Kelly didn’t give him time to ponder anything at all except her petite body and delicious curves cuddling into him. He found the corner of a blanket with his fingers and pulled it up and over them. She murmured against his chest as the cover floated down and wrapped them in soft warmth.
“Whatever you’re thinking, stop. I’m not a child.”
Aw, come on. Seriously? Did the orgasm connection include a channel into his thoughts? That wasn’t exactly fair. Not fair at all, because he was fucking baffled more than half the time about what went on in her head.
Tempting as it was in the sated aftermath of their serious love-making to burrow deeper and dial back a post mortem of their unorthodox and risky activities, Roman ignored what he knew from experience was an emotional trap. Not speaking one’s truth, no matter how uncomfortable or fucked up at the time, chipped away at a relationship and since he and Kelly were most definitely embarking on an intimate liaison fraught with sober ramifications, holding his tongue wasn’t an option.
She felt so good in his arms. He held tighter and kissed the top of her head. “I know you think you know what you’re doing, luv, but…”
“What?” she whisper-snapped. “You’re older? And wiser? Cut me a break Roman.”
When she got pissed off her whole body tightened. It didn’t matter how little of the world she knew. Her fire and determination came from within.
The fierceness is strong with this one. Must be a family trait, he thought.
“Don’t be upset because I’m worried. About you. These things have consequences. I don’t want you hurt in any way, Kelly. You getting hurt is a deal breaker.”
She crawled onto his chest and captured his eyes with hers. “I know we’re taking chances and I can’t explain why, but I’m not afraid. Some things you just know. You have to trust me, fancy man.”
No shouted conversation could have shaken him up more than this grim whisper.
“Is that your way of saying shut up and go with the flow?”
“Yep.”
Sharp fangs of darkness nipped at his feet. Ugly shadows from the past blew through his mind. He knew what lay in the gloom. Knew that his public persona hid a savage inner core, tested by war, compounded by a black fury, the result of the bastard twins, terror, and loss.
“Kelly.”
She smirked. “Give it a rest Roman. We both have shit to deal with. In here,” she murmured before dropping a soft kiss over his heart. “And here.” Her fingers brushed against his temples. “I’m serious, big guy. You have to trust that I know what’s best for me. And Matty. Right now, that’s you. What’s that obnoxious saying? Borrowing trouble is stupid? Yeah, that.”
She cut him off so neatly he was stunned into silence. Trust me. Jesus. Wasn’t that supposed to be his line?
Getting into anything right now was counterproductive. Between them, they were juggling several different realities. Remembering that he left Rhiann to drop the Matty bombshell sparked a flurry of random, fragmented thoughts. He knew Liam. Adding a half-brother to the situation was going to stir up the guy’s inner demons.
Maybe the best way for him to protect Kelly was with information. Her legal status was a shit show, and Matty? Fuck me, but who the hell knows where that breadcrumb trail would lead. He needed to speak with Cameron Justice. Roman knew Cam dealt with his own background legal bullshit over the years and could probably steer him in the right direction so he could take control of cleaning this shit up.
Yeah. That’s what he’d do. He didn’t want to hurt Liam any more than he could deal with Kelly being hurt. Or Matty. That sorta’ meant it was up to him to keep track of the dozen or so balls up in the air at any given moment.
And right now the ball in the air was his lover’s state of mind. She was too fucking wonderful for words, and he was a dick for not showering her with romantic care.
It was clearly important that her autonomy be acknowledged and respected. Not only did he understand, he practically wrote the damn book on the subject. So he gave her what she needed and in doing so felt a peacefulness in his soul that he hadn’t been able to access in a very long time.
“I trust you, Carina.” He kissed her nose. “But go easy on me, okay? My heart is involved.”
She was blushing and the pouty smile making her lips quiver held amusement and delight.
“Did you just tell me to be gentle with you, Mr. Bishop?”
And this ladies and gentlemen, he mentally shouted. This right here is why I’m a fucking goner.
“Nah,” he quietly scoffed. “I can take a beating.”
