Always Box Set

by Ward, Susan

  “It feels like you want something from me and are afraid to ask. I just can’t figure out what. But I’m certain you want something.”

  Her face flushed even as she tried to do something impish-looking with her expression. “Maybe I just want your hot body.”

  Nope, Linda, that answer was bullshit.

  I climbed from the driver’s seat and came around to open her door, then planted my hands on either side of the car, trapping her between me and it.

  I held her in my gaze and could see how the pulse in her neck jumped.

  “It’s completely unnecessary, you know,” I told her.

  Her eyes widened, worry tucked behind boldness.

  “Excuse me? I don’t understand. What’s unnecessary?”

  “Trying hard to make me like you.”

  I flattened her against the car, kissing her deeply, continuing the moves of my lips and hands until I felt her rise up into me.

  Right spot.

  Wrong time.

  Time to end this.

  I lifted my face and said, “I already like you, so stop trying so hard, and let’s just enjoy each other.”

  Her dark brows lowered, but I took her hand, smiling as I guided her toward the mall.

  “Do you want to pick the store or should I?” I asked.

  She shrugged, and I could tell she was overwhelmed by everything. Herself. Me. What we were doing. Even shopping.

  Linda had had a rough life in every way.

  As I tried to figure out where to take her, since shopping was definitely not my forte and Chrissie usually preferred to go with Patty, I realized this girl—out of nowhere—was someone who now mattered to me and it felt good having that feeling again.

  Nope, I didn’t know why she was with me.

  But I knew why I let her be.

  And that I’d go with her as long and far as she’d take me.

  What Linda took me on was one hell of a ride. Not your average first date, not by a long shot. Taking her shopping at the store Patty owned was my first mistake. They’d sparred with words, Linda dishing out as good as she got, and as revenge Patty had sent her from the dressing room wearing a tight black dress and heels that made Linda look exactly like Lena.

  Next, but the least unexpected thing, was letting Linda playfully seduce me into fucking her in the bathroom instead of eating at the restaurant I’d taken her to for dinner. A better mistake, but a mistake nonetheless.

  Then slipping out the back door, instead of going to our table in the elegant eatery I’d taken her to, to dine at the biker bar next door. A mistake? No, that was interesting. Trying to bust down her walls to get to know her was damn near impossible. We’d run into her boyfriend, the crass jerk, as we prepared to leave for the night, only to end up punching him in some grand moronic overly public gesture of protecting my girl.

  Yep, one fucking unbelievable first date, I thought as I climbed from my car and walked my angry self and battered hand into the house without a glance back at Linda who followed after me.

  As I stood at the kitchen sink, rinsing off blood from my fingers, over and over in my head played what the fuck, Jackie, are you doing with this girl?

  Linda held back at the doorway, staring at me, and it made me feel like a jerk. I was right to be angry. Right to be rethinking trying to get something going with her.

  Fuck, I nearly ruined my hand over Linda, and in the car when I’d asked her about the guy I’d punched for her at the biker bar, she’d said dismissively, “It’s complicated.”

  I didn’t doubt that one or my response: “Everything about you is complicated. It’s part of the turn-on and part of the risk.”

  It had come out harsh, unintentionally an insult to her, when that comment had been about me and what I suspected my illogical interest in her was.

  I’d have had to have a lobotomy not to drawl the parallels between my first capricious, unpredictable affair with Lena and how this day unfolded with Linda.

  I stared at my hand, wishing Linda would say something because, yes, I’d noticed how my angry words in the car had made her face fall.

  Hurting her was the last thing I wanted.

  As I continued to wash my hand, I looked over my shoulder at her. “I haven’t been in a fight in fifteen years.”

  “It wasn’t much of a fight, if you ask me,” she answered, playful but cautious.

  The laughter rose in me out of nowhere. Linda was like a tonic that masked everything wrong with this.

  “Should we go to a hospital?” she asked seriously. “Do you think you broke anything? We should really get that checked.”

  “No. Just a cut. Nothing broken. It’s fine.”

  I grabbed a towel to dry my hand and reached for the first aid kit.

  She hurried across the room to me.

  “No, I’ll do it,” I told her, sitting down on a stool.

  She glared at me. “You can’t bandage your own hand. Don’t be an ass about this.”

  I frowned—ass—but beat back a smile as well. Bossy and not intimidated by me. Not a bad combination.

  I watched as she cut a square of gauze and cleaned the cut with antiseptic.

  I circled back to the boyfriend. “How long were you involved with him?”

  She didn’t look up at me. “On and off since high school. He’s my BTN.”

  “BTN?”

  It was a new term I hadn’t heard before.

  What the fuck was that?

  She concentrated on bandaging my hand.

  I held her in the heavy pressure of my gaze.

  “Are you going to tell me or not? What’s a BTN?”

  “It’s just a stupid term girls use. It stands for better than nothing. The guy you hang out with when you don’t have a real boyfriend.”

