On the second ring, her door flung open with a loud bang, followed by the muffled sound of her feet pounding down the hallway. She blew past him where he stood and completely ignored his presence as she rushed to grab the phone.
“Matty?”
Her happy laugh when the person on the other end spoke made the hair on his neck stand up. The sound was joyous and authentic. He wanted to make her laugh like that. Wanted to lose himself in the sound of her happiness.
“Why aren’t you in bed, young man?” she scolded playfully. “Oh no you didn’t,” she giggled a minute later. “Yep, yep. Two quail!”
Roman’s head shook without him being aware that’s what he was doing. My god, he thought. What little kid cares about a hunting tally?
His head filled with visions of introducing Kelly to the joys of a shopping trek through Whole Foods. He thought of the oversized box of PG Tips tea leaves in his cupboard that Rhiann brought back from London and mentally wished for a chance to shower her with every awesome tea blend from around the world.
She kept her back to him through the conversation, but that didn’t stop him from admiring the view.
She’d taken off her boots and was parading around in a pair of thick pink socks. The jeans were the same, but she’d ditched the hoodie. A thin white t-shirt, neatly tucked into the waistband, clung to her torso. He traced the outline of her bra with his eyes and willed her to turn around.
So far he’d seen her bundled up in a snowstorm and hidden inside a large sweatshirt. He longed to know if her breasts were the handful he suspected.
When she bent over at the waist to fish something out of the cabinet beneath the sink, he had to count back from one hundred. The sight of the worn jeans molding to her body like a second skin got him hard in seconds. It wasn’t difficult to imagine her face pressed into a mattress as she offered herself to him with a beautiful arch in her back.
She chattered on and continued ignoring him. “I love you too. Don’t forget to be grateful, okay? Grateful prayers before bed. That’s the rule.”
He moved in closer. In bare feet, she fit him perfectly. Small and curvy in all the right places.
Did untamed have a smell? Being close enough to pick up her scent, he inhaled and let it fill his senses. The simplicity of soap and toothpaste was more pleasing than a thousand dollar fragrance. She was a combination of the natural world and something else.
She was fresh and wild and…shit. When she suddenly whirled around and found him practically on top of her, she reacted like a cornered animal. Swatting at the center of his chest, she shoved hard and growled, “Back off!”
No. He had no intention of backing off, but he did give her space.
Returning her heated glare, he made a series of rash decisions. She could fight him all she wanted but he was taking her away from this place, and none of her snarling or shin-kicking would make any difference.
That part was for Liam.
The rest was all him because he’d never been surer of anything in his entire life than he was about this female being his for the taking. Knowing it was wrong didn’t faze him in the least. He’d deal with Liam man-to-man. The person who was going to object the loudest and be the biggest headache wasn’t Liam. Or Rhiann. It was Kelly herself.
Roman felt the satisfied smile before it moved on his face.
Let the game begin.
“Who’re you talking to, Kik? Is someone there?”
She gathered every ounce of bad attitude she had and pinned fancy man to an imaginary wall with her eyes. Growling at him when he jumped her from behind had been a stupid move because now Matty would play detective.
Aw, come on. Can nothing ever be easy?
When her trespassing tormentor smiled at her like she was a twenty-ounce steak in an eating contest, she had difficulty swallowing and even more trouble answering.
Before she got a squeak out, Ginny grabbed the phone and said, “Say goodnight.” She could hear her directing Sam to take Matty to the bathroom to brush his teeth.
It only took a handful of heartbeats for Ginny to jump down her throat. “What’s going on Kelly? Is someone there? Are you okay?”
The near panic in the woman’s voice made her nervous. It was so unlike her.
“I’m fine,” she assured Ginny with a pointed smirk at the man staring a hole through her. “A, uh, guy from town got stranded by the snow. No need to worry.”
“What guy? Stranded where? Should I call for Sam?”
