She caught up with him in the hall and he shot her an exasperated look. “What’s to talk about? You do realize that a lot of authors write under a second name, right? Plenty of them try to keep it quiet when the material is that different.”
“Oh, hey.” She bit her inner cheek to keep from smiling. If she did that, she might tip back over into that laughter and the rest of her emotions were fighting to boil out of control, everything kiting back and forth, with her anger still at a keen edge. But now, just now, the brightness of this moment overshadowed everything. “Don’t go getting defensive on me. I think it’s fantastic that you’re so . . . flexible.”
* * *
That mischievous glint in her eyes had him torn. Okay, he was hugely embarrassed now, but there was something in her eyes.
Something dark.
Something dark and edgy. That he understood.
Distraction could prove vital for sanity. That was why he’d buried himself in stories, in books . . . wrapped himself in Clayton for so long after Aliesha had died.
“Why are you blushing?” she asked.
Mortified, he realized his face was still hot and probably burning red. Turning away, he checked the pasta and then turned off the water. “I’m not,” he lied.
“Okay. Then how did you suddenly become so sunburned?”
Sighing, he braced his hands on the counter. “You’re getting a kick out of this, aren’t you?”
“Why are you so worked up over it?”
Aggravated, he shrugged. “The hell if I know.”
“You know, I think it’s wonderful you can write like that.”
Grabbing a colander from the cabinet, he slanted a look at her. He opened his mouth, closed it, then finally just shook his head.
She drew closer, and the self-consciousness he felt now only added to his discomfort. When she settled her hips against the counter next to him, he couldn’t really keep avoiding her gaze, either.
“You’re weren’t this gun-shy talking about your other stuff.”
Shows what you know. He just hid it better—because he’d been prepared. But he kept those words behind his teeth. Jerking a shoulder in a shrug, he said, “That was . . . different.”
“Different how?” Her tone was tart. “Let me guess . . . you’re fine with pushing the dark and the dismal and the intellectual, but bring something fun and sexy to the table and that is a problem?”
“Hell, no.” Aggravated all over again, he shot her a look. “Have you seen my bookshelves downstairs? Those are my books, Ressa, and you know what kind of books I read. They are mine. There’s everything from The Story of O to Jules Verne to The Iliad to Grisham and J.D. Robb. If I can read about sex, then I can damn well write about it.”
“Then what’s your problem?” she asked, lifting a brow. “Why do you look like you got caught sneaking your dad’s Playboy magazine? Why do you look so embarrassed?”
He snorted. “First of all, assuming my dad had them, I never would have found them—and I doubt he had them. The only time I ever got my hands on them was when I found Zach’s old stash. Second of all . . .” His mind went blank. Once more, he found himself floundering for words, because he was absolutely incapable of figuring out how to put it into words. “It’s not about . . .”
Trey sighed and gave himself a minute as he mixed up some olive oil with garlic, red pepper, and salt. After his mind settled a little, he glanced at her. “It’s not about being embarrassed, okay? I write. It’s what I do. It’s what I’ve always done. It’s like . . . I’ve always breathed. I was able to learn how to walk well enough, too, although I don’t remember doing that. I’ve always been able to write. I’m good at it—I know that, and I work hard at it, but . . . I’ve always done . . .. It’s . . .” Lowering his hands, he scowled at her. “It’s weird having the woman I’m sleeping with making a big deal out of it. Especially with those books, because I saw that ARC I gave you in your bedroom. You’ve already practically read that L. Forrester book to pieces.”
* * *
Ressa had never realized how appealing it could be to see a man look that flustered. Although she realized she’d been off target—embarrassed wasn’t quite right.
Self-conscious was the term she needed.
He focused on the food he was putting together with a single-minded intensity, although considering how easily he had done everything, she suspected being in the kitchen came about as easily as everything—well, everything that didn’t involve anything public. “It’s done,” he said less than a minute later, while she was still pondering her next step. “They ate earlier. I ordered pizza, but I didn’t eat much and I’m starving now.”
She moved to block him.
“So . . . what? You think this is just a regular, old, everyday job and people shouldn’t be interested?” she asked, her eyes narrowed on his face.
“It is a job. It’s one I’m just suited for better than some others—like any one of my brothers.” A wide grin split his face as he said it, and then, as it faded, he turned toward the glossy blue refrigerator and opened it up. A line formed between his brows as he looked at her. “It’s a job. Some people are born to be soldiers, some are born to be cops. Zach was born to act—for a while, and then he lost touch with it. He found what made him happy. Others are good with kids and they go on to teach or be counselors or that kind of thing. I’ve got stories in my head. I didn’t ask for them to be there, although I won’t complain that I have them. It’s a job, Ressa.”
“It’s a damn good job, most of the time,” he said softly. Turning away, he got plates from a cabinet, focusing on that simple task. “People pay me to do the one thing I have to do if I want to sleep at night . . . but yeah, it’s a job.”
“It’s a job you’re brilliant at.” She slid a hand up his back. “I don’t see why you feel so self-conscious about it.”
“Yeah, well, I’d probably feel just as weird if I was into roofing and you discovered I secretly did plumbing and were all excited about that, too.” He pushed the plates into her hands. “Here. You can do this part.”
