by Dale Mayer
“The killers were never caught. Are not likely to ever be caught.” After all these years, he still felt an ache in his heart. “The police figure the man who actually did the damage was part of a gang. Chances are good he’s never going to pay for what he did.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“Like Jenna said, Justice is an issue for me. There’s a big part of me that wants to make that asshole pay. And another part of me that says I need to just move on. Move forward and let it go. But saying that and doing that are two different things.”
Chapter 23
Paris stared at him. They were so different. For him, Justice was something he wanted, and she was afraid Justice wanted her.
She slipped off his lap and moved over to the chair on the side. It wasn’t that she wanted to put any distance between them…but she wanted to put distance between them. This was getting intense quickly.
“That must have been difficult growing up,” she said quietly.
For long seconds he was silent, then he opened up a little more. “For years, I hated my father. Hated him for dying. Hated that he’d been more concerned about his car than his family, but I’ve come to understand. I doubt he was thinking at all at the time. He likely just reacted and paid a high price for his resistance.”
“I’ll say,” she said with feeling, hating what he’d been through. “And your mother, did she blame him too?”
“Absolutely. That made it harder for me. As she was so angry, it was hard not to get angry at him as well. She was a good woman. One who, once she slid into the dark side of life, could never get back to the right side again.”
“That’s very sad,” Paris said. In his eyes, she saw the sadness of a little boy who had been through unthinkable tragedy.
“The trouble with any kind of dependency is it becomes a crutch. She could always find forgetfulness in a bottle. The anger came when there was no bottle and reality slapped her in the face.”
“I imagine those scenes would have been tough.”
Her father never drank. Said it made fools of men. And he was no fool. No one and nothing was going to have that type of control over him. Never. He was bigger and better than that and always would be. But inside, he was a raging ball of anger with extreme hated of his own father and he despised his mother. But his uncle, just mention that man’s name and her father went ballistic. Her father had been one scary dude.
It was years later when she heard him muttering about the kiddy pedophile uncle of his that she realized her father had likely been a victim, too.
This was the first time in a long time she had thought about these things. She’d forgotten a lot of family history lessons in life, probably on purpose. The ones she remembered hadn’t been pleasant. Of her mother’s family, she knew nothing. Maybe she never would. Now though she no longer hated her mother for leaving them. It was highly likely that she had been abused as well. Too bad she hadn’t taken her children with her when she finally escaped. Paris’s childhood would have been very different if she had.
“Life is a bitch sometimes,” Paris said.
“Yes it is, but when you hang around with people in therapy, you realize we all have stories to tell but many of us don’t want to share. Why would we?” He shrugged. “We’ve already lived through it. We just want to move on.”
“Do you feel you’ve dealt with it all, or do you give Jenna a pat answer to those uncomfortable questions, knowing inside that you’re lying?”
He gave a bark of laughter. “You do that too, do you?”
“Absolutely. I figure she must know.”
Nodding, he continued solemnly. “I think I’ve dealt with a lot of stuff, but I’m still struggling in some ways.”
“Such as…”
“Jenna thinks I should go see my mother.” He winced. “I haven’t seen her in ten years.”
“That’s a long time to go without a mother.” She should know. Would she want to meet hers after all this time? Or would she just be angry – even now?
“Not really. It’s hard to look her in the face and accept that my life sucked in a big way because of her.”
“Interesting. Any remorse for her? Sadness? Any hope she’d make a better life for herself?”
“Sure, but I don’t want to be involved in the process. I haven’t forgiven her. Better to just let her be and see if she’s strong enough to get out of the cage she built herself.”
“But cold for her and maybe lonely for you?”
He gazed off into the distance. “Loneliness is an issue for people like us, isn’t it? Before we can share, we have to know our secrets will be safe. Otherwise, we can’t really be ourselves, and the trouble is compounded when you hook up with someone going through therapy too. Your partner will be dealing with their own stuff and that can be just as difficult.”
“Was that the problem with your wife?”
“Something like that. She desperately wanted to get married. To not be alone. But once married, it took her only a few months to figure it’s what she’d needed but no longer what she wanted. If that makes any sense. I’m still trying to sort my way through it all. And likely will never get an answer.” His voice had taken on a weary tone, as if he’d trashed this one to the end and back and still had no idea.
“Do you still see her?”
He shook his head. “No,” he said. “She moved back east to be closer to her family.” Then, rolling his eyes, he explained, “She said something about how I’m part of her past and she didn’t want to be reminded of me and our short life together so it was better this way.”
Paris laughed. “Too bad she didn’t figure that out before the nuptials.”
“So true.” He grinned. “Still, it’s nice to be able to laugh now, but at the time…”
“Everything hurts when it happens.”
“That’s for sure.” Looking over at Paris, he smiled. “I do tend to avoid women with baggage. So many have issues.”
