“I’m not at home,” I answer. I don’t want to discuss what almost happened with Annalee and myself with anyone other than her.
“Oh, you’re at home. Just not your home, although, since you’re still paying the mortgage on it, I guess that’s up for debate … I’m having the worst fucking night of my life and you’re screwing your soon to be ex-wife?”
“That is not what’s going on here,” I protest. It is, but I’m sure as hell not doing to discuss that with my sister. I don’t know what’s going on with Mia. She sounds wild, a little crazed, and angrier than I’ve ever heard her. “Mia, you’ve got to calm down.” Annalee, halfway through the process of putting her shirt back on, is making cutting motions across her throat and rolling her eyes at me, . I made the fatal error of telling a woman to calm down. It’s all a clusterfuck.
“No, I don’t! I’ve been calm. I’ve been quiet. I’ve done what the dutiful daughter ought to and I’ve spent ten years making up for something I didn’t even fucking do! I’m finding those letters, Clayton, and when I do, so help me God, I may kill him.”
The panic hits again, mostly because I think she means it. “Kill who, Mia? Baby, you’re worrying me—.”
“Samuel!” she replies sharply. “I can’t talk about this anymore. Not tonight. I won’t do anything stupid or reckless. I won’t shoot anyone unless they’re trying to break in. I promise.”
“I can be there in ten minutes,” I offer. It might kill me to walk out of this house again, to walk away from Annalee and what almost happened just a moment ago, but I will. Whatever is happening with Mia, she is clearly not herself right now. Or maybe it’s like she said, and she finally is being herself. That might be scarier.
“No. I shouldn’t have yelled at you. I’m just angry and hurt… and jealous. If you’re with Annalee, it’s where you ought to be. Stay there. I’ll be fine. Just don’t expect me in the office tomorrow. I’m going to be tearing this house apart from top to bottom.”
“I can help you,” I offer again. I mean it. I’d do anything for her or for Quentin.
“Yes, you can,” she says with certainty. “Whatever it is you’re working on, whatever you’re trying to do destroy him, keep going. Don’t stop until you have it. When this is all done, I want him left with nothing… Promise me that.”
“Whatever it takes.” It’s not a promise I’m making it lightly. Destroying Samuel has already cost me more than I was willing to give. I won’t stop. No matter what it takes.
“Now, go seduce your wife. Or let her seduce you. We like that sometimes.”
“That is really not what’s happening here and for the love of God, just don’t go there with me. I can’t take it. Quentin is bad enough,” I say to her. I don’t hear her laugh, which worries me, but when she answers I can hear the smile in her voice. It’s enough.
“Good night, Clay. I love you.”
“Love you too, Mia-mine,” I reply. The nickname slips out, something our mother used to call her.
“You bastard. I thought I was done crying for the night.”
My own eyes are burning a little. But I don’t cry. I haven’t. Not in a long time and I’m not going to start now. But Mia is a different matter altogether. “Maybe you need to cry. You can’t bottle it up forever,” I tell her.
“I can try,” she protests lamely.
“It doesn’t work. Take it from someone who knows… Call me. Anytime. I will come right there if you need me.”
“I know you will. Goodnight,” she whispers softly and the phone clicks.
I place my phone on the counter and look at Annalee who clearly has questions. “I still don’t know what’s going on.”
“Mia isn’t suicidal?” she asks, a line of worry forming between her brows.
“No,” I try to sound as certain and as reassuring as possible. “But she may need a lawyer if Samuel goes near her.”
“Are you going over there?” Annalee asks softly. I can tell that she thinks I should, and maybe it’s just wishful thinking on my part, but I can also tell that part of her doesn’t want me to go.
“No.” I’m not totally confident in the decision, but it’s the best I’ve got. “I think I’ll do more good for Mia by working this from a different angle… I didn’t want to tip my hand, but I’m going to have to make Samuel give up control.”
Annalee frowns at me. “Control of what?”
