Mr. Pink

by Tessa Layne

  She presses her lips together and nods, eyes downcast. “Yeah.” She sucks in a breath and lets it out on a sigh. “Okay. Well, I’ve gotta run.” She takes a step back and meets my eyes with a tiny, sad smile. “Thank you.”

  I ruminate on her expression the entire drive into town. “Where’s mommy?” Sophie asks suspiciously when I arrive at the day camp.

  “She’s working.”

  “But she always picks me up,” she says with a quivering lip.

  Oh jesustitschrist. If she starts crying I’m fucked. I’m not equipped for wiping away women’s tears, no matter what her age. Spoiling, yes. Lovemaking, undoubtedly. But tears? Fuck no. But I also know that Sophie is tough as nails, and something must have happened today at camp if she’s close to tears. I squat down so she’s at eye-level. “I know, kiddo. So how about chocolate shakes at the diner?” That seems like the perfect way to spoil a precocious five-year-old.

  She immediately brightens. “But mommy doesn’t let me have ice-cream unless it’s a special occasion.”

  “Don’t you think me picking you up from camp is a special occasion?”

  Her devilish smile is back in place. She likes my logic. Was Macey like this as a little girl? All vim and vigor, running wild through her parents’ vineyard, climbing trees and causing trouble for the adults in charge of her safety? Could she have been bought off with a chocolate shake? I’ll never know. But at least I can spoil Sophie this once.

  I rise and she slips her hand into mine. I brace against the tug I feel deep in my chest, the feelings of protectiveness that arise as I give her tiny hand a squeeze. “C’mon. Let’s go.”

  She skips to the car and climbs into the backseat. “Wait,” she says as I move to shut the door. “You’re supposed to check it’s buckled.”

  “Looks like it to me,” I say, eyeing her.

  She scowls. “You’re supposed to.”

  I bend across her and give the seatbelt a tug. “Satisfied?”

  She nods with a self-satisfied grin. We drive about a block before she speaks up again. “You’re supposed to ask what I did today.”

  I catch her eye in the rearview, and she’s waiting expectantly for the question. “What did you do today?”

  “I threw sand at Aiden and got sent to time-out,” she says proudly.

  My eyebrows launch to my hairline. “You threw sand at Aiden?” My immediate response is relief that I’m the one to learn this. I’m pretty sure Macey would shit bricks if she found out Sophie was picking fights, and I wonder why nobody from camp called her. Of course, if they had, she’d have ignored the call anyway, or missed it. Cell service isn’t so hot in the middle of the vineyards. “And why did you throw sand at Aiden?” I ask sternly. I should be stern about this, right? Throwing sand is bad. Very bad.

  She shoots me a defiant, half-fearful look, and her lower lip starts to quiver again. “Because he said I don’t have a daddy.”

  Little fucker. I don’t care who Aiden is, or whether or not he’s mostly a nice kid, I want to pound his puny little head into the ground for making Sophie cry. I clear my throat. “But you do have a daddy, right, kiddo?”

  She nods solemnly. “He’s in heaven, but Aiden said that didn’t count.”

  “Fuck Aiden.”

  Sophie’s eyes widen. “You’re not supposed to say bad words.”

  “And you’re not supposed to throw sand, but you did it anyway.” God, I hope Macey doesn’t hear about this. She’ll be beside herself. And then she’ll be pissed at me for teaching her daughter four-letter words.

  Sophie studies me through big round eyes. “I miss my daddy.”

  Kill me now. I feel for her, but I’m the wrong guy for this job. I don’t know what to say. I clear the frog from my throat. “I bet you do. And you know, no one can take your daddy from you, right? No one.” I hope it’s enough. I don’t like the bastard, and not because of what I remember of him, vague though it may be. He broke Macey’s heart. His daughter’s too. But I’ll be damned if I crush a little girl’s dreams of her father, even if he was an asshole who left them high and dry.

  “No one,” she repeats softly, looking absolutely crestfallen.

  I clench the steering wheel as my heart does loop-de-loos. I know that heartache. That pain of loss and betrayal. “Time for shakes,” I say roughly, pulling into the diner parking lot a little too fast.

