Brenna sat up. He looked wild-eyed and panicked and was zooming around like a cartoon character. Clearly, he’d misunderstood her protest, and the entire situation suddenly struck her as hilarious. Not to mention absurd.
This time her laughter came as quickly as her tears had moments before.
Luke did not join in the merriment. “You’re hysterical.” He bent down and took both her hands in his. “Brenna, it’s going to be all right, honey, I promise you.”
Using his hands as leverage, Brenna pulled herself to her feet. She was calming down now, her emotions beginning to level. The baby must have known it, because the frantic kickboxing slowed to mellow pokes.
“Sit down, Brenna,” ordered Luke, trying to push her back down onto the sofa. “Better yet, lie down. I’ll call the doctor and we—”
“I don’t need a doctor, Luke.” This time her voice held all the clarity and strength it had lacked during the debacle on the stairs. “I just want you to leave. Immediately.” Her tone also possessed the steely, icy edge she had honed to perfection over the years.
It was one that Luke had never heard from her, and it visibly affected him. He stared at her, uncertain and uneasy.
“Brenna, what happened tonight—”
“Won’t happen again, Luke. Not ever.” She hoped she sounded threatening enough to be taken seriously. “Get out of my house and leave me alone. I’ll…I’ll make you very sorry if you don’t.”
It worked! She must’ve sounded as menacing as a henchman working for the Sopranos, because Luke strode from the room and out the front door without a backward glance.
Brenna sank slowly back onto the sofa and rested her elbows on her knees, her head in her hands.
She sat there, consumed by memories of the inexplicable, terrifying and wondrous passion that Luke Minteer had evoked in her. And that she had evoked in him?
Brenna wasn’t sure. After all, he had a reputation with women, and for all she knew any available, willing female might turn him on—despite his claim that he didn’t, as a rule, fancy pregnant women.
Well, she’d been willing—at least for a short while there—but she would never, ever be available to him or to any other man. Brenna thought of her mother’s terrible relationships with all the wrong men and, finally, with the man who had committed the one act not even Marly Morgan could excuse.
“Brenna!”
Cassie Walsh’s voice startled Brenna from her increasingly disturbing reverie.
Brenna jerked her head up and stared in astonishment at her neighbor, standing in front of her.
Cassie sat down beside her. “I heard Luke Minteer peeling rubber, racing out of here like a speed demon at about a hundred miles an hour.” Cassie was thoroughly disapproving.
“So you came over here to see if the reason he writes so successfully about serial killers is because he happens to be one?” Brenna managed a wavering smile. “I’m fine, Cassie.”
“Your front door was unlocked.” Cassie put a sisterly arm around Brenna’s shoulders. “And you’ve been crying, Brenna.”
Brenna touched her fingers to her cheeks, which were still wet with tears. She’d almost forgotten she had cried. And in front of Luke Minteer! Since she never cried in front of anybody, the act seemed as intimate as…Luke’s touch. As her responses to him.
Brenna heaved a soft groan. What an embarrassing, unnerving mess this was! How could she ever face Luke in the courtroom tomorrow?
Maybe she could call in sick. Surely her doctor would vouch for her if she were to tell him she was feeling ill and needed to stay at home in bed. Weren’t there alternate jurors available to fill in for such emergencies?
“Brenna, I want you to know that you can trust me.” Cassie was looking at her with concern and speculation. “I mean, we’ve only known each other since you moved in last year, but I think we’ve become really good friends and—”
“We have become really good friends, Cassie,” Brenna agreed, interrupting. “And I’m so grateful to have you and Ray and the kids living next door as neighbors and friends.”
Cassie leaned forward attentively, as if prompting Brenna to continue. But Brenna had nothing more to say. The two sat in silence for a few moments, and then Cassie rose to her feet.
“Well, I guess as long as you’re okay, Brenna…” Her voice trailed off.