“No, oh my goodness, Ginny. Relax. It’s fine. Really.”
A worried friend. The plot thickens. “Tell your friend Jimmy can vouch for me.”
Kelly flipped Roman the bird but grabbed onto the life vest and repeated his words for Ginny’s reassurance.
“He’s a friend of Jimmy’s. I found him lost in the snow when I came down from the peak. It’s not a big deal. I’m all right.”
“Let me talk to her,” he drawled.
She swatted his hand away when he reached for the phone.
“It’s the man from the other night, isn’t it? Put him on the phone Kelly.”
Was this a joke? How the hell did she end up stuck in the middle? Ginny’s terse confrontational tone and Roman’s droll approach put her on the defensive with both people.
Covering her mouth and the receiver with one hand, she turned away and murmured, “He knows something about Debbie.” She heard Ginny’s gasp and quickly added, “But he doesn’t know everything.”
Roman snapped his fingers and gestured for the phone. She handed it over and crossed her arms. He was crazy if he imagined she intended to back off.
Speaking with grave authority, he announced into the phone, “My name is Roman Bishop. Who am I speaking with?”
She groaned. Good god. He sounded like he’d never been anything but in complete charge.
She watched him listen to what Ginny said. His expression never changed. Finally, he responded, “Miss James is completely safe in my care Mrs. Martin.”
He went silent again, and she was sure the ruddy hue on his cheeks was the suggestion of a blush.
“Yes, I do and it’s not what you think. He’s not a threat. Clearly we need to talk.” He didn’t say much after that except for the occasional one-word response. When he handed the phone back to her, she noticed right away that something in his attitude had changed.
“Ginny,” she murmured into the phone. “What’s going on?”
The other woman’s long sigh sounded like a harbinger of things she wanted no part of.
“There are things you need to know, Kelly.”
“About Deb?”
“Yeah. And um, your uh, father.”
“Oh Jesus,” she spat. “Please say you’re joking. Please.”
Ginny sounded on the verge of tears. “I wish I could, hon. You know,” she said cautiously, “me and Sam always knew this day would come. Too many secrets and lies. Your mom was a complicated mess. It was inevitable that one day everything would catch up.”
“What’s everything, Ginny? What else is there?”
“Sweetie,” Ginny wailed. “I’m so sorry to do this on the phone, but you need to know. This Roman Bishop? I don’t know who he is but he knows about your father, and Kelly, there’s another.”
“Another what?”
“Another brother. He’s also illegitimate.”
The world started to spin in front of her eyes. This wasn’t happening. Couldn’t be happening.
“Honey,” Ginny murmured. “Your mom knew, and despite all her crazy thinking, she left you a clue. So you’d know for sure if ever a time came when the whole story came out.”
“Oh god,” she murmured. “What?”
“Your older brother? His name is Liam.”
Matty’s homemade birth certificate exploded in her brain. So did the memory of their mother laboring over the hand-lettered document announcing the February birth of Matthew Liam James.
The phone slid from her hand as the kitchen fade
d to black and she dropped to the floor like a rock.
His voice hushed, he spoke into the old school landline as he took a stab at reassuring Liam. “Leave everything to me, boss.”
“Shit, Roman. I want her where I can be sure she’s okay. Ward will be dead before the week is out, so she has nothing to fear. Bring her here. As soon as you can.”
“There’s something else,” he grumbled.
“Oh for fuck’s sake. Now what?”
“There’s something up with the kid. The old lady was super cagey about him. I’ll learn more tomorrow, but I thought you should know.”
Considering Liam’s personal understanding of a young, unwed mom’s predicament, the anger in his voice wasn’t a surprise.
“I want every bit of information you can nail down about the baby daddy. Kelly and her kid must be protected at all costs. No more surprises Roman. You just bring them to me, and I’ll take it from there.”