“Said my ass to your hand,” she giggled.
“Keep it up, Carina,” he teased as his hands went on a seek and destroy tickle maneuver that got her wiggling frantically. “And we’ll find out just how much your sweet sexy ass can take.”
She swatted his hands away and crawled back to lying at his side. A quiet yawn blew across his skin.
“Yeah, yeah. Promises, promises,” she murmured with a sleepy sigh and just like that drifted into a deep sleep.
Quieting his thoughts wasn’t easy, but somehow he managed to let go of everything and concentrate on the now. It’d been forever since he slept with a woman. Slept. Not fucked. And yet here he was for night two, on a shitty single size mattress on the floor with a sexy wanton elf curled around him. It was just the most perfect moment, he thought, as sleep claimed him too.
“And poor old Buck,” Jimmy said with a good-natured chuckle, “slid right off the road and into a ditch. We had to call for reinforcements to dig him out before the snow swallowed his truck!”
“That shit was wild, I’ll give you that,” Roman answered.
Tossing him a biscuit, Jimmy’s face was transformed with a wry scowl. “Folks around here ain’t used to weather like that. The kids had a great time but plowing and digging everyone out sucked donkey dicks. When you vanished into a snow cloud, I just hoped your survival skills were on point, man.”
They both snickered for different reasons. Roman because hell yeah his survival skills rocked. He’d taken refuge from the storm. Found warmth inside the seductive body of… shit. Cancel that thought.
Pushing back from the table where he’d shared a late breakfast with his new buddy, he did the obligatory gut smack followed by a rich, full belch that Jimmy easily eclipsed with an impressively overblown burp. His smirk was pure son-of-a-bitch, Marine style.
“I bow to your supremacy,” Roman quipped.
“So what now?” his friend asked. “You’re taking off I see,” he said with a nod directed at the duffle bags on the chair next to him.
He was ready for the question. Had given what he wanted to convey a good deal of thought. He liked this guy. He had a cool backstory. They were interconnected by an oath they’d sworn.
Jimmy was good people, and he wanted to set Kelly’s record straight and tell him as much of the truth that he could.
“Back to the big city. Taking Kelly and the boy with.”
Jimmy nodded. “Good. She’s a smart girl. She’ll be fine.”
“I need your help, though. She’s freaking out about the land. Is her worry about the Dulbs taking over for real?”
“Oh, fuck yeah,” Jimmy grated angrily. “Bunch of assholes. Look, I have an idea. Is this move to the big city permanent?”
Roman tried to appear nonchalant. He even gave a lazy shrug. “I imagine so.”
“Then what y’all need is a placeholder. Someone to maintain the land. Live in the house. Ya’ feel me, right?”
Hmph. Damn. “Great suggestion. Have someone in mind?”
“Bobby Douglas. Regular Army. Got shot up pretty bad over there. He’s having a rough time now. Wife. Two kids. Boys. He needs to catch a break. Maybe, oh, I don’t know,” he muttered. “Caretaker? He’s got some issues but nothing that’d prevent him from keeping up the house, the garden, you know.”
“I like it,” Roman answered. “When life moves us up and on, that’s when you reach back
and lend a hand.”
“I think Kelly might know Bobby. He’s a regular in town and has helped out Sam with some handyman work. Maybe the butcher can be a reference.”
Roman took Jimmy’s hand in a hearty shake and landed a hand on his shoulder. “You rock, man. Is there anything I can do for you?”
The other guy laughed and made a face. “Yelp reviews are always nice.” His snicker was drier than the Sahara desert. Yelp reviews for an off the beaten path hole in the wall were about as helpful as a fork with a bowl of soup.
“I’m serious. What’ve you got going on? Maybe I can help.”
“Well,” he drawled. “There is the whole custom wood thing me and Lil started. Mostly small stuff. Hand carved boxes. Children’s furniture. I make the objects, and she does the most amazing carvings. The internet is a beautiful thing.”
“Well shit, Jimmy! A redneck entrepreneur? I fucking love it.”