“I am, Cassie. Honest. And thanks for checking up on me,” Brenna added with a smile. “It’s nice to know somebody cares about us.” She patted her swollen belly. The baby was quiet now. “About Susannah or Simon and me.”
To Brenna’s surprise, Cassie’s eyes misted with tears. “Brenna, we do care. And I have more than an inkling of what you’re facing. I was a single mother myself for a number of years.”
“You were?” Brenna was surprised. The Walsh family seemed like such a close, tight-knit unit, the type of family who’d always been together.
Cassie nodded her head. “My first husband left me and the boys when they were just babies. That was a really rough time. I took Tim and Brandon home to live with my parents and grandmother and my sister. I don’t know what we would’ve done without them. But you don’t have a family to fall back on, Brenna.”
“No, but don’t worry about me, Cassie.” Brenna didn’t bother to add that basically she’d been on her own for years. Having someone “to fall back on” was an alien concept.
Brenna Morgan depended on herself.
“I’m fine,” she reiterated.
“You always say you’re fine.” Cassie frowned. “Even if you weren’t, you wouldn’t admit it. But, Brenna, you and your baby need family, you need—”
“How about if you and Ray and the kids are my honorary family?” Brenna suggested brightly. “There couldn’t be a better family to have than you Walshes.” She paused. “I never knew Ray wasn’t the boys’ real dad, Cassie. He treats them the way he treats little Abby. Just like his own.”
“He legally adopted the boys right after we were married. And now they are his own kids in every way, just like Abigail.”
“Ray is a wonderful man,” Brenna said warmly. “It’s good to know guys like him actually exist in real life.”
“Yes.” Cassie’s face darkened. “Unfortunately, good-for-nothing jerks who contribute nothing but their genes to the next generation also exist in real life. You can’t imagine how much I detest men who shirk their duties as a father, the…the emotional and financial obligations that each and every father owes to his child. To just opt out, to blithely assume the mother will handle everything… It makes my blood boil, Brenna!”
Brenna assumed that Cassie was thinking about her sons’ biological father, who must have been one of those detestable shirkers. She wasn’t sure how to reply. To bash Cassie’s ex or to praise Ray Walsh again?
She tried to do a little of both. “Some men are responsible and kind, and others aren’t.” Brenna gave a philosophical shrug. “That’s just the way it is, I guess.”
“There has to be a better way,” Cassie muttered fiercely as Brenna walked her to the door. “Somebody has to do something to make things better for mothers and children.”
“I guess garnisheeing men’s wages to pay child support is a step in the right direction, at least financially,” remarked Brenna.
“And we have that law in Pennsylvania. Think about it, Brenna. At the very least, your baby deserves its father’s financial support.”
Brenna thought of the medical student who didn’t even know he was going to be a father, though his contribution had enabled her to be blessed with this wonderful gift of a child.
“It doesn’t matter to me. I know I’m very fortunate to be able to support my baby all by myself,” she assured Cassie.
Cassie did not appear reassured as she left Brenna’s house for her own. She looked furious, no doubt still enraged by the heartless abandonment of her sons by their birth father. Brenna considered calling Cassie back, to urge her to put the disturbing memories of the past behind her.
It was the best way to get on with your life after something bad had happened to you, Brenna knew. It was what she had done herself.
Except every now and then those bad memories would boomerang into your new, good life. Flashbacks—a not uncommon symptom of post-traumatic stress, so she’d been told.
Brenna swallowed hard. Undoubtedly that’s what had happened to her tonight, when she’d been assailed by terror as Luke attempted to carry her up the stairs.
His size and strength and her own vulnerability to it triggered her panic. And though the circumstances tonight couldn’t have been more different from—that night—her reaction, so deeply ingrained from that night’s trauma, had been the same.
She’d pleaded and cried and tried to physically fight back.
To no avail, back then. But tonight she hadn’t been harmed. She had won.
Or had she? Was it winning when there was no fight? Luke hadn’t used his strength against her, he hadn’t been trying to hurt her. Or to scare her.
