More Than Friends (Kingsley #4)

by Brandi Kennedy

  His relationship with Sherry – such as it was – had begun with a drunken urge, a night of passion, and sexual compatibility. They had been compatible in other ways too, of course; they enjoyed each other’s company, had fun flirting with each other, and could talk easily both in and out of the bedroom. Still, Michael had never invited her to stay with him in all the time they had been sleeping together, had never asked her to go out on a real date. He had either met her at the bar for drinks that usually led to sex, met her at her house for sex, or had her meet him at his house for sex. But just because there had been other things sprinkled in amongst the sexual escapades didn’t mean that there was enough to create a relationship. And now, any chance of building a relationship with Sherry – such as it had been – was over. She had walked away from him too. Turning away from the bathroom mirror in disgust, Michael stepped into the shower for the second time that night, to wash away old memories of his failings with Nicolette and the disappointment of how things had ended with Sherry. To wash away the traces of women he would never hold again.

  Had he not been supportive enough of Nicolette? Questions raced through his mind and the woodsy scent of his body wash covered the heavy air of sex as he lathered a body scrubber. What could he have done differently to make her feel safe enough to talk to him? Suds washed down his chest as his mouth twisted wryly. He knew exactly what he could have done differently with Sherry – but would any of it have mattered? She had been clear from the beginning that she didn’t want anything more than sex, and he had obliged her. But had she been truly honest, or had it been a woman’s game? Had she meant for him to win her over? If so, then he had clearly failed in that, too.

  Would he fail Renee? Now that he had made that first move, now that he had allowed himself to think of her in that way, would he be able to step back if she wanted him to? Could they go back to the way they had been before? No. He couldn’t. Already the image of her naked body, seen unbeknownst to her in the moonlight, was burned into his mind. He could never unsee the curves that edged her flat stomach, could never unsee the rise of peaked breasts as she had lain back on the blanket under the sky. But would she want him to go back, or was his family right to think that something more had always been between them? Had there been an attraction all along, quietly brewing between Michael and Renee without their noticing? Certainly he hadn’t noticed.

  But had she? She had stayed with him at the hospital, after all, had helped him to keep his mother company, had even gone to the extra effort of pampering her. She had come home with him that night, had lain naked in the field, knowingly within the limits of his sight. True, he had said he was going to bed, and she had had no way to know that he hadn’t. But she had known that he was there. And on top of all of it, Drew was right – she had come to him. When she had had a moment of fear and need, she had come to him, had shown up on his doorstep seeking solace, seeking his company. She could have gone to her mother, to Cass, to one of her many friends. But she had come to him.

  Rinsing the last of the soap away, Michael shook his head and sighed. What if she was interested? What if they decided to take things to the next step?

  What if in the end, he couldn’t keep Renee, either?

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  When he woke in the morning, Renee was on his mind. When he wandered through the house, drinking his coffee, the brew somehow tasted of her sweetness. As he showered, as he dressed for work, he felt her presence around him as if she were there. There was an earring on the mantel in the living room, one that she had lost months ago, a small golden post topped with a blood red ruby, surrounded by countless tiny sparkling diamonds. She had been crushed when she realized it was missing, and had tearfully mourned the loss; the small, sparkling jewel had been one of the last gifts Renee had received from her father before his death, and she valued it greatly. She had been overjoyed to hear that Michael had found it, but kept forgetting to take it back. "I know," she had said, her voice lifting with the sound of her smile, the last time they had discussed her forgetfulness. "I guess I just trust that it'll be safe with you." Michael smiled to himself as the early morning sunlight caught on the crust of diamonds that surrounded the heart-shaped ruby in the center of the dainty jewel. A rainbow of light crossed his hand as he held the earring up to the sun, and he smiled again, turning to set it back on the mantel.

  He didn't know what, if anything, had grown between them, but he knew that whatever it might be, it would be worth exploring. Since the day he had met her, Renee Keaton had been his best friend and his confidante – apart from his brothers. And he had been hers – apart from her sisters. They had casually discussed music, movies, arts, comedy. They had bonded over talks of family tradition, the ideal family size, and what they wanted their futures to look like. And as the years had passed and they had grown more comfortable with each other, the occasional off-color joke shared in family or group settings had led to more serious discussions in private about sex, romance, infidelity, and their goals for future relationships.

  How was it possible that he had not seen her in that light before now? And now that things had changed, would whatever was between them deepen – or end, as things had ended with Sherry? What if Renee decided that she liked things as they were and didn't want to see if there was anything more between them? What if he couldn't go back to the way things had been? Already, her taste and the softness of her mouth had been burned into his sensory memory ... how could he ever spend another movie night with her, without pulling her into his arms and tasting her again?