He studied the pale-faced girl huddled in the corner of the sofa with a throw blanket clutched around her shoulders. She hadn’t uttered a single word since coming to. And she hadn’t met his eyes except once, and what he saw in their fiery depths grabbed at his heart.
She was afraid, confused, and worried. He knew all the signs.
“Look, boss. I have to go. She’s a mess, and it’s still snowing like a mother, but I wanted to touch base and bring you up to speed. Give Rhi my love, and I’ll call again when I know more.”
He hung the old handset on the wall-mounted phone and kicked the long coiled cord piling on the floor out of the way. His head was spinning. After Kelly hit the floor, the old lady on the other end of the phone ripped into him pretty good, and piled on enough threats to warrant peace negotiations. That’s why he broke down and called Liam because honest to Christ he had no idea how to proceed.
Learning that Deb James confided in someone and that those people knew an awful lot about Liam threw him completely. The Ginny person even suggested that Deb and Carolyn Ashforth, Liam’s mother, knew each other at one time. That part of the story went over with his boss like a fart in church. Liam was hypersensitive where his mother was concerned.
It wasn’t a stretch to wonder if more fuck-fruits from Adam Ward’s sexual adventures in his company’s secretarial pool were likely.
Approaching warily, he hovered with the coffee table between them. She needed space, and he was determined not to do anything that would further freak her out.
“Kelly?”
He watched her eyes slowly shift his way without moving her head.
“Was that…him?”
“Yes. He’s worried about you.”
Her expression grew tense. Narrowed eyes concealed thoughts and reactions he needed to understand.
“Cut me a break, okay?”
“I don’t know what you mean by that,” he replied, and he wasn’t just spouting words.
“Worried you say? How nice.” The biting sarcasm in her words was hard to ignore. “I guess it’s easy,” she snarled, “to be worried when you keep secrets. My mother was the secret keeper of all time.”
He struggled at the sound of raw anguish in her voice.
“Secrets and lies. That’s all I’ve ever known. And the rest of the damn world? Ginny knew. My sperm donor knew.”
Roman cringed at the term she used, and the way it rolled off her tongue like the crudest of all swear words.
“This man in New York who says he’s my brother—he knew. You knew. But me?” Her harsh snigger pierced his heart like an arrow. “Why the hell should I know anything? I’m nothing but a pawn. A pawn in a game that totally fucked up my life. And now Matty.” She clutched her chest and groaned. “Oh my god. Matty.”
Shit. There was so much subtext flying around that he wasn’t sure where to start, so he gently tried to bring the conversation around to some of the missing details that were driving him nuts.
“Is taking your son away from here going to present a problem?”
Her head snapped up, and turbulent eyes shot daggers his way. “You can’t possibly be that stupid.”
Her expression and the disbelief she voiced made him pause. What was he missing?
“Tell me something, Roman Bishop. Why did you automatically assume I was a single mother? Was it because I live in the woods and drive a beat up truck?”
“No,” he growled with haste. “Not at all.” But inside his head, he was re-evaluating a lot of things. “It’s just, oh fuck, I don’t know. That’s what I heard and…” he shrugged.
“So believing town gossip is how you handle your so-called job? Doesn’t whisper down the lane constitute fake news?”
He walked right into that one.
The blanket around her shoulders flung back against the sofa, and she bolted from the room like a jackrabbit on speed. He followed right behind and stumbled to a startled halt in the doorway to her bedroom.
Okay, so maybe bedroom was stretching the truth, because the entire space resembled a workshop with a wide table under a window and a tall bookshelf crammed with baskets and tools. He saw a soldering iron and several colored tiles piled in a basket. An easel with a cover thrown over it was shoved in a corner. His curiosity shot off the charts when an Apple laptop caught his eye.
An old brass bed was against one wall and by the look of things she used the head and foot rails as a clothes closet because literally, shit was draped and hanging everywhere.
Kelly knelt on the floor and pulled an old suitcase from under the bed. He could barely make out the mutters coming from her mouth but was certain they were less-than-friendly.
