“I tried! They wanted me to forget about you. I was set up on dates with nice young men, from good wealthy backgrounds. They told me how bad you were for me at every single turn. They wouldn’t let me out of the house unescorted. I couldn’t use the phone or get anywhere near a computer without supervision. I was a prisoner there. It may have been a mansion, but I was a prisoner.”
“Maybe, but your sentence was a hell of a lot shorter than mine.” He paced away from her. “Tell me more. Tell me about how you found out.”
“I was sick for those three months. I couldn’t get out of bed. I stopped caring if I could go out of the house. We all thought I was just depressed, but when I missed my period for the fourth time I realized it was more than that. I knew I was having your baby, and I thought you didn’t care.”
“That’s bullshit,” he spat. “You know me better than that.”
She nodded. “I thought I did, too. But silence hurts a hell of a lot more than any words could. Besides, you told me you didn’t want me, remember? I assumed you were just reminding me of that.”
She watched his chest heave as he took her words in. “I would have killed for you. I nearly did.”
She nodded. That was the truth. That night she thought he had loved her. She thought they were going to get back together and have a good life. That it would all blow over and they could start over together somewhere new.
“What did your parents say when they found out?” he asked, his eyes focused on her.
“My father wanted me to get rid of him,” she said slowly, remembering the painful time. “He even made an appointment at a doctor for me, but I refused to go. I loved Ryder from the moment I knew I was pregnant. My mother had him cancel it. She never spoke up to him, but she told him that he went too far. She made him apologize to me, but it was too late then. I knew I could never look at him the same after that.”
“You should have tried harder to tell me. You had to have known that the jail blocked me from getting those letters. You had to know that Patrick Andersen’s father had such tight control over me I couldn’t fucking breathe. You should have sent the letters to Colt or Lolly. Hell, a goddamn carrier pigeon would have been better. You should have done more.”
Now she knew that. But then … “I was so ashamed of what I’d done. I couldn’t face your family. It took everything there was in me to write those letters to you.”
She thought back to the night of the fight. She had worn Duke’s favorite dress, and the cheap perfume he had bought her for her birthday, and gone out on a date with a guy Duke had always hated, just to get back at him for breaking up with her.
Patrick Andersen was as cocky as they came. But his father was chief of police. His mother had come from money. Their entire lives, people tried to put them together. The police chief’s son and the judge’s daughter. The perfect match.
But Patrick got a little too bold that night and slipped his hand up her dress and tried to stick it between her legs. She slapped him and he slapped her back hard, calling her a bitch and a tease. Then out of nowhere, Duke came and punched him with so much force Patrick’s head snapped back. Blood flew from his mouth, and his look of pure shock mixed with drunken rage was one Grace would never forget.
The fight that followed was brutal, each of the men giving it their all, but it was Patrick who ended up with the broken ribs and the concussion and it was Duke who ended up in prison. Ten years was the original sentence. Attempted murder was the charge.
It was the police chief’s son and there were witnesses there that night who said Duke had intended to kill him. She could never guess what was going on in Duke’s mind that night, but she knew that Duke wouldn’t have tolerated any man hitting a woman. And even if Duke hadn’t intended to kill him, she knew he wanted to teach Patrick a lesson he would never forget.
“I wanted to testify on your behalf. But I couldn’t. They wouldn’t let me help you. And when my father found out that I wasn’t going to get rid of Ryder, he tried to marry me off to some man who was twenty years older than me. It was then I ran away.”
“Where did you go?”
“I couldn’t have gone to you, could I? You were in prison and I didn’t have a home anymore. I went to Boston. My mother secretly sent me some money once she found out that I had left.”
“She should have done more. She should have stuck up for you with your rat bastard of a father.”
“You forget my mother was from the old Deep South. She was a belle. She didn’t disagree with her husband. It wasn’t done, but she told me to come home so that she could take care of me. I refused. I couldn’t go back to living in the house with the man who tried to make me get rid of my baby and then marry me off to another man.”
“And yet you’re here.”
“I promised her that I would take care of him. It was the last thing she asked of me when she was dying.”
He nodded briefly but she wasn’t sure he understood. “How did you survive?”
“I got a job as a waitress. I got on state assistance for medical care and then I got my nursing degree at nights while my neighbors watched Ryder.”
“And you stayed there?”
She nodded. “I had rationalized it. I figured it was for the best that we were without you, because you were in prison and that’s not a place I would ever want to take my child to visit anyway. No kid should see his father behind bars.” He looked pained but she went on. “I really thought you hated me, Duke. I thought you would never want to see me again. You have to believe me when I tell you that.”
“I can understand you not wanting to bring him to that prison. But why didn’t you tell me when I got out? Even when you thought I didn’t want to see you. Ryder had the right to be supported by his father.”
“I didn’t know how you would be. I heard about the prison you were in. One of the roughest in the country. Prison sometimes makes people worse, more violent, and I was scared that that could happen to you. I was scared that you would be angry, bitter, and resentful.”
Men who got sent to maximum-security prison on trumped-up charges of attempted murder usually were.