  Perhaps even more frightening – what if she was interested? What if she felt the same sense of excited confusion that he did? He had great confidence in how well they knew each other ... but did they need each other? Had this attraction developed between them because they could live with each other as partners – or because, if given the chance, they couldn't live without each other ... as more?

  And what if he did allow himself to need Renee ... and she left him, as Nicolette had? The thought struck him as he stood in front of the attic door, behind which stood the room that had been Nicolette's private sanctuary. The door that still hid the destruction left behind in the wake of his finding her letter.

  His hand had been poised on the knob, his grip already tightened, his wrist already turning. He froze, remembering the letter, remembering her words. She had not left him as an unhappy wife, as he had originally thought. He had not failed their marriage, as he had originally believed. Rather, she had left him sadly, as a gesture of love. She had left believing herself to be the one who had failed, believing her secret infertility to be something they could not overcome.

  He didn't know if it would work out with Renee, either – but Michael was tired of being lonely. He was tired of going out alone, coming home alone, going to bed alone. And he had lied when he had told his mother he liked being alone, that he liked having his home to himself. He had lied when he had said he liked not having a woman's delicates hanging over the shower rod – the truth was, he deeply missed having the day-to-day presence of a woman in his life. He missed goodnight kisses, he missed feminine companionship, and damn it – yes! He missed the delicates, too.

  Whatever happened – or didn’t happen – he was ready to move on. He was ready to try again.

  These thoughts wreaked havoc on his mind as he went to work and struggled through the day, and as he worked through the backlog of cars in need of his attention, he struggled to ignore the nagging desire to call Renee and ask her to clarify her feelings. He ignored, too, the multitude of calls that came in from Drew. Finally, as he locked the lobby door and waved goodnight to Ben, Michael pulled his cell phone from his pocket.

  ''So you tell me you finally kissed Renee," Drew said as he answered Michael's call, "and then you just leave me hanging all day without answering my calls? What the hell, man? You just gonna leave me hangin'?"

  "Shut up, I wasn't ignoring your calls." Michael laughed at the energetic protests from the oth
er end of the call. ''Alright! Alright! I was, then," he said, unlocking the door to his truck. He laughed again as he climbed into the seat, listening to his brother's playful complaints. "Seriously though, I just didn't have anything to tell you. Nothing has changed."

  "You haven't heard from her?"

  "No, I've been at work, and she had classes at the studio all day today." Michael shrugged and started the truck. "Who knows?" he asked, switching the call over to speakerphone and dropping his phone onto the seat beside him. "I may not hear from her at all today. You know? Maybe she's tired."

  "But she said she'd call today?" Drew asked.

  "She did. Dude, are you at work tonight?"

  "No, I'm off, hanging with Cass once she gets home from work. Date night, I guess. We're heading out to a movie and some fondue."

  "And then back home for a little baby making, hmmm?" Michael grinned, navigating the wet streets on the way to his house. The whole family had been teasing Drew – and his wife Cass – for months about when they would begin having children, and Michael laughed as Drew groaned into the phone. "Come on, Mom needs grandchildren!"

  "She has Logan," Drew growled. ''And he's a damn good grandson, too."

  "Yeah," Michael answered dryly. "He's grand. But you know, you're not getting any younger."

  "Screw you!" Drew retorted. "You're older than I am. You make some grandkids, then!"

  "Well, you're the one with a woman," Michael teased. "Do your duty, man."

  "Duty," Drew scoffed. "You do yours. You're the one that's next in line. It's Cameron, then you, and then me. Cam already went, so it's your turn, man, not mine."

  "Yeah, yeah." Michael rolled his eyes, turning onto the street that led into what he thought of as his neighborhood. It was a narrow, suburban street that ran through a small suburb full of young families before heading out toward the edge of town – where his old lonely house stood on what had once been rolling farmland. When he had bought it, Michael had imagined his house being the one all the neighborhood kids would grow up in, that his now-barren fields would someday be a place of entertainment for the friends of his children.

  He frowned as he drove through the neighborhood, though; many of the children born in those houses were now looking forward to beginning school for the first time, and he had become the distant non-neighbor on the other side of the now overgrown woods, the one people waved at as he drove by, but forgot as soon as he rounded the last curve and moved out of sight. The fields were still there; Michael's house stood proudly in the center of his property, surrounded on three sides by fields that swayed with tall grass in the summertime. But his house stood largely alone, with a thin wooded border of old trees surrounding the edges of the fields. On the one hand, it gave him privacy; on the other, it made him feel like the resident lonely recluse.

  ''Hey. Michael. Where'd you go?"

  Shaken from his thoughts, he turned in at the end of his driveway. "Yeah, I'm still here."

  "I guess you didn't hear me, then," Drew said with a laugh. "You'd have been yelling if you did ... I said, 'The next time you see Renee, it's time to put it down, man.' Make a move."

