by Cherrie Lynn
“Shit,” she whispered. Thank goodness her curtains were shut tight, or someone might have seen them through the window. She jumped off him and threw on her clothes while he went into the bathroom. She was still standing there, chewing her knuckle, when he emerged a couple of minutes later.
“You okay?” he asked, eyeing her suspiciously.
She gave a nervous laugh. “No, but I’ll manage.”
“Do you need me?”
“Always, but stay here for now, okay?”
He nodded as she turned and headed for the door. She probably looked a fright: hair a mess, clothing disheveled from hours on the road…and she probably smelled of sex.
A hysterical laugh bubbled up, but she didn’t let it go. She also didn’t bother to peek out and see who she was about to confront. Taking a deep breath, she snatched the door open.
She must have had a hell of a look on her face, because her mother’s carefully honed glare turned to surprise in an instant. Candace let her own gaze sweep down her mother’s figure with all of the disdain she’d suffered over the last few years. “What?”
“After what you’ve done, you have the nerve to ask me what?” Sylvia turned toward the parking lot behind her and motioned for someone. Great. More people to make her feel like scum of the earth.
“What do you mean what I’ve done? Maybe I got sick. Maybe I went for a drive and had car trouble.”
“Nonsense. You could have called. We called you, we came by, we checked everywhere we knew to check. We even called the police.”
“What bothered you more, Mom, that you were worried about me or that I skipped out on the wedding of the year?”
“Now that I know you’re okay, what bothers me most is your irresponsibility. I have no idea what’s gotten into you.”
I do, she wanted to say. He’s around six-two, heavily tattooed and fucks like a god.
“You’re always saying I should make better decisions. Yesterday morning I was presented with an option, and I made the best decision for me. Not for you, or Deanne, or anyone else. I’m done being so selfless. I’m sticking with selfish for a while.”
As her voice trailed away, she shifted uncomfortably when she saw who was coming up the walk toward them. Jameson and Michelle. Dammit. She had to fight not to step back and slam the door.
“Candace, is he here?” Michelle asked quietly.
She nodded, and Jameson surged toward the door. Fury flashing through her, Candace shoved viciously at his chest before he could get past her. “You calm down, James, and don’t you dare come in my house starting anything with him.”
Brian must have heard the commotion, because he came up behind her and yanked the door all the way open. “You got a fucking problem with me, James?”
Jameson, ever the type to go off half-cocked until things started to get serious, seemed to shrink a bit. “I’ve got a problem with you screwing my sister, yeah.”
“I suggest you get the fuck over it.”
Sylvia backed away from the stare-down, but Michelle and Candace insinuated themselves between James and Brian as best they could. Both the guys had their feathers ruffled, but she would lay bets on Brian any day of the week. He was the only one between the two who had absolutely no fear in his glare, though that worried her. A lot. “Brian, it’s not worth you getting in trouble,” Candace murmured, her hand planted on his chest.
James exploded. “What the hell is wrong with you, Candy? Siding with this piece of trash over me? I’m not worth him getting in trouble?”
“That’s not what I said! You need to get out of here. This doesn’t have one damn thing to do with you.”
“It has to do with all of us,” Sylvia interjected. She was staring at Brian as if he was something she’d found on the bottom of her shoe. “And I don’t have to go anywhere. I think you forget whose name is on this lease, Candace.”
“Yeah?” Brian asked, shifting that burning intensity to Sylvia, who took a step backward as if he was going to physically assault her. “There’s no one’s name on my lease except mine. You keep this up, and there’ll be another one. This shit stops right here. I don’t give a damn who you call.”
Michelle just looked at him. “I have one question,” she said quietly, and he turned to her, his expression softening. “Is Candace the one you were talking about the other night?”
Candace’s frown deepened. When had the two of them talked? About her?
He nodded. “She is.”
As if some decision had been reached in her mind, Michelle took Jameson’s arm and pulled him back. “James, come on. It’s all right.”