But she’d certainly scared him! Brenna thought of Luke’s own panic in response to hers and couldn’t help but smile a little. He’d feared she was going into labor and had morphed into a stereotypical, nervous expectant father, a sitcom staple.
It was rather dear of him to be so concerned, especially since he wasn’t the father, she decided.
And then she remembered how cold she had been to him while he raced around wanting to help her. She hadn’t been able to appreciate his motives at the time, not when she was still in the fearful grip of past threats.
So she’d driven Luke away with her words and her tone. He had left immediately, undoubtedly glad to be away from such a moody irrational shrew, and who could blame him?
Brenna certainly didn’t.
After all, she wasn’t looking for a good man like Ray Walsh to come along and take care of her and her baby—not that Luke Minteer had been auditioning for the role.
Why had he come over tonight, anyway? The longer she sat here thinking about tonight’s strange events, the more Luke’s actual reason for dropping in eluded her. Hadn’t he mentioned something about her being angry with him at the courthouse this afternoon because he’d expressed no interest in her job?
As if he cared about either—her anger or her job!
As for him wanting to make love to her…
Now that she was firmly back in her right mind, Luke’s professed desire for her was beyond comprehension. Why, how, could he want her in her current condition, her body swollen with child? A child who wasn’t even his own.
She preferred not to think of her desire for him. There was only so much confusion a person’s mind could deal with at any given time.
Brenna gingerly rose to her feet and slowly climbed the stairs to her studio. The partially colored-in figure of mischievous little Kristin, surrounded by her 1908 clothes and playthings, lay on the desk before her.
With considerable relief, Brenna picked up a pencil and got back to work.
When the phone rang fifteen minutes later, Brenna ignored it. Though it was a bit late for telemarketers, some ambitious ones had probably extended their calling hours. The answering machine would take care of that.
After six rings, she heard her own voice politely recite her recorded message, inviting whoever to leave a name and number. Telemarketers never accepted the invitation.
“Pick up. I know you’re there, Brenna.” Luke’s voice boomed into the machine. “I know you’re screening your calls.”
Disconcerted, Brenna dropped her pencil. As always, while working, she’d been too absorbed to think about anything but the characters and their lives she was creating with her drawings. It put her into another world, which was her refuge, her escape.
And now Luke Minteer had invaded that private, peaceful place by crashing back into her consciousness.
He wasn’t welcome. She had come up here expressly to work—and to avoid all thoughts of Luke Minteer. Now, here was his voice, filling her studio. Filling her head!
“If this machine cuts me off before you pick up, I’ll simply call back, Brenna. I’m relentless about getting through to people who are trying to dodge my calls. I never give up. It was one of my greatest talents as a political hatchetman.”
Brenna found herself smiling in spite of herself. She’d never heard anyone admit to being a hatchetman. In her experience, people tried to sugarcoat their less-than-admirable traits and deeds. Or deny them completely.
The machine clicked off, and the studio was quiet. For a moment. Then the phone rang again, and this time Brenna picked it up.
“I knew you were there,” said Luke.
“Congratulations. Your record of getting through to people trying to dodge your calls still stands.”
There was a split second of silence.
“I also considered the art of ironic distance to be another specialty of mine,” Luke said wryly. “But you’re as good at it as I am. Maybe even better.”
“I’m not sure you mean that as a compliment.”
“I don’t. It just occurred to me how annoying ironic distance really is. Tiring, too.”
“Well, since we’re both annoyed and tired of each other, let’s hang up and pretend that—” she gulped for breath “—that none of this ever happened.”
“I can’t forget, Brenna. I terrified you tonight, and I’m sorry.” There was no flippancy, no ironic detachment in his tone now. He sounded genuinely concerned and contrite.
Brenna winced. “Don’t, Luke.”
“Don’t what, Brenna? Don’t apologize? Don’t think about what you—”
“Yes, don’t think about me,” she cut in eagerly. “Think about you. About how furious you were when you left here.”