  "Already did," Michael answered, reaching for the phone. "Ball's in her court now, silly ass. I gotta go." He said goodbye to his brother and ended the call with a laugh as he stepped out of the truck and moved toward the house. He was still laughing as he walked into the house and slipped his keyring onto the hook beside the door, but he sobered as he moved into the kitchen.

  Chapter Thirty

  The guitar was, of course, still sitting exactly where he had left it the night before, in the old battered case it had been purchased with when Michael had been a teenager. He had mostly taught himself to play, and he could mimic songs he liked pretty well, but he had no idea at all whether he was any good or not, because no one had ever heard him play before. Not even Nicolette. Still it had always felt good to sit down and prop the old thing on his knee, with music blaring from the radio as he plucked the strings. Sometimes he even played without the radio, using his remembrance of the lyrics to help his fingers play along the chords.

  The clasps of the case clicked loudly as he hit the buttons to release them, and his breath felt strangled in his chest as he thought back on all the grief his unwillingness to play in front of other people had caused him over the years. To begin with, there had been no end of grief from his parents, who had chided him for spending his money on a guitar they believed he never played. Even Cameron and Drew had teased him for "wasting" his money, while Harmony and Evan had been much more focused on trying to play with it themselves. It had nearly been broken during one such attempt, when the two youngest Kingsley siblings had sneaked into his room and fought over who could play with it first.

  He had had a girlfriend when he'd first bought the guitar too, a young girl he had known all his life. They had both known from the start that the relationship was temporary, as she had had big dreams of leaving their small city to head east and become a dancer and Michael had always known that he would stay put. In the beginning, the knowledge of their eventual separation had given them both freedom they might not have had otherwise, freedom for each of them to truly be themselves without fear of driving the other person away. But as time had gone on and they had grown closer, they had begun to resent each other– she because Michael still planned to stay, and he because she still planned to go.

  She had begun dancing more, turning to the peace that dancing gave her– and Michael, left alone but still invested in the relationship, had turned to learning the art of mechanical repair. Under the hood of his mother's car, he had fallen in love with the guitar riffs that littered the old classic rock tracks he'd listen to while he worked, and it hadn’t taken him long to want a guitar of his own.

  He had loved learning to play, and she had loved the idea of having a musician for a boyfriend. For a while, things had been good between them again– until she had wanted Michael to play for her. She had gotten it into her head that it would be romantic for him to play her audition music when she competed to attend a prestigious dance school, and she had been furious when he refused, afraid that his inexperience with the chords might cost her the audition.

  "You just aren't being supportive," she had said accusingly, tears sparkling in her eyes. "I thought you cared for me."

  "I do, that's why I don't want to mess this up for you." Michael had retorted, angered by her words. "But do I want to help you leave me? No, I don't."

  Furious, she had broken up with him then, and Michael had buried himself even more in music and mechanics; by the time he had graduated high school, he had been halfway through with his ASE certification, and it hadn't taken him long after that to be working in a shop in the mornings and attending mechanics courses in the evenings. The guitar that had cost him that early relationship had been relegated to the back of his closet– until he had met Nicolette, and music had begun to have personal meaning to him again. In those days, the guitar was a guilty secret; he played because he loved it again, but he kept it to himself because he loved Nicolette.

  She had discovered the old guitar case by accident as she searched for odds and ends to decorate the attic with, and had asked about it then. "I didn't know you had this," she had said, smiling. Her eyes had crinkled softly at the corners, and she had popped the case open to look inside. "Can you play this?"

  "I can," he had answered, embarrassed. "Not well, though, and I haven't played in a long time."

  Nicolette had watched him quietly for a moment, and then closed the case with a soft click. "Okay, well, if you ever want to pull that back out ... You could probably bribe me into listening." He had wanted to play for her then, had wanted to hear her sing along. And it had been easy, in the days and weeks afterward, to imagine their house full of music and love and laughter. Would the sound of music in the house have been enough to mask the absence of children's laughter? Would it have been enough to make her stay? He would never know now; even though she had hi
nted many times, he hadn't found the courage to play for her before she had left.

  Now, in the wake of his memories, his fingers trembled on the clasps of the guitar case. Would he have the courage to play for any woman? For Renee? He had no idea. Music, or at least his attempt to create music, was something that touched his soul, something that opened his heart and left him vulnerable in ways he had never shared with anyone. It was therapeutic– but his desire to keep it to himself had cost him greatly. It was such a large part of so many different times in his life, but as far as he knew, no one even knew Michael still owned the battered old guitar.

  He popped the clips and lifted the lid, staring down at the dusty instrument. His fingers itched for the feel of the strings, and he could almost feel the weight of the guitar on his knee already. It was almost reverence, the emotion that filled him as he lifted the weight of the instrument and began to wipe away the layer of dust that had slipped through the protective barrier of the case. In the bottom of the case was a wadded rag, clean but much-softened with age and use, and Michael sighed as he lifted it.