* * *
Thirty minutes later, she sat outside curled up on a lounge watching the fire dance in the fire pit in front of her. It was gas and it had only taken her a few seconds of fiddling with it to get it going.
She heard a door open but she didn’t move.
She had managed to keep her mind off everything that had happened with Kiara earlier, but now, in the quiet of the night, it was harder.
Kiara.
She thought she was getting out.
And she just might be right.
She’d done four years. This was her second offense and yeah, it had been one hell of an offense, but she’d been on the straight and narrow ever since.
Kiara had stayed out of trouble, kept her nose clean, taken college courses, all the things a parole board would look for.
Trey sat down beside her and Ressa still continued to stare out over the yard. The pool sparkled, the blue light glowing faintly in the darkness. There was something soothing about it, the way the water flowed and rippled in the night.
“Tell me something,” she said after a long time had passed. A car pulled up nearby and they listened as the engine cut off, as a door shut.
“What do you want to know?” he murmured.
“I don’t know. I just want you to talk.” Then she frowned and lifted her head. “Tell me about the books . . . the Forrester ones. How did that happen?”
“What, you couldn’t ask me about how me and Travis would talk Zach into ganging up on Zane?” he asked, his voice grouchy. Then he sighed. “That’s fun to talk about.”
“Yes,” she said, her voice dry. “I’ve gotten the point . . . you kind of hate to talk about the books. But I’m curious.”
“I’ve noticed.” He slid her a look from the corner of his eye. “Look, the Forrester thing . . . nobody knows.”
“Yeah?” Curious, she studied him. Firelight danced over his face, castin
g him into ever changing slivers of light and shadow.
“Yeah.” He shrugged. “I mean my editor. Some of the people in house. My agent. Travis does. My assistant, although she’s been on leave . . . sorta . . . for a while. But that’s it. None of my other brothers know, my parents don’t. You know now. I want to keep it quiet.”
“Okay.” She laid a hand on his cheek, studying his eyes. “But can I ask why? I mean, it’s your call and everything, but I don’t see why you don’t want people to know or anything.”
“I . . .” He rolled his eyes and rose to his feet. She watched as he moved to the fire pit, crouching down to fiddle with the controls. “I get nervous in front of people. I always have. I’m fine if I’m talking about my brothers and even better if I’m not the only one up there—growing up, there was almost always a couple of us together anyway, so I had to learn to deal with that.” He grimaced and shot her a look. “I had to or I might as well become a recluse. But when it comes to me? I don’t know. I tend to half panic and I have to spend days—sometimes weeks—psyching myself up for it. It’s stressful enough to do it for one. I don’t know if I can handle doing it for two.”
As he slowly straightened from his crouch, he shot her a caustic look. “And it’s even more nerve-wracking thinking about doing it in front of a bunch of women.”
“Whatever.”
“Yeah, you roll your eyes.” He scraped his nails down the five o’clock shadow that had darkened his face. “You’re not the one who damn near had panic attacks every time an essay or a project was due in high school. Shit, I even bribed Travis into doing it for me a few times—until we got caught.”
“You bribed . . . you mean you had your twin giving your reports in class?”
“I wrote them,” he said defensively. “He just read them.”
A smile twitched at her lips and he had to clench his jaw not to smile back. Okay, yeah, that had been this side of desperate, the two of them swapping out classes, just so Trey didn’t have to give those damn reports. Getting caught—thanks to a teacher who had figured out he couldn’t go from panicked and ready to puke, to suave and cool within the span of a month or two—had probably been the kick in the pants he needed to actually learn how to handle getting up in front of people on his own.
And it had gotten better. Most of the time, other than a few twitches in his gut, he’d learned how to deal.
But he just wasn’t certain if he was ready to handle it for both faces he seemed to be wearing these days. Especially not yet. He was just now learning how to function in this world again. He didn’t need to juggle more on top.
“How did you get started writing them anyway?” Ressa asked. “I mean, Absence is a huge leap away from Exposing the Geek Billionaire.”
There were still shadows in her eyes. He wanted to carry her up to his bedroom and hold her until she slept—okay, other things first—but she needed sleep.
“Well.” He settled on the foot of the lounger and caught her hand. Her nails were wicked red, a slim ring of twisted copper on her right middle finger. He wished he could draw worth a damn, because he loved her hands. Elegant and beautiful and strong.
Aware she was still watching him, he finally looked up and met her eyes. “It was Aliesha,” he said. “She kept pushing at me to do it. After she died, I couldn’t write—not anything—for a year.”
Ressa’s eyes fell away.
He continued to hold her hand as he talked. “Then on the anniversary of the day she died, I woke up, and this idea—the idea she kept teasing me about, was just there.” Toying with her fingers, he thought about that morning—it was weird. He still couldn’t clearly recall Aliesha’s face, but that morning, when he’d taken those first steps toward saying good-bye, he remembered in stark, vivid detail. “I’d talked about wanting to try something different and she wanted me to do it, told me I could. So . . . I tried. I finished—and then I bawled like a baby, because the day I finished was the day I really let myself admit she was gone.”