“The hell it is,” he thundered.
Michelle looked imploringly at her aunt. “Aunt Syl, you’ve seen that she’s fine, now you’ve got to let her live her life. If he’s who she wants, that’s her decision, not yours. If you don’t let her go, you’re going to lose her forever. He loves her, and he’ll take care of her.”
But Sylvia Andrews was ever the ice queen, and the fires of hell probably wouldn’t even melt a drop from her. “I refuse,” she all but hissed at Brian, “to stand by while you move in on my daughter.”
He slid his hand over Candace’s shoulder. “I’m already in, and there’s nothing you can do about that.”
Candace put her arm around his waist. “Mom, I love you, and I realize I acted irresponsibly. I wish it hadn’t come to that. But you can either accept us, or you can do your worst. I don’t care. Cancel my lease, I’ll move in with him. Cut off my tuition, I’ll get a job until I can get some student loans and finish on my own. I have half a mind to do that, anyway, because I’m tired of depending on you if this is what my life is going to be like. You have no power here anymore. I know that drives you crazy, but all I can tell you is to get yourself in therapy or something, because like he said, it ends here. Right now.”
Sylvia’s expression steadily fell during her harangue. James’s only became more outraged, and he stared at her much the same way her mother had looked at Brian. “My God, Candace, what have you lowered yourself to? You would turn your back on all of us so you can be his whore—”
The movement beside her was so sudden she blinked and almost missed it. One moment Brian’s arm was around her shoulders, the next he’d lunged forward. One loud, painful crack later, Jameson dropped to the ground, blood gushing from his nose. Immediately, she knew any headway she might have made had just been destroyed.
Oblivious to Michelle and Candace grabbing at his arms, Brian bent over and with both hands jerked James up by his collar. “If you even dare to think the word whore again where she’s concerned, I’ll hang your nuts as knockers on her fucking front door, you got me?” Throwing him back down, Brian straightened and looked at Candace, barely leashed fury seething in his dark eyes. “If they won’t leave, I have a simple solution. We’ll get the hell out of here.”
“Oh, you don’t have to worry,” Sylvia said, staring down at her son, who was rolling over so he could get to his feet. Candace could swear there was disappointment in her expression. “We’re leaving, before you can assault someone else.” That wintry gaze lifted to Candace’s face. “You see what you’re getting, don’t you? How long do you think it’ll be before it’s you lying on the floor with a bloody nose?”
Even Michelle rolled her eyes at that comment. “Aunt Syl, that’s freaking ridiculous, and you know it. If I were the physical sort, I’d kick James while he’s down.” She stepped over him and brushed past Candace and Brian as she entered the apartment. “You guys come talk to me.”
Brian followed her, but Candace lingered at the door. “Mom, I…” Her voice trailed off, but Sylvia lifted a quelling hand anyway.
“I don’t want to hear it. You do what you feel you have to do, Candace. I don’t care anymore, either.”
“That’s not what I want. I don’t want you to not care. I just want you to see how you’ve hurt me, especially about this. He means everything to me. Maybe we’ll stay together forever, and you know
what? Maybe we won’t. Right now that’s not the point. The point is, he’s my choice. The risk is solely on my shoulders.”
Jameson got unsteadily to his feet and walked away without a word, his hands cupped to catch the blood still pouring from his nose. He didn’t stop or reply, even when Candace asked if he needed a towel. Sylvia turned without further comment and followed him. Just before Candace shut the door, she heard her mother warn him that he’d better not bleed all over her leather seats.
She found Michelle and Brian sitting at the kitchen table, Michelle staring at nothing in particular, Brian brooding. He kept flexing the hand he’d used to punch Jameson. Candace went straight to the freezer and got some ice for him to put on it, wrapping it in a thin dishtowel.
“Well, that actually went over a little worse than expected,” she proclaimed, dropping into a chair with them. Brian let her take his hand and settle the ice on his knuckles. “I didn’t count on actual bloodshed.”