“You don’t get it, do you?” Luke heaved a long sigh. “Do you know why I left when I did, Brenna?”
“Of course. Because I kicked you out. And off you went—at about a hundred miles an hour, according to my neighbors.”
“Brenna, the reason why I left so abruptly had nothing to do with you kicking me out. In fact, it’s impossible to kick me out. Just ask anybody who’s ever tried. When ordered to leave, I take it as a challenge and deliberately stay put. Needless to say, it irritates the hell out of people.”
“Another one of your valuable talents, no doubt?”
“Unquestionably.”
“I can see that politics’ loss is publishing’s gain,” Brenna cracked.
“Brenna, listen to me,” Luke’s tone grew serious once again. “I left tonight because you were extremely upset, and I knew if I stayed, it would only make things worse for you. I had to go when you ordered me to, because if I didn’t get out right then and there, I would’ve scared you even more. I didn’t want to hurt or scare you, Brenna. I realized that you had to know you were in control of the situation.”
Brenna stared uneasily into space, discomfited. Luke had analyzed the situation—and her—a bit too accurately. Not that she would tell him so.
“All women want men to…to leave them alone when they say so,” she pointed out. “It’s why there are stalking laws.”
“Brenna, I know it’s more than that. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about this. Something bad happened to you, didn’t it, Brenna? Something involving a man, or—” there was an audible gulp from him “—men?”
Brenna closed her eyes. His voice was quiet and low, with understanding, with concern. It washed over her like a warm, soothing wave.
“Brenna?”
She had a sudden vital urge to pour out the story of that long-ago terrible night, but she fought against it. The very few times she’d ever talked about it had elicited what she didn’t want. Pity.
She didn’t need pity; she knew it could only be detrimental to her. Brenna well remembered the frequent bouts of self-pity her mother had indulged in, and look where she’d ended up!
As if he could see her across the telephone line, Brenna straightened her shoulders and lifted her chin to co
nvey her resolve.
“Yes, something bad happened to me,” she said brusquely. “But it was years ago, in the…the distant past. It’s over, so let’s just leave it at that.”
She heard Luke’s sharp intake of breath. “Brenna, you…you didn’t have a…a run-in with a serial killer, did you? Or…or someone you loved wasn’t murdered by one?” He sounded completely shaken, ready to hit the ground from sheer horror.
Brenna couldn’t help herself. She started to laugh. “No wonder you decided to write crime fiction! You do have the imagination for it. No, I’ve never crossed paths with a serial killer, and I’ve never met anyone who has. Thank the good Lord for that.”
It took her a moment before she noticed that Luke was not sharing her amusement. There was no laughter, only silence, on his end of the line.
Brenna felt a pang of remorse. “Luke, I’m sorry for laughing at your, um, kind concern but it was just so—”
“Serial killers aside, something bad happened to you and it involved a man,” Luke said quietly. “You admitted as much, and I can’t find that funny, Brenna.”
She waited for him to press for details. When he didn’t, when the silence on his end continued, she relaxed. “I know this is probably the last thing a cool rogue type like you wants to hear, but you’re basically a nice guy, Luke Minteer.”
“There was a time when that description of me would’ve been like a knife in the gut, back when I was intent on being the coolest rogue of rogues.” Luke’s laugh was self-mocking, without mirth. “But now, being called a nice guy…well, it doesn’t sound all that bad.”
“I’m glad. Because I…I appreciate your call tonight after…well, you know.” Brenna couldn’t bring herself to say any word to describe tonight’s “incident” with Luke. She wasn’t going to step into the landmine evoked by words like kiss, touch, or passion.
Luke must’ve known it, because he made no further reference to the “incident” either. “I’ll see you in court tomorrow for the next riveting installment in the Who Gets the Ring Saga,” he said lightly.
“Yes.” Thanks to this call, she no longer had to dread seeing him tomorrow. She wouldn’t have to fake an illness and pester her doctor for an alibi. That in itself was a relief.
Irresistible You Page 7