Love Me Two Times (Rock Royalty Book 8)

by Christie Ridgway

  Beck rubbed the back of his neck, unwilling to respond. Damn Ren, still working on Gwen’s directive to “bring everybody home.”

  “What happened that night?” Ren asked now, with another lightning change of subject.

  Beck frowned at him. “I told the story yesterday. You have ugly dreams about it, for God’s sake.”

  “Maybe I can put a stop to those if I learn the details.”

  “Christ, fine. I’ll go over it again,” Beck said, sighing. It wasn’t like he didn’t understand how it was to be plagued by missing recollections. “Once upon a time, it was the night after Halloween and—”

  “Wait, go back to that. To Halloween. We really trick-or-treated together, dressed as skeletons?”

  “Yeah,” Beck affirmed. “I don’t know where Gwen came up with the costumes, probably some shop in Hollywood.”

  Ren seemed to think a moment, then shook his head. “I don’t know if I have any actual recall of dressing up as bones, or if it’s the photo we have that’s in my mind. Go on.”

  “Gwen took us around on the thirty-first, and we ended up with pillowcases full of candy. Of course, no one monitored how much of it we were stuffing into our faces.”

  “Of course.”

  “The next night, there was still plenty of sugar in our bags when they corralled us into the big first-floor media room at Hop’s, a stack of movies to entertain us while their party raged on throughout the compound.”

  “Where was Gwen?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know if she was even on the premises that night.” He hauled in a long breath and stared at the green of the canyon, seeing another time and place. “At some point in the evening Hop came through the sliding glass doors with a woman and a little kid—a girl. He told me to watch her.”

  “When you first saw Soul you didn’t make a connection?”

  “I don’t think I could have described the girl to you until I saw that photo last night. Then I recognized her instantly.” He shrugged. “And initially I didn’t look at Jewel’s daughter very closely. Then Soul…just became Soul.”

  “Your daughter.”

  Shit. “Yeah.” Beck set down his beer to scrub his hands over his face. “So back to that night. The adults left the room, and the kids were all watching ‘Ghostbusters’ except the new little one who was raiding candy from the bags. Given our great role models, I didn’t see a reason to stop her.”

  Ren laughed, not a pleasant sound.

  “But it gave her a definite sugar buzz, and she started running in circles around the room. Again, given our great role models, this didn’t seem particularly alarming to me.”

  “More like familiar behavior.”

  “Right. But then I amused myself by following after her which is the only reason I saw her slip out the slider that Hop or the woman had left ajar. I dashed after her.”

  “But she had a head start.”

  “Yeah, and she—Jewel—was fast.” He frowned, still disconcerted that the beautiful woman he’d slept with the day before and the child from long ago were one and the same. “So I had to put on speed to catch up to her and then everything seemed to slow down…or does now when I remember it. The long driveway, the headlights of the car speeding on the blacktop, the small figure on a collision course with the sports car.”

  He had to stop and take a few breaths while swallowing down the old taste of terror in his mouth. “It was going to happen, I knew it, even as I grabbed the back of her shirt with my hand. It was only enough to slow her pace for a second. Then she broke free and…”

  “I remember the brakes shrieking and then the shouting and screaming right afterward.” Ren closed his eyes. “Your dad. I must have been right beside you then, maybe I came outside after hearing the commotion. He was yelling at you—‘What the fuck.’”

  “‘What the fuck you stupid little shit?’” Beck repeated the words without tone or emotion from the endless tape in his head. “‘How did you let this happen? How could you have been so damn careless?’”

  “Hell, Beck,” Ren said with disgust. “You’ve got to know it wasn’t your fault. You’ve got to see that he was deflecting blame from himself.”

  “Intellectually, I suppose. Now.” He scrubbed his face again. “But I thought she was dead. All these years I thought if I could have just caught her a moment sooner—”

  “But you did catch her.” Ren turned and stared at Beck. “Damn, but you left out that small detail last night. You managed to check her speed. That likely saved her life.”

  “What?”