“No,” she snickered, “you’re looking at this all wrong.” Her smile widened. “You’re actually seeing women who are trying to deal with their shit, instead of women who aren’t even acknowledging it is shit!”
His laughter rolled free before dying away to a comfortable silence.
Now what? She didn’t know how to proceed. What to say? But she did feel like she knew him a lot better. Liked him a lot better and felt closer to him. Her mind wandered back to that kiss. Maybe too much so.
Certainly he had been through a lot in life.
Why the hell had Jenna put them together again? And that brought up the damn report. She stood up again, intent on walking to the window. He held out his hand. Letting him tug her back down onto his lap, she tried for nonchalance and asked, “So how do we take all this and turn it into a visual project for Jenna?”
*
Happy to have her back in his arms, he tried to focus on her question. Visual? Interesting directive from Jenna. He wasn’t a painter or artist of any kind, but there was one thing he’d done a lot of over the years. He asked her, “Can you paint or do some kind of art?”
Paris gave a quick headshake. “I do stick men.”
“Good to know.” He laughed. “Well, maybe we’ll have to cut magazine pictures and create a collage of some kind.”
At the look of surprise on her face, he realized she likely hadn’t done anything like that. Like him, she’d had a poor childhood. School would have been an escape if she’d had a way to stay there after hours. It certainly had been that way for him.
But maybe that hadn’t been an option for her. If her father had demanded she return right at the end of the school day, then she wouldn’t have gone against that.
Once he’d grown too big for his mother to hit, life had changed for him. He’d done whatever he wanted to do and whenever. Not that the change had been a good thing, and it certainly hadn’t stopped the abuse. Just the physical beatings. In a way, he’d almost become the parent in that relationship.
Paris had
n’t had that choice. She’d been younger and with her father being the abuser, well, it would have been damn hard to have protected herself from him.
Weaver would love to show her life wasn’t always so hard. That there were good people in it. She had been through school and nursing training. Most of the time she related well to people, but there was that inherit lack of trust with men specifically. Big men. Understood. But he was gentle. Or at least he could be gentle if that was required. And in this case, it was definitely required.
Holding her in his arms, he kissed her gently, thinking about the simplicity of the moment in contrast to the complex reality of their lives. It would be easy to stay cocooned with one another. His eyes drifted over to the bed and he took a breath.
How to proceed? Because he really wanted to spend time with her. Sex was one thing, but this…this could be so much more.
But she had to want it as much as he did, and she wasn’t even close.
Chapter 24
“We’re such a mess.”
That shot his eyebrows into his hairline. “I was a mess. Sometimes I’m still a mess, but lots of times, I’d like to think I have my crap together, thank you very much.”
Lifting her head, she smiled. “You’re also very nice.”
Kissing her upturned forehead, he tilted his head in acknowledgment. “Thank you. I like you too.”
Snuggling in closer, she dropped her head onto his shoulder and nuzzled his neck. “Would you like to go to bed?”
Instead of getting a laugh or shocking him, he froze.
This time, it was her turn to see if he had stopped breathing there for a moment. A kind of hiccup escaped his lips, then he answered, “I’d love to go to bed.”
And he didn’t say any more.
So had he meant to go back to sleep? In which case, was she keeping him up? She pulled back and looked at him warily. “Does that mean you’re sleepy? Or…”
He grinned. “Or…”
Her cheeks flushed with heat and she turned to look out the window. “Ha.” Wishing she’d kept her big mouth shut, she backtracked quickly. “We’re strangers. Aren’t you supposed to do that with someone you love?”
His eyebrows shot way up. “Really. How about someone you like a lot? Someone you’re interested in getting to know better. Someone you might like to spend a lot of time with.”
Her cheeks were hot, but her gaze was steady as she stared at him, still snuggled close to him, their hearts beating in unison, the heat rising between them.
“Your big issue is trust,” he said, looking at her with big eyes.
She dropped her gaze and slowly nodded. “I’ve never really been interested in anyone before. So it hasn’t really come up. I’m essentially a novice, and that’s always intimidating.”
A laugh lit up his face. “It’s also reassuring.”
She frowned at him, loving the lighthearted laughter in his voice, and wanting to be able to make the move her body was urging her to, she asked. “Why does every guy want to be the first?”
“I couldn’t care less.” He shrugged. “It’s just nice to know that you don’t spend all your time hopping in and out of men’s beds.”
“What if it was women’s beds?” she teased.
“There is something almost appealing about that.”
She laughed. “Men are so simple. Sex, sex, and sex.”
“Hey, this is the first time the subject has come up between us. We’ve known each other a whole three to four days.”
Instantly she gasped and said, “Oh my, that’s right. That’s so not long enough.”
“Not long enough for what?” he cried in a mock-pitiful voice. “If it’s right, it’s right, and time doesn’t come into it.”
“I’m not holding out for the church wedding and white picket fence, remember.” She smiled. “I’m actually looking to adopt as a single parent. I didn’t write men off, just thought it wasn’t likely to happen to me.”
