Safe Love (Love Brothers #4)

by Liz Crowe

  Too easy, she thought.

  Not good, she also thought, tamping down the extreme urge to lean over him and lick her way up his neck.

  Instead, she spoke into the air over his head. “Now, tell me one thing you miss about Crystal.”

  “Uh…” he said, clenching and unclenching his fingers. “It’s…um… been such a long time and I…”

  “One thing Antony, quick, without thinking too hard.”

  He took a long, shuddering breath. “Her lips.”

  “Okay, now another thing.” She kept her hands pressed on his shoulders, willing him to be calm and to open up to her.

  “Her ass,” he ground out. She smiled.

  “Now we’re getting somewhere. One more thing please.”

  “Her…” He sucked in a breath. “The way she’d be in charge.”

  “Hmm…” Margot said, willing herself to stay put, to not place herself in front of him and do what she really wanted. “And what do you mean by that? She balanced the checkbook?”

  “No,” he whispered.

  “Okay then. Where was she in charge?” She caught herself even as she said it, implying that Antony’s wife had been “in charge” in a specific place. It cut to the chase, so why not?

  “I’m, um…not really comfortable with this.” His leg was jittering up and down as tension rose in him again. Margot took a deep breath, cursing her body for betraying her. She squared her shoulders.

  “I know. That’s why we’re not looking at each other.” Unable to stop herself, she leaned down and put her lips near his ear, sucking in a huge breath of leather, a hint of smoke, cotton and a clean, soapiness that made her want to weep. “It’s all right. I’m in charge in this room so you can just…relax.”

  She saw him grit his teeth and knew he was trying hard to do the exact opposite of what she was telling him to, so she tightened her grip on his shoulders, not an easy feat considering how firm they were. A point had to be made and she knew her options for making it were limited, since she’d promised herself that this would be nothing more than a therapy method.

  “The bedroom,” he said, so low she barely heard him. “Crystal was in charge in our bedroom, in private. It was…something we…liked.” Margot straightened, smiling but shaking at the same time, even more confused about how to proceed. Keeping her hands on him, knowing he required at least that much from her, she got herself under some modicum of control and plowed forward.

  “How was she in charge?”

  “Oh, I’m pretty sure you know,” he said, surprising her with the sudden strength in his voice. “And I’m also pretty sure I’ve told you enough.” He jumped up, ripped off her un-rip-able blindfold, sending it fluttering to the floor in two strips of black fabric and kicked the chair out of the way. She stumbled, blinking fast, brain spinning and body going into overdrive at the look on his face. He was begging her now, using his unconscious body language, but she could not—she would not—give into the urge to shove him to his knees.

  Her butt hit the bookshelf, making her stumble and curse. Antony stopped, looming over her and sending out the sort of obvious vibe she’d spent years coming to terms with and assuming she understood—until recently.

  “Step away from me,” she said. “This isn’t what you think.”

  He frowned and got even closer, pissing her off and making her inner self rise up and take over. She put her hands on his impossibly firm chest and shoved, forcing him to move out of her personal space so she could breathe and process how quickly she’d lost control of the situation. Typical, she thought with a shudder of disgust. No wonder Gavin left you. You’ve gotten weak.

  Antony bent down and picked up the pieces of the blindfold. When he held them in his outstretched hands, his expression did nothing to dispel her dismay. “Sorry about this,” he said.

  She grabbed them, her heart pounding way too fast. “Get out,” she whispered. “Just go. I’m sorry. I can’t…do this.”

  “You’re the only one I’ve ever told…about Crystal and me and what we…you know, liked.”

  She willed away the girlie tears. “I know,” she said. “It’s not something you’d share with your brothers.”

  Antony chuckled and ran a hand around the back of his neck, breaking the tension in the room enough for her to breathe again. “I, um, I’m engaged. And I love her, Rosie, and her boy.” He dropped his gaze to the carpet. Without thinking, Margot tilted his face up, ignoring that strange electrical charge that snapped between them. “It took me nearly four years to even kiss her, Rosie. And we only just… um…” A charming blush rose from his neck to his face, making Margot faint with lust. “I don’t know why in the hell I’m telling you this.”