Jimmy laughed. “We love the hick lifestyle, what can I say? The thing is,” he said with a shrug, “running a bar ain’t enough. But having a business on the side? Fuck. Welcome to the American dream. Me and Lil made enough last year to take care of all sorts of shit and even managed one of those Carnival cruises out of Galveston. You should try it sometime. That there is some good shit.”
Roman saw his opening and took it. “That’s not a half-bad idea. Kelly would love a cruise, and Matthew? What kid doesn’t have a ball in the ocean?”
He expected Jimmy to ask and he wasn’t disappointed.
“So…the kid?”
“Matthew. About to turn four, and he’s her little brother.”
Jimmy’s startled whistle about said it all. “She-it Roman. Brother? Damn! That girl is my new hero.”
“You and me both.”
He headed out not long after that, taking a bunch of business cards and a brochure of Jimmy’s side gig with him. He knew exactly who to talk to about giving the guy some pointers on how to grow his woodworking business. Draegyn St. John, also of Justice Brothers fame and another of Roman’s tribe of warrior buddies, was a wood artist in a caliber all by himself. What that guy did with a piece of tree was some other level shit.
As he pulled in and parked at his next stop, he did a quick mental rehash of all the things he wanted to say to Sam. Turns out that Roman’s initial impression that the curmudgeonly butcher and his know-it-all wife being more than casual friends to Kelly and Matty was on target.
Another thing Liam was going to have to accept. The two siblings came with a ready-made support system in the form of a strong surrogate family. Not only were a brother and sister about to shake up his employer’s life, so were an unexpected set of grandparents.
When he entered the store, Sam was helping a customer. He looked at him through the glass case he was behind and gave a perfunctory nod. “Be right with you,” he told him.
Roman wandered around and checked the place out. A wall with photos in different sized, mismatched frames caught his eye. He chuckled at several pictures of deer kills with rude comments on sticky notes attached. A photo of Sam wrapped in an apron, holding a trophy next to a huge barbecue smoker was an eye-opener. So was the standard cop in uniform shot showing a much younger version of the man watching his every muscle twitch.
The cord strung with bells hanging from the shop’s door tinkled, letting Roman know the customer Sam had helped was leaving. When he turned around, the man was already moving to a small round table by the front window with a coffee pot and two white mugs in his hands.
“Take a load off, son. You look like someone wishing they were anywhere but here. You’re safe. For now.”
Thank god the conversation went smoothly. It was hard enough managing Kelly’s wild mood swings whenever the subject of her future came up. He didn’t want to battle the old guy, too.
Sam offered up some sage advice as they shook hands and said goodbye. He’d stayed neutral before now when Roman first presented Kelly with the options before her—as he saw them. After some time to process the changing conditions, he’d told him, the only way forward from Sam’s standpoint was for Kelly to ball up and meet with her older brother. Until she did that, anything else was nothing but a stalling tactic.
The problem with that, however, was her belligerent reluctance to take that step. Hell, she still refused to say Liam’s name.
“Don’t ease up on the gas, my boy. Pedal to the metal. That girl can sniff out uncertainty better than a bloodhound on a trail. If you give an inch, believe me. You’re doomed. And whatever you do, don’t let her shove you into a corner. It’s her best move, by the way. Clueing into weakness in any form and shooting from the corner is how she wins at pool.”
“Thanks, Sam,” he told the old guy with a warm handshake.
“And if you hurt my girl, I will personally rip off your nuts and shove ‘em down your throat.”
So much for warm and fuzzy goodbyes.
Message received. He just nodded. That was enough.
He gassed up and took advantage of the public Wi-Fi from the parking lot at the Laundromat. The signal was shit, but he was able to shoot off half a dozen emails and touched base with Liam via text.
His boss reacted to the news about Matty much better than expected. Roman owed Rhi big time for handling that particular microphone drop with her usual aplomb. Somehow she managed to get Liam focused on the future rather than kicking a bunch of dead horses that’d get them all nowhere.