  “I think it could have been worse. Much worse. If you hadn’t gone after her, if you hadn’t managed to get a hand on her…”

  “I don’t know. I’m still trying to believe that little girl is alive.”

  “You saved her life. And then you created a life with her.”

  “Soul,” Beck whispered.

  “Yeah. Soul.”

  Her grin. Her demanding voice. Dah! “What the hell am I going to do about being a father, Ren?”

  “Already done, buddy. Can’t get the toothpaste back in the tube. Or, in this case, the sperm back in the—”

  “I got it.” Beck grimaced. “And thanks for that mental picture.”

  “You’re welcome,” Ren said, unrepentant. He stared out over the canyon in silence. “What’s your next step?” he finally said.

  “I don’t know. It seems like all this…emotion is gumming up my decision-making process. I’m not good at dealing with it. And that hole in my memory—something is lost in there, and it keeps nagging at me.”

  “Have another beer.”

  Beck knew that wasn’t the answer. “Do me a favor, will you? I need time and quiet to clear out all the clutter inside me. Can you tell everybody to leave me alone until I get my head on straight?”

  “Sure,” Ren agreed easily. “But let me say something you probably have already discovered. As much as you try not to feel something—guilt, love, regret—it manages to find you anyway.”

  After his beers-on-the-tree-deck talk with Ren, Beck had promised himself to steer clear of Jewel until he’d calmed all the upheaval inside him. She was part of everything that was clouding his judgement—that night in his distant past, the near-past that he couldn’t remember, the recent days when he’d kissed her and petted her and lost himself in the wet heat of her.

  But while complete clarity still eluded him, one certainty had come out of all his ruminating. He was a father, responsible to a child, and as little as he knew how to be a good one, he realized that fathers could not live in the present. A man with a kid had to consider the future.

  So as he let himself out of the compound he had one goal in mind—that of getting the details of the financial proposal he’d given Jewel nailed down. His monetary support was the best thing he had to offer Soul—and to Soul’s mother, if he could get her to agree to an allowance besides the college fund, the larger trust, and the monthly sum to cover the child’s needs.

  With that business accomplished, he’d be more his old self, a man eager to take off on his next adventure.

  Instead of Jewel, it was her grandmother who answered the door. He agreed to come inside, however, because mother and daughter were expected to return from taking some inventory to a couple of local boutiques.

  Alison Malone led him to the kitchen where she poured him a glass of iced tea and then sat down in front of a laptop. She had a pair of glasses hanging from a chain around her neck and a second pair perched on the top of her head, and it took her a couple of tries to determine which strength was right for computer work.

  “I think I’m going to have to get a third pair,” she muttered.

  Relative tech neophyte that he was, he couldn’t feel superior, even though he did share with her how to make the text on the screen larger.

  “Write that down,” she said, jabbing her forefinger on a steno pad set on the table. He could see other directions written on the open sheet, in what was probably
Jewel’s neat and somehow artistic handwriting.

  “Happy to,” he said, and idly asked what she was doing. “Updating your status on social media?”

  “I’m posting a picture of the Nicky Aston set—well, Doris’s set—on my page.”

  Beck whistled. “Posting a picture…good on you to figure out how to do that.”

  “To tell the truth, Jewel did that part for me. Now I’m writing up what we know of its history. My other junking friends will love it.”

  When he pushed the steno pad toward her again, the older woman looked over the frames of her glasses at him. “I need you to know I had no idea about what you thought happened that night. If I had, I would have reassured you myself, knocking your father on his boney butt if that’s what it took to get an opportunity to speak to you.”

  He smiled at her fierce tone. “I thank you for that, though I never talked to anyone about it, not even to Gwen.”

  “I wish…well, I wish so many things had been different. My daughter was a party girl, probably still is, though we don’t see her often. After Jewel was released from the hospital all those years ago, Madeline took her away from me because we’d had an argument about her care—or lack thereof—for her healing child.”

  He didn’t like the distress on the older woman’s face. “But then Jewel came back here at ten years old,” Beck said. “You had your chance to take care of her.”