I’ve never talked to her about my plans for Samuel. I worry that I am saying too much, that when it all goes to hell, and it will, that she won’t have the distance needed to be safe. But I need to say it to someone, and even after everything else, there’s no one I trust more. “Everything—the house. Mama. The distillery… If we don’t get him out of our lives— That’s not an option. He will be out of our lives. One way or another.”
She doesn’t say anything for the longest time, just leaves me squirming under that measuring gaze. “Don’t do anything stupid. Emma Grace needs you,” she finally states.
It’s a dangerous question to ask, but I have to know. “Just Emma Grace? Or do you still need me too, Annalee?”
“I needed you a year and a half ago,” she says softly. “I needed you twelve months ago… Even six months ago, if you’d looked at me then the way you looked at me tonight, my answer would be different.”
“It’s not too late,” I reply, and I hate how desperate I sound.
“Isn’t it? We can’t do this, Clay. What just happened— this is confusing enough for Emma Grace without us acting like hormonal teenagers who can’t figure out if we’re broken up or not.”
“What is confusing to her exactly? The fact that you threw me out?” There are some things that I shouldn’t say to her. I understand why she did it. I understand why I didn’t fight it. But the loneliness of it, the fucking misery of being separated from her, from my daughter— that kind of misery makes you mean. It makes you lash out and one hurt just builds on the other.
She squares her shoulders and levels an icy glare at me. “I asked you to move out, Clayton, but you left me a long time ago. You checked out. You didn’t look at me, didn’t talk to me, you sure as hell didn’t touch me… Living with you was like living with a damn ghost.”
The accusation stings because I know it’s true. It hadn’t been by choice, it hadn’t been because I didn’t want to tell her everything. But struggling to keep the distillery afloat, to keep the mortgage paid and the roof over our heads, not to mention the possibility that things I’m doing could land me in prison— I’d wanted to spare her that.
“I never stopped loving you… not then and not now. What the hell else do you need from me?” I ask.
“The only thing I ever needed was you,” she replies “But all I got was this cold, distant stranger.”
I take her hands, “I’m here now. I’m talking to you. I’m looking at you, and two minutes ago I had my hands on—.”
“I know where your hands were!” she interrupts and pulls her hands free. “But what happens the next time life gets hard, Clayton? What happens the next time the business is in trouble or work is too stressful? You’ll just shut me out again and we’ll be back where we started!”
“Annalee, I don’t want us to end this way.”
Annalee crosses her arms over her chest and leans her head back, a sigh of deep exasperation escaping her. “You think I wanted this? I didn’t, Clayton… I had a very different vision of where we’d be right now.”
“I don’t know how to fix this.”
Annalee
* * *
“I don’t think we can be fixed… not the way we were. Right now, we just have to focus on Emma Grace and move on.” I feel like we’ve poked at our bruises enough for one night. We’re not any better off than we were before. He’s still keeping secrets and I’m still standing my ground, even if it is on knees that wobble. “You’ve got clothes upstairs still, if you want to change,” I offer. I need him to go upstairs, I need him to be away from me for a moment so I can re
gain whatever semblance of balance I had before.
He loops the tie around his hand. It’s an old habit, something I always teased him about. “You could come up with me,” he offers.
I know that tone. I know that look. And God help me, my brain and my ovaries are at war over it. “That’s not a good idea.”
“And your date the other night?” he asks. There’s a hardness in his tone, a cold and calculating look in his eyes. “Was that a good idea?”
I look away. I should be lying to him, should be feeding his jealous. But that’s Brit’s way of doing things. Not mine. I can’t. “No, it wasn’t a good idea. It was an exercise in misery. Happy?”
“Nothing about that makes me happy,” he replies. “I want to find him and rip his fucking throat out. You’re not supposed to be with him.”
“Am I supposed to be with you, then?” I ask with a bitter laugh. “Really, Clayton? Am I not entitled to try and have a life after you?”