When Liam deferred to Roman’s judgment on how best to wind things up in Oklahoma, he was relatively sure Rhiann was also responsible for that. Telling him that he was sleeping with his little sister and was moving them into his home, well, that part Rhiann wisely left unsaid. It was his responsibility to do the right thing on that score.
Driving along the winding road leading to Kelly’s home, he took a few deep breaths. Their snowbound fantasy was coming to an end. It was time to get back to the real world.
He sensed the battle waging inside her. She wasn’t making it easy and refused to hand over the reins. It was her life she liked to say, and while she reluctantly conceded that a previously unknown sibling was intriguing, she had other things on her plate that were way more important. Kelly’s stubborn refusal to acknowledge that the two things were linked was driving him nuts.
So he was going to force the issue. Jimmy handing him a made-to-order solution for keeping control of her land was what he needed to sail over the last hurdle holding her here.
She was coming to New York with him, and that’s all there was to it.
The pacing wasn’t helping, but she didn’t know of another way to burn off energy and anxiety without drawing too much attention. It was making her twitchy that eyes were watching her all the damn time.
Matty, Ginny, Sam, Roman. Even the damn goats looked at her like they thought she was about to unravel right before their eyes. And maybe she was, because right now Kelly was close to jumping out of her skin.
Pushing both fists into the small of her back, she stopped and arched enough to get a good stretch going. Her back was killing her, and she wasn’t sure if the ache was from sleeping on the floor, the high-intensity sexual gymnastics, or the non-stop tension she was barely managing.
Pacing resumed, she shook out her hands and willed the wild beating of her heart to settle down. If only it were that simple. A heavy conscience came with a price.
Matty had a particularly awful morning, and she was the reason why. He was picking up on her anxiety. When she snapped at him over nothing, and his little lip quivered, she hated herself.
Angered, she kicked the door jamb with her boot. Deb was a snapping turtle. Non-stop. Having a tart, insensitive attitude was something her mother excelled at, and she didn’t want to be like that.
Damn. Poor Matty. She was coming unglued right before his eyes. This morning he asked a simple question about his birthday, and she nearly tore his face off. What was wrong with her? She’d been looking forward to Matty’s fourth birthday more tha
n he had.
Wishing she hadn’t lost it though was useless. Because she had. Lost it. And why? Because in the blink of an eye she realized that his birthday was timed to take place somewhere else. Not here. Not in the little house in the woods on the not very big mountain in their little corner of Oklahoma.
That was the moment when panic, real, gut-freezing panic, took hold. And because these feelings were foreign and so out of character, she was having a hard time keeping her shit together.
Without the snow to keep the outside world at bay, their altered reality slowly filtered in. That guy in New York City, Liam? He wanted to meet her. And Matty. There was talk of a trust fund and questions about Matthew’s future schooling that made her super uncomfortable.
There was a woman too. Rhiann. She was Liam’s fiancée. Kelly spoke with her briefly. Reluctantly. It was only hello, but she got the impression this was a person who was good at ironing out wrinkles and making things go smoothly.
The nagging sense that she was a major wrinkle tore away at her. Was her entire life going to be about other people and how they reacted to her and Matty? Jeez, but she was sick of being the cog in the wheel. Her mother, a father who hated her enough to send a subtle fuck you on every birthday, and now him. Liam. He didn’t know her. And what he did know was total bullshit if he thought she was some stupid backwater country girl.
She didn’t want to be ironed out. Why the hell would she? To make someone else feel good?
Blech. Her face contorted with disgust.
Where was Roman? She needed him.
A for real guardian angel must have been on stand-by. That’s the only way to explain how she missed smacking her head on the coffee table when her feet unexpectedly circled left, and she went crashing to the floor.
Huh? She needed him?
Was she drunk?
Is this a dream?
Needing anything was not her style. She made do. That’s how she got this far by herself.
“Oh my god. I need him,” she whispered out loud. Staying on the floor seemed safer than pacing, so she scooted until her back hit the sofa. Pulling her legs in she sat cross-legged and slumped. Her hand rubbed and squeezed the back of her neck. How the hell did she end up here?
Bishop's Pawn Page 22