  “It was more like we took care of each other then. She’d been the adult in the relationship with her mother, I think, and by the time she came to live in the Canyon she was quite self-sufficient.” Alison Malone frowned. “Now, though, she does even more for me. I worry about her—that she’ll be left without someone to rely on.”

  Beck opened his mouth, ready to reassure her that Walsh and Reed had already pledged to look out for Jewel and Soul once he was gone. But then he thought better of it. Because what kind of asshole shunts off his responsibilities—basic, primal, vital responsibilities—to his younger brothers? But he had to say something. About the financial situation, at least. His daughter and her mother would want for nothing, he’d make sure of it.

  “Alison,” he began. “Jewel knows—”

  “She can always rely on me,” a hearty voice said. They both glanced over.

  “I let myself in,” Gavin said, looking tanned and too well-pressed. Fucking annoying. “I hope you don’t mind, Alison. I knocked, but no one came to the door.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” Jewel’s grandmother said.

  Beck gave the other man a suspicious glance. What, had he knocked with his tongue?

  “Remember,” Gavin said, ignoring Beck. “I’m picking you up for bridge club. I was out this way, and we’ll swing by and get Granny next.”

  “Of course, of course,” the older woman said, getting to her feet. She leaned down to press the Enter button on the laptop. “All done! I’m becoming a real social media maven.”

  Gavin sent her an indulgent smile. “You’re brightening up the day of all your followers, Alison.”

  Didn’t she hear the other man’s silky, smarmy tone? Beck barely managed not to roll his eyes or puke on the tips of his own toes.

  “I’ll be just a few minutes,” the woman said now, and hurried from the room, heading for the hall that led to the bedrooms.

  That left the two men alone, facing each other.

  “How are the ponies treating you?” Beck asked.

  A flicker of expression crossed the other man’s face, then he snapped his fingers as if a thought had just occurred to him. “Hey, I know. Why don’t we pop over to your place and get Granny’s jewelry set? We have time before Alison’s ready.”

  Pop over? What red-blooded male talked like that? “Oh, sorry, man. No can do.”

  “Really?” Gavin’s eyebrows drew together. They appeared to have been waxed. “Why not?”

  “It’s because of the kind of lock on the safe,” Beck said. “The combination is set by the user. Jewel’s the one who chose the numbers, and I don’t know ’em.”

  Gavin looked disbelieving. He should, since Beck had lied like a rug just to fuck with him. Maybe he should feel bad about it—but no. Why make life easy on a guy that slick?

  The other man got his payback, though. His lips turned up in an easy, but insincere smile. “Well, we’ll need to make arrangements very soon. Jewel says you’re leaving town any day.”

  Subtext: Leaving her to fall into Gavin’s perfectly manicured yet metaphorically grubby paws.

  “I meant what I said,” Gavin told him, with another fake smile. “I’ll be here for her.”

  Beck just bet he would. She might not see it yet, but that jerk had her in his crosshairs.

  The man’s irritating display of bright whites only widened now. “I’ll be here for her and Soul.”

  Instantly incensed, Beck shoved to his feet, too late realizing he’d fallen into the jerk’s trap. Gavin had been after just such a reaction.

  “She’s my daughter,” he said from between clenched teeth, unable to swallow back the words.

  “Yes, I’ve been told that.” Gavin’s smile was more smirk now. “But Daddy Dearest is about to go on a walkabout, leaving me here at home to comfort the ladies.”

  Christ, Beck thought, unable to stop his fingers from curling into fists. Maybe he was overreacting. Maybe the other man was an actual nice guy who just had a talent for getting under Beck’s skin. And on his last nerve. But, fuck, he wanted to deck him just for breathing, and the idea of him “comforting” Jewel or Soul made him…there weren’t words.

  Nor was there time for action, either, as the front door opened, and he heard Jewel’s light footsteps.

  And the whiny cry of a toddler in distress.

