They were both quiet for a couple blocks. Caroline settled a bit, charmed as she always was by Boston in the fall. It would rain before the day was over, but the morning was all bright sun.
“I looked for you. Really,” he said. “That next summer. I’d spent half the year looking forward to seeing you again.”
“You had my phone number.”
“Well, I was seventeen and an idiot. And you were freaking fifteen. I was trying to think I was all grown up, and having the hots for a fifteen-year-old girl just seemed juvenile. I thought when we left South Carolina I’d forget about you.”
His hand brushed hers, but she slid away.
“I didn’t forget, couldn’t. By the time I realized I wasn’t going to, it seemed stupid to call. So I just waited for the next July. But you never came.”
He grabbed her hand and didn’t let her get away this time. He stopped her and stepped around to face her, blocking her path.
“I never forgot, Caro.”
She shook her head. “I’ve been seeing Jack for a while.”
“I know. He’s talked about you. I just didn’t know it was you.”
“I care about him.”
Now he nodded. “He cares about you, too.” He watched her, and she remembered. His blue eyes always saw so much. Always saw her. “How was it with him, last night?”
She barely kept from rolling her eyes. Or maybe she didn’t, entirely. “I’m not going to talk to you about my sexual relationship with Jack.”
He was impatient. “I’ve lived with Jack for five years. We’ve been buddies since halfway through our undergraduate program. I love him like a brother. But I know he has a dark side when he’s with a woman.”
She looked away. He squeezed her hand, tugging it to draw attention back. “I’m afraid he could hurt you.”
“I’m not.” Caroline said it without hesitation, and she realized it was true. There might be darkness, he might push her limits, but he wouldn’t hurt her.
She met his eyes carefully until finally he backed off. He still faced her, just far enough that they couldn’t touch.
“So I’ve missed my chance with you? Again?”
She didn’t answer quickly enough.
She wanted to, she should have. But the hesitation was too long, and so it sounded weak when she said it. “I’m with Jack now.”
He nodded. He’d learned what he wanted not from her words, but from the silence before them.
“I’ll see you around, Caro.”
* * * *
Jackson was at the kitchen table when Matthew got back to the apartment. Without speaking, he slid the other half of the omelet onto a plate and sat across from him. He ate, and the eggs were good, but every bite went down hard.
Finally he gave up and put his fork down. “You know I love you, man. I’d never want a woman to come between us. But this is Caro.”
“Yeah,” Jack said. “This is Caro.”
They watched each other carefully until finally Jack got up and took his dishes to the sink. “I’ve got her Friday night and Saturday next weekend.”
He scrubbed off the dishes and put them in the drying rack. “She has lunch at the quad dining hall about one-thirty on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I won’t be able to make it this week. I have to finish extracting the RNA to get ready for that DNA screen on Sunday.”
He dried his hands and walked out of the kitchen.
Matthew craned his lower jaw back into position. Goddamn.
Chapter Three
“Hey.” Caroline’s brother, Rich, was in the living room when she walked into her apartment. He had his bare feet up on the coffee table, a glass of orange juice in his hand, and the Saturday paper spread all over. “How are you?”
He’d have been worried, looking out for her like he always did. She’d let him know that she was spending the night with Jack, but had only been brave enough to send him a late text and not brave enough to answer back when he responded with questions.
Rich had met Jack briefly a couple times and seemed to like him okay. But he knew that she’d never spent the night with a man before, knew that doing so was a big deal for her.
“I’m fine.” She walked through the living area on her way to her bedroom and was entirely unsurprised when he stopped her.
“Caroline. Come sit here and talk with me.”
She sighed and bit back the frustration that wasn’t really justified. Yes, she’d had fully enough of domineering men pushing her around to get their way. But that wasn’t Rich.
Rich and she were each other’s family. Ten years ago their father had lost his job, and they’d lost him. He’d checked into a bottle and out of their lives.
Together, when Caroline was twenty-one and Rich nineteen, they’d suffered through their mother’s grim death. She’d had Huntington’s disease, an inherited disorder that was quiescent until adulthood and then inevitably, cruelly made itself known. It was incurable, ending in progressively debilitating loss of muscle control, psychiatric illness, and dementia.
Angela Freeman had known she carried the gene, passed down from her father. Genetic testing had allowed her to know it before she passed the gene on to her own children. In fact, the miraculous science of reproductive technology had allowed her to stop the disorder with her. Through assisted reproductive techniques she was able to give birth to Caroline and then Rich without fear that they would be affected by the horrible condition.
Those contrasting circumstances—the wonderful possibilities of medical science and its limitations to do no more than give supportive care through Angela’s death—set the course of Caroline’s and Rich’s lives. She chose reproductive genetics as a career, the discipline that allowed small miracles to occur and aided families through those crises that were not preventable.
Rich chose medicine. He and his fiancée, Carlie, were both second-year med students at BU.
The choice of school was no accident. Rich and Caroline were close. They’d always lived near each other, and when Rich had started medical school they’d found this apartment, the first floor of an old brownstone, together. Rich met and fell in love with Carlie his first year, and she’d moved in with them at the beginning of the fall semester.