“I know the stats on convicted felons,” she went on. “Likely to reoffend. Unlikely to find steady employment. I didn’t want to put that pressure on you, especially since I was the reason you were put there.”
“But then after I became rich? After you knew I had made something of myself. After you knew I wasn’t some kind of fucking caged animal. Why didn’t you tell me then?”
“Come to you after finding out you had money? I didn’t need your money. I didn’t want your money and if I had come to you, could you have looked at me and not thought of me as a gold digger?”
“No, I would have thought of you as the mother of my son. I would have thought of you doing what’s best for him,” he said harshly.
She shrugged, feeling the force of his anger but knowing she couldn’t do anything about it. “Well, I can’t change that now.”
“No, you can’t. And I’m stuck here with a kid who thinks I’m a stranger and doesn’t trust me.”
“You’re not stuck here. You don’t have to stay. If you think it’s going to be too hard to be here with us, with me, you can leave. You can forget the bet and we’ll work something out.”
She rose from the bed and walked over to him, wrapping her arms around his hard, tight body. She couldn’t help herself. A pissed-off hurt Duke was still an amazingly sexy Duke. And it had been so long since she had been in his presence, she couldn’t resist pressing her body against his.
“What are you doing, Grace?”
He held himself stiff, not softening a bit, but she still hugged him. She still pushed her hands beneath his shirt to stroke his back.
“I’m waiting for your answer, Duke.”
*
Duke couldn’t believe he was turned on by Grace’s touch, but he was. It was her soft body that had filled out since he had last known her. It was her sweet smell that was a combi
nation of soap and fabric softener; it was the fact that he was once in love with her, that he would have killed for her.
But he was pissed at her. Even though he understood her reasons for keeping such a big secret, he was so mad he couldn’t think straight. “What’s it going to be?” she asked him.
He could hear the challenge in her voice and it enraged him and made his cock so hard it was in danger of bursting through his pants.
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“I hope that’s a promise you’re willing to keep.”
His control completely snapped in that moment and he pulled her mouth to his, kissing her hard. It was a punishing, brutal kiss, the only way he could vent his frustration with her and have her near. She didn’t shy away from him. She didn’t just take the kiss. She looped her arms around his neck, opened her mouth beneath his, and took his kiss and gave her own in return.
He grabbed her behind and pushed her body more firmly into his. She rubbed herself against his erection, in a way that was meant to tease him, in a way that was meant to break him. And it was then he knew this had gone too far.
He couldn’t go down this road again. He ripped himself away from her, his chest heaving. “Get out,” he barked at her. Not because he wanted her to go but because he couldn’t trust himself to keep his hands off her.
*
Grace woke up the next morning to the smell of bacon wafting through her bedroom. At first she thought she was dreaming. She had spent the night having the most vivid dreams about Duke. They started out innocently enough with him and her sitting in his old Pontiac GTO. They were younger in her dream, but they looked as they did now. Duke was talking about Ryder and their plans for him and what kind of life he wanted for him.
It was a dream that she’d had many times in the past thirteen years, but it changed when Duke leaned over to kiss her—and then he was on top of her, his hands wandering her body, his lips hot and wet over his skin. And then he was inside of her, thrusting in and out of her with that slow, hard slide that always managed to make her forget what planet she was on.
The dreams were so real to her that she could feel his heavy weight on top of her, and smell his clean smell, and hear the rumble of his deep voice. She blamed the kiss they had shared last night. It was more than a kiss. It was an angry attack on her senses that she had initiated. He was so mad at her. She could feel it, but he still wanted her with all the passion he’d had when they were still kids. There was something undeniable between them that they could find with no one else.
But what good is it to have tremendous passion with someone if they can’t stand to be in the same room with you?
She opened her eyes. Knowing that the bacon was part of her reality and not her dream. She didn’t keep any in the house and on the rare occasions she did, it was organic turkey bacon, which failed to produce the same mouthwatering smell as the real thing.
She threw on her robe and wandered out to the kitchen to find Duke there at the stove. He was shirtless and in just a pair of boxers. Her mouth watered again, but it had nothing to do with the bacon. Duke was a massive man with a naturally hard muscled body. She spotted some scars on his back, surely a sign of some battles he had been in, and then there were his tattoos. There was the King’s Custom crown logo and myriad other things. But it was the beautiful portrait tattoo of a young woman that really caught her eye. She immediately wondered who it was. A former lover? A girlfriend? She hadn’t heard he was married. But she realized she had no right to feel the slight twinge of jealousy that rose up inside her.
They hadn’t been together in over a decade. He had every right to move on and fall in love again. She just wasn’t sure that falling in love with somebody else was in the cards for her.
“Good morning,” she said to both of them. Ryder was at the table chugging down what looked to be a glass of full-fat milk.
“Morning,” Duke said, barely glancing at her.
Ryder grunted something. She was actually surprised to see him awake and out of his room this early. It must have been the bacon. It had powers that she was lacking. Duke turned around and slid a pile of eggs with melted cheese on top of them, two slices of buttered toast, a mountain of home fries, and about five strips of bacon onto his plate.
“You can’t feed him all of that! Especially after the dinner he had last night.”