She popped the case open and rifled through for a minute before pulling out a manila envelope. Tossing it in his direction, she struggled to her feet and met his curious gaze.
“Matty was a home birth.”
Ugh, no. He felt sick imagining things he wished he could blank out.
“Not a lot of official paperwork ‘round these parts. Debbie made that,” she indicated with a dismissive wrist flick.
Roman pried open the metal clasp on the envelope. Every few seconds he would search her face, but she was giving away nothing. A piece of craft vellum slid from the protective wrapping. He dropped the envelope and held the beautifully calligraphed document in both hands. It was a birth announcement.
His eyes searched hers. He didn’t like what he saw and found it hard to swallow. Then he focused on the paper as he began to read.
“Out loud,” she grunted. “I want to hear you say it.”
He cleared his throat. “Born to Deborah Jenkins James on February ninth,” his voice trailed off as the shame of his assumption began to eat him up.
Kelly arched an eyebrow and smirked. “Keep reading.”
“Seven pounds nine ounces, Matthew Liam James…”
Holy fucking shit.
Holy.
Fucking.
Shit.
“That’s right fancy man. Say it again.”
“Matthew Liam James.”
“We were pawns, the both us. All these years. All the lies. The secrets. And we were nothing but pawns in a game we knew nothing about.”
His hands were numb, and a strange buzzing muddied his thoughts. He’d never been so wrong in his whole life. Well, he remembered with pained clarity, that’s not entirely true. There was that one other time when he’d been so wrong that his wife and child paid the price.
“He’s your brother?”
She looked at him as if he was the dumbest motherfucker that ever lived.
“Liam’s brother,” he added as an afterthought.
Wrong thing to say, because she ripped the document from his hand and shoved it back into the envelope.
A gust of frigid wind rattled the windows and howled through the trees. What fucked up joke was the universe playing out in this situation? He wished he knew.
“I don’t need you or what’s his name. Matty is my responsibility, and I’ve got this, so no harm, no foul. You can toddle on back to
the big city and tell your boss.”
“He’s your brother Kelly.”
“I don’t care who he is. I’m done being a game piece. You can all go straight to hell in a hand basket. I’ve got plans. Big plans and they don’t include anyone else. Understand?”
“Why are you yelling?”
“Why am I yelling? Are you serious?” she shrieked. “That’s it.”
Next thing he knew she was physically trying to shove him out the door.
“Go away. Leave me alone. Tell my…brother, I’m not interested.”
A feeling of intense panic filled her up. She’d always known whatever lurked in her background was fucked up, but she was unprepared for any of this.
Her hands slammed into the middle of his big chest to push him away, but the tiniest hesitation took over when the heat from his body singed her palms. His large hands covered hers, but instead of shaking her off he pressed her fingers and gave a small shudder.
Some form of instantaneous insanity took her over. The feel of his muscular torso beneath her fingers short-circuited Kelly’s common sense. It was enthralling. She’d never touched an adult male beyond the occasional handshake or brief social hug.
He felt hard and soft at the same time. Fascinated, she pressed her whole palm and picked up the steady thumping of his heart. It seemed somehow familiar.
His throat moved when he swallowed. She stared at the column of his neck and failed to stop herself from leaning closer to breathe him in. Her whole being quivered as he filled her senses. She could nearly taste his sexual magnetism.
When their eyes locked, she was shocked by the intensity of his gaze.
“I’m sorry,” she muttered. Pushing against him she tried to move away, but he put his hands on her waist and stopped the retreat.
Made helpless by his fierce expression, she stared up at him as soft mewling cries of alarm rolled out of her mouth. A slow burn began in her feet and moved steadily upward until she was engulfed by heat.
The way his jaw clenched and the intense burning in his eyes triggered an uncontrollable response. Rising on her toes, she slid her arms around his neck and pressed her lips to his.
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