Caroline and Rich watched out for each other. She was older by two years, but lately, in that man-of-the-house way, he’d taken on a more responsible role.
Certainly, when it came to Caroline’s dates, he assumed he had the right to input as though he were the big brother.
And maybe he did have the right.
So she went and sat next to him, but she didn’t stifle the sigh.
He put the paper down and took her hand. She kind of wished he wore more than just a pair of cut-off sweats. He’d played volleyball, too, Div I, in fact. And she really didn’t need another bare, brawny chest to remind her of Jack. Or Matt.
“What happened, Caroline?”
“Nothing. Everything is fine.”
He squeezed her hand, and she knew she shouldn’t have even tried. She slipped out of her clogs, propped her feet next to his, and dropped her head onto his shoulder.
“Where’s Carlie?”
“Working at the free clinic today. Tell me what happened.”
She took a long swallow of his orange juice but it was a poor delaying tactic, and she knew it. “It was fine with Jack, lovely, really. Intense, though.”
“Intense in a bad way?”
“I’m not sure. Mostly good? I was still thinking about it when—” She stopped and took a breath, remembering that moment when she realized it was Matthew Churchill who’d walked in on her and Jack in the kitchen. While she was wearing Jack’s shirt and had Jack’s hand on her ass.
Matthew had left a little empty, lonely place in her heart that she hadn’t thought would ever be filled.
Until Jack. Dammit.
“When—” Rich prompted.
“Do you remember our summer in South Carolina? When I met that boy from down the street?”
“How do you know that?”
“I liked him, too. Remember? We played beach volleyball, and he’d kick a soccer ball around with me. He was a decent guy.”
“Yeah. He was.”
“You couldn’t stop looking at him.”
“You were spying on me.”
“Was not. You just weren’t at all subtle. Anyway, what’s the relevance?”
She rolled her head to look up at him. “Turns out he’s Jack’s roommate.”
“OMG. And you found this out before or after all that intensity?”
“After.” Or else that intensity might not have happened, eh?
“Ouch.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Well, didn’t your life just get interesting?”
“I really like Jack.”
“You really liked Matt.”
“I’ve kind of committed to Jack.”
“Yeah? How’s Matt with that? As I recall, he wasn’t at all subtle about looking at you, either.”
How was Matt with it? She wasn’t sure he was going to be gentlemanly about it. She sighed again. “I don’t know.”
* * * *
Caroline smiled when she felt that big male presence beside her, lunch tray in hand.
She’d called and talked with Jack Sunday evening. She knew he had a busy week in the lab, prepping for his next big experiment, one of his last. Both he and, she’d learned, Matthew were working in a lab that was looking at acquired neuromuscular disorders like myasthenia gravis.
She was interested in the disease—it related very much to her own work and studies. But when the talk went to mutant rat brains, homogenizing samples, and electrophoresis ranges, it didn’t take long for her attention to wander. Still, she always enjoyed Jack’s hot nerd-speak, and she expected to get a dose of it over lunch.
She’d describe their phone conversation as cautious. He’d dialed her Saturday afternoon and again fairly late that night. And Sunday morning.
He gave up after that and waited—she was sure she could hear his teeth grinding—for her to call him.
She’d said she wanted time to think. She’d decided to take it and not be rushed.
The problem was, thinking didn’t really help.
She had very strong feelings for Jack. She wasn’t ready to say more than that, but there probably was more than that. It was just too soon to be thinking in four-letter “L” words.
And that other thing, that concern she’d had over his aggressive sexuality—well, that had faded. Very much like those tender areas that had suffered his, uh, extreme attention. Like that sucking bruise he’d left on her breast, his little reminder of ownership.
As the hours had passed and she’d considered her experience with him, its appeal, its inherently flattering and inflaming nature, had ultimately prevailed over her wary initial response. He wanted her in a hot and demanding way. If his desire drove him to control, even to dominate, well, there really wasn’t a bit of it she hadn’t enjoyed. There wasn’t anything she hadn’t, in fact, reveled in.
Over the phone, he took obvious care not to push her. But his warm voice was enough, letting her know he was there, still wanting her. That he had more for her, more of that intensely pleasurable, full-throttle, hot sex. More of that incredibly intimate sharing of the self.
Each night, she’d gone to sleep longing for him.
And this morning, she’d woken up smiling and greatly looking forward to seeing him over lunch.
Her smile faded, however, when she realized it was Matthew setting his tray down, not Jack.
He sat across from her, and she suddenly felt the table was too small. She could feel the heat from his jean-covered legs as his knees pressed close to hers, not quite touching.
“Jack’s busy.”
She swallowed. “He always tells me when he can’t make lunch.”
“This time, he told me instead.”
“He did?”
Matthew nodded. “Yeah.”
Caroline’s mind blanked. What did that mean? Hadn’t she just had that sweet talk with Jack two nights ago? Hadn’t his warm voice, his obvious desire made her quiver, made her forget her qualms?