  “French fries too?” She asks hopefully.

  “Sure. What the hell. French fries too.”

  “You said a bad word,” she points out.

  “Yep. I did. Grown up’s prerogative.”

  She clambers out of the booster seat and this time I offer my hand. She takes it firmly. “What’s pero… pero…”

  “Prerogative?”

  She nods.

  “It means it’s my choice to say those words.” That satisfies her long enough for us to walk into the diner and settle into two seats at the long Formica counter.

  Sophie waves. “Hi, Dottie.”

  Dottie, the town matriarch and command center for all the gossip bustles over to the counter. “Well hi there, sweetie pie. How are you today? Your mama busy with the vineyard?”

  “I threw sand,” she confesses, looking not one bit apologetic.

  “Did you now? And what does your mama have to say about that?” Dottie gives me a healthy dose of stink-eye, as if it’s my fault she threw sand at day camp.

  “I haven’t told her,” she mumbles.

  “I see.” Dottie pats down her apron and harrumphs. “Well, nothin’ that some pie won’t cure, I suppose.”

  Sophie’s eyes glow. “Chocolate shakes? With fries?”

  “That too, I suppose.” She turns to me, still looking suspicious. “And for you?”

  “Same.”

  “Alrighty, you two sit tight.” She hurries off, hollering something through the kitchen window.

  I’m at a loss for what to say now that it’s just the two of us. I pat Sophie on the head and watch quietly as she colors the kiddie menu. Fortunately, Sophie’s not in a talking kind of mood, and she’s content to connect the dots and color flower petals, drawing her own additions to the picture in the margins.

  The shakes and fries arrive, and Sophie’s very happy to dip her fries into her shake and make airplanes into her mouth. I might have to revise my first impression of her. She’s definitely grown on me. Hell, I’ll probably miss her when I go. I think mostly I’ll miss her because of the way she reminds me of her mother - the mischievous looks, the naughty grins, the fire in her eyes when she’s mad about something. “Come on, kiddo. Time to get you back to your mother,” I say when she slurps up the last of her shake from the bottom of the tall glass.

  “But you didn’t finish yours.” She eyes my half-consumed shake intently.

  “Oh, no. Don’t get any ideas. You’re already on a sugar high.”

  “Please?” she wheedles, eyes going soft.

  I have to laugh. But I shake my head. “Car. Your mom’s probably worried.”

  But Macey’s nowhere to be found when we arrive back at the vineyard. Not waiting by the drive, or at the crushing pad, or even in the office. I send her a quick text: Back w/ S where ru?

  Five minutes later, she still hasn’t responded.

  Sophie’s oblivious, already halfway up a tree in the yard. “Yes, I see you,” I shout. “Be careful up there.”

  Ten minutes later, I text again: ru okay?

  Not thirty seconds later, she hurries into the yard, breathless. “There you are,” she says brightly. Too brightly. Immediately, I’m on alert.

  “You okay?”

  She nods, not meeting my eyes. “Sorry, I was out in the fields, we’re going to harvest the cab franc tonight.”

  “Tonight?”

  She nods. “Brix are at twenty, and a storm system is projected to move in late morning, tomorrow. We’ve gotta start tonight.”

  I hear the excitement in her voice, even as I deflate a little. So much for the back rub I’
d planned to give her tonight. It could wait, the grapes couldn’t. “Great. What about Sophie?”

  “She’s got a bedroom across the hall from Jason and Millie. She’ll be fine here tonight.” She cocks her head, looking at me funny. “You know, you’re really great with her.”

  “Yeah? Why do you say that?”

  “She talks about you all the time.”

  “Only because I curse in front of her.”

  She laughs. “Seriously, you’d make a great dad someday.”

  Something in her voice puts me instantly on guard. “Who me?” I shake my head. “No way.”

  Her brows knit together. “You really think that?”

  I laugh harshly. “I know that, Gorgeous.”

  “So… you’re fling material, not father material.” Her voice goes flat. Emotionless. She frames her comment as a statement, not a question, and then I swear she mumbles “Good to know now.” Something about this whole exchange feels off. But I can’t put my finger on it. She flashes me a smile, only it doesn’t reach her eyes.