He shoves his hands into his hair, that same familiar gesture that he makes every time he gets frustrated or doesn’t know how to handle something. “I just need some time, Annalee. If you give me a little while, I can fix all this. Once it’s done, I’ll tell you everything. I promise.”
“I can’t,” I respond. It hurts me to say it. It fucking breaks my heart all over again. “I keep holding onto this hope that I’ll wake up and this will all be a bad dream, and everything will be like it was. But that’s not going to happen. And I need to start living in the here and now and not some fantasy world where you love me the way I want you to… the truth of it is, Clayton, I only went out on a date with him because of you.”
His gaze hardens. “You’re going to have to explain that a little better. The logic of it is eluding me.”
I roll my eyes. Of course, the logic of it eludes him. Hell, it eluded me. Goddamn Brit and her crazy plan. “Brit—.”
“Well, that explains a lot!”
“Brit,” I continue, “suggested that if I really wanted to know if you still cared, I should see whether or not it made you jealous to think of me seeing someone else.”
“You can tell her it fucking worked.”
“But it didn’t.” Did it piss him off? Yes. Sure it did. But there was no epiphany. There was no moment where he thought, I’ll do whatever it takes to get her back. He was going on the same way he had before, just slightly grumpier. “You’re still not willing to give an inch. You’re still not willing to let me in.”
“Annalee, everything I’m doing is to protect you… to keep you and Emma Grace safe. Mia, Quentin, Mama. There’s so much at stake here. Do you honestly think I want to carry this alone?”
“I think you’re going to, no matter what I say. So it’s a pointless question.” My reply might seem a little heartless, even mean. But I’ve got to stop hoping. I’ve got to accept the reality of our current situation and move on, no matter how much it hurts.
I can’t look at him anymore, I realize. It just hurts too much. I turn to walk away, but his hand snakes out and grabs my arm, pulling me back, holding onto me like he can’t quite bear to let go.
“Don’t,” he says. “Please, just don’t.”
“Clayton—,” I begin, but I realize I don’t have anything to say. He’s holding me to him, our wet clothes plastered together. I can feel the heat of him, the hardness of him against me. It feels so good and so tempting.
When he kisses me, I can’t think. I can’t breathe. I can’t do anything but feel his lips on me, the slide of his tongue between my lips, penetrating, blatantly sexual. His hands drift down to my ass, cupping each cheek and pressing into me. I can feel the thick length of him, hard and full against me. He rocks his hips and all I can think of is how good it would feel for him to be inside me.
I can’t do this. I’m weakening, falling under his spell. It takes everything in me to push him back. I press my hands against his chest and he steps back, reluctantly.
“I can’t help wanting you,” I tell him. “But wanting you doesn’t make you good for me. You’re not good for me, right now. You have to go… now.”
“Annalee.” He just says my name. Nothing else. He looks at me for the longest time and then just turns on his heels and leaves.
I watch him walk out and it takes everything I have in me not to call him back, not to strip my clothes off and attack him naked in the foyer. I follow after him, just to the kitchen door and before I can catch myself I say something that I know I’ll regret. “The final papers should be here by the end of next week… You wanted time, Clayton, and that’s what I’m willing to give you. Once I sign them, there’s no going back.”
He stops in his tracks. He doesn’t look back at me. Just stands there for a moment and lets that sink in. After a moment, he gives a brief nod and heads for the door.
I’ve fucked up. I’ve given him another chance to break my heart, because if he doesn’t tell me the truth in the next ten days, then I’ll have to say goodbye to those hopes and dreams all over again.
I head back into the kitchen and open the freezer door. There’s a pint of Ben and Jerry’s in there that belongs to Emma Grace. I’m going to have to owe her one. I’m going to eat the whole damn thing.
4
CHAPTER FOUR
Clayton
* * *
Pulling into the parking lot of my shithole condo, I sit there in the car so fucking mad I can’t see straight. Of course it doesn’t help that my damn dick is still so hard I’ll do myself permanent injury if I try to walk from the car to the front door.