“So this was some sort of closure for you,” she murmured.
“The first one was.” He shrugged. “Yeah. The second one? There was another idea . . . and it was fun. I had fun with it and I hadn’t had fun with writing for a long time. So . . . I wrote the third one. I’ll keep doing it as long as I have fun with it.”
“And when you stop having fun?”
“I’ll try another kind of story.” He gazed into the fire. The firelight danced over his skin and she was struck anew by how beautiful he was.
The question hovered in the back of her throat.
Ressa told herself not to ask.
Now wasn’t the time.
She didn’t need to do this right now. She opened her mouth, then closed it, feeling like a fool. Before her internal debate could be solved, there was a crashing sound and they both went silent, turning to follow the noise that had come from beyond the hedge that ran along Trey’s yard.
There was no way to see beyond it, not with the fence and the thick, lush green that rose above it.
The odd sensation of being watched settled over her. “What was that?”
“Probably Nadine’s dog,” Trey said. “She’s got an old bulldog that’s blind as a bat.”
The night was quiet, save for the lapping of the water in the pool.
He brushed his fingers down her cheek. “You worry too much.”
Forcing herself to look up, she met his gaze.
“What?”
He cupped her cheek, stroked his thumb over her lip. Tucked there in the corner of his backyard, she felt like it was just the two of them in the world.
He lifted his eyes to hers but they were practically lost in the shadows.
“You wear every thought, right there for people to see,” he said. “Instead of worrying, why don’t you just ask?”
Ressa’s heart lodged up in her throat. She licked her lips, opened her mouth. But the words wouldn’t come.
Trey just shook his head, a faint smile twitching on his lips. “I loved Aliesha. She was Clayton’s mother, was the love of my life . . . while I had her. But she’s gone and I’m not the man I used to be.”
Reaching up, she lay a hand against his cheek. Stubble scraped against her palm. “And who are you now?”
“In this very moment?” He turned his face into her touch. “I’m the man who wants to take you to bed.”
Her heart jumped up into her throat.
She thought of Neeci, thought of Clayton, thought of a hundred reasons why maybe this wasn’t the smart thing to do.
But she could argue with herself for hours.
For once, she was going to listen to what her heart said.
“I like that man . . . a lot.”
Chapter Twenty-seven
Ressa didn’t know why she felt so nervous.
It had seemed so easy, so right, outside a few minutes ago.
She’d called her aunt and Angeline had acted so casual, taken it completely in stride when Ressa said she was thinking about staying the night with Trey.
Shoot, the woman had already planned for that.
“I’ve already got clothes for Neeci here, baby. We’ll work out plans to meet tomorrow for you to get your car.”
So simple, so easy.
Except it wasn’t.
Now, lingering by the French doors in Trey’s room, she tried to calm the crazy knots in her belly. She heard a door open—the bathroom, she assumed, and she shivered, opened her mouth to say something. Stall . . . say something, you need to think . . .
But then she was in his arms.
“I missed you,” he whispered against her mouth.
Think.
Yeah, she was going to be doing a lot of that.
Trey moved—she had the dizzying impression of the room spinning and then she was pressed up between him and the wall. “You sure about this?” he asked, his mouth sliding along her cheekbone to nuzzle at her neck.
“Shut up.” She dragged his mouth back to
her, nipped his lower lip.
“Yes, ma’am.” Trey stripped her shirt away and then he leaned in, his mouth seeking out the curve of her neck while he reached behind her for the catch on her bra.
“You, too,” she demanded, tugging at the plain white button-down.
She laughed when he pulled it off with a force that sent buttons flying.
“I hope that wasn’t one of your favorites,” she said as he boosted her up.
“Wouldn’t matter. It was in the way.” He braced her against the wall, leaning in to press his mouth to her neck, then go lower, brushing soft, light kisses along her collarbone, and then he moved back up, claiming her mouth with his.
His tongue stabbed into her mouth as he popped the button on her jeans, undid the zipper. He seemed to have a thousand hands, because the jeans were gone in a blink. Then he boosted her up, braced her against the wall so he could rock against her. He was only wearing a pair of jeans now—and other than her panties, rough denim was all that separated him from her. His cock pulsed and she whimpered, feeling that sensation all the way down to her toes. Wrapping her legs around his hips, she clung tight, almost delirious with the pleasure.
He caught her tongue and sucked it into his mouth and then rubbed against her again.
Was it really possible to see sparks? Maybe even feel them? Because in that moment, she thought she was seeing, feeling . . . tasting—
Tearing her mouth away, she shoved him back. “Stop.”
He went still. “Stop?” His voice was harsh, uneasy, his breathing as ragged as her own.
“I can’t . . .” She had to wait a second to catch her breath. “I can’t breathe.”
The slow, wicked smile that curled his lips sent fire sizzling through her veins and she thought maybe, just maybe, she’d learn what it felt like to combust. “Good.” He leaned back in, but instead of covering her mouth with his, he pressed his lips to the curve where neck and shoulder met. She hissed out a breath, the heat of him scalding her, and the sensation of him raking his teeth down her skin sent shivers racing through every part of her.
Busted (Barnes Brothers #3) Page 32