He tugged her upward into his arms and lowered his mouth to hers. Kissing her gently but thoroughly, his hands stroked her back before reaching around to hug her close. When he lifted his head, it was her pulling him back in for more. Breathless, they looked at each other.
In a voice deep and low, he said, “Well, maybe you should rethink that.”
*
The confused cloudiness in her gaze was a total come on. He’d done that to her. And although it was arrogant of him, he was also damn happy he’d been the man to put it there. All he could think about was her. He wanted her more every minute. A mix of confusing sides, she was hard to read. How she’d survived was beyond him, but she had, and she was sweet and caring and had so much to give. He could see that she’d poured all that love into her patients. Those lucky babies. And given the strength and power of love, he couldn’t help but think those babies must have responded beautifully.
He lowered his head again and closed his eyes, gently savoring the sweetness of her lips. The tenderness of her touch, the softness of her hair. The acceptance as she lay in his arms. He’d had several relationships. His own childhood abuse, not having had a sexual content to it, had geared him more to being disdainful of women. Tarring them all with the same brush. But he could never see this woman the same way. There is no way she would turn to the bottle to forget or abuse a child because she was so full of anger.
Paris had spent years working to heal. Trying so hard to adapt. To be strong and to survive. She’d done it at great cost – emotionally and spiritually. But she’d done it, and that was important.
She wasn’t like his wife. And he had to remember that.
Paris was her own person, and she’d be damned if she’d allow anyone to compare her to someone else.
Good thing – he didn’t want anyone else.
Just her.
Chapter 25
The taste and touch of his kiss…the feeling of those strong fingers slowly rubbing her back, exploring her ribs and caressing her skin. Nice. Addictive. She’d always wondered. Always wanted to have someone to hold her. Especially after seeing Robin with her brother. Seeing the affection and caring, how love bound them together.
And it had started here.
Like her relationship.
Was it possible? Could miracles hit twice in the same location? Third time if they counted Robin’s friend Tania. And maybe more. Jenna’s workshops were legendary. Who knew how many relationships started with them? And she had to wonder how many lasted.
This wasn’t about having a forever perfection – although like every woman, she certainly wanted such a thing if it existed. But she’d take little bits and pieces of wonderful goodness for now. Weaver was extraordinarily kind. He’d been looking out for her in the same way Sean had done for decades. Maybe that was the attraction. But it was more than that, it was his touch, his smell, the way he would not back down but was gentle at the same time. It gave her hope.
“What are you thinking?” Weaver asked, the heat of his breath sliding down her cheek to her neck as he trailed a line of kisses across her face.
“You remind me of my brother,” she said honestly, tilting her head to give him better access.
He froze, lifted his head, and said, “I don’t feel brotherly toward you.”
And this time when he kissed her, it was as if he wanted to erase the thought from her mind, stamping his personality on her soul, taking possession of her needs and wants and spiking them higher and higher.
Heat coursed through her, feelings she’d never experienced before making her shiver – with want, with expectation, with need. She’d missed out on this in life. It felt so good. So right. She wanted to see where it could go.
Wrapping her arms around his neck and pressing closer, she was willing to see what more there was. What more he could show her. Make her feel and forget. To enjoy this moment.
He shuddered then shifted and she found herself lying flat on the couch beneath him.
The weight of him on top felt so natural, so go
od. She loved the rapid thud of his heartbeat. The red flush on his neck and face. The glitter to his eyes. She wasn’t scared of him.
And though it shocked her, she trusted him.
With a sexy smile, she murmured as she placed tiny kisses at the corner of his mouth, “Take me to bed, Weaver.”
*
Weaver dropped his forehead to rest on hers. He closed his eyes. He wanted this. He really wanted this. But he needed to know she was okay with it – regardless of her words. Or maybe in spite of it.
He opened his mouth, and she placed a finger against his lips, telling him to stop.
“Don’t ask if I’m sure. I’m sure. Don’t ask if this is what I want. It’s what I want. I know this pushes my boundaries and yours. But I can do this. I want to do this. Besides…”
The little catch in her voice was barely audible but he heard as she added, “Besides, I trust you.”
His heart overflowed. For many guys, they wouldn’t care about that. For him, it was major.
“Thank you,” he whispered. Slipping off the couch, he grinned at her wide-eyed confusion. “No, you didn’t say anything wrong.” He held out his hand. “I figured the bed would be a whole lot more comfortable.”
With a startled laugh, she stood up with him, already walking backwards to the edge of the bed, his gaze intent, searching. He wanted her to be there inside – right there with him – and maybe she was, but he was going to give her every chance to back off if she needed to.
It might kill him…but she needed to be in control. At the edge of the bed, he flicked off his shirt and tossed it back on the couch then unbuckled his belt while slipping off his shoes. Seeing her gaze widen, he leaned forward to kiss her. She shook her head and stayed just out of reach.