It isn’t just being horny. It isn’t just that I haven’t been touched by anything softer than my own damn hand in more than a year. It’s her—it’s always been her. She twists me up in knots and turns me inside out.
I lean the seat back and just stare up through the moon roof of the car for a minute. It was something we used to do, long before Emma Grace came along. A country road on a clear night in my old car, and we’d stay like that for hours. Until she climbed over the console and straddled me.
I grip the steering wheel in a mixture of frustration and anger. My mind keeps supplying all those tempting images of her, of us together. And it’s not doing a goddamn thing to relieve my current physical misery.
Liquor. If I can’t have what I want, I decide, I’ll just drink until I don’t fucking care. Getting out of the car, I walk to the front door, but as I insert the key into the lock, the door swings inward.
Fuck.
There, sitting in my living room like he’s got every fucking right to be there, is Samuel Darcy.
“I’m in no goddamn mood to deal with you tonight. You need to leave and you need to do it now,” I tell him.
“I’m concerned about your sister,” he says, acting as if I hadn’t just told him to get the fuck out.
“Mia’s a big girl. She can take care of herself,” I reply. I need that drink now more than ever. I walk into the kitchen and open the cupboard. I pull down a half full bottle of Maker’s Mark. I don’t even bother with a glass, just carry the bottle back to the living room with me.
“You ought to be ashamed of yourself for drinking that,” Samuel scolds. “Fire Creek is better.”
“Since we’re in a shortage, I figured I’d buy something readily available and save our bottles for paying customers… More to the point, I didn’t ask your fucking opinion. Get out.”
“Son, I will go when I am goddamn ready,” he replies.
“Then say what you mean to and go.” I take a healthy swig of the bourbon, letting it burn all the way down. Maybe it’ll put out the other fires raging inside me.
“She’s getting tangled up with Bennett Hayes again. I don’t need to tell you what a disaster that could be,” Samuel states. “It’d be a shame for Mia to lose her head over this man and for poor Patricia to have no one to properly look after her.”
“She’s a grown woman—her choice and her business. And for the record, no one will ever take better care of Mama th
an Mia does. Like you’d fucking know, of course. What rent-a-slut did you tear yourself away from tonight to come here?” My reply is terse. I want him gone. I’m freaked the hell out by the fact that he’s been in my house, alone here to go through whatever the fuck he feels like, while I’m away. I make a mental note to change the locks.
“Clayton,” he says smoothly, “I know that we don’t see eye to eye on a lot of things—.”
“On anything, old man.”
He goes on as if I didn’t just interrupt and insult him.
“The fact of the matter is, I have Mia’s and the distillery’s best interest at heart. There’s a lot of old gossip… wives’ tales, if you will, about whether or not the Hayes family is entitled to a piece of the Fire Creek legacy. The two of them being together will only fuel that fire.”
“That fire rages out of control for every resident of Fontaine, mostly because they all know it’s true. I don’t know the particulars, but hell, even I know it’s true. If someone says a Darcy, or at least a Darcy from previous generations did something shady… hell, that’s just like saying the sky is blue in my book. You’ll have to do better than that.”
Samuel’s expression hardens and for just a second, I can see the monster in him. “He doesn’t want her. He just wants what she can give him access to. I hate to see her waste herself on a man like that… I’ve been trying to get her to go with me to the Annual Bourbon Association gala. There are some people in the industry that it would be very beneficial—.”
I stand up and open the door. “She’s not your whore. You’re not her pimp. You don’t get to turn her out. Go.”
“Clayton—.”
“You get the fuck out. If I have to throw you out, I’m going to do it with a lot more force than either of us will like.”
Samuel gets to his feet, straightens his suit jacket and tie and looks at me as if he’s disappointed in me. Like he has the right. “I had thought with your love of Fire Creek, you’d be more receptive to doing what it takes to make the distillery a success.”
Clayton (Bourbon & Blood Book 2) Page 5