the bottle, but it was empty. Cole just watched her, a war going on in his eyes.
“You found the envelope?”
I crossed my arms over my chest, watching as Cole handed it to her. She pulled out the stack of papers that were inside. They made little sense to me. I’d looked through them half a dozen times after I learned that Peter died, but they just looked like a bunch of business stuff, things that only Peter, or someone working with him, would understand. Even Megan seemed a little confused by them.
Cole sat on the edge of the couch beside her and looked at them, too.
“What is this?”
Megan shook her head. “Information on software from Bradford. But I don’t really understand what it relates to. There’re invoices from companies that paid to use it and a copyright. I don’t know; I’ll have to take it to Daddy and ask him tomorrow.”
“Do you think that’s what all this is about? Some software that someone stole?”
“Could be.” Megan leaned forward and picked up a cell phone from the coffee table. I recognized it, too. It was also Peter’s. He always had it with him at the diner, sitting there next to his hand.
She handed it to Cole. Curiosity got the better of me. I moved behind the couch so that I could read what was on the screen over his shoulder.
“He was texting me when the accident happened,” Megan said softly, lifting her glass to her lips before she realized it was empty.
“That’s my phone number,” I said.
Megan nodded. “I think he was trying to tell me he’d left his stuff with you.”
I nodded. “It wouldn’t have done you any good, though. My phone was turned off a day or two before he gave it to me.”
Megan glanced back at me, pity in her eyes. I stepped back, crossing my arms over my chest. I didn’t want her pity.
“Are you going to see this guy?” Cole asked, gesturing with the phone. “Kurt Sanchez? Isn’t he the guy who bullied Peter back in high school?”
“He is. And he was at the funeral.”
“Why would Peter tell you to contact him?”
“I don’t know. But he works for TxTel, so maybe he knows something about this software.”
Cole nodded. “You’re not going alone.”
“Hayden and Sam are going with me.”
Cole ran his thumb over the edge of the phone, then set it down carefully. He to
uched the soft leather of the satchel sitting on the table, running his hands over all the things that were scattered out on the coffee table.
“I wish you’d told me you were going to do this.”
“We didn’t really find anything. Just ordinary things.”
“That’s not my point.”
He looked at his sister and grief just seemed to explode over both their faces. I suddenly felt like I was intruding on something I was never meant to see. I slipped out of the room, walking out to the car with tears inexplicably burning in my throat. As much as I cared about Peter, I never was as close to him as they were. I didn’t really know him; I didn’t know what was ordinary about the things in his car when he died. I had his baby, but I wasn’t the one he was texting in the seconds before he died; I wasn’t the one he was thinking about. I wasn’t the one who knew what he was thinking as he wrote those words.
I had never been close to anyone to feel the grief that I could see on the faces of Cole and Megan in there. I suddenly felt incredibly alone. I’d held on to that one night with Peter because it was the one good thing that had ever really happened to me. But it wasn’t all I’d blown it up to be, was it? I was holding onto the ghost of possibility. It wasn’t real. It’d never been real. I was just in the right place at the right time that night. Nothing would ever have come from it. Peter was a good man, but he wasn’t in love with me. He would have done the right thing because it was the right thing, but he wouldn’t have loved me the way those two in there loved him.
I’d been fooling myself for all this time. And now I felt like an idiot. I felt completely unmoored, like a ship with no power, no way to direct itself.
How stupid could I have been?
Chapter 15
Cole
Amber disappeared into the nursery with the baby the moment we walked through the apartment doors. I made us something to eat, a little grilled chicken and vegetables, but she didn’t come down. With a sigh, I finished eating my own meal and put hers on a tray, taking it up to her.
“You need to eat,” I said, pushing the door open without bothering to knock. I should have knocked.
She was sitting on the bed, the baby draped across her chest. She was naked from the waist up, the baby suckling at one breast while the other lay uncovered, her thick nipple erect and aimed straight at me like a gun ready to discharge.
“Sorry,” I mumbled, turning to leave again.
“No. It’s fine.”
I hesitated, then backed into the room again, setting the tray on the top of the baby’s dresser.
“You can bring it over here,” she said. “Can’t really reach it from there.”
I hesitated again, then turned and set it on the bed, trying not to look at her nudity. But when I did, she’d pulled the baby’s blanket up to cover herself.
“Is he okay? Did he survive my mom all right?”
“He’s fine.” She brushed her hand over the top of the baby’s head. “They were really happy to have him, weren’t they?”
“They were. They’ve been waiting a long time to have a grandchild.”
I backed away, headed for the door.
“Why haven’t you or Megan gotten married?”
I shook my head. “I was in the military until about five months ago. And Megan…her story is a little complicated. She was with this guy, Luke Murphy, since high school. He was military, too. He got out a little over a year ago. They were planning this big wedding, flowers and a huge cake and all the bells and whistles. But then the morning of, she gets this letter from him telling her that he just wasn’t ready for commitment. He disappeared, and no one’s heard from him since.”
“That sucks.”
“Yeah. She took it pretty hard. If not for Peter…”
Amber tilted her head as she looked over at me. “The three of you were really close.”