  I couldn’t see her face as she finished with my hand, but I tried to study her anyway. I couldn’t understand how a girl like her could let herself be used by any man, let alone the guy I’d punched at the bar. BTN. Nope, it didn’t mean a guy better than nothing. It meant a girl believing for some reason she had to settle for less.

  “I don’t want you ever seeing him again,” I told her, surprising myself even more than her.

  She rolled her eyes and ignored my inappropriate high-handed behavior. “I don’t think there is much chance of that after tonight.”

  “Good. He’s not someone you should be mixed up with.”

  She lifted her eyes to mine, surprised and confused. “What do you care?”

  Her voice was so quiet it made my heart clench.

  “I care, Linda.”

  She stepped into my arms and kissed my chest. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I ruined our lovely evening. I’m sorry you hurt your hand because of my crazy life. I make everything shitty. Everything a mess…”

  I stood up.

  “Don’t apologize, Linda. Take me to bed and make up for it.” A glib and charming response I should never have said to her, because Linda took the words literally, and worse, I let her.

  The way she made love to me was glorious, but it was another mistake I made that day because, for a few hours longer, it kept me from figuring out why I was holding onto her and why she was miraculous.

  Maybe that’s why I woke up shortly after we’d fallen asleep in each other’s arms, naked and sweaty and sex-drained, to slip from the bed and go out onto the patio to wait for the dawn.

  Twenty-four hours of sobriety realigned all things into perspective for me, even if I wasn’t quite sure how I’d done it this time or that it would last. But getting through the first day not taking a drink—one day at a time, remember?—hadn’t seemed possible before this mysterious girl drifted into my life.

  Walter’s last phone conversation replayed in my head, and I hated now that I could hear it clearly that I knew he was right. I couldn’t fault him for taking Chrissie, but that didn’t mean I would let him keep her.

  I went into the house
, grabbed the cordless phone, and returned to my lounge chair. It was early, but he rose early, too, and if I called him now it would mean Chrissie wouldn’t hear us if this went badly.

  I dialed the number, hit speaker, and listened to it ring.

  “Good morning, Walter. It’s me,” I said nervously into the receiver.

  A long pause. “Jack?”

  The way he said that made me tense; he was wondering if I was dialing while drunk again.

  I laughed. “Yes, since I’m pretty sure we’re the only two awake at this hour in southern California. I thought we should talk and clear the air.”

  Another unpleasant stretch of silence.

  I tried to organize my words into something that would cool down the situation between us and not further inflame it.

  “I don’t want a court battle with you, Walter. Lena would have hated that. I’m open to discuss anything you want that you think will make this situation better for all of us.”

  “There’s no point in discussing anything if you’re not sober or can’t give me assurances you’ll stay that way.”

  Rigid.

  Intractable.

  Regrettably right.

  More regrettably wrong with his request.

  “I’m sober today,” I told him gravely, “and that’s all I can say. One day at a time, Walter. It worked for Lena and me. It worked for nine years. Maybe it can work for the family.”

  We had a reasonable discussion as he outlined what he thought was in Chrissie’s best interest. Not taking her from me since she’d suffered enough loss already. Putting her in boarding school so she’d have more contact with kids and I’d have time to work on me.

  Pretty simple plan.

  I hated it.

  But trying to negotiate with Walter only heated up the debate. “Jack, if you can’t see that you need to do this for Chrissie, then your being sober doesn’t change a thing. I won’t bring her back and I’ll file suit for custody. It’s the right thing.”

  “I don’t care what you think, Walter. You are not taking my daughter away.”

  “She’s not doing well, Jack. I don’t know why you can’t see it. She won’t talk about that night. She needs to talk. You need to get her into counseling.”

  I sank my fingers into my hair, clutching until it was painful to keep the lid on my temper. “I know my daughter, Walter. When she’s ready to talk, she’ll let it out. She was very close to her brother. It is not in her interest to force her to relive his death. I won’t do that to my girl. We all deal with things differently.”

  “I don’t want to fight you in court. You know that.”

  “Then stop, Walter. For all our sakes. Stop. Lena wouldn’t want this. It needs to stop.”

  “She’s my granddaughter. All I have left. I love her. I’m doing what I think is right.”

  “I know you love her, Walter. I know this isn’t about you and me. I know you want what’s best for Chrissie, but taking her to live with you isn’t the answer.”

  “Will you at least consider boarding school instead of a private tutor at home?” Walter said in weary determination. “It’s not good for her to be that isolated. It might help for her to be around other girls.”

  Fuck.

  “I’m not promising anything, but I’ll consider it,” I forced myself to say.

  “It would be better all around.”

  He clicked off his phone. A stalemate. Better than where we were two days ago, because at least we talking and focusing on Chrissie instead of unresolved issues between us.

  I clicked off the phone and stared out at the ocean, willing for some kind of sign to tell me how to get through this.

  “You’re a wonderful man. There isn’t a court on earth who would take your daughter away from you,” I heard Linda say behind me.

  Oh crap. How long had she been listening?

  I turned to look at her. “How would you know? You haven’t any idea what kind of father I am. I’ve made a lot of mistakes, Linda.”

  Linda shrugged.