  She kept his dimpled chin between her thumb and forefinger, studying his face and willing him to keep talking. His shoulders slumped and the light that had been sparkling in his eyes went out.

  “Rosie’s husband Paul was my friend, since birth I think. Our parents were all young, too young, but latched onto each other because they were all poor as dirt, trying to get businesses started, with no support from their families. We were always together, and once Kieran made his appearance the three of us were inseparable.”

  Margot took a step away from him, watching as the man told his story, realizing that she should get him into a chair and get them both a glass of water to dispel some of the inappropriate tension. But she didn’t want to, no matter how much she liked Rosie.

  Lindsay had filled her in on this part of Antony’s story—Paul’s tragic death, Rosie’s pregnancy, and how Antony had stepped in as caretaker which had, it seemed, finally lead to something emotionally permanent between them.

  Antony tucked his hands into his jeans pockets. “Once Rosie and Paul started dating, the summer between our sophomore and junior years in high school, I remember being jealous of him but I was pretty busy…fucking every female in my immediate vicinity.” He shrugged. “I paid for abortions for two different girls that year. There, that’s another thing I’ve never told anyone else. You sure are gettin’ an earful today.”

  She nodded as she kept her silence, realizing he was on a proverbial roll and if she spoke it would break it up and she wanted to know everything she could about him, in a wholly selfish way.

  “So, uh, well, Crystal was one of those girls. With the abortion I mean.”

  Margot blinked. She had not expected that. Lindsay had told her Antony was wild from the get-go but once it had become clear that he’d be the oldest of a passel of Love kids he had calmed somewhat, taking on the role of being the oldest in a pretty serious way, at least at home. But as his mother, she was fully aware of what he got up to with numerous girls, beer, and pot. Until Dominic came along, she’d believed Antony would be the first one to do jail time, or to get shot by some girl’s angry father.

  “When that happened, I was feeling pretty stupid over my inability to remember to use protection, especially since I knew damn good and well Crystal’s parents were too conservative to get her on the pill. And you know, junior year of high school is all about gettin’ into college too, stressful and all with tests and shit.” He shook his head. “I hated school. Thought I might play ball somewhere but wasn’t as good as Kieran. And something about Crystal…well…she was a bitch, you can ask anybody.” He chuckled, and something in Margot seemed to give way.

  Ridiculous, she said to herself. Get a grip. She smiled and nodded, encouraging him to go on.

  “We were together after that, sorta off and on because I was a horn dog idiot, letting my dick do the thinking half the time. But she, well, she was always there. My mama hated her, I promise you that. That’s ‘cause they were the same in a lot of ways—bossy, know-it-all, my-way-or-the-highway kinds of ladies.” He took a step towards her but Margot moved to the side. “Anyway,” he went on, seemingly oblivious to the fact that he’d done it. “When she came to me and said she was pregnant again, even after my mama finagled a way to get her on birth control during my sopho
more year up at UK, she claimed she was gonna ‘take care of it’ but we would be breaking up. I lost it, I swear. I went out on a bender, got so drunk I honestly thought I would die of alcohol poisoning. I woke up in the bed of my damn truck with her sitting next to me, cross-legged, cryin’ and cursin’ my name and telling me she loved me and that she was keeping my baby and she didn’t care what I thought about it.” He sighed and held out both hands. “‘Take me or leave me, Antony Ian Love,’ she said to me that day. ‘But do it now so I can figure out if I’m gonna stay in college or what.’”

  Margot swallowed past the lump in her throat at the thought of them, both kids, barely into their twenties, making that decision between them.