“Yeah. Sorry about decking your brother,” he muttered. “Hell of a way to make a good impression, huh?”
“It’s all right.” She sighed, stroking his forearm. Deep inside, it made her proud that her man was strong and fearless enough to defend her physically, if it came to that. And that he cared enough.
Proud, hell. If it wouldn’t be entirely inappropriate, she’d be grinning like a fiend.
Poor Jameson. He’d run off at the mouth to the wrong person. Despite everything, she loved her big brother, but she’d always known his day was coming.
Michelle’s lips quirked. “I take it my ride left.”
“Sorry. I’ll take you home. So how much does Deanne hate me?”
She seemed to debate it for a moment. “Deanne was…weird. At first I could see the steam rising, and I thought we were going to have a major meltdown they’d hear all the way up to the space shuttle, but then it was as if a calm came over her and she didn’t really care anymore. She was so ready to walk down the aisle and get the whole thing over with. She stuck Becky back in the wedding.”
Candace laughed. “Tattoo and all?”
“Yep. She didn’t have much choice, unless she wanted a lone groomsmen during the recessional. She made her try to cover her tattoo with gobs of foundation, though.”
Brian scoffed and Candace sent him a smile. “I’d have told her to fuck off,” he said.
“Yes, I’m aware,” Michelle said, rolling her eyes fondly.
“So…when did you two talk?”
Brian opened his mouth, but Michelle beat him to the punch. “I called him. It was after we all went to lunch, and we’d been talking about tattoos. I really just wanted to check in on him. I had no idea about you guys.”
“But you said you talked about me?”
Brian shook his head. “She asked if I was seeing someone. I told her about you without really saying it was you.”
“And what he told me is how I know he’s serious.” She smiled at him, a little sadly. “You take care of her. You’ll have me to answer to if you don’t.”
“Don’t worry. She won’t ever be picking herself up off the floor with a broken nose,” he said bitterly. Candace felt terrible that her mother had insinuated that about him. It was just a taste of what she dealt with on a daily basis. Maybe now he understood.
“Hey, congratulations, that punch was a beauty,” Michelle said. “And Aunt Syl’s face was priceless.”
“Why, thank you.”
“I pretty much missed the whole thing,” Candace said.
Michelle looked at her. “And you. I think I like this new side he’s brought out in you. Before all of this, I’d never seen you stand up to them.”
“For all the good it did me. I’m just worried about the repercussions.”
Michelle gave her a worried frown. “Honestly, I am too.”
Brian looked Candace in the eyes, his own serious and troubled. He put his uninjured hand over hers, where she was still holding the ice over his sore knuckles. “Baby, I need to get to work. You’re still more than welcome to come with me. In fact, I wish you would. I don’t want you being alone right now.”
“It’s not like they’re going to come back and hurt me or something—”
“I still want you with me. Maybe take your mind off things for a while.”
“Are you sure you’ll be able to work with your hand this way?”
He pulled it from under the ice and wiggled his fingers. “It’s not that bad.” Sending her a wicked grin, he chuckled. “I guess I should’ve had enough presence of mind to give him a left hook, though.”
Watching him that night, Candace was afraid he was hurting more than he let on. But if that was the case, he suffered through without a single complaint.
After a while she retreated to Brian’s office, called Sam—Macy was inexplicably absent tonight—then spent the rest of the time poring over her notes for her psych final tomorrow. All of his employees were fun and gracious, but she hadn’t wanted to hover out there with them. She didn’t want to get in their way, or make them uncomfortable. How did they feel about the boss’s girlfriend hanging around watching them work?
And she supposed she really was his girlfriend. The thought was almost too astounding to entertain.
“You okay?” he asked from the doorway. She shifted her gaze to him, resisting the urge to lick her lips at the sight of him leaning against the frame. So tall, so gorgeous, with his normally intense eyes gentle as he looked at her. No telling how long he’d been standing there, watching her. He looked comfortable.