  “Who hasn’t? But I know a good man from a bad man. I know a good father from a bad father. There is one thing I know, Jackson Parker. It’s men.”

  Her words were a hint of something Lena would say blended with who Linda was.

  A good father from a bad father.

  I’d figured out enough on my own about her to know in her eyes my just being a father to Chrissie meant I was a good one.

  I was far from that.

  I pulled her down in front of me on the chaise and surrounded her with my arms and legs.

  “Why don’t you come back to bed, Jack?”

  “Can we just sit here and wait for the dawn?”

  She nodded, and I buried my lips in her hair and adjusted her body against me. “I’m so glad I found you,” I said, and I was. Linda was kind and strong and calming like Lena had been.

  She looked over her shoulder and made a face. “Wrong. I found you.”

  I laughed since I’d forgotten she had her own brand of capriciousness, too.

  Staring into her dark brown eyes, I made another decision, out of nowhere, that surprised me yet again. “Don’t go back to LA yet. Without you, I wouldn’t be making it through this week half as well as I am.”

  “You want me to stay?”

  “More than you know.”

  “Then I’ll stay. As long as you need me to.”

  She turned to face me and wrapped me tightly in her arms, gently stroking and kissing my hair, and I suddenly knew what it was that made me want to be with this girl.

  Maybe it was wrong.

  Unfair to her.

  But I let her stay with me anyway.

  I don’t care how old the man is. All men at times, no matter who they are, just need to be held and surrounded by a woman. There was no safer place on earth than in a woman’s arms. And Linda, at twenty-one, understood that. No woman could hold a man the way she held me that night if she hadn’t understood that.

  Forty-One

  A week later, I was still sober, we were still together, and the only thing that troubled me ever—and only briefly—was I still didn’t really understand why she was with me.

  In the last seven days she’d told me enough to know she had quite a life in LA. School. A job. A mother she looked out for. No father ever in the picture. And a few things I hadn’t expected.

  Linda was honest about her past when I asked her how she knew so much about music, the recording industry, and things about me I’d never told her. She’d had quite a few relationships with musicians—hell, she knew the inside gossip on the LA scene better than I did—and of the two of us, I was sure I was the one least bothered by it.

  No matter what she told me about herself, nothing made me think any less about her. She was a stunning girl. Her looks could open any door. She was young. Hell, I’d done my share of things and was definitely no one to judge anyone anything they did.

  I could tell she felt badly about some of the things she shared with me, that it was part of why she viewed herself so harshly, and I tried to do everything I could to help her see herself differently. Like I saw her. One incredible young woman.

  After finishing our weekly shopping at the farmers’ market, we were driving toward Hope Ranch and I asked, “Do you want to stop on the pier for a drink before we head back to the house?”

  “No. I just want to go home.”

  Her cheeks colored and she turned her face to stare out the window, flustered and troubled. Yep, I noted the error of saying home, and pretended I didn’t because I felt good that she’d called it that. I didn’t question it because I didn’t want her to.

  We drove for a while in silence, and I took quick glances at her. I could feel something building in her with each mile, and then worried her misspeak might have gotten her thinking it was time for her to go back to LA.

  She angled her body to face me and I tensed.

  “Do yo
u know a drummer named Brian Cray?”

  Relief shot through my veins. Not a brush-off as I’d been expecting. “That’s a name you don’t hear very often in the real world. Of course I know him. Everyone in the industry knows Brian. Why?”

  My mood plummeted from the sudden seriousness on her face.

  “You’re not going to tell me you’ve been involved with him, are you?” I teased then kicked myself for having said that because of how her expression changed.

  Her reaction took me completely by surprise. Hell, I’d always teased her about the musicians she knew, though mostly in the vein that it sounded like she knew more than I did and never in a sexual context.

  Not smart, Jack, not smart.

  As I tried to figure out what I was seeing on her face, I realized we were in a situation that was even less funny than my joke had been.

  She shook her head and almost looked like she was bracing herself for something.

  “No. My name is Linda Cray.”

  Oh fuck. Why Linda was with me suddenly made sense. No guy on earth was lucky enough to find a girl like her the way I had.

  I pulled the car over onto the side of the road, searching for anything in her expression to tell me that what I suspected was wrong. That our meeting had been by chance. That it wasn’t some kind of game to get close to me. And worse, that it was a lie that she cared for me.

  Her expression was tight and unrevealing.

  Damn.

  Nothing.

  “Oh fuck. Is that why you’re with me? Is that what this is about? Jesus Christ, you’re his daughter, aren’t you?”

  She struggled to open the car. “I need to get out. I need air.”

  “You’re not going anywhere until you explain every part of this to me.”

  Her cheeks burned. “Explain what?”

  “On the beach. Was that an accident or some kind of setup to get close to me? How long have you been playing me?”

  “Playing you?” Her brown eyes grew enormous. “I wasn’t playing you! Playing you for what?”

  “You are a beautiful woman. You can have any man you want. You’re only here with me because you want something from me. Isn’t that how girls like you work?”

  “Girls like me?”