She said it as a statement, but there was clear awe in her voice.
“Yeah. The whole family. My mom insisted that we respect each other. That we care about how our actions impacted everyone else. And she made us participate in game night every Saturday night.”
Amber’s face turned into something like a question mark. I leaned back against the doorframe, remembering all the times Mom and Dad teamed up to kick our asses at Monopoly or Risk. It was frustrating until the three of us finally figured out a system that allowed one of us to kick butt every week. I could still feel the pure joy that rushed through me the first time I won a game, one-on-one, against Dad.
“She insisted that it would teach us how to work together as a team. And it did. I suppose that was why we were so close, because we had to team up together to stop Mom and Dad from kicking our asses at everything.”
Amber looked down at the baby. There was a dark cloud that seemed to hover around her every time we talked about Peter or the family. I couldn’t begin to guess what she was thinking, but I couldn’t imagine that the woman Megan had described to me as Amber’s mother would have been interested in playing Monopoly with her only daughter.
“I should let you take care of him.”
Amber nodded, her eyes falling to the baby. It was a beautiful sight, her with the baby in her arms. I wondered if she knew just how beautiful she truly was when she looked down at her son like that.
I couldn’t stop thinking about Megan and Amber and everything that had been going on as I showered. I stood under the pulse of the water and tried not to feel like a total waste of space for not being there for Megan when she opened Peter’s belongings. And then I wanted to scream with regret for kissing Amber like I did. She was clearly not in the same mindset as me, clearly not interested in beginning a new romance. And to do it just moments after telling her we’d work out some sort of arrangement for the clothes and things she now needed. It was completely the worst timing ever. It didn’t matter that that wasn’t what I was thinking when I kissed her. She didn’t know that. To her, I was asking for sex in exchange for everything I was doing for her. That wasn’t what I wanted, but it couldn’t help but look that way.
“Stupid, stupid, stupid,” I whispered to myself.
I didn’t know what I was thinking. This woman…she was so beautiful and spending every day together was making it nearly impossible for me not to think about what it would be like to touch her, to bring her into my bed. Was I just one of those guys who couldn’t be around a woman without wanting sex? Had it just been that long since I’d been with a woman?
But it hadn’t. Not really. There was a girl just before Amber came walking into my life, a bartender I’d spent a couple of nights in the company of. So it wasn’t as if I was desperate. I’d gone longer without the company of a woman.
I was stupid. I was screwing this whole thing up. Megan would never let me take another case; Amber would never let me near her and the baby once she was on her feet. I’d fucked everything up, and I wasn’t sure there was anything I could do to fix it.
I toweled off, thinking about Peter. What would he think of Amber living here with me, of his son here in my home? What would he think of what I’d done?
I wished that Peter had told us about Amber. I wished that I knew how he felt about her. If he was in love with her…I couldn’t stab my brother in the back like that. Even if it was just a one-night thing, it was wrong for me to be having the thoughts I was having about her.
I pulled on a pair of shorts and climbed into bed, still so lost in my thoughts that I thought I would never get to sleep. I loved Peter. He was always the one who was first to my corner when I needed support, the first one to tell me I could do something that everyone else thought was too much. And this was how I paid him back.
I was a real asshole.
Almost as proof of that, I fell right to sleep. I was lost in dreams in less than ten minutes, dreaming of Amber and her beautiful body, of the taste of her lips. It was a fevered dream that did things to me nothing had since I was fifteen and having hormone-driven dreams of adolescence. Her hands were on my ch
est, her fingers playing with the elastic that held my shorts around my hips. Her mouth sliding over my throat, her tongue playing a little game over the rounded mound of my Adam’s apple. And then her lips touched mine, and I moved into her, kissing her like I was drowning and she was the only source of air for miles.
It wasn’t until I tucked her body down under mine, until my hands were sliding under her thin nightie—the one Mom stole from Megan to give to her—to touch those brilliantly created breasts, that I realized this wasn’t a dream. She was really there, her hands sliding over my near naked body, her tongue dancing a little dance with mine.
I pulled back—the hardest thing I’d ever done!—and untangled myself from her touch.
“What are you doing?”
“It’s okay. I want to.”
I shook my head, scrambling out of the bed and flipping on the light.
“Amber, you don’t have to do this. I told you, what happened earlier was just me being stupid.”
“You can’t tell me you don’t want to.”
I groaned, the need burning through my body likely palpable. I mean…shit, there were things I couldn’t exactly hide from her. Not now. Not dressed like this.
“I do. I so desperately want you,” I groaned, the sight of her not making this any easier. She was wearing the skimpiest little nightie I’d ever seen—with pretty pink panties peeking out underneath. And her nipples were hard, poking up against the silky material just begging to be touched. I’d have to be dead not to want her.
And that…Peter.
“It’s too complicated.”
She nodded. “But you’ve done so much for me, and I see the way you look at me.”
“You’re beautiful.”
She blushed, brushing a piece of her long, golden hair out of her face. “Where I grew up, when a girl couldn’t pay for what she needed, this was how—”
“No.”
The word came out before I could stop myself. I crossed to the bed and sat beside her, taking her hands into mine.
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