“I’m fine. Are you?”
Brian nodded, stepping in and dropping into the chair beside the door. “It’s pretty slow out there. Sundays usually are. I told them we could go ahead and shut down. I think they’re still tired and hung over from last night.”
“Aw. Nice boss,” she teased.
He grinned. “I’d love to go home and boss you around a little bit.”
“Really. Well, I regret to inform you that you aren’t the boss of me, Mr. Ross.”
Smoothing his hand down his goatee, he gave her a long appraisal that made her insanely curious as to what was going on behind those eyes. “What if I was?”
“Huh?”
He shrugged. “I was just thinking how good you look sitting in here, and you mentioned getting a job to your mother. I could use someone to handle the business side of things so I can be out front most of the time. It would be perfect, because you could work around your class schedule.”
“That sounds ideal, but…have you really thought that through?”
“No, not really. It was just an idea. I know what you’re going to say, though, and you’re probably right.”
“It would complicate things. Not that I have any doubts about you at all, but it’s so early. If we didn’t work out, God forbid, what would happen?”
“I would never do you wrong like that, Candace. Even if we didn’t work out, you could stay until you found something else, if you felt you had to quit. I wouldn’t screw you over with your job. And I trust you wouldn’t screw me over, either.”
“Depends on what you did, I guess,” she joked.
He laughed. “Hey, now, why does it have to be me who messes up?”
“And I don’t know that you could afford me.”
Something melted in his gaze, in his expression, and her heart softened. Any more of that and the mushy organ wouldn’t be of much use to her. “Now, that might be a legitimate concern,” he said. “I don’t know if I can afford you now, but I’m damn sure gonna break the bank trying.”
She was hoping to not have one more reason to love him, because he was enticing her to leave everything she’d ever known and insinuate herself fully into his life. It was thrilling and terrifying, and if there could only be one thing to make her want to hang on to her former self, she thought maybe she could resist his all-consuming allure.
But, no. He took her home to his apartment, and she found she even loved where he lived. Her community was
silent and dull, mostly parents and working professionals who wanted it quiet at all times. She rarely saw any of her neighbors—except for the ones who kept her entertained most nights with the sounds of their sexual escapades, of course; it seemed she was always running into them. Usually she was too embarrassed to look them in the eyes.
They hadn’t been at Brian’s apartment twenty minutes when some of his neighbors stopped by to invite them to a get-together in the courtyard by the pool. Brian declined, but she liked the whole atmosphere of the place: laid-back, easy-going fun. She’d lay bets no one here was going to snap your head off if you wanted to play your music a little loud one night. Even now, the muffled sounds of the party could be heard below.
Brian’s place was neat and sparse, a typical bachelor pad, she imagined. Not that she had been in any of those. He had the essential furniture and lots of toys: HD flat, X-Box, Wii, awesome computer set-up, a massive stereo system.
Several pieces of abstract artwork covered his walls, along with some bizarre surrealist pieces that looked like they could’ve been done by H. R. Giger. It wasn’t until she peeked in one of the two bedrooms and saw his makeshift art studio and the work on the easel that she realized most of the art on the walls—here and at his parlor—must be his. The same style, despite the nuances.
He looked so modest when she told him how much she loved it. And when she asked if he could paint something for her, he wordlessly took her hand and led her back in the room.
“Something I did a few days ago,” he said, riffling through several canvases stacked against one wall. “I just…had to.”
What he pulled out then made her lose her breath. It was her. Her face, laughing with her chin in her hands, sketched out with charcoal in a way she could only describe as…loving. Meticulous. She found herself glancing around the room to see if he had a picture of her somewhere that she wasn’t aware of.
“It looks so much like me. It’s…beautiful. I mean, it’s a beautiful drawing, not that I’m beautiful—”
“Stop that. You are beautiful.”
“You did this a few days ago?”