  “Something like that,” I joke. Only not really. My thoughts turn to the pact Declan and I made, to never have children. To never let the sins of the father, or the brother, be passed on to the son. But I can’t exactly explain that to Macey.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  The harvest is in. The grapes have been crushed, and the second bottling of Stardust Rosé is complete, no thanks to Jason, who was more or less absent. Mike’s chardonel grapes are slowly fermenting in a steel tank at fifty-five degrees.

  I’ve been a visitor at Macey’s house so much in the last three weeks that she’s stopped insisting I walk over, or park in the alley. I stop on the way back and grab a box of take-out. My ladies are hungry and tired, and the least I can do is supply dinner. Macey shoots me a grateful glance when I walk into the kitchen with a box of takeout, and a grocery bag full of ice-cream and Oreos in the other. Sophie immediately eyes the ice-cream. “Dinner first,” I growl. I’m already impatient to send her off to bed so that I can have Macey to myself. Sophie just giggles and climbs up into her seat, not intimidated by my bear-like demeanor in the least.

  Somehow, we manage to get Sophie put to bed with only two bedtime stories. Then I entice Macey into a hot shower, and proceed to love her until the knots work themselves out of her neck. After, I wrap her in a towel and carry her back to the bedroom. But she scrambles down before I can shut the door. “Be right back.” She scoots down the hall, naked as the day she was born and disappears into the kitchen.

  I settle myself between the cool sheets to await her return. If she brings the ice-cream, I’m licking it off her belly. Her feet slap on the wood floor as she pads back holding a bag of Oreos. Her mouth bows as she shuts the door with purpose then slips in next to me and props herself up with pillows, leaving the bag in her lap. She fishes a cookie out of the package and slowly twists it, then pops the unfrosted piece of cookie into her mouth, licking the crumbs from her bottom lip.

  “You’re not supposed to eat cookies in bed.” I lick a crumb she missed from the corner of her mouth.

  She gives me a saucy arch of her brow and lifts her delicate shoulder. “It’s my bed. I can do what I want.”

  “But what about crumbs? No crumbs in my bed,” I pronounce with the authority of a king. Unless, of course, I was licking them off her body.

  She licks the frosting off the remaining cookie. My shaft gives a painful throb, swelling at the sight of her pink tongue moving in slow circles, lapping up the sugar paste. It’s erotic as fuck, and I want her to look at me just like that the next time she takes me in her mouth. Like I’m dessert. She gives me a Mona Lisa smile, but I see the want building in her eyes. She drops her gaze to my burgeoning cock, and nibbles at the cleaned off cookie. “You’re just a visitor. My bed, my rules.”

  Something I can’t identify balloons inside my chest. Something that arrows down into my belly and makes me squirm. I don’t want to be a visitor. I want… more. I want to be setting the rules. Calling the shots. It’s my preferred role. Hell, it’s my fucking destiny. I take what’s left of the cookie and bring it to my mouth, swallowing it whole.

  “Hey, that was mine.”

  Her lower lip juts out and I can’t resist taking a nibble of that, either. I can’t resist floating a trial balloon. “What if… I wasn’t just a visitor… what if…” I trail hot kisses down her neck. “I called the shots for a while, see how it goes?”

  She goes still, frozen as a deer in headlights. I’ve completely misjudged the situation. Fuck. After a sickeningly long pause, she sniffs. “I… umm… I don’t think you’re ready for that.”

  Her answer reminds me of the night I met her, when she was trying to be tactful about her distaste for my family’s wine. She’s trying to be tactful now, but I’m done with being polite. Done with not talking about the elephant in the room, done with the innuendos and the taboo subjects. Finito. Caput. “Au contraire, Gorgeous. I think you’re the one who’s not ready. You’re the one still hung up in the past.”

  Her eyes flash. I’ve poked the bear, and she’s going to unleash her fury. “Really?” Her voice drips with disdain. “You’re accusing me of being stuck in the past.”

  It’s a rhetorical question, but I rise to the bait. “It’s the truth, isn’t it? You’re too afraid to confront your past and move on.”