  “I dropped out of school, reopened my uncle’s garage, lived through two sets of parents fit to kill us both and took Crystal’s father’s gift—the house I live in now. She finished up her year down at Tennessee, had the baby and our parents took care of AliceLynn between them for a year while she finished her associate’s degree in Lexington while I worked my ass off to make the garage a going concern again. She was aces at running the books and stuff at the garage for a while. And she was…” He blinked fast. “She…was…” He sucked in a breath, looked up at her office ceiling, then straight at her. A tear slid down his face. Without thinking, Margot touched her finger to it. “She was a great mother, and we had a good life. Guess I shoulda known better than to think it would stay that way.”

  He turned away from her and headed for the door. Margot was unable to speak in the face of his outpouring, shocked by it on one level but on another, not. She’d broken the ice in a way she knew damn good and well he’d respond to, and he had. It took every ounce of willpower in her not to leap across the room, take him in her arms and finish what she’d started the way they both wanted.

  Facing away from her, he said, “I had so much on my shoulders. So many people expecting me to fail. My brothers were in various stages of fuckin’ up their lives, my mother and sister fought non-stop. My father…well, he and Crystal’s daddy were in general agreement about me at that point I think. She…Crystal met me at the door one Friday after I’d just spent two hours at the bank, begging them to extend my line of credit for the fourth time that year, and after having to fire one of my best mechanics for getting his second DUI in a month, wearing a robe and smile. The baby was still at her parents’ house. She took me to the bedroom and…well…she… I don’t know. But it changed us in ways that we never expected.”

  “She topped you,” Margot said, her voice perfectly calm, belying the roiling turmoil in her head and chest. “She took all the control you had to keep over yourself and everyone around you out of your hands completely and let you be the one controlled for a while. And it worked, right?”

  He shook his head and when he turned and met her gaze, his eyes were dark with something she recognized. She knew that if she were to see her own face right then, it would reflect the same expression—full of longing and regret. “Yes, Margot,” he said, caressing her name in a way that made her have to bite the inside of her cheek. All her inner alarms were clanging, telling her to act, to move, to dominate, to give this man the one thing he required of her, right now.

  But she couldn’t, not anymore.

  Chapter Six

  Antony’s heart pounded. His pulse raced. Sweat rolled down his back and his knees shook so hard he nearly dropped to the floor. He kept his gaze on hers, on Margot’s, willing her to just fucking do it. But he knew she wouldn’t. Margot had met Rosie and he could tell she wasn’t “that sort of woman.”

  And you? Are you that sort of a man?

  No.

  “Sorry,” he said, his throat clogged and croaky. He fumbled for the door knob, yanked it open and threw himself out into the small foyer of the strip mall office where he’d just ripped his heart out his chest and nearly handed it over to a complete stranger.

  A complete stranger he wanted so badly he could already taste her on his tongue, feel the hard metal cuffs she’d clasp on his wrists and smell the leather straps she’d use on his body. Cursing, he shoved open the glass door and was blinded by the bright, early fall sunlight. He sat in the boiling hot cab of his truck, letting his pulse calm for a few minutes before starting it up and heading home, his mind blank in a way that he didn’t understand, but kind of liked.

  When he walked in from the garage he saw AliceLynn sitting in front of the TV, her phone in her hand and a bowl of melting ice cream on the coffee table in front of her. Some kind of long unused muscle inside him flexed. It hurt, but felt great because he knew it for what it was. “Hey, wanna go get a pizza?”

  She looked up at him and he got such an overwhelming urge to pick her up and hug her it made his teeth ache. “You look more like your mama every single day,” he managed before grabbing a glass, filling it with water and drinking a few gulps. He felt so…weird. Hollowed out, like he had after that bizarre day of yard work and picnic with his family.

  She got up and stretched without ever actually responding to him. Antony gripped the kitchen counter, trying to come to terms with all the emotions whirling around in his head. “I’m going out with Jason,” she said, flouncing away and down the hall.

  “With who?” he asked, anger rising, but slower than usual he noted as he followed her, holding open her room door when she attempted to slam in it his face. “This place is a wreck.” He took in the unmade mattress, cardboard boxes and laundry baskets overflowing with clothes and other crap.

  “Since when do you care?” She dropped into a beanbag chair, sending a puff of the tiny little beads into the air.