Both Duke and Ryder looked up at her with identical expressions on their faces. It was odd standing there staring at the two of them looking so much alike. She’d never thought they would be here like this.
“Mom, just give it a rest for one freaking day,” Ryder said to her and dug into his plate.
“Don’t speak to your mother like that,” Duke said firmly before he looked at Grace. “Food is already made. I’ve gone hungry before. I don’t believe in wasting food.”
She knew that. He had told her that he and his brothers lived off a bag of rice for two weeks after their father had left. Duke had always appreciated good food, eating well whenever he wanted. “Give me a plate. I’ll share with Ryder. He’s not used to eating like this for breakfast.”
“What do you normally feed him?” he asked as he handed her a plate.
“Steel-cut oats,” Ryder answered, watching Grace with a look of pure annoyance as she removed a large portion of food from his plate. “Smoothies with green crap in them and protein powder. Egg whites. Plain Greek yogurt with fruit.” He said the last words as if she had given him poison.
“Plain yogurt?” He looked at Grace as if he found her parenting lacking and then piled his own plate high with food.
Grace held her tongue about all the fat and cholesterol he was about to ingest. Before she became a school nurse she was a cardiac care nurse and spent her days teaching her patients how to eat well. She didn’t think Duke would take too kindly to her offering him dietary advice. Besides, the smells of the hot decadent food were making her stomach rumble. She couldn’t remember the last time she had eaten like this.
“We’ll eat like this on weekends,” he told Ryder. “On the weekdays your mother is in charge of your food.”
She silently balked at that idea. It was hard enough to get him to eat healthy as it was. It would be doubly hard to get him to do it if he was eating double cheeseburgers and piles of bacon every weekend.
But she didn’t want to say anything in front of Ryder, so she just picked up her fork and took a bite of her eggs. They were perfect. Perfectly cheesy. Perfectly seasoned. Just the right texture. Ryder must have agreed because he was shoving them in his mouth like he hadn’t eaten in years.
He had never eaten anything she made with such enthusiasm.
“Good shit, isn’t it, kid?” Duke said to Ryder, a satisfied look on his face.
Ryder grunted and then left the table to bring back the fully sweetened orange juice that she had never purchased and a bottle of ketchup that was also a new addition to her kitchen.
She tried not to think about how much added sugar was in there as he squirted a ton of it on his home fries. “When did you go shopping?” she asked Duke instead.
“Last night,” he said, biting into his bacon.
“Oh, with Ryder?”
He shook his head. “Couldn’t sleep. Went out and found a twenty-four-hour store.”
“Oh” was all she could say. The only twenty-four-hour store was at least thirty miles away. She hadn’t even heard him come or go, which was rare for her. She was always hyper-aware of noises at night, especially since Ryder slept a floor away from her, but last night she had been so exhausted from the emotions of the day that she slept like the dead.
“I’m done,” Ryder said, scooping the last bit of food into his mouth. “May I be excused?”
Before Grace could answer Duke asked, “Do you want any more? There’s still bacon and home fries left.”
Ryder looked longingly at the meat stacked on the plate and then at her. “I’d better not.”
“You’re excused then.”
It was a little jolt to her system to hear Duke give her child permission to leave the table, but Ryder wasn’t just her child anymore. Duke was his father and she had to remember that.
“Aren’t you going to say thank you to Duke for making us breakfast?” she asked, feeling the need to mother him.
Ryder nodded his head at Duke and Duke nodded back. An unspoken thank you and you’re welcome.
They continued to eat after Ryder had gone. The food was excellent, but Grace’s stomach couldn’t handle it. It was too silent in the room. Too uncomfortably silent. “You’re a good cook, Duke. I appreciate you cooking for us this morning.”
“I didn’t do it for you,” he said, biting into his toast. “I’m living here. I’ve got to eat. I feed who’s around me.”
“I know. If you cook again, can you keep in mind that I try to feed Ryder a more nutritionally balanced breakfast?”
“What’s wrong with this breakfast?” he asked her with an edge in his voice.
“Nothing. I would just prefer him to eat more fruits, vegetables, and lean protein.”
“And smoothies with green shit in them.”
“Don’t curse in the house,” she said automatically, like she was chiding Ryder.
Duke’s nostrils flared. “I’m a grown-ass man. I’ll curse if I want to. And I’ll feed my son what I want to when I cook for him. Or have you forgotten that I never got the chance to cook for him before because you never told me about him?”
She shut her eyes briefly, knowing that he was right to be hurt, but she knew she couldn’t back down to him about this, because she would spend the rest of her life backing down to him.
“Do you think taking a shot at me is going to solve anything? I tried to tell you that I was pregnant and if you don’t believe me, then that’s on you. I’m just letting you know that being a parent doesn’t involve just doing things to make him happy. It doesn’t involve spoiling him. It involves doing things that don’t make him happy because you know it will make him healthy and whole. We made a bet. Thirty days here with us so you can get to know him and prove to me that I can trust you with him. If you can’t, we are going to have one hell of a nasty fight in court. So I’m just telling you that I hope that your plan is not to spend the time feeding him cheeseburgers and milk shakes. Because that’s not a father. A waitress could do that.”
Betting the Bad Boy Page 7