  Her eyes darken. “You want the truth?” Her voice is knife-sharp. “To coin a phrase, I don’t think you can handle the truth.”

  I lean in, breath coming in shallow pulses. “Bring it, Gorgeous. You think you know everything about me? About what I can and can’t handle? Bring it the fuck on.”

  “Fine.” She rucks up the sheet, covering her breasts like she’s putting on armor. “Know what happened the last time I let someone else call the shots? When I trusted someone to be there?” She twists the sheet in a knot. “He killed himself. You know what Veteran’s benefits are like? They’re shit. The policy his parents took out on him? Void in the case of suicide. And there was no way it could be ruled accidental. Not with his brains splattered all over the kitchen wall.” Her voice catches, and a flush creeps down the back of her neck. She glances up, eyes glimmering and dark, lost in a memory so painful, she doesn’t see really see me. “The man I loved. The man who I gave everything to, checked out and left me to clean up the mess. Literally.” The story her eyes tell punches me in the gut, and I find it hard to breathe. She doesn’t have to fill in the blanks, it’s as plain as day between us. She scrubbed the walls clean herself.

  I want to gather her into my lap, pet her like a lamb and promise her everything is going to be all right. That I’d never leave her high and dry. That I’m her knight in shining armor, her champion. But it would be a lie. Sophie starts kindergarten in a week, and once the grapes are barreled I’m on the first plane back to California. The air is heavy and raw between us, filled with unspoken words, of might haves and hopes burned to ash. I want to say something, but any words of comfort would come off as trite. Insincere, even if I meant them. Because she’s right. This shit is too heavy for me to handle. I can’t promise her the fucking fairy tale with the happy ending. There is no happy ending for us, and the reality of that settles into my bones with cold certainty. Somehow, when neither of us were looking we went from fucking to… being friends…to something far far deeper. And now it’s complicated, messy. Like cookie crumbs in bed.

  So I do what any self-respecting asshole in this situation would do. I confess something I know without a doubt, will make her hate me.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  The words stick in my throat, caught in the tight squeeze behind my tongue. Is this what deathbed confessions feel like, when the secret has become to heavy to bear alone? Possibly, but I doubt I’ll find relief at the end of my confession. Certainly not absolution.

  “It must bring you comfort to wear your grief like a badge,” I say cruelly. She flinches, and the knife in my stomach gives a sharp twist. “To cl
oak yourself in words like honor. Fidelity.”

  She gives me a sharp look.

  “You accuse me of not being able to handle the truth when you refuse to see the ugly truth about Jason staring you in the face.”

  Her cheeks darken. “You’re just jealous,” she accuses.

  She’s not wrong. Jason’s part of her inner circle, though I’m the one she turns to for baser desires. And that’s the crux of it. “Everyone’s always loved Jason,” I begin. “Jason the heir, Jason the West Point star, Jason the wounded warrior. Poor Jason, abandoned by his fiancée.”

  “And your point is?” She glares. She sits taller in the bed, on guard and ready to defend.

  “He’s not Jesus Fucking Christ. He’s as much of an asshole as the rest of us.”

  “How dare you say that after all he’s been through?” she bristles.

  “Because it’s the truth. You want the unvarnished truth, Gorgeous? Jason was sent to West Point to shape up. He was a fucking liability to the family.”

  Her mouth hardens to a thin line. “That’s not true.”

  “Deny all you want, sweetheart. Keep your blinders on if you want, but the fact of the matter is that Jason was the biggest, meanest asshole of all of us. Where do you think Nico learned his tricks?” Where do you think I learned mine? I think, resolved to spare her from the worst of my brother’s transgressions. As if taunting me, the two little scars under my arm throb painfully.

  “Nico knocked up Jason’s fiancée.”

  “They were already over. Maybe not officially, but I caught Jason in the barn fucking one of Ronnie’s friends the day before his last deployment.”

  “You’re lying,” she says in a terrible voice.

  “Ask him why he refuses to wear his class ring.”

  She turns the full force of her fury on me, like a goddess ready to incinerate a mortal with a single look. “You. Are. Lying,” she punctuates viciously.