  Antony stopped, pondering the question un-rhetorically. “Since right about now,” he declared stepping into the room his daughter had been reoccupying for the first time in over a decade. “Come on AliceLynn. Let’s make something out of this.” He grabbed the headboard his father had brought over from her room at their place and shoved the mattress and box springs off the metal frame. “Help me out, willya? Bring my toolbox.” He kept his tone matter of fact, not watching her while she stood slowly, gawking at him. “Hurry up now, we’ve got a lot to do.”

  “Um, where’s…?”

  “Get the small one. It’s in the kitchen utility closet.” He allowed himself a brief glimpse of her—of his daughter—standing there looking like a waif with her dumbfounded face and her way too skimpy clothes. He smiled, then lest she think she’d actually get her way and go out with some tool of a boy and not spend time with him tonight, he frowned. “Go on, git.”

  An hour and a half later, the bed was assembled and moved to a better spot in the large room for “fung shway” or some shit she kept babbling about. Her dirty clothes were in the laundry room and her clean ones were out of boxes and tucked into drawers or hung on hangers. They had ceremoniously tossed the leaky beanbag chair and he’d promised to take her shopping for something to replace it but she’d balked at getting rid of a couple of the rattier stuffed animals she insisted reside on top of her newly made bed.

  It had made for a pleasant interlude, but the second he suggested she ditch her plans with ‘Jason’ and go out for pizza with him, it went sour. Unsurprising, he thought. Can’t erase thirteen years of ignoring her out of pure spite at God or karma or whatever with an hour or so of attention.

  “Who is this boy anyway,” he asked, sipping a beer and watching as she flitted around the house getting ready. His temper was rising at the very thought of some kid putting his hands, or anything else, on her. Odd, since he’d never had this kind of intense feeling about her dating before.

  God I am lame. This is my daughter and I’m just now figuring this all out? No wonder my own father doesn’t respect me.

  “Are you on the pill,” he asked, already wincing in advance of her answer.

  “Of course,” she said, patting his cheek on her way to the front door.

  “Hold up a second,” he said, rising to his feet. “Where are you going? Why are you driving? What happened to
getting picked up for a date? How did you … get the prescription anyway?”

  She laughed, but it wasn’t a pleasant sound by anyone’s measure. “I’m going to Jason’s house. I’m driving because I want to and he can’t drive right now. Grammie got it for me. Bye-bye Daddy.” She wiggled her fingers at him. “See ya later.”

  “But…hey, hold up,” he spluttered, following her to the door. “Just a god damn minute young lady.” He grabbed her arm, noting that she’d exchanged one too-tight, too-small tank top for one about the same size, but slinkier, loose, and way too easy-access.

  Her brows knitted as her blue eyes clouded over in a way so very much like his dead wife it made Antony’s head pound. Steeling for the emotional tsunami about to roll over him, he let go of her arm and sidestepped so he stood between the girl and the door. AliceLynn’s face got even stormier but he held his ground.

  As he watched her get worked up into a Crystal level snit fit, Antony sensed the tension in his neck ease. He smiled. She took a step away from him, rubbing her bare arms, the anger in her seeming to release like air from a popped balloon. At that moment, she was just a confused-looking little girl and he hated his own guts for being so unbelievably selfish all these years, it lodged in his chest as actual pain.

  “You can’t do this,” she said in a small voice.

  “Watch me,” he said, keeping his voice neutral, knowing it was for the right thing. “This is my house—no, I mean our house. But in it, I’m the boss, capice?”

  She tossed the thick, auburn hair she’d inherited straight from her paternal grandmother over one too-bare shoulder. “Yeah, well, I’m not your prisoner and you sound like some kinda goombah in a bad mafia movie when you talk that way.”

  He grinned and relaxed which was an error he’d realize later. AliceLynn knew how to play him—she had when she’d been three years old and their time apart, thanks to his lameness, had not lessened that knowledge. She went up on her tiptoes, pecked his cheek, squeezed his arm and said, “Pizza sounds super. I’ll drive.”