Watching her, Matthew leaned forward. His knee fully touched hers now, and he reached across to tangle his fingers in hers.
Clearly, it meant something to him. His gaze was hot, expectant. He rubbed his fingers over hers, an action that generated excited heat in her, too.
She jerked her fingers away, took them to her mouth as though she’d been burned. She sensed she had that deer-in-the-headlights look, but didn’t know how to squelch it.
Matthew grinned and then sat back. “Eat your lunch, Caro. You’re going to need your energy.”
* * * *
The truth was, Matthew didn’t know what the hell Jack was up to. To all appearances, he’d given Matt the green light to pursue Caro.
He was virtually certain that Jackson wasn’t bowing out. He’d been hearing about Jack’s new love interest for a while, and it was clear that his friend was hooked. Jack liked women. Over the years, he’d certainly given that king bed a workout.
It had come as a surprise to Matthew, even as he’d seen it develop. They lived together in a small half house—there was no way Matthew could avoid hearing what went on when Jack brought a woman home.
Jack made women happy. There was no doubt about that. But it was clear he’d developed an edge to his sex play.
Matthew had no reason to object. The women didn’t complain—just the opposite, in fact. They generally came back wanting more, long after Jack lost interest.
It was different with Caro, way off pattern.
With most women, Jack was all about fucking. He didn’t woo them or gentle them along. He brought them home and fucked them, and without exception they were out the door before morning.
Now, Caro, he’d courted. He’d spent almost two months getting her to his bed. And he’d kept her there all night. Matthew had so little expected to find the two of them together in the kitchen that morning, he could only be glad he’d bothered to pull on a pair of shorts.
So no, it surely didn’t seem like Jack was going to clear the field, not even for his best buddy.
Was he intending that Caroline should decide? Was he such a gentleman that he’d agree to let Matthew make his play? It could be. Jack was about as rational a person as Matthew knew. It was entirely possible that he would think the choice had to be up to Caroline. He would consider that if she had feelings for him, Matthew, they would always be in the way of her relationship with Jack.
He might prefer to let those feelings play out, even if he lost her to them, than to always wonder.
Or did he have some other idea, something that didn’t involve an either-or decision?
They hadn’t talked any further about it. There had been nothing but those cryptic words on Saturday morning. And those words had kind of seemed to open the door for Matthew.
That last possibility—well, it was hard to wrap one’s head around it, to even imagine how something like that might be configured.
Nonetheless, incredibly, it was exactly what Matthew was most inclined to think Jack was contemplating.
But even as he had the thought, he wanted to dismiss it as just too improbable.
The fact was, whatever shot he had at Caro, he was going to take. Maybe Jack was acting the gentleman. Maybe he was just being eminently practical. Or, just possibly, he was freaking off his rocker.
No matter. He’d wanted Caro when he was seventeen and now, ten years later, the want was even stronger. If Jack was idiot enough to give him an opening, he was barging through it.
So now, Thursday evening, he’d had two very public lunches with her. He’d realized he’d alarmed her a bit, that first time he sat across from her and took her fingers, pressed his knee against hers, and let her see his desire. So he’d backed off, lulling her, he hoped, into thinking he was after a k
ind of casual friendship.
He was as matter-of-fact about it as he could be, when he met her outside a lecture hall at seven. She’d mentioned it at lunch, her plans to hear a talk on new noninvasive fetal screening tests. She was with a couple women—friends from work or school, he guessed—when she spotted him leaning against a column at the front of the building.
“Matthew,” she said, with a bit of question. “Hi.”
“Hey,” he responded. “I was heading out and remembered you’d be here. I thought I could walk you home.”
The suspicion in her eyes made him think his play for casual hadn’t been all that successful. “Oh, well, we—” She pulled her two friends around her, the coward. “We were planning to stop for a drink.”
Okay. The day Matthew couldn’t wrangle an invitation from three good-looking single women—he’d checked for rings all around, that was just reflex—headed out to a bar, well, he’d just have to throw in the whole man-towel.
So in about twenty minutes, introductions had been made and he was sitting at a small table in a crowded little pub, the center of attention for two out of three women. Miss Number Three had maneuvered herself to sit across from him, more or less out of reach.
But that didn’t keep him from looking.
After a while, Sheila and Megan figured out where his interest lay, and a bit after that, he was alone with Caro, walking her home.
And that easily, he was back on track with the original plan.
It was a nice, crisp, starry night, and there was no reason not to casually take her hand as they walked. She wore thin leather gloves, short enough that his thumb could reach the soft skin of her wrist. Her pulse jumped whenever he did it, an observation that encouraged rather than discouraged.
Her place was much more upscale than his and Jack’s. It was an apartment in an old brownstone that, he learned, she shared with her brother and his fiancée, both med students. He remembered Rich from South Carolina and wasn’t surprised to hear he was in medical school. He’d been a bright little nerd even at thirteen.
Three Men and a Woman: Caroline (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) Page 4