  Some primitive instinct kicked in, from somewhere deep, deep in his lizard brain. His body jerked, all muscles stiffening, nerves on sudden high alert. Then he was moving to intercept, a defender determined to protect his family.

  But there was no corporeal enemy to face in the foyer. Just mother and daughter. Jewel, tendrils trailing from a messy bun on the top of her head, wore a worried expression. Soul perched on her mother’s hip, her face flushed, her eyelashes spikey from tears. As he approached the pair, the little one whimpered.

  “What’s the matter?” he asked, beginning to slide his hands into his pockets. Then he caught himself and reached for the overstuffed baby bag hanging on Jewel’s shoulder.

  She gave him a wan smile as he took it from her and set it on the floor. “I think she’s teething again.”

  “Oh.” Beck had never considered the process, but one look at the baby made clear it was no picnic. He bent to bring his face closer to hers and lowered his voice. “Hey, buddy. How you doing?”

  Little arms reached toward him, and Soul whimpered again.

  Alarmed, he stepped back. What did he know about easing her pain? Then he heard heavy footsteps behind him, thought Gavin, and was determined not to shirk his duty. Or show any fear. He scooped his daughter into his arms.

  She began to cry in earnest. Shit.

  In an imitation of the hot potato game, he quickly but gently passed her back to her mother. But that only increased the wailing, and Soul stretched her arms toward him again.

  “Want me to see what I can do?” Gavin asked from behind Beck.

  “No,” he said, his voice curt. “I’ve got this.”

  Soul practically threw herself at him, and he caught her against his chest. The wailing subsided to pitiful whimpers.

  Beck felt himself start to sweat.

  “I’m sorry she’s fussy,” Jewel said.

  “You don’t have to apologize.” You just have to tell me what the hell to do! “Uh, how about a cool cloth for her face. She feels warm.”

  “Right.” Looking flustered, Jewel led the way to the kitchen, where she put a paper towel under a cool stream of water.

  Alison Malone appeared in the room, and she clucked her tongue. “Oh, poor baby. Is it her teeth like you thought?
”

  “I’m guessing yes,” Jewel replied, wringing out the towel. “I suppose that’s why she was so fussy last night.”

  “You guess?” Beck said. “Should we get her to the doctor?”

  “I don’t think so.” Jewel bathed the baby’s face and this close Beck could see the shadows beneath her eyes. If the baby had had a difficult night, then so had she.

  “I’ve got this,” he said, taking the towel from her. “Why don’t you sit down? My glass of tea is there, but I haven’t touched it. Drink some.”

  Jewel didn’t move.

  “Honey,” he said again, then found her hand with his free one and drew her toward a chair. “Sit.”

  “But Soul—”

  “I’ve got her. I’ve got this. Take a minute to breathe.”

  Jewel’s grandmother glanced at Gavin. “I think I should cancel on my bridge group.”

  “No,” Beck said before Jewel or the other man could get a word in. “Go ahead.” I worry about her—that she’ll be left without someone to rely on. On the heels of that echo, a promise tumbled from him. “I’m here. I’m going to take care of my girls.”

  Christ. What was he saying?

  It wasn’t as if he was a magic wizard. Good intentions weren’t a surefire cure for anyone’s physical distress. But he did what he could, insisting Jewel take the shower she said she’d missed that morning, allowing Soul to gum at his knuckles which seemed to give her a measure of relief, pacing about the house and talking to the baby to distract her from her discomfort.

  Finally, she dozed off, her face pressed into the crook of his neck. Too afraid he’d wake her if he transferred her to her crib, he took a seat next to Jewel on the couch in the family room. He heard her sigh and then released one himself, letting his head fall back and his eyes close.

  Apparently he fell asleep. When he awoke, though, he wasn’t the least bit disoriented. He knew instantly it was the weight of his daughter against his chest. Her mother’s head against his shoulder, his free arm tucking her close. Well-being trickled through him.

  It reminded him of when he’d read the ballerina book to Soul. I’m happy, he’d thought then.

